I think this is an opportunity to influence IP patents. You can argue a case for DRM and Sim locks and, in the end, we consumers still have a choice on that end (don't but DRM limited music and don't buy cell phones with Sim locks).
But the Software IP and those who "own" it are the robber-barons and the oil or railroad monopolists of the 21st century. Patenting Software is like patenting math. Even worse, the patent office grants patents for basic concepts which have been in use (public domain) since the 60's. Corruption?
When Nokia and others use Open Source Linux (or whatever) it's a gain for freedom of use and information, even if DRM and Sim Locks are still part of the mix.
Working those kinds of hours, your company probably produces the same quality of code as the likes of Win95.
Anyone who's been in the business long enough, knows that the best code is produced with a clear head - working 16 hours a day 7 days a week wins the prize for the most code and usually the most bugs.
You also shipped Visual C++ and, remarkably, at the next OS update, Borland C++ wouldn't work. How strange. We finally had to give up on Borland because somehow, now that MS was competing against it, every OS upgrade would break competitors software.
Being a veteran, you will surely remember the DOS 3.1 slogan: "Dos isn't done 'till Lotus won't run".
So, if indeed, you left a trail of dead or dying competitors in your wake, it may not have been due to the quality of code you produced on no sleep at 4 in the morning.
Exactly what I was thinking... if he trolls slashdot all day between compiles, I think you let the cat out of the bag. If he has time enough to troll between compiles, his wife should be getting him a new computer first.
I thought some MS Windows products are already running on airplanes? Oh no, if they were using MS Windows, they would _always_ blow up, not just sometimes.;-)
Any computer is vulnerable if you give someone physical access to it, unless the hard disk is encrypted. Even then, it's just a matter of time.
However, the article talks about computers being hacked over the internet. I'd bet they were using Windows and MS Office. They should be using a government certified version of Linux or Unix, built from source.
It seems that stepping on a tile with pads which push fluid through turbines would have kind of a gel effect or feeling to the people walking on them. This could reduce the impact on the joints and perhaps the fatigue of walking around.
they put in a wi-fi access point that relayed the data over a cellular network. That must be terribly slow. What kind of speeds were they offering? If you had 25 people connected, it seems even a good DSL or Cable connection would be slow.
I think it makes sense to shutdown when you cannot verify that your data is 100% available. The software did interpret "Lack of Data" as exactly that "Lack of Data" and shut down accordingly.
Yes Firefox is free but rolling it out to hundreds of PCs in a company isn't. Click to install. Other than the time it takes to install it (3 minutes or so), where's the cost?
You don't get it. Actually, it appears you don't get it. You can write an standards based web app and it will run on IE5+ as well as Firefox 2+ (maybe even 1+).
Writing an application specificially for IE just means you don't know what you're doing.
Wow... did you guys look at the breakdown on that article?
Their "success" was, since 2002, they spent $35 MILLION, and converted about 1000 computers. So that's about what, $350,000 per workstation?
Yes, the OP had it correct... Munich did "Stay the Course" with Linux. Any rational person would have stopped a LONG time ago. The effort is upfront. Any rational person knows that once the major applications are done, the rest of the conversions are free. But, then some people think that if it doesn't say Microsoft, it can't be real. Open Source works and that makes some people nervous.
I am dumbfounded that they are spending 8M Euro to make a switch primarily for ONE application. If you have that money to spend, tell the bloody web app vendor to fix their broken app or you will move to a competitor. Heck, I bet for substantially less than 8M you could sponsor an open-source project to CREATE A NEW APP FROM SCRATCH. That's just the front they're using. Who's going to argue against the children? Whenever they use the "kids" as the reason, I suspect corruption.
Or license a Windows Terminal Server with just as many concurrent CALs as they need for this one temporarily-incompatible app?
Price that out vs. converting all 720 physical computers to nonfree software from the OS up, and that for one app that will be compatible in a year. Good point. When I hear about these decisions, I suspect that more may have happened behind the scenes than those making the decisions are willing to admit to. Sometimes, it's just that some manager in the process who has Windows at home just can't accept something that doesn't say windows. I see that where I work, even though we are a Windows shop. One manager just can't accept that Linux works. Fortunately the owner thinks differently, but this manager has Windows box on his desk that costs us no end of admin grief.
Actually, your application (lots of reads and a few writes or writes infrequently in batch mode) shouldn't cause MySQL as much trouble as a transactional environment with lots of reads and writes with multiple tables involved.
That said, your application would still probably be better under Postgresql (PG) as it would scale better to multiprocessor and multicore hardware. InnoDB for MySQL is extremely slow when adding columns to large tables and with some other admin tasks. But, Oracle is coming out with a new version for MySQL which should improve that. MySQL is coming out with Falcon next year which should improve things.
Keep in mind that Sun is targeting MySQL to Web Space applications and not high volume production applications.
Once you've lost all your data to a disk failure, you should realize the importance of backups... True, which I do. But I only backup my data. Reinstalling all the software is a pain in the butt.
We've been running MySQL using MyISAM since 2002. It's delivered acceptable performance until recently as we've expanded our application and the data volumes have increased. Now, we have to reorganize it on a frequent basis (we just backup and restore).
But, we really need to move to a transactional model so I've done some benchmarking between InnoDB and Postgresql. In almost all cases, Postgresql was significantly faster. Our application is very transactional with alot of writes.
And from what I've read, Postgresql scales well to multiprocessors and multiple cores where as MySQL does not. I know Falcon is coming but it was still very Alpha at the time I compared - I couldn't get it to run long enough to perform the tests.
Has anyone else compared Postgres to MySQL/Innodb?
Actually, that was part of the coverup. It was a devious plot where they diverted your attention from what they were really doing by telling you what they were really doing. Nobody would ever believe they were telling the truth so the best way to hide it was to show it. Yep, that's the genius of the Karl Rove. We now all believe they are just lying so, they can actually tell the truth and no one will believe them. I must admit, I missed it at first, but, wow, what a plan!
China is a huge country with a huge population, and implementing something like what Ms Klein describes would require just over 3 persons to watch every ordinary Chinese; it can't be done, not even in the US
You don't really understand the technology. You don't need 3 people to watch one person. The data is captured and stored. It is automatically scanned for indications of anti-state or criminal activity.
Once you have gotten on their radar screen, then they watch your every move, or they arrest you.
Slashdot Mirror
I think this is an opportunity to influence IP patents. You can argue a case for DRM and Sim locks and, in the end, we consumers still have a choice on that end (don't but DRM limited music and don't buy cell phones with Sim locks).
But the Software IP and those who "own" it are the robber-barons and the oil or railroad monopolists of the 21st century. Patenting Software is like patenting math. Even worse, the patent office grants patents for basic concepts which have been in use (public domain) since the 60's. Corruption?
When Nokia and others use Open Source Linux (or whatever) it's a gain for freedom of use and information, even if DRM and Sim Locks are still part of the mix.
Working those kinds of hours, your company probably produces the same quality of code as the likes of Win95.
Anyone who's been in the business long enough, knows that the best code is produced with a clear head - working 16 hours a day 7 days a week wins the prize for the most code and usually the most bugs.
Now, if Mac's didn't cost twice as much, I'd love to buy one.
You also shipped Visual C++ and, remarkably, at the next OS update, Borland C++ wouldn't work. How strange. We finally had to give up on Borland because somehow, now that MS was competing against it, every OS upgrade would break competitors software.
Being a veteran, you will surely remember the DOS 3.1 slogan: "Dos isn't done 'till Lotus won't run".
So, if indeed, you left a trail of dead or dying competitors in your wake, it may not have been due to the quality of code you produced on no sleep at 4 in the morning.
Why wasn't this used on 9/11?
Any computer is vulnerable if you give someone physical access to it, unless the hard disk is encrypted. Even then, it's just a matter of time.
However, the article talks about computers being hacked over the internet. I'd bet they were using Windows and MS Office. They should be using a government certified version of Linux or Unix, built from source.
It seems that stepping on a tile with pads which push fluid through turbines would have kind of a gel effect or feeling to the people walking on them. This could reduce the impact on the joints and perhaps the fatigue of walking around.
Perhaps the problem lies in outlook and not in signatures and rich text email. Just another example of how MS stifles growth.
Good idea. I want to be able to send an email with pictures placed within the email.
I think it makes sense to shutdown when you cannot verify that your data is 100% available. The software did interpret "Lack of Data" as exactly that "Lack of Data" and shut down accordingly.
Writing an application specificially for IE just means you don't know what you're doing.
Their "success" was, since 2002, they spent $35 MILLION, and converted about 1000 computers. So that's about what, $350,000 per workstation?
Yes, the OP had it correct... Munich did "Stay the Course" with Linux. Any rational person would have stopped a LONG time ago. The effort is upfront. Any rational person knows that once the major applications are done, the rest of the conversions are free. But, then some people think that if it doesn't say Microsoft, it can't be real. Open Source works and that makes some people nervous.
Price that out vs. converting all 720 physical computers to nonfree software from the OS up, and that for one app that will be compatible in a year. Good point. When I hear about these decisions, I suspect that more may have happened behind the scenes than those making the decisions are willing to admit to. Sometimes, it's just that some manager in the process who has Windows at home just can't accept something that doesn't say windows. I see that where I work, even though we are a Windows shop. One manager just can't accept that Linux works. Fortunately the owner thinks differently, but this manager has Windows box on his desk that costs us no end of admin grief.
Here are the links to segments of the high res jpegs. You have to click on the word jpeg.
http://gallery.spitzer.caltech.edu/Imagegallery/image.php?image_name=ssc2008-11a
Here's a link to one of the pictures:
http://ipac.jpl.nasa.gov/media_images/ssc2008-11a4.jpg
Actually, your application (lots of reads and a few writes or writes infrequently in batch mode) shouldn't cause MySQL as much trouble as a transactional environment with lots of reads and writes with multiple tables involved.
That said, your application would still probably be better under Postgresql (PG) as it would scale better to multiprocessor and multicore hardware. InnoDB for MySQL is extremely slow when adding columns to large tables and with some other admin tasks. But, Oracle is coming out with a new version for MySQL which should improve that. MySQL is coming out with Falcon next year which should improve things.
Keep in mind that Sun is targeting MySQL to Web Space applications and not high volume production applications.
Once you've lost all your data to a disk failure, SSD starts looking pretty nice.
Okay, I'll bite too ...
We've been running MySQL using MyISAM since 2002. It's delivered acceptable performance until recently as we've expanded our application and the data volumes have increased. Now, we have to reorganize it on a frequent basis (we just backup and restore).
But, we really need to move to a transactional model so I've done some benchmarking between InnoDB and Postgresql. In almost all cases, Postgresql was significantly faster. Our application is very transactional with alot of writes.
And from what I've read, Postgresql scales well to multiprocessors and multiple cores where as MySQL does not. I know Falcon is coming but it was still very Alpha at the time I compared - I couldn't get it to run long enough to perform the tests.
Has anyone else compared Postgres to MySQL/Innodb?
You don't really understand the technology. You don't need 3 people to watch one person. The data is captured and stored. It is automatically scanned for indications of anti-state or criminal activity.
Once you have gotten on their radar screen, then they watch your every move, or they arrest you.