I've been turned down from a few jobs because of tattoos but to me it always was a filter for shallow, control-freak managers and good dudes.
Couldn't get away with that in Seattle and a few other places I can think of, at least if you are hiring for any kind of technical or creative position.
I mean who care if the DBA has tattoos, long blue hair, and facial piercings as long as they know what they are doing.
I probably shouldn't respond to the obvious troll but...
How exactly do you explain a country with the following racial makeup: black 90%, white 4%, Asian and mixed 6%
Having a 99.7% literacy rate?
Numbers are from an actual country entry in the CIA World Fact Book and this is one of several countries with a largely non-white and non-asian ethnic makeup with a high literacy rate.
For that matter lets take a look at the numbers for Mexico: mestizo (Amerindian-Spanish) 60%, Amerindian or predominantly Amerindian 30%, white 9%, other 1% Literacy rate: 92.2%
Dell- If you can't get an assigned rep you will get better prices and service by going through a reseller (yes Dell has resellers). Boxes are only slightly better than the better generic white-box servers. Service and support is iffy at the best of times. Dell RAID controlers suck.
HP - Rock solid boxes built like tanks. Not quite as overbuilt as when they were Compaq but still damn solid. Somewhat more expensive than other options though you can get the price way down if you go through the right reseller. Decent service most of the time.
IBM - Good solid boxes. Not as overbuilt as HP but way better than Dell gear. Resellers can sometimes get you the best price though often the best deals are direct from IBM. Excellent service even on out-of-warranty systems. Premium service offerings are actually worth paying for if you need them.
Sun's Opteron offerings are worth looking at if you want well-built AMD gear at a Dell-like price.
What would I buy? Depends. If price is the only consideration Dell and/or Sun. If solid gear and decent service is a consideration; IBM or HP.
The magic of something like an E25K has little to do with the speed of each processor and much to do with the overall system design. Things like the sheer number of processors, memory fabric, I/O fabric, hot-swap hardware, hardware level partitioning, etc.
Even 4-way (8 if you assume dual-core) Opteron boxes are limited by a PC-centric architecture.
What Sun should be doing is putting it's enterprise class systems (read: to include mainboard fabric design) experience to work at making Opteron solutions. With Sun's memory fabric experience and so forth, Opteron could really fly.
It is still far easier to do Oracle RAC wrong, and end up with a flat performance curve as you add nodes past 8 or so, than to do it right. It's possible to do RAC for some databases right and get reasonably, monotonically increasing performance out to many many nodes, but it's not common yet, or practical if you look at it statistically in terms of how many projects end up having to back it out and go back to large monolithic SMP servers.
I figure there is a reason companies with huge databases tend to be running them on large SMP servers from Sun, HP, or IBM.
It seems to me SUN's demise is similar to DEC/SGI where fewer and fewer people need big bulky machine -> enterprises are ok with cluster of'disposable' Intel boxes vs an ever-living-upgradable box. Is HPC an area they are good at? Have they explore any 'alternative' business?
Not really, you still need big honking multi-processor machines to run big honking databases. A quad-proc dual-core opteron still isn't there yet in being able to match a fully loaded E25K for chewing on a big database. Not to mention the huge difference between mainframe class and PC server class hardware on the reliablity front. Still the market for such beasts is limited.
It might do well for Sun to ditch the SPARC in favor of AMD. I don't think the SPARC architecture is up for matching the latest from Intel, AMD, or IBM. Furthermore Sun really can't afford to spend the development money necessary to keep up. Besides a 72 processor dual-core Opteron version of the E25K would be incredibly cool.
I'd still say IBM and HP proliant servers are the best. Dell's servers never impressed me nearly as much.
OTOH I'd still take Dell servers over most whitebox servers.
There is much more to making a server than putting desktop components in a rackmount case. Unfortunately there are a lot of people who don't seem to understand this.
There's no practical competition to land lines only because landlines are no longer practical. Cell phone networks are both cheaper and more reliable.
Hardly, for a large number of voice channels or high-speed data networks fiber and to a lesser extent copper is the only game in town. Just try finding a 43Mbps wireless connection in most parts of the country that includes a large static IP block and is as solid as a DS3 line.
I'd hardly call a cell phone network 'more reliable' than the old copper phone network. With an analog phone line and a line powered phone you just pick it up and it works, even during widespread power outages. Cell networks suffer from dead spots, dropped calls, marginal reception areas, and are easily overloaded when too many people try to make calls at once.
Now for consumer level services the local phone company, the cable company, and the services offered by wireless providers and satellite provides competition for voice, data, and video. Unfortunately for business class service unless you are lucky enough to be located somewhere with access to a facilities based CLEC the local phone company is pretty much the only game in town.
Um, like FOSS databases or not I just don't see them being ready for the kind of applications the ones listed in the Wintercorp report are likely being put to.
Still considering some of the databases listed were MS SQL I suppose anything is possible.
And don't look at the market cap numbers as buyout targets.
True but MSFT's $280B market cap is one heck of a warchest on its own. Many buyouts are financed by nothing more than the aquiring company's stock.
You really can't underestimate the financial power of $12 billion in operating profit and a $40 billion war chest. There really isn't a company in the world MSFT couldn't consider buying.
Well not exactly. I think Microsoft might have trouble pulling off a buyout of an oil major or GE. Aside from those few companies the triple threat of huge market cap, huge cash reserves, and huge operating profits does mean MSFT can aquire pretty much any company they can get past the shareholders and regulators.
Microsoft does not have enough money to buy Sony, at least if you are talking about the whole megacorp.
Actually Microsoft probably could buy Sony if they really wanted to. One thing people here seem to be forgetting is in the corprate M&A business you get to use your stock as currency along with any cash on hand (as well as debt such as bonds but lets not complicate the issue).
Lets take a look at the numbers: Microsoft (MSFT) Market cap: 283.13B Cash on hand: 34.70B Debt: 0 Revenue: 41.36B Gross profit: 33.59B
Sony (SNE) Market cap: 47.47B Cash on hand: 3.76B Debt: 8.88B Revenue: 61.95B Gross profit: 15.60B
So while Microsoft has only 2/3 the annual revenue of Sony, it has roughly 6 times the market capitalization, 9 times the cash on hand, and more than double the gross profit. In addition Microsoft carries no debt.
If Microsoft wanted to buy Sony all they would really have to do is offer Sony shareholders some mix of MSFT stock and cash in excess of Sony's current market captialization. (probably something along the lines of a 10-20% premium depending on the exact mix of cash in the offer)
Now as others point out the question is if Microsoft would really want Sony. Other than the games division none of Sony's business lines are in areas Microsoft has expressed an interest in getting involved in. At the very least there is the risk of annoying other Microsoft partners, not to mention potential anti-trust problems.
Now Microsoft could try to convince Sony to sell its game division, but I somehow doubt it is for sale at any price it would make sense for Microsoft to pay.
They care because everybody here who talks up linux has a dirty little secret: their windows partition. The one they use when they need to get stuff done, like use photoshop or illustrator, or use a word processor that actually works, or a browser that works with their bank's website (granted, not fair, but true), or a play a game other than gnu chess, or print to that fancy new color laserjet down the hall.
Ok mods, have at it, but before you do look deep inside your hard drives and you'll see that what I say is true!
Open Office works just fine as a word processor, Firefox works with every web site I actually care about including my bank's, and CUPS hasn't had a problem with any printer (including the fancy color laserjet down the hall) I've pointed it at.
I don't even have a windows desktop at work... Linux has been able to do everything I need just fine.
I will confess to having XP on my laptop (stupid drivers) and running under VMWare on my home box, but that said I really see no compelling reason to upgrade any time soon. I was running 2000 until SP1 came out for XP. I'd probably still be on 2k if it didn't require 2 billion patches and worked better with modern hardware.
Now, if Novell wants to make a dent in the Idiot(meaning, normal user) market, more power to them, but please! People! Nerds! Please, understand that Linux does not have to be mainstream, it just has to be what it is - an OS for people, who like it.
Realize that Novell's target user for SLED isn't the average home user or the small business with a couple of PC's but medium to large businesses. Think companies with 100 or 1000 plus desktops in place.
The trick isn't making Linux more attractive to the average windows user but making it more attractive to the average IT department at a mid to large size company.
Solve their desktop management headaches, particularly for users in places like call-centers and the'll beat a path to your door.
A number of people here seem to be confused as to how the Fair Housing Act applies to shared housing situations as opposed to rental or sale of entire units.
If you are advertising for a shared housing situation you are allowed to state your gender, religion, age, race, etc. Similarly you are allowed to state preferences that otherwise would not be allowed in housing ads.
Our local paper won't even allow ads that state an apartment or house for rent or sale is near a church (i.e. "Near St.Mark's"), however they do allow "wanted to share" ads with statements like "Wanted: Christian male professional to share with same". I suspect that it is a fairly safe bet there is an exception to the Fair Housing Act for shared living situations.
From what I've seen on Craigslist 99% of the housing ads that could be considered to have discriminitory language are for shared housing. I don't think I've ever seen an ad for an entire apartment or house posted that would violate the Fair Housing Act. This isn't to say such ads haven't been posted but I suspect they are rare.
Why is this? For one people tend to be much more picky about who they will get into a shared housing situation with. For another those who are posting houses or apartments for rent very likely have been in the business of renting property for a while and know the rules so don't post ads they couldn't post in the local paper.
Ick... the Charles Shaw wines I've had haven't been all that good (in fact the Cabernet I had tasted like drain cleaner). Much better to pay a couple of dollars more and buy some cheap Aussie, Washington, or California wine.
University of British Columbia and espcially the Engineering students are well known for pulling various pranks.
A favorite target of theirs is the Lion's Gate Bridge across the Vancouver harbor. Two I've heard about were suspending a car from the underside and setting the marker lights to flash out a message in Morse code.
Well Stewart was a special case for two other reasons: 1. She held a Series 7 Securities Trading License and should know better based on the standards expected of one holding such a license. 2. She was on the Board of Directors of the NYSE and again needs to uphold a higher standard due to her position.
I believe just prior to WWI the US Congress invalidated all aircraft related patents due to the problems it was creating for military development of aircraft.
I think the patent holders got a one-time payout.
Intellectual property is a creation of the government and what the government giveth the government can taketh away when it suits them (though for political reasons it is best if there is a darn good reason for taking away and some form of due process is followed).
Canada is kind of a special case where this sort of thing is concerned. There have been any number of things used by the government or military where a key supplier was located in Canada or run by a Canadian company.
Far more troubling should be the fact that with almost any electronic device a large number of key parts are made in places like China or Taiwan. This even extends nowdays to some critical defense electronics like radios or radar sets.
What about voucher programs such as Section 8? Do these crowd out private dollars from the housing market?
As an aside I think most 'public housing' should be funded via mechanisms such as section 8 and the publicly-owned housing projects done away with. The main problem I see with section 8 is that it is woefully underfunded thus has very long waiting lists.
Furthermore another way government (at whatever level) can ensure a supply of affordable housing would be by offering zoning variances, tax incentives, or loan programs to builders/landlords who put affordable units in their buildings/projects.
Otherwise the natural incentives to developers and property owners seem to be toward providing luxury apartements and condos, at least in areas where land is expensive. Look at San Francisco/San Jose for an example of an urban area with few options availible to people with low or even middle incomes within anything approaching a reasonable commuting distance.
Well I just thought I'd mention it as I pissed off a Chinese-Canadian co-worker of mine by jokingly refering to Vancouver as 'Hongcouver' in front of him. He normally wasn't one to be terribly PC so I was a little shocked.
Not to mention the number of times I'd heard 'Hongcouver' from Canadians (and others) of all colors.
"Hongcouver" - I LUV it! Fits right in there with Canuckistan/Kanuckistan.
Well it isn't original and I've been hearing it since the mid-90's. Supposedly it is a reference to the large numbers of Hong Kong Chinese who immigrated to Vancouver, BC around the time of the handover from the Brits to the mainland.
Warning: it is considered somewhat racist by many people.
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I've been turned down from a few jobs because of tattoos but to me it always was a filter for shallow, control-freak managers and good dudes.
Couldn't get away with that in Seattle and a few other places I can think of, at least if you are hiring for any kind of technical or creative position.
I mean who care if the DBA has tattoos, long blue hair, and facial piercings as long as they know what they are doing.
I probably shouldn't respond to the obvious troll but ...
How exactly do you explain a country with the following racial makeup:
black 90%, white 4%, Asian and mixed 6%
Having a 99.7% literacy rate?
Numbers are from an actual country entry in the CIA World Fact Book and this is one of several countries with a largely non-white and non-asian ethnic makeup with a high literacy rate.
For that matter lets take a look at the numbers for Mexico:
mestizo (Amerindian-Spanish) 60%, Amerindian or predominantly Amerindian 30%, white 9%, other 1%
Literacy rate: 92.2%
My thoughts on the 'big three' server vendors:
Dell- If you can't get an assigned rep you will get better prices and service by going through a reseller (yes Dell has resellers). Boxes are only slightly better than the better generic white-box servers. Service and support is iffy at the best of times. Dell RAID controlers suck.
HP - Rock solid boxes built like tanks. Not quite as overbuilt as when they were Compaq but still damn solid. Somewhat more expensive than other options though you can get the price way down if you go through the right reseller. Decent service most of the time.
IBM - Good solid boxes. Not as overbuilt as HP but way better than Dell gear. Resellers can sometimes get you the best price though often the best deals are direct from IBM. Excellent service even on out-of-warranty systems. Premium service offerings are actually worth paying for if you need them.
Sun's Opteron offerings are worth looking at if you want well-built AMD gear at a Dell-like price.
What would I buy? Depends. If price is the only consideration Dell and/or Sun. If solid gear and decent service is a consideration; IBM or HP.
You almost seem to be contradicting yourself.
The magic of something like an E25K has little to do with the speed of each processor and much to do with the overall system design. Things like the sheer number of processors, memory fabric, I/O fabric, hot-swap hardware, hardware level partitioning, etc.
Even 4-way (8 if you assume dual-core) Opteron boxes are limited by a PC-centric architecture.
What Sun should be doing is putting it's enterprise class systems (read: to include mainboard fabric design) experience to work at making Opteron solutions. With Sun's memory fabric experience and so forth, Opteron could really fly.
Indeed that is what I had in mind.
It is still far easier to do Oracle RAC wrong, and end up with a flat performance curve as you add nodes past 8 or so, than to do it right. It's possible to do RAC for some databases right and get reasonably, monotonically increasing performance out to many many nodes, but it's not common yet, or practical if you look at it statistically in terms of how many projects end up having to back it out and go back to large monolithic SMP servers.
I figure there is a reason companies with huge databases tend to be running them on large SMP servers from Sun, HP, or IBM.
It seems to me SUN's demise is similar to DEC/SGI where fewer and fewer people need big bulky machine -> enterprises are ok with cluster of'disposable' Intel boxes vs an ever-living-upgradable box. Is HPC an area they are good at? Have they explore any 'alternative' business?
Not really, you still need big honking multi-processor machines to run big honking databases. A quad-proc dual-core opteron still isn't there yet in being able to match a fully loaded E25K for chewing on a big database. Not to mention the huge difference between mainframe class and PC server class hardware on the reliablity front. Still the market for such beasts is limited.
It might do well for Sun to ditch the SPARC in favor of AMD. I don't think the SPARC architecture is up for matching the latest from Intel, AMD, or IBM. Furthermore Sun really can't afford to spend the development money necessary to keep up. Besides a 72 processor dual-core Opteron version of the E25K would be incredibly cool.
I'd still say IBM and HP proliant servers are the best. Dell's servers never impressed me nearly as much.
OTOH I'd still take Dell servers over most whitebox servers.
There is much more to making a server than putting desktop components in a rackmount case. Unfortunately there are a lot of people who don't seem to understand this.
There's no practical competition to land lines only because landlines are no longer practical. Cell phone networks are both cheaper and more reliable.
Hardly, for a large number of voice channels or high-speed data networks fiber and to a lesser extent copper is the only game in town. Just try finding a 43Mbps wireless connection in most parts of the country that includes a large static IP block and is as solid as a DS3 line.
I'd hardly call a cell phone network 'more reliable' than the old copper phone network. With an analog phone line and a line powered phone you just pick it up and it works, even during widespread power outages. Cell networks suffer from dead spots, dropped calls, marginal reception areas, and are easily overloaded when too many people try to make calls at once.
Now for consumer level services the local phone company, the cable company, and the services offered by wireless providers and satellite provides competition for voice, data, and video. Unfortunately for business class service unless you are lucky enough to be located somewhere with access to a facilities based CLEC the local phone company is pretty much the only game in town.
Um, like FOSS databases or not I just don't see them being ready for the kind of applications the ones listed in the Wintercorp report are likely being put to.
Still considering some of the databases listed were MS SQL I suppose anything is possible.
And don't look at the market cap numbers as buyout targets.
True but MSFT's $280B market cap is one heck of a warchest on its own. Many buyouts are financed by nothing more than the aquiring company's stock.
You really can't underestimate the financial power of $12 billion in operating profit and a $40 billion war chest. There really isn't a company in the world MSFT couldn't consider buying.
Well not exactly. I think Microsoft might have trouble pulling off a buyout of an oil major or GE. Aside from those few companies the triple threat of huge market cap, huge cash reserves, and huge operating profits does mean MSFT can aquire pretty much any company they can get past the shareholders and regulators.
Microsoft does not have enough money to buy Sony, at least if you are talking about the whole megacorp.
Actually Microsoft probably could buy Sony if they really wanted to. One thing people here seem to be forgetting is in the corprate M&A business you get to use your stock as currency along with any cash on hand (as well as debt such as bonds but lets not complicate the issue).
Lets take a look at the numbers:
Microsoft (MSFT)
Market cap: 283.13B
Cash on hand: 34.70B
Debt: 0
Revenue: 41.36B
Gross profit: 33.59B
Sony (SNE)
Market cap: 47.47B
Cash on hand: 3.76B
Debt: 8.88B
Revenue: 61.95B
Gross profit: 15.60B
So while Microsoft has only 2/3 the annual revenue of Sony, it has roughly 6 times the market capitalization, 9 times the cash on hand, and more than double the gross profit. In addition Microsoft carries no debt.
If Microsoft wanted to buy Sony all they would really have to do is offer Sony shareholders some mix of MSFT stock and cash in excess of Sony's current market captialization. (probably something along the lines of a 10-20% premium depending on the exact mix of cash in the offer)
Now as others point out the question is if Microsoft would really want Sony. Other than the games division none of Sony's business lines are in areas Microsoft has expressed an interest in getting involved in. At the very least there is the risk of annoying other Microsoft partners, not to mention potential anti-trust problems.
Now Microsoft could try to convince Sony to sell its game division, but I somehow doubt it is for sale at any price it would make sense for Microsoft to pay.
They care because everybody here who talks up linux has a dirty little secret: their windows partition. The one they use when they need to get stuff done, like use photoshop or illustrator, or use a word processor that actually works, or a browser that works with their bank's website (granted, not fair, but true), or a play a game other than gnu chess, or print to that fancy new color laserjet down the hall.
... Linux has been able to do everything I need just fine.
Ok mods, have at it, but before you do look deep inside your hard drives and you'll see that what I say is true!
Open Office works just fine as a word processor, Firefox works with every web site I actually care about including my bank's, and CUPS hasn't had a problem with any printer (including the fancy color laserjet down the hall) I've pointed it at.
I don't even have a windows desktop at work
I will confess to having XP on my laptop (stupid drivers) and running under VMWare on my home box, but that said I really see no compelling reason to upgrade any time soon. I was running 2000 until SP1 came out for XP. I'd probably still be on 2k if it didn't require 2 billion patches and worked better with modern hardware.
Now, if Novell wants to make a dent in the Idiot(meaning, normal user) market, more power to them, but please! People! Nerds! Please, understand that Linux does not have to be mainstream, it just has to be what it is - an OS for people, who like it.
Realize that Novell's target user for SLED isn't the average home user or the small business with a couple of PC's but medium to large businesses. Think companies with 100 or 1000 plus desktops in place.
The trick isn't making Linux more attractive to the average windows user but making it more attractive to the average IT department at a mid to large size company.
Solve their desktop management headaches, particularly for users in places like call-centers and the'll beat a path to your door.
A number of people here seem to be confused as to how the Fair Housing Act applies to shared housing situations as opposed to rental or sale of entire units.
If you are advertising for a shared housing situation you are allowed to state your gender, religion, age, race, etc. Similarly you are allowed to state preferences that otherwise would not be allowed in housing ads.
Our local paper won't even allow ads that state an apartment or house for rent or sale is near a church (i.e. "Near St.Mark's"), however they do allow "wanted to share" ads with statements like "Wanted: Christian male professional to share with same". I suspect that it is a fairly safe bet there is an exception to the Fair Housing Act for shared living situations.
From what I've seen on Craigslist 99% of the housing ads that could be considered to have discriminitory language are for shared housing. I don't think I've ever seen an ad for an entire apartment or house posted that would violate the Fair Housing Act. This isn't to say such ads haven't been posted but I suspect they are rare.
Why is this? For one people tend to be much more picky about who they will get into a shared housing situation with. For another those who are posting houses or apartments for rent very likely have been in the business of renting property for a while and know the rules so don't post ads they couldn't post in the local paper.
Ick ... the Charles Shaw wines I've had haven't been all that good (in fact the Cabernet I had tasted like drain cleaner). Much better to pay a couple of dollars more and buy some cheap Aussie, Washington, or California wine.
University of British Columbia and espcially the Engineering students are well known for pulling various pranks.
A favorite target of theirs is the Lion's Gate Bridge across the Vancouver harbor. Two I've heard about were suspending a car from the underside and setting the marker lights to flash out a message in Morse code.
Well Stewart was a special case for two other reasons:
1. She held a Series 7 Securities Trading License and should know better based on the standards expected of one holding such a license.
2. She was on the Board of Directors of the NYSE and again needs to uphold a higher standard due to her position.
Where is my Goddamn flying car? They promised us flying cars!
I believe just prior to WWI the US Congress invalidated all aircraft related patents due to the problems it was creating for military development of aircraft.
I think the patent holders got a one-time payout.
Intellectual property is a creation of the government and what the government giveth the government can taketh away when it suits them (though for political reasons it is best if there is a darn good reason for taking away and some form of due process is followed).
Canada is kind of a special case where this sort of thing is concerned. There have been any number of things used by the government or military where a key supplier was located in Canada or run by a Canadian company.
Far more troubling should be the fact that with almost any electronic device a large number of key parts are made in places like China or Taiwan. This even extends nowdays to some critical defense electronics like radios or radar sets.
Acually the voice/data on a phone line is AC as is any form of signal or noise vs pure DC.
What about voucher programs such as Section 8? Do these crowd out private dollars from the housing market?
As an aside I think most 'public housing' should be funded via mechanisms such as section 8 and the publicly-owned housing projects done away with. The main problem I see with section 8 is that it is woefully underfunded thus has very long waiting lists.
Furthermore another way government (at whatever level) can ensure a supply of affordable housing would be by offering zoning variances, tax incentives, or loan programs to builders/landlords who put affordable units in their buildings/projects.
Otherwise the natural incentives to developers and property owners seem to be toward providing luxury apartements and condos, at least in areas where land is expensive. Look at San Francisco/San Jose for an example of an urban area with few options availible to people with low or even middle incomes within anything approaching a reasonable commuting distance.
Well I just thought I'd mention it as I pissed off a Chinese-Canadian co-worker of mine by jokingly refering to Vancouver as 'Hongcouver' in front of him. He normally wasn't one to be terribly PC so I was a little shocked.
Not to mention the number of times I'd heard 'Hongcouver' from Canadians (and others) of all colors.
"Hongcouver" - I LUV it! Fits right in there with Canuckistan/Kanuckistan.
Well it isn't original and I've been hearing it since the mid-90's. Supposedly it is a reference to the large numbers of Hong Kong Chinese who immigrated to Vancouver, BC around the time of the handover from the Brits to the mainland.
Warning: it is considered somewhat racist by many people.
Hey you know you should pitch that quick to a TV production company before someone else develops a show using that idea.