Surely the issue is not how much data you have, but how much bandwidth you need.
You can physically perform the initial transfer, so no problem if it's 1GB or 100TB.
The question is, do you need to access more of that than the bandwidth can carry?
If you need to extensively modify all of that data each day, then clearly cloud won't work for you if those modifications require lots of data from outside the cloud data centre.
> Seriously, the 30% cut just for managing the payment stuff *alone* is a bargain, as anyone who has ever had to handle a merchant account and payment processing will tell you, especially for small transactions. It is very expensive and time consuming to deal with.
Nonsense. Payment transaction charges are nothing like 30%.
I used to work for a company that handled credit card processing, hosting, bandwidth, web servers and designed web storefronts for third party companies. Our cut was nowhere near 30%. AND we warehoused, sorted, picked, packed, and dispatched real physical items. They just told us what products they wanted to sell, and we did the rest.
So, yeah, 30% is a lot for the actual services being provided. What Apple are charging you 30% for is the ability to appear in the App Store, which they have a monopoly over.
That statistic is answering a different question, and a survey like that carries limited meaning. For example, 'intention' is not as meaningful as 'actually have gone out and bought a new iPhone'. Just sayin'.
From what I've heard / seen of Android, and extensively using iOS, I'm not surprised that more crashes happen on iOS. It got much, much worse with recent iOS updates (for me at least), so I think it's more an OS issue than app quality.
Regarding the question "Would you buy another iPhone?"... I'm mulling that over now. ok, so iOS is probably more buggy than Android, but when it does work it seems to be prettier and faster, with a better UI. That's from limited experience... anyone able to give a personal opinion having owned both devices themselves? I'm tempted to 'stick to what I know' rather than taking a gamble and finding that Android's apps are inferior, or the GUI is sluggish, etc.
Difference being we CAN do the stuff that Required Snark was talking about. Whilst I'm quite happy to solder or write assembly code, I'm not so hot on legal issues (but I have made a few movies and am about to make a few more).
I think "do it yourself is just a silly excuse" only works when we can't do those things ourself - but we can. We are the geeks. If we don't do it, sure as hell no-one else will.
Having been using Ubuntu since I returned to geekland about 5 years ago, my next install will be Linux Mint. I've been running it in VirtualBox on my Mac, and it's fairly decent.
Gnome 2.x was such a great interface. It was simple, clean, efficient. ok, it wasn't as beautiful as OS X, but window management was so much easier. Simple things like file open/save dialogues, the way menus were arranged, were logical and well-designed.
Innovation is good. I think Unity is OK, and an interesting experiment, but it was introduced too early. I also think that fundamentally users need to know what applications they have open - I know iOS doesn't do this, but I think it causes problems even on existing mobile devices, and would be even worse on a desktop for a content-creator.
This new idea is just bonkers. It's a step backwards.
I actually think that Desktop Linux may have a big future - perhaps in education (specifically IT / Computer Science classes at high school and university) - especially as hardware becomes dirt cheap and MS and Apple begin to neglect their full desktops. Ubuntu could (should?) have been aiming for that market, but it seems to me that they're chasing the same opportunities as Android. Android has already won.
That wasn't a rate of defection that was quoted, it was a rate of "announced intended defection". Just because 50% of Android users might have said in a poll that they wouldn't buy another Android, doesn't mean they would. They may, for example, remember why they didn't get an iPhone in the first place - because it's much more expensive. The survey doesn't show much, other than perhaps more 'brand loyalty' amongst iPhone users. Hardly a surprise given the almost religious devotion many Mac users have, is it? (for reference, I own an iPhone, Mac Mini, and use both Linux & OS X at work).
Fair point, although just because the difference in CO2 levels is numerically small wouldn't exclude the possibility that it was that small CO2 different outweighing the effects of large differences in other variables.
Indeed. And look how the Pyramids got built! Wow! You wouldn't see that kind of efficiency nowadays, with our penchant for keeping (most) of our employees alive during the construction of our products.
I completely agree with Edlll. So glad someone made that point.
So often I speak to people with mindsets like:
"We don't have an obligation to solve America's problems. Our only obligation is making the best product possible."
or
"My job is not to worry about ethics, I'm driven only by business goals." "I am not paid to think about the environmental implications of our investments." "I only care about what's good for the business."
It's a really powerful trick, to try to separate your business role from your 'real' life. Often those who get ahead most in business follow such ideologies. But there is no such separation. All business people must consider their responsibilities to society, to mankind, to the environment, to their workers, the communities they are part of. There's no frickin' excuse.
Even worse is the 'if we didn't do it, our competitors would' argument. I don't know whether people are just ignorant, stupid or selfish, but I don't think we (society, the government, the legal system) should tolerate this behaviour.
To answer the question: some potential cloud users will have problems with governance (compliance) issues, and the cloud may not be suitable for them. An obvious example would be some government authorities. Organisations like the military will not want to use cloud computing services for many applications, because it requires trusting a third party and the connection to that third party. However, for many people data will be *more* secure, because it will be backed up more effectively, e.g. through replication at multiple sites or through distributed storage where all of the data is not stored at any one site, and because servers may be administered better. Moving to the cloud for many organisations will be equivalent to outsourcing IT, so if you have poor quality local expertise then you can expect an improvement in your IT administration.
Also, to add an opinion on cloud: so many people have disregarded cloud as a 'buzzword' or fad. I believe that they are wrong to do so. Recently I visited a cloud hosting provider that was growing its turnover by more than 100% a year - in the middle of an economic downturn - and they really are focused on the very early stages of cloud adoption (e.g. outsourcing an Exchange server). The potential for savings is huge, particularly for business that are starting up and are need scalability. One of the big advantages of cloud computing is that you free your company of capital investment in IT infrastructure, and you can relate your running costs to your operating income.
For concrete examples, Cloud is a catch-all word that includes: - Hosting Exchange servers - Providing thin-client services to offices or call centres. - Providing CRM management over a web or thin client interface. - Scalable web frameworks such as Google's App Engine. - Providing scalable resources such as servers booting an image provided by the client.
Of course there are issues with Cloud Computing, and not everyone will adopt it to the extent that some enthusiasts suggest. There may well be a backlash after moving some services over and finding out that latency is too poor, or that certain providers are not sufficiently well-trained to do the job. But Cloud is here to stay, I am convinced of that, and it is a trend that will dominate the computing landscape for the next decade at least.
Thanks. I don't think that this webpage justifies the claim, although it is interesting.
It does not appear to be a very formal study, or at least the webpage has no report of the methodology. So when they say "37% was JRE", it's not clear what those 37% were: e.g. was it the case that 37% of the exposures of users to potential infections were exploits using the JRE? Were these the successful ones or not? And given that according to the document, their study only considers 80% of infections, that other 20% could be the important 20%. Too many unanswered questions.
There must be a published paper on this somewhere, but I can't find one:-(. It seems like such an obvious thing to study.
> I can't think of a single platform where porting Java apps is easier than porting C ones.
Linux to Mac or to Windows? I just run the same jars on all three without thinking about it. I have had plenty of problems trying to use the same C programs. Even from one version of Linux to another, I've had problems compiling C (usually due to gcc or library changes).
To be fair to George Osborne (and I do not like the guy one iota), the reason he is against the transaction tax currently being discussed in Europe is because he is concerned that countries like Germany are envious of the LSE and that they will use the tax as a way to make their own stock exchanges more favourable.
I looked around for good Linux laptops, but as people have said, you just can't find an equivalent laptop not sold by Apple with anything even close to the build quality, battery life, keyboard, screen etc. I don't think I would ever buy a MacBook for personal use - they are just too expensive - but the space I save in my bag, the length of time I can use the machine for on battery power and the quality of the screen, ergonomics etc. are fantastic. I have looked for many hours and found nothing comparable, sorry to tell you that.
That said, the issue of things 'not working' with Linux is a bit misleading... people often claim that Macs are flawless, so when I started using mine I expected it to be. But it's not: for example, I have had to reboot my Mac many times when the O/S has hung. This rarely happened with my last Linux laptop, where everything worked but the laptop itself was 'like one of those ruggedised laptops from the chemical industry' - an actual quote from an interview! Also, the wireless chipsets have problems, especially after waking the Mac up, so I often have to switch wireless on and off to get it to work again. I've had to do similar things with Linux laptops in the past. You should also be aware that Linux achieves much better performance on less powerful hardware, so you might want to manage your expectations if you switch.
Finally, if you do give up and go for Mac, OS X is a bit of a mixed bag... windows management sucks compared to Gnome unless you enjoy using the mouse extensively, but it does look pretty and a few of the apps (iCal, for instance) are excellent.
Slashdot Mirror
> I'm just waiting for them to abandon the hard drive entirely, in favor of a coin slot. Using your computer will be just like internet video poker.
We use Bitcoin in this community, you insensitive clod!
Surely the issue is not how much data you have, but how much bandwidth you need.
You can physically perform the initial transfer, so no problem if it's 1GB or 100TB.
The question is, do you need to access more of that than the bandwidth can carry?
If you need to extensively modify all of that data each day, then clearly cloud won't work for you if those modifications require lots of data from outside the cloud data centre.
RS
> if you need something that "just works," Debian is definitely the way to go.
Now there's something you'll never hear in an Apple store. Only on Slashdot :-)
> Seriously, the 30% cut just for managing the payment stuff *alone* is a bargain, as anyone who has ever had to handle a merchant account and payment processing will tell you, especially for small transactions. It is very expensive and time consuming to deal with.
Nonsense. Payment transaction charges are nothing like 30%.
I used to work for a company that handled credit card processing, hosting, bandwidth, web servers and designed web storefronts for third party companies. Our cut was nowhere near 30%. AND we warehoused, sorted, picked, packed, and dispatched real physical items. They just told us what products they wanted to sell, and we did the rest.
So, yeah, 30% is a lot for the actual services being provided. What Apple are charging you 30% for is the ability to appear in the App Store, which they have a monopoly over.
RS
That statistic is answering a different question, and a survey like that carries limited meaning. For example, 'intention' is not as meaningful as 'actually have gone out and bought a new iPhone'. Just sayin'.
From what I've heard / seen of Android, and extensively using iOS, I'm not surprised that more crashes happen on iOS. It got much, much worse with recent iOS updates (for me at least), so I think it's more an OS issue than app quality.
Regarding the question "Would you buy another iPhone?"... I'm mulling that over now. ok, so iOS is probably more buggy than Android, but when it does work it seems to be prettier and faster, with a better UI. That's from limited experience... anyone able to give a personal opinion having owned both devices themselves? I'm tempted to 'stick to what I know' rather than taking a gamble and finding that Android's apps are inferior, or the GUI is sluggish, etc.
RS
Safari crashes on my iPhone quite often. I don't see any correlation with tabs, looks more like a parsing or rendering bug.
RS
I just heard that the Raspberry Pi website CSS has been tweaked.
A new element "checkout_button" has been referenced in the CSS.
Rumours that this is an indication that the Pi will launch soon have reached fever pitch!!!
It's like iLaunch hysteria, but for techies! Yey!
RS
Difference being we CAN do the stuff that Required Snark was talking about. Whilst I'm quite happy to solder or write assembly code, I'm not so hot on legal issues (but I have made a few movies and am about to make a few more).
I think "do it yourself is just a silly excuse" only works when we can't do those things ourself - but we can. We are the geeks. If we don't do it, sure as hell no-one else will.
RS
Does BitCoin run on Raspberry Pi?
I can't wait for my Raspberry Pi.
Google is evil. No, wait, it's good.
Apple are evil. No wait, they're good designers.
I for one welcome our new story meme overloads.
Recursive post is recursive.
RS
Having been using Ubuntu since I returned to geekland about 5 years ago, my next install will be Linux Mint. I've been running it in VirtualBox on my Mac, and it's fairly decent.
Gnome 2.x was such a great interface. It was simple, clean, efficient. ok, it wasn't as beautiful as OS X, but window management was so much easier. Simple things like file open/save dialogues, the way menus were arranged, were logical and well-designed.
Innovation is good. I think Unity is OK, and an interesting experiment, but it was introduced too early. I also think that fundamentally users need to know what applications they have open - I know iOS doesn't do this, but I think it causes problems even on existing mobile devices, and would be even worse on a desktop for a content-creator.
This new idea is just bonkers. It's a step backwards.
I actually think that Desktop Linux may have a big future - perhaps in education (specifically IT / Computer Science classes at high school and university) - especially as hardware becomes dirt cheap and MS and Apple begin to neglect their full desktops. Ubuntu could (should?) have been aiming for that market, but it seems to me that they're chasing the same opportunities as Android. Android has already won.
RS
> Apple had something like 4 billion dollars in the bank
Citation needed. I've never read that before. AFAIK, Apple did not have that kind of cash available - that's why they needed it from MS.
And yes, the reputation side of things (Office, etc.) were also vital.
RS
That wasn't a rate of defection that was quoted, it was a rate of "announced intended defection". Just because 50% of Android users might have said in a poll that they wouldn't buy another Android, doesn't mean they would. They may, for example, remember why they didn't get an iPhone in the first place - because it's much more expensive. The survey doesn't show much, other than perhaps more 'brand loyalty' amongst iPhone users. Hardly a surprise given the almost religious devotion many Mac users have, is it? (for reference, I own an iPhone, Mac Mini, and use both Linux & OS X at work).
RS
Fair point, although just because the difference in CO2 levels is numerically small wouldn't exclude the possibility that it was that small CO2 different outweighing the effects of large differences in other variables.
RS
Indeed. And look how the Pyramids got built! Wow! You wouldn't see that kind of efficiency nowadays, with our penchant for keeping (most) of our employees alive during the construction of our products.
> To Apple it's flexibility and speed that are the main advantages.
We all know that is BS. America is the biggest manufacturer in the world.
Perhaps what they really mean is that *flexibility of labour laws, taxation and morality* are the main advantages.
RS
I completely agree with Edlll. So glad someone made that point.
So often I speak to people with mindsets like:
"We don't have an obligation to solve America's problems. Our only obligation is making the best product possible."
or
"My job is not to worry about ethics, I'm driven only by business goals."
"I am not paid to think about the environmental implications of our investments."
"I only care about what's good for the business."
It's a really powerful trick, to try to separate your business role from your 'real' life. Often those who get ahead most in business follow such ideologies. But there is no such separation. All business people must consider their responsibilities to society, to mankind, to the environment, to their workers, the communities they are part of. There's no frickin' excuse.
Even worse is the 'if we didn't do it, our competitors would' argument. I don't know whether people are just ignorant, stupid or selfish, but I don't think we (society, the government, the legal system) should tolerate this behaviour.
RS
Interesting comment, but I'm with Dijkstra on this one:
http://www.ifi.uzh.ch/req/courses/kvse/uebungen/Dijkstra_Goto.pdf
RS
To answer the question: some potential cloud users will have problems with governance (compliance) issues, and the cloud may not be suitable for them. An obvious example would be some government authorities. Organisations like the military will not want to use cloud computing services for many applications, because it requires trusting a third party and the connection to that third party. However, for many people data will be *more* secure, because it will be backed up more effectively, e.g. through replication at multiple sites or through distributed storage where all of the data is not stored at any one site, and because servers may be administered better. Moving to the cloud for many organisations will be equivalent to outsourcing IT, so if you have poor quality local expertise then you can expect an improvement in your IT administration.
Also, to add an opinion on cloud: so many people have disregarded cloud as a 'buzzword' or fad. I believe that they are wrong to do so. Recently I visited a cloud hosting provider that was growing its turnover by more than 100% a year - in the middle of an economic downturn - and they really are focused on the very early stages of cloud adoption (e.g. outsourcing an Exchange server). The potential for savings is huge, particularly for business that are starting up and are need scalability. One of the big advantages of cloud computing is that you free your company of capital investment in IT infrastructure, and you can relate your running costs to your operating income.
For concrete examples, Cloud is a catch-all word that includes:
- Hosting Exchange servers
- Providing thin-client services to offices or call centres.
- Providing CRM management over a web or thin client interface.
- Scalable web frameworks such as Google's App Engine.
- Providing scalable resources such as servers booting an image provided by the client.
Of course there are issues with Cloud Computing, and not everyone will adopt it to the extent that some enthusiasts suggest. There may well be a backlash after moving some services over and finding out that latency is too poor, or that certain providers are not sufficiently well-trained to do the job. But Cloud is here to stay, I am convinced of that, and it is a trend that will dominate the computing landscape for the next decade at least.
RS
> http://www.csis.dk/en/csis/news/3321/ [www.csis.dk]
Thanks. I don't think that this webpage justifies the claim, although it is interesting.
It does not appear to be a very formal study, or at least the webpage has no report of the methodology. So when they say "37% was JRE", it's not clear what those 37% were: e.g. was it the case that 37% of the exposures of users to potential infections were exploits using the JRE? Were these the successful ones or not? And given that according to the document, their study only considers 80% of infections, that other 20% could be the important 20%. Too many unanswered questions.
There must be a published paper on this somewhere, but I can't find one :-(. It seems like such an obvious thing to study.
> I can't think of a single platform where porting Java apps is easier than porting C ones.
Linux to Mac or to Windows? I just run the same jars on all three without thinking about it. I have had plenty of problems trying to use the same C programs. Even from one version of Linux to another, I've had problems compiling C (usually due to gcc or library changes).
> The JRE is currently the #1 malware vector, even above Flash and Acrobat.
Citation needed.
Android?
Why is Java so bad (seriously)? It doesn't run much slower than C, generally, and has some benefits such as portability.
To be fair to George Osborne (and I do not like the guy one iota), the reason he is against the transaction tax currently being discussed in Europe is because he is concerned that countries like Germany are envious of the LSE and that they will use the tax as a way to make their own stock exchanges more favourable.
RS
Recently, I got a new MacBook Pro through work.
I looked around for good Linux laptops, but as people have said, you just can't find an equivalent laptop not sold by Apple with anything even close to the build quality, battery life, keyboard, screen etc. I don't think I would ever buy a MacBook for personal use - they are just too expensive - but the space I save in my bag, the length of time I can use the machine for on battery power and the quality of the screen, ergonomics etc. are fantastic. I have looked for many hours and found nothing comparable, sorry to tell you that.
That said, the issue of things 'not working' with Linux is a bit misleading... people often claim that Macs are flawless, so when I started using mine I expected it to be. But it's not: for example, I have had to reboot my Mac many times when the O/S has hung. This rarely happened with my last Linux laptop, where everything worked but the laptop itself was 'like one of those ruggedised laptops from the chemical industry' - an actual quote from an interview! Also, the wireless chipsets have problems, especially after waking the Mac up, so I often have to switch wireless on and off to get it to work again. I've had to do similar things with Linux laptops in the past. You should also be aware that Linux achieves much better performance on less powerful hardware, so you might want to manage your expectations if you switch.
Finally, if you do give up and go for Mac, OS X is a bit of a mixed bag... windows management sucks compared to Gnome unless you enjoy using the mouse extensively, but it does look pretty and a few of the apps (iCal, for instance) are excellent.
RS