Domoco should have expected this, given that they have such a similar situation to microsoft. Yes, the market is different (cells vs. software) but the context is similar.
That's a bad analogy. The reason that NTT are in the position of market dominance that they now enjoy is because they were a government-sanctioned monopoly. You literally could not compete with NTT, if you did, you would eventually be arrested. The law stated that NTT were the only people permitted to run a telco, and that was that.
Say what you like about Microsoft, but they achieved market dominance by competing in a free market. Linux is a viable alternative for many applications, you are free to distribute and use it as you please. Neither Microsoft nor the government are in any way able to enforce that you do otherwise - in fact there's this little thing called the Constitution that protects you.
I think my qualification as a lifeguard/gym supervisor have lapsed, so consider this advice fully disclaimed, but the problem that many people have, even physically fit people, is a lack of what we call "core strength". This means development of the muscles in the lower abdomen and back. A standard sit-up won't work the lower abs, and the lower back exercises are boring and look silly, so most people don't want to learn or do them.
Good core strength means good posture and massively lowered risk of back pain, especially as you get older. Speak to your local physio or gym instructor. If you can't, try swimming, it's the best all round exercise and it will work the muscles you need.
Failing that, get a good chair. Loads of dotcoms going bust will mean plenty of Aeron's on the market:0)
The Business when your peers agree that they want you leading them.
That's not really unusual, I interviewed at CMG a while back, and they have a similar policy. Also, like The Business, they are financially transparent internally, everyone knows what everyone else makes.
Sun is writing Solaris more for their high end stuff than their low end stuff, so somebody who happens to own a low-end Sun box may well be happier with Linux than with Solaris.
There's one reason to buy an Ultra 5: you're developing software that you later intend to run on larger Sun kit, and you want a workstation that makes this easy to do. (I'm ignoring for now the use of U5s in render farms, etc).
If all you want is a desktop PC that happens to run X Windows, then of course Linux is a better choice. But then, why on earth would you pay the premium for a SPARC based machine? A machine that's poorly supported for what you want to do? (Versus the very good support you get from Sun - Solaris just works on Sun kit, no messing around with device drivers and so forth. Etc).
I'm sorry to be so blunt, but if you've just bought a brand new SPARC workstation and don't want to run the bundled OS, you've wasted your money. The only sensible use for Linux on SPARC is to support aging kit like the Classic than can't run Solaris 8 at a reasonable speed.
In this context, Windows NT could obtain UNIX status.
Whyever not? NT is Posix compliant, and I believe with layerered products meets UNIX95 compliance too.
Gee, you'd think stability would be a requirement of UNIX status
Never used IRIX, have you? *ducks*
No, seriously, stability has never been one of Unix' strengths. It's pretty easy to accidentally fork() bomb most of them even now, which can even lock the system administrator out. It's happened to me (a poorly coded Pro*C daemon which couldn't contact Oracle and went crazy, spawning child processes every time it attempted to connect again). An OS like VMS would simply contain such a process within quotas and leave the system fully usable.
Getting back on topic, Apple's regular customers (i.e. Photoshop/DTP at one end, families and students at the other) don't really care about "official" Unix status. The only people who might are the US Government (who have FIPS, which includes POSIX, as a minimal specification).
Do you expect a university to have Linus Torvalds give a speech on economics to students who are paying nearly $35,000 to learn how to shake hands?
By that argument, you're paying $40k to learn how to push the button on a disposable Kodak.
Grow up. Just because you don't understand something, that doesn't it isn't worthwhile.
Re:The Eventual Downfall of Every Man
on
Coder on the Cross
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· Score: 5
it's all just exo-structure built to obscure that we're all greedy and no-good. Hobbes was right, I guess, in that respect. We need to make society so complex we can fool ourselves into thinking we're doing something good. 99.999% of us aren't. Me included.
I don't buy this at all. A lion is not evil when it kills an antelope; that just the way it is. The lion is simply living according to its nature, which might be bad news for the antelopes, but moral good and evil don't even come into the picture.
In fact, the lion is living exactly as it is supposed to. If anything, that is the definition of good, from its own perspective (apologies for the anthropomorphication, but good/evil is a human concept).
Now you say that for man to live according to his nature - i.e. self-interest as motivator - is evil. But I ask you, how can it be evil? If this is how we are, how do we gain by denying it? You don't see lions trying to grow crops, do you? And you don't see lions forging weapons to fight hunters on their own term either.
I will leave you with some Nietzsche:
"Think again before postulating the drive to self preservation as the cardinal drive in an organic being. A living thing desires above all to vent its strength - life as such is will to power - self preservation is only one of the indirect and most frequent consequences of it".
It means taking pleasure in the misfortune of others. Like all German philosphical concepts, it doesn't translate particularly well into simple English. It's a bit like a smug "I told you so", but not quite as petty, if that makes any sense.
There are other professions that need 24/7 coverage, and, are a little more important than a computer being up. Your local hospital, for instance.
Note to slashbots: there are more computers in the world than the Linux box in your bedroom.
I could go on to name any number of industries in which the computers must not stop, otherwise blood will be shed and/or millions of dollars will be lost. Hospitals are one of them.
I mean, what kind of place would we live in if police only got paid for the arrests they made? That's a rediculous idea.
You say that, but in the UK speed cameras are paid for out of the fines they collect. Local government gets the money it collects in parking fines. It's not that different.
Not if you write them properly, for example, if it's a heading, actually set it to be a heading, don't just make it bold. Good word processors support this, and that's why you can use them to write books and legal documents, which need to be maintained and updated just as programs do. Word even has built-in version control!
I've visited Scient, and I wonder why you think that Scient would be particularly crash-proof. They're not quite as "innovative" thinkers as ArsDigita are.
Mainly because Robert Howe pretty much built IBM Global Services into what it is today, a consulting and software behemoth. He has plenty of experience, and perhaps thought that Scient could take on as much risk as they had with impunity. They're hurting badly, and they might not survive at all - and they will have lost forever the culture that was their main selling point, and their tool for rapid expansion. They aspired to be the next McKinsey, a company that has endured and prospered for the better part of a century. But you can't do that if "long term" means "next financial quarter" as it does to newly-public companies.
It is fitting that from now on, Greylock and General Atlantic will be known as "Oh yeah, you're the venture capitalists that took Ars Digita, a successful, popular, profitable company and wrecked it in just one year!"
You don't know what you're talking about. Greenspun et al made a lot of money taking cash from startups who were flush with venture capital. A rising tide floats all ships. Now, after the "bubble burst", that cash isn't around any more, Greenspun's getting out of the game and leaving his backers to carry the can. Look around the industry, even people like Scient who have a management team with an amazing track record, are suffering badly. Look at marchFIRST, who have just imploded.
I've been a fan of Philip Greenspun since way back in '98 when I read his guide to web publishing
He is undoubtedly a talented software engineer (altho' perhaps not as talented as he thinks he is) but he lacks business skills, which is why he went to VCs in the first place. This is business, nothing personal.
What if the courts decided that information such as, music and movies become free? It's not exactly like all these entertainers will stop entertaining...
The courts, eh? What if the courts decide that, say, farmers, should work without pay? After all, we all need food, right? They should be glad to do it to feed the rest of us! In fact, paying farmers is stealing from society!
The short answer is, any society that passed such a law would starve, and would deserve it.
What are they going to do, join the workforce like everyone else?
Any other industries you think should be provided by slaves?
Now once the company starts producing the units anybody can duplicate the invention and make their own, even improving on it. If the company is smart they'll keep the project under wraps until they're ready to hit the market, then they'll go out there with a reasonable price and large quantities. If they do things right it will take a while for competitors to have a means to challenge them.
That won't work. There's no way a small company could capture a market large enough in a so little time that, say, Sony Corporation couldn't get a competing product out of the door, at a better price, everywhere in the world, and market the hell out of it.
It sounds paradoxical, but patents do promote diversity by making it possible for small innovators to compete on equal grounds to large incumbents.
He begins by noting the obvious argument against intellectual property, namely that sharing intellectual objects still allows the original possessor to use them.
To start with, that argument is nonsense, because for every "use" there must be a "what for". If a piece of information in crucial to my competitive position in business (as patents are) then if you use it without my permission, you literally have deprived me of the use of it. If I have invested money in developing that piece of information, I have done so on the understanding that the information is valuable enough to enable me pay back that investment through the use of that information; if you take it without my permission you are literally stealing cash.
Intellectual products are social products.
To what extent individual laborers should be allowed to receive the market value of their products is a question of social policy.
Ah, now we cut to the chase. You mean there is no room for individual achievement in your socialist collective utopia?
Slashdot Mirror
That's a bad analogy. The reason that NTT are in the position of market dominance that they now enjoy is because they were a government-sanctioned monopoly. You literally could not compete with NTT, if you did, you would eventually be arrested. The law stated that NTT were the only people permitted to run a telco, and that was that.
Say what you like about Microsoft, but they achieved market dominance by competing in a free market. Linux is a viable alternative for many applications, you are free to distribute and use it as you please. Neither Microsoft nor the government are in any way able to enforce that you do otherwise - in fact there's this little thing called the Constitution that protects you.
So, really, the situation isn't similar at all.
Yamamoto?
Just wondering.
Good core strength means good posture and massively lowered risk of back pain, especially as you get older. Speak to your local physio or gym instructor. If you can't, try swimming, it's the best all round exercise and it will work the muscles you need.
Failing that, get a good chair. Loads of dotcoms going bust will mean plenty of Aeron's on the market :0)
That's not really unusual, I interviewed at CMG a while back, and they have a similar policy. Also, like The Business, they are financially transparent internally, everyone knows what everyone else makes.
That's deliberate. Otherwise, you you lock a system administrator out by repeatedly submitting the wrong password for their user name.
There's one reason to buy an Ultra 5: you're developing software that you later intend to run on larger Sun kit, and you want a workstation that makes this easy to do. (I'm ignoring for now the use of U5s in render farms, etc).
If all you want is a desktop PC that happens to run X Windows, then of course Linux is a better choice. But then, why on earth would you pay the premium for a SPARC based machine? A machine that's poorly supported for what you want to do? (Versus the very good support you get from Sun - Solaris just works on Sun kit, no messing around with device drivers and so forth. Etc).
I'm sorry to be so blunt, but if you've just bought a brand new SPARC workstation and don't want to run the bundled OS, you've wasted your money. The only sensible use for Linux on SPARC is to support aging kit like the Classic than can't run Solaris 8 at a reasonable speed.
Like one of these?
Not actually Linux, but pretty much what you mean.
Whyever not? NT is Posix compliant, and I believe with layerered products meets UNIX95 compliance too.
Gee, you'd think stability would be a requirement of UNIX status
Never used IRIX, have you? *ducks*
No, seriously, stability has never been one of Unix' strengths. It's pretty easy to accidentally fork() bomb most of them even now, which can even lock the system administrator out. It's happened to me (a poorly coded Pro*C daemon which couldn't contact Oracle and went crazy, spawning child processes every time it attempted to connect again). An OS like VMS would simply contain such a process within quotas and leave the system fully usable.
Getting back on topic, Apple's regular customers (i.e. Photoshop/DTP at one end, families and students at the other) don't really care about "official" Unix status. The only people who might are the US Government (who have FIPS, which includes POSIX, as a minimal specification).
And don't drink so much coffee
Kid, I've barely gotten started....
It already does - you can get ODBC drivers for practically every record-structured data file format known to man.
They don't use just Objectstore. Lots of them use Informix too - like 8/10 of the world's traffic if you believe the adverts.
Yeah, tell me about it. All hail the slashbots!
Not to mention Oracle Reports.
By that argument, you're paying $40k to learn how to push the button on a disposable Kodak.
Grow up. Just because you don't understand something, that doesn't it isn't worthwhile.
I don't buy this at all. A lion is not evil when it kills an antelope; that just the way it is. The lion is simply living according to its nature, which might be bad news for the antelopes, but moral good and evil don't even come into the picture.
In fact, the lion is living exactly as it is supposed to. If anything, that is the definition of good, from its own perspective (apologies for the anthropomorphication, but good/evil is a human concept).
Now you say that for man to live according to his nature - i.e. self-interest as motivator - is evil. But I ask you, how can it be evil? If this is how we are, how do we gain by denying it? You don't see lions trying to grow crops, do you? And you don't see lions forging weapons to fight hunters on their own term either.
I will leave you with some Nietzsche:
"Think again before postulating the drive to self preservation as the cardinal drive in an organic being. A living thing desires above all to vent its strength - life as such is will to power - self preservation is only one of the indirect and most frequent consequences of it".
It means taking pleasure in the misfortune of others. Like all German philosphical concepts, it doesn't translate particularly well into simple English. It's a bit like a smug "I told you so", but not quite as petty, if that makes any sense.
No, their FAQ says that they believe that databases are just part of the infrastructure, and should be free.
Whereas applications (their core business) cost money...
Note to slashbots: there are more computers in the world than the Linux box in your bedroom.
I could go on to name any number of industries in which the computers must not stop, otherwise blood will be shed and/or millions of dollars will be lost. Hospitals are one of them.
You say that, but in the UK speed cameras are paid for out of the fines they collect. Local government gets the money it collects in parking fines. It's not that different.
Word processing files are unstructured.
Not if you write them properly, for example, if it's a heading, actually set it to be a heading, don't just make it bold. Good word processors support this, and that's why you can use them to write books and legal documents, which need to be maintained and updated just as programs do. Word even has built-in version control!
Mainly because Robert Howe pretty much built IBM Global Services into what it is today, a consulting and software behemoth. He has plenty of experience, and perhaps thought that Scient could take on as much risk as they had with impunity. They're hurting badly, and they might not survive at all - and they will have lost forever the culture that was their main selling point, and their tool for rapid expansion. They aspired to be the next McKinsey, a company that has endured and prospered for the better part of a century. But you can't do that if "long term" means "next financial quarter" as it does to newly-public companies.
You don't know what you're talking about. Greenspun et al made a lot of money taking cash from startups who were flush with venture capital. A rising tide floats all ships. Now, after the "bubble burst", that cash isn't around any more, Greenspun's getting out of the game and leaving his backers to carry the can. Look around the industry, even people like Scient who have a management team with an amazing track record, are suffering badly. Look at marchFIRST, who have just imploded.
I've been a fan of Philip Greenspun since way back in '98 when I read his guide to web publishing
He is undoubtedly a talented software engineer (altho' perhaps not as talented as he thinks he is) but he lacks business skills, which is why he went to VCs in the first place. This is business, nothing personal.
The courts, eh? What if the courts decide that, say, farmers, should work without pay? After all, we all need food, right? They should be glad to do it to feed the rest of us! In fact, paying farmers is stealing from society!
The short answer is, any society that passed such a law would starve, and would deserve it.
What are they going to do, join the workforce like everyone else?
Any other industries you think should be provided by slaves?
That won't work. There's no way a small company could capture a market large enough in a so little time that, say, Sony Corporation couldn't get a competing product out of the door, at a better price, everywhere in the world, and market the hell out of it.
It sounds paradoxical, but patents do promote diversity by making it possible for small innovators to compete on equal grounds to large incumbents.
To start with, that argument is nonsense, because for every "use" there must be a "what for". If a piece of information in crucial to my competitive position in business (as patents are) then if you use it without my permission, you literally have deprived me of the use of it. If I have invested money in developing that piece of information, I have done so on the understanding that the information is valuable enough to enable me pay back that investment through the use of that information; if you take it without my permission you are literally stealing cash.
Intellectual products are social products.
To what extent individual laborers should be allowed to receive the market value of their products is a question of social policy.
Ah, now we cut to the chase. You mean there is no room for individual achievement in your socialist collective utopia?