Actually, SMG is playing Daphne to her RL squeeze Freddy Prinze Jr's [will SOMEONE please off this puke?] Fred. Velma is being played by Linda Cardellini (Freaks&Geeks, Legally Blonde), and Shaggy by Matt Lillard. The ONLY potential redeeming item in this upcoming abortion is Rowan Atkinson as the baddie...
The problem with using vanilla LDAP to get to Active Directory is that the authentication part (i.e. passwords) is actually in Kerberos, so you can't do the usual LDAP password tricks.
Just another case of MS supporting 'open' standards: jam two of them together into a bastard blend that only MS can/will support...
If you look at the article at siliconvalley.com (http://www.siliconvalley.com/docs/hottopics/msant itrust/msschl112101.htm),
the hardware that M$ would probably be donating is so old it won't even run their current code. So what they're offering the schools may well be old 16-bit code getting dusty on their shelves running on systems dredged from the landfills of Silicon Valley. Clear out old code as a writeoff, no impact to their current sales, and of course, the PR machine at MS will portray dumping the old hardware as a 'green' effort to recycle less-than-cutting-edge systems "for the chilluns".
Of course this is self-aggrandizement to some degree, but Niven&Pournelle's Footfall features a military threat-assessment team for alien invasion composed of **VERY** recognizable caricatures of well-known SF writers, including the authors themselves.
Simple: the population is so used to free content that outside of online pr0n, few folks are willing to pay for it, period. If the online papers, etc. had stuck to their guns and charged maybe $3/month
(.10/day wouldn't be bad for the NYTimes, say) for reading their content online, maybe there would be some precedent that would give micropayments a foot in the door, but when I can get news, make reservations, do my banking, etc., online without fees, and can download e-books for $5 via Paypal or debit card, what's out there that's so compelling I'd sign up for YA payment account?
If it has to run on both platforms, I'd follow the recommendations of others and work to Java, and compile to native code if needed for performance.
If the issue is that they don't want to tie up "expensive Unix servers" for development, then for Ghu's sake slap a copy of Linux onto 1+ of the Intel boxen and develop on that using existing Unix tools; it would at least be closer to the target than Windows... If they think that GUI development can't be done "properly" on Unix (entirely possible mindset given the description), this would be an opportunity to show them otherwise with a start-to-finish *ix development cycle.
Re:It means the US has taken over the world
on
Defining Globalism
·
· Score: 1
I think the fact that the Taliban are headed for the hills, and that the people are cheering their departure, suggests that just maybe the only thing they had in their favor was superior firepower, not the people's mandate...
It's almost certainly a fact that the only thing holding back the "Alliance" from instituting an equally harsh regime is the glare of the news cameras and the promise of international aid.
Re:It means the US has taken over the world
on
Defining Globalism
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
In the case of capital crimes such as murder, most countries allow for extradition of the accused to the nation where the crime occurred. The attacks of 11 Sept are considered by all civilized nations as an attack with weapons of mass destruction, which is an act of war, and in this case led to the death of thousands. Were the US to respond IN KIND with such weapons, there would now be multiple city-sized iridescent green glass coasters in central Asia. There seemed to be general applause for Milosevic's being handed over to the Hague. Why is there any sympathy for this mass murderer, other than that he directed the killing of people in the US rather than Serbia?
Don't know about *your* state, but when I called the FL AG's office, and started to say I was "calling to protest..." the receptionist said "Microsoft?" so maybe some of these folks are getting the idea there's some pushback on this out in the population.
I'm running a wireless hub spoofing my original PC's MAC address to make the cable modem happy and dodge paying them for multiple IP addresses, and running three PCs behind it: the original box now running W2K, my 12-year-old's WinME box and my Dell laptop running RH7.2 over the wireless. They don't care as long as I'm not trying to run a server up the connection; they just don't want to hear service calls they aren't set up for.
The sort of user you're talking about may be visible, like the PR about Titanic's SFX being rendered on Linux boxen, but the REAL save will be with heads-down workers like bank tellers, call-center operators, etc., where (a) the business doesn't want to buy them all 2GHz P4 stations just to make the latest Windoze run acceptably fast, (b) they want better uptime and (c) they probably already have *ix expertise in-house so their added cost in support will be negligible. A coupla hundred $$ saved per seat times a few thousand seats for something like a call center makes a much bigger save than a few dozen CAD users. Also more likely to stay switched once the beancounters run the numbers...
The issue becomes whether you're paying exorbitant amounts of $$ for the basic infrastructure (i.e., OS, webserver, etc.) or for the expertise to apply it (support, custom apps, etc.). The mainframe and midrange vendors like IBM & DEC bundled the OS into the hardware cost, and made up their development costs in pro services and support. If you could get a PC for $150 cheaper by not paying the MS tax, don't you think the market would pile on? As it is, the major vendors have to pay by the box, whether it ships pre-loaded with Windows or not, since obviously no one would want it otherwise, right?
A former colleague of mine sets up small business systems; they use Linux as the preferred platform, save a few hundred dollars per gig in licensing fees and reduced support costs and put it in their pockets instead of Redmond's. Expertise will still cost money, but you can reduce the overhead by using OSS products. With the current business slowdown, some Fortune 500 CFO is going to do the math, and I suspect Linux will suddenly get a whole lot more popular.
Let us know if you find out anything. My wife picked up something on eBay and the seller was using their pay service instead of PayPal, so now I'm one of those countless millions they're touting. If I could un-enroll I'd be off it in a hot second.
It does fit the auto industry model in this: in the 50's and 60's it was common for households to trade-in every three or four years for the latest model. In the 80's and 90's people started keeping their cars longer, so dealers weren't seeing the repeat business they used to.
Answer? Start pushing three-to-four-year leases, where you end up turning over the car and keeping the dealer in dollars...
Now MS can't talk people into upgrading (Good Enough Syndrome), people aren't replacing their PCs as often so the OEM cashflow is thinning, so what do they do? Move to a lease-based structure to keep the dollars flowing through.
If I were McNealy, I'd be hurling staff and $$ at StarOffice. Some CFO is going to do the math on the new TCO for Microsoft and start prodding the IT staff for alternatives. If they're going to have to suffer the pain of upgrades and minor incompatibilities anyway, why not move to something they aren't forced to throw out periodically.
This could be the best prod to Lotus/Corel/StarOffice in ages to clean up their compatibility filters and get back into the game.
Their software is stable enough at this point that most folks don't see any need to upgrade/bugfix every couple of years (CNet says 60% of businesses are still on Office 95/97), the later versions aren't compelling enough to warrant upgrading, the OEM revenues are thinning because people aren't rolling over their computers as often, and then there's the Open Source Threat: commoditization of infrastructure software (OS, file/print, Webserver, DB) that is Redmond's lifeblood.
If businesses get the idea that such software is effectively free, then the only viable revenue streams become servicing the infrastructure and writing apps on top of it - something VARs and consultants are great for, but doom for MS. [But where IBM has a long track record - see any connection? ]
So they move to a subscription model where you HAVE to upgrade every three years, whether you need their new features or not, incurring the additional training costs, file-format incompatibilities, etc., but provide Big Bill with a steady cashflow. It dovetails nicely with the Mundie rant last week about Open Source being Evil, Stupid and Wrong. If they can delay interest in OSS until they get the market locked into their dot-Net subscription scheme, they OWN you forever.
I have one of those "clunky mutha's" (LanCity, now part of Bay Networks, er, Nortel). Ever since the merger went through my carrier ("block sync") has burped regularly, on the same 30s - 30m schedule you're describing.
Of course THEIR solution is wait until the neighborhood is completely upgraded for digital cable and switch out for the DOCSIS-compatible Toshiba box that YOU'RE having grief with... You think they're just shuffling these things around the country to keep us mushrooms quiet?
My Sci-Fi Book Club edition is getting a little ragged, but I still re-read it now and again. It's a lighter read (and shorter) than Brunner's other dystopian books.
All too much of what he's predicted is here or about to be: ubiquitous 'Net, jobhopping -> social isolation, massive data-sifting, pro wrestling as the new bread-and-circuses, and if policy-by-focus-group isn't already too close to Delphi for MY taste, there's always Regis asking "Ask the audience?"
I agree that Sterling, Stephenson &c need to be paying Brunner's estate; he did it first, and for all the extra chrome the others have added, in many respects he still did it best.
Interesting point in the article was the comment about bCentral needing to quadruple the server count when moved to Windows.
If you're selling Windows licenses for a living, this is probably a Good Thing. If you're that seller suddenly having to 'eat your own dog food', and invest in the extra hardware it entails, maybe not... Does this imply that *ix operating environments are 4x more efficient than Windows?
Fox just started season 2 of Beast Machines last weekend (though not with the first episode of that season, 'Fallout' - ?!?). Saturday mornings around 10 or 10:30 ET, don't know how they do PT schedules by comparison.
I had the same feeling about the Thundercats when I saw them on some rainy weekend this summer. I remember what hooked me originally was the *stunning* opening sequences, looked like classic anime vs. American stuff. The formula got a little tired after a while, and in Silverhawks, having the borg-bird save their collective bacon about every fifth episode got REAL old.
My 70-yr-old parents asked about this as a cheap way to do e-mail with their kids/grandkids. The specs look good: Linux, bundled browser, USB expansion, $360 w/ monitor, and the hint of an iOpener-style expansion to add a HD and make it a REAL machine. For what they want to do, cool. (Only I wish the 2.4 kernel was out so they could properly leverage those USB jacks...)
Then you do the math: You can get a low-end Celeron-500 box, 15" tube and printer for around $650, which these $400 ISP rebates then knock down to $250. Hmmm, diskful system, with printer, the free ISPs won't support Linux so they'd be out the $20/month anyway, and the whole thing nets out one-third cheaper...
If LE could cut a deal with Steve Case to get CIS to support these beasts AND qualify them for their $400 rebate, I'd tell my folks to get in line for theirs today. As it is, I'm probably pointing them at an e-Machines bundle. My gut says the NC should be a better deal, but not going by this. Any suggestions?
Given that MPAA member Disney owns ABC, they're one of the *plaintiffs*... That being the case, how sympathetic to Jon's (our) cause do you expect them to be?
FYI, AT&T may still buy a lot of Lucent hardware, but after the Baby Bells spun off, *they* started buying hardware from Nortel, Siemens, etc. so they wouldn't be subsidizing their potential market rival. Same argument for the cellular companies, same argument for MCI, Sprint, GTE, etc. That's why Ma spun Lucent out, and why they took off so fast as a separate entity; as simply a hardware company, everyone felt free to use them, and most of them have.
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Actually, SMG is playing Daphne to her RL squeeze Freddy Prinze Jr's [will SOMEONE please off this puke?] Fred. Velma is being played by Linda Cardellini (Freaks&Geeks, Legally Blonde), and Shaggy by Matt Lillard. The ONLY potential redeeming item in this upcoming abortion is Rowan Atkinson as the baddie...
The problem with using vanilla LDAP to get to Active Directory is that the authentication part (i.e. passwords) is actually in Kerberos, so you can't do the usual LDAP password tricks.
Just another case of MS supporting 'open' standards: jam two of them together into a bastard blend that only MS can/will support...
If you look at the article at siliconvalley.com (http://www.siliconvalley.com/docs/hottopics/msant itrust/msschl112101.htm),
the hardware that M$ would probably be donating is so old it won't even run their current code. So what they're offering the schools may well be old 16-bit code getting dusty on their shelves running on systems dredged from the landfills of Silicon Valley. Clear out old code as a writeoff, no impact to their current sales, and of course, the PR machine at MS will portray dumping the old hardware as a 'green' effort to recycle less-than-cutting-edge systems "for the chilluns".
Anyone have a barfbag handy?
Of course this is self-aggrandizement to some degree, but Niven&Pournelle's Footfall features a military threat-assessment team for alien invasion composed of **VERY** recognizable caricatures of well-known SF writers, including the authors themselves.
Simple: the population is so used to free content that outside of online pr0n, few folks are willing to pay for it, period. If the online papers, etc. had stuck to their guns and charged maybe $3/month (.10/day wouldn't be bad for the NYTimes, say) for reading their content online, maybe there would be some precedent that would give micropayments a foot in the door, but when I can get news, make reservations, do my banking, etc., online without fees, and can download e-books for $5 via Paypal or debit card, what's out there that's so compelling I'd sign up for YA payment account?
If the issue is that they don't want to tie up "expensive Unix servers" for development, then for Ghu's sake slap a copy of Linux onto 1+ of the Intel boxen and develop on that using existing Unix tools; it would at least be closer to the target than Windows... If they think that GUI development can't be done "properly" on Unix (entirely possible mindset given the description), this would be an opportunity to show them otherwise with a start-to-finish *ix development cycle.
I think the fact that the Taliban are headed for the hills, and that the people are cheering their departure, suggests that just maybe the only thing they had in their favor was superior firepower, not the people's mandate...
It's almost certainly a fact that the only thing holding back the "Alliance" from instituting an equally harsh regime is the glare of the news cameras and the promise of international aid.
In the case of capital crimes such as murder, most countries allow for extradition of the accused to the nation where the crime occurred. The attacks of 11 Sept are considered by all civilized nations as an attack with weapons of mass destruction, which is an act of war, and in this case led to the death of thousands. Were the US to respond IN KIND with such weapons, there would now be multiple city-sized iridescent green glass coasters in central Asia. There seemed to be general applause for Milosevic's being handed over to the Hague. Why is there any sympathy for this mass murderer, other than that he directed the killing of people in the US rather than Serbia?
Don't know about *your* state, but when I called the FL AG's office, and started to say I was "calling to protest..." the receptionist said "Microsoft?" so maybe some of these folks are getting the idea there's some pushback on this out in the population.
I'm running a wireless hub spoofing my original PC's MAC address to make the cable modem happy and dodge paying them for multiple IP addresses, and running three PCs behind it: the original box now running W2K, my 12-year-old's WinME box and my Dell laptop running RH7.2 over the wireless. They don't care as long as I'm not trying to run a server up the connection; they just don't want to hear service calls they aren't set up for.
The sort of user you're talking about may be visible, like the PR about Titanic's SFX being rendered on Linux boxen, but the REAL save will be with heads-down workers like bank tellers, call-center operators, etc., where (a) the business doesn't want to buy them all 2GHz P4 stations just to make the latest Windoze run acceptably fast, (b) they want better uptime and (c) they probably already have *ix expertise in-house so their added cost in support will be negligible. A coupla hundred $$ saved per seat times a few thousand seats for something like a call center makes a much bigger save than a few dozen CAD users. Also more likely to stay switched once the beancounters run the numbers...
The issue becomes whether you're paying exorbitant amounts of $$ for the basic infrastructure (i.e., OS, webserver, etc.) or for the expertise to apply it (support, custom apps, etc.). The mainframe and midrange vendors like IBM & DEC bundled the OS into the hardware cost, and made up their development costs in pro services and support. If you could get a PC for $150 cheaper by not paying the MS tax, don't you think the market would pile on? As it is, the major vendors have to pay by the box, whether it ships pre-loaded with Windows or not, since obviously no one would want it otherwise, right?
A former colleague of mine sets up small business systems; they use Linux as the preferred platform, save a few hundred dollars per gig in licensing fees and reduced support costs and put it in their pockets instead of Redmond's. Expertise will still cost money, but you can reduce the overhead by using OSS products. With the current business slowdown, some Fortune 500 CFO is going to do the math, and I suspect Linux will suddenly get a whole lot more popular.
Let us know if you find out anything. My wife picked up something on eBay and the seller was using their pay service instead of PayPal, so now I'm one of those countless millions they're touting. If I could un-enroll I'd be off it in a hot second.
Answer? Start pushing three-to-four-year leases, where you end up turning over the car and keeping the dealer in dollars... Now MS can't talk people into upgrading (Good Enough Syndrome), people aren't replacing their PCs as often so the OEM cashflow is thinning, so what do they do? Move to a lease-based structure to keep the dollars flowing through.
This could be the best prod to Lotus/Corel/StarOffice in ages to clean up their compatibility filters and get back into the game.
If businesses get the idea that such software is effectively free, then the only viable revenue streams become servicing the infrastructure and writing apps on top of it - something VARs and consultants are great for, but doom for MS. [But where IBM has a long track record - see any connection? ]
So they move to a subscription model where you HAVE to upgrade every three years, whether you need their new features or not, incurring the additional training costs, file-format incompatibilities, etc., but provide Big Bill with a steady cashflow. It dovetails nicely with the Mundie rant last week about Open Source being Evil, Stupid and Wrong. If they can delay interest in OSS until they get the market locked into their dot-Net subscription scheme, they OWN you forever.
I have one of those "clunky mutha's" (LanCity, now part of Bay Networks, er, Nortel). Ever since the merger went through my carrier ("block sync") has burped regularly, on the same 30s - 30m schedule you're describing. Of course THEIR solution is wait until the neighborhood is completely upgraded for digital cable and switch out for the DOCSIS-compatible Toshiba box that YOU'RE having grief with... You think they're just shuffling these things around the country to keep us mushrooms quiet?
All too much of what he's predicted is here or about to be: ubiquitous 'Net, jobhopping -> social isolation, massive data-sifting, pro wrestling as the new bread-and-circuses, and if policy-by-focus-group isn't already too close to Delphi for MY taste, there's always Regis asking "Ask the audience?"
I agree that Sterling, Stephenson &c need to be paying Brunner's estate; he did it first, and for all the extra chrome the others have added, in many respects he still did it best.
The O/S poll is gone, but the will-you-buy-ME poll that had been running 92% NO is suddenly 50/50... Yet More Stuffing?
Interesting point in the article was the comment about bCentral needing to quadruple the server count when moved to Windows. If you're selling Windows licenses for a living, this is probably a Good Thing. If you're that seller suddenly having to 'eat your own dog food', and invest in the extra hardware it entails, maybe not... Does this imply that *ix operating environments are 4x more efficient than Windows?
Fox just started season 2 of Beast Machines last weekend (though not with the first episode of that season, 'Fallout' - ?!?). Saturday mornings around 10 or 10:30 ET, don't know how they do PT schedules by comparison. I had the same feeling about the Thundercats when I saw them on some rainy weekend this summer. I remember what hooked me originally was the *stunning* opening sequences, looked like classic anime vs. American stuff. The formula got a little tired after a while, and in Silverhawks, having the borg-bird save their collective bacon about every fifth episode got REAL old.
Then you do the math: You can get a low-end Celeron-500 box, 15" tube and printer for around $650, which these $400 ISP rebates then knock down to $250. Hmmm, diskful system, with printer, the free ISPs won't support Linux so they'd be out the $20/month anyway, and the whole thing nets out one-third cheaper...
If LE could cut a deal with Steve Case to get CIS to support these beasts AND qualify them for their $400 rebate, I'd tell my folks to get in line for theirs today. As it is, I'm probably pointing them at an e-Machines bundle. My gut says the NC should be a better deal, but not going by this. Any suggestions?
push a model for $300 and no ISP contract for use as an NC in schools, kiosks, etc. Compact, cheap, field-replaceable; should move
Given that MPAA member Disney owns ABC, they're one of the *plaintiffs*... That being the case, how sympathetic to Jon's (our) cause do you expect them to be?
FYI, AT&T may still buy a lot of Lucent hardware, but after the Baby Bells spun off, *they* started buying hardware from Nortel, Siemens, etc. so they wouldn't be subsidizing their potential market rival. Same argument for the cellular companies, same argument for MCI, Sprint, GTE, etc. That's why Ma spun Lucent out, and why they took off so fast as a separate entity; as simply a hardware company, everyone felt free to use them, and most of them have.