No religion on earth recognizes "Marriage" as anything other than a relationship between a man and a woman.
Except of course the Episcopalians (more or less), the United Church of Christ, Most Wiccans and NeoPagans, The Unitarians, and certainly several other liberal religious groups that I am unaware of or forgetting. Except for them (probably several million people in the US alone), no religion on Earth...
I think Giuliani gets away with a lot because he is neither defensive or evasive about it. He doesn't try to cover stuff up, then, when he can't possibly get away lying about it anymore, admit to a limited subset of the offense and apologize in the voice of an angel.
People are much more willing to forgive offense when the offender is forthright and acts like a human who made a mistake instead an offended angel followed by a naughty child.
Volkswagen sells a couple of TDIs here in the States. I know the Bug (Ok, yeah, but it IS TDI), and the Jetta are available with TDI, and I am pretty sure the Passat is (though I can't recall ever having seen one).
Yeah, I was the info systems officer for a National Guard unit in Iraq. We had a mix of hardened laptops and off the shelf desktops. Lemme tell you which ones did better. We lost on average a desktop a month, and all told I had the hard drive on one of the hardened laptops die. This was over a one year period, and we were in decently built climate controlled wood structures. This program will do MUCH better with the laptops assuming they're as well built as claimed.
It's really not that specialized. Pretty much every large university in Louisiana is hooked up to this same network, and it's not as if we're like the cutting edge of technology here. I'm not talking "a few big iron systems in a a secluded data center on the campuses of the large universities in Louisiana" I had access to Internet2 on my regular work PC as a junior systems administrator at Tulane, 5 years ago. Made downloading distro.isos much faster (granted the LAN only did 100Mbps, but if that's the worst of your bottleneck...) The start facility I work for now has a 10 Gig-E hook up too, but that is mostly for big iron research machines.
You can however get "Business Class" DSL these days that will give you the same guarantees as a T-1. I.e. they guarantee that you will always get the bandwidth specified at least as far as the ISP (at which point they may or may not be oversubscribed and you may or may not get your bandwidth). Usually Business Class DSL has a price point between a T-1 and non-Business Class DSL. The problem with T-1s is that there is a ton of dedicated hardware and lines involved. Those are expensive to run/maintain. The only advantage, IMHO, to a T-1 is that usually you wind up getting a partial T-3 installed, and just leave most of the lines dead. This allows you to expand your bandwidth well past T-1 or DSL or even cable with the flick of a switch. If I were in charge of the installation of Internet for a facility right now, I'd never get a straight T-1. If I knew my bandwidth needs would never exceed capacity I'd probably go business DSL or business cable, otherwise I'd go partial T-3.
What I don't get is why we're still (mainly) limited to these choices. Most exchanges are fiber these days, and most new building have telco CAT5e or CAT6 run to them (if not fiber). It would be trivial in most cases to setup straight long haul Gig-E to the exchanges and Ethernet or Fast Ethernet to the building. At worst you might have to lay long haul fiber from the exchange to the building (and in the case of a T-1 or Partial T-3 you're going to have to run cable any way. Long haul fiber is probably cheaper that the multi-channel copper they run for T-data levels). Why not just offer 100Mbps Fast Ethernet to businesses and screw all this mess. It would probably be cheaper to the providers and they could charge more for it (or at worst the same amount). You could even offer Gig-E that way, but I doubt the backbone would take it.
This is not some kind of impossible dream either. I work for a supercomputing and visualization facility owned by the State of Louisiana. Not, by most standards, the most high tech of states. We have 10Gig-E coming into our facility from a ring around the whole state, and that fiber is linked to the national NLR project that does the same thing around the whole country. We can (at least in theory) connect to Seattle, at 4 or 5 Gbps. At Super Computing I saw this same tech actually working at 6 to 7 Gbps between The Tampa Convention Center and the University of Michigan. Now, 10 Gbps is expensive and requires multi-mode fiber, I don't expect to see that available outside of research or government in the immediate future, but Fast Ethernet is trivially cheap at this point. Triple T-3 speeds at a fraction of the cost, what's the issue?
That's not really the point. The fact that you use IE doesn't change the fact that a significant and growing minority use Firefox. It is therefore foolish to develop for only one browser. It's also worth pointing out that the main reason that sites rendered poorly in Firefox was (and occasionally still is) that they were designed for IE with no cross-browser compatibility testing. Blaming Firefox for not rendering them well is kind of like blaming it for mis-rendering untested code that you threw together one afternoon. In theory it should work, but it's not the browser's fault you left out a bracket.
Feh. Don't play pissing contest, I have a 160 core 4.1 TB SMP system at my disposal. Big deal. The point is that this system is (reasonably) affordable to small businesses if not individuals. It's a desktop system in a normal sized reasonably attractive case, that doesn't sound like a jet engine when it powers on.
Lots of people have big boxes, but this is something powerful for apps like video editing and large scale photo editing that need a lot of horse power, but preferably not in a machine room.
I have to say that Entourage, MS's Mac groupware effort isn't even close to as good as Outlook. Seriously it's probably the single best thing they've ever come out with from pure usability/user experience point of view. Sure it's got security issues, but from the straight "it does what I want it too" point of view it's an awesome app, and one of the few things I really miss from Windows.
There are ways around these problems. I can advertise a job in a small local paper, unlikely to create results. Exagerate the requirements in ads (The apocarphal 5 years of Java experience ads from several years ago, before Java had that length of history are an example.) Even advertise the job, but offer a salary insufficent to attract qualified applicants. I don't honestly know enough about the topic to have an informed opinion on the greater issues, but I've seen enough bueracracy to be aware that they hire who they wan regaurdless of what the supposed rules are.
BA in history with a minor in computer science... I got into Unix Admin through Windows tech support. Long story. I think the moral is that almost any degree (or even lack thereof) can lead to a career in systems administration... The trick is in getting the inital experience, after that you're golden.
O/O is not the answer to everything, but it is very useful in the type of software the original question was about. Web based data base apps (in my experience) are failry modular by nature and lend themsleves well to object oriented design. I have no idea what the poster beofre you works on, but if he is also working on web based database apps, I can see where he'd want to use o/o design.
You are right. That is why eventually the sound coming out will be encoded all the way to the speakers.
Even then, the way around that would be to stick a microphone to the speaker (just like old times...).
I don't think this would be possible, or at any rate, if it happened, "legacy" equipment will be around for a long time. People buy new players, but recievers don't change much. My dad still has his CD Player plugged into the same reciever he used to have his reel to reel plugged into. You can convince people to go buy the new $format player, but they want to be able to plug it into their existing component system. There are digital recievers now, and digital outs on CD player (as someone else pointed out), but most people (at least most of my dad's firends, and they all have compent stereos... most of my friends don't) still have analog only recievers, and will be resistant to buying new ones. Since you can't encrypt analog, there is plenty of cable for the music to flow down in unencrypted form. I wonder about the digital outs on CD players though. Someone else mentioned them, and that seems like it would make a perfect copy, but I wonder if it be affected by the copy protection scheme. I don't think it would be affected by this scheme. So that would be a better solution for this one. For that matter the digital out from a DVD player to a TV would have the same capablilities for "protected" DVD's. I winder if this post is a violation of the DMCA?
How much sound quality would be lost if one plugged the "out" on a moderatly good stereo into the "in" on a moderatly good sound card and recorded that way? The sound is going from digital to analog and back to digital, but it's never leaving the wires. As long as one made a "master" copy at full sampling rate, then made one's recordings from that, I would not think you'd loose much.
I'm just curious, because all these protection schemes seem to leave out the idea of a direct, hardware to hardware, copy being made, once the "appoved" player has decoded the sound. Since most decent sound systems are component systems, I don't see them removing the "out" from stereos, and since more and more people are playing with amatur video editing, I don't see them getting rid of the "in" on sound cards, so all of this is really kinda futile. At least that is how it seems to me, I might be missing something.
The military is likely uncaring about your ability to monitor it's spectrum. You won't hear anything. 90% of military communications are encrypted, and what isn't setup with unidirectional antennas in a point to point configuration is spread spectrum, changing freqs many times a second. If they give the military the old analog TV bands, it'll be an excuse to modernise all this even more, and get rid of the small amount of legacy stuff that might be heard with a scanner. Military comms are about as secure as wireless gets.
Having already read your later comments on the marriage issue, I'll ignore it. My only other comment is that the two guys you are talking about were clearly assholes, and should certainly be ignored. On the other hand I've met plenty of straight assholes who sould also be ignored. The judgement of an entire "community" based on the behavior of a couple of guys seems a bit harsh to me, but I can also see that my ealier sarcastic tone was probably uncalled for as well.
I believe that homosexuality is morally wrong. I do not try to force my views on others, but I get upset when the homosexuality community tries to force their views on me.
This statement confuses me. Have you met many homosexuals who force their views on you? How do they do this? "You must convert or we will kill this very cute puppy!" Most of the homosexual men (or women for that matter) I've known (not as many as it used to be since I got out of college and the restaurant industry) just want be left alone to live normal lives. Do they force their views on you when they demand the ability to get the same jobs as anyone equally qualified, and yet still be who they are? Should they all just slip quietly back in the closet and not bother you with their obvious wrongness? Living your life as what you are is not forceing your views on anyone else, it's just living. I may be wrong, maybe some gay guy really did threaten to kill a puppy if you didn't become gay, I don't know. Could you ellborate a bit more how "the homosexuality community tries to force their views on" you?
Having done Software design (at the collegiate level at least, I do administration professionally right now), and worked for an architecture firm, I can make a somewhat informed opinion here. People are willing to pay extra and wiat longer for beautiful buildings. A rich man might go into an architect's office and say "Make me the most beautiful 5 bedroom dwelling you can. Make sure to include all the amenities. I'll need a bathroom for every bedroom, a gourmet kitchen, a family room and formal living room..." This guy knows it is going to cost him a fortune to get the house desgined (and even more to get it built) and that the time (both real and billable) requirments are going to be high.If the firm gives him back a design that is merely functional and has "bugs" (only one bathroom, kitchen in a seperate building, whatever) he is going to be upset because he paid for the best.
No one wants to pay extra in time or money for "beautiful" software. Ironic since most people will spend more time working with their primary computer applications than they will enjoying their house. People cannot recognise beautiful code, so clearly they don't care about that, but you would think they would be willing to pay extra for "functionally" beautiful programs. "Hey guys, take your time. I gotta spend 4 hours a day working with this software, so I want it be as pleasant to use as possible. I'll pay a bit more to make it less painful." The only reason I can see for this is that people have gotten so used to software being painful that they just accept it as is. They assume that any money spent to make it better is wasted, since in the end it'll just be the same crap, just crap that cost more and took longer. We're in kind of a vicious circle at this point. No one will pay for better software, but it'll take better software for people to be willing to pay for better software.
There are some obvious problems with this.. Single point of failure, for one
Yes, That is a signifigant problem, redundent servers of this type would get very expensive. It was one I had noted, but was ignoring, since hardware of the type I was talking about rarely fails (at least in my experience)
If one instance of Windows crashes, how easy is it to re-install without affecting the other users? If it is possible, the server would probably slow to a crawl during the install.
I don't think it would slow things much at all. The Windows reinstall would be happening in the same virtual "sandbox" that Windows itself runs in. It's resources are by definition controlled.
Also, one server can only support a limited amount of workstations, since each server is running a complete Windows OS and applications in sepeperate VMWare partitions.
Hence the reason for the eight way 16-32 gig machine as a server (with beau coup hard drive space obviously) By the time all is said and done, each of the workstations in my example ought to be getting about a PII 300 with 128 MB of RAM worth of computer, reasonable, if not generous.
You are still required to buy licenses for each instance of Windows and Office that is running, so you are only saving money on hardware (and support costs, I suppose).
I never said this was a cheap option. In fact I stated it would be more expensive than a similar setup with "real" computers and a more moderate server for shared data and such. I just said it would have some administrative advantages. That and a bit of gee whiz value. I think support costs might (note I say might) save you money in the long run, but I have no numbers to validate this.
Thirdly, how stable is VMWare? Can it really do this realistically? (I've never used it). Also, can all those VMWare instances share the same Ethernet connection?
No idea actually. I'm buying VMWare's marketing for the sake of arguement. I think you'd want at least a gigabit ethernet card on the server Maybe more than one. But I still say that if VM's claims are true, this is a doable idea. I will admit (again) to it's somewhat limited practicle application. I really think that in a classroom lab, internet cafe, or even a limited Kisok situation, this could be useful. In all those instances you are dealing with a situation where ease of maitaince is a greater concern than power, and your users are likely to be even more abusive of the software than most of us are used to.
The user PCs would not actually have anything on them. VmWare runs in X, right? So you setup a large sever able to serve say 24 Windows Virtual Machines (from the article that would require a 6 processor machine, but to ensure good performance, we'll say an eight CPU machine with 16 gigabytes of RAM). Then you setup 24 machines of extremely low power, say Pentium 133s with 16 MB pf RAM, and no hard drive (Maybe a really small one for swap space, but I doubt you'd need it) or really anything except a video card (a decent one for good screen resolution), a NIC, and a CDROM. Make a bootable CDROM with nothing but a Linux install that automatically boots into X, and then opens a Windows VM full screen window from the server. Presto, 24 machines that are all "dumb terminals", but all have a nice familiar Windows interface your users are used to. You can manage everything from the server and the underlying OS. Since the server does all the work of running the OS and software, you can use whatever crap you want for the client machines, as long as they are powerful enough to run a Linux kernal, and X in 1024X768 (with no Window Manager, and only a single "window" open.)
Need to upgrade Office? Do it for each copy of the VM from your desk (or maybe right a script that'll do all of them at once). Same with OS upgrades. User hosed the system? No Problem, copy the data onto some temp space on the underlying server, wipe the VM and make a new one (again this could probably be automated from the underlying OS). Somebody wants to try Linux/BSD/"The latest version of Windows TM", but you don't want to risk your production systems? Install an extra VM for them to play with, and if it doesn't work out, wipe it.
This would, of course, be somewhat more expensive than buying 24 "normal" machines and a server for data and such, but I don't think it would be ALOT more expensive, and it would have some advantages. Like I said before, I don't know how many bussinesses would intersted in something like this, but it is an interesting idea. (Actually it'd make a great setup for a lab, or Internet cafe, where you can't trust the users not to abuse your OS.)
The Enterprize level product is just that. It's a VM manager for a (I assume) VERY powerful server. Get an eight or sixteen way box a few 32 gigs of RAM or so, and I bet you could serve many copies of any of several OS's to some low end clients that are basically just dumb terminals. Do all your managment from one place. Upgrade Office once, and everybody has the latest version. I don't know that to many businesses would be interested, but I can see some advantages.
Actually, I think you support my point quite well. "We the people" believe a lot of different stuff. Trying to put religion in schools, AND keep any signifigant fraction of us happy, would be a neat trick.
Except the big bang is theory, as is evolution. In a good science class they should be taught as such. Both theories are the best currently available based on scientific observation, but neither claims to be revealed and involitle truth. as theories go, both have been fairly well tested based on observation at both the micro and macro level, but the Big Bang, especially, is one of several explainations being investigated. Presenting something as probable truth, because it has been observed and tested is in no way the same same as presenting something as a certain truth, because a medicore translation of a two thousand year old book (Who's opening passages are actually medicore retranslations of medicore translations of six to ten thousand year old oral traditions that evolved signifigantly from their inception). Now before I get lynched, let me say that you have every wright to believe what you want. You have every right to teach your children what you want. But Public schools have an obligation to be as open as possible. In this case, that means teaching observable theory, not revealed "fact". And, in answer to your question, no, I do not want Public schools to teach my religion. That's my job.
Actually there are thousands of unfilled teaching positions in this country. the problem is that the jobs are through government agencies. The government is to busy spending money to keep the Saints in New Orleans (or whatever YOUR local government silliness is) to worry about the education of it's citizens.
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No religion on earth recognizes "Marriage" as anything other than a relationship between a man and a woman.
Except of course the Episcopalians (more or less), the United Church of Christ, Most Wiccans and NeoPagans, The Unitarians, and certainly several other liberal religious groups that I am unaware of or forgetting. Except for them (probably several million people in the US alone), no religion on Earth...
I think Giuliani gets away with a lot because he is neither defensive or evasive about it. He doesn't try to cover stuff up, then, when he can't possibly get away lying about it anymore, admit to a limited subset of the offense and apologize in the voice of an angel.
People are much more willing to forgive offense when the offender is forthright and acts like a human who made a mistake instead an offended angel followed by a naughty child.
Volkswagen sells a couple of TDIs here in the States. I know the Bug (Ok, yeah, but it IS TDI), and the Jetta are available with TDI, and I am pretty sure the Passat is (though I can't recall ever having seen one).
Yeah, I was the info systems officer for a National Guard unit in Iraq. We had a mix of hardened laptops and off the shelf desktops. Lemme tell you which ones did better. We lost on average a desktop a month, and all told I had the hard drive on one of the hardened laptops die. This was over a one year period, and we were in decently built climate controlled wood structures. This program will do MUCH better with the laptops assuming they're as well built as claimed.
It's really not that specialized. Pretty much every large university in Louisiana is hooked up to this same network, and it's not as if we're like the cutting edge of technology here. I'm not talking "a few big iron systems in a a secluded data center on the campuses of the large universities in Louisiana" I had access to Internet2 on my regular work PC as a junior systems administrator at Tulane, 5 years ago. Made downloading distro .isos much faster (granted the LAN only did 100Mbps, but if that's the worst of your bottleneck...) The start facility I work for now has a 10 Gig-E hook up too, but that is mostly for big iron research machines.
Ahh, but you have to make time to get the data on and off of the tapes. After all this is a computer to computer transfer.
You can however get "Business Class" DSL these days that will give you the same guarantees as a T-1. I.e. they guarantee that you will always get the bandwidth specified at least as far as the ISP (at which point they may or may not be oversubscribed and you may or may not get your bandwidth). Usually Business Class DSL has a price point between a T-1 and non-Business Class DSL. The problem with T-1s is that there is a ton of dedicated hardware and lines involved. Those are expensive to run/maintain. The only advantage, IMHO, to a T-1 is that usually you wind up getting a partial T-3 installed, and just leave most of the lines dead. This allows you to expand your bandwidth well past T-1 or DSL or even cable with the flick of a switch. If I were in charge of the installation of Internet for a facility right now, I'd never get a straight T-1. If I knew my bandwidth needs would never exceed capacity I'd probably go business DSL or business cable, otherwise I'd go partial T-3.
What I don't get is why we're still (mainly) limited to these choices. Most exchanges are fiber these days, and most new building have telco CAT5e or CAT6 run to them (if not fiber). It would be trivial in most cases to setup straight long haul Gig-E to the exchanges and Ethernet or Fast Ethernet to the building. At worst you might have to lay long haul fiber from the exchange to the building (and in the case of a T-1 or Partial T-3 you're going to have to run cable any way. Long haul fiber is probably cheaper that the multi-channel copper they run for T-data levels). Why not just offer 100Mbps Fast Ethernet to businesses and screw all this mess. It would probably be cheaper to the providers and they could charge more for it (or at worst the same amount). You could even offer Gig-E that way, but I doubt the backbone would take it.
This is not some kind of impossible dream either. I work for a supercomputing and visualization facility owned by the State of Louisiana. Not, by most standards, the most high tech of states. We have 10Gig-E coming into our facility from a ring around the whole state, and that fiber is linked to the national NLR project that does the same thing around the whole country. We can (at least in theory) connect to Seattle, at 4 or 5 Gbps. At Super Computing I saw this same tech actually working at 6 to 7 Gbps between The Tampa Convention Center and the University of Michigan. Now, 10 Gbps is expensive and requires multi-mode fiber, I don't expect to see that available outside of research or government in the immediate future, but Fast Ethernet is trivially cheap at this point. Triple T-3 speeds at a fraction of the cost, what's the issue?
That's not really the point. The fact that you use IE doesn't change the fact that a significant and growing minority use Firefox. It is therefore foolish to develop for only one browser. It's also worth pointing out that the main reason that sites rendered poorly in Firefox was (and occasionally still is) that they were designed for IE with no cross-browser compatibility testing. Blaming Firefox for not rendering them well is kind of like blaming it for mis-rendering untested code that you threw together one afternoon. In theory it should work, but it's not the browser's fault you left out a bracket.
Feh. Don't play pissing contest, I have a 160 core 4.1 TB SMP system at my disposal. Big deal. The point is that this system is (reasonably) affordable to small businesses if not individuals. It's a desktop system in a normal sized reasonably attractive case, that doesn't sound like a jet engine when it powers on.
Lots of people have big boxes, but this is something powerful for apps like video editing and large scale photo editing that need a lot of horse power, but preferably not in a machine room.
I have to say that Entourage, MS's Mac groupware effort isn't even close to as good as Outlook. Seriously it's probably the single best thing they've ever come out with from pure usability/user experience point of view. Sure it's got security issues, but from the straight "it does what I want it too" point of view it's an awesome app, and one of the few things I really miss from Windows.
There are ways around these problems. I can advertise a job in a small local paper, unlikely to create results. Exagerate the requirements in ads (The apocarphal 5 years of Java experience ads from several years ago, before Java had that length of history are an example.) Even advertise the job, but offer a salary insufficent to attract qualified applicants. I don't honestly know enough about the topic to have an informed opinion on the greater issues, but I've seen enough bueracracy to be aware that they hire who they wan regaurdless of what the supposed rules are.
BA in history with a minor in computer science... I got into Unix Admin through Windows tech support. Long story. I think the moral is that almost any degree (or even lack thereof) can lead to a career in systems administration... The trick is in getting the inital experience, after that you're golden.
O/O is not the answer to everything, but it is very useful in the type of software the original question was about. Web based data base apps (in my experience) are failry modular by nature and lend themsleves well to object oriented design. I have no idea what the poster beofre you works on, but if he is also working on web based database apps, I can see where he'd want to use o/o design.
You are right. That is why eventually the sound coming out will be encoded all the way to the speakers.
Even then, the way around that would be to stick a microphone to the speaker (just like old times...).
I don't think this would be possible, or at any rate, if it happened, "legacy" equipment will be around for a long time. People buy new players, but recievers don't change much. My dad still has his CD Player plugged into the same reciever he used to have his reel to reel plugged into. You can convince people to go buy the new $format player, but they want to be able to plug it into their existing component system. There are digital recievers now, and digital outs on CD player (as someone else pointed out), but most people (at least most of my dad's firends, and they all have compent stereos... most of my friends don't) still have analog only recievers, and will be resistant to buying new ones. Since you can't encrypt analog, there is plenty of cable for the music to flow down in unencrypted form. I wonder about the digital outs on CD players though. Someone else mentioned them, and that seems like it would make a perfect copy, but I wonder if it be affected by the copy protection scheme. I don't think it would be affected by this scheme. So that would be a better solution for this one. For that matter the digital out from a DVD player to a TV would have the same capablilities for "protected" DVD's. I winder if this post is a violation of the DMCA?
How much sound quality would be lost if one plugged the "out" on a moderatly good stereo into the "in" on a moderatly good sound card and recorded that way? The sound is going from digital to analog and back to digital, but it's never leaving the wires. As long as one made a "master" copy at full sampling rate, then made one's recordings from that, I would not think you'd loose much.
I'm just curious, because all these protection schemes seem to leave out the idea of a direct, hardware to hardware, copy being made, once the "appoved" player has decoded the sound. Since most decent sound systems are component systems, I don't see them removing the "out" from stereos, and since more and more people are playing with amatur video editing, I don't see them getting rid of the "in" on sound cards, so all of this is really kinda futile. At least that is how it seems to me, I might be missing something.
The military is likely uncaring about your ability to monitor it's spectrum. You won't hear anything. 90% of military communications are encrypted, and what isn't setup with unidirectional antennas in a point to point configuration is spread spectrum, changing freqs many times a second. If they give the military the old analog TV bands, it'll be an excuse to modernise all this even more, and get rid of the small amount of legacy stuff that might be heard with a scanner. Military comms are about as secure as wireless gets.
Having already read your later comments on the marriage issue, I'll ignore it. My only other comment is that the two guys you are talking about were clearly assholes, and should certainly be ignored. On the other hand I've met plenty of straight assholes who sould also be ignored. The judgement of an entire "community" based on the behavior of a couple of guys seems a bit harsh to me, but I can also see that my ealier sarcastic tone was probably uncalled for as well.
I believe that homosexuality is morally wrong. I do not try to force my views on others, but I get upset when the homosexuality community tries to force their views on me.
This statement confuses me. Have you met many homosexuals who force their views on you? How do they do this? "You must convert or we will kill this very cute puppy!" Most of the homosexual men (or women for that matter) I've known (not as many as it used to be since I got out of college and the restaurant industry) just want be left alone to live normal lives. Do they force their views on you when they demand the ability to get the same jobs as anyone equally qualified, and yet still be who they are? Should they all just slip quietly back in the closet and not bother you with their obvious wrongness? Living your life as what you are is not forceing your views on anyone else, it's just living. I may be wrong, maybe some gay guy really did threaten to kill a puppy if you didn't become gay, I don't know. Could you ellborate a bit more how "the homosexuality community tries to force their views on" you?
Having done Software design (at the collegiate level at least, I do administration professionally right now), and worked for an architecture firm, I can make a somewhat informed opinion here. People are willing to pay extra and wiat longer for beautiful buildings. A rich man might go into an architect's office and say "Make me the most beautiful 5 bedroom dwelling you can. Make sure to include all the amenities. I'll need a bathroom for every bedroom, a gourmet kitchen, a family room and formal living room..." This guy knows it is going to cost him a fortune to get the house desgined (and even more to get it built) and that the time (both real and billable) requirments are going to be high.If the firm gives him back a design that is merely functional and has "bugs" (only one bathroom, kitchen in a seperate building, whatever) he is going to be upset because he paid for the best.
No one wants to pay extra in time or money for "beautiful" software. Ironic since most people will spend more time working with their primary computer applications than they will enjoying their house. People cannot recognise beautiful code, so clearly they don't care about that, but you would think they would be willing to pay extra for "functionally" beautiful programs. "Hey guys, take your time. I gotta spend 4 hours a day working with this software, so I want it be as pleasant to use as possible. I'll pay a bit more to make it less painful." The only reason I can see for this is that people have gotten so used to software being painful that they just accept it as is. They assume that any money spent to make it better is wasted, since in the end it'll just be the same crap, just crap that cost more and took longer. We're in kind of a vicious circle at this point. No one will pay for better software, but it'll take better software for people to be willing to pay for better software.
There are some obvious problems with this.. Single point of failure, for one
Yes, That is a signifigant problem, redundent servers of this type would get very expensive. It was one I had noted, but was ignoring, since hardware of the type I was talking about rarely fails (at least in my experience)
If one instance of Windows crashes, how easy is it to re-install without affecting the other users? If it is possible, the server would probably slow to a crawl during the install.
I don't think it would slow things much at all. The Windows reinstall would be happening in the same virtual "sandbox" that Windows itself runs in. It's resources are by definition controlled.
Also, one server can only support a limited amount of workstations, since each server is running a complete Windows OS and applications in sepeperate VMWare partitions.
Hence the reason for the eight way 16-32 gig machine as a server (with beau coup hard drive space obviously) By the time all is said and done, each of the workstations in my example ought to be getting about a PII 300 with 128 MB of RAM worth of computer, reasonable, if not generous.
You are still required to buy licenses for each instance of Windows and Office that is running, so you are only saving money on hardware (and support costs, I suppose).
I never said this was a cheap option. In fact I stated it would be more expensive than a similar setup with "real" computers and a more moderate server for shared data and such. I just said it would have some administrative advantages. That and a bit of gee whiz value. I think support costs might (note I say might) save you money in the long run, but I have no numbers to validate this.
Thirdly, how stable is VMWare? Can it really do this realistically? (I've never used it). Also, can all those VMWare instances share the same Ethernet connection?
No idea actually. I'm buying VMWare's marketing for the sake of arguement. I think you'd want at least a gigabit ethernet card on the server Maybe more than one. But I still say that if VM's claims are true, this is a doable idea. I will admit (again) to it's somewhat limited practicle application. I really think that in a classroom lab, internet cafe, or even a limited Kisok situation, this could be useful. In all those instances you are dealing with a situation where ease of maitaince is a greater concern than power, and your users are likely to be even more abusive of the software than most of us are used to.
The user PCs would not actually have anything on them. VmWare runs in X, right? So you setup a large sever able to serve say 24 Windows Virtual Machines (from the article that would require a 6 processor machine, but to ensure good performance, we'll say an eight CPU machine with 16 gigabytes of RAM). Then you setup 24 machines of extremely low power, say Pentium 133s with 16 MB pf RAM, and no hard drive (Maybe a really small one for swap space, but I doubt you'd need it) or really anything except a video card (a decent one for good screen resolution), a NIC, and a CDROM. Make a bootable CDROM with nothing but a Linux install that automatically boots into X, and then opens a Windows VM full screen window from the server. Presto, 24 machines that are all "dumb terminals", but all have a nice familiar Windows interface your users are used to. You can manage everything from the server and the underlying OS. Since the server does all the work of running the OS and software, you can use whatever crap you want for the client machines, as long as they are powerful enough to run a Linux kernal, and X in 1024X768 (with no Window Manager, and only a single "window" open.)
Need to upgrade Office? Do it for each copy of the VM from your desk (or maybe right a script that'll do all of them at once). Same with OS upgrades. User hosed the system? No Problem, copy the data onto some temp space on the underlying server, wipe the VM and make a new one (again this could probably be automated from the underlying OS). Somebody wants to try Linux/BSD/"The latest version of Windows TM", but you don't want to risk your production systems? Install an extra VM for them to play with, and if it doesn't work out, wipe it.
This would, of course, be somewhat more expensive than buying 24 "normal" machines and a server for data and such, but I don't think it would be ALOT more expensive, and it would have some advantages. Like I said before, I don't know how many bussinesses would intersted in something like this, but it is an interesting idea. (Actually it'd make a great setup for a lab, or Internet cafe, where you can't trust the users not to abuse your OS.)
The Enterprize level product is just that. It's a VM manager for a (I assume) VERY powerful server. Get an eight or sixteen way box a few 32 gigs of RAM or so, and I bet you could serve many copies of any of several OS's to some low end clients that are basically just dumb terminals. Do all your managment from one place. Upgrade Office once, and everybody has the latest version. I don't know that to many businesses would be interested, but I can see some advantages.
Actually, I think you support my point quite well. "We the people" believe a lot of different stuff. Trying to put religion in schools, AND keep any signifigant fraction of us happy, would be a neat trick.
Except the big bang is theory, as is evolution. In a good science class they should be taught as such. Both theories are the best currently available based on scientific observation, but neither claims to be revealed and involitle truth. as theories go, both have been fairly well tested based on observation at both the micro and macro level, but the Big Bang, especially, is one of several explainations being investigated. Presenting something as probable truth, because it has been observed and tested is in no way the same same as presenting something as a certain truth, because a medicore translation of a two thousand year old book (Who's opening passages are actually medicore retranslations of medicore translations of six to ten thousand year old oral traditions that evolved signifigantly from their inception). Now before I get lynched, let me say that you have every wright to believe what you want. You have every right to teach your children what you want. But Public schools have an obligation to be as open as possible. In this case, that means teaching observable theory, not revealed "fact". And, in answer to your question, no, I do not want Public schools to teach my religion. That's my job.
Actually there are thousands of unfilled teaching positions in this country. the problem is that the jobs are through government agencies. The government is to busy spending money to keep the Saints in New Orleans (or whatever YOUR local government silliness is) to worry about the education of it's citizens.