And this Skype client will never be full-featured because it would take revenue away from the phone company, who profits by selling voice plans. You might be thinking a data-only plan with a Skype client would save you money, but you'd be wrong: Apple doesn't want you to do that. AT&T doesn't either. Or any other wireless provider. Sure, we could invest in a decent wireless data architecture, but why do that when we know we can keep bumping up prices and not improving infrastructure, and then blaming "high consumption users" for the problem. You will pay, like the good consumer you are. Oh yes, you will pay.
Please fix the user pages. The new way of doing it where our comments are buried several clicks in is irritating. The only reason most of us go to our own user pages is to see if anyone's replied to our comment.
Okay, first, you can't "scientifically test" people's sexual mores. It's a question of taste, culture, environment, and context. Second, the definition of pornography has long been held to be something along the lines of "You'll know it when you see it." This has actually been used as the legal test in many courts in this country. Third, people are stupid frothing-at-the-mouth retarded and lobotomized flatworms as soon as they become emotionally engaged in a social problem, and doubly-so when it involves criminal charges.
The legal system is a crap shoot. As a defendant you can be hung even if you make completely honest statements. False witnesses, poor quality of evidence, lack of evidence, or (god help you) eyewitness testimony, etc., can all destroy the credibility of a defendant who is completely honest on the stand. If you excercise your fifth amendment rights, the jury will pretty much hang you on that basis alone -- nevermind the VERY strong legal arguments for doing so (even if you're innocent). Not only that, but did you know that in something like a quarter of rape cases where the defendant was later aquitted based on DNA evidence -- they admitted to the crime? Not that YOU would ever do something like that, but why do you suppose they did it? And let's not even get into over-zealous prosecutors, incompetent judges and attorneys, "lost" or witheld evidence from the police department--because we all know they aren't human but in fact infallable robots who never make honest mistakes, let alone malicious ones. Did I mention that a lot of people plead guilty to lesser offenses simply because they don't want to deal with the hassle and stress of a trial? A lot of people do this. Think of when you got a parking ticket or speeding ticket -- after venting about how you're going to fight the man, etc., and how the cop was just singling you out, etc... How many of you knew you weren't guilty but decided to give in anyway and pay the fine just because it was easier than a fight and the risk of losing and having to pay even more (and pay you will, Citizen).
In the majority of cases, the trial is over before it even starts. And people don't learn -- it doesn't matter how many innocents they throw to the wolves, because in their mind they're justified for doing so "because we got a few bad guys doing it too!" People are irrational, emotional, slathering rat-beasts. And they're stupid. Just realize how stupid the average person is and then realize that half the people serving on your jury will be stupider than that. Oh, and the icing on the cake? I don't know you, but I'm sure you've committed an arrestable-offense today. There is no person on the planet who can understand and follow all the laws we've created. And there are so many of them, that the odds are incredibly good that you've broken at least one of them. So all of you are criminals. We just haven't caught you...yet.
Lastly, consider this: What if one of these girls had been a boy instead. Ah, but justice is blind they say.
It's quite elementary, really: Windows Update sucks. Okay, that probably needs an explanation.
Would you rather: a) Run Windows Update so Microsoft has backdoor access to update/patch/install software at random, as well as auditing your system for "compliance" and sending you a legal nastygram if you are caught running a "pirate" copy of Windows? Note: The detection algorithm for "Windows Genuine Authentication" has passed numerous false negatives and disabled people's computers before who purchased legitimate copies, -or- b) Not update, download a software firewall, run a bunch of anti-malware scanners, and use Firefox, -or- c) Do nothing, because "there's nothing important on my computer anyway."
Microsoft went through a lot of effort to make sure there were tons of unpatched systems out there when they started throwing up "windows genuine" everywhere, and having the average user jump through so many hoops. Then there's the two hour process of installing Service Pack 3. Who wants to waste two hours on a ginormous OS update when they can play WoW some more? And god help you if one of a thousand failure conditions crops up and it dies, telling you to reinstall the entire OS. The average Windows users is caught between knowing their systems are vulnerable and playing a rat race that requires knowledge and process they don't understand to keep their systems secure.
Big surprise when they choose the devil they know.
This is another case of only seeing part of the problem. Data preservation is easy. The problem is, we generate massive amounts of data. Data doesn't have an expiration date. It doesn't automatically categorize itself, know its own relevance, or volunteer itself for tasks. See, the vast majority of "data" floating around can be safely discarded. Do you really need an ethernet sniff log of everything you've done on the internet over the past ten years? The government might want a copy, but chances are pretty good its just as useless to them as you. How about those four (broken) copies of that mp3 you downloaded from Shareaza? Or outdated installers of software? Is there a reason to keep around those Netware 3.12 floppies (besides impressing other old farts)?
The problem isn't preserving data, it's knowing when to let it go. We have many, many, many methods of data preservation. We are drowning in information. The internet is generating petabytes worth of data every day, and only the smallest fraction of that really has any reuse value. And most of that, in six months, or a few years, probably not. What we need is better methods of sorting data, and ways to expire data safely.
Also, we also need control over our data. Corporations have been trying to take that away now for years. You don't need a copy of our software that can run on any computer, we're going to mung it up so it only runs on one computer, and if you have to reinstall the operating system or change the video card or anything else, that copy will cease to work. An irony, really -- because I know plenty of people that love playing old video games whose manufacturers long ago gave up on, but won't release the copyright for. Fifty years from now, I doubt a single copy of the game will still exist -- the concept, maybe. But it will have died and yet someone will still own the copyright and think money could be made off it. When we buy a chunk of data, we need to be able to control it, not just use it in some narrowly-defined way. Because otherwise, what's the point of data preservation in the first place? To stockpile more useless data that -- even worse, holding onto could be a liability to you?
I can now theoretically steal "the internet" with a flatbed truck and a lift. There's something to be said for conventional data centers: They're rather hard to load onto a truck and drive off with.
I'm probably the only one here that read that and thought that migrating from LCARS to Linux might not be in the Federation's best interest. Although I'm sure that 300 years from now, all software is FOSS. ^_^
Was it just me or did anyone else spend a few minutes contemplating how you actually could make a car that did allow you to change a flat while moving?
Retractable axles, like they use on dump trucks. With the wheels off the pavement, changing it becomes trivial. You need at least two sets of drive wheels though for that to work. But that's a closed-system solution. An adaptive solution would be a semi-truck that would deploy a ramp out the back. Drive the car onto the ramp and then effect the fix on the semi-truck. Then return the car to the flow of traffic. It would be dangerous though if it was one of the front tires; At 60 MPH, a normal car tire that has gone flat will shred itself in moments. In a convoy situation, it is likely that by the time the semi-truck positioned itself, the vehicle still traveling at that speed would have suffered extensive damage and be a risk to other vehicles in the area, including the rescue vehicle. Simply keeping it traveling in a straight line would be problematic, if my limited empirical evidence (episodes of Cops detailing police chases where the vehicle behing pursued has one or more damaged tires) is any indication.
You know, the article read like a press release. Hasn't slashdot whored itself out enough lately on these kinds of things? Google is so ultra-reliable, blah blah, 24x7, blah blah, commitment, blah blah, premier service partner, blah blah... I get that kind of talk enough in staff meetings. Where's the meat already!?
Why not write an article with some nice graphics saying what happens to my request from the time I hit "Search" to the time I click a result. List off all the servers it goes through, their roles, how they're monitored, etc. Give examples of failure and show the mode decisions the software makes (and where this software is running) -- show the latencies and other performance impacts as my request bounces over failure after failure. That's what I expect when I pull up an article entitled "How Google Routes Around Outages". Something useful, professionally enriching, intellectually stimulating, etc. In short, tell me why I (should) never see a "500 Internal Server Error" from Google, but I do from just about every other major website I've used.
You make an excellent point. I've always operated under the assumption that english was taught rather pervasively, and so they would also use english sites.
Okay, seriously; They've invested tens (if not hundreds) of millions of dollars into a national infrastructure informally known as the "Great Firewall of China". And yet they block sites wholesale rather than by keyword, URL, or a dozen other possibilities? If they're trying to keep this as transparent to the population as possible, why constantly block and unblock popular sites? It just compels people to ask the question "Why do they keep blocking/unblocking this site?" And the answer is only a google query away.
I'm not arguing for or against censorship here, I'm merely pointing out that it's difficult to imagine that they lack the most basic capabilities of censorship software that is sold commercially and globally elsewhere, and that it is not technically challenging to impliment those features. Why spend millions on an infrastructure item that lacks even the most basic features needed for its intended use?
If I have to bear witness to another buzzword in a slashdot article title, I will turn Richard Stallman into a Juicer and ship him in a crate to Slashdot HQ. Because nothing says mega-damage like a character from RIFTS. I swear I will. He's already half-way there. You've seen his code, you know he's already got a caffeine drip. It won't be hard. Plus, I'm kinda bloated and cranky right now, so I might just come with. Don't tempt me.
From a support perspective, yeah. I worked for Target corporation, which has about 2030 stores around the world, about 50 or so distribution centers, a world headquarters, a few regional headquarters, and a massive support staff in India. I supported about 93,000 workstations, and there are approximately 120,000 employees there and about twice that again in contractors that need access to the system. When you get under about 50k employees, the management style and support system changes pretty radically, and under about 10k employees, IT is usually not even a bullet point on the quarterly report.
There are several solutions, and which one is adopted depends a lot more on corporate culture than technical merit.
In large businesses (10,000+ employees), I see two common approaches. The first is lock-down.
Lock down. * Centralize everything and lock down the workstations. All software comes from one department, is distributed by SMS or Altiris, and (sometimes) workstations are monitored for compliance. Businesses like this often go with Dell for their hardware provider and have only about 5 or so workstation configurations in active use. Patches and install requests can take months to fulfill, and if the software isn't on their list, chances are good that you'll never see it. These businesses have security weaknesses in their network due to this centralization -- typically using flat topology models with very little or no firewalling between various business units. USB ports are typically fiddled with so flash drives cannot be used. For some reason, DVD/CD drives always do though. Go figure. Everything is vanilla-flavored, stock, and the same. If you find a weakness on one workstation, chances are good they all have it. Standardization is great! The servers are backed up. The workstations, where all the real data is, is ignored.
Multiple IT departments * You'll see this with businesses that absorb other businesses -- financial companies in particular. Each business unit has its own IT, distribution schema, and enforcement of IT policies vary wildly. You won't be able to change your desktop wallpaper, but regedit still works with full admin rights. Firewalling between various business units is more common, but the policies are often out-of-date, and multiple routes exist. VPNs are commonly stacked over them, and if you know where to look, you can usually find a way through. The upshot is that the hardware is much more diverse, users are sometimes "left to their own devices" (literally and figuratively), and homebrew software solutions are more common. Nobody really knows what Server X does, but it has a sticker on it saying "Do not touch, Very Important." Often, hardware inventory and diagnostics in such environments consists of unplugging it and waiting to see who complains. If nobody complains, pack it up and ship it to Corporate. Nobody really knows what the company owns, but by god, we've got a lot of it. The good news is, if you can find your IT guys, they'll usually have your software loaded in a few hours. They won't care as much about software licensing either (I just gotta make my 8 hours, man)... Contractors typically run the show, and they have no idea what they're doing (because nobody wants to tell them anything). Servers are backed up, sometimes workstations are too. Sometimes. Maybe.
Mid-size businesses (less than 100,000 employees) Sometimes you'll see centralization, but more often it's the scenario above, but with only one IT department. The network topology is generally laid out better though, hardware is more consistent, and the helpdesk is actually (le gasp) helpful, typically being a stone's throw away from the admins who maintain the servers. This is a good deal for you users -- they're too busy to be making many software policies and auditing, but not too monolithic that they're inaccessible. Your USB flash drive will work, even though you're told not to. Hello iTunes! Don't download pr0n though... For some reason, medium-sized corporate IT departments know everything you do on the internet, even though they don't know where the database server is. There is one rack of equipment... somewhere... and if it dies the entire business will collapse. But nobody knows. The servers are sometimes backed up, and so are the workstations. We're not sure... What's a "backup policy"? Can I use MMC to set one up?
Small business (less than 10,000 employees) There is one guy or a small team and they are zyzzy GOD on the network. They don't care what you are running on your workstation... There's a pile of install CDs at his desk. Help yourself. Talk to the pimply-face
Prediction: It will be found in six months laying in the "nearly free" bin in the bookstore, along with "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People", and "Change Your Underwear, Change Your Life."
Before everyone goes all stupid crazy about Oracle versus Red Hat Steel Cage Match, I'd just like to point out that Oracle has been around since 1977. Redhat: 1995. Redhat brought in $400 million in revenue in 2007. Oracle? $22.43 billion. I could go on, but I think you get the point. Oracle is a freight train, and Redhat is a skinny guy who jogs a couple times a week in the business world.
If I go to senior management and say I'd like to use Redhat Linux, they'll go "What's that?" If I say I want to run Oracle Linux, they'll ask "How much will that save us?" There is no question of Oracle's reliability, or market performance. None. Oracle doesn't need to prove itself. So if you're a fan of getting Linux into the business, you should be saying "hip-hip hoooray" to this; You've got a free pass now at the executive board meetings to install Linux now somewhere. Or... or you can bitch about how it's the wrong flavor of linux and tear into Oracle for ruining the good name of Linux, how Orthodox Linux users are into shaming other users, and Oracle is more like New Evangelical Linux -- half the guilt, twice the usability, etc., etc.
First of all, ext3 is live and working, there's no reason whatsoever to move to ext4 as of now, unless you want a speed boost.
Or use NTFS, which has the same features and works now.
Second "all your data is belong to us" seems far from what is going on, did you hear this only happens when the power is gone?
If the system crashes, or someone frobs the reset button, it's the same deal.
Since when is it that obvious to expect all data to reliably survive a power shutdown?
The idea behind journaling is not to save all the data, but to leave the data in a consistent state. ext4 fails this test.
Not at all, this is more of developers vs. developers. The users will just have to wait until one side changes what was going on.
Uhhmm, and what about the users who use products made by developers on the wrong side of this "debate"? Too bad for them?
I guess you were just reading the words "data losses" in a topic that relates to Linux and wanted to prove your theory of how free software is like Microsoft, eh?
Software is software, I don't care to get into religious debates about which one is the One True Software. I care about two things as a professional: Reliability, and performance, and in that order. I won't sacrifice reliability to gain performance. Microsoft understands this. Linux is still learning.
The laws are screwy. I can take a 2x4 to your head and be out in six months for aggravated assault, but spend ten years in jail for downloading a song you made. I think we're already there.
Everyone yells and jumps about over copyright. And while in truth yes, it will have an effect on our lives and how we conduct business, the law will never settle the matter. No matter how many judgements, treaties, proclaimations, arrests, convictions, and everything else we throw at it, it cannot change the fact that the internet is global. You can't stop the signal, nobody can. We can't simply dismantle the network, and try as we might to control what goes over it, if a connection can be made someone will figure out a way to get the data through. The internet doesn't care about copyright. It exists to transmit information between people, and nothing will ever deny that power. Not as long as it exists.
We might bear witness to a fifty year war on copyright, pirates, and blah blah blah, but the problem will never go away. The signal will always be there, someone will always have a copy, and eventually the economic drain that will come from fighting this war will bankrupt its supporters. Eventually. It might not happen in five years, or twenty, but it will happen.
Slashdot Mirror
And this Skype client will never be full-featured because it would take revenue away from the phone company, who profits by selling voice plans. You might be thinking a data-only plan with a Skype client would save you money, but you'd be wrong: Apple doesn't want you to do that. AT&T doesn't either. Or any other wireless provider. Sure, we could invest in a decent wireless data architecture, but why do that when we know we can keep bumping up prices and not improving infrastructure, and then blaming "high consumption users" for the problem. You will pay, like the good consumer you are. Oh yes, you will pay.
Why not just set it to send you a message when someone replies to one of your comments?
Other than the fact that the feature doesn't work? No reason.
Please fix the user pages. The new way of doing it where our comments are buried several clicks in is irritating. The only reason most of us go to our own user pages is to see if anyone's replied to our comment.
Okay, first, you can't "scientifically test" people's sexual mores. It's a question of taste, culture, environment, and context. Second, the definition of pornography has long been held to be something along the lines of "You'll know it when you see it." This has actually been used as the legal test in many courts in this country. Third, people are stupid frothing-at-the-mouth retarded and lobotomized flatworms as soon as they become emotionally engaged in a social problem, and doubly-so when it involves criminal charges.
The legal system is a crap shoot. As a defendant you can be hung even if you make completely honest statements. False witnesses, poor quality of evidence, lack of evidence, or (god help you) eyewitness testimony, etc., can all destroy the credibility of a defendant who is completely honest on the stand. If you excercise your fifth amendment rights, the jury will pretty much hang you on that basis alone -- nevermind the VERY strong legal arguments for doing so (even if you're innocent). Not only that, but did you know that in something like a quarter of rape cases where the defendant was later aquitted based on DNA evidence -- they admitted to the crime? Not that YOU would ever do something like that, but why do you suppose they did it? And let's not even get into over-zealous prosecutors, incompetent judges and attorneys, "lost" or witheld evidence from the police department--because we all know they aren't human but in fact infallable robots who never make honest mistakes, let alone malicious ones. Did I mention that a lot of people plead guilty to lesser offenses simply because they don't want to deal with the hassle and stress of a trial? A lot of people do this. Think of when you got a parking ticket or speeding ticket -- after venting about how you're going to fight the man, etc., and how the cop was just singling you out, etc... How many of you knew you weren't guilty but decided to give in anyway and pay the fine just because it was easier than a fight and the risk of losing and having to pay even more (and pay you will, Citizen).
In the majority of cases, the trial is over before it even starts. And people don't learn -- it doesn't matter how many innocents they throw to the wolves, because in their mind they're justified for doing so "because we got a few bad guys doing it too!" People are irrational, emotional, slathering rat-beasts. And they're stupid. Just realize how stupid the average person is and then realize that half the people serving on your jury will be stupider than that. Oh, and the icing on the cake? I don't know you, but I'm sure you've committed an arrestable-offense today. There is no person on the planet who can understand and follow all the laws we've created. And there are so many of them, that the odds are incredibly good that you've broken at least one of them. So all of you are criminals. We just haven't caught you...yet.
Lastly, consider this: What if one of these girls had been a boy instead. Ah, but justice is blind they say.
It's quite elementary, really: Windows Update sucks. Okay, that probably needs an explanation.
Would you rather:
a) Run Windows Update so Microsoft has backdoor access to update/patch/install software at random, as well as auditing your system for "compliance" and sending you a legal nastygram if you are caught running a "pirate" copy of Windows? Note: The detection algorithm for "Windows Genuine Authentication" has passed numerous false negatives and disabled people's computers before who purchased legitimate copies, -or-
b) Not update, download a software firewall, run a bunch of anti-malware scanners, and use Firefox, -or-
c) Do nothing, because "there's nothing important on my computer anyway."
Microsoft went through a lot of effort to make sure there were tons of unpatched systems out there when they started throwing up "windows genuine" everywhere, and having the average user jump through so many hoops. Then there's the two hour process of installing Service Pack 3. Who wants to waste two hours on a ginormous OS update when they can play WoW some more? And god help you if one of a thousand failure conditions crops up and it dies, telling you to reinstall the entire OS. The average Windows users is caught between knowing their systems are vulnerable and playing a rat race that requires knowledge and process they don't understand to keep their systems secure.
Big surprise when they choose the devil they know.
Does this mean we're going to have those "What's in YOUR wallet" commercials switch to "What's in YOUR computer?" I can see it now...
"Hi, I'm a Mac."
"Hi, I'm a PC."
"Hi, I'm a viking maurader. Bleeeeaaarrrgh!"
Red Hat Linux: Sneak attack, bitches.
This is another case of only seeing part of the problem. Data preservation is easy. The problem is, we generate massive amounts of data. Data doesn't have an expiration date. It doesn't automatically categorize itself, know its own relevance, or volunteer itself for tasks. See, the vast majority of "data" floating around can be safely discarded. Do you really need an ethernet sniff log of everything you've done on the internet over the past ten years? The government might want a copy, but chances are pretty good its just as useless to them as you. How about those four (broken) copies of that mp3 you downloaded from Shareaza? Or outdated installers of software? Is there a reason to keep around those Netware 3.12 floppies (besides impressing other old farts)?
The problem isn't preserving data, it's knowing when to let it go. We have many, many, many methods of data preservation. We are drowning in information. The internet is generating petabytes worth of data every day, and only the smallest fraction of that really has any reuse value. And most of that, in six months, or a few years, probably not. What we need is better methods of sorting data, and ways to expire data safely.
Also, we also need control over our data. Corporations have been trying to take that away now for years. You don't need a copy of our software that can run on any computer, we're going to mung it up so it only runs on one computer, and if you have to reinstall the operating system or change the video card or anything else, that copy will cease to work. An irony, really -- because I know plenty of people that love playing old video games whose manufacturers long ago gave up on, but won't release the copyright for. Fifty years from now, I doubt a single copy of the game will still exist -- the concept, maybe. But it will have died and yet someone will still own the copyright and think money could be made off it. When we buy a chunk of data, we need to be able to control it, not just use it in some narrowly-defined way. Because otherwise, what's the point of data preservation in the first place? To stockpile more useless data that -- even worse, holding onto could be a liability to you?
I can now theoretically steal "the internet" with a flatbed truck and a lift. There's something to be said for conventional data centers: They're rather hard to load onto a truck and drive off with.
I'm probably the only one here that read that and thought that migrating from LCARS to Linux might not be in the Federation's best interest. Although I'm sure that 300 years from now, all software is FOSS. ^_^
Was it just me or did anyone else spend a few minutes contemplating how you actually could make a car that did allow you to change a flat while moving?
Retractable axles, like they use on dump trucks. With the wheels off the pavement, changing it becomes trivial. You need at least two sets of drive wheels though for that to work. But that's a closed-system solution. An adaptive solution would be a semi-truck that would deploy a ramp out the back. Drive the car onto the ramp and then effect the fix on the semi-truck. Then return the car to the flow of traffic. It would be dangerous though if it was one of the front tires; At 60 MPH, a normal car tire that has gone flat will shred itself in moments. In a convoy situation, it is likely that by the time the semi-truck positioned itself, the vehicle still traveling at that speed would have suffered extensive damage and be a risk to other vehicles in the area, including the rescue vehicle. Simply keeping it traveling in a straight line would be problematic, if my limited empirical evidence (episodes of Cops detailing police chases where the vehicle behing pursued has one or more damaged tires) is any indication.
Yeah... I'm a geek too.
Spanish is taught a lot in the US... how many teenagers do you see using Spanish websites?
Not many.
You know, the article read like a press release. Hasn't slashdot whored itself out enough lately on these kinds of things? Google is so ultra-reliable, blah blah, 24x7, blah blah, commitment, blah blah, premier service partner, blah blah... I get that kind of talk enough in staff meetings. Where's the meat already!?
Why not write an article with some nice graphics saying what happens to my request from the time I hit "Search" to the time I click a result. List off all the servers it goes through, their roles, how they're monitored, etc. Give examples of failure and show the mode decisions the software makes (and where this software is running) -- show the latencies and other performance impacts as my request bounces over failure after failure. That's what I expect when I pull up an article entitled "How Google Routes Around Outages". Something useful, professionally enriching, intellectually stimulating, etc. In short, tell me why I (should) never see a "500 Internal Server Error" from Google, but I do from just about every other major website I've used.
A typical neuron is a vastly complex electro-chemical computer,
You can still simulate these interactions digitally and have the output match. Like these guys did.
You make an excellent point. I've always operated under the assumption that english was taught rather pervasively, and so they would also use english sites.
Okay, seriously; They've invested tens (if not hundreds) of millions of dollars into a national infrastructure informally known as the "Great Firewall of China". And yet they block sites wholesale rather than by keyword, URL, or a dozen other possibilities? If they're trying to keep this as transparent to the population as possible, why constantly block and unblock popular sites? It just compels people to ask the question "Why do they keep blocking/unblocking this site?" And the answer is only a google query away.
I'm not arguing for or against censorship here, I'm merely pointing out that it's difficult to imagine that they lack the most basic capabilities of censorship software that is sold commercially and globally elsewhere, and that it is not technically challenging to impliment those features. Why spend millions on an infrastructure item that lacks even the most basic features needed for its intended use?
If I have to bear witness to another buzzword in a slashdot article title, I will turn Richard Stallman into a Juicer and ship him in a crate to Slashdot HQ. Because nothing says mega-damage like a character from RIFTS. I swear I will. He's already half-way there. You've seen his code, you know he's already got a caffeine drip. It won't be hard. Plus, I'm kinda bloated and cranky right now, so I might just come with. Don't tempt me.
From a support perspective, yeah. I worked for Target corporation, which has about 2030 stores around the world, about 50 or so distribution centers, a world headquarters, a few regional headquarters, and a massive support staff in India. I supported about 93,000 workstations, and there are approximately 120,000 employees there and about twice that again in contractors that need access to the system. When you get under about 50k employees, the management style and support system changes pretty radically, and under about 10k employees, IT is usually not even a bullet point on the quarterly report.
There are several solutions, and which one is adopted depends a lot more on corporate culture than technical merit.
In large businesses (10,000+ employees), I see two common approaches. The first is lock-down.
Lock down.
* Centralize everything and lock down the workstations. All software comes from one department, is distributed by SMS or Altiris, and (sometimes) workstations are monitored for compliance. Businesses like this often go with Dell for their hardware provider and have only about 5 or so workstation configurations in active use. Patches and install requests can take months to fulfill, and if the software isn't on their list, chances are good that you'll never see it. These businesses have security weaknesses in their network due to this centralization -- typically using flat topology models with very little or no firewalling between various business units. USB ports are typically fiddled with so flash drives cannot be used. For some reason, DVD/CD drives always do though. Go figure. Everything is vanilla-flavored, stock, and the same. If you find a weakness on one workstation, chances are good they all have it. Standardization is great! The servers are backed up. The workstations, where all the real data is, is ignored.
Multiple IT departments
* You'll see this with businesses that absorb other businesses -- financial companies in particular. Each business unit has its own IT, distribution schema, and enforcement of IT policies vary wildly. You won't be able to change your desktop wallpaper, but regedit still works with full admin rights. Firewalling between various business units is more common, but the policies are often out-of-date, and multiple routes exist. VPNs are commonly stacked over them, and if you know where to look, you can usually find a way through. The upshot is that the hardware is much more diverse, users are sometimes "left to their own devices" (literally and figuratively), and homebrew software solutions are more common. Nobody really knows what Server X does, but it has a sticker on it saying "Do not touch, Very Important." Often, hardware inventory and diagnostics in such environments consists of unplugging it and waiting to see who complains. If nobody complains, pack it up and ship it to Corporate. Nobody really knows what the company owns, but by god, we've got a lot of it. The good news is, if you can find your IT guys, they'll usually have your software loaded in a few hours. They won't care as much about software licensing either (I just gotta make my 8 hours, man)... Contractors typically run the show, and they have no idea what they're doing (because nobody wants to tell them anything). Servers are backed up, sometimes workstations are too. Sometimes. Maybe.
Mid-size businesses (less than 100,000 employees)
Sometimes you'll see centralization, but more often it's the scenario above, but with only one IT department. The network topology is generally laid out better though, hardware is more consistent, and the helpdesk is actually (le gasp) helpful, typically being a stone's throw away from the admins who maintain the servers. This is a good deal for you users -- they're too busy to be making many software policies and auditing, but not too monolithic that they're inaccessible. Your USB flash drive will work, even though you're told not to. Hello iTunes! Don't download pr0n though... For some reason, medium-sized corporate IT departments know everything you do on the internet, even though they don't know where the database server is. There is one rack of equipment... somewhere... and if it dies the entire business will collapse. But nobody knows. The servers are sometimes backed up, and so are the workstations. We're not sure... What's a "backup policy"? Can I use MMC to set one up?
Small business (less than 10,000 employees)
There is one guy or a small team and they are zyzzy GOD on the network. They don't care what you are running on your workstation... There's a pile of install CDs at his desk. Help yourself. Talk to the pimply-face
Guess LHC better get in for a checkup. Like so many major observatories of late, this one is also near-sighted. ^_^
Prediction: It will be found in six months laying in the "nearly free" bin in the bookstore, along with "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People", and "Change Your Underwear, Change Your Life."
Before everyone goes all stupid crazy about Oracle versus Red Hat Steel Cage Match, I'd just like to point out that Oracle has been around since 1977. Redhat: 1995. Redhat brought in $400 million in revenue in 2007. Oracle? $22.43 billion. I could go on, but I think you get the point. Oracle is a freight train, and Redhat is a skinny guy who jogs a couple times a week in the business world.
If I go to senior management and say I'd like to use Redhat Linux, they'll go "What's that?" If I say I want to run Oracle Linux, they'll ask "How much will that save us?" There is no question of Oracle's reliability, or market performance. None. Oracle doesn't need to prove itself. So if you're a fan of getting Linux into the business, you should be saying "hip-hip hoooray" to this; You've got a free pass now at the executive board meetings to install Linux now somewhere. Or... or you can bitch about how it's the wrong flavor of linux and tear into Oracle for ruining the good name of Linux, how Orthodox Linux users are into shaming other users, and Oracle is more like New Evangelical Linux -- half the guilt, twice the usability, etc., etc.
Your call.
...not the ability to use as few bullets as possible on hard-to-hit monstrosities.
*cough* like Half-life *cough*
First of all, ext3 is live and working, there's no reason whatsoever to move to ext4 as of now, unless you want a speed boost.
Or use NTFS, which has the same features and works now.
Second "all your data is belong to us" seems far from what is going on, did you hear this only happens when the power is gone?
If the system crashes, or someone frobs the reset button, it's the same deal.
Since when is it that obvious to expect all data to reliably survive a power shutdown?
The idea behind journaling is not to save all the data, but to leave the data in a consistent state. ext4 fails this test.
Not at all, this is more of developers vs. developers. The users will just have to wait until one side changes what was going on.
Uhhmm, and what about the users who use products made by developers on the wrong side of this "debate"? Too bad for them?
I guess you were just reading the words "data losses" in a topic that relates to Linux and wanted to prove your theory of how free software is like Microsoft, eh?
Software is software, I don't care to get into religious debates about which one is the One True Software. I care about two things as a professional: Reliability, and performance, and in that order. I won't sacrifice reliability to gain performance. Microsoft understands this. Linux is still learning.
Sounds reminiscent of the war on drugs...
The laws are screwy. I can take a 2x4 to your head and be out in six months for aggravated assault, but spend ten years in jail for downloading a song you made. I think we're already there.
Everyone yells and jumps about over copyright. And while in truth yes, it will have an effect on our lives and how we conduct business, the law will never settle the matter. No matter how many judgements, treaties, proclaimations, arrests, convictions, and everything else we throw at it, it cannot change the fact that the internet is global. You can't stop the signal, nobody can. We can't simply dismantle the network, and try as we might to control what goes over it, if a connection can be made someone will figure out a way to get the data through. The internet doesn't care about copyright. It exists to transmit information between people, and nothing will ever deny that power. Not as long as it exists.
We might bear witness to a fifty year war on copyright, pirates, and blah blah blah, but the problem will never go away. The signal will always be there, someone will always have a copy, and eventually the economic drain that will come from fighting this war will bankrupt its supporters. Eventually. It might not happen in five years, or twenty, but it will happen.