First on supplies: Do you think that every kid should have to supply their own paints/crayons etc for art class? Do you think that every kid should have to bring in their own basketball/kickball? Should a elementary/middle/high school make kids pay for their own books every year just like students do in college?
Also, do you think that while the cost of goods purchased has increased, AND the numbers of students attending our schools have increased, that by having us cutback on funding; we'll somehow people able to find sufficient money? Also, while I will complain about the salaries of administration, their salaries come out of a completely different budget than either my salary OR those used to pay for supplies and books?
--Money for books and basic school supplies (paper, binders, text books).
--Salary budgets so we can have more than one specialist (Gym, Music, Art, reading) per 4 elementary schools. These specialists spend their lives going from one school to the next
--Librarians. Most in our district were 'let go' due to budgetary reasons and now parents/volunteers are doing the work. Parents/volunteers are no replacement for someone with 20yrs of experience as a librarian.
--Raises so we can live within 30miles of our school (same goes for Firefighters and Police officers).
I don't need computers when I'm teaching YOUR kids how to read and write, when I barely have enough for books and have to buy school supplies (dry erase markers, paper, binders) out of my own pocket.
Obama is talking about broadband because it's "Sexy". It wouldn't get any attention if he said, "I'm going to make sure all of our teachers have enough textbooks, paper and supplies to teach our kids how to read, write and do arithmetic." Why doesn't he say this, because schools are funded at the state level.... and the towns/states referendums for tax increases to pay for this equipment (books/pencils) are voted down, year after year. The only schools around here that have sufficient supplies are in the higher income towns because the parents are willing to donate $5000....
Should funding be broken down by %population of the world, or %landmass occupied? However, I see this as "make the US pay for it". If a non-planet killing asteroid is targeting a nation which has not contributed to the fund/program, should we defend it? The security system on my house doesn't protect my neighbor's, (although my tax dollars which pay for the police, do.).
At the Cisco campus that I recently visited in SanJose, if you visit one of the less visited buildings (like one occupied by Engineers as opposed to the Briefing Center building), instead of a receptionist sitting at the desk, at the desk is a box the size of a microwave and a 40in HDTV on the wall. You push a button on the 'box' and it calls a centralized receptionist, who then appears on the TV (this might be the same tech as their Telepresence product). Anyhow, if you need a guest badge, she records your information and a guest badge is dispensed from the box on the desk.
I'm assuming that the remote receptionist can do all the other tasks as well (calling someone down etc..)
I can run XP in a virtual machine that moves with me across my various desktops, laptop, etc, in a 100% consistent "hardware" environment so I can stay on the hardware upward speed curve as Apple brings out new machines
What a waste of hardware resources. So you have to use a certain amount of CPU/memory/HD just to support your native OSX OS and applications. Then you've got to use an additional amount of memory to support this VM (or API) plus the windows native applications. If you tell me that Outlook in a winXP VM uses less memory than the same Outlook process in native winXP, I'm calling bull. Don't give me the BS about "I don't need a virusscan/malware checker" if you're running XP in a VM.
My main applications at work at Outlook (plus plugins), Visio and various internal websites that use ActiveX controls or require IE (Oracle Projects!). When _all_ of my primary applications are natively supported in OSX, I'll gladly switch over, but to have a setup in which I'm forced to run XP in a VM (or via API), I'll keep my native windows setup thank you.
Btw... don't forget the lessons of OS/2. It could run windows 3.11 applications, but not nearly as fast or efficiently as a native OS/2 Warp app.
How is this any different than mp3s? I want to listen to a song that I cannot find on Amazon/local Record stores or via legal download. But I do find it on ThePirateBay in 500_Greatest_Rock_Anthems.torrent.
I would bet that the amount of eBook piracy is nothing compared to the amount of music piracy going on. So if you're looking for a financial compensation problem, go after music. In a few years when the Wii/PS3/XBOX360 generation grows up, we won't have to worry about eBook piracy, as this 'instant gratification' generation won't be able to sit still long enough to read a book. Maybe we'll all get lucky and they'll pirate (I mean legally download) an eBook and have it read to them.
This reminds me of Robocop's "new" Prime directives which originally were:
1. "Serve the public trust"
2. "Protect the innocent"
3. "Uphold the law"
4. any attempt to arrest a senior OCP employee results in shutdown)
However in the sequel, they wanted Robocop to be kinder/gentler with morals etc... which turned him into a cop which, while being shot at (and hit) would try to reason and tell moral stories...
RoboCop's new directives are (in numerical order): -DIRECTIVE 233: Restrain hostile feelings. - DIRECTIVE 234: Promote positive attitude. - DIRECTIVE 235: Suppress aggressiveness. - DIRECTIVE 236: Promote pro-social values. - DIRECTIVE 238: Avoid destructive behavior. - DIRECTIVE 239: Be accessible. - DIRECTIVE 240: Participate in group activities. - DIRECTIVE 241: Avoid interpersonal conflicts. - DIRECTIVE 242: Avoid premature value judgments. - DIRECTIVE 243: Pool opinions before expressing yourself. - DIRECTIVE 244: Discourage feelings of negativity and hostility. - DIRECTIVE 245: If you haven't got anything nice to say, don't talk. - DIRECTIVE 246: Don't rush traffic lights. - DIRECTIVE 247: Don't run through puddles and splash pedestrians or other cars. - DIRECTIVE 248: Don't say that you are always prompt when you are not. - DIRECTIVE 249: Don't be oversensitive to the hostility and negativity of others. - DIRECTIVE 250: Don't walk across a ballroom floor swinging your arms. - DIRECTIVE 254: Encourage awareness. - DIRECTIVE 256: Discourage harsh language. - DIRECTIVE 258: Commend sincere efforts. - DIRECTIVE 261: Talk things out. - DIRECTIVE 262: Avoid Orion meetings./* this is an Easter egg, as Orion was the movie's Production Company */ - DIRECTIVE 266: Smile. - DIRECTIVE 267: Keep an open mind. - DIRECTIVE 268: Encourage participation. - DIRECTIVE 273: Avoid stereotyping. - DIRECTIVE 278: Seek non-violent solutions.
Voices from the Hellmouth
on
American Nerd
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Are we really that much farther away now from Nerd having a negative stigma than we were back in '99 during http://slashdot.org/articles/99/04/25/1438249.shtml one of the more famous/important discussions on/.?
In the beginning there was windows and Netscape. Then MSFT decided to include their own browser, and most users didn't think they needed _another_ browser, so they stuck with IE. Eventually, Netscape ceased to exist. IE stagnated for years and this led us to Firefox. Most users still use IE (70%) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Usage_share_of_web_browsers.png
Will McAfee go down the same roads at Netscape? Will the average user go out and buy McAfee when Microsoft's might just be "good enough"?
So instead of having a wired sensor on every external door/window, I now have a wireless setup? How many batteries and how do I maintain them? I'll assume the sensors notify me that the downstairs bathroom window's sensor needs to be replaced.
Retrofitting a house, go with the wireless solution so you don't have to tear up your walls (unless you've got an attach to run cabling)
New House? hardwired, as there would be less maintenance.
How is this any different than the signs in restaurants that say "We reserve the right to refuse to serve someone." They don't care if you already paid for your meal, if you're abusing the wait staff, they can kick you out. It's a private establishment, just like the forums/servers/realms/whatever, just because you paid for the game does not give you the right to infringe on the rights of others.
Just because you bought the game does not entitle you to act like an a$$hole in the forums, chatrooms or in the game. I'm all for forums in which if someone is spouting off garbage, the moderator has the right to delete the post/thread and ban the user. I've seen this in many non-game related forums. Most people abide by the rules, and when some nut comes along and spouts junk, it just attracts more people like them.
They're not going to ban someone that uses the occasional off colored language, or and if they're smart they'll warn you that you're on thin ice. Unless it's obvious that the poster is spamming posts etc..
Many games were ruined by a$$holes, take Diablo2 for example. Cheating was so rampant that you could only play multiplayer with people you already knew. If only they could have banned all the cheaters.
Do you think that China/India/Korea/wherever's government would prosecute someone that "stole" intellectual property from the US? Look at the drug industry, a drug patent lasts 20yrs, yet India and China freely copy patented drugs rather than buying them from the US based company. If the drug could help stop the spread of HIV, and would cost quite a bit to purchase, of course those countries are going to violate the patents.
If I was one of these countries I'd do the same. Why pay for something in time, money, effort, research when you can just get it for free.
I don't recall seeing morality having a dollar figure.
You didn't lose a feature, you lost it in the low end mac line. You want to talk about vendors killing things, why not look at the list of protocols that Cisco killed with Ethernet?
I had the benefit of experiencing multipoint teleconferencing. NewYork (where I was), San Jose and Boston. The room had three 60in plasmas and three cameras. Now of course you can't see everybody at once if there are three people in each room (9 feeds in total), but when the left person in Boston spoke, the left screen in New York changed to show the speaker (and the sound came from the left screen); then when the San Jose (left) guy spoke the Boston guy was replaced with that person. It was pretty slick, just like in a real room where you look at the person that is talking. There was _no lag_ with sound, such as you would ask a question and then just as if they were sitting next to you, they would respond.
The setup was trivial. When we walked into the room the cisco phone on the desk was pre-programmed for our meeting and all we had to hit was the "join meeting" button next to the LCD screen. No phone numbers to dial, PINs etc. If we wanted to share a ppt, there was a VGA cable to plug our laptop into. I understand the folks that set the meeting up just plugged in the rooms into their outlook calendar and *voila* all done.
For those comparing this to consumer grade video conferencing (yahoo/skype), it's like comparing IMAX to watching a movie on a iPhone.
If I buy a phone and a contract with say ATT, and I'm in a location in which Verizon is the strongest signal. How does Verizon get compensated for this? Are the expected to set up peering agreements with ATT or do they charge ATT for the right to allow ATT contracted phones to attach to Verizon's network?
Why can't some of the owners of/8 address spaces return them back to be re-allocated?
For example, HP owns 15.0.0.0 through 16.0.0.0 (~33m ip addresses) can't they get by on just ONE class A network? Apple owns 17/8 MIT own 18/8 US Postal Service 56/8. http://www.iana.org/assignments/ipv4-address-space/
Do all these companies need to have ALL of their devices on publicly routable IP addresses? From a security standpoint, I would hope not. Odd since IBM, a company much larger than MIT and Apple can get by on just one/8, and I'm having trouble believing that HP requires 2/8 networks.
We talk about making our datacenters "green" by consuming less power, there's got to be an equivalent for consuming fewer public IP addresses.
I've just finished re-IPing our datacenter (~5000 servers), not to 'release IP addresses back, but to undo the damage done by years of seemingly randomly assigning IP addresses to servers in our datacenter. Yes it's a pain, but so is any form of cleaning up your datacenter (cabling for example).
Look at how people deal with email. I've got coworkers that have every single email (including mailing lists they've subscribed to) they've ever sent or received since they started (~8yrs ago). They're probably got 20GB of email on their laptop. Now we only allow 100MB of server based email storage, so that helps on the server side, but we're still backing up this guys laptop.
On the datacenter side, we had a database corruption about 10years ago so we implemented snapshots, and then snapshots of those snapshots... we actually now carry about seven copies of our database. Why still seven? Because nobody wants to have to recommend that we have fewer copies of data in case we have another problem again. The funny part is that nobody in operations was around at the time of this outage.
Atleast de-duplication technology is being adopted, which gives us an excuse to hoard even more data. However from a legal standpoint, tell the Judge we don't retain data older than X years is easier than recalling 50k tapes you sent offsite 8years ago.
Bottom Line: It's just easier to store it than to be the one that "Recommended we delete XYZ files, that's why we don't have the data."
What's the difference in gaming between consoles and PCs for multi-player games?
For the PC, one person per computer. Want to play with another person, they need another computer. The Wii has 1/2 the power of the typical home computer yet you can have multiplayer games with the people in the same room. PC gaming is individuals sitting at individual computers, looking at tiny monitors (not your 60" TV) Multiplayer on the PC shouldn't be two people sharing the same keyboard.
Consoles while inflexible serve a great purpose, to play games. Why can't the game companies, say "Here, buy this PCI card so you can hook up standard controllers and use the power of the home computer to act more like a console." Why not have two keyboards/mice? Surely it can't be that much more (if any) power than two game controllers so you can play splitscreen while the PC is connected up to the TV..
My computer can do more than the console, I should be able to configure it to act as an appliance (ala a console), and when I'm done go back to doing computer only functions (word processing, email, etc..).
People like to compare IBM to MS, and see MS slowing down, but then ultimately being successful like IBM. What people fail to realize is that IBM spent the money to make rock solid products.
Actually, IBM went from being a hardware company to a services company. When MSFT helps you design, install and optimize competitive products like IGS does with setting up Solaris servers connecting to EMC disk arrays. Realizing that money can be made off of more than just software licensing, then they'll be successful like IBM.
I'd be much more interested in the ratio of technical IT people to non-technical. I'm not referring to managers of IT staff, but the throngs of Project Managers. I'm at a large networking company that rhymes with CrISCO and it seems whenever we have a hiring freeze in IT, they are still pouring in the Project Managers. I haven't figured out what they manage, but there sure is a lot of them.
Slashdot Mirror
First on supplies: Do you think that every kid should have to supply their own paints/crayons etc for art class? Do you think that every kid should have to bring in their own basketball/kickball? Should a elementary/middle/high school make kids pay for their own books every year just like students do in college?
Also, do you think that while the cost of goods purchased has increased, AND the numbers of students attending our schools have increased, that by having us cutback on funding; we'll somehow people able to find sufficient money? Also, while I will complain about the salaries of administration, their salaries come out of a completely different budget than either my salary OR those used to pay for supplies and books?
If you can read this, thank a teacher.
...why don't you give us teachers:
--Money for books and basic school supplies (paper, binders, text books).
--Salary budgets so we can have more than one specialist (Gym, Music, Art, reading) per 4 elementary schools. These specialists spend their lives going from one school to the next
--Librarians. Most in our district were 'let go' due to budgetary reasons and now parents/volunteers are doing the work. Parents/volunteers are no replacement for someone with 20yrs of experience as a librarian.
--Raises so we can live within 30miles of our school (same goes for Firefighters and Police officers).
I don't need computers when I'm teaching YOUR kids how to read and write, when I barely have enough for books and have to buy school supplies (dry erase markers, paper, binders) out of my own pocket.
Obama is talking about broadband because it's "Sexy". It wouldn't get any attention if he said, "I'm going to make sure all of our teachers have enough textbooks, paper and supplies to teach our kids how to read, write and do arithmetic." Why doesn't he say this, because schools are funded at the state level.... and the towns/states referendums for tax increases to pay for this equipment (books/pencils) are voted down, year after year. The only schools around here that have sufficient supplies are in the higher income towns because the parents are willing to donate $5000....
Should funding be broken down by %population of the world, or %landmass occupied? However, I see this as "make the US pay for it". If a non-planet killing asteroid is targeting a nation which has not contributed to the fund/program, should we defend it? The security system on my house doesn't protect my neighbor's, (although my tax dollars which pay for the police, do.).
At the Cisco campus that I recently visited in SanJose, if you visit one of the less visited buildings (like one occupied by Engineers as opposed to the Briefing Center building), instead of a receptionist sitting at the desk, at the desk is a box the size of a microwave and a 40in HDTV on the wall. You push a button on the 'box' and it calls a centralized receptionist, who then appears on the TV (this might be the same tech as their Telepresence product). Anyhow, if you need a guest badge, she records your information and a guest badge is dispensed from the box on the desk.
I'm assuming that the remote receptionist can do all the other tasks as well (calling someone down etc..)
I can run XP in a virtual machine that moves with me across my various desktops, laptop, etc, in a 100% consistent "hardware" environment so I can stay on the hardware upward speed curve as Apple brings out new machines
What a waste of hardware resources. So you have to use a certain amount of CPU/memory/HD just to support your native OSX OS and applications. Then you've got to use an additional amount of memory to support this VM (or API) plus the windows native applications. If you tell me that Outlook in a winXP VM uses less memory than the same Outlook process in native winXP, I'm calling bull. Don't give me the BS about "I don't need a virusscan/malware checker" if you're running XP in a VM.
My main applications at work at Outlook (plus plugins), Visio and various internal websites that use ActiveX controls or require IE (Oracle Projects!). When _all_ of my primary applications are natively supported in OSX, I'll gladly switch over, but to have a setup in which I'm forced to run XP in a VM (or via API), I'll keep my native windows setup thank you.
Btw... don't forget the lessons of OS/2. It could run windows 3.11 applications, but not nearly as fast or efficiently as a native OS/2 Warp app.
How is this any different than mp3s? I want to listen to a song that I cannot find on Amazon/local Record stores or via legal download. But I do find it on ThePirateBay in 500_Greatest_Rock_Anthems.torrent.
I would bet that the amount of eBook piracy is nothing compared to the amount of music piracy going on. So if you're looking for a financial compensation problem, go after music. In a few years when the Wii/PS3/XBOX360 generation grows up, we won't have to worry about eBook piracy, as this 'instant gratification' generation won't be able to sit still long enough to read a book. Maybe we'll all get lucky and they'll pirate (I mean legally download) an eBook and have it read to them.
This reminds me of Robocop's "new" Prime directives which originally were:
1. "Serve the public trust"
2. "Protect the innocent"
3. "Uphold the law"
4. any attempt to arrest a senior OCP employee results in shutdown)
However in the sequel, they wanted Robocop to be kinder/gentler with morals etc... which turned him into a cop which, while being shot at (and hit) would try to reason and tell moral stories...
RoboCop's new directives are (in numerical order): /* this is an Easter egg, as Orion was the movie's Production Company */
-DIRECTIVE 233: Restrain hostile feelings.
- DIRECTIVE 234: Promote positive attitude.
- DIRECTIVE 235: Suppress aggressiveness.
- DIRECTIVE 236: Promote pro-social values.
- DIRECTIVE 238: Avoid destructive behavior.
- DIRECTIVE 239: Be accessible.
- DIRECTIVE 240: Participate in group activities.
- DIRECTIVE 241: Avoid interpersonal conflicts.
- DIRECTIVE 242: Avoid premature value judgments.
- DIRECTIVE 243: Pool opinions before expressing yourself.
- DIRECTIVE 244: Discourage feelings of negativity and hostility.
- DIRECTIVE 245: If you haven't got anything nice to say, don't talk.
- DIRECTIVE 246: Don't rush traffic lights.
- DIRECTIVE 247: Don't run through puddles and splash pedestrians or other cars.
- DIRECTIVE 248: Don't say that you are always prompt when you are not.
- DIRECTIVE 249: Don't be oversensitive to the hostility and negativity of others.
- DIRECTIVE 250: Don't walk across a ballroom floor swinging your arms.
- DIRECTIVE 254: Encourage awareness.
- DIRECTIVE 256: Discourage harsh language.
- DIRECTIVE 258: Commend sincere efforts.
- DIRECTIVE 261: Talk things out.
- DIRECTIVE 262: Avoid Orion meetings.
- DIRECTIVE 266: Smile.
- DIRECTIVE 267: Keep an open mind.
- DIRECTIVE 268: Encourage participation.
- DIRECTIVE 273: Avoid stereotyping.
- DIRECTIVE 278: Seek non-violent solutions.
Are we really that much farther away now from Nerd having a negative stigma than we were back in '99 during http://slashdot.org/articles/99/04/25/1438249.shtml one of the more famous/important discussions on /.?
In the beginning there was windows and Netscape.
Then MSFT decided to include their own browser, and most users didn't think they needed _another_ browser, so they stuck with IE.
Eventually, Netscape ceased to exist.
IE stagnated for years and this led us to Firefox.
Most users still use IE (70%) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Usage_share_of_web_browsers.png
Will McAfee go down the same roads at Netscape? Will the average user go out and buy McAfee when Microsoft's might just be "good enough"?
These are great for moving around data... (tho you could use rsync instead...)
% tar cf - . | (cd /home/user123 && tar xBf -)
So instead of having a wired sensor on every external door/window, I now have a wireless setup? How many batteries and how do I maintain them? I'll assume the sensors notify me that the downstairs bathroom window's sensor needs to be replaced.
Retrofitting a house, go with the wireless solution so you don't have to tear up your walls (unless you've got an attach to run cabling)
New House? hardwired, as there would be less maintenance.
If they ban you from the online game, you can still play it by yourself, at home. Just not on their servers.
How is this any different than the signs in restaurants that say "We reserve the right to refuse to serve someone." They don't care if you already paid for your meal, if you're abusing the wait staff, they can kick you out. It's a private establishment, just like the forums/servers/realms/whatever, just because you paid for the game does not give you the right to infringe on the rights of others.
Just because you bought the game does not entitle you to act like an a$$hole in the forums, chatrooms or in the game. I'm all for forums in which if someone is spouting off garbage, the moderator has the right to delete the post/thread and ban the user. I've seen this in many non-game related forums. Most people abide by the rules, and when some nut comes along and spouts junk, it just attracts more people like them.
They're not going to ban someone that uses the occasional off colored language, or and if they're smart they'll warn you that you're on thin ice. Unless it's obvious that the poster is spamming posts etc..
Many games were ruined by a$$holes, take Diablo2 for example. Cheating was so rampant that you could only play multiplayer with people you already knew. If only they could have banned all the cheaters.
Do you think that China/India/Korea/wherever's government would prosecute someone that "stole" intellectual property from the US? Look at the drug industry, a drug patent lasts 20yrs, yet India and China freely copy patented drugs rather than buying them from the US based company. If the drug could help stop the spread of HIV, and would cost quite a bit to purchase, of course those countries are going to violate the patents.
If I was one of these countries I'd do the same. Why pay for something in time, money, effort, research when you can just get it for free.
I don't recall seeing morality having a dollar figure.
You didn't lose a feature, you lost it in the low end mac line. You want to talk about vendors killing things, why not look at the list of protocols that Cisco killed with Ethernet?
decnet, appletalk, ATM, FDDI, TokenRing...
I had the benefit of experiencing multipoint teleconferencing. NewYork (where I was), San Jose and Boston. The room had three 60in plasmas and three cameras. Now of course you can't see everybody at once if there are three people in each room (9 feeds in total), but when the left person in Boston spoke, the left screen in New York changed to show the speaker (and the sound came from the left screen); then when the San Jose (left) guy spoke the Boston guy was replaced with that person. It was pretty slick, just like in a real room where you look at the person that is talking. There was _no lag_ with sound, such as you would ask a question and then just as if they were sitting next to you, they would respond.
The setup was trivial. When we walked into the room the cisco phone on the desk was pre-programmed for our meeting and all we had to hit was the "join meeting" button next to the LCD screen. No phone numbers to dial, PINs etc. If we wanted to share a ppt, there was a VGA cable to plug our laptop into. I understand the folks that set the meeting up just plugged in the rooms into their outlook calendar and *voila* all done.
For those comparing this to consumer grade video conferencing (yahoo/skype), it's like comparing IMAX to watching a movie on a iPhone.
Your kids will also have no notion of what a good recording sounds like. Before it's been compressed, I mean Optimized, for iPod.
If I buy a phone and a contract with say ATT, and I'm in a location in which Verizon is the strongest signal. How does Verizon get compensated for this? Are the expected to set up peering agreements with ATT or do they charge ATT for the right to allow ATT contracted phones to attach to Verizon's network?
Why not sell blocks of IP addresses? ISPs do that, I'm sure that MIT could fund quite a bit of classes/research/new dorms for $X per IP address.
Why can't some of the owners of /8 address spaces return them back to be re-allocated?
For example, HP owns 15.0.0.0 through 16.0.0.0 (~33m ip addresses) can't they get by on just ONE class A network?
Apple owns 17/8
MIT own 18/8
US Postal Service 56/8.
http://www.iana.org/assignments/ipv4-address-space/
Do all these companies need to have ALL of their devices on publicly routable IP addresses? From a security standpoint, I would hope not. Odd since IBM, a company much larger than MIT and Apple can get by on just one /8, and I'm having trouble believing that HP requires 2 /8 networks.
We talk about making our datacenters "green" by consuming less power, there's got to be an equivalent for consuming fewer public IP addresses.
I've just finished re-IPing our datacenter (~5000 servers), not to 'release IP addresses back, but to undo the damage done by years of seemingly randomly assigning IP addresses to servers in our datacenter. Yes it's a pain, but so is any form of cleaning up your datacenter (cabling for example).
Q: What type of virtualization do Pirates use?
A: LPARRRRRRS
Q: What type of storage do Pirates use?
A: IBM SHARRRRRRK...
Enough for now, time to get back to doing restores, now if I can only find the right Barrrrrrcode.
Look at how people deal with email. I've got coworkers that have every single email (including mailing lists they've subscribed to) they've ever sent or received since they started (~8yrs ago). They're probably got 20GB of email on their laptop. Now we only allow 100MB of server based email storage, so that helps on the server side, but we're still backing up this guys laptop.
On the datacenter side, we had a database corruption about 10years ago so we implemented snapshots, and then snapshots of those snapshots... we actually now carry about seven copies of our database. Why still seven? Because nobody wants to have to recommend that we have fewer copies of data in case we have another problem again. The funny part is that nobody in operations was around at the time of this outage.
Atleast de-duplication technology is being adopted, which gives us an excuse to hoard even more data. However from a legal standpoint, tell the Judge we don't retain data older than X years is easier than recalling 50k tapes you sent offsite 8years ago.
Bottom Line: It's just easier to store it than to be the one that "Recommended we delete XYZ files, that's why we don't have the data."
What's the difference in gaming between consoles and PCs for multi-player games?
For the PC, one person per computer. Want to play with another person, they need another computer. The Wii has 1/2 the power of the typical home computer yet you can have multiplayer games with the people in the same room. PC gaming is individuals sitting at individual computers, looking at tiny monitors (not your 60" TV) Multiplayer on the PC shouldn't be two people sharing the same keyboard.
Consoles while inflexible serve a great purpose, to play games. Why can't the game companies, say "Here, buy this PCI card so you can hook up standard controllers and use the power of the home computer to act more like a console." Why not have two keyboards/mice? Surely it can't be that much more (if any) power than two game controllers so you can play splitscreen while the PC is connected up to the TV..
My computer can do more than the console, I should be able to configure it to act as an appliance (ala a console), and when I'm done go back to doing computer only functions (word processing, email, etc..).
People like to compare IBM to MS, and see MS slowing down, but then ultimately being successful like IBM. What people fail to realize is that IBM spent the money to make rock solid products.
Actually, IBM went from being a hardware company to a services company. When MSFT helps you design, install and optimize competitive products like IGS does with setting up Solaris servers connecting to EMC disk arrays. Realizing that money can be made off of more than just software licensing, then they'll be successful like IBM.
Go read ex-CEO Louis Gerstner's book, it wasn't typewriters, the mainframe or PCs.
http://www.amazon.com/Who-Says-Elephants-Cant-Dance/dp/0060523808/
I'd be much more interested in the ratio of technical IT people to non-technical. I'm not referring to managers of IT staff, but the throngs of Project Managers. I'm at a large networking company that rhymes with CrISCO and it seems whenever we have a hiring freeze in IT, they are still pouring in the Project Managers. I haven't figured out what they manage, but there sure is a lot of them.