In the '90s IBM released product called the PCServer 500/system390. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC-based_IBM-compatible_Mainframes What this was a standard PC Server Model 500 (dual Pentium 75/100/120s) and microchannel adapter that could run VM. You had to install first OS/2, then Communications Manager on it and then a couple of other applications. The purpose of this box and it's successor the PCServer 520/system390 (a PCI version) was for developers to write code and test without using up valuable mainframe time.
As of December, 2007, there are no authorized PC-based 64-bit mainframe-compatible systems. Thus there is no legal way to run z/OS 1.6 (or higher), DB2 V8 (or higher), z/TPF, or z/VSE 4.1 (or higher) on PC-based machines.
Disclaimer: I manage the DASD (disk based storage) for a mainframe (z10) environment.
We used to run a System 390 (think watercooled and took up 1/4 of our datacenter floorspace) We then migrated to a S390 (aircooled, the first big black box) in about 1995 We then migrated to a z900 in 2002.
We've just completed migrating to a z10.
The applications continue to run on our brand new mainframe unmodified since the early 90s. Sure we've gone from Bus and Tag to ESCON to FICON (1Gb, 2Gb and now 4Gb). But the same applications are taking up significantly less power and a percentage of the mainframe than previously did.
In the early 90s, 486dx was king. How many applications that ran on 486dx DOS systems are currently running in a VMware VM that is running MSDOS 6.22?
Next time you swipe a credit card, and within a few seconds you're approved for your transaction, including determining if you're purchasing something within a common pattern of recent purchases. How many x86 boxes would you need to manage this?
Thank us mainframers.
Btw: I'm 36, run linux at home and on the mainframe.
I hope if something ever happens to you that you need the police, you don't call them. We all know how legal vigilantism is. I'd hate to be paying taxes to provide a service to someone who only appreciates those that provide the service when it suits them.
Who is going to foot the bill to upgrade the US power grid? When windmills generate large amounts of electricity outside of Los Angeles, PG&E shuts down many of the windmills as the transmission lines can't handle the additional electricity.
"The U.S. power transmission system is in urgent need of modernization. Growth in electricity demand and investment in new power plants has not been matched by investment in new transmission facilities. Maintenance expenditures have decreased 1% per year since 1992. Existing transmission facilities were not designed for the current level of demand, resulting in an increased number of "bottlenecks," which increase costs to consumers and elevate the risk of blackouts."
If everyone in your neighborhood upgraded their houses with another 220v circuit, could the transmission lines handle it? The increase in gas powered cars spurred an increase of gas stations, and that was paid for by the gas companies, through profits from selling gas. Remember tho in the US, power companies aren't allowed to be profitable.
If you had to pay 2,3,4x your electrical bill to pay to have your regions power grid upgraded, would you go for it? Better still would you pay for it even if you didn't have an electric car?
I used to work at a Storage Service Provider back in the dotcom era (StorageNetworks baby!), and before you sign up for any type of service provider that would be providing access to your data you need to go over that contract with a fine toothed comb. Two areas that need to be covered are:
What happens if the SSP goes out of business, how do you get your data back? In our contracts we would give you your data back either via access to the old arrays for X days to copy it somewhere else. Worst case: We drop a truckload of tapes off on your doorstep.
Financial impact of loss of service. We had many financial customers that wanted to make sure we had "enough cash in the bank" to cover their financial losses if they suffered any downtime due to an issue on our end.
Just like picking a hosting provider, you need to make sure you have contingency plans for data loss or corruption. If the SSP can't provide you with the services you need (backups, snapshots etc..), find another provider.
I am actually quite amazed that/. would put such an inflamatory phrase like that into a summary. By using the word "ridden" are you implying that being proud of your race is a bad trait? I do believe that while we are at the olympics, many people are 'proud' of their country, heritage or race. However, in light of the olympics, this is a positive thing as we cheer in the name of sport and friendly competition. The usage in the summary, gives the impression that all Georgian's are Klansman. One should note that Georgia has a higher percentage of African Americans (29%) than the US average http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/13000.html, and I'm sure they are proud of being from Georgia.
Why not describe other countries that are predominantly Caucasian such as Sweden, or Ireland in the same manner?
If you assign punitive damages to a vote, aren't you then assigning a value to said vote? Since it's illegal to sell your vote to begin with, what good is it to assign a value to something you cannot sell in the first place.
If you can't sell or buy something, does it have value? Is it priceless or worthless?
It takes a place like IBM to do that to Adobe's dominance without Adobe either winning or even killing the competitor. Gnash is also pretty close, so IBM's investment in it would be the finishing touches that make all the difference in corporate IT strategy decisions.
Why is it IBM's responsibility to invest in these programs? Aren't the open source developers (whomever they might be in this case) supposed to do this stuff on their own? This then results in FUD regarding "who are these guys in their basements writing these apps?"
So far here inside of Big Blue, unless you're in the Research Division (like the folks in Almaden for example), you're still using Windows. So IBM may be telling IBM Global Services' customers to go sans MSFT. But for the most part IBM is still a large consumer of MSFT.
Besides consuming 100TB, anybody have any better ideas on a) how this stuff was stored and b) how it was backed up? SAN/NAS or internal disk on the servers?
I can see this now, people rushing to register OpenID unique usernames. Currently, with these 100million accounts, the same username could be used by 4 different people across 4 different sites. Now we'll have people squatting to reserve usernames which are unique across all four sites.
We'll end up with the same problem we have now with domainnames, grandma will have to register with grandma_alkjs because grandma_mimi will cost her $100 to get from a squatter.
I use linux/*nix all day long at work, and I have a mac at home, yet there's very few things that I use on OSX that are *nix related. Maybe running 'top' is about it, and that's a rarity. I picked OSX because of the applications and how they are all integrated in with each other, pure and simple. My laptop at work is a company provided XP system and while not having the polish/eye candy that OSX has, it gets the job done.
When linux distros have the same ease of use, smooth upgrades and most importantly application integration (with each other AND the OS), then I can see people like myself thinking about saving a few bucks and going with Linux instead.
I assume that when I buy a dishwasher, the interface is intuitive and it just works, why should we treat computers any differently?
why do you assume that we all want to live in high rise apartment buildings in large cities? Can a city of 100k people support a subway system? Doubt. Maybe the county of surrounding towns can support the bus system, but surely the bus system won't be going into every neighborhood.
Also, I and many other people on this planet live in the suburbs. I like having a lawn, not hearing heavy-footed neighbors upstairs walking around. I like grilling out in the backyard on a warm summer night. Going up to a 'rooftop garden' isn't even close to it, as how many apartments can invite their X closest friends up there?
Sure, I guess I could load up a couple of carts with a bbq, charcoal and coolers of food/beer and walk a few blocks, get on the subway with this stuff and take that to a park, whereby if I forgot something, I'm truly f-cked, b/c I can't run back into the house and get the g-ddamn ice.
I don't want to have to go to special cordoned off area of the city just to see grass, trees, birds and squirrels. I actually like putting up a bird feeder and seeing what shows up. Or planting a small tree when my son was born, or putting up a basketball hoop in the driveway, instead of having him walk down to the same park that 5000 other kids are trying to use.
You may love living in the city, but I'll give up my lawnmower when you take it from my cold dead hands.
Are you talking about having a user point their web browser to CRM-server.XYZ.com? or are you having them connect to a network drive? -filer/share....
I wouldn't tie the name to the hardware since you should be architecting your environment to be able to migrate the application/share to new hardware in the next few years, so doing something like DL380-row1-rack2-A isn't a wise idea.
If you're naming storage devices (arrays) than -- is a good solution. EMC-1234-14AA
Coming up with "cutesy" naming schemes like national parks, sports teams, beers, guns, cartoon characters are neat if you have 5 systems that no end user would connect to or get offended by.
So this is the argument that comes up time and time again. It's different when you personalize the argument and talk about, say members of your family.
"What would my wife feel safer in when driving around with the kids?" One might be able to logically explain the virtues of 50airbags, carbon fiber reinforced, rollcages. However, buying a car is still an emotional experience, otherwise we'd be buying the most fuel efficient, safest in the most easy to see colors. I don't see that many cars on the road (in the US) in bright yellow, red or orange. I see much more cars in tans, greys and blacks.
I can't wait to see the marketing slogan, "Buy our cars, as they come in safety red, orange and yellow!"
Because, often, being able to avoid an accident is just as important as being able to survive one. This article from the New Yorker is a pretty enlightening read.
So when someone runs a red light and broadsides you, the car will automatically detect this incoming vehicle and accelerate out of the way? Or when you are stopped in traffic, it will someone avoid being rear ended by the guy using his cellphone?
Avoidance is great when you have the space/time to avoid the object (tree, other car).... Just like having a motorcycle.
I look at a vehicle this small and wonder what would happen if it was hit by a 3000lb vehicle. Even if it has a crumple zones, I could see it being sent flying across the road like a hockeypuck, or it's lack of mass being unable to stop the forward progress of the impacting vehicle after the impact.
What arguments does one use to convince laymen that these tiny vehicles are safe? My gf wants to get a volvo SUV, but when I even mention a Corolla/Tercel/Yarvis, she likes that they are fuel efficient, but is concerned about being hit by any full size vehicle (not just a Hummer/SUV).
I recently rode in a coworkers SmartCar, and while it seemed like a great car, I realized that if were were rear ended, we'd be killed. There's about a foot between your back and the back of the car. Less than that of a Jeep Wrangler. My biggest fear would be having to stop quickly on the highway and the guy behind me doesn't stop in time.
Anybody have any good arguments for justifying these ultra-light cars (VW, SmartCar) to those that do equate a certain size=safety measure?
When I read articles like this about scientists coming up with ways which can result in the dramatic increase in population, I can't help but think about Thomas Malthus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthus#The_Principle_of_Population. He theorizes that while our capacity to provide food increases arithmetically (1,2,3,4...) our population grows at a geometric rate (1,2,4,8...)
"The power of population is so superior to the power of the earth to produce subsistence for man, that premature death must in some shape or other visit the human race. The vices of mankind are active and able ministers of depopulation. They are the precursors in the great army of destruction, and often finish the dreadful work themselves. But should they fail in this war of extermination, sickly seasons, epidemics, pestilence, and plague advance in terrific array, and sweep off their thousands and tens of thousands. Should success be still incomplete, gigantic inevitable famine stalks in the rear, and with one mighty blow levels the population with the food of the world."
In the first edition of the Essay, Malthus suggested that only natural causes (such as accidents and old age), misery (war, pestilence, plague, and above all famine) [Book I, Ch. 2], and vice (which for Malthus included infanticide, murder, contraception and homosexuality) [Book I, Ch. 5.] could check excessive population-growth. In the second and subsequent editions, Malthus raised the possibility of moral restraint (marrying late or not at all, coupled with sexual abstinence prior to, and outside of, marriage) as a check on the growth of population.
We've seen all of these from China's "One child" law, African warlords using food to control the population and pollution causing reduced lifespans. We've seen famine in Ireland (potato), and recently the tomato scare in the US. What would happen if instead of a few varieties of tomatoes, this was a bacteria that destroyed wheat (ala locusts).
The problem with most views is that they don't look at the evolution of technology as a way of 'spicing up' IT...
Storage is often looked at as one of the most boring areas... we've gone from parallel scsi, to FibreChannel and now we're moving to FCoE (FibreChannel over ethernet). Disk arrays aren't just dumb raid boxes, but require knowledge of applications so the storage engineer can provide the right DR solution to the application owners (offsite replication, snapshots etc..).
With servers we've gone from client/server, to the 1U 'pizza boxes' of the dotcom era, and now we're moving into virtualized servers (VMware...).
Even with telephony, we're moving from old PBXs to VOIP and converged networks (Voice, data and storage), there's something there for the networking folks as well.
If you look in the mirror and say, "I've been doing the same thing for 5 years and I'm bored of it." Don't quit IT, just find somewhere else in IT to transition to. And don't blame your mgr, the industry or ComputerWorld, go ahead and blame yourself for not realizing you could get off your butt do something a bit more interesting.
heavily subsidized and good quality food, on-site oil change, car wash, dry cleaning, massage therapy, gym, hair stylist, fitness classes, bike repair, shuttle service, etc. Funny how you don't mention the expensive 'perks' such as health, dental and life insurance as they compare to the offerings of what other comparably sized companies offer.
I don't care how little my 4 oil changes per year cost, or an on-site car wash, if I'm paying 2x the cost to put braces on my kids teeth.
(Luckily I use gmail for my domain, and out of ~2000 monthly spam, only 2 hit my inbox. And only 1 false positive to date) Why do slashdotters feel the need to brag about how little spam they get? I mean seriously, it's not like you're running your own smtp server out there and programming your own rules. You signed up for a gmail account. You might as well say, "The IT staff that manages my email server has configured the rules so effectively, I rarely get any spam."
Who cares. Is this the 2008 equivalent of my car having 380hp?
While this is probably a flame, I see too many people bragging about how little/much they get. Sure if you're discussing anti-spam techniques, but gmail? C'mon, you might as well compare it with yahoo/AOL...
There's quite a few people I work with that find it necessary to CC: people on almost every single email they write. It seems their purpose is, "if I CC my entire management chain, then you will have to do my bidding..." rather than just asking the person to do the task with a convincing argument, they CC the VP...
I feel sorry for those in his/her mgmt chain that receive all that crap.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually,
In the '90s IBM released product called the PCServer 500/system390. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC-based_IBM-compatible_Mainframes What this was a standard PC Server Model 500 (dual Pentium 75/100/120s) and microchannel adapter that could run VM. You had to install first OS/2, then Communications Manager on it and then a couple of other applications. The purpose of this box and it's successor the PCServer 520/system390 (a PCI version) was for developers to write code and test without using up valuable mainframe time.
As of December, 2007, there are no authorized PC-based 64-bit mainframe-compatible systems. Thus there is no legal way to run z/OS 1.6 (or higher), DB2 V8 (or higher), z/TPF, or z/VSE 4.1 (or higher) on PC-based machines.
Disclaimer: I manage the DASD (disk based storage) for a mainframe (z10) environment.
We used to run a System 390 (think watercooled and took up 1/4 of our datacenter floorspace)
We then migrated to a S390 (aircooled, the first big black box) in about 1995
We then migrated to a z900 in 2002.
We've just completed migrating to a z10.
The applications continue to run on our brand new mainframe unmodified since the early 90s. Sure we've gone from Bus and Tag to ESCON to FICON (1Gb, 2Gb and now 4Gb). But the same applications are taking up significantly less power and a percentage of the mainframe than previously did.
In the early 90s, 486dx was king. How many applications that ran on 486dx DOS systems are currently running in a VMware VM that is running MSDOS 6.22?
Next time you swipe a credit card, and within a few seconds you're approved for your transaction, including determining if you're purchasing something within a common pattern of recent purchases. How many x86 boxes would you need to manage this?
Thank us mainframers.
Btw: I'm 36, run linux at home and on the mainframe.
I hope if something ever happens to you that you need the police, you don't call them. We all know how legal vigilantism is. I'd hate to be paying taxes to provide a service to someone who only appreciates those that provide the service when it suits them.
Who is going to foot the bill to upgrade the US power grid? When windmills generate large amounts of electricity outside of Los Angeles, PG&E shuts down many of the windmills as the transmission lines can't handle the additional electricity.
I found an interesting article about the US Power Grid: http://www.energybulletin.net/node/43823
According the American Society of Civil Engineers, http://www.asce.org/reportcard/2005/page.cfm?id=25 gave the US power grid a grade of D,
"The U.S. power transmission system is in urgent need of modernization. Growth in electricity demand and investment in new power plants has not been matched by investment in new transmission facilities. Maintenance expenditures have decreased 1% per year since 1992. Existing transmission facilities were not designed for the current level of demand, resulting in an increased number of "bottlenecks," which increase costs to consumers and elevate the risk of blackouts."
If everyone in your neighborhood upgraded their houses with another 220v circuit, could the transmission lines handle it? The increase in gas powered cars spurred an increase of gas stations, and that was paid for by the gas companies, through profits from selling gas. Remember tho in the US, power companies aren't allowed to be profitable.
If you had to pay 2,3,4x your electrical bill to pay to have your regions power grid upgraded, would you go for it? Better still would you pay for it even if you didn't have an electric car?
I used to work at a Storage Service Provider back in the dotcom era (StorageNetworks baby!), and before you sign up for any type of service provider that would be providing access to your data you need to go over that contract with a fine toothed comb. Two areas that need to be covered are:
What happens if the SSP goes out of business, how do you get your data back? In our contracts we would give you your data back either via access to the old arrays for X days to copy it somewhere else. Worst case: We drop a truckload of tapes off on your doorstep.
Financial impact of loss of service. We had many financial customers that wanted to make sure we had "enough cash in the bank" to cover their financial losses if they suffered any downtime due to an issue on our end.
Just like picking a hosting provider, you need to make sure you have contingency plans for data loss or corruption. If the SSP can't provide you with the services you need (backups, snapshots etc..), find another provider.
Caucasian-pride-ridden state in the southern U.S
I am actually quite amazed that /. would put such an inflamatory phrase like that into a summary. By using the word "ridden" are you implying that being proud of your race is a bad trait? I do believe that while we are at the olympics, many people are 'proud' of their country, heritage or race. However, in light of the olympics, this is a positive thing as we cheer in the name of sport and friendly competition. The usage in the summary, gives the impression that all Georgian's are Klansman. One should note that Georgia has a higher percentage of African Americans (29%) than the US average http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/13000.html, and I'm sure they are proud of being from Georgia.
Why not describe other countries that are predominantly Caucasian such as Sweden, or Ireland in the same manner?
Other uses that you should try:
Arab-pride-ridden (Iraq)
Jewish-price-ridden (Israel)
Linux-pride-ridden (./)
If you assign punitive damages to a vote, aren't you then assigning a value to said vote? Since it's illegal to sell your vote to begin with, what good is it to assign a value to something you cannot sell in the first place.
If you can't sell or buy something, does it have value? Is it priceless or worthless?
It takes a place like IBM to do that to Adobe's dominance without Adobe either winning or even killing the competitor. Gnash is also pretty close, so IBM's investment in it would be the finishing touches that make all the difference in corporate IT strategy decisions.
Why is it IBM's responsibility to invest in these programs? Aren't the open source developers (whomever they might be in this case) supposed to do this stuff on their own? This then results in FUD regarding "who are these guys in their basements writing these apps?"
So far here inside of Big Blue, unless you're in the Research Division (like the folks in Almaden for example), you're still using Windows. So IBM may be telling IBM Global Services' customers to go sans MSFT. But for the most part IBM is still a large consumer of MSFT.
Mod parent up, this paper is relevant and is pretty good.
Besides consuming 100TB, anybody have any better ideas on a) how this stuff was stored and b) how it was backed up? SAN/NAS or internal disk on the servers?
I can see this now, people rushing to register OpenID unique usernames. Currently, with these 100million accounts, the same username could be used by 4 different people across 4 different sites. Now we'll have people squatting to reserve usernames which are unique across all four sites.
We'll end up with the same problem we have now with domainnames, grandma will have to register with grandma_alkjs because grandma_mimi will cost her $100 to get from a squatter.
Instead of spending $36k on a solar array, why not take your $36k and spend it on planting trees.
I use linux/*nix all day long at work, and I have a mac at home, yet there's very few things that I use on OSX that are *nix related. Maybe running 'top' is about it, and that's a rarity. I picked OSX because of the applications and how they are all integrated in with each other, pure and simple. My laptop at work is a company provided XP system and while not having the polish/eye candy that OSX has, it gets the job done.
When linux distros have the same ease of use, smooth upgrades and most importantly application integration (with each other AND the OS), then I can see people like myself thinking about saving a few bucks and going with Linux instead.
I assume that when I buy a dishwasher, the interface is intuitive and it just works, why should we treat computers any differently?
why do you assume that we all want to live in high rise apartment buildings in large cities? Can a city of 100k people support a subway system? Doubt. Maybe the county of surrounding towns can support the bus system, but surely the bus system won't be going into every neighborhood.
Also, I and many other people on this planet live in the suburbs. I like having a lawn, not hearing heavy-footed neighbors upstairs walking around. I like grilling out in the backyard on a warm summer night. Going up to a 'rooftop garden' isn't even close to it, as how many apartments can invite their X closest friends up there?
Sure, I guess I could load up a couple of carts with a bbq, charcoal and coolers of food/beer and walk a few blocks, get on the subway with this stuff and take that to a park, whereby if I forgot something, I'm truly f-cked, b/c I can't run back into the house and get the g-ddamn ice.
I don't want to have to go to special cordoned off area of the city just to see grass, trees, birds and squirrels. I actually like putting up a bird feeder and seeing what shows up. Or planting a small tree when my son was born, or putting up a basketball hoop in the driveway, instead of having him walk down to the same park that 5000 other kids are trying to use.
You may love living in the city, but I'll give up my lawnmower when you take it from my cold dead hands.
Are you talking about having a user point their web browser to CRM-server.XYZ.com? or are you having them connect to a network drive? -filer/share....
I wouldn't tie the name to the hardware since you should be architecting your environment to be able to migrate the application/share to new hardware in the next few years, so doing something like DL380-row1-rack2-A isn't a wise idea.
If you're naming storage devices (arrays) than -- is a good solution. EMC-1234-14AA
Coming up with "cutesy" naming schemes like national parks, sports teams, beers, guns, cartoon characters are neat if you have 5 systems that no end user would connect to or get offended by.
So this is the argument that comes up time and time again. It's different when you personalize the argument and talk about, say members of your family.
"What would my wife feel safer in when driving around with the kids?" One might be able to logically explain the virtues of 50airbags, carbon fiber reinforced, rollcages. However, buying a car is still an emotional experience, otherwise we'd be buying the most fuel efficient, safest in the most easy to see colors. I don't see that many cars on the road (in the US) in bright yellow, red or orange. I see much more cars in tans, greys and blacks.
I can't wait to see the marketing slogan, "Buy our cars, as they come in safety red, orange and yellow!"
Because, often, being able to avoid an accident is just as important as being able to survive one. This article from the New Yorker is a pretty enlightening read.
So when someone runs a red light and broadsides you, the car will automatically detect this incoming vehicle and accelerate out of the way? Or when you are stopped in traffic, it will someone avoid being rear ended by the guy using his cellphone?
Avoidance is great when you have the space/time to avoid the object (tree, other car).... Just like having a motorcycle.
I look at a vehicle this small and wonder what would happen if it was hit by a 3000lb vehicle. Even if it has a crumple zones, I could see it being sent flying across the road like a hockeypuck, or it's lack of mass being unable to stop the forward progress of the impacting vehicle after the impact.
What arguments does one use to convince laymen that these tiny vehicles are safe? My gf wants to get a volvo SUV, but when I even mention a Corolla/Tercel/Yarvis, she likes that they are fuel efficient, but is concerned about being hit by any full size vehicle (not just a Hummer/SUV).
I recently rode in a coworkers SmartCar, and while it seemed like a great car, I realized that if were were rear ended, we'd be killed. There's about a foot between your back and the back of the car. Less than that of a Jeep Wrangler. My biggest fear would be having to stop quickly on the highway and the guy behind me doesn't stop in time.
Anybody have any good arguments for justifying these ultra-light cars (VW, SmartCar) to those that do equate a certain size=safety measure?
I'll google "Dual Internet connections" for you: http://www.google.com/search?btnG=Google+Search&q=dual+connections+to+the+internet
http://gentoo-wiki.com/Dual_internet_connections
http://community.spiceworks.com/topic/13347
Or just search for "How to build a linux router" otherwise there are some prebuilt linksys/netgear solutions that can handle dual ISP connections.
When I read articles like this about scientists coming up with ways which can result in the dramatic increase in population, I can't help but think about Thomas Malthus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthus#The_Principle_of_Population. He theorizes that while our capacity to provide food increases arithmetically (1,2,3,4...) our population grows at a geometric rate (1,2,4,8...)
"The power of population is so superior to the power of the earth to produce subsistence for man, that premature death must in some shape or other visit the human race. The vices of mankind are active and able ministers of depopulation. They are the precursors in the great army of destruction, and often finish the dreadful work themselves. But should they fail in this war of extermination, sickly seasons, epidemics, pestilence, and plague advance in terrific array, and sweep off their thousands and tens of thousands. Should success be still incomplete, gigantic inevitable famine stalks in the rear, and with one mighty blow levels the population with the food of the world."
In the first edition of the Essay, Malthus suggested that only natural causes (such as accidents and old age), misery (war, pestilence, plague, and above all famine) [Book I, Ch. 2], and vice (which for Malthus included infanticide, murder, contraception and homosexuality) [Book I, Ch. 5.] could check excessive population-growth. In the second and subsequent editions, Malthus raised the possibility of moral restraint (marrying late or not at all, coupled with sexual abstinence prior to, and outside of, marriage) as a check on the growth of population.
We've seen all of these from China's "One child" law, African warlords using food to control the population and pollution causing reduced lifespans. We've seen famine in Ireland (potato), and recently the tomato scare in the US. What would happen if instead of a few varieties of tomatoes, this was a bacteria that destroyed wheat (ala locusts).
The problem with most views is that they don't look at the evolution of technology as a way of 'spicing up' IT...
Storage is often looked at as one of the most boring areas... we've gone from parallel scsi, to FibreChannel and now we're moving to FCoE (FibreChannel over ethernet). Disk arrays aren't just dumb raid boxes, but require knowledge of applications so the storage engineer can provide the right DR solution to the application owners (offsite replication, snapshots etc..).
With servers we've gone from client/server, to the 1U 'pizza boxes' of the dotcom era, and now we're moving into virtualized servers (VMware...).
Even with telephony, we're moving from old PBXs to VOIP and converged networks (Voice, data and storage), there's something there for the networking folks as well.
If you look in the mirror and say, "I've been doing the same thing for 5 years and I'm bored of it." Don't quit IT, just find somewhere else in IT to transition to. And don't blame your mgr, the industry or ComputerWorld, go ahead and blame yourself for not realizing you could get off your butt do something a bit more interesting.
I don't care how little my 4 oil changes per year cost, or an on-site car wash, if I'm paying 2x the cost to put braces on my kids teeth.
Who cares. Is this the 2008 equivalent of my car having 380hp?
While this is probably a flame, I see too many people bragging about how little/much they get. Sure if you're discussing anti-spam techniques, but gmail? C'mon, you might as well compare it with yahoo/AOL...
There's quite a few people I work with that find it necessary to CC: people on almost every single email they write. It seems their purpose is, "if I CC my entire management chain, then you will have to do my bidding..." rather than just asking the person to do the task with a convincing argument, they CC the VP...
I feel sorry for those in his/her mgmt chain that receive all that crap.