Thats good for you. But for the other 98% of the population want a PC that is already up and running with all the apps, drivers, and configuration set. So it's the much larger market that Dell will chase to sell too. The real money is in companies that buy 20,000 identical systems with a huge service contract. Not us computer geeks that tend to build our own anyways.
That's Michael Dell's problem, not the linux community's.
Since Dell seems more or less happy with the state of affairs now, and you're complaining about it, I'm going to suggest that the evidence would suggest the opposite: your problem, not Dell's.
I think that you're confusing scale with definition in this case.
Mission critical just means "something which is critical to the success of the mission." For a business, that can mean e-mail, billing and invoicing, banking services, procurement/logistics, telephony, or any one of hundreds of types of applications without which the organization simply cannot function. These vary from organization to organization - a mom and pop florist whose web site goes down for a couple of days is unlikely to suffer any lasting harm, but the effects on Amazon would be disasterous. Nobody uses the term "mission critical" around florists, though, because they'd look at you funny.
So I'd say that the parent posts assertion is actually correct, if perhaps not specific enough. If your organization will suffer irreperable harm as a result of being without a certain service for a relatively short period of time, it can be considered mission critical.
Just as an aside: the people who really understand this term are people dealing with, for example, manned spaceflight. That's because they'll distinguish between things which are mission critical ("The remote management of this satellite must function, or we deploy it and it doesn't work. Mission failure.") and things which are life critical ("The oxygen levels in the cabin must not fall below this point or everybody gonna die").
Speaking of bedrooms, and not in the least bit tongue-in-cheek, I can see the built-in iSight as a new and even easier means for amateur, uh... adult photos... to be taken and sent around the Internet. I, for one, welcome our new Pr0nCam overlords. Okay, not really.
*sniff* It's like the reviewer was my long lost sibling!.
Right, because having some on-call asshat get up in the middle of the movie and climb over me, stepping on my feet and mumbling apologies during the big fight scene/car chase/lover's reunion isn't annoying at all.
However, all this is moot, as he wasn't the damn government, or anyone lawyer. If I run across notes written by a lawyer to a client, I am not bound by anything. Client-attorney priviledge is a red herring.
Well... to be fair, I think you're off here. Harris was working as a temp in the law firm when he discovered the documents. My undertstanding is that employees of law firms are bound by attorney-client privilege the same way that attorneys are.
Nevertheless, since there was apparently conspiracy to break the law here, any privilege related to those activities are nullified, which leaves us where we started: Harris was right.
Just because you agree with him... doesn't make his actions ok.
Correct.
(Warning: IANAL)
Diebold was knowingly using uncertified software to operate their voting machines, in clear violation of both the law and their agreement with the state of California. At best, this is breach of contract: at worst, it could be considered felony vote tampering.
Jones Day, a law firm which was advising Diebold and where the whistleblower was temping, sent several memos to their client about the subject. The memos appear to show that not only was the firm aware of the illegality of Diebold's actions, but was actively providing their client advice on how to evade detection, making them party to their illegal activities.
Heller discovered the documents, which he believed provided evidence that both companies had conspired to defraud the state of California. Days after their exposure, the state decertified the Diebold machines. The lawsuit which followed cost Diebold $2.6 million to settle out of court.
This isn't about upholding the law. This is about putting the fear of god into future whistleblowers when they dare to cross paths with a powerful corporation.
Plus, the "Do you know where I can go" bit. Now I'm going to worry that a thing from Microsoft that wants me to touch it can go under my bed and wait for me to fall asleep.
Sweet Jesus, that's funny. (and no, I'm not Jeff. I'm Sammy. Hi!)
Not two hours after I posted my thing here, I hopped onto The Daily WTF, and wouldn't you know that this was the WTF of the day? I'm not sure which is worse, a serialized object for all the important data, or an XML document...
My issue with databases and all that is that they are not abstract enough. Either one must create a new table when one wishes to implement a new feature, or one must develop some extremely generic database that is hard to search.
Well, you could always create a single-table database. Call the single table "Stuff," put a generic autoincrementing key on it, and give it two more columns: a type identifier and a serialized object that contains all the data.
Of course, you could also stab yourself in the eye. Might be preferable.
Doctor Weir, Atlantis' director, and Lieutenant Colonel Shepard, ranking military officer assigned to the project, were unreachable for comment. Doctor McKay, on the other hand, griped for several minutes without a pause about the "typically boneheaded" move, stopping only to eat an energy bar and mumbling something about low blood sugar.
I mean, I'm doing a bunch of RoR work on the side right now, and even I had a hard time caring about this. Although I guess it must be a nice ego boost for DHH and Adaptive Path.
His point was that Shaun of the Dead better captured the feel of Douglas Adams' sense of humor than the Hitchiker's movie: ironic, considering that he actually wrote the novel (and radio show, and TV show) upon which the film was based.
And I haven't seen Shaun yet (bad Sammy! bad!) but I have to say that I'm inclined to agree. The film adaptation of Hitchiker's was awful. About the only good thing to come of it was the music video created to endorse his presidency.
The first computer I used was a briefcase-style "luggable" that my father used for work. He had a copy of that trek-style game on it, and I was too impatient to read the rules for it. He used to get really nervous when I used it, since it belonged to his office.
The first computer I considered mine in any reasonable sense was a Commodore Vic-20, but frankly I couldn't do enough cool things with it to be really interesting.
The first computer I could really get excited about was the Commodore 64, and it was all about the games, baby. (Although I did learn basic with that machine.)
Look, there's a lot of truth to what you post,but I have to take issue with this:
Huge amounts of people don't exercise, and they stay inside for large amounts of time where the air quality is the worst, usually (and our news media constantly hits us with the message that sunlight causes cancer, anyway).
Reference: our news media. The truth is that prolonged exposure to sunlight is actually a fairly good predictor of cancer. I say this as a emmber of a family prone to it, and with grandmother who has the very rare Merkel cell carcinoma described in the article.
That's not an exhortation to stay inside all the time. But you seem to be mocking the notion that exposure to UV radiation can cause cancer, and that's just bizarre.
Incidentally: if avoidance of fast food is such a good idea, shouldn't it have said something about it in the bible? As I recall, most of the dietary advice in the Bible is kinda contradictory.
You missed an important point. The $23.45 is a wholesale price. When the wholesale price of the item is about 60% more than the retail price of a competing item, there's enough of a difference to sit up and take notice.
According to his official biography, Stewart Simonson is the Health and Human Services Department's point man "on matters related to bioterrorism and other public health emergencies." Hopefully, he has taken crash courses on smallpox and avian flu, because, prior to joining HHS in 2001, Simonson's background was not in public health, but... public transit. He'd previously been a top official at the delay-plagued, money-hemorrhaging passenger rail company Amtrak.
Next, he nominated to the Supreme Court his personal lawyer Harriet Miers who had absolutely no judicial experience. Luckily she didn't get her "up or down" vote due to a Republican backlash (but probably for the wrong reasons).
Yeah - I was actually hoping for the vote on that one. All those republicans screaming "Up or Down Vote! Up or Down Vote!" on previous occasions suddenly got really quiet when it came to Miers.
As soon as you show me a single straight person who is allowed to marry a member of the same sex, you'll have a point.
Really? I'd say you just made my point for me.
This is such a transparent rhetorical dodge that it's nauseating, and disgusted to see it reappear here. Is that seriously how you want to play this?
Straight couples have the option to enter into a relationship which is enshrined by law, confers upon them numerous legal and financial benefits. Gay couples do not. But this is somehow viewed as equitable because gays are allowed to marry members of the opposite sex. So, just out of curiosity, do you feel the same way about miscegenation laws? After all, black people had the right to marry between themselves. Mixed-race couples had exactly the same "freedom" that you describe here - the right to marry someone else. Why not bring those laws back? Laws forbidding the marriage of mixed race couples were argued on the basis that they were "unnatural," "against God's will," and "threatened the existence of the white man," rather like homosexual marriages are "unnatural," "against God's will," or "threaten the existence of the family" or "the institution of marriage."
Now, if you want to discuss a new institution to encompass spousal rights for gay couples, I say go for it.
But don't act like it's about equality. That's a lie, and it serves no purpose.
A new institution? Like in pre-Columbus nativie american tribes? Or, for that matter, ancient Egypt, dark ages to medieval Europe, Africa, and Asia?
But no, it's pretty clear that you're not actually interested in a historical precedent. You've already made up your mind that homosexual couples aren't worthy of the same protections that heterosexual couples are. And you know what? That's fine.
Just do me a favor. Don't you pretend that gays have equal rights to straights. That's a lie, and you know it - but it serves your purposes very well.
Human beings have produced great art, science, and engineering for millennia in the absence of copyright protection.
And you can see the result! People trading copies of the Sistine Chapel all over the streets of Milan! Bootleg recordings of the Brandenburg Concertos leaked far and wide before Bach's official release date!
(The reason we didn't need COPYRIGHT LAW for so long was that it was so damn hard to COPY THINGS. Duh.)
Slashdot Mirror
Since Dell seems more or less happy with the state of affairs now, and you're complaining about it, I'm going to suggest that the evidence would suggest the opposite: your problem, not Dell's.
I think that you're confusing scale with definition in this case.
Mission critical just means "something which is critical to the success of the mission." For a business, that can mean e-mail, billing and invoicing, banking services, procurement/logistics, telephony, or any one of hundreds of types of applications without which the organization simply cannot function. These vary from organization to organization - a mom and pop florist whose web site goes down for a couple of days is unlikely to suffer any lasting harm, but the effects on Amazon would be disasterous. Nobody uses the term "mission critical" around florists, though, because they'd look at you funny.
So I'd say that the parent posts assertion is actually correct, if perhaps not specific enough. If your organization will suffer irreperable harm as a result of being without a certain service for a relatively short period of time, it can be considered mission critical.
Just as an aside: the people who really understand this term are people dealing with, for example, manned spaceflight. That's because they'll distinguish between things which are mission critical ("The remote management of this satellite must function, or we deploy it and it doesn't work. Mission failure.") and things which are life critical ("The oxygen levels in the cabin must not fall below this point or everybody gonna die").
*sniff* It's like the reviewer was my long lost sibling!.
Poor, poor.
Maybe we should forbid bathroom breaks too.
Well... to be fair, I think you're off here. Harris was working as a temp in the law firm when he discovered the documents. My undertstanding is that employees of law firms are bound by attorney-client privilege the same way that attorneys are.
Nevertheless, since there was apparently conspiracy to break the law here, any privilege related to those activities are nullified, which leaves us where we started: Harris was right.
Correct.
(Warning: IANAL)
Diebold was knowingly using uncertified software to operate their voting machines, in clear violation of both the law and their agreement with the state of California. At best, this is breach of contract: at worst, it could be considered felony vote tampering.
Jones Day, a law firm which was advising Diebold and where the whistleblower was temping, sent several memos to their client about the subject. The memos appear to show that not only was the firm aware of the illegality of Diebold's actions, but was actively providing their client advice on how to evade detection, making them party to their illegal activities.
Heller discovered the documents, which he believed provided evidence that both companies had conspired to defraud the state of California. Days after their exposure, the state decertified the Diebold machines. The lawsuit which followed cost Diebold $2.6 million to settle out of court.
This isn't about upholding the law. This is about putting the fear of god into future whistleblowers when they dare to cross paths with a powerful corporation.
And that's what makes Heller's actions okay.
All of the above.
Plus, the "Do you know where I can go" bit. Now I'm going to worry that a thing from Microsoft that wants me to touch it can go under my bed and wait for me to fall asleep.
I'm not sure, but the animation on the linked "Origami Project" site is scaring the shit out of me.
This is like "I Love Bees," only minus the whimsicial veneer.
"Speed of Sound," by Coldplay.
Figures.
Fucking Coldplay.
Sorry, I have to say it:
"I award you no digg, and may god have mercy on your soul."
Sweet Jesus, that's funny. (and no, I'm not Jeff. I'm Sammy. Hi!)
Not two hours after I posted my thing here, I hopped onto The Daily WTF, and wouldn't you know that this was the WTF of the day? I'm not sure which is worse, a serialized object for all the important data, or an XML document...
Well, you could always create a single-table database. Call the single table "Stuff," put a generic autoincrementing key on it, and give it two more columns: a type identifier and a serialized object that contains all the data.
Of course, you could also stab yourself in the eye. Might be preferable.
Doctor Weir, Atlantis' director, and Lieutenant Colonel Shepard, ranking military officer assigned to the project, were unreachable for comment. Doctor McKay, on the other hand, griped for several minutes without a pause about the "typically boneheaded" move, stopping only to eat an energy bar and mumbling something about low blood sugar.
Well, most people agree that Alienware boxes are, indeed, pretty damn fast. There's considerably less agreement on that point with Apple.
Are you kidding? All I ever wanted to do during 8:00 AM classes was sleep.
Agreed.
I mean, I'm doing a bunch of RoR work on the side right now, and even I had a hard time caring about this. Although I guess it must be a nice ego boost for DHH and Adaptive Path.
His point was that Shaun of the Dead better captured the feel of Douglas Adams' sense of humor than the Hitchiker's movie: ironic, considering that he actually wrote the novel (and radio show, and TV show) upon which the film was based.
And I haven't seen Shaun yet (bad Sammy! bad!) but I have to say that I'm inclined to agree. The film adaptation of Hitchiker's was awful. About the only good thing to come of it was the music video created to endorse his presidency.
The first computer I used was a briefcase-style "luggable" that my father used for work. He had a copy of that trek-style game on it, and I was too impatient to read the rules for it. He used to get really nervous when I used it, since it belonged to his office.
The first computer I considered mine in any reasonable sense was a Commodore Vic-20, but frankly I couldn't do enough cool things with it to be really interesting.
The first computer I could really get excited about was the Commodore 64, and it was all about the games, baby. (Although I did learn basic with that machine.)
Reference: our news media.
The truth is that prolonged exposure to sunlight is actually a fairly good predictor of cancer. I say this as a emmber of a family prone to it, and with grandmother who has the very rare Merkel cell carcinoma described in the article.
That's not an exhortation to stay inside all the time. But you seem to be mocking the notion that exposure to UV radiation can cause cancer, and that's just bizarre.
Incidentally: if avoidance of fast food is such a good idea, shouldn't it have said something about it in the bible? As I recall, most of the dietary advice in the Bible is kinda contradictory.
You missed an important point. The $23.45 is a wholesale price. When the wholesale price of the item is about 60% more than the retail price of a competing item, there's enough of a difference to sit up and take notice.
Here's a notable excerpt:
And he's ranked 7 out of 15 for hacktitude.
Yeah - I was actually hoping for the vote on that one. All those republicans screaming "Up or Down Vote! Up or Down Vote!" on previous occasions suddenly got really quiet when it came to Miers.
Really? I'd say you just made my point for me.
This is such a transparent rhetorical dodge that it's nauseating, and disgusted to see it reappear here. Is that seriously how you want to play this?
Straight couples have the option to enter into a relationship which is enshrined by law, confers upon them numerous legal and financial benefits. Gay couples do not. But this is somehow viewed as equitable because gays are allowed to marry members of the opposite sex. So, just out of curiosity, do you feel the same way about miscegenation laws? After all, black people had the right to marry between themselves. Mixed-race couples had exactly the same "freedom" that you describe here - the right to marry someone else. Why not bring those laws back? Laws forbidding the marriage of mixed race couples were argued on the basis that they were "unnatural," "against God's will," and "threatened the existence of the white man," rather like homosexual marriages are "unnatural," "against God's will," or "threaten the existence of the family" or "the institution of marriage."
A new institution? Like in pre-Columbus nativie american tribes? Or, for that matter, ancient Egypt, dark ages to medieval Europe, Africa, and Asia?
But no, it's pretty clear that you're not actually interested in a historical precedent. You've already made up your mind that homosexual couples aren't worthy of the same protections that heterosexual couples are. And you know what? That's fine.
Just do me a favor. Don't you pretend that gays have equal rights to straights. That's a lie, and you know it - but it serves your purposes very well.
Which is why today, Vivendi Universal and Sony crack down mercilessly on bootleg sheet-music providers.
And you can see the result! People trading copies of the Sistine Chapel all over the streets of Milan! Bootleg recordings of the Brandenburg Concertos leaked far and wide before Bach's official release date!
(The reason we didn't need COPYRIGHT LAW for so long was that it was so damn hard to COPY THINGS. Duh.)