The one thing that jumps out at me is that Blagojevich and his staff have already determined that the custom software tax will net the state $64M in taxes, but my question is what goods will this tax pool come from? The definition is extremely vague, yet there is a hard number being discussed.
So either Blagojevich pulled this $64M number out of his ass and is wildly guessing, making him a bad politician (oh no! gasp!), or he's already defined the source of the new taxes and the proposal is too vague, meaning that more information about this needs to be made public.
Actually, there's a serious implication here that could set a bad precedent. In essence, Blagojevich is considering double taxation, where in this case, the original sale of the product is taxed and then if the product is resold, it's taxed again.
This is not a good thing if this resolution passes due to the cascade effect this may have on other "resellable" items.
Actually, Brooks ought to be recognized for his No Silver Bullet article from the 80's as it provided a very large foundation for what we know as software engineering, but the mythical man-month is notable as well.
Either way, you're right -- he should be listed here, and especially instead of business folks. Brooks was a true Computer Scientist, whereas Ellison and others simply commercialized computing.
Again, you're assuming that she has (or even wants to have) the ability to maintain her computer. This is a faulty assumption. Like I said, to her, the computer needs as much maintenance as the microwave oven. She will not understand what it means to turn off services, or to make regular updates. If I'm lucky, I might get her to understand why virus scanning is a good thing to do, and teach her how to do the clicky-clicky's to do that.
But running through services, updates, best practices, etc.....it all comes out gobbledy-gook to her, and even if I were successful in getting her to run the updates, her ability to retain that information is going to be extremely small. I'm not saying that she's stupid either -- she's college educated and well read -- what I'm saying is that she is the average user. And the average user doesn't know, nor care, about the inner workings of their computer -- it just has to do the job they want it to do. And as long as her access to the online bridge website is there and she's able to trump her opponents' cards, she's a happy camper.
Now, by inference, what you should be gleaning from this is that due to the marketing of PC as appliance that Microsoft does, they have the obligation to treat it as an appliance and if things break, it's not the users' fault in the majority of cases. If, however, they intentionally leave things open or use buggy code, thereby making it all too easy for miscreants to take over systems, then Microsoft has some measure of culpability at a minimum. Ethically, Microsoft should not market Windows as an appliance (meaning that anyone can use it) without actively hand-holding their customers at Microsoft's expense. Barring that, some level of training/certification should be required to use a device that has the ability to affect the well-being of other people -- which sounds vaguely similar to the requirements for operating an automobile or a handgun...
My mother plays online bridge on my parent's computer. That's the extent of her ability to work with a computer. She's never even heard of Windows Update, let alone the need to actually have to update anything at all. To her, the computer is like a kitchen appliance -- once turned on, it never needs maintenance.
She is the stereotypical PC user, not the uber-geeks that inhabit Slashdot. Try to remember that what is talked about here is not indicative of the population-at-large.
Prominent artists who were owed royalty payments included: David Bowie, Dolly Parton, Harry Belafonte, Liza Minnelli, Dave Matthews, Sean Combs and Gloria Estefan.
Ummm....how exactly do you lose track of your prominent artists? And for that matter, why aren't the agents of these artists banging down the doors at Sony, BMI, Vivendi, EMI, and so forth to get the royalties? IOW, the agents conveniently forgot to collect? Something doesn't sound right here -- when in the history of business has someone not aggressively pursued their debtors?
Perhaps the problem is that since Microsoft OS's seem to have critical security patches far more often than other OS's, people just can't keep up. I know there are alternatives to having to do it yourself, but what does it say about Microsoft's coding practices when you have so many exploits against the codebase appearing so regularly?
Now this could just be a law of numbers issue, in that the installed base of systems with one of MS OS's is far larger than any other and therefore it gets the most scrutiny. However, the simple fact is that it does happen more often, and given the absence of an educated userbase (BTW -- this is a pipe dream and you know it), Microsoft should be doing more and better code reviews and testing of their products. Microsoft is quickly becoming the Ford Pinto of the IT world.
Sorry, Suns just don't cut it. You'd need somewhere between 8 and 16 of the latest UltraSparcs in a box, to even touch a cheap 4 way Xeon for a server. And you can check out for yourself what the Sun would cost in that configuration.
Ok, so let's compare. Let's compare a Sun Fire V440 and a HP DL580 G2. Let's assume each is equipped with 4 top end CPU's, 8GB memory, dual Gigabit NIC's, 2x36GB disks, and a DVD-ROM drive on each -- sounds like a fairly standard server configuration to me.
Price
Sun Fire V440 --> $16,395
HP DL580 G2 --> $34,374
The V440 is more than 50% less!!!!!!!!! Ok, let's go to performance. Going to use the SPEC CPU2000 info for the DL580 G2 3.0GHz Xeons and going to use the Sun Fire V250 config mutltiple by 1.8 (since Sun has not yet releaed info on the 4-way V440 with the same 1.28GHz US IIIi CPU's tha the V250 has). (Listing below represents Cint2000/Cfp2000/Cint2000 rate/Cfp2000 rate).
Performance
Sun Fire V440 --> 702/1054/26.5/33.0
HP DL580 G2 --> 1491/1208/61.6/30.7
Hmmmmm....two things jump out at me here -- the UltraSPARC IIIi is lousy at integer math, while the Xeon is lousy at floating point math. Either way, the 3.0GHz Xeon, which represents a clock speed difference of 234% greater than the US IIIi, only performs better than it by 28.7%. Increasing the CPU to 1.7GHz or going to US IV CPU's as Sun plans to do with the upcoming V490 will close the gap.
So overall, for 109.6% of the price of a V440, you're only getting 28.7% of the performance. Umm....what was your original point?
I'm envisioning a new method of government sponsored assassinations, where diplomats pass the nano-attackbots on to the intended victim via handshake. The diplomat would have a proximity sensor implant that tells the nano-attackbots to attack when they are more than 1km away from the sensor. Leave the embassy, get safely away, and you'll never hear the screams....
Regardless though, even if the MIT interview is seen as somewhat of a disjointed attack, it has possibly opened the table for dicussion on a larger scale, and has gotten Valenti to consider that option. The interview's goal was not to solve all their problems, but to possibly open the doors of discussion, and that possibility is stronger following the interview than it was before, so it's a success in my book.
Sounds to me like he was trying to back out of an argument that he knew that there was no way he could possibly win at that time and place. It the classic, "I don't know the answer, but I'll talk to my people and we'll get back to you" technique, which is followed up by vast amounts of never getting back to you.
Nature is self-regulating. Even if we artificially heat our planet past the point of our viability, mother nature will make sure that doesn't continue to cook the planet by making our existence less and less viable. At that point, we will either be forced to adapt our ways or we will prove Darwin's theories.
Yes, but the original poster does have a point here. Insurance does work due to the laws of large numbers and just one judgement in SCO's favor will likely cause the probability of all outcomes to shift enormously in SCO's favor, meaning that the insurance companies no longer have a profitable enterprise.
I'm not sure any company or group of companies would (or could) bear that reinsurance risk, however miniscule the possibility of it occuring might be. Remember, judgment isn't about right or wrong, but what is determined in a court of law.
What you say is true, but it's not because Linux developers, and FOSS developers for that matter, are hesitant to change. It's because they're sensitive to people telling them that their stuff is no good and is broken while they themselves believe that its the greatest thing since sliced bread because it does what they want it to do, not what the people who would use it want it to do.
The biggest hurdle facing the widespread adoption of FOSS at this point, IMHO, is the widespread introversion of the developer community. We are by and large open within the community but closed to outsiders and very hostile to criticisms of our work from what can only be classified as "customers". To people like this, I say "Get off your high horse and listen to what the people want!"
What FOSS developers have got to realize is that the code doesn't exist for the gratification of the programmer, but for use by the customer. Until then, sound cards and other pieces may not work right in spite of the availability of technical specs by the manufacturers and the desire of customers to have a working product. Getting people to understand that a given product almost always needs more than one version, and more often than not it needs tens to hundreds of versions, is just a way of life in software development.
I'd like to see a study on how many companies go broke trying to outsource their technical work to india.
What I would be more interested in viewing is a study that analyzed the outcomes of IT outsourcing in general, whether some domestic IT services firm or some overseas firm based in Asia or elsewhere. I want to read about the outcomes for that company and find out if outsourcing actually worked for them.
Of course, I'm leading up to this, but I would bet that most outsourcing decisions have led to a higher cost for less productivity in the IT space. You only need to talk with employees of companies that have outsourced to find out that this occurs more often than not. In my experience, this is what typically happens.
First, the outsourcing firm comes in, promises the world, shows the company how they would actually save dollars (keying on the different pools of money that salary comes from vs. vendor expenditures and the tax benefits therein). Then the deal is signed, the outsourcing company starts moving in, analyzing the environment and looks to be making great strides.
Then year two hits and the outsourcing company brings up the topic of scope wrt the contract. Suddenly, that $/server figure you did doubles, and then triples. By year three, you're realizing that even though you've signed a deal to outsource the IT work to another company, your own employees are still doing the bulk of the IT work since the majority of your IT is deemed out of scope.
By this time, your own employees are getting stressed out and pissed off because the money that could be going to their salaries are going to an external company that isn't doing squat anymore, while their duties have increased greatly. But you still have a few years left on the contract, unless you execute some termination clause and bite the bullet one more time, sending further funds into that outsourcing company. But maybe, you'll finally realize at this point that farming out the talent for little return makes little sense and that keeping the talent in-house can be much more cost-efficient in the long run, even if it seems like it costs you more in salary right now.
Or everyone could grant your wish, and leave Austin, immediately causing your housing market to crash, and eventually causing the rest of the conveniences you now take for granted in the new Austin economy go away as well. And unlike Silicon Valley, they aren't coming back.
Slashdot Mirror
tells it like it is....
And related to the article, perhaps they can also shed light on the "questionable beginnings" of MS Windows.
Hmmmm, a keg wrap that runs off of 100-120VAC power == keg parties.
Can also run off of a car cigarette lighter == tailgaiting extraordinaire.
This kid is going to the wrong school. He'd be a god down at Ohio State....
The one thing that jumps out at me is that Blagojevich and his staff have already determined that the custom software tax will net the state $64M in taxes, but my question is what goods will this tax pool come from? The definition is extremely vague, yet there is a hard number being discussed.
So either Blagojevich pulled this $64M number out of his ass and is wildly guessing, making him a bad politician (oh no! gasp!), or he's already defined the source of the new taxes and the proposal is too vague, meaning that more information about this needs to be made public.
Actually, there's a serious implication here that could set a bad precedent. In essence, Blagojevich is considering double taxation, where in this case, the original sale of the product is taxed and then if the product is resold, it's taxed again.
This is not a good thing if this resolution passes due to the cascade effect this may have on other "resellable" items.
Actually, Brooks ought to be recognized for his No Silver Bullet article from the 80's as it provided a very large foundation for what we know as software engineering, but the mythical man-month is notable as well.
Either way, you're right -- he should be listed here, and especially instead of business folks. Brooks was a true Computer Scientist, whereas Ellison and others simply commercialized computing.
Given some of the crap coming out today, they should be forced to pay people to listen to them...
Again, you're assuming that she has (or even wants to have) the ability to maintain her computer. This is a faulty assumption. Like I said, to her, the computer needs as much maintenance as the microwave oven. She will not understand what it means to turn off services, or to make regular updates. If I'm lucky, I might get her to understand why virus scanning is a good thing to do, and teach her how to do the clicky-clicky's to do that.
But running through services, updates, best practices, etc.....it all comes out gobbledy-gook to her, and even if I were successful in getting her to run the updates, her ability to retain that information is going to be extremely small. I'm not saying that she's stupid either -- she's college educated and well read -- what I'm saying is that she is the average user. And the average user doesn't know, nor care, about the inner workings of their computer -- it just has to do the job they want it to do. And as long as her access to the online bridge website is there and she's able to trump her opponents' cards, she's a happy camper.
Now, by inference, what you should be gleaning from this is that due to the marketing of PC as appliance that Microsoft does, they have the obligation to treat it as an appliance and if things break, it's not the users' fault in the majority of cases. If, however, they intentionally leave things open or use buggy code, thereby making it all too easy for miscreants to take over systems, then Microsoft has some measure of culpability at a minimum. Ethically, Microsoft should not market Windows as an appliance (meaning that anyone can use it) without actively hand-holding their customers at Microsoft's expense. Barring that, some level of training/certification should be required to use a device that has the ability to affect the well-being of other people -- which sounds vaguely similar to the requirements for operating an automobile or a handgun...
My mother plays online bridge on my parent's computer. That's the extent of her ability to work with a computer. She's never even heard of Windows Update, let alone the need to actually have to update anything at all. To her, the computer is like a kitchen appliance -- once turned on, it never needs maintenance.
She is the stereotypical PC user, not the uber-geeks that inhabit Slashdot. Try to remember that what is talked about here is not indicative of the population-at-large.
Prominent artists who were owed royalty payments included: David Bowie, Dolly Parton, Harry Belafonte, Liza Minnelli, Dave Matthews, Sean Combs and Gloria Estefan.
Ummm....how exactly do you lose track of your prominent artists? And for that matter, why aren't the agents of these artists banging down the doors at Sony, BMI, Vivendi, EMI, and so forth to get the royalties? IOW, the agents conveniently forgot to collect? Something doesn't sound right here -- when in the history of business has someone not aggressively pursued their debtors?
Perhaps the problem is that since Microsoft OS's seem to have critical security patches far more often than other OS's, people just can't keep up. I know there are alternatives to having to do it yourself, but what does it say about Microsoft's coding practices when you have so many exploits against the codebase appearing so regularly?
Now this could just be a law of numbers issue, in that the installed base of systems with one of MS OS's is far larger than any other and therefore it gets the most scrutiny. However, the simple fact is that it does happen more often, and given the absence of an educated userbase (BTW -- this is a pipe dream and you know it), Microsoft should be doing more and better code reviews and testing of their products. Microsoft is quickly becoming the Ford Pinto of the IT world.
Ok, so let's compare. Let's compare a Sun Fire V440 and a HP DL580 G2. Let's assume each is equipped with 4 top end CPU's, 8GB memory, dual Gigabit NIC's, 2x36GB disks, and a DVD-ROM drive on each -- sounds like a fairly standard server configuration to me.
Price
The V440 is more than 50% less!!!!!!!!! Ok, let's go to performance. Going to use the SPEC CPU2000 info for the DL580 G2 3.0GHz Xeons and going to use the Sun Fire V250 config mutltiple by 1.8 (since Sun has not yet releaed info on the 4-way V440 with the same 1.28GHz US IIIi CPU's tha the V250 has). (Listing below represents Cint2000/Cfp2000/Cint2000 rate/Cfp2000 rate).
Performance
Hmmmmm....two things jump out at me here -- the UltraSPARC IIIi is lousy at integer math, while the Xeon is lousy at floating point math. Either way, the 3.0GHz Xeon, which represents a clock speed difference of 234% greater than the US IIIi, only performs better than it by 28.7%. Increasing the CPU to 1.7GHz or going to US IV CPU's as Sun plans to do with the upcoming V490 will close the gap.
So overall, for 109.6% of the price of a V440, you're only getting 28.7% of the performance. Umm....what was your original point?
you know in retrospect....
Score: -1, Disturbing...
I'm envisioning a new method of government sponsored assassinations, where diplomats pass the nano-attackbots on to the intended victim via handshake. The diplomat would have a proximity sensor implant that tells the nano-attackbots to attack when they are more than 1km away from the sensor. Leave the embassy, get safely away, and you'll never hear the screams....
Hmmm...this has so many nasty implications...
Yup....looks like the end of the dead cat bounce from a couple weeks ago -- the end is nigh...
Is the effect viral? Could this explain why the Matrix Reloaded sucked so bad?
Regardless though, even if the MIT interview is seen as somewhat of a disjointed attack, it has possibly opened the table for dicussion on a larger scale, and has gotten Valenti to consider that option. The interview's goal was not to solve all their problems, but to possibly open the doors of discussion, and that possibility is stronger following the interview than it was before, so it's a success in my book.
Sounds to me like he was trying to back out of an argument that he knew that there was no way he could possibly win at that time and place. It the classic, "I don't know the answer, but I'll talk to my people and we'll get back to you" technique, which is followed up by vast amounts of never getting back to you.
And the great irony of all this? Microsoft has one less UNIX-based OS to worry about...
Nature is self-regulating. Even if we artificially heat our planet past the point of our viability, mother nature will make sure that doesn't continue to cook the planet by making our existence less and less viable. At that point, we will either be forced to adapt our ways or we will prove Darwin's theories.
Yes, but the original poster does have a point here. Insurance does work due to the laws of large numbers and just one judgement in SCO's favor will likely cause the probability of all outcomes to shift enormously in SCO's favor, meaning that the insurance companies no longer have a profitable enterprise.
I'm not sure any company or group of companies would (or could) bear that reinsurance risk, however miniscule the possibility of it occuring might be. Remember, judgment isn't about right or wrong, but what is determined in a court of law.
What you say is true, but it's not because Linux developers, and FOSS developers for that matter, are hesitant to change. It's because they're sensitive to people telling them that their stuff is no good and is broken while they themselves believe that its the greatest thing since sliced bread because it does what they want it to do, not what the people who would use it want it to do.
The biggest hurdle facing the widespread adoption of FOSS at this point, IMHO, is the widespread introversion of the developer community. We are by and large open within the community but closed to outsiders and very hostile to criticisms of our work from what can only be classified as "customers". To people like this, I say "Get off your high horse and listen to what the people want!"
What FOSS developers have got to realize is that the code doesn't exist for the gratification of the programmer, but for use by the customer. Until then, sound cards and other pieces may not work right in spite of the availability of technical specs by the manufacturers and the desire of customers to have a working product. Getting people to understand that a given product almost always needs more than one version, and more often than not it needs tens to hundreds of versions, is just a way of life in software development.
I'd like to see a study on how many companies go broke trying to outsource their technical work to india.
What I would be more interested in viewing is a study that analyzed the outcomes of IT outsourcing in general, whether some domestic IT services firm or some overseas firm based in Asia or elsewhere. I want to read about the outcomes for that company and find out if outsourcing actually worked for them.
Of course, I'm leading up to this, but I would bet that most outsourcing decisions have led to a higher cost for less productivity in the IT space. You only need to talk with employees of companies that have outsourced to find out that this occurs more often than not. In my experience, this is what typically happens.
First, the outsourcing firm comes in, promises the world, shows the company how they would actually save dollars (keying on the different pools of money that salary comes from vs. vendor expenditures and the tax benefits therein). Then the deal is signed, the outsourcing company starts moving in, analyzing the environment and looks to be making great strides.
Then year two hits and the outsourcing company brings up the topic of scope wrt the contract. Suddenly, that $/server figure you did doubles, and then triples. By year three, you're realizing that even though you've signed a deal to outsource the IT work to another company, your own employees are still doing the bulk of the IT work since the majority of your IT is deemed out of scope.
By this time, your own employees are getting stressed out and pissed off because the money that could be going to their salaries are going to an external company that isn't doing squat anymore, while their duties have increased greatly. But you still have a few years left on the contract, unless you execute some termination clause and bite the bullet one more time, sending further funds into that outsourcing company. But maybe, you'll finally realize at this point that farming out the talent for little return makes little sense and that keeping the talent in-house can be much more cost-efficient in the long run, even if it seems like it costs you more in salary right now.
Or everyone could grant your wish, and leave Austin, immediately causing your housing market to crash, and eventually causing the rest of the conveniences you now take for granted in the new Austin economy go away as well. And unlike Silicon Valley, they aren't coming back.
So careful what you wish for.
Walmart wins!
You have no idea how true this is, especially with regards to Walmart's suppliers. Walmart always wins.