I'm not pointing out the obvious to troll, but remember Linux is just a kernel. If one desktop team decides to make an Apple clone that sacrifices top performance for a common user interface (I don't see how that argument makes any sense at all, but I'll go with it), another team will step up to give you the bare bones written in optimized C and assembly. People have this vision of every Linux enthusiast on the planet except for themselves heading in one unified direction that isn't to their liking; I don't think you'll see that happen any time soon.
Being able to detect and have control panels for common peripherals like sound cards and printers. Some distributions do this better than others, but a newbie shouldn't have to deal with the nuances of OSS vs. ALSA vs. JACK or CUPS vs. LPR just to listen to music and print a document.
This timeline is getting stretched out way too far, the investors are going to pull out! Back in my dot com days business plans would be formed on a napkin, investor relations made over a beer, and a coding team assembled from random stragglers at a tech convention all in about four hours:-).
The companies would most likely dissolve at the end of the weekend when they forgot to ask what irc server C0derMan hangs out on.
I have done outsourcing but have hired some people to help with the additional volume
That part is critical. While lots of jobs are being exported (especially jobs that did great in the dot com era so it seems to be a sore spot around this site), nearly all of the major companies that have been outsourcing have help wanted signs up. The programming teams are being replaced with management teams and other resources.
It's funny how ten years ago programmers were more than happy to replace hundreds of jobs in a company with a new efficient software system, but when it came time to outsource their own job it's not so fun anymore.
There's a couple long distance wireless providers here, and while all DSL lines are purchased through Qwest you have a huge variety of ISPs to choose from for DSL service. BTW most everything in Spokane, a city with 300K plus population, is a shame.
At least now we can read Slashdot while playing Blackjack!
More interesting would be tuning in to a station (or a category of stations), lets say classic rock and using a plugin that rips the streams to disk and checks for duplicates. Run it for a few days and you have a nice [category here] collection. This has already been done with Shoutcast, so we might as well adapt to new technology! The RIAA doesn't really care about this happening with FM radio, because the quality is sub-par, but if a web station is streaming at 160kpbs or greater...
Pretty clever that the same electronics device plays MIDIs of Nelly's "Hot In Here" while strobing through enough LEDs to hold a small rave, causes people to take up two lanes and drive half the speed limit, allows telemarketers to sell you insurance while you use the bathroom, runs out of battery when you might need it for something actually productive, and is small enough to constantly lose?
Some moderators thought the post was "overrated", so I took the financial analysis to a CPA. Some other interesting points are the Return On Equity calculations. When they have negative income but a positive shareholder's equity, they report the ROE as "ns", as in you supposedly can't divide a negative NI by a positive OE. But if you do for 2001, you realize that an investment of one Euro would have bought you an investment of over seven Euros in debt. Then, the great part, in 2003 both NI AND OE are negative so they figure "negative divided by negative... positive!" and report 157% ROE. Meaning debt increased by 157%, not 157% growth as the unbastardized original meaning of ROE would entail. The Net Profit Margin was -.51 for 2003, meaning for every Euro of sales they lost half a Euro. In that same year they dumped a lot of their assets as well, so it doesn't seem like they were buried in asset expenses. Their operating debt was simply out of control, and despite the selling of assets and tuning things down in general, the operating debt continued to climb. What about this miraculous jump of 1,827% in net cash? Keep in mind that's forecasted, it's a completely made up number in stark contrast to every bit of financial data provided that has to follow IAS rules. Maybe they're hoping enough people will buy in to this analysis and invest in Mandrake that their net cash actually does grow that much, and the company who created this hype can finally cash out on their losing investment.
I love the Mandrake software, it's my primary recommendation for anyone that asks me about Linux, but on the books this company looks like a dot com bust that's a few years too late. Flatlining revenues, steadily increasing operating debt, and a downward spiral of equity. Liquidity, solvency, debt to equity, operating margin, ALL BAD.
Aside from the economic impossibility of upgrading the Internet infrastructure and replacing all modern computers in four years, your entire paranoia is based on a single "trust chip". We saw how effective those were in the XBox. The other fallacy is you assume everyone is ok with this. Could you imagine the damage it would do if fifteen years down the road we live in this trusted computing model where no code ever has to be checked for flaws? Then one person figures out how to subvert the technology and the entire infrastructure we depend on comes crashing down. It might make for some good sci-fi but you're not the only person who would see this coming.
Software manufacturers are going to try as hard as they can to insulate themselves from lawsuits and angry customers, but they are still servants of their consumers in a free market.
Can't you turn off 1 and 2 and just use Windows style copy/paste? The highlight-to-copy idea sounds cool, but in practice you rarely need to copy something and put it in to an empty space, you are copying something to replace something else which doesn't work with the highlight + middle-click.
But you can modify the Linux kernel to allow any user to gain root privileges. That's the point of the source code, anyone can rewrite/recompile/reinstall and remove any offending "features" while adding their own modifications.
I like the flashy presentation, the "ooh look over here!" aspect, and how they seamlessly tied the financial forecasts in with the real data, but I'm not sure I would take that analysis as a reason to invest. Most of it consisted of "Mandrake is losing less money than Novell, that's gotta count for something". That and the strong growth forecasted, while their debt ratio continues to climb.
This is similar to printer manufacturers that want to keep their cartridge design proprietary and prevent third party cheap refill vendors from selling alternatives. I guess cars are something lawmakers can understand.
They wouldn't go out of business. You act like the entire world was at an eager standstill for thousands of years until the first computer network was invented. Sure technology has given businesses an advantage, but lots of companies are missing the point that technology in business is there to make your assets work more efficiently, and streamline your operating cycle. Too many people get caught up in the "oooh shiny" factor, and don't do the calculations on whether their investment will ever make a return.
Re:initial argument was silly
on
Why I.T. Matters
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Plenty of businesses get by without the latest technology. Are you saying a restaurant is going to fail because they don't have a website? I'd be more inclined to say a restaurant will fail because they invested too much in a new computer system that is prone to failure and frequent tech support calls, and requires a learning curve for new employees.
now we're waiting for the enabling law (aka, the law that let the reichstag put people into concentration camps).
You mean a law that would allow people to be detained without a reason, thrown in a Guantanamo Bay prison and not allowed to speak to anyone including legal counsel? Don't be silly that will never happen!
Actually games can provide a better environment than a multiple choice test. In the game you might have the option to stage a revolution and create a Democracy, or maybe build up a military and try and fight off a revolution. You are given different choices with regards to economics, foreign relations, military, etc. and historical context and anecdotes are provided as you play to keep it relevant. By allowing someone to take multiple paths and see what the results would be, rather than "this is how it was, end of story" you can get a better picture on the why aspect.
Gross income is a good indicator of box office success, but I would be interested to see how the net income and the profit margins for Pixar movies compare against traditionally shot movies. Are the server farms and custom renderers burying them in expenses, or are they saving a ton by not having to pay top-notch actors (other than voices)? Also how about comparing profit margin to traditional animation (Snow White style disney) and modern animation (cel shaded Disney) movies?
But it does help when you store sensitive customer data on a box you don't own, hosting hundreds of other websites. Many websites have been cracked or user databases stolen from someone setting up an account with the same hosting provider as the target site and gleaning information from the shared database server.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not pointing out the obvious to troll, but remember Linux is just a kernel. If one desktop team decides to make an Apple clone that sacrifices top performance for a common user interface (I don't see how that argument makes any sense at all, but I'll go with it), another team will step up to give you the bare bones written in optimized C and assembly. People have this vision of every Linux enthusiast on the planet except for themselves heading in one unified direction that isn't to their liking; I don't think you'll see that happen any time soon.
Being able to detect and have control panels for common peripherals like sound cards and printers. Some distributions do this better than others, but a newbie shouldn't have to deal with the nuances of OSS vs. ALSA vs. JACK or CUPS vs. LPR just to listen to music and print a document.
This timeline is getting stretched out way too far, the investors are going to pull out! Back in my dot com days business plans would be formed on a napkin, investor relations made over a beer, and a coding team assembled from random stragglers at a tech convention all in about four hours :-).
The companies would most likely dissolve at the end of the weekend when they forgot to ask what irc server C0derMan hangs out on.
I have done outsourcing but have hired some people to help with the additional volume
That part is critical. While lots of jobs are being exported (especially jobs that did great in the dot com era so it seems to be a sore spot around this site), nearly all of the major companies that have been outsourcing have help wanted signs up. The programming teams are being replaced with management teams and other resources.
It's funny how ten years ago programmers were more than happy to replace hundreds of jobs in a company with a new efficient software system, but when it came time to outsource their own job it's not so fun anymore.
There's a couple long distance wireless providers here, and while all DSL lines are purchased through Qwest you have a huge variety of ISPs to choose from for DSL service. BTW most everything in Spokane, a city with 300K plus population, is a shame.
At least now we can read Slashdot while playing Blackjack!
More interesting would be tuning in to a station (or a category of stations), lets say classic rock and using a plugin that rips the streams to disk and checks for duplicates. Run it for a few days and you have a nice [category here] collection. This has already been done with Shoutcast, so we might as well adapt to new technology! The RIAA doesn't really care about this happening with FM radio, because the quality is sub-par, but if a web station is streaming at 160kpbs or greater...
Or what about Wesley Willis - Rock & Roll McDonalds?
"McDonalds sells quarter pounders, they will put pounds on you. ROCK AND ROLL MCDONALDS!"
Linux is to bloated, or X? What about QT/Embedded?
Yes, all those Ivy league schools threatening once again to sweep the NCAA championships across all sports. Damn them!
I don't know about all sports, but Ivy league basketball was doing a bang-up job.
Pretty clever that the same electronics device plays MIDIs of Nelly's "Hot In Here" while strobing through enough LEDs to hold a small rave, causes people to take up two lanes and drive half the speed limit, allows telemarketers to sell you insurance while you use the bathroom, runs out of battery when you might need it for something actually productive, and is small enough to constantly lose?
Oh yeah, I'm overjoyed.
Some moderators thought the post was "overrated", so I took the financial analysis to a CPA. Some other interesting points are the Return On Equity calculations. When they have negative income but a positive shareholder's equity, they report the ROE as "ns", as in you supposedly can't divide a negative NI by a positive OE. But if you do for 2001, you realize that an investment of one Euro would have bought you an investment of over seven Euros in debt. Then, the great part, in 2003 both NI AND OE are negative so they figure "negative divided by negative... positive!" and report 157% ROE. Meaning debt increased by 157%, not 157% growth as the unbastardized original meaning of ROE would entail. The Net Profit Margin was -.51 for 2003, meaning for every Euro of sales they lost half a Euro. In that same year they dumped a lot of their assets as well, so it doesn't seem like they were buried in asset expenses. Their operating debt was simply out of control, and despite the selling of assets and tuning things down in general, the operating debt continued to climb. What about this miraculous jump of 1,827% in net cash? Keep in mind that's forecasted, it's a completely made up number in stark contrast to every bit of financial data provided that has to follow IAS rules. Maybe they're hoping enough people will buy in to this analysis and invest in Mandrake that their net cash actually does grow that much, and the company who created this hype can finally cash out on their losing investment.
I love the Mandrake software, it's my primary recommendation for anyone that asks me about Linux, but on the books this company looks like a dot com bust that's a few years too late. Flatlining revenues, steadily increasing operating debt, and a downward spiral of equity. Liquidity, solvency, debt to equity, operating margin, ALL BAD.
Aside from the economic impossibility of upgrading the Internet infrastructure and replacing all modern computers in four years, your entire paranoia is based on a single "trust chip". We saw how effective those were in the XBox. The other fallacy is you assume everyone is ok with this. Could you imagine the damage it would do if fifteen years down the road we live in this trusted computing model where no code ever has to be checked for flaws? Then one person figures out how to subvert the technology and the entire infrastructure we depend on comes crashing down. It might make for some good sci-fi but you're not the only person who would see this coming.
Software manufacturers are going to try as hard as they can to insulate themselves from lawsuits and angry customers, but they are still servants of their consumers in a free market.
Can't you turn off 1 and 2 and just use Windows style copy/paste? The highlight-to-copy idea sounds cool, but in practice you rarely need to copy something and put it in to an empty space, you are copying something to replace something else which doesn't work with the highlight + middle-click.
But you can modify the Linux kernel to allow any user to gain root privileges. That's the point of the source code, anyone can rewrite/recompile/reinstall and remove any offending "features" while adding their own modifications.
I like the flashy presentation, the "ooh look over here!" aspect, and how they seamlessly tied the financial forecasts in with the real data, but I'm not sure I would take that analysis as a reason to invest. Most of it consisted of "Mandrake is losing less money than Novell, that's gotta count for something". That and the strong growth forecasted, while their debt ratio continues to climb.
This is similar to printer manufacturers that want to keep their cartridge design proprietary and prevent third party cheap refill vendors from selling alternatives. I guess cars are something lawmakers can understand.
Just like if gas prices doubled from their current price noone except airline industries and other big consumers would be affected, right?
Hopefully grad school isn't teaching you that businesses bottom line absorbs any unexpected expenses.
They wouldn't go out of business. You act like the entire world was at an eager standstill for thousands of years until the first computer network was invented. Sure technology has given businesses an advantage, but lots of companies are missing the point that technology in business is there to make your assets work more efficiently, and streamline your operating cycle. Too many people get caught up in the "oooh shiny" factor, and don't do the calculations on whether their investment will ever make a return.
Plenty of businesses get by without the latest technology. Are you saying a restaurant is going to fail because they don't have a website? I'd be more inclined to say a restaurant will fail because they invested too much in a new computer system that is prone to failure and frequent tech support calls, and requires a learning curve for new employees.
Sending ESR an early copy of the book is like asking Sony to do a review of XBox 2
now we're waiting for the enabling law (aka, the law that let the reichstag put people into concentration camps).
You mean a law that would allow people to be detained without a reason, thrown in a Guantanamo Bay prison and not allowed to speak to anyone including legal counsel? Don't be silly that will never happen!
They should swap out the CD burner for a DVD burner and you can have an all-in-one XBox game backup center! ;-)
Actually games can provide a better environment than a multiple choice test. In the game you might have the option to stage a revolution and create a Democracy, or maybe build up a military and try and fight off a revolution. You are given different choices with regards to economics, foreign relations, military, etc. and historical context and anecdotes are provided as you play to keep it relevant. By allowing someone to take multiple paths and see what the results would be, rather than "this is how it was, end of story" you can get a better picture on the why aspect.
Gross income is a good indicator of box office success, but I would be interested to see how the net income and the profit margins for Pixar movies compare against traditionally shot movies. Are the server farms and custom renderers burying them in expenses, or are they saving a ton by not having to pay top-notch actors (other than voices)? Also how about comparing profit margin to traditional animation (Snow White style disney) and modern animation (cel shaded Disney) movies?
But it does help when you store sensitive customer data on a box you don't own, hosting hundreds of other websites. Many websites have been cracked or user databases stolen from someone setting up an account with the same hosting provider as the target site and gleaning information from the shared database server.