As a long time marketer I can assure you that we ruin everything. email spam, ugly banner ads, interstitials, SEO manipulation, retargeting, on and on. We do it because it works. Even paid twitter followers work. Robocalls work. Blatant sex works (works really well). When Congress gets involved all that happens is we have to pay lobbyists to make sure we can get around any laws or regulations. When we find ways to make you aware of our clients or their products, when we find ways to make you like us, when we find ways to make you engage with us, even if the response is a very low percent, we will do it.
For your situation it depends on a few things. First is how your overall business works. If the server farm is just a small part of the cost of your business, and your product is strong, saving a few bucks on the servers won't matter. But if your business is mostly driven by the server farm and it is a large percentage of your companies expense, you will find out if you are right soon enough. What will or will not happen is that one of your competitors will use an OSS implementation to lower their costs. True, they may have problems in stabilizing it, but they may not. In any case, if they can operate more efficiently that you can, you will have to change. If they cannot operate more efficiently than you can, then you are absolutely correct.
You are saying the same thing many UNIX companies said about Linux many years ago.
First language I learned was LISP. Second was assembler for an old Univac machine. Then SPS and Autocoder for the IBM 1401. Then BAL for the 360 and finally FORTRAN. After college and the military I got into C (in 1972). C and LISP served me well until I got onto a project using SMALLTALK. SMALLTALK was really fun, but I think it was the nice IDE rather than the language that made it fun. By the mid 90's OO was all the rage and as the education factories started turning out Visual C++ experts it looked liked C++ would be the language forever except those Visual C experts could not create a class library to save their lives. They basically used it as a procedural language but there was great confusion as many people believed if it was written in C++ it was OO by definition. OO was what the cloud is today. A clearly defined environment, with all of 12 people really getting it, and thousands thinking they do.
My thinking is that LISP was a great language to start off with for many reasons. These days I really like Python for general stuff, and I have not been close to a programming project in years so have no idea what is best, but would look at the tools first.
By the way, assembler and machine language doesn't help. The theory is that if you understand the machine internals and architecture your code will perform better. Not true. Understanding the machine does not prevent you from designing a web app that requires 50 DNS lookups, 150 database calls, and 150K of javascript for the first page. If you like to drive a stick, you should learn assembler, you will like it. If you want a car with all sorts of gadgets and fly by wire, you do will find assembler very boring.
So I think CMU is on the right track. But there is one last thing I have noticed over my many years in the industry. Whichever language you learn first will likely be the one you favor forever.
Common access to source code improves security. I cannot believe Microsoft does not know this. I cannot believe you do not know this. Microsoft does not employ enough people to find and fix all their security exploits. They need help.
One benefit of a commercial distribution of OSS is that all of the components undergo extensive QA and are fully supported and then signed with a cryptographically strong key.
The fact that anyone can change the source and submit it is a huge plus if those changes are subsequently examined, discussed, tested, documented and supported. Explain the difference between free as in beer and free as in speech. freeware is very different than open source.
SystemTap provides free software (GPL) infrastructure to simplify the gathering of information about the running Linux kernel. This assists diagnosis of a performance or functional problem. SystemTap eliminates the need for the developer to go through the tedious and disruptive instrument, recompile, install, and reboot sequence that may be otherwise required to collect data.
The recent addition of kprobes to the Linux kernel provides the needed support but is not easy to use. SystemTap provides a simple command line interface and scripting language for writing instrumentation for a live running kernel. Over time, we plan to enlarge our script "tapset" library to aid instrumentation reuse and abstraction. We also plan to support probing userspace applications. We are investigating interfacing Systemtap with similar tools such as Frysk, Oprofile and LTT.
Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, all deeply involved in technology but no degree for them. While not even close to their level i left college and joined the Navy. In 1972 I started working in tech. Did some systems programming. Did some hardware design and was deeply involved in a few very significant products. Put 2 kids through college, eventually got a BS an MS and an MBA at night cause I wanted to. Have anice house. Had a nice airplane. Lived in 3 countries. Retired froma major vendor after 33 years. Started a second career with a small "free software" company and love it. And I am no genius.
And I know some bright people do have degrees. rms for example
Point: While I would have been disappointed if my kids did not get degrees, I wouldn't confuse education with diplomas.
You are confusing outsourcing and offshoring. Many of us outsource our electrical work, plumbing work, even food growing. Using an expert to do more specialized work or utilizing economies of scale for more mundane work is not always bad.
Sending work offshore is only one form of outsourcing. And buying any goods made abroad is no different. So if you drive a car, or watch a TV that was not mad in your home country you are doing the same as a company utilizes offshore resources.
Lots of professional services, especially in the medical profession, are migrating to cheap labor countries.
I ran into an issue with this the other day. I live in area code 978-448 and my mobile was 978-506 which was a free call. All of a sudden a call from 448 to 506 became a toll call. Verizon Wireless told me that in order to get ready for number portability they had to disable reverse billing. Reverse billing was how the 448 to 506 call was handled.
On the good side, Verizon wireless changed my number to a 302 exchange (free call from 448) in a few minutes with no hassle.
So you may have to change your number one more time if you want to have your mobile be toll-free from your home.
Try air freight via Aeroflot with enough insurance to cover it. They fly from Moskow to Khabarovsk every evening. You may need to find a freight forwarder in New York to handle the customs forms.
http://www.avsforum.com/ubbtivo/Forum6/HTML/000398 .html
If you do not have the serial port tied up with a satellite box, you can run ppp from the serial port to a server and set the default route. See the above link for instructions.
OTOH, it is only a short phone call every 25 hours.
Slashdot Mirror
As a long time marketer I can assure you that we ruin everything. email spam, ugly banner ads, interstitials, SEO manipulation, retargeting, on and on. We do it because it works. Even paid twitter followers work. Robocalls work. Blatant sex works (works really well). When Congress gets involved all that happens is we have to pay lobbyists to make sure we can get around any laws or regulations. When we find ways to make you aware of our clients or their products, when we find ways to make you like us, when we find ways to make you engage with us, even if the response is a very low percent, we will do it.
Stop me before I annoy you again.
For your situation it depends on a few things. First is how your overall business works. If the server farm is just a small part of the cost of your business, and your product is strong, saving a few bucks on the servers won't matter. But if your business is mostly driven by the server farm and it is a large percentage of your companies expense, you will find out if you are right soon enough. What will or will not happen is that one of your competitors will use an OSS implementation to lower their costs. True, they may have problems in stabilizing it, but they may not. In any case, if they can operate more efficiently that you can, you will have to change. If they cannot operate more efficiently than you can, then you are absolutely correct.
You are saying the same thing many UNIX companies said about Linux many years ago.
First language I learned was LISP. Second was assembler for an old Univac machine. Then SPS and Autocoder for the IBM 1401. Then BAL for the 360 and finally FORTRAN. After college and the military I got into C (in 1972). C and LISP served me well until I got onto a project using SMALLTALK. SMALLTALK was really fun, but I think it was the nice IDE rather than the language that made it fun. By the mid 90's OO was all the rage and as the education factories started turning out Visual C++ experts it looked liked C++ would be the language forever except those Visual C experts could not create a class library to save their lives. They basically used it as a procedural language but there was great confusion as many people believed if it was written in C++ it was OO by definition. OO was what the cloud is today. A clearly defined environment, with all of 12 people really getting it, and thousands thinking they do.
My thinking is that LISP was a great language to start off with for many reasons. These days I really like Python for general stuff, and I have not been close to a programming project in years so have no idea what is best, but would look at the tools first.
By the way, assembler and machine language doesn't help. The theory is that if you understand the machine internals and architecture your code will perform better. Not true. Understanding the machine does not prevent you from designing a web app that requires 50 DNS lookups, 150 database calls, and 150K of javascript for the first page. If you like to drive a stick, you should learn assembler, you will like it. If you want a car with all sorts of gadgets and fly by wire, you do will find assembler very boring.
So I think CMU is on the right track. But there is one last thing I have noticed over my many years in the industry. Whichever language you learn first will likely be the one you favor forever.
Is it pedantic to point out that speed and bandwidth are different?
Common access to source code improves security. I cannot believe Microsoft does not know this. I cannot believe you do not know this. Microsoft does not employ enough people to find and fix all their security exploits. They need help.
One benefit of a commercial distribution of OSS is that all of the components undergo extensive QA and are fully supported and then signed with a cryptographically strong key.
The fact that anyone can change the source and submit it is a huge plus if those changes are subsequently examined, discussed, tested, documented and supported. Explain the difference between free as in beer and free as in speech. freeware is very different than open source.
Dtrace is CDDL so it probably can not be ported to Linux. But systemtap is a good alternative and pretty far along. http://sources.redhat.com/systemtap/wiki/Systemtap DtraceComparison
http://sourceware.org/systemtap/
Overview
SystemTap provides free software (GPL) infrastructure to simplify the gathering of information about the running Linux kernel. This assists diagnosis of a performance or functional problem. SystemTap eliminates the need for the developer to go through the tedious and disruptive instrument, recompile, install, and reboot sequence that may be otherwise required to collect data.
The recent addition of kprobes to the Linux kernel provides the needed support but is not easy to use. SystemTap provides a simple command line interface and scripting language for writing instrumentation for a live running kernel. Over time, we plan to enlarge our script "tapset" library to aid instrumentation reuse and abstraction. We also plan to support probing userspace applications. We are investigating interfacing Systemtap with similar tools such as Frysk, Oprofile and LTT.
http://sourceware.org/systemtap/
http://sourceware.org/frysk/
Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, all deeply involved in technology but no degree for them. While not even close to their level i left college and joined the Navy. In 1972 I started working in tech. Did some systems programming. Did some hardware design and was deeply involved in a few very significant products. Put 2 kids through college, eventually got a BS an MS and an MBA at night cause I wanted to. Have anice house. Had a nice airplane. Lived in 3 countries. Retired froma major vendor after 33 years. Started a second career with a small "free software" company and love it. And I am no genius.
And I know some bright people do have degrees. rms for example
Point: While I would have been disappointed if my kids did not get degrees, I wouldn't confuse education with diplomas.
You are confusing outsourcing and offshoring. Many of us outsource our electrical work, plumbing work, even food growing. Using an expert to do more specialized work or utilizing economies of scale for more mundane work is not always bad.
Sending work offshore is only one form of outsourcing. And buying any goods made abroad is no different. So if you drive a car, or watch a TV that was not mad in your home country you are doing the same as a company utilizes offshore resources.
Lots of professional services, especially in the medical profession, are migrating to cheap labor countries.
I ran into an issue with this the other day. I live in area code 978-448 and my mobile was 978-506 which was a free call. All of a sudden a call from 448 to 506 became a toll call. Verizon Wireless told me that in order to get ready for number portability they had to disable reverse billing. Reverse billing was how the 448 to 506 call was handled.
On the good side, Verizon wireless changed my number to a 302 exchange (free call from 448) in a few minutes with no hassle.
So you may have to change your number one more time if you want to have your mobile be toll-free from your home.
I find the ptk.progeny.com website useful. This sounds like a similiar type of deal but for Linux instead of development tools.
Try air freight via Aeroflot with enough insurance to cover it. They fly from Moskow to Khabarovsk every evening. You may need to find a freight forwarder in New York to handle the customs forms.
http://www.avsforum.com/ubbtivo/Forum6/HTML/000398 .html
If you do not have the serial port tied up with a satellite box, you can run ppp from the serial port to a server and set the default route. See the above link for instructions.
OTOH, it is only a short phone call every 25 hours.