I can give you my personal reason I'm averse to paying for online content: A percieved lack of value-add, with a concrete chunk of money extracted from my account regularly.
A good example of this is Ars Technica. I wanted to read an article. I noticed a link to download a pdf version of the file. I figured "great, I can print it out and read it in bed!". I click the link and it turns out you not only have to register, you have to pay a monthly membership fee.
So now I've got two options: pony up $50 a year for a membership, for which I may or may not ever want to print an article out again, or just print out the (lousy due to paged html setup) web pages.
In other cases I'm reluctant to sign up for a site because it's one more thing to explain to the wife -- but honey, I really need this!
I would be more willing to 'pay as you go' if I could use some form of digital cash/micropayment system that didn't hassle you to sign up and if the products in question didn't cost too much. Back to my original example, I would happily have paid $0.50 for the privilege of printing a nicely formatted pdf over the crappy browser printout. But I am unwilling to if I have to register, give out tons of personal details, a credit card, etc. etc.
I think programming/sysadmin etc. are jobs where you 'bring your own tools' similar to many professions and trades. In other words, you're hired as a programmer because you have a skill. Maintaining that skill is up to you.
If the company wants you to learn a new skill, then clearly they should either pay to have you trained or hire someone that has the skill.
If you want to get ahead, avoid being obsolete, or just do something different, then you should invest your own time in gaining new skills.
My current employer requires 40 hours spread over two years of work-related education/training/etc. This is normally spent at conferences or trade shows, although some people go for a specific week-long class or whatever. There's also a great tuition reimbursment program, but that requires you to do it 'on your time' (and pick up about 20% of the cost assuming good grades).
So by looking at MS source, would I then be 'polluted' (from a licensing standpoint) -- unable to write free software that's compatible with/works with.NET or whatever?
Is this a marketing ploy or a legal ploy? Oh, wait, it's probably both.
At least it is in a sellers market. Houses don't show up on MLS until after the listing realtor has offered it to 2-3 of his/her close clients. Once it's on MLS all of the realtors seem to get a head start vs. electronic updates to the Internet, and (the good ones) check for updates multiple times a day and call their clients.
By the time _you_ see it on the Internet, it's been seen in person by several prospective buyers. The net result of this is that the really nice properties are always under contract by the time you see them show up on the Internet, if they get to the Internet at all.
What's left is less desireable properties -- poor location, overpriced, poor condition, etc. And these tend to stay on the Internet for months at a time.
I just bought a house after my wife and I spent endless hours driving around looking at houses we found on the Internet. None of them was any good. We finally got lucky and got a great house that our realtor hadn't put on MLS yet. Without the realtor we would still be renting.
As long as 2-3 of the most valuable employees don't like the dress code, and are willing to stand up for themselves, they could act thusly:
1: Don't follow the dress code
2: If sent home to change, come back in a different (non-dress code) outfit. Repeat.
3: When called into managers office lay out argument that dress code is silly, and they don't support it.
4: Manager is left with few options: Reprimands etc. are unlikely to influence. Threats of not getting a raise/etc. are ineffective as long as other well-paying jobs are on the horizion. Firing the irreplacable employee means putting in 4-5 other employees to take over their duties, losing massive amounts of money in the process, and exposing the company to a lawsuit. Or just drop the whole issue.
5: Once a few people have gotten away with this the whole thing becomes unenforceable, and dies on the vine.
If the valuable employee(s) get canned, they can still use co-workers as references and can pass the whole episode off to a new employer as a difference of opinion.
Risky, but showing a little backbone from time to time is a good thing.
It is also probably worth first sending an anonymous memo to the manager thats pushing/enforcing the dress code at the local site, that in essence declares war on the new policy. This gives that manager time to save face and back down on it. When push comes to shove, most managers would gladly send their company down the tubes rather than lose face over something as silly as jeans or a t-shirt.
IBM makes a nice looking 1U server that includes KVM functionality.
Compaq has one that uses the same hard drives as their other servers.
I have to agree with one of the earlier posts -- get one of each and test them. Intel/AMD/x86 chips have gotten awfully fast lately. Since the cheaper sun boxes usually use IDE and PCI, the main difference from the intel servers will be CPU, scsi vs. ide, and memory subsystem (cache amt, speed, ram amt & speed). The Sparc might make more sense if you're doing some 64 bit stuff, or using some feature that's better on sparc, e.g.: floating point.
Since the preceding seems fairly obvious, your question simplifies to: "Is solaris 8 on slower hardware better than *BSD on faster hardware?". That question is better answered by looking at your in-house solaris expertise, need to run commercial apps only available on solaris, etc.
The powerPC is a nice chip, but I don't think the 'linuxPC' concept would wash, at least not as a powerPC based system. It's been hard enough to get popular commercial software ports to intel Linux, much less different architectures. Examples: Acrobat reader, Flash plugin, Arcserve client. 'All' it would take is a re-compile to run them on PowerPC, but good luck getting commercial vendors to do it.
Look at some of the existing attempts to package linux appliances on non-x86 CPUs: Remember the sidewinder and netwinder box that Corel used to make? Looks like their new products were switched to a transmeta (ie: x86) CPU. How about Cobalt? Gone are the MIPS based models, now they run x86 chips.
Why would the average customer at a discount retailer like Best Buy purchase the PowerPC based linux system (running at, say 2GHz), vs. the Intel/AMD/Transmeta x86 based system (running at, say 6GHz)? (speed ratings inflated assuming this doesn't happen for a few years)
The RISC vs. CISC point is almost moot nowadays, given that the more advanced Pentium and Athlon chips are essentially RISC chips that emulate the x86 CISC instruction set.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'll hunker down in my anti-flame bunker.
One of the first languages I learned in College was Logo (on a 512k Mac no less). I haven't used Logo since, but I sure learned a lot about recursion. While my contemporaries were struggling with it in CS I, II, and III, I was wondering why they didn't "get it".
I've read about Eiffel in Bertrand Meyers' book "Object Oriented Software Construction". It's a great book, but I didn't/don't have time to learn Eiffel; I wish I did.
In college I used to whine about having to learn apparently useless things. Having been in the 'real world' for a while I've found that adapability is key. The fundamental principles don't change even though the languages and details do. Sure, right now Java is a hot thing to have on a resume, but quite frankly, you can pick up Java pretty quickly if you understand OO and have programmed in some other OO language. I would rather hire someone who is good at OO and then train them on Java or whatever technology my company happens to be using, rather than have a mediocre Java programmer that doesn't understand OOP.
Sure, "Ozzie and Harriet" had a car, and traffic wasn't as bad -- of course not everyone could afford a car, and if as many cars were on the road then as there are now, the environmental impact would be devastating. Same with safety -- we take seatbelts and airbags for granted, not to mention safety glass etc.
Computers have fundamentally altered nearly every aspect of our working lives. Sure, most people don't have computerized homes, but what about the office? Would 'Ozzie and Harriet' have been able to figure out how to start a robotic production line? Run an MRI? Operate a call center? Analyze financial data in Excel? Do any of a thousand things we take for granted now. If not they'd have a hard time getting a job.
Digital storage has fundamentally changed the ability of businesses and consumers to disseminate information. For example, in 1950 you could buy an encyclopedia set -- typically this was very expensive. Now you get an entire set of encyclopedias on a CD-ROM costing almost nothing. The Internet has accelerated this; company and governement websites offer information that used to require phone calls, or snail mail requests.
Materials have dramatically improved since the 50s. Sure, some of these were invented by 1950, but few if any were in widespread use: Saran wrap, teflon/gore-tex, carbon fiber/composites, a multitude of alloys, polyester.
Radio phones existed in the 50s, but it's hard to compare that to the ubiquitous cell phones and pagers of today. Lasers have allowed such medical refinements as laproscopy and vision correction.
This article seems to point out the painfully obvious -- the 'low hanging fruit' of technology has already been picked. It's difficult to conceive of a fundamental improvement to the automobile that is workable -- personal aircraft? computer control? teleportation?, likewise with home appliances. Future improvements will usually be marginal, but who knows -- maybe transmutation is just around the corner.
From what I've seen, this whole scheme is 99.999% pure legal machinations to assist in the enforcement of playing back licensed content through a (currently vaporware) hardware-dependent codec. The other 0.001% is simply a really bad idea that will potentially screw up data on hard drives.
It seems almost certain that:
1: Someone will come up with a filesystem that avoids verboten bit combinations (e.g.: UUencoded). Hey -- it's a 30% hit on capacity but drives keep getting bigger, and you could just keep usenet downloads in 'native' format. Alternately imagine using plex86/vmware style virtual drives (with virtual copy protection).
2: Someone will come up with a codec that ignores the encryption, or simply extracts the content and re-encodes with a different codec, not unlike using de-css to rip DVDs and then burn as vcds.
3: The content companies will foam at the mouth with rage. The FBI will start doing wholesale raids of homes to enforce the existing legislation.
4: The presence of suspicious filesystems, unapproved codecs, and of course 'illegal' copies, will make the consumer guilty before proven innocent. Several (dozens?) of people will get jail time. Hundreds will lose their computers for months at a time until they are cleared or impounded permamently.
This latest initiative will fail in a technical sense. From a legal perspective it would seem to provide some good evidence that you're doing something illegal, and an unfortunate few will pay the price by being scapegoats.
The only way I can see to deal with this is through civil disobedience. Ghandi style hunger strikes. Mass-revolt against the DCMA. Protest rallies. Egging and TP'ing of content company executives. Handing out thousands of free copies of a popular movie (with Chinese subtitles) that's just hit the theatres.
The target of this protest should be, must be, the basic premise of the DCMA and other copy-protection legislation, get it repealed, and prevent any replacement. Better yet, replace it with a law that prohibits copy protection.
Soooo... if IBM comes out with a computerized shirt, then Microsoft will upstage them with a computerized jacket. And where will that take us? "Oh, sorry, my jacket seems to have crashed, let me take it off and put it back on again..."
Of course the really killer app will be computerized condoms (digital technology for her pleasure). This would of course bring a whole new meaning to PKI.
The paint-on display concept would be great for cabs -- imagine times square driving down every street...
iThis is _really_ a cool IDE -- but aside from the 'code folding' feature I can't imagine using the editor.
You see, I have a VIM problem. I admit that I am addicted to VI key bindings and bcweven^[$though it's a bit difficult to learn you get used to it ^[:?VIM dwdwiVIM Addiciton.^[Ga
So my question is, when will a decend IDE come out that lets you switch 'modes' between "Normal mode" (ie: windows default), EMACS, and VI style editing. I'm sure someone will figure out a way to embed VIM and EMACS in Komodo eventually, but it sure would be nice right off the bat.^[
:wq
I've used one of these things, and even for the limited time I had to use it (1-2 hours) my wrist and fingers didn't recover for a day or so. It's sort of like a trackpoint on a laptop, but extremely stiff. Granted that my admin/programming efforts required a lot more mouse usage than the average worker would do.
Very good for use in difficult environments; factory floors, chemical production, very dirty environments, etc. Not my first choice for anything else though.
Is it just me, or does the verbage on the site just look like an attempt to extract maximal venture capital cash?
The picture looks like anything _but_ a keyboard -- ergonomic palm pilot (whoops -- should have patented that), funky gameboy with extra buttons, a 101 function universal remote control with a button for every function...
I like the idea of a one handed keyboard, but I don't think this is it. Has anyone made a one handed keyboard that isn't a chording setup? Seems like we're due for a new human-computer input device -- maybe a 3d joystick you hold like a pencil or something... who knows...
This would be very interesting vis a vis product era. For example, a 120MB SCSI 5.25" tape drive might have cost $3000 new in 1992, been a blowout clear-the-shelves price of $100 in 1995, and then be $6000 in the need-to-access-old-tapes-at-any-cost market in 1998. (prices and capacities are totally fictional to illustrate the point). Whether the brand is wang, hp, connor, exabyte, etc. is immaterial as long as it's the same technology (QIC/4mm/8mm/etc.)
I think this idea is sound, but there are so many products and so much turnover I think you'd want to aggregate somehow -- keeping with the tape drive example, look at a graph of 80MB, 120MB, 640MB, 1.2GB, etc. drives, and see the average/median/whatever price over time for a given technology, possibly with some correlation to quantities manufactured/sold.
Sounds like a great economics project for school... I think there's definitely a pattern in all of this, but how to winnow it out? Anyone work for a big distributor with access to old price databases?
Seriously, this isn't a minor plug-in a new backend sort of thing. DB2 is different with administration and the dialect of SQL is a bit different.
Overall the level of industry use/acceptance of DB2 is much lower than Oracle, particularly the Unix/NT (UDB) version of DB2. DB2 is big in the mainframe world, but good luck finding new hires with DB2 on Unix experience. Mainframe experience doesn't automatically port over to Unix experience.
Cost is going to vary widely based on:
1. Who's doing it? -- In house or hire consultants? Consultants will cost a lot more, but might be able to pull it off faster.
2. Level of in-house expertise with Oracle and DB2 (doesn't sound like much since you're asking this)
3. Timeframe, both for deploying the new database, and schedule for supporting both at the same time.
4. Training you plan to offer to existing people and/or new people you'll be hiring.
5. Level of buy-in from the technical and business users -- if the techs hate db2 the project will be an expensive failure. If the business users won't let up on change requests during the conversion then the project will likely be late and/or over budget.
6. Complexity of what you're trying to port to DB2 and the level of reliance on proprietary Oracle features.
Why are you asking Slashdot this? Seems like you should be asking us about a conversion to mySQL or PostgresSQL...:)
1: Sync to/work with more than just the desktop. e.g.: Sync to a palmpilot or pocketPC, allow access via a web browser. Support calendar updates via e-mail (ie: e-mail to calender-server@company.com). In fact, heavily use e-mail for reminders, coordination of meetings, etc. If you're coordinating a meeting, the e-mail you send to request the meeting should be reply-able to the calendar server and update that users calendar.
2: Give a powerful text-based command language so 3rd parties can heavily customize the whole thing. Allow for hooks and an API to add modules ala apache/perl/etc.
3: Do more than 'calendar management'. How about timeslips? I know a lot of team leaders who would love something better than the paper-based system they use right now. This doesn't have to a be a fancy project mangement system; just provide a way to tag time as belonging to one or more user-defined categories and a way to extract this data as needed. Of course have a journal/notes entry for documentation.
4: Multiple access/management of time by various people. For example, my boss generaly doesn't update his calendar; his secretary does. Likewise, his secretary should be able to book time on my calendar. I know that outlook supports this to an extent, but giving more flexibility/security to such an arrangement would be great. In particular, support resource scheduling and pre-emptive access to resources based on who you are (ie: my boss could 'bump' my reservation of a conference room, and I (and all other attendees) would get an e-mail notifying us of a change of venue or that we need to find something else.
The 386 (faster than a 286, but oh so expensive, and no one uses 32 bit apps yet anyway)
The 486 (who needs a math co-processor? Geez it's expensive)
The Pentium (Gosh 486's are available with the same or higher clock speed)
The Pentium Pro (16 bit apps actually run _slower_)
The Pentium II (oh, bummer, L2 cache is at half-speed, PPro is so much better...)
Lets face it; many of Intels 'new' chips don't make immediate sense, but who was buying the predecesor to any of the above chips once the new style had been in the market for a while.
Personally, I'm looking forward to the new AMD chips. As always, more bang for the buck than Intel.
Well, no, it wouldn't perpetuate the current problems. It would give everyone access -- yes you would need 'internet access', but you can get that for free at your local libary.
In practice only the people with axes to grind are going to bother getting involved until it comes time to actually do something -- then everyone who wants representation gets it in person, and if they're unwilling to represent their interests, they either don't get represented or they could nominate someone else to represent them in whole or in part.
As for the minority issue, where minorities would be under-represented in a true 'democracy'; if everyone had direct access to the political system, the system I outlined would be vastly more level than it is now. Would the rights of some be compromised in the process? Possibly, but then of course you would most likely see coalitions form as they do in other countries. Rather than two dominant parties you'd see all of the current interest groups (NAACP, AARP, NRA, etc. etc.) coalescse the support of their respective members. In this 'new order', political influence would not be peddled for money, but channeled by specific interests. Instead of the NRA making huge contributions to candidates, they would mobilize their members on specific issues, or collect some form of proxy voting power on their behalf. This sort of system would immediately be stable and correct itself through negative feedback. Hmmm... there's a thought... Engineered politics.
Out of chaos flows not entropy but a complicated system of order.
I think there is a strong case to be made for a more 'democratic' form of government based on the fact that technology now makes representative goverenment all but obsolete. Why be represented when you can participate directly? As the current U.S. system stands, it's not particularly democratic. Candidates say anything to get elected, often promising to deliver many things they have no control over. Ultimately one of them gets elected, and then gets wined and dined by big money -- special interests, corporations, etc.
In my view, the current political system pays lip service to 'democracy' while in fact to be represented you have to pony up $millions in various contributions (bribes). The only way, for example, some piece of 'important small business legislation' could ever be passed is if the small business owners got together, threw a bunch of money in a pot, and hired a professional lobbyist.
Whether we vote on punch cards, or computers, the basic political system itself will not change. I suspect that computerizing the election process would cause much more trouble than it cures. Have you ever voted? The people signing you in and operating the equipment are not exactly your typical computer literate crowd.
The implementation details are what kills this -- it's one thing to have a slashdot poll, but any election comes under a lot of scrutiny. By the time everyone has had their say in the system it's unlikely that it would ever work, and even if it did, it would cost 10-20 times what we pay now.
Disgruntled voter in New York -- the carpetbagger state!
Open source databases -- great. But how about tools to facilitate database development? In commercial terms you've got modeling systems (e.g.: Erwin), Extract-Transform-Load (ETL) tools (e.g.: Informatica, Sagent), Reporting tools (e.g.: Brio, Business Objects, etc.). GUI managers, GUI drag-n-drop development tools, etc.
In the open-source world you've got... Well you've got to custom code in some non-database-centric language, e.g.: C, C++, Java, Perl, etc.
Anyone want to start up an open-source alternative for an ETL tool? Target open-source databases as source and target systems. A usable open-source system would really raise the visibility of open source in the (hitherto) commercial-only data warehousing market.
I see that this looks much less likely to hit us (assuming no change in orbital velocity, the sun does not go supernova, etc.).
Assuming we have an extinction-level impact, this could be an excellent solution for two pressing problems: the 32-bit UNIX epoch that rolls over sometime in 2038, and the U.S. Social Security systems impending meltdown.
With any luck it will nail the U.S. Patent offices and solve yet another sticky problem.
The reason I recommend this book is that it gives you a lot of insight to how utterly depraved you may have to be to 'succeed'. The corollary is how depraved some of the people you might run into are.
Companies vary, but there is _always_ some level of political machination going on. The trick is to either be very successful at that game, or to know some techniques to avoid it.
Whether you use the knowledge to steer clear of trouble, or use it to keep your peers biting each others tails (and not your own) is up to you.
If nothing else, you may gain some perspective on _what_ you're all about as a manager, colleague, friend, husband, etc.
First, good luck and I hope this works out for you. Since you asked, here's some things to consider:
I don't think there's any such thing as a 'management' job that takes '20%' of your time. You're either a manager or not. The 20% will expand (as needed) to 100% and tech work will end up taking a back seat. I personally find this frustrating since I love the tech part of my job, but hate the management part.
If you're some sort of liason between the techie types and some other manager, then you're put in an untenable position; enforce the 'party line' while having little or no authority. Being held responsible for someone elses work, without any authority isn't much fun.
If you will _really_ have some control of things (i.e.: budget, hiring/firing, project timeline...), then you should find a mentor, or get your company to send you to some management development classes. You'll need 'real' contact with teachers and other students to pick up on techniques. Don't give in to the conceit that having _been_ managed your working life you can just dive in and _be_ an effective manager.
If you're in the position of managing former colleagues, that opens another can of worms. Former friends may feel like they are being manipulated or that you've "gone over" (depending on the degree dichotomy of management vs. staff at your company)
Finally, having made that career choice, suppose it doesn't work out and you want to go back to being a pure tech. You'll forever be a 'manager' on your resume (failed or successful) and will always have to explain why you'd want to be a pure tech rather than a manager. Sort of the "you're too qualified for this position" quandry.
On the other hand, management probably pays better and, ironically, most companies will pay a good techie a lot more as a mediocre manager.
I think the computer profession needs a reworking so that you can be just as successful (money-wise and respect-wise) as a pure technical wizard, even if you're not a V.P. or Director with your worth determined by number of direct reports.
Some books that I've found very helpful are:
The Seven Habits of Hightly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey
How to win friends and influence people by Dale Carnegie
Slashdot Mirror
I can give you my personal reason I'm averse to paying for online content: A percieved lack of value-add, with a concrete chunk of money extracted from my account regularly.
A good example of this is Ars Technica. I wanted to read an article. I noticed a link to download a pdf version of the file. I figured "great, I can print it out and read it in bed!". I click the link and it turns out you not only have to register, you have to pay a monthly membership fee.
So now I've got two options: pony up $50 a year for a membership, for which I may or may not ever want to print an article out again, or just print out the (lousy due to paged html setup) web pages.
In other cases I'm reluctant to sign up for a site because it's one more thing to explain to the wife -- but honey, I really need this!
I would be more willing to 'pay as you go' if I could use some form of digital cash/micropayment system that didn't hassle you to sign up and if the products in question didn't cost too much. Back to my original example, I would happily have paid $0.50 for the privilege of printing a nicely formatted pdf over the crappy browser printout. But I am unwilling to if I have to register, give out tons of personal details, a credit card, etc. etc.
I think programming/sysadmin etc. are jobs where you 'bring your own tools' similar to many professions and trades. In other words, you're hired as a programmer because you have a skill. Maintaining that skill is up to you.
If the company wants you to learn a new skill, then clearly they should either pay to have you trained or hire someone that has the skill.
If you want to get ahead, avoid being obsolete, or just do something different, then you should invest your own time in gaining new skills.
My current employer requires 40 hours spread over two years of work-related education/training/etc. This is normally spent at conferences or trade shows, although some people go for a specific week-long class or whatever. There's also a great tuition reimbursment program, but that requires you to do it 'on your time' (and pick up about 20% of the cost assuming good grades).
So by looking at MS source, would I then be 'polluted' (from a licensing standpoint) -- unable to write free software that's compatible with/works with .NET or whatever?
Is this a marketing ploy or a legal ploy? Oh, wait, it's probably both.
At least it is in a sellers market. Houses don't show up on MLS until after the listing realtor has offered it to 2-3 of his/her close clients. Once it's on MLS all of the realtors seem to get a head start vs. electronic updates to the Internet, and (the good ones) check for updates multiple times a day and call their clients.
By the time _you_ see it on the Internet, it's been seen in person by several prospective buyers. The net result of this is that the really nice properties are always under contract by the time you see them show up on the Internet, if they get to the Internet at all.
What's left is less desireable properties -- poor location, overpriced, poor condition, etc. And these tend to stay on the Internet for months at a time.
I just bought a house after my wife and I spent endless hours driving around looking at houses we found on the Internet. None of them was any good. We finally got lucky and got a great house that our realtor hadn't put on MLS yet. Without the realtor we would still be renting.
As long as 2-3 of the most valuable employees don't like the dress code, and are willing to stand up for themselves, they could act thusly:
1: Don't follow the dress code
2: If sent home to change, come back in a different (non-dress code) outfit. Repeat.
3: When called into managers office lay out argument that dress code is silly, and they don't support it.
4: Manager is left with few options: Reprimands etc. are unlikely to influence. Threats of not getting a raise/etc. are ineffective as long as other well-paying jobs are on the horizion. Firing the irreplacable employee means putting in 4-5 other employees to take over their duties, losing massive amounts of money in the process, and exposing the company to a lawsuit. Or just drop the whole issue.
5: Once a few people have gotten away with this the whole thing becomes unenforceable, and dies on the vine.
If the valuable employee(s) get canned, they can still use co-workers as references and can pass the whole episode off to a new employer as a difference of opinion.
Risky, but showing a little backbone from time to time is a good thing.
It is also probably worth first sending an anonymous memo to the manager thats pushing/enforcing the dress code at the local site, that in essence declares war on the new policy. This gives that manager time to save face and back down on it. When push comes to shove, most managers would gladly send their company down the tubes rather than lose face over something as silly as jeans or a t-shirt.
IBM makes a nice looking 1U server that includes KVM functionality.
Compaq has one that uses the same hard drives as their other servers.
I have to agree with one of the earlier posts -- get one of each and test them. Intel/AMD/x86 chips have gotten awfully fast lately. Since the cheaper sun boxes usually use IDE and PCI, the main difference from the intel servers will be CPU, scsi vs. ide, and memory subsystem (cache amt, speed, ram amt & speed). The Sparc might make more sense if you're doing some 64 bit stuff, or using some feature that's better on sparc, e.g.: floating point.
Since the preceding seems fairly obvious, your question simplifies to: "Is solaris 8 on slower hardware better than *BSD on faster hardware?". That question is better answered by looking at your in-house solaris expertise, need to run commercial apps only available on solaris, etc.
I just have to ask: Why?
The powerPC is a nice chip, but I don't think the 'linuxPC' concept would wash, at least not as a powerPC based system. It's been hard enough to get popular commercial software ports to intel Linux, much less different architectures. Examples: Acrobat reader, Flash plugin, Arcserve client. 'All' it would take is a re-compile to run them on PowerPC, but good luck getting commercial vendors to do it.
Look at some of the existing attempts to package linux appliances on non-x86 CPUs: Remember the sidewinder and netwinder box that Corel used to make? Looks like their new products were switched to a transmeta (ie: x86) CPU. How about Cobalt? Gone are the MIPS based models, now they run x86 chips.
Why would the average customer at a discount retailer like Best Buy purchase the PowerPC based linux system (running at, say 2GHz), vs. the Intel/AMD/Transmeta x86 based system (running at, say 6GHz)? (speed ratings inflated assuming this doesn't happen for a few years)
The RISC vs. CISC point is almost moot nowadays, given that the more advanced Pentium and Athlon chips are essentially RISC chips that emulate the x86 CISC instruction set.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'll hunker down in my anti-flame bunker.
One of the first languages I learned in College was Logo (on a 512k Mac no less). I haven't used Logo since, but I sure learned a lot about recursion. While my contemporaries were struggling with it in CS I, II, and III, I was wondering why they didn't "get it".
I've read about Eiffel in Bertrand Meyers' book "Object Oriented Software Construction". It's a great book, but I didn't/don't have time to learn Eiffel; I wish I did.
In college I used to whine about having to learn apparently useless things. Having been in the 'real world' for a while I've found that adapability is key. The fundamental principles don't change even though the languages and details do. Sure, right now Java is a hot thing to have on a resume, but quite frankly, you can pick up Java pretty quickly if you understand OO and have programmed in some other OO language. I would rather hire someone who is good at OO and then train them on Java or whatever technology my company happens to be using, rather than have a mediocre Java programmer that doesn't understand OOP.
Sure, "Ozzie and Harriet" had a car, and traffic wasn't as bad -- of course not everyone could afford a car, and if as many cars were on the road then as there are now, the environmental impact would be devastating. Same with safety -- we take seatbelts and airbags for granted, not to mention safety glass etc.
Computers have fundamentally altered nearly every aspect of our working lives. Sure, most people don't have computerized homes, but what about the office? Would 'Ozzie and Harriet' have been able to figure out how to start a robotic production line? Run an MRI? Operate a call center? Analyze financial data in Excel? Do any of a thousand things we take for granted now. If not they'd have a hard time getting a job.
Digital storage has fundamentally changed the ability of businesses and consumers to disseminate information. For example, in 1950 you could buy an encyclopedia set -- typically this was very expensive. Now you get an entire set of encyclopedias on a CD-ROM costing almost nothing. The Internet has accelerated this; company and governement websites offer information that used to require phone calls, or snail mail requests.
Materials have dramatically improved since the 50s. Sure, some of these were invented by 1950, but few if any were in widespread use: Saran wrap, teflon/gore-tex, carbon fiber/composites, a multitude of alloys, polyester.
Radio phones existed in the 50s, but it's hard to compare that to the ubiquitous cell phones and pagers of today. Lasers have allowed such medical refinements as laproscopy and vision correction.
This article seems to point out the painfully obvious -- the 'low hanging fruit' of technology has already been picked. It's difficult to conceive of a fundamental improvement to the automobile that is workable -- personal aircraft? computer control? teleportation?, likewise with home appliances. Future improvements will usually be marginal, but who knows -- maybe transmutation is just around the corner.
From what I've seen, this whole scheme is 99.999% pure legal machinations to assist in the enforcement of playing back licensed content through a (currently vaporware) hardware-dependent codec. The other 0.001% is simply a really bad idea that will potentially screw up data on hard drives.
It seems almost certain that:
1: Someone will come up with a filesystem that avoids verboten bit combinations (e.g.: UUencoded). Hey -- it's a 30% hit on capacity but drives keep getting bigger, and you could just keep usenet downloads in 'native' format. Alternately imagine using plex86/vmware style virtual drives (with virtual copy protection).
2: Someone will come up with a codec that ignores the encryption, or simply extracts the content and re-encodes with a different codec, not unlike using de-css to rip DVDs and then burn as vcds.
3: The content companies will foam at the mouth with rage. The FBI will start doing wholesale raids of homes to enforce the existing legislation.
4: The presence of suspicious filesystems, unapproved codecs, and of course 'illegal' copies, will make the consumer guilty before proven innocent. Several (dozens?) of people will get jail time. Hundreds will lose their computers for months at a time until they are cleared or impounded permamently.
This latest initiative will fail in a technical sense. From a legal perspective it would seem to provide some good evidence that you're doing something illegal, and an unfortunate few will pay the price by being scapegoats.
The only way I can see to deal with this is through civil disobedience. Ghandi style hunger strikes. Mass-revolt against the DCMA. Protest rallies. Egging and TP'ing of content company executives. Handing out thousands of free copies of a popular movie (with Chinese subtitles) that's just hit the theatres.
The target of this protest should be, must be, the basic premise of the DCMA and other copy-protection legislation, get it repealed, and prevent any replacement. Better yet, replace it with a law that prohibits copy protection.
Soooo... if IBM comes out with a computerized shirt, then Microsoft will upstage them with a computerized jacket. And where will that take us? "Oh, sorry, my jacket seems to have crashed, let me take it off and put it back on again..."
Of course the really killer app will be computerized condoms (digital technology for her pleasure). This would of course bring a whole new meaning to PKI.
The paint-on display concept would be great for cabs -- imagine times square driving down every street...
iThis is _really_ a cool IDE -- but aside from the 'code folding' feature I can't imagine using the editor.
You see, I have a VIM problem. I admit that I am addicted to VI key bindings and bcweven^[$though it's a bit difficult to learn you get used to it ^[:?VIM dwdwiVIM Addiciton.^[Ga
So my question is, when will a decend IDE come out that lets you switch 'modes' between "Normal mode" (ie: windows default), EMACS, and VI style editing. I'm sure someone will figure out a way to embed VIM and EMACS in Komodo eventually, but it sure would be nice right off the bat.^[
:wq
I've used one of these things, and even for the limited time I had to use it (1-2 hours) my wrist and fingers didn't recover for a day or so. It's sort of like a trackpoint on a laptop, but extremely stiff. Granted that my admin/programming efforts required a lot more mouse usage than the average worker would do.
Very good for use in difficult environments; factory floors, chemical production, very dirty environments, etc. Not my first choice for anything else though.
Is it just me, or does the verbage on the site just look like an attempt to extract maximal venture capital cash?
The picture looks like anything _but_ a keyboard -- ergonomic palm pilot (whoops -- should have patented that), funky gameboy with extra buttons, a 101 function universal remote control with a button for every function...
I like the idea of a one handed keyboard, but I don't think this is it. Has anyone made a one handed keyboard that isn't a chording setup? Seems like we're due for a new human-computer input device -- maybe a 3d joystick you hold like a pencil or something... who knows...
This would be very interesting vis a vis product era. For example, a 120MB SCSI 5.25" tape drive might have cost $3000 new in 1992, been a blowout clear-the-shelves price of $100 in 1995, and then be $6000 in the need-to-access-old-tapes-at-any-cost market in 1998. (prices and capacities are totally fictional to illustrate the point). Whether the brand is wang, hp, connor, exabyte, etc. is immaterial as long as it's the same technology (QIC/4mm/8mm/etc.)
I think this idea is sound, but there are so many products and so much turnover I think you'd want to aggregate somehow -- keeping with the tape drive example, look at a graph of 80MB, 120MB, 640MB, 1.2GB, etc. drives, and see the average/median/whatever price over time for a given technology, possibly with some correlation to quantities manufactured/sold.
Sounds like a great economics project for school... I think there's definitely a pattern in all of this, but how to winnow it out? Anyone work for a big distributor with access to old price databases?
Seriously, this isn't a minor plug-in a new backend sort of thing. DB2 is different with administration and the dialect of SQL is a bit different.
:)
Overall the level of industry use/acceptance of DB2 is much lower than Oracle, particularly the Unix/NT (UDB) version of DB2. DB2 is big in the mainframe world, but good luck finding new hires with DB2 on Unix experience. Mainframe experience doesn't automatically port over to Unix experience.
Cost is going to vary widely based on:
1. Who's doing it? -- In house or hire consultants? Consultants will cost a lot more, but might be able to pull it off faster.
2. Level of in-house expertise with Oracle and DB2 (doesn't sound like much since you're asking this)
3. Timeframe, both for deploying the new database, and schedule for supporting both at the same time.
4. Training you plan to offer to existing people and/or new people you'll be hiring.
5. Level of buy-in from the technical and business users -- if the techs hate db2 the project will be an expensive failure. If the business users won't let up on change requests during the conversion then the project will likely be late and/or over budget.
6. Complexity of what you're trying to port to DB2 and the level of reliance on proprietary Oracle features.
Why are you asking Slashdot this? Seems like you should be asking us about a conversion to mySQL or PostgresSQL...
You asked for a wishlist...
1: Sync to/work with more than just the desktop. e.g.: Sync to a palmpilot or pocketPC, allow access via a web browser. Support calendar updates via e-mail (ie: e-mail to calender-server@company.com). In fact, heavily use e-mail for reminders, coordination of meetings, etc. If you're coordinating a meeting, the e-mail you send to request the meeting should be reply-able to the calendar server and update that users calendar.
2: Give a powerful text-based command language so 3rd parties can heavily customize the whole thing. Allow for hooks and an API to add modules ala apache/perl/etc.
3: Do more than 'calendar management'. How about timeslips? I know a lot of team leaders who would love something better than the paper-based system they use right now. This doesn't have to a be a fancy project mangement system; just provide a way to tag time as belonging to one or more user-defined categories and a way to extract this data as needed. Of course have a journal/notes entry for documentation.
4: Multiple access/management of time by various people. For example, my boss generaly doesn't update his calendar; his secretary does. Likewise, his secretary should be able to book time on my calendar. I know that outlook supports this to an extent, but giving more flexibility/security to such an arrangement would be great. In particular, support resource scheduling and pre-emptive access to resources based on who you are (ie: my boss could 'bump' my reservation of a conference room, and I (and all other attendees) would get an e-mail notifying us of a change of venue or that we need to find something else.
This reminds me of...
The 386 (faster than a 286, but oh so expensive, and no one uses 32 bit apps yet anyway)
The 486 (who needs a math co-processor? Geez it's expensive)
The Pentium (Gosh 486's are available with the same or higher clock speed)
The Pentium Pro (16 bit apps actually run _slower_)
The Pentium II (oh, bummer, L2 cache is at half-speed, PPro is so much better...)
Lets face it; many of Intels 'new' chips don't make immediate sense, but who was buying the predecesor to any of the above chips once the new style had been in the market for a while.
Personally, I'm looking forward to the new AMD chips. As always, more bang for the buck than Intel.
Well, no, it wouldn't perpetuate the current problems. It would give everyone access -- yes you would need 'internet access', but you can get that for free at your local libary.
In practice only the people with axes to grind are going to bother getting involved until it comes time to actually do something -- then everyone who wants representation gets it in person, and if they're unwilling to represent their interests, they either don't get represented or they could nominate someone else to represent them in whole or in part.
As for the minority issue, where minorities would be under-represented in a true 'democracy'; if everyone had direct access to the political system, the system I outlined would be vastly more level than it is now. Would the rights of some be compromised in the process? Possibly, but then of course you would most likely see coalitions form as they do in other countries. Rather than two dominant parties you'd see all of the current interest groups (NAACP, AARP, NRA, etc. etc.) coalescse the support of their respective members. In this 'new order', political influence would not be peddled for money, but channeled by specific interests. Instead of the NRA making huge contributions to candidates, they would mobilize their members on specific issues, or collect some form of proxy voting power on their behalf. This sort of system would immediately be stable and correct itself through negative feedback. Hmmm... there's a thought... Engineered politics.
Out of chaos flows not entropy but a complicated system of order.
I think there is a strong case to be made for a more 'democratic' form of government based on the fact that technology now makes representative goverenment all but obsolete. Why be represented when you can participate directly? As the current U.S. system stands, it's not particularly democratic. Candidates say anything to get elected, often promising to deliver many things they have no control over. Ultimately one of them gets elected, and then gets wined and dined by big money -- special interests, corporations, etc.
In my view, the current political system pays lip service to 'democracy' while in fact to be represented you have to pony up $millions in various contributions (bribes). The only way, for example, some piece of 'important small business legislation' could ever be passed is if the small business owners got together, threw a bunch of money in a pot, and hired a professional lobbyist.
Whether we vote on punch cards, or computers, the basic political system itself will not change. I suspect that computerizing the election process would cause much more trouble than it cures. Have you ever voted? The people signing you in and operating the equipment are not exactly your typical computer literate crowd.
The implementation details are what kills this -- it's one thing to have a slashdot poll, but any election comes under a lot of scrutiny. By the time everyone has had their say in the system it's unlikely that it would ever work, and even if it did, it would cost 10-20 times what we pay now.
Disgruntled voter in New York -- the carpetbagger state!
Open source databases -- great. But how about tools to facilitate database development? In commercial terms you've got modeling systems (e.g.: Erwin), Extract-Transform-Load (ETL) tools (e.g.: Informatica, Sagent), Reporting tools (e.g.: Brio, Business Objects, etc.). GUI managers, GUI drag-n-drop development tools, etc.
In the open-source world you've got... Well you've got to custom code in some non-database-centric language, e.g.: C, C++, Java, Perl, etc.
Anyone want to start up an open-source alternative for an ETL tool? Target open-source databases as source and target systems. A usable open-source system would really raise the visibility of open source in the (hitherto) commercial-only data warehousing market.
I see that this looks much less likely to hit us (assuming no change in orbital velocity, the sun does not go supernova, etc.).
Assuming we have an extinction-level impact, this could be an excellent solution for two pressing problems: the 32-bit UNIX epoch that rolls over sometime in 2038, and the U.S. Social Security systems impending meltdown.
With any luck it will nail the U.S. Patent offices and solve yet another sticky problem.
The reason I recommend this book is that it gives you a lot of insight to how utterly depraved you may have to be to 'succeed'. The corollary is how depraved some of the people you might run into are.
Companies vary, but there is _always_ some level of political machination going on. The trick is to either be very successful at that game, or to know some techniques to avoid it.
Whether you use the knowledge to steer clear of trouble, or use it to keep your peers biting each others tails (and not your own) is up to you.
If nothing else, you may gain some perspective on _what_ you're all about as a manager, colleague, friend, husband, etc.
First, good luck and I hope this works out for you. Since you asked, here's some things to consider:
I don't think there's any such thing as a 'management' job that takes '20%' of your time. You're either a manager or not. The 20% will expand (as needed) to 100% and tech work will end up taking a back seat. I personally find this frustrating since I love the tech part of my job, but hate the management part.
If you're some sort of liason between the techie types and some other manager, then you're put in an untenable position; enforce the 'party line' while having little or no authority. Being held responsible for someone elses work, without any authority isn't much fun.
If you will _really_ have some control of things (i.e.: budget, hiring/firing, project timeline...), then you should find a mentor, or get your company to send you to some management development classes. You'll need 'real' contact with teachers and other students to pick up on techniques. Don't give in to the conceit that having _been_ managed your working life you can just dive in and _be_ an effective manager.
If you're in the position of managing former colleagues, that opens another can of worms. Former friends may feel like they are being manipulated or that you've "gone over" (depending on the degree dichotomy of management vs. staff at your company)
Finally, having made that career choice, suppose it doesn't work out and you want to go back to being a pure tech. You'll forever be a 'manager' on your resume (failed or successful) and will always have to explain why you'd want to be a pure tech rather than a manager. Sort of the "you're too qualified for this position" quandry.
On the other hand, management probably pays better and, ironically, most companies will pay a good techie a lot more as a mediocre manager.
I think the computer profession needs a reworking so that you can be just as successful (money-wise and respect-wise) as a pure technical wizard, even if you're not a V.P. or Director with your worth determined by number of direct reports.
Some books that I've found very helpful are:
The Seven Habits of Hightly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey
How to win friends and influence people by Dale Carnegie
The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli