I'd suggest using a service wrapper. There are a few free ones out there. Some applications need a user context though and not all wrappers will handle that well.
I'm a big fan of winserv for exactly that purpose. Unfortunately as you say, I have some "servers" that add systray menu icons to access a console GUI, and access to those is pretty much required.
On the upside though, out of the three application servers I've limited all of those type apps to one server. which is the only one utilizing the auto login trick.
Not much sensitive is on it either. One app logs from all the electrostatic discharge stations on the shop floor. Another is a print server for the barcode thermals. Stuff like that.
Unfortunately it does not. Nor do some of it's dependencies.
At first I used to try every couple months or so, after wine had a number of updates and more on the compatibility list. I admit that lately I've been trying a bit less often, and ever since the prerequisite hardware order was approved, I've been more focused on a smooth transition to the new version instead.
Sadly this system was already in place when I got there, chosen and setup by my predecessor not 2-3 years before then. The staff still remember the pains in switching from DBA+FileMaker over to our current ERP system. Another change to a completely different ERP package will not be looked favorably on unless there are some majorly good reasons I can provide. No one else but me really cares what goes on for the back end, so that argument won't be enough.
When I was first hired on, I did spend quite a bit of time working with it in Wine. The minor updates to ERP kept trying to beat the idea out of me though.
For example, initially the biggest two dependencies were with MS Access 97 runtime (It can only work with the 97 runtime, or the full 2003 Access) and.NET 3 At the time, Wine did not support the Access runtime, had some issues with the 2003 full version, and did not support above.NET 2
Once Wine got.NET 3 compatibility far enough to work, the ERP app added some features that now required.NET 3.5, which was not:/
Today, the Access runtime is still not at all compatible, and there has been little to no improvement on 2003 Access. Unfortunately this would require the purchasing of ~150 copies of MS Access 2003, which isn't available through normal Microsoft channels, and still more money then I'm likely to get approved. It does run fine on Windows now after all, in the eyes of the VPs.
The up side is, almost all of our other critical software used on the shop floor PCs I have gotten to run under Wine. One of the first things I did was get rid of our Win2000 time clock terminals, and replaced them with Debian kiosks running time clock client under Wine.
I've also replaced all the old OS/2 Warp hardware with current generation PCs running Linux and VirtualBox, with OS/2 in there. No more 2gb HD limits, no more unsupported sata and network cards, no more OS/2 TCP/IP for backups, etc. It was a wonderful upgrade.
I have a bad feeling the new major update to ERP will require.NET 4 or some crap, and although they are ditching MS Access for the reporting side of things, I'm not sure what will be replacing it. I'll also finally get to deprecate our SQL Server 2000 server in favor of SQL Server 2010, which is now supported (and in fact 2000 is not at all supported, thus the required upgrade and new hardware to run it)
After I get used to this new major version under Windows, I most certainly will give Wine another shot however.
I maintain a clean desktop, too. My trick since the windows 95 days is to put shortcuts to stuff I use frequently into a desktop folder, which I keep open all the time. With the taskbar on the left side of the screen, it's easy to select the folder when I need to run one of the things in it, otherwise it's the Start button.
I have a similar trick, but using menus instead of having a folder window open all the time. Under my user folder is a "Toolbars" folder. Inside that is one folder per menu I want. "Apps" and "Servers" are my main ones. Apps are my frequently used apps, and Servers contains.RDP files to different machines to remote into.
Then you right-click the taskbar, go to toolbars, and "New toolbar...". Select one of those folders and it pops up in an ugly way. Right-click on the toolbar icon itself, and you can set it to Not display the icon, Do display the label, and then resize it to fit the name.
This gives me a "Servers >>" label in the taskbar, and if you click the ">>" part, it opens a menu with whatever you put in the real folder.
It looks cleanest when the names are one word and short (No more than 8-9 letters)
You can also right-click on the text of the label and hit "Open Folder" to bring up the actual explorer window, either to use as you currently do or just to change things around.
Since I try to keep my desktop clear of icons (But usually fail at it after a short time), I also keep a toolbar pointing to my desktop folder. Then I can hide the desktop icons completely, but still access them through a menu, open it in a folder, or just re-enable desktop icons depending on my mood at the moment.
If anything however, this is more like having many start menus, instead of getting rid of my only start menu. I tend to dislike the real start menu due to app installers just generally making a horrid mess of it that I finally got sick and tired of fighting to keep organized.
The only time I've seen staff use the Start button here is to log off when they're done with the machine. If there was a button on the taskbar to do that, they'd never use the Start menu at all!
In case you actually wanted to provide that, it's pretty easy to do.
Create a shortcut, and make the target: C:\windows\system32\shutdown.exe -L
Then you can change it's icon to a custom one, or just browse to \windows\system32\shell32.dll and pick the normal icon out of there.
The -L flag is log off. You also have -r to reboot and -s to shutdown.
Similarly, you can make a "lock terminal" icon too. Create a shortcut and make the target: C:\windows\system32\rundll32.exe user32.dll,LockWorkStation
Ironically, the last one there is very useful on application servers if you have any programs that run as servers but are not a real service. I have one server scripted to auto login as administrator, and then a few shortcuts in the program menus "startup" folder, prefixed with numbers to provide an order. The very last icon in the startup folder is named "9999-Lock" which is the above shortcut.
On boot up, the server auto logs in, runs the crap software, and locks the terminal. This all happens in a few seconds, so anyone local at the console would not have any chance to do much before it locked on them. You still need the password to unlock just the same as login, so its pretty secure if your servers are locked away in a server room.
All 100 Atari Greatest Hits games are free on iOS today.
Actually, it is 1 Atari game for free (Missile Command)
Quote: Buy additional games in 2 unique ways: 1. 25 separate packs available for download at $0.99 2. Buy all 100 games for a discounted price of $9.99 (basically the price of a movie ticket)
Not a bad price at all though, and in fact I bought the full 100 set too. I just wanted to point out they aren't free however.
too bad, all the idiots who choose to drive after drinking more than they should deserve to go to jail. i'll drive a few hours after i have one drink. maybe one and a half. these idiots got drunk and drove a car
So you readily admit you are a drunk driver. You have done all that is needed to go to jail.
But you know what? It gets worse! Your even more of a hypocrite. Because even without drinking ANYTHING but water for weeks, you have done all that is required to go to jail for being a drunk driver. These tests can show positive while there is not a drop of alcohol in your system. So yes, you did say people who do not drink should have jail time for it.
Yet you don't turn yourself in. And you continue to claim other idiots doing the same drunk driving as you, and worse doing the same drunk driving as none what so ever, all deserve jail time while you yourself are skirting your own jail time.
I would love to see a picture of your head. The shape it must be in after the mental gymnastics you have done must be fairly impressive.
* For wishing jail time on people who only drink water, you should be ashamed. * For wishing jail time on people who do exactly what you do, while hiding from the law and your sentence yourself, you should feel embarrassed. * For actually being a drunk driver, you should feel bad and hate yourself.
I am the IT manager at the company I work for, and am the one responsible for the server infrastructure and ~150 client computers The only thing keeping us on Windows at work is due to our highly specialized and highly expensive ERP system, which runs most all aspects of the business.
If this system had an update released tomorrow that gave it Linux support, or even Mac support, I would ditch Windows like the bad habit it is faster than you could double-click.
The ERP company literally just released an update to allow the client to run on Windows 7 and not fall on its face on a 64 bit OS. 6 months ago now.
I began our XP to 7 migration plan a while before that, but with this rather critical dependency those plans have been on hold until January.
After putting in all the capital expenditure and purchase order requests to update our 5-6 year old Win2003 servers, I only last month got approval. I'm not expecting to get the hardware for another 2-3 weeks. I'm expecting the ERP upgrade to take longer to fully test than I am the Windows 7 upgrade.
After all of this, I am not about to even listen to, let alone consider, how "easy" it is for enterprise software to be written for Win 8. That does not help with our million and a quarter dollar investment in existing software. I'm not about to replace last years 23" wide screen LCDs with new touch screens, especially so when our primary use is data entry. And I'm most certainly not looking forward to tossing out a decade of knowledge and learning experiences for Windows 8.
On that last point, while I fully expect to be playing around with and learning Windows 8 on my own, one thing that needs firmly kept in mind is that the company I work for does electronics manufacturing. Nearly no one is or has interest in the technicals of computers. They just prefer computers over pen paper and calculators. We even have a whole department of 30 people, of which only TWO own computers at home. (Yes this is as boggling to me as it no doubt is to you, especially in this day and age!) These are not people who use computers purely for the sake of using computers, like we are. To them they are just tools to get work done easier and quicker. Anything that distracts from that simple and only goal is not a benefit to us, and Win 8 falls firmly in that category.
I am not in any way looking forward to the re-training Windows 8 would require ON TOP OF the training for the new ERP update, which we already have to do.
Point being, Windows 8 is nothing but a bunch of time and money that does not benefit me or our company in any additional way than XP has and 7 will for some time to come. Even if it was free software, my time would be better spent elsewhere, that would more than likely end up saving us time and/or money, if not actively making us money.
Windows 8 doesn't bring anything to the table we want. While not all businesses are the same, I think Microsoft is about to be surprised by how many are similar in this regard.
Actually, it wasn't impossible, just that U.S. Robots and Mechanical Men didn't build them (generally). And only USR could build the positronic brains.
I wonder if USR still has 56k modems rolling off the assembly lines along with the positronic brains...
What's really shitty is that HP (not to defend them given my hatred of them) is mostly involved in a nuclear capacity with regards to medicine, not weaponry.
That raises an excellent point. Is chemotherapy and radiation therapy both illegal in Takoma Park? Do they really let cancer patients die due to this ban? Or are they all just hypocrites who take advantage of a technology when it benefits them but deny it to others when it benefits someone other than them?
For another, the Sun and the Moon have almost exactly the same apparent diameter as seen from Earth - surely that's just a statistically unusual coincidence, but technically, we don't really know but that it might be anomalously common, and in complete contrast to the random ratios we might expect, for the same situation to occur elsewhere.
Our moon is moving away from Earth at a consistently measured speed of almost 4 cm per year. This is from directly observed evidence.
This means that on tiny galactic time scales such as hundreds of millions to a billion years, we can accurately predict the moons distance from earth at any particular point of time within that time scale. The Suns diameter is about 400 times greater than the moons, however *right now* the Sun is also about 400 times further away, thus the apparent diameter is the same.
Further back in time, the moon was closer, and thus appeared larger than the Sun. In the future, it will be further away and thus appear smaller than the Sun.
We also have direct observed evidence that life existed on Earth a billion years ago, when the moon did not appear the same diameter as the Sun. While it is completely possible that such variables do come into play regarding the formation of life, the fact the moon and Sun appear to have almost an identical diameter has no bearing on that. We know the moon can be closer and thus appear larger and still have life.
As a side note, the moons distance is also related to the rotational period of the Earth. A day is 1440 minutes right now, but in the past a day was shorter, and in the future it will be longer. Granted, in only a tiny 100 years different, the day was only 2ms different. But a billion or so years ago it was a number of hours shorter than it currently is.
Also the proximity of the moon to the Earth has a gravitational effect on both bodies, which has also changed over time. While "1 G" is defined as 1 earth gravity worth, the value of 1 G has changed over time and will continue to do so.
Life has grown, been nearly extinguished, regrown, etc etc a number of times now - where these variables have been different each time it happened.
If those variables are related to life forming at all, then there is clearly a lot of wiggle room the values can be. Earth is clearly special, but statistically it is not unique, and the total range of variables that can match those the Earth has had over time is larger and more complex than just "1".
Realizing there is no chance anyone will read TFA, let alone discuss it, personally I would just be happy if the homophobes would crawl back under their rocks and let the important off topic discussions continue!
Put the computer in the living room and smack 'em in the head when you catch them going where they shouldn't
Wow you got the same tripe in first yet again!
How does your solution prevent porn ads from regular non-porn websites? How does your solution prevent popup/under ads? How does your solution prevent drive-by downloads of malware?
A parent watching (or hell, a parent at the fucking keyboard) can't stop these things.
A good web filter is wise even for your own usage, let alone children. It has NOTHING to do with blocking them from seeking out porn. The Internet has a way of forcing these things on you if you want them or not.
If you would have used the Internet for more than a few days you would know this.
Then why haven't you turned yourself in? You've broken hundreds of laws today alone, and if you count all the countries of the world, you have broken thousands of laws today alone.
I don't see you making an example of what you preach...
So you won't find any money inside of an ATM machine. ATM machines only build ATMs, so they are full of ATM parts. If you are after money, you should more likely go after the ATM itself.
How open can the system be when it runs on someone else's hardware under someone else's control?
You sound just like the old greybeards "Why on earth would you ever want to use Unix?! I mean it's not even your computer under your control!"
Just as one can install any flavor and distro of unix on their own hardware at home or work, so too can it be done with "cloud" management software.
I have three systems running in my basement all running as virtualization hosts. Each and every one of those is owned by me, and is run by me. The only thing missing to make it a "cloud" is the management software, which are tasks I perform manually right now.
I would LOVE to be able to load up a tiny hypervisor on a flash drive to boot a brand new machine from, plug it in my network, and BAM have it's CPU memory and storage resources added to the pool automatically, and not have to think about it. I would love to be able to just specify the VM instance I want, and let the software figure out the best actual server to put it on this moment, as well as have the software move them all around willy-nilly to best utilize the available resources.
It's also worth noting for you that if such software existed and I installed it, then the hardware will still be owned by me, and I will still manage it.
I haven't heard of OpenStack before this article, and have no idea how far along the project it (sounds like not very, but we all know how accurate slashdot summaries tend to be), but if they actually delivered on that promise I would install it for my own use in a heartbeat.
Perfect software doesn't exist and neither will it ever. If someone claims they can, make sure you know where your wallet is. It's like the koan, "If you meet the Buddha, kill him."
Exactly. One of the best examples that comes to mind is the guidance software written for the first space shuttle computer, and even that had bugs. It was also 20x more expensive than the normal going rate at the time, and technically speaking it contained only about one two hundredth less bugs by number of lines of code.
Damn impressive for sure, but far from a zero. It also cost half a billion 1960's dollars!
As anyone who has ever used a computer knows, software is seldom error-free. A statistical average for software used in critical systems (flight control, air traffic control, etc.) shows that programs average 10-12 errors for every 1,000 lines of software code. This was clearly unacceptable to NASA for use on the Space Shuttle. As a result, NASA forced one of the most stringent test and verification processes ever undertaken on IBM for the primary avionics system software. 21
The result achieved by the 300 IBM programmers, analysts, engineers, and subcontractors was impressive. An analysis accomplished after the Challenger accident showed that the IBM developed PASS software had a latent defect rate of just 0.11 errors per 1,000 lines of code - for all intents and purposes, it was considered error-free. But this remarkable achievement did not come easily or cheap. In an industry where the average line of code cost the government (at the time of the report) approximately $50 (written, documented, and tested), the Primary Avionics System Software cost NASA slightly over $1,000 per line. A total of $500 million was paid to IBM for the initial development and support of PASS. 22
The absolute best (to watch others fight with) is when both the projector and the laptop have a sense detector for the signal.
Turn on projector and hit "PC" button.. it looks for a signal for maybe 5 seconds and then flips back over to "Video"
At the same time, the laptop is using the internal LCD and you hit a function key to flip to external VGA, only to have it detect no monitor connected and flip back to the internal display!
If the timing isn't just right on both devices so that they see each other, the operator ends up looking like a lawn sprinkler swinging back and forth between laptop keyboard and pointing the remote up at the projector
How exactly is it a win for Oracle? They now have a competing VM that can run Java code. Considering Android's position in the mobile market, I'd say for Oracle this means Java goes into a slow eclipse.
It is a win for Oracle in at least one way.
Had the judge ruled in Oracles favor, then the second the gavel hit the desk, every last piece of software Oracle ever made is now in infringement.
Let's look at Java alone for now. The installation screen claims 10 billion devices run Java. That is 10 billion counts of willful infringement documented.
Java for Windows is compiled against the win32 API which Oracle has no license for. Java for Linux is compiled against glib which Oracle has no license for. Java for BSD is compiled against libc which Oracle has no license for. Java for Mac is compiled against whatever Apple calls their toolbox this year (Quartz? Cocoa? I'm quite behind in that world), but am certain Oracle has no license to use that API either.
Oracle also failed to pay Intel a license for the bytecode API on the CPU. Compiling from source code to object code to assembly uses the processors API and they document 10 billion counts of willful infringement. I say willful because it can be argued Oracle clearly knew this secret API copyright trick by bringing Oracle vs Google to court, so they know using APIs is infringement (even before the law did!)
So 10 billion devices times a minimum $150,000 per infringement. That is $1.5x10^14 or "one point five million billion dollars"... Just for Java alone. I didn't bother to add up infractions by Oracle distributing the database software called Oracle DB which also infringes since IBM created the SQL API. That lawsuit alone would put Oracle out of business.
Once there is a legal injunction against Oracle to stop distributing all of their infringing software, and with such a huge legal debt over the companies head, it would take hundreds of years to get out of the red by selling support to software they can no longer release patches, updates, fixes, or add requested features in to.
So yes, Oracle gets to remain in business, which would not happen had the judge ruled for Oracle. So they win, even if they do not believe so now.
Slashdot Mirror
I'd suggest using a service wrapper. There are a few free ones out there. Some applications need a user context though and not all wrappers will handle that well.
I'm a big fan of winserv for exactly that purpose. Unfortunately as you say, I have some "servers" that add systray menu icons to access a console GUI, and access to those is pretty much required.
On the upside though, out of the three application servers I've limited all of those type apps to one server. which is the only one utilizing the auto login trick.
Not much sensitive is on it either. One app logs from all the electrostatic discharge stations on the shop floor. Another is a print server for the barcode thermals. Stuff like that.
Unless they held the shift key down as the admin auto logged in.....
GPOs prevent that.
Despite that, the server is in a secured room, in a building without general public access.
Unfortunately it does not. Nor do some of it's dependencies.
At first I used to try every couple months or so, after wine had a number of updates and more on the compatibility list. I admit that lately I've been trying a bit less often, and ever since the prerequisite hardware order was approved, I've been more focused on a smooth transition to the new version instead.
Sadly this system was already in place when I got there, chosen and setup by my predecessor not 2-3 years before then. The staff still remember the pains in switching from DBA+FileMaker over to our current ERP system. Another change to a completely different ERP package will not be looked favorably on unless there are some majorly good reasons I can provide. No one else but me really cares what goes on for the back end, so that argument won't be enough.
When I was first hired on, I did spend quite a bit of time working with it in Wine. The minor updates to ERP kept trying to beat the idea out of me though.
For example, initially the biggest two dependencies were with MS Access 97 runtime (It can only work with the 97 runtime, or the full 2003 Access) and .NET 3 .NET 2
At the time, Wine did not support the Access runtime, had some issues with the 2003 full version, and did not support above
Once Wine got .NET 3 compatibility far enough to work, the ERP app added some features that now required .NET 3.5, which was not :/
Today, the Access runtime is still not at all compatible, and there has been little to no improvement on 2003 Access. Unfortunately this would require the purchasing of ~150 copies of MS Access 2003, which isn't available through normal Microsoft channels, and still more money then I'm likely to get approved. It does run fine on Windows now after all, in the eyes of the VPs.
The up side is, almost all of our other critical software used on the shop floor PCs I have gotten to run under Wine. One of the first things I did was get rid of our Win2000 time clock terminals, and replaced them with Debian kiosks running time clock client under Wine.
I've also replaced all the old OS/2 Warp hardware with current generation PCs running Linux and VirtualBox, with OS/2 in there. No more 2gb HD limits, no more unsupported sata and network cards, no more OS/2 TCP/IP for backups, etc. It was a wonderful upgrade.
I have a bad feeling the new major update to ERP will require .NET 4 or some crap, and although they are ditching MS Access for the reporting side of things, I'm not sure what will be replacing it.
I'll also finally get to deprecate our SQL Server 2000 server in favor of SQL Server 2010, which is now supported (and in fact 2000 is not at all supported, thus the required upgrade and new hardware to run it)
After I get used to this new major version under Windows, I most certainly will give Wine another shot however.
I maintain a clean desktop, too. My trick since the windows 95 days is to put shortcuts to stuff I use frequently into a desktop folder, which I keep open all the time. With the taskbar on the left side of the screen, it's easy to select the folder when I need to run one of the things in it, otherwise it's the Start button.
I have a similar trick, but using menus instead of having a folder window open all the time. .RDP files to different machines to remote into.
Under my user folder is a "Toolbars" folder. Inside that is one folder per menu I want.
"Apps" and "Servers" are my main ones. Apps are my frequently used apps, and Servers contains
Then you right-click the taskbar, go to toolbars, and "New toolbar...". Select one of those folders and it pops up in an ugly way. Right-click on the toolbar icon itself, and you can set it to Not display the icon, Do display the label, and then resize it to fit the name.
This gives me a "Servers >>" label in the taskbar, and if you click the ">>" part, it opens a menu with whatever you put in the real folder.
It looks cleanest when the names are one word and short (No more than 8-9 letters)
You can also right-click on the text of the label and hit "Open Folder" to bring up the actual explorer window, either to use as you currently do or just to change things around.
Since I try to keep my desktop clear of icons (But usually fail at it after a short time), I also keep a toolbar pointing to my desktop folder. Then I can hide the desktop icons completely, but still access them through a menu, open it in a folder, or just re-enable desktop icons depending on my mood at the moment.
If anything however, this is more like having many start menus, instead of getting rid of my only start menu. I tend to dislike the real start menu due to app installers just generally making a horrid mess of it that I finally got sick and tired of fighting to keep organized.
The only time I've seen staff use the Start button here is to log off when they're done with the machine. If there was a button on the taskbar to do that, they'd never use the Start menu at all!
In case you actually wanted to provide that, it's pretty easy to do.
Create a shortcut, and make the target:
C:\windows\system32\shutdown.exe -L
Then you can change it's icon to a custom one, or just browse to \windows\system32\shell32.dll and pick the normal icon out of there.
The -L flag is log off. You also have -r to reboot and -s to shutdown.
Similarly, you can make a "lock terminal" icon too.
Create a shortcut and make the target:
C:\windows\system32\rundll32.exe user32.dll,LockWorkStation
Ironically, the last one there is very useful on application servers if you have any programs that run as servers but are not a real service.
I have one server scripted to auto login as administrator, and then a few shortcuts in the program menus "startup" folder, prefixed with numbers to provide an order.
The very last icon in the startup folder is named "9999-Lock" which is the above shortcut.
On boot up, the server auto logs in, runs the crap software, and locks the terminal. This all happens in a few seconds, so anyone local at the console would not have any chance to do much before it locked on them. You still need the password to unlock just the same as login, so its pretty secure if your servers are locked away in a server room.
All 100 Atari Greatest Hits games are free on iOS today.
Actually, it is 1 Atari game for free (Missile Command)
Quote:
Buy additional games in 2 unique ways:
1. 25 separate packs available for download at $0.99
2. Buy all 100 games for a discounted price of $9.99 (basically the price of a movie ticket)
Not a bad price at all though, and in fact I bought the full 100 set too. I just wanted to point out they aren't free however.
seriously, how does one play oldschool arcade style games on an iOS device?
A Joystick-It, of course!
Or you can go all out hardcore with an iCade
Oh my god what a hypocrite!
too bad, all the idiots who choose to drive after drinking more than they should deserve to go to jail. i'll drive a few hours after i have one drink. maybe one and a half. these idiots got drunk and drove a car
So you readily admit you are a drunk driver. You have done all that is needed to go to jail.
But you know what? It gets worse! Your even more of a hypocrite. Because even without drinking ANYTHING but water for weeks, you have done all that is required to go to jail for being a drunk driver.
These tests can show positive while there is not a drop of alcohol in your system. So yes, you did say people who do not drink should have jail time for it.
Yet you don't turn yourself in. And you continue to claim other idiots doing the same drunk driving as you, and worse doing the same drunk driving as none what so ever, all deserve jail time while you yourself are skirting your own jail time.
I would love to see a picture of your head. The shape it must be in after the mental gymnastics you have done must be fairly impressive.
* For wishing jail time on people who only drink water, you should be ashamed.
* For wishing jail time on people who do exactly what you do, while hiding from the law and your sentence yourself, you should feel embarrassed.
* For actually being a drunk driver, you should feel bad and hate yourself.
I am the IT manager at the company I work for, and am the one responsible for the server infrastructure and ~150 client computers
The only thing keeping us on Windows at work is due to our highly specialized and highly expensive ERP system, which runs most all aspects of the business.
If this system had an update released tomorrow that gave it Linux support, or even Mac support, I would ditch Windows like the bad habit it is faster than you could double-click.
The ERP company literally just released an update to allow the client to run on Windows 7 and not fall on its face on a 64 bit OS. 6 months ago now.
I began our XP to 7 migration plan a while before that, but with this rather critical dependency those plans have been on hold until January.
After putting in all the capital expenditure and purchase order requests to update our 5-6 year old Win2003 servers, I only last month got approval.
I'm not expecting to get the hardware for another 2-3 weeks. I'm expecting the ERP upgrade to take longer to fully test than I am the Windows 7 upgrade.
After all of this, I am not about to even listen to, let alone consider, how "easy" it is for enterprise software to be written for Win 8. That does not help with our million and a quarter dollar investment in existing software. I'm not about to replace last years 23" wide screen LCDs with new touch screens, especially so when our primary use is data entry. And I'm most certainly not looking forward to tossing out a decade of knowledge and learning experiences for Windows 8.
On that last point, while I fully expect to be playing around with and learning Windows 8 on my own, one thing that needs firmly kept in mind is that the company I work for does electronics manufacturing. Nearly no one is or has interest in the technicals of computers. They just prefer computers over pen paper and calculators. We even have a whole department of 30 people, of which only TWO own computers at home. (Yes this is as boggling to me as it no doubt is to you, especially in this day and age!)
These are not people who use computers purely for the sake of using computers, like we are. To them they are just tools to get work done easier and quicker.
Anything that distracts from that simple and only goal is not a benefit to us, and Win 8 falls firmly in that category.
I am not in any way looking forward to the re-training Windows 8 would require ON TOP OF the training for the new ERP update, which we already have to do.
Point being, Windows 8 is nothing but a bunch of time and money that does not benefit me or our company in any additional way than XP has and 7 will for some time to come.
Even if it was free software, my time would be better spent elsewhere, that would more than likely end up saving us time and/or money, if not actively making us money.
Windows 8 doesn't bring anything to the table we want. While not all businesses are the same, I think Microsoft is about to be surprised by how many are similar in this regard.
So how exactly does one fit that need for privacy into the schedule and mission?
During commercial breaks, obviously ;}
Actually, it wasn't impossible, just that U.S. Robots and Mechanical Men didn't build them (generally). And only USR could build the positronic brains.
I wonder if USR still has 56k modems rolling off the assembly lines along with the positronic brains...
+++ATH1KILLALLHUMANS
What's really shitty is that HP (not to defend them given my hatred of them) is mostly involved in a nuclear capacity with regards to medicine, not weaponry.
That raises an excellent point. Is chemotherapy and radiation therapy both illegal in Takoma Park?
Do they really let cancer patients die due to this ban? Or are they all just hypocrites who take advantage of a technology when it benefits them but deny it to others when it benefits someone other than them?
For another, the Sun and the Moon have almost exactly the same apparent diameter as seen from Earth - surely that's just a statistically unusual coincidence, but technically, we don't really know but that it might be anomalously common, and in complete contrast to the random ratios we might expect, for the same situation to occur elsewhere.
Our moon is moving away from Earth at a consistently measured speed of almost 4 cm per year. This is from directly observed evidence.
This means that on tiny galactic time scales such as hundreds of millions to a billion years, we can accurately predict the moons distance from earth at any particular point of time within that time scale.
The Suns diameter is about 400 times greater than the moons, however *right now* the Sun is also about 400 times further away, thus the apparent diameter is the same.
Further back in time, the moon was closer, and thus appeared larger than the Sun. In the future, it will be further away and thus appear smaller than the Sun.
We also have direct observed evidence that life existed on Earth a billion years ago, when the moon did not appear the same diameter as the Sun.
While it is completely possible that such variables do come into play regarding the formation of life, the fact the moon and Sun appear to have almost an identical diameter has no bearing on that. We know the moon can be closer and thus appear larger and still have life.
As a side note, the moons distance is also related to the rotational period of the Earth. A day is 1440 minutes right now, but in the past a day was shorter, and in the future it will be longer.
Granted, in only a tiny 100 years different, the day was only 2ms different. But a billion or so years ago it was a number of hours shorter than it currently is.
Also the proximity of the moon to the Earth has a gravitational effect on both bodies, which has also changed over time. While "1 G" is defined as 1 earth gravity worth, the value of 1 G has changed over time and will continue to do so.
Life has grown, been nearly extinguished, regrown, etc etc a number of times now - where these variables have been different each time it happened.
If those variables are related to life forming at all, then there is clearly a lot of wiggle room the values can be. Earth is clearly special, but statistically it is not unique, and the total range of variables that can match those the Earth has had over time is larger and more complex than just "1".
Now, can we talk about what's relevant? Like TFA?
You must be new here ;}
Realizing there is no chance anyone will read TFA, let alone discuss it, personally I would just be happy if the homophobes would crawl back under their rocks and let the important off topic discussions continue!
Put the computer in the living room and smack 'em in the head when you catch them going where they shouldn't
Wow you got the same tripe in first yet again!
How does your solution prevent porn ads from regular non-porn websites?
How does your solution prevent popup/under ads?
How does your solution prevent drive-by downloads of malware?
A parent watching (or hell, a parent at the fucking keyboard) can't stop these things.
A good web filter is wise even for your own usage, let alone children. It has NOTHING to do with blocking them from seeking out porn. The Internet has a way of forcing these things on you if you want them or not.
If you would have used the Internet for more than a few days you would know this.
Nothing to hide, nothing to fear.
Then why haven't you turned yourself in?
You've broken hundreds of laws today alone, and if you count all the countries of the world, you have broken thousands of laws today alone.
I don't see you making an example of what you preach...
ATM machines mean most of the money is locked away in safes - and spread out over many branches, convenience stores, etc.
This is an ATM.
This is an ATM machine!
So you won't find any money inside of an ATM machine. ATM machines only build ATMs, so they are full of ATM parts. If you are after money, you should more likely go after the ATM itself.
And knowing is half of the battle!
A) a system and method preventing unauthorized access to copyrighted academic texts
B) while also enhancing the overarching academic mission to create and disseminate knowledge
So they are trying to spread knowledge, by not allowing access to knowledge?
I believe one, if not both, of those things does not mean what they think it means.
Working for "pimp molecules" or something?
Smack that Holmium 67 up!
If I was that rich, I would have my own Slashdot, with blackjack, and hookers. ;}
You likely wouldn't see me for a long time
We have a real shill here, people.
Says the person who created an account just for trolling this one story, with no comments prior...
Does Microsoft pay well? I hear the benefits are pretty nice.
How open can the system be when it runs on someone else's hardware under someone else's control?
You sound just like the old greybeards
"Why on earth would you ever want to use Unix?! I mean it's not even your computer under your control!"
Just as one can install any flavor and distro of unix on their own hardware at home or work, so too can it be done with "cloud" management software.
I have three systems running in my basement all running as virtualization hosts. Each and every one of those is owned by me, and is run by me.
The only thing missing to make it a "cloud" is the management software, which are tasks I perform manually right now.
I would LOVE to be able to load up a tiny hypervisor on a flash drive to boot a brand new machine from, plug it in my network, and BAM have it's CPU memory and storage resources added to the pool automatically, and not have to think about it.
I would love to be able to just specify the VM instance I want, and let the software figure out the best actual server to put it on this moment, as well as have the software move them all around willy-nilly to best utilize the available resources.
It's also worth noting for you that if such software existed and I installed it, then the hardware will still be owned by me, and I will still manage it.
I haven't heard of OpenStack before this article, and have no idea how far along the project it (sounds like not very, but we all know how accurate slashdot summaries tend to be), but if they actually delivered on that promise I would install it for my own use in a heartbeat.
Perfect software doesn't exist and neither will it ever. If someone claims they can, make sure you know where your wallet is. It's like the koan, "If you meet the Buddha, kill him."
Exactly. One of the best examples that comes to mind is the guidance software written for the first space shuttle computer, and even that had bugs. It was also 20x more expensive than the normal going rate at the time, and technically speaking it contained only about one two hundredth less bugs by number of lines of code.
Damn impressive for sure, but far from a zero. It also cost half a billion 1960's dollars!
An interesting read: http://history.nasa.gov/sts1/pages/computer.html
The absolute best (to watch others fight with) is when both the projector and the laptop have a sense detector for the signal.
Turn on projector and hit "PC" button.. it looks for a signal for maybe 5 seconds and then flips back over to "Video"
At the same time, the laptop is using the internal LCD and you hit a function key to flip to external VGA, only to have it detect no monitor connected and flip back to the internal display!
If the timing isn't just right on both devices so that they see each other, the operator ends up looking like a lawn sprinkler swinging back and forth between laptop keyboard and pointing the remote up at the projector
How exactly is it a win for Oracle? They now have a competing VM that can run Java code. Considering Android's position in the mobile market, I'd say for Oracle this means Java goes into a slow eclipse.
It is a win for Oracle in at least one way.
Had the judge ruled in Oracles favor, then the second the gavel hit the desk, every last piece of software Oracle ever made is now in infringement.
Let's look at Java alone for now. The installation screen claims 10 billion devices run Java.
That is 10 billion counts of willful infringement documented.
Java for Windows is compiled against the win32 API which Oracle has no license for.
Java for Linux is compiled against glib which Oracle has no license for.
Java for BSD is compiled against libc which Oracle has no license for.
Java for Mac is compiled against whatever Apple calls their toolbox this year (Quartz? Cocoa? I'm quite behind in that world), but am certain Oracle has no license to use that API either.
Oracle also failed to pay Intel a license for the bytecode API on the CPU. Compiling from source code to object code to assembly uses the processors API and they document 10 billion counts of willful infringement. I say willful because it can be argued Oracle clearly knew this secret API copyright trick by bringing Oracle vs Google to court, so they know using APIs is infringement (even before the law did!)
So 10 billion devices times a minimum $150,000 per infringement. That is $1.5x10^14 or "one point five million billion dollars"... Just for Java alone.
I didn't bother to add up infractions by Oracle distributing the database software called Oracle DB which also infringes since IBM created the SQL API. That lawsuit alone would put Oracle out of business.
Once there is a legal injunction against Oracle to stop distributing all of their infringing software, and with such a huge legal debt over the companies head, it would take hundreds of years to get out of the red by selling support to software they can no longer release patches, updates, fixes, or add requested features in to.
So yes, Oracle gets to remain in business, which would not happen had the judge ruled for Oracle. So they win, even if they do not believe so now.