Of any system declared dead by fringe groups like the Greens (in the US) and Libertarians. The problem with proportional voting and accommodating small parties with narrow agendas is that you're going to be politicizing legitimizing the message and empowering people on the fringe with extremist views. Don't disrupt a 200+ year old system because you don't like George Bush.
In the US, this means that anti-abortion parties, libertarians, socialists will begin to wield real political power. And although they won't win alot of seats, their power will be magnified because they will become swing votes. In New York from the 1840's until the mid-20th century, Tammany Hall was a corrupt political machine based out of New York City that dominated state politics. They did so because the Republicans had about 40-48% of the legislative seats, the mainstream democrats had 40-48% of the legislative seats, and the Tammany Hall democrats kept around 10%. When people vote, the swing people matter.
Personally, I feel that over time, the good ideas advocated by fringe parties get absorbed into the mainstream party platform. I think that's healthier for democracy than having Senators waving pictures of dead fetuses on the Senate floor.
But if you're someone like me, who needs to work in multiple environments, including all Windows environments where you need to access Active Directory or use excel alot, you can't beat the Mac. You get Unix goodness, with proprietary software available as well.
But there are tradeoffs -- I've had similar struggles, and I get really annoyed when I fsck up the weird, undocumented directory placement that Apple pulled from the sky for certain things.
Shocking that consumers who typically don't see the contract until the very end of the purchasing process, and typically receive a copy of their 10-page contract, written in highly technical legal language on a tiny, folded piece of paper in a 3 point font don't know what they're getting into.
And if they read and can understand the contract, they find that the terms are non-negotiable, require that you agree to waive right to sue in court, and allow the vendor to arbitrarily change the contract.
So I hope your customers/victims screw you out of every dime possible.
No way, its a case of Congress spewing more feel-good crap. They target a highly-visible, but marginal power consumption source and everyone feels like they're doing something.
In an era where nearly every new home has central air and each of the 3 TVs in an average home draw more power than an light bulb when powered OFF, forcing us to use inferior lighting that contains noxious, hard to dispose of materials like mercury, is a joke. CFLs and other lighting technologies are already catching on in areas where they are appropriate because they save people money -- these new rules are simply unnecessary.
If the government wants to encourage efficency, they should mandate utility billing structures that penalize consumers from using lots of electricity during the work day (ie. dopes leaving A/C all day) and penalizes businesses for keeping millions of computers powered on 24/7/365.
I worked for CompUSA in college, and totally agree with you. CompUSA was a great jumping off point for someone wanting to get into IT in the 96-98 timeframe. They had corporate sales and tech services guys who did network implementations and rollouts who were always recruiting from the smart folks in selling at retail. I occasionally run into someone who worked at that store ten years ago, and almost all of them are successful IT people.
I went in there again a few months ago for an el-cheapo video card, and noticed that the employees looked more salesy than they were in my day. Too bad -- that was a good place to work.
I definately agree with much of what you have to say.
One point about hardware is that generally you are the mercy of your local "business partner". IBM doesn't actually manufacture most systems, dozens of boxes per server get shipped over 1-4 weeks to the local business partner, who then assembles them. In my experience, this usually translates into more DOAs. I have the same issue with some Sun products as well. Note that I'm talking about xSeries hardware -- the p, z and i stuff is top-notch quality -- at a price.
People bitch about Dell -- but when I get a PO cut for Dell stuff, it arrives at the data center dock within a week in one or two boxes. The warranty and other services from Dell are about as good as IBM (on the xSeries side, again the p, z and i are a different league), except that IBM will support ancient hardware practically forever, where Dell pulls the plug at 5 years.
With regard to Tivoli -- I think they have a product line that's all over the map that is simply more expensive to implement than most alternatives. For the money that I've seen spent on customizing Tivoli implementations that sorta-kinda work, you could integrate open source or even roll your own solutions. The constant churn of products makes it impossible to transition implementations from consultants to the employees -- by the time you bring people up to snuff, it's time to implement some new product. As a consequence, you're never done rolling out, (or your running obsolete product that's on life support) and the Enteprise Management Solution becomes more of a distraction than a solution.
IBM doesn't do much well at all...
on
What If Yoda Ran IBM?
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· Score: 2, Interesting
IBM's #1 advantage is they are on every government and big corporate preferred vendor list, because they have entrenched sales forces who are excellent at pitching to upper management. They are great with the mainframes too.
Other than that, what's good about them?
Servers: IBM xSeries are junk IBM iSeries are treading water and relegated to vertical markets IBM pSeries makes Sun look cheap.
Consulting services are the same as any big vendor. If you're the CIO of a small company, you're simply insane to expect IBM to give you the time of day -- why would they? They make more money collecting maintenance on shelfware from a big bank than they would providing actual service to you!
IBM has some really smart people tucked away somewhere. But to an IBM customer, dealing with IBM is like dealing with the IRS.
Q: Where do I go to buy OS X for my commodity PC? A: I don't.
Mac OS, iTunes, the iTunes Music store, etc exist for one purpose: to sell Macs, iPhones, iPods, etc. The software simply isn't where the company makes the money. The old regime almost bankrupted Apple by switching to a Microsoft-like software licensing model... so I doubt that Apple would go back to that.
Apple doesn't have a mature enough sales force or market stability to aim at the enterprise markets that.Net is thriving in. I know of large Mac shops that are totally screwed right now because key features (like directory integration) that they absolutely need simply don't work in Leopard at the moment. Apple was kind enough to ship hundreds of Leopard only computers that will be useless for months.
Remember that Mac is a hardware company. The ultimate goal of Apple is to sell hardware -- who gives a shit what you do with it. If anything, a customer using a Mac as an overpriced PC is a better customer that isn't going to need support for OSX, patches etc.
Boot Camp/VMWare/etc helps to sell computers, so to Apple its a good thing.
Leopard has alot of issues, but they are all quality control issues that will eventually get fixed. Apple frankly took on more than it can chew in terms of workload, and it shows. Advertised features like AD integration are just broken, upgrades are hit and miss and there are some really nasty bugs like the Finder issues.
That said, those issues will be gone in 6 months.
Vista's issues are architectural -- they made bad design decisions that make it really, really difficult for business users to migrate. Even Microsoft reps aren't excited about Vista.
It's widely acknowledged that Tor can easily be undermined by establishing compromised nodes on the network. Since Tor was originally a US Navy project and is well known, I think it's safe to assume that the network is at least partially compromised.
I think that if you're up to something that attracting the attention of the intelligence agencies, your communications will be compromised if you're using a global network. VPNs and encryption like SSH are dependent on the strength of your keys and passphrases. Systems like Tor depend on trusted nodes. Phones can be tapped. Cars with OnStar can eavesdrop on your conversations with a court order. All you need to do is mess up once.
You assume that Google isn't already doing work for the NSA. When was the last time you clicked on a tiny classified Google ad? And what that fuck are 10,000 workers over there doing with 250,000 servers anyway? Microsoft employs like 60,000, and they have the #1 OS, Office Suite, Email Server and respectable database, middleware and other businesses as well.
I'm willing to bet a buck that Google has been the NSA's version of "Air America" since day one -- hiding in plain sight.
They're not stupid at all. You're just not thinking... the point isn't to say "that guy is a terrorist due to his hummus consumption!".
They're trying to identify sleeper agents. They gather huge amounts of data from phone/email intercepts, and use stuff like this to identify social networks. One white guy eating pitas is meaningless, but a network of 12 people who shop at the same ethnic groceries who have one or two degrees of separation from a known terrorist is more significant. If you were looking for IRA people, you'd probably look at cultural equivalents to narrow your search.
I imagine they use a scoring system. You get a +1 for shopping at mideast groceries, +2 for encrypted emails to central asia, -1 for Judaica shops, -5 for going to the pork store, etc.
Slashdot Mirror
Of any system declared dead by fringe groups like the Greens (in the US) and Libertarians. The problem with proportional voting and accommodating small parties with narrow agendas is that you're going to be politicizing legitimizing the message and empowering people on the fringe with extremist views. Don't disrupt a 200+ year old system because you don't like George Bush.
In the US, this means that anti-abortion parties, libertarians, socialists will begin to wield real political power. And although they won't win alot of seats, their power will be magnified because they will become swing votes. In New York from the 1840's until the mid-20th century, Tammany Hall was a corrupt political machine based out of New York City that dominated state politics. They did so because the Republicans had about 40-48% of the legislative seats, the mainstream democrats had 40-48% of the legislative seats, and the Tammany Hall democrats kept around 10%. When people vote, the swing people matter.
Personally, I feel that over time, the good ideas advocated by fringe parties get absorbed into the mainstream party platform. I think that's healthier for democracy than having Senators waving pictures of dead fetuses on the Senate floor.
I see where you're coming from.
But if you're someone like me, who needs to work in multiple environments, including all Windows environments where you need to access Active Directory or use excel alot, you can't beat the Mac. You get Unix goodness, with proprietary software available as well.
But there are tradeoffs -- I've had similar struggles, and I get really annoyed when I fsck up the weird, undocumented directory placement that Apple pulled from the sky for certain things.
It was on delicious/popular yesterday, so obviously it must be interesting. Probably got digged too.
I disagree... local weekly papers are still prospering.
The endangered species is the traditional daily paper, 90% of which consists of the same 10 AP stories that you can get anywhere.
Read more about the bill -- it has more to do with subsidizing porkbarrel alternative fuels like corn ethanol and coal-derived oil than efficiency.
Yeah, I feel for you.
Shocking that consumers who typically don't see the contract until the very end of the purchasing process, and typically receive a copy of their 10-page contract, written in highly technical legal language on a tiny, folded piece of paper in a 3 point font don't know what they're getting into.
And if they read and can understand the contract, they find that the terms are non-negotiable, require that you agree to waive right to sue in court, and allow the vendor to arbitrarily change the contract.
So I hope your customers/victims screw you out of every dime possible.
No way, its a case of Congress spewing more feel-good crap. They target a highly-visible, but marginal power consumption source and everyone feels like they're doing something.
In an era where nearly every new home has central air and each of the 3 TVs in an average home draw more power than an light bulb when powered OFF, forcing us to use inferior lighting that contains noxious, hard to dispose of materials like mercury, is a joke. CFLs and other lighting technologies are already catching on in areas where they are appropriate because they save people money -- these new rules are simply unnecessary.
If the government wants to encourage efficency, they should mandate utility billing structures that penalize consumers from using lots of electricity during the work day (ie. dopes leaving A/C all day) and penalizes businesses for keeping millions of computers powered on 24/7/365.
Oh please STFU. Like you're going to run OpenBSD on laptops. Get real.
There are no Open Source FDE solutions, although some of the commercial products use OpenSSL.
I worked for CompUSA in college, and totally agree with you. CompUSA was a great jumping off point for someone wanting to get into IT in the 96-98 timeframe. They had corporate sales and tech services guys who did network implementations and rollouts who were always recruiting from the smart folks in selling at retail. I occasionally run into someone who worked at that store ten years ago, and almost all of them are successful IT people.
I went in there again a few months ago for an el-cheapo video card, and noticed that the employees looked more salesy than they were in my day. Too bad -- that was a good place to work.
I definately agree with much of what you have to say.
One point about hardware is that generally you are the mercy of your local "business partner". IBM doesn't actually manufacture most systems, dozens of boxes per server get shipped over 1-4 weeks to the local business partner, who then assembles them. In my experience, this usually translates into more DOAs. I have the same issue with some Sun products as well. Note that I'm talking about xSeries hardware -- the p, z and i stuff is top-notch quality -- at a price.
People bitch about Dell -- but when I get a PO cut for Dell stuff, it arrives at the data center dock within a week in one or two boxes. The warranty and other services from Dell are about as good as IBM (on the xSeries side, again the p, z and i are a different league), except that IBM will support ancient hardware practically forever, where Dell pulls the plug at 5 years.
With regard to Tivoli -- I think they have a product line that's all over the map that is simply more expensive to implement than most alternatives. For the money that I've seen spent on customizing Tivoli implementations that sorta-kinda work, you could integrate open source or even roll your own solutions. The constant churn of products makes it impossible to transition implementations from consultants to the employees -- by the time you bring people up to snuff, it's time to implement some new product. As a consequence, you're never done rolling out, (or your running obsolete product that's on life support) and the Enteprise Management Solution becomes more of a distraction than a solution.
IBM's #1 advantage is they are on every government and big corporate preferred vendor list, because they have entrenched sales forces who are excellent at pitching to upper management. They are great with the mainframes too.
Other than that, what's good about them?
Servers:
IBM xSeries are junk
IBM iSeries are treading water and relegated to vertical markets
IBM pSeries makes Sun look cheap.
Software:
Tivoli - Sucks
DB2 - Ok
Lotus - Sucks
Rational - Double Sucks
Consulting services are the same as any big vendor. If you're the CIO of a small company, you're simply insane to expect IBM to give you the time of day -- why would they? They make more money collecting maintenance on shelfware from a big bank than they would providing actual service to you!
IBM has some really smart people tucked away somewhere. But to an IBM customer, dealing with IBM is like dealing with the IRS.
You're missing a few small companies like HP, IBM (ever hear of AIX, zOS?), Sun, Unisys?
Q: Where do I go to buy OS X for my commodity PC?
A: I don't.
Mac OS, iTunes, the iTunes Music store, etc exist for one purpose: to sell Macs, iPhones, iPods, etc. The software simply isn't where the company makes the money. The old regime almost bankrupted Apple by switching to a Microsoft-like software licensing model... so I doubt that Apple would go back to that.
You're spot on.
.Net is thriving in. I know of large Mac shops that are totally screwed right now because key features (like directory integration) that they absolutely need simply don't work in Leopard at the moment. Apple was kind enough to ship hundreds of Leopard only computers that will be useless for months.
Apple doesn't have a mature enough sales force or market stability to aim at the enterprise markets that
Remember that Mac is a hardware company. The ultimate goal of Apple is to sell hardware -- who gives a shit what you do with it. If anything, a customer using a Mac as an overpriced PC is a better customer that isn't going to need support for OSX, patches etc.
Boot Camp/VMWare/etc helps to sell computers, so to Apple its a good thing.
Leopard has alot of issues, but they are all quality control issues that will eventually get fixed. Apple frankly took on more than it can chew in terms of workload, and it shows. Advertised features like AD integration are just broken, upgrades are hit and miss and there are some really nasty bugs like the Finder issues.
That said, those issues will be gone in 6 months.
Vista's issues are architectural -- they made bad design decisions that make it really, really difficult for business users to migrate. Even Microsoft reps aren't excited about Vista.
You're the exception -- most employers don't think that way.
The OP didn't copy the offending code, and probably doesn't own the company, so he should delete that link.
The only issue is that if the author wrote the code at work, it's not his to give away.
Personally, I'd forget that that I found it.
It's widely acknowledged that Tor can easily be undermined by establishing compromised nodes on the network. Since Tor was originally a US Navy project and is well known, I think it's safe to assume that the network is at least partially compromised.
I think that if you're up to something that attracting the attention of the intelligence agencies, your communications will be compromised if you're using a global network. VPNs and encryption like SSH are dependent on the strength of your keys and passphrases. Systems like Tor depend on trusted nodes. Phones can be tapped. Cars with OnStar can eavesdrop on your conversations with a court order. All you need to do is mess up once.
US news outlets are still pushing the PC view.
You assume that Google isn't already doing work for the NSA. When was the last time you clicked on a tiny classified Google ad? And what that fuck are 10,000 workers over there doing with 250,000 servers anyway? Microsoft employs like 60,000, and they have the #1 OS, Office Suite, Email Server and respectable database, middleware and other businesses as well.
I'm willing to bet a buck that Google has been the NSA's version of "Air America" since day one -- hiding in plain sight.
You missed the point actually.
If you had enough money/guns/followers/etc you could probably run with it.
Right and wrong are human constructs. At the end of the day, whomever has power behind them wins.
They're not stupid at all. You're just not thinking... the point isn't to say "that guy is a terrorist due to his hummus consumption!".
They're trying to identify sleeper agents. They gather huge amounts of data from phone/email intercepts, and use stuff like this to identify social networks. One white guy eating pitas is meaningless, but a network of 12 people who shop at the same ethnic groceries who have one or two degrees of separation from a known terrorist is more significant. If you were looking for IRA people, you'd probably look at cultural equivalents to narrow your search.
I imagine they use a scoring system. You get a +1 for shopping at mideast groceries, +2 for encrypted emails to central asia, -1 for Judaica shops, -5 for going to the pork store, etc.