I should note first that I am writing this from my Powerbook G4, NOT my Wintel box. Having said that, I quote thee:
"The difference is that Apple has always been a friendly company...Apple makes their money by doing what's best for the users. What MS doesn't realize is that in the short term, being a jerk is great, but in the long term, Apple's the one who's going to come out on top..."
How exactly is shrinkwrapping an OS that comes with everything except an Office suite freindly? Office 10.x is the only piece of software I had to purchace for my Mac. Everything else came with... The DVD player AND burning apps, Movie editing app, Multimedia app, heck... Why go and buy ANYTHING that comes in the iLife package. The only company they are being freindly to there is Microsoft! After all, what other office suite do most corporate consumers look for?
If they wanted to be freindly, they could have left out all of the bells and whistles and just included a nice, non-MS office suite.
But didn't Microsoft own a version of Unix at some point? I seem to recall the vendor name on a Unix box that used to run the call managment server at my work was Microsoft.
I always had a suspision that underneath it all, Windows (NT especially) was running atop of some bastardized form of Unix. Think about it. What was there 30+ years ago but Unix? Isn't it the grandfather of all anyways? Try this:
-Open the management console in Windows 2000 (the one called "Manage" when you right-click My Computer). -Select "System Information", expand the "Software Environment" folder and select "Loaded Modules".
In pre-SP1 builds of Win2K the dates on some of the DLLs in this folder were in the 1970's. How can that be? Windows wasn't even around in the 70's! Isn't it possible the kernel is already based on Unix and 'Windows' is just another abstraction layer? It sure would account for the mediocre performance (added overhead). And some of the hardware names in the registry are Unix-like. Check:
\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\H ivelist You can see the OS locates volumes the same way Unix does. For example, the location of Registry file \REGISTRY\MACHINE\SAM is:
\Device\HarddiskVolume1\WINNT\System32\Config\SA M
So what if the '/' is a '\'? It's the same thing right? After all...
"...The greatest trick the devil ever made was convincing the world he didn't exist..."
I know, corny one...;)
Single signon bad no matter what.
on
Passport vs. Plan 9
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I work for a large bank, one of the largest. A few years back we adopted a single-signon technology to try and apease the 6000+ users in the company who were complaining that they had to remember 20 different passwords that had different requirements and all expired at different intervals.
Actually we didn't adopt it, it cost us millions of dollars. The company that sold it to us said it would put an end to our password woes and we would reap the rewards by cutting our support staff and lessening the load on our call-centre. It did no such thing... Our call-centre volume tripled, the cost of implementation (not to mention training) was horrendous and our support staff were overwhelmed.
Fast forward to now, 4 years later. We have an entire department dedicated to customizing our in-house applications (and some purchaced via the regular sources) to work with this beast, the helpdesk and support staff are still inindated with calls to do with our single-signon menace and management won't get rid of the thing because it would mean admitting a mistake was made that cost us millions and having to retrain our user population would cost even more!
And security!? It used to be when a password was guessed and a system compromised, the guesser still had to guess the password(s) to any application(s) they needed to do any real damage. Now...we've eliminated that inconvenience.
Now I like Windows XP. Yet I don't use hotmail. I don't even have a Passport. So what's all this about needing one for WinXP?
I work for a very large bank (82 countries large).
My company has an employee salary policy similar to that of the company Dilbert works for. They low-ball anyone who doesn't raise enough of a stink about it. They pay contractors twice what they pay full-timers. If you move up within the company (say, to manager level), you'll see half the salary of someone who is hired from off the street for the same position.
They don't hand-out raises, except the token yearly raise everyone gets regardless of the performance review results. For example, I "acheived" the highest performance rating possible last year; something they only do for people who go 'above and beyond' what is required of them (which most people in the western workplace do not).
I received nothing more than the same raise than the guy in my department who received the lowest possible rating. Why? Because they know I'm not going anywhere.
I work with a guy who has had 3 salary increases in the last year. He's no more valuable to the company than I am. Only difference is, he bitched about his pay and I didn't.
Even with the current state of the job market, most companies don't realize what you mean to them until you're on your way out the door. That's when the pockets get deeper than they would admit to before, when you were the happy-little cubicle rat.
Does the company frown on the guy who got 3 raises last year? No. They know they need him. He may be the first to go when budget-cuts come around, but as long as they know they need him and training someone else to replace him is not feasible, he's safe.
That's the key, maintain your overall value to the company and make sure losing you would be more expensive than keeping you.
"Microsoft's time to patch a remote hole where the attacker can gain complete access to your computer: two months. Open Source's time to patch a much less serious bug where the attacker can merely crash your computer: three days."
...a much less serious bug
Of course it took longer for M$ to patch the hole. There are literally hundreds of thousands of IIS server, possibly millions. Microsoft is accountable for every single installation of the server and if a hole patch doesn't work or fucks up those servers, they get sued.
Who sues the Open-Source community?
Also, it's a server, not some browser application with nothing else depending on it. For IIS, an entire company's infrastructure may depend on the servers running it's websites. Of course this means the patch should have been expidited but my first point should be reason enough to explain why it wasn't.
And of all of the BS 'IIS admins don't patch their servers..' posts, fuck off. I am an IIS admin and I don't know any IIS admins who 1) pledge allegence to Microsoft and don't run anything but... and 2)don't take security of our servers very seriously.
Sometimes the decision of which OS/Webserver Application combination is not in the hands of us lowly admins. Some of us work for extremely large companies where those things are decided by a committee and the decision is swayed by political factors.
I'm tired of being insulted be every self-righteous/.er who thinks just because s/he runs an open-source product, that everyone else should. It's more complicated than that.
Can't they just ammend the Treaty, Section 2, to say:
"Outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, is not subject to any appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means."
Of course I can see disputes rising in the form of, "We're not on Earth anymore, so you're not the boss of me!" That's just human nature.
Expanding our occupation of the Solar System to the moon and Mars will probably only prove that no matter where we are, we will fight each other for it.
Would you rather refer to it as renting Internet access? Or how about Microsoft's idea that you don't own anything? Would you then be licencing access? I buy a lot of things, like a domain name, that I cannot keep next to my car in the garage.
Perhaps in your little world if you can't store something physically it isn't bought but in the real world, the only way to get a service is to purchace it.
Nice try though. Maybe you should spend more time offering an opinion of your own and less time picking apart others. Oh, btw, we do agree that using something more should mean paying more.
"tiered or even metered price is a good way to split the costs somewhat fairly."
Have Americans been completely brain-washed into believing they should pay more to use the most of a service? If you buy a car, and I buy a car, yet you drive it 3x as much, should you pay more (aside from gas prices)? If a company offers a service, any service, they should expect that people will use it, not raise prices when they do. And if they plan offer broadband to 20,000 users in an area, they had better have the infrastructure in place to support all 20,000 users at full bandwidth utilization at the CIR they advertise. Here in Canada, if a DSL provider doesn't have the capability to facilitate over 1,000 users from a particular CO, they simply don't take any more customers in that area. At one time, there was a one-year waiting list for DSL in the Greater Vancouver Area. Did the existing customers have to pay more than their $35 CAD/mo., NO!
Maybe our Canadian companies just don't know how to make money like those good 'ol American ones.
"Why isn't Internet, the infrastructure of the 21st century to a greater extent paid for by our taxes ?"
Careful there, you may get what you ask for. I, for one don't think the taxpayers should pay for a completely private sector service, do you?
"the need for higher pricing for users who tend to use more than their fair share of the bandwidth"?
Are we referring to the uncapping of cable-modems or just someone using all they can? I don't know what your American companies call 'fair share' but up here in Canada that means if I pay for a 512Kb connection and my monthly limit is 3GB upstream, if that's all I am using, that's all I pay for (at a reasonable $35 CAD/mo.(about $22.75 USD/mo.)). Most of our providers don't even care if you have a home network and use NAT! Check here if you don't believe me.
Maybe Canadian companies just don't understand the concept of gouging like those good 'ol American ones. We always were a little slow.
"Microsoft's chief rivals have complained that the changes being made to Windows XP do not go far enough to ensure a level playing field in the computer software market"
Level playing field? Is this communism?
I like Windows XP. I like having a browser integrated into the OS. I can open a URL from the same window I open my File Manager console from. I like that.
And no matter how many different browsers I try, I like IE. It seems as though all of the other browsers are mostly just trying to keep up with it (with the exception of Netscape 7, which is quite nice). I think if MS added a few power features in XP, such as being able to create.ISO files and a decent Media Player (although I haven't replaced WMP because again, I like OS-integrated software), I wouldn't need to use anything but Windows XP.
Quit fighting it and conform. Resistance is futile...
I am Canadian. My country's government is synonymous with allowing stup shit take place. However, I am appalled with the recent string of news articles posted on/. about 2-bit companies trying to sue other companies for using thier "technology" for profit. Am I alone in wondering what the fuck is going on here?
This particular artice makes me want to hurl. It's code. How do you patent code? I understand copyrighting code but a patent? What is your country coming to?
Someone ought to take the patent offices and beat the shit out of every single one of them. Seriously...
However, the article was focusing on the lack of planes in the air because of the attack on 9/11. Never have modern meteorologists had the opportunity to study weather patterns in conditions without airplanes because we have been flying planes longer than they have been studying the weather!
As for: "I don't know what the short-term, localized (to NYC) effect it had. Probably measurable, but certainly not widespread"
As the chaotic butterfly demonstrates, everything is widespread.
I would bet if anything is going to be picked up by other intelligent species in the galaxy (that originated from us), it is going to be Voyager I. We cannot be certain they watch the same electromagnetic frequencies we have been transmitting for the last 50+ years. We can, however, figure if someone is watching their skies like we do, they would eventually see this sucker whipping through deep-space all alone and emitting radio signals.
We should send out another one some day that sends signals in ALL directions, like a beacon. Sure, it might get us blowed up good by some bad-assed ID4 type ETs but it might also put us in contact with the Vulcan type MFs.
I agree with the second part of the Bill. It's not like the purveyors or hard-core pornography care, giving them their own domain would make it easier for people to find their sites. What I don't agree with is hiding porn sites in the rest of the otherwise safe Internet and even hiding themselves so that people stumble onto them unsuspectedly. I don't want children to do that.
As an adult, I have the right to look at porn, Larry Flynn made sure of that (at least the movie says he did); This Bill doesn't inhibit that right. It does protect children from having prOn sites appearing as something other that prOn when searching for something else on Google.
And I don't think it will label all adult-related material as prOn. After all, Slashdot is adult-oriented and I can access it from my corporate network which is closely watched and filtered by Websense software. I cannot access www.whitehouse.com though, good thing.
This is all very depressing. With so many possible conditions for the evolution of Intelligent life on other planets, and so many of the factors leading one to beleive that only in identical solar systems would a planet, quite similar to Earth, be able to support life, why even bother searching?
Maybe I should become a Mormon...
(Note: The above statement was one of sarcasm and in no way intended to insult those of the Mormon community)
You don't like it? Get the *$&# out then!
on
April Fools Wrap Up
·
· Score: 1, Troll
It never ceases to amaze me how people can actually whine about the content of this site instead of actually surfing for the news themselves. How lazy can you get? Point, click, repeat...!
If you don't like what they post, don't read it! Don't pay for it! Or even better, do your work instead!! (I know, that's not even funny).
I mean, the news on this site is almost always the same, "Big company buys another big company", "MS Sux", "Coders can't get laid"...
That's what actually made the posts today funny; they actually sound a lot like the normal news!
This is true in so many ways. Not only would a large financial institution not trust our internal systems logic to "outsiders" because of security (even internally, information regarding different systems is kept a secret), outsiders wouldn't understand our systems. We don't follow the same standards as the rest of the programming world.
Not to say the Linux community couldn't understand how we work, it would just take too lond to tech it. We would be better off hiring 200 Linux programmers and developing in parallel until convertion time.
Unfortunately, this would affect the "bottom line" so again, would never happen. Our Executives don't care who runs their systems, so long as they run. And they don't mind dishing out millions to keep things that way; Another point Microsoft is well-aware of...
It takes US months to rewrite a SINGLE application when needed, and we KNOW our system. Besides, we (just like I'm sure other major financial institutions) don't TRUST OTHER PEOPLE TO WRITE OUR APPS. Security here is second only to the US Military.
I hope the other respondants with similar questions read this too.
We write all of our applications ourselves. While Financial Institutions are primarily Host-Based (AS/400, DEC, crap like that), the size of most Institutions forces us to have middle-tier servers. Our Middle tier is primarily Windows NT based. We wrote all 120+ applications (financial stuff, no word processers here) for Windows NT.
While this would be easier for ML as they were previously running UNIX Hosts and Middle tier, my post was only relating the story to my own experience with conversion on a large-scale.
IMHO, not only would it never come to pass that the Linux community would be called upon to help re-write applications for a financial institution, security prevents that. Also, without knowing how Wine would react/perform on our mission-critical applications, it too would never happen. Banks don't take chances like that, that's WHY we write everything ourselves (most banks do).
Slashdot Mirror
I should note first that I am writing this from my Powerbook G4, NOT my Wintel box. Having said that, I quote thee:
"The difference is that Apple has always been a friendly company...Apple makes their money by doing what's best for the users. What MS doesn't realize is that in the short term, being a jerk is great, but in the long term, Apple's the one who's going to come out on top..."
How exactly is shrinkwrapping an OS that comes with everything except an Office suite freindly? Office 10.x is the only piece of software I had to purchace for my Mac. Everything else came with... The DVD player AND burning apps, Movie editing app, Multimedia app, heck... Why go and buy ANYTHING that comes in the iLife package. The only company they are being freindly to there is Microsoft! After all, what other office suite do most corporate consumers look for?
If they wanted to be freindly, they could have left out all of the bells and whistles and just included a nice, non-MS office suite.
PS, I love my Mac.
But didn't Microsoft own a version of Unix at some point? I seem to recall the vendor name on a Unix box that used to run the call managment server at my work was Microsoft.
Can't recall what version it was though...
I always had a suspision that underneath it all, Windows (NT especially) was running atop of some bastardized form of Unix. Think about it.
H ivelist
A M
What was there 30+ years ago but Unix? Isn't it the grandfather of all anyways? Try this:
-Open the management console in Windows 2000 (the one called "Manage" when you right-click My Computer).
-Select "System Information", expand the "Software Environment" folder and select "Loaded Modules".
In pre-SP1 builds of Win2K the dates on some of the DLLs in this folder were in the 1970's. How can that be? Windows wasn't even around in the 70's! Isn't it possible the kernel is already based on Unix and 'Windows' is just another abstraction layer? It sure would account for the mediocre performance (added overhead).
And some of the hardware names in the registry are Unix-like. Check:
\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\
You can see the OS locates volumes the same way Unix does. For example, the location of Registry file \REGISTRY\MACHINE\SAM is:
\Device\HarddiskVolume1\WINNT\System32\Config\S
So what if the '/' is a '\'? It's the same thing right?
After all...
"...The greatest trick the devil ever made was convincing the world he didn't exist..."
I know, corny one...;)
I work for a large bank, one of the largest. A few years back we adopted a single-signon technology to try and apease the 6000+ users in the company who were complaining that they had to remember 20 different passwords that had different requirements and all expired at different intervals.
Actually we didn't adopt it, it cost us millions of dollars. The company that sold it to us said it would put an end to our password woes and we would reap the rewards by cutting our support staff and lessening the load on our call-centre. It did no such thing... Our call-centre volume tripled, the cost of implementation (not to mention training) was horrendous and our support staff were overwhelmed.
Fast forward to now, 4 years later. We have an entire department dedicated to customizing our in-house applications (and some purchaced via the regular sources) to work with this beast, the helpdesk and support staff are still inindated with calls to do with our single-signon menace and management won't get rid of the thing because it would mean admitting a mistake was made that cost us millions and having to retrain our user population would cost even more!
And security!? It used to be when a password was guessed and a system compromised, the guesser still had to guess the password(s) to any application(s) they needed to do any real damage. Now...we've eliminated that inconvenience.
Now I like Windows XP. Yet I don't use hotmail. I don't even have a Passport. So what's all this about needing one for WinXP?
I work for a very large bank (82 countries large).
My company has an employee salary policy similar to that of the company Dilbert works for. They low-ball anyone who doesn't raise enough of a stink about it. They pay contractors twice what they pay full-timers. If you move up within the company (say, to manager level), you'll see half the salary of someone who is hired from off the street for the same position.
They don't hand-out raises, except the token yearly raise everyone gets regardless of the performance review results. For example, I "acheived" the highest performance rating possible last year; something they only do for people who go 'above and beyond' what is required of them (which most people in the western workplace do not).
I received nothing more than the same raise than the guy in my department who received the lowest possible rating. Why? Because they know I'm not going anywhere.
I work with a guy who has had 3 salary increases in the last year. He's no more valuable to the company than I am. Only difference is, he bitched about his pay and I didn't.
Even with the current state of the job market, most companies don't realize what you mean to them until you're on your way out the door. That's when the pockets get deeper than they would admit to before, when you were the happy-little cubicle rat.
Does the company frown on the guy who got 3 raises last year? No. They know they need him. He may be the first to go when budget-cuts come around, but as long as they know they need him and training someone else to replace him is not feasible, he's safe.
That's the key, maintain your overall value to the company and make sure losing you would be more expensive than keeping you.
"Microsoft's time to patch a remote hole where the attacker can gain complete access to your computer: two months. Open Source's time to patch a much less serious bug where the attacker can merely crash your computer: three days."
/.er who thinks just because s/he runs an open-source product, that everyone else should. It's more complicated than that.
...a much less serious bug
Of course it took longer for M$ to patch the hole. There are literally hundreds of thousands of IIS server, possibly millions. Microsoft is accountable for every single installation of the server and if a hole patch doesn't work or fucks up those servers, they get sued.
Who sues the Open-Source community?
Also, it's a server, not some browser application with nothing else depending on it. For IIS, an entire company's infrastructure may depend on the servers running it's websites. Of course this means the patch should have been expidited but my first point should be reason enough to explain why it wasn't.
And of all of the BS 'IIS admins don't patch their servers..' posts, fuck off. I am an IIS admin and I don't know any IIS admins who 1) pledge allegence to Microsoft and don't run anything but... and 2)don't take security of our servers very seriously.
Sometimes the decision of which OS/Webserver Application combination is not in the hands of us lowly admins. Some of us work for extremely large companies where those things are decided by a committee and the decision is swayed by political factors.
I'm tired of being insulted be every self-righteous
..."The latest IE gopher hole patch is out!"
They really shouldn't take the best possible post and include it in the article, it's just not fair.
Can't they just ammend the Treaty, Section 2, to say:
"Outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, is not subject to any appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means."
Of course I can see disputes rising in the form of, "We're not on Earth anymore, so you're not the boss of me!" That's just human nature.
Expanding our occupation of the Solar System to the moon and Mars will probably only prove that no matter where we are, we will fight each other for it.
Would you rather refer to it as renting Internet access? Or how about Microsoft's idea that you don't own anything? Would you then be licencing access? I buy a lot of things, like a domain name, that I cannot keep next to my car in the garage.
Perhaps in your little world if you can't store something physically it isn't bought but in the real world, the only way to get a service is to purchace it.
Nice try though. Maybe you should spend more time offering an opinion of your own and less time picking apart others. Oh, btw, we do agree that using something more should mean paying more.
"tiered or even metered price is a good way to split the costs somewhat fairly."
Have Americans been completely brain-washed into believing they should pay more to use the most of a service? If you buy a car, and I buy a car, yet you drive it 3x as much, should you pay more (aside from gas prices)? If a company offers a service, any service, they should expect that people will use it, not raise prices when they do. And if they plan offer broadband to 20,000 users in an area, they had better have the infrastructure in place to support all 20,000 users at full bandwidth utilization at the CIR they advertise. Here in Canada, if a DSL provider doesn't have the capability to facilitate over 1,000 users from a particular CO, they simply don't take any more customers in that area. At one time, there was a one-year waiting list for DSL in the Greater Vancouver Area. Did the existing customers have to pay more than their $35 CAD/mo., NO!
Maybe our Canadian companies just don't know how to make money like those good 'ol American ones.
"Why isn't Internet, the infrastructure of the 21st century to a greater extent paid for by our taxes ?"
Careful there, you may get what you ask for. I, for one don't think the taxpayers should pay for a completely private sector service, do you?
"the need for higher pricing for users who tend to use more than their fair share of the bandwidth"?
Are we referring to the uncapping of cable-modems or just someone using all they can? I don't know what your American companies call 'fair share' but up here in Canada that means if I pay for a 512Kb connection and my monthly limit is 3GB upstream, if that's all I am using, that's all I pay for (at a reasonable $35 CAD/mo.(about $22.75 USD/mo.)). Most of our providers don't even care if you have a home network and use NAT! Check here if you don't believe me.
Maybe Canadian companies just don't understand the concept of gouging like those good 'ol American ones. We always were a little slow.
"Microsoft's chief rivals have complained that the changes being made to Windows XP do not go far enough to ensure a level playing field in the computer software market"
.ISO files and a decent Media Player (although I haven't replaced WMP because again, I like OS-integrated software), I wouldn't need to use anything but Windows XP.
Level playing field? Is this communism?
I like Windows XP. I like having a browser integrated into the OS. I can open a URL from the same window I open my File Manager console from. I like that.
And no matter how many different browsers I try, I like IE. It seems as though all of the other browsers are mostly just trying to keep up with it (with the exception of Netscape 7, which is quite nice). I think if MS added a few power features in XP, such as being able to create
Quit fighting it and conform. Resistance is futile...
I am Canadian. /. about 2-bit companies trying to sue other companies for using thier "technology" for profit. Am I alone in wondering what the fuck is going on here?
My country's government is synonymous with allowing stup shit take place. However, I am appalled with the recent string of news articles posted on
This particular artice makes me want to hurl. It's code. How do you patent code? I understand copyrighting code but a patent? What is your country coming to?
Someone ought to take the patent offices and beat the shit out of every single one of them. Seriously...
Very good point.
However, the article was focusing on the lack of planes in the air because of the attack on 9/11. Never have modern meteorologists had the opportunity to study weather patterns in conditions without airplanes because we have been flying planes longer than they have been studying the weather!
As for:
"I don't know what the short-term, localized (to NYC) effect it had. Probably measurable, but certainly not widespread"
As the chaotic butterfly demonstrates, everything is widespread.
American Way that is...
Where else in the world can a company exist for the sole purpose of sueing people?
In a loosely related article, MS patents the Binary System of Numbers.
I know, it's an oldie, but it's still good!
Why does the improved file-download window look a little too much like the one in Windows XP?
Is this what developers at KDE consider improved?
I would bet if anything is going to be picked up by other intelligent species in the galaxy (that originated from us), it is going to be Voyager I. We cannot be certain they watch the same electromagnetic frequencies we have been transmitting for the last 50+ years. We can, however, figure if someone is watching their skies like we do, they would eventually see this sucker whipping through deep-space all alone and emitting radio signals.
We should send out another one some day that sends signals in ALL directions, like a beacon. Sure, it might get us blowed up good by some bad-assed ID4 type ETs but it might also put us in contact with the Vulcan type MFs.
Just a rambling thought I guess.
Wouldn't it be ironic if the 10,000 dead were killed by a plague and the virus had survived this long, only to wreak havok on the world?
...ok so it might suck a little.
I agree with the second part of the Bill. It's not like the purveyors or hard-core pornography care, giving them their own domain would make it easier for people to find their sites. What I don't agree with is hiding porn sites in the rest of the otherwise safe Internet and even hiding themselves so that people stumble onto them unsuspectedly. I don't want children to do that.
As an adult, I have the right to look at porn, Larry Flynn made sure of that (at least the movie says he did); This Bill doesn't inhibit that right. It does protect children from having prOn sites appearing as something other that prOn when searching for something else on Google.
And I don't think it will label all adult-related material as prOn. After all, Slashdot is adult-oriented and I can access it from my corporate network which is closely watched and filtered by Websense software. I cannot access www.whitehouse.com though, good thing.
This is all very depressing. With so many possible conditions for the evolution of Intelligent life on other planets, and so many of the factors leading one to beleive that only in identical solar systems would a planet, quite similar to Earth, be able to support life, why even bother searching?
Maybe I should become a Mormon...
(Note: The above statement was one of sarcasm and in no way intended to insult those of the Mormon community)
It never ceases to amaze me how people can actually whine about the content of this site instead of actually surfing for the news themselves. How lazy can you get? Point, click, repeat...!
If you don't like what they post, don't read it! Don't pay for it! Or even better, do your work instead!! (I know, that's not even funny).
I mean, the news on this site is almost always the same, "Big company buys another big company", "MS Sux", "Coders can't get laid"...
That's what actually made the posts today funny; they actually sound a lot like the normal news!
I think most programmers would testify that no matter what language they code in, programmers STILL don't get laid.
This is true in so many ways. Not only would a large financial institution not trust our internal systems logic to "outsiders" because of security (even internally, information regarding different systems is kept a secret), outsiders wouldn't understand our systems. We don't follow the same standards as the rest of the programming world.
Not to say the Linux community couldn't understand how we work, it would just take too lond to tech it. We would be better off hiring 200 Linux programmers and developing in parallel until convertion time.
Unfortunately, this would affect the "bottom line" so again, would never happen. Our Executives don't care who runs their systems, so long as they run. And they don't mind dishing out millions to keep things that way; Another point Microsoft is well-aware of...
I repeat, mission-critical ...
It takes US months to rewrite a SINGLE application when needed, and we KNOW our system. Besides, we (just like I'm sure other major financial institutions) don't TRUST OTHER PEOPLE TO WRITE OUR APPS. Security here is second only to the US Military.
Yet now I see you agree with me...
I'll shutup now.
I hope the other respondants with similar questions read this too.
We write all of our applications ourselves. While Financial Institutions are primarily Host-Based (AS/400, DEC, crap like that), the size of most Institutions forces us to have middle-tier servers. Our Middle tier is primarily Windows NT based. We wrote all 120+ applications (financial stuff, no word processers here) for Windows NT.
While this would be easier for ML as they were previously running UNIX Hosts and Middle tier, my post was only relating the story to my own experience with conversion on a large-scale.
IMHO, not only would it never come to pass that the Linux community would be called upon to help re-write applications for a financial institution, security prevents that. Also, without knowing how Wine would react/perform on our mission-critical applications, it too would never happen. Banks don't take chances like that, that's WHY we write everything ourselves (most banks do).