This kind of smells like a congress-person (or persons) who own or have a stake in a Y2K contracting firm, that needs it's business perked up a bit...:S
Hardware RAID controllers are quite significant in the server market, and we all appreciate the "not insignificant" share of the server market that Linux has.
Well, I have a number of Adaptec's ATA Raid Cards (ATA RAID 2400A), for the longest time they only supported RedHat 7.0. Now that Fedora is somewhat the premiere platform for me (three releases later), they are finally supporting Redhat 9.0.
With the the latest Fedora, there is no way to see if the raid array has a failed drive. So I instead use the card as a quad ATA controller, using software RAID. Guess if I'd buy another Adaptec piece of hardware???
Even an attack which wasn't targeting the IT infrastructure (Sept 11th), made the net (and phone infrastructure) pretty much unusuable for an extended period of time. An emergecy broadcast system for information during a major attack, it's not.
With proper routing, redundancy, spare capacity, it could be more robust, but there is no mandate for that, but mainly pressure to drive costs lower and lower. So you get an internet which is very low cost, and very powerful, but not very resilient to major problems.
That's an easy one. You want to go in the programming business? (There's the first hint.) I would highly recommend Commerce. Unless you are able to find an esoteric niche where you are working on rocket science stuff in a think tank or such, you are most likely to be dealing with real business needs, in a real business world. And understanding business concepts and rationale, will make you far more valuable than any other discipline.
I had become quite familiar with computers and programming by the time I hit university, so mixed a bunch of computer science courses, with a Bachelor of Commerce. Best move I ever made. I think part of the decision was influenced by working (during my high school days) with some pure C.S. graduates, who didn't have much of a clue about the real world.
There are so many business concepts that are lost on people with some basic training in the area. For example, the concept of "sunk costs" (excuse me if my terminology is rusty); it doesn't matter what you have invested in a given attempt; it solely matters what the incremental cost involved in that approach and your other alternatives at hand. (That is, it doesn't matter that you've sunk a ton of resources into an effort; if there's an alternative that is incrementally easier than finishing your original attempt, don't be sentimental!) That's a fairly fundamental concept in business, but not necessarily outside of that realm. I've seen more than one disaster due to the thought that "well, we have so much invested in this approach, we can't change now..." even when there was a far better (and often open source) alternative that would have been a better solution to solve the need at hand. Other concepts such as present value/future value, annuities, and so on, really do help one make better programming decisions and design in the business world.
It's paid off for me a thousand times over, and I expect it to continue to do so.
As a close second, I would recommend psychology; computers interact with people, and in my opinion, do so in ways that could be drastically better if programmers had a better foundation in human psychology. (And this does actually overlap with business, to a certain degree.)
-d
Re:This is not dumb...
on
DVHS on a Budget
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
I seem to remember a contact lense maker (who I shall refer to simply as B&L, since I'm 100% sure it was them, nor am I sure how to spell their name), who lost a class action suit for selling the exact same product as daily disposables, and extended wear lenses. Simply different branding, packaging, use, but the ability to charge drastically different pricing, was frowned upon and judged against by the courts.
Would this not be a precedent against branding the same tapes with different qualities?
There a number of commercial vendors who sell, configure, and support Asterisk; this is a good option for people who aren't up to doing the configuration themselves, and no worse than if they had gone with a commercial-only product.
Some old home computing magazines used to also publish the odd program on barcodes right in the magazine. Never tried it, but seemed like it would beat typing in programs.
I haven't checked the reports, and done the math, but this strikes me as a small committment on the scales of comapny we're talking about; along the lines of the % of Gate's wealth that goes to charity (although I'm sure it's not that small; and even that he gets to write off, for giving windows licenses to schools to further hedge his empire; I guess in absolute terms, no one can knock his contributions to world causes, but I'd like to think if I had billions, I'd give half or most of it to good causes, how much does one person/family/empire need?)
Anyhow, back to the article at hand; 100m for IBM doesn't seem like a stunning amount to me. Can someone put it in perspective?
Oh man, there were so many things in that article (well, the summary, this is slashdot after all), that made me choke.
Who is repsonsible if Linux has a security breach??? So if MS has one (which is far more frequent), they will compensate us? Nuh uh, they aren't accountable for their horrible security record in the slightest, and are far slower to respond to security issues than the open source community.
While the Zaurus is indeed cool, and I haven't used one, from the article, my 1999 Toshiba Libretto seems to win in almost all categories.
These were sold for awhile around that time frame, never well marketed; the price was good (around $1K, I think), and the size was amazing (VHS-cassette sized).
800x480 display, 233mhz, 64M Ram, 4G hard drive, runs Win98, Win2000, Linux, two PCMCIA slots (so wifi, bluetooth, cd-rom, anything you want can be added), quite nice trackpoint style mouse next to the screen, small, but touch-typable keyboard, docking cradle included to hook to serial, parallel, external video.
These units were so amazing; I haven't seeen anything that matches what I would expect to see today along the same lines, except for some very high priced units. I wish Toshiba had kept up that tradition (they still make new models of libretto, but have upsized them, it's just not the same, and they're pricier).
Being able to take a laptop in my camera bag, and run Linux, Windows, firefox, cygwin, and so on, is so helpful. (This post was typed on one:).
(Some models of the Sony Picturebook were close to as interesting, with some nice features; but they've lost the trackpoint on newer models, for the far most costy [in terms of real estate] touchpad.)
Sure, take all the nice Linux applications over to Windows...don't worry about porting the nice Windows apps over to Linux though. Nope, we're fine...We'll just run them at half speed with WINE or something...
Anything that helps break MS's stranglehold, even on windows, is a good thing; not having to use Outlook, to get outlook-like functionality (but better, more reliable, etc.), is nothing but a good thing. No nasty sarcasm required.
I think something most people don't realize is that by using the GPU to render, you are actually taking load OFF of the CPU, not adding to it. Bravo to Microsoft for this.
Yeah, and I'm sure it will be implemented in an efficient, stable, and reliable way, to achieve exactly that. Just like windows pre-emptive multitasking (great concept), and filesystem, and so on and so forth, are perfect implementations, achieving all of the conceptual goals.
For the sarcasm-impaired: Microsoft has a clear history of taking very strong, powerful, established computing concepts, and botching them in the execution of these goals, so overall performance, reliability, is far worse. And they close off any third party integration along every step (DOJ, what ever happened to you?)
When you have several of the worlds extremely wealthy throwing money at something this big, independently (rather than teaming their efforts), you know that A. there's a SHITLOAD of money to be made, and B. that it has more than a snowball's chance in hell of succeeding because of the pure amount of money that is going to be thrown at it.
While I wish this were true, I think that's pretty faulty logic. If this were the case, you'd see logical *investment* firms investing in space, which is pretty rare. Bezos, Branson(sp?), and others, have made more money through smart business, than they could possibly ever spend, and are now spending some on some "long shots" that may benefit the good of mankind.
I applaud these efforts, and any moves by people who are in a position to take some chances for the betterment of mankind.
After having used Altigen in a previous life, and recently trying out and setting up an Asterisk system, I am most impressed.
It takes a bit more to get your head around some of the configuration items, but once you grasp a few basic concepts, it is incredibly flexible, and extremely powerful.
One of the nice touches is a wide library of pre-recorded professional phrases. Additionally, you can have custom ones recorded (with something like a 48 hour turnaround), in the same voice, for something like $20 for three recordings. Quite a deal for a very professional office PBX (or mini-telco). (The prerecorded library has some hilarious phrases, recorded in that same professional voice; definitely worth a download of the asterisk source, just to play the.wav's.)
I believe I have heard that Vonage uses Asterisk.
The only problem I have had with the system, is occasionally with Digium's cards an extension will get "stupid" (no dial tone, just static); from what I have read, some reshuffling of interrupts (Digium cards like having their own interrupt), and getting a slightly more modern motherboard (mine is '98), would help this problem. It occurs fairly rarely.
Knoppix is truly invaluable for Windows and Linux rescue. Last time I did a rescue, I had two CD roms on the system, and Knoppix even let me burn the files I needed to save onto a CD; it can't get much more convnient than that.
I do wish there were USB-key based distros that were easy to set up (there is at least one based upon Damn Small Linux, a derivative of Knoppix, but I've never been able to get it work); I have seen bundled DSL or other based rescue setups preconfigured on USB memory keys but not an easy-to-install downloadlable version.
Additionally, even if those assumptions aren't true, and other people aren't of similar perspective or nature, acting as if they were, and building consensus with them so that *they* share (are appear to) that belief, and act accordingly, can improve your life experience in your interactions with them, and others.
That is, even if other people were just entities provided for your entertainment, having them share respect and empathy and respect for others (i.e., including you) through consensus building, makes more sense than the alternatives.:-)
One obvious path, is to download and install some emulators of these classic (and simpler) systems, for the kids to play with, and learn (and get a bit of a history lesson in ancient computing:-).
On a photo sharing site I created awhile back, some user uploaded some child porn; when we became aware of it, I reported it to the FBI. A few years later, I was asked to testify against him in court.
This fellow was already convicted of abusing several kids, and received a number of years for that. However, on the federal charges (crossing state lines via the net, I guess) of child pornography, he was convicted and sentenced to life (no possibility of parole for this federal time).
It is frightening that the physical acts on the children received less time; in the end, I was glad to play a part in getting him off the street for good, but it still seems the wrong way to have achieved the goal. (Like nailing Capone on tax charges.)
It may not make much difference to the passengers, but think about having the plane touch down (sort of) gracefully rather than, say, crashing into the middle of a housing development. Not to mention the fact that your insurance company will be far happier to repair a lightly damaged aircraft rather than shelling out for a replacement of the bits and pieces left behind in a smoking crater...
From what I understand, and have seen, most of north america is pretty sparsely populated. Ever fly across the US during the day? Lotsa farmland, mountains, a few populated areas. The odds of a plane crashing into a populated area, is fairly small. I somewhat suspect this is not a *huge* factor in the actuarial calculations of plane insurance. But would welcome enlightenment (or knee jerk misinformation, this being/.).
Could a stronger IBM / apple partnership be the culmination of technologies (power processors, apple desktops, IBM servers, the marketing engine of both companies) that finally steps up and pushes an all *nix platform to challenge Microsoft?
But that would make future generations miss the humour in one of my favorite lines:
It all started on the thirteenth hour, of the thirteenth day, of the thirteenth month. We were there to discuss the misprinted calendars the school had purchased.
Well, one of the first questions to cross my mind, was how to tie the multiple cores together. But if the VP of this endeavor is Steve Smith, maybe the answer is the "handyman's secret weapon..."
What a wonderful time we live in, where they're actually using phrases like "90% less (well, fewer) electrons to store the data." Actually starting to measure data storage in terms of electrons, makes it sound like we're on the way to the ultimate (1 electron=1 bit ).:-)
Slashdot Mirror
-d
Well, I have a number of Adaptec's ATA Raid Cards (ATA RAID 2400A), for the longest time they only supported RedHat 7.0. Now that Fedora is somewhat the premiere platform for me (three releases later), they are finally supporting Redhat 9.0.
With the the latest Fedora, there is no way to see if the raid array has a failed drive. So I instead use the card as a quad ATA controller, using software RAID. Guess if I'd buy another Adaptec piece of hardware???
With proper routing, redundancy, spare capacity, it could be more robust, but there is no mandate for that, but mainly pressure to drive costs lower and lower. So you get an internet which is very low cost, and very powerful, but not very resilient to major problems.
I had become quite familiar with computers and programming by the time I hit university, so mixed a bunch of computer science courses, with a Bachelor of Commerce. Best move I ever made. I think part of the decision was influenced by working (during my high school days) with some pure C.S. graduates, who didn't have much of a clue about the real world.
There are so many business concepts that are lost on people with some basic training in the area. For example, the concept of "sunk costs" (excuse me if my terminology is rusty); it doesn't matter what you have invested in a given attempt; it solely matters what the incremental cost involved in that approach and your other alternatives at hand. (That is, it doesn't matter that you've sunk a ton of resources into an effort; if there's an alternative that is incrementally easier than finishing your original attempt, don't be sentimental!) That's a fairly fundamental concept in business, but not necessarily outside of that realm. I've seen more than one disaster due to the thought that "well, we have so much invested in this approach, we can't change now..." even when there was a far better (and often open source) alternative that would have been a better solution to solve the need at hand. Other concepts such as present value/future value, annuities, and so on, really do help one make better programming decisions and design in the business world.
It's paid off for me a thousand times over, and I expect it to continue to do so.
As a close second, I would recommend psychology; computers interact with people, and in my opinion, do so in ways that could be drastically better if programmers had a better foundation in human psychology. (And this does actually overlap with business, to a certain degree.)
-d
Would this not be a precedent against branding the same tapes with different qualities?
There a number of commercial vendors who sell, configure, and support Asterisk; this is a good option for people who aren't up to doing the configuration themselves, and no worse than if they had gone with a commercial-only product.
Some old home computing magazines used to also publish the odd program on barcodes right in the magazine. Never tried it, but seemed like it would beat typing in programs.
Anyhow, back to the article at hand; 100m for IBM doesn't seem like a stunning amount to me. Can someone put it in perspective?
Who is repsonsible if Linux has a security breach??? So if MS has one (which is far more frequent), they will compensate us? Nuh uh, they aren't accountable for their horrible security record in the slightest, and are far slower to respond to security issues than the open source community.
Arrrrgh. Insantiy.
These were sold for awhile around that time frame, never well marketed; the price was good (around $1K, I think), and the size was amazing (VHS-cassette sized).
800x480 display, 233mhz, 64M Ram, 4G hard drive, runs Win98, Win2000, Linux, two PCMCIA slots (so wifi, bluetooth, cd-rom, anything you want can be added), quite nice trackpoint style mouse next to the screen, small, but touch-typable keyboard, docking cradle included to hook to serial, parallel, external video.
These units were so amazing; I haven't seeen anything that matches what I would expect to see today along the same lines, except for some very high priced units. I wish Toshiba had kept up that tradition (they still make new models of libretto, but have upsized them, it's just not the same, and they're pricier).
Being able to take a laptop in my camera bag, and run Linux, Windows, firefox, cygwin, and so on, is so helpful. (This post was typed on one
(Some models of the Sony Picturebook were close to as interesting, with some nice features; but they've lost the trackpoint on newer models, for the far most costy [in terms of real estate] touchpad.)
Anything that helps break MS's stranglehold, even on windows, is a good thing; not having to use Outlook, to get outlook-like functionality (but better, more reliable, etc.), is nothing but a good thing. No nasty sarcasm required.
Yeah, and I'm sure it will be implemented in an efficient, stable, and reliable way, to achieve exactly that. Just like windows pre-emptive multitasking (great concept), and filesystem, and so on and so forth, are perfect implementations, achieving all of the conceptual goals.
For the sarcasm-impaired: Microsoft has a clear history of taking very strong, powerful, established computing concepts, and botching them in the execution of these goals, so overall performance, reliability, is far worse. And they close off any third party integration along every step (DOJ, what ever happened to you?)
While I wish this were true, I think that's pretty faulty logic. If this were the case, you'd see logical *investment* firms investing in space, which is pretty rare. Bezos, Branson(sp?), and others, have made more money through smart business, than they could possibly ever spend, and are now spending some on some "long shots" that may benefit the good of mankind.
I applaud these efforts, and any moves by people who are in a position to take some chances for the betterment of mankind.
But a sound business decision? I think not.
It takes a bit more to get your head around some of the configuration items, but once you grasp a few basic concepts, it is incredibly flexible, and extremely powerful.
One of the nice touches is a wide library of pre-recorded professional phrases. Additionally, you can have custom ones recorded (with something like a 48 hour turnaround), in the same voice, for something like $20 for three recordings. Quite a deal for a very professional office PBX (or mini-telco). (The prerecorded library has some hilarious phrases, recorded in that same professional voice; definitely worth a download of the asterisk source, just to play the .wav's.)
I believe I have heard that Vonage uses Asterisk.
The only problem I have had with the system, is occasionally with Digium's cards an extension will get "stupid" (no dial tone, just static); from what I have read, some reshuffling of interrupts (Digium cards like having their own interrupt), and getting a slightly more modern motherboard (mine is '98), would help this problem. It occurs fairly rarely.
This is also the trick that cats use in the air, to land on their feet (a bend and an angular twist, kinda thing).
I do wish there were USB-key based distros that were easy to set up (there is at least one based upon Damn Small Linux, a derivative of Knoppix, but I've never been able to get it work); I have seen bundled DSL or other based rescue setups preconfigured on USB memory keys but not an easy-to-install downloadlable version.
That is, even if other people were just entities provided for your entertainment, having them share respect and empathy and respect for others (i.e., including you) through consensus building, makes more sense than the alternatives. :-)
One obvious path, is to download and install some emulators of these classic (and simpler) systems, for the kids to play with, and learn (and get a bit of a history lesson in ancient computing :-).
This fellow was already convicted of abusing several kids, and received a number of years for that. However, on the federal charges (crossing state lines via the net, I guess) of child pornography, he was convicted and sentenced to life (no possibility of parole for this federal time).
It is frightening that the physical acts on the children received less time; in the end, I was glad to play a part in getting him off the street for good, but it still seems the wrong way to have achieved the goal. (Like nailing Capone on tax charges.)
From what I understand, and have seen, most of north america is pretty sparsely populated. Ever fly across the US during the day? Lotsa farmland, mountains, a few populated areas. The odds of a plane crashing into a populated area, is fairly small. I somewhat suspect this is not a *huge* factor in the actuarial calculations of plane insurance. But would welcome enlightenment (or knee jerk misinformation, this being /.).
-d
-d
-d
Add up these facts:
Apple is powerpc
IBM is powerpc
Apple is OSX based on FreeBSD
IBM spent $1 bil on Linux last year
Sheeesh, dude, I'm lost already, can you draw me a logic diagram for this?