Oracle pricing is comical. You have to calculate your "Oracle Power Units". I'm serious. OPUs.
I went thru their website trying to price Oracle for a project and I was stuck. I had to call their sales number. Basically you add up the number of cpu's multiple by their Mhz and multiple this by your number of users. Then add on a few extra thousands dollars to that. No really you have to call. Its just too compex. To make it simple just use MS SQL Server. Its one price regardless of CPUs or their speed.
MS used to have a deal where if your client base was large enough you could just ask them to round off the license at $25k. They probably won't do this anymore. For one thing MS wants to be taken seriously and to some lame people that means asking alot of money. So MS has jacked up the price. Its silly but so are most database people.
Yes, if you can afford multi-million dollar licence' then I bet the software you buy, run by people with EE degrees will run far better then stuff on a Win2000 machine. But to me this is horribly elitest and exactly what I don't like about Unix. It's a club for elitest. While MS is really software for the people. The proof is in the numbers. MS is by no means a perfect solution from the CS POV like a Unix box but Windows software generally does alot more work for the user (UI, on-line help, self administration) then say a piece of Sun or Oracle software which does nothing for you. And most people don't care what CS types think anyway. Oracle has like 400 user adjustable parameters while SQL Server has 50. SQL server's engine does the rest of the work itself. For most companies(most compaies being small to medium sized) the MS approach is a better appraoch. The proof again is in the number of licenses MS sells as opposed to Oracle or Sun. If you work for a huge corporation that can afford engineers to hold Sun, Oracle, or even Linux' hands then fine. Personnally, I would hate to be working for one the these huge corporations where my job was to do one thing for 20 years and then get my gold watch. I prefer to work for the comman man companies and for them Win2000, VB, MS SQL Server are most often the best solution because the DBA can also be the developer which is what I am.
So you Sun people are generally a part of the largest multinational corporations while us MS people are a part of the smaller Mom and Pop operations. So of course there is a different mindset. We are about getting things done with a team of one or two devs and you are about maintaining kingdoms and the status quo.
All I have to say is that if Sun, Oracle, and Linux don't improve their software which to me means better documentation, better administration tools (how *do* you set the refresh rate on a Linux machine's display?), and better inter-operability (ADO and OLE DB rock while JDBC kinda sucks) then MS's.net is going to eat a chunk of flesh from their dying carcuss. Because.Net will have easy to understand tools and common themes that Windows programmers *will* be able to port to Unix and other platforms. And using a language like C# which *has* been submitted to a standards body rather then using clunky Java which SUN HAS STILL NOT RELEASED!
That would be the Plutonians. The Plutonians are
sick and tired of being ignored.
22% of children in family under 22k/year have PC!
on
Kids and Computers
·
· Score: 1
That's far more than I imagined. I consider myself to be very liberal but I don't think kids need a computer. Kids need loving parents(or other "family" which can be anyone who takes care of us) who can spend time with them and foster a love for learning. I am a programmer and I didn't have a PC as a kid and I didn't have parents who spent alot of time with me. But I did have a great older brother. Buying a kid a computer, or anything will not give then a desire to learn. Having parents, siblings, or extended family (friends, neighbors, teachers) who care about a kid are what matter most. And money can not and will not buy this.
What we should be most worried about are the parents who both work, but don't need to, who shuttle their kids from activity to activity but never really spend time with their kids just letting the child be a child. I look back on my childhood and the fondest memories are of playing in the woods or by the creek. Exploring a fallen tree or catching crawdads or garter snakes, sitting on the hill and watching clouds form into a summer thunder storm. Or catching fireflies at night or watching heat lightening. I really feel sorry for these kids strapped into minivans going from one thing to the next without anytime for reflection.
I can't recall who said it but "A life without reflection is a life not worth living."
Is there free speech when all the places are malls
on
ACLU Takes on ICANN
·
· Score: 4
You're an...you're not thinking clearly. Controlling DNS' is like telling you what street you can stand on to give your speech. All that will be left if corporate America gets its way will be alleys and swamps. If all the good streets (recognized and traveled by most people) are owned by major corporations then your right to speech is effectively denied. Think of it this way, how much free speech is there in a mall? No, there is no free speech in a mall. Its not a public space. People may falsly beleive they are public but they are not. There are no homeless in a mall. Malls are great places to feel safe and to consume while ignoring the truth of our society. And that's what corporations would wish to do to the internet. They don't want those pesky people gathering to discuss why GM cars are unsafe at GM.sucks.
You have no loyalty to management because loyalty is not something MBA types are taught or understand. If fact, most MBA types would see loyalty as a sign of weakness.
Try to get upper management to get off their ass' and change the direction of the company such that in the short term your company is at least meeting its cash needs. But do not let on that you are thinking of jumping ship. Most managers will see that as a sign to attack you. Its amazing how lacking in leadership skills most MBA/manager types are. Anyway, if they refuse, seem less than motivated, or you don't think they are up to it then you should tell those programmers you feel loyal to and you trust what your plans are and give them a timeline. That's all you need to do. Then its up to them to either take the risk of staying or planning a timely retreat.
I would hope your management gets off their duffs but I wouldn't hold my breath. Most managers were party types in school who don't like to work hard. They would rather use politics and games to get ahead than real work. Keep that in mind.
Lastly when you do leave only tell management that you are leaving because you were offered more money. That's the only reason they will understand. Any other reason and you can expect a Homer Simpson level knee-jerk response. Basically managers never think its their fault that things suck.
Don't be a Neo-ludite but also don't be a Feringi!
on
The Renaissance
·
· Score: 2
Its just as dangerous to worship tech as it is fear it.
The real question when you look at technology has to be if the current culture is
capable of understanding it(technologically, economically, historically, ethically, and morally) and therefore aware of how it could be used
for bad and when people are making false claims of its use. When you look at Genetically Modified Oraganisms we something
even more dangerous happening. We see a government, the US, not informing
its people that they are eating GMOs. The US government assumes that
the food is safe but has done no studies to prove or disprove this. They
are also making blind claims of ecosystem safety but have done no tests or
studies. These are the kind of arrogent actions we can see from history that lead to
very undesirable results. Think of DDT. The government promised it was safe, and strayed
it everywhere. Later we come to find DDT moving up the food chain and in higher and
higher concentrations. In Eagle's it causes the shells to be thin and the eggs die.
That lead to the near extinction of the Bald Eagle.
Or think Agent Orange.
Appearantly we have not learned
any lessons and are throwing caution to the wind in the name of profit.
Go watch your parents, if they are typical parents, try to use the internet. Watch how slow and cautious they are. If they hit one of these crappy sites they are going to get trapped. They aren't going to know how to get out. This makes the internet something people don't want to use and it will hurt the internet, and net programmers, in the long run. There needs to be standards of conduct but at the same time if we let big business write these laws they will be worded to be used as weapons against smaller competition. Big business has a real stake in making sure they can the internet in such a way that it favors big money. So watch out for exactly how things are worded, be critical, and use your imagination.
For starters there would be a clear survival advantage to being able to reach the tree tops. And what else are you going to do with a silly long nick? These bonehead profs are so damn arrogent. How do they know the animal didn't have a special organ in the nick to help pumping or that allowed them to raised their nicks only for brief periods? Maybe they had highly specialized nick veins? Nature has no lack of creativity when survival is on the line! And I have seen people with PhDs be wrong too often to beleive them on what is obvious to the most casual observer.
PhD must grow on trees because every pencil-nicked geek has one.
It doesn't matter if you are guilty or a threat to society, the FBI is all about impressions. The FBI is looking for someone to make an example of. The FBI is all about terror, see Waco and Ruby Ridge. They came in your home(dorm) and seized your property...so what is more freightening? Only if you have never read the history of the FBI would you not be afraid. Check out COINTELPRO.
And dude they have enough on you to get a conviction because you are not going to be on trial with a jury of peers (other programmers) but with a jury of the general population which might not know a thing about Linux except what the FBI will tell them. And who will most people trust the FBI or some hacker?
Get BestCrypt and encypt everything!
Let's do a mind experiment:
Let say corporations have to pay taxes.
What is a CEO of a corporation going to do?
Is he:
A) Going to take a pay cut?
B) Going to fire some people to off set new cost of taxes?
C) Raise prices to offset new cost of taxes?
I think our little experiment leads to some combination of B and C. Corporations are never going to let a cost that effects everyone effect their bottom line. They will just pass it on to consumers or cut expenses (labor is usually the biggest expense companies have).
The real question is: Does the money we already give to the government (1.4 trillion/year) get used well? I think not.
Before we decide to screw someone else over the way we(private citizens) get screwed just head down to a IRS office or a Social Security office and see what your $1.4 trillion is getting you!
I don't think we have to worry about this predicted future. I think some well meaning politician will regulate us before then.
Look at the accounting profession. It was regulated because accounting is seen as vital to maintaining the financial well-being of the nations industries. Could it possibly be argues that computers are not vital? So how long before the government decides we need to be protected?
Don't think it sounds like too bad of an idea? Have you ever read a FASB(Financial Accounting Standards Board) ruling? Amazingly boring. What the scares the hell out of me is the the government will pressure programmers into joining such organizations without outright regulation, the way accountants and doctors are regulated by professional organizations. "Programing is so vital to our economy that we need to make sure certain standards and rules are followed", they will say. I used to work as an accountant and there is nothing more boring. On one hand standards and governing rules make sence. On the other hand they make work/life as boring as can be and they make workers highly replacable. Safe vs. a life of boring work. Accounting is now a 5 year degree and it pays nothing. Or at least next to nothing. And there is no career growth.
I think this is our future.
rather than try to find keywords, which will never work, limit users to a set of sites. This is very limiting...but that's what you want.
All.gov,.mil,.edu sites are probably safe.
Besides as you said these are very none tech types so they won't know the difference. And if someone has a site added have a moderated procedure to do so.
Slashdot Mirror
Oracle pricing is comical. You have to calculate your "Oracle Power Units". I'm serious. OPUs. I went thru their website trying to price Oracle for a project and I was stuck. I had to call their sales number. Basically you add up the number of cpu's multiple by their Mhz and multiple this by your number of users. Then add on a few extra thousands dollars to that. No really you have to call. Its just too compex. To make it simple just use MS SQL Server. Its one price regardless of CPUs or their speed. MS used to have a deal where if your client base was large enough you could just ask them to round off the license at $25k. They probably won't do this anymore. For one thing MS wants to be taken seriously and to some lame people that means asking alot of money. So MS has jacked up the price. Its silly but so are most database people.
Have you ever tried to rely on Oracle or Sun as a small to medium sized company? Good luck.
And with Linux you are also essentially unsupported.
Yes, if you can afford multi-million dollar licence' then I bet the software you buy, run by people with EE degrees will run far better then stuff on a Win2000 machine. But to me this is horribly elitest and exactly what I don't like about Unix. It's a club for elitest. While MS is really software for the people. The proof is in the numbers. MS is by no means a perfect solution from the CS POV like a Unix box but Windows software generally does alot more work for the user (UI, on-line help, self administration) then say a piece of Sun or Oracle software which does nothing for you. And most people don't care what CS types think anyway. Oracle has like 400 user adjustable parameters while SQL Server has 50. SQL server's engine does the rest of the work itself. For most companies(most compaies being small to medium sized) the MS approach is a better appraoch. The proof again is in the number of licenses MS sells as opposed to Oracle or Sun. If you work for a huge corporation that can afford engineers to hold Sun, Oracle, or even Linux' hands then fine. Personnally, I would hate to be working for one the these huge corporations where my job was to do one thing for 20 years and then get my gold watch. I prefer to work for the comman man companies and for them Win2000, VB, MS SQL Server are most often the best solution because the DBA can also be the developer which is what I am.
.net is going to eat a chunk of flesh from their dying carcuss. Because .Net will have easy to understand tools and common themes that Windows programmers *will* be able to port to Unix and other platforms. And using a language like C# which *has* been submitted to a standards body rather then using clunky Java which SUN HAS STILL NOT RELEASED!
So you Sun people are generally a part of the largest multinational corporations while us MS people are a part of the smaller Mom and Pop operations. So of course there is a different mindset. We are about getting things done with a team of one or two devs and you are about maintaining kingdoms and the status quo.
All I have to say is that if Sun, Oracle, and Linux don't improve their software which to me means better documentation, better administration tools (how *do* you set the refresh rate on a Linux machine's display?), and better inter-operability (ADO and OLE DB rock while JDBC kinda sucks) then MS's
The Sinclair ZX-80 has been demoted to a programmable calculator and is no longer considered a computer.
That would be the Plutonians. The Plutonians are sick and tired of being ignored.
That's far more than I imagined. I consider myself to be very liberal but I don't think kids need a computer. Kids need loving parents(or other "family" which can be anyone who takes care of us) who can spend time with them and foster a love for learning. I am a programmer and I didn't have a PC as a kid and I didn't have parents who spent alot of time with me. But I did have a great older brother. Buying a kid a computer, or anything will not give then a desire to learn. Having parents, siblings, or extended family (friends, neighbors, teachers) who care about a kid are what matter most. And money can not and will not buy this.
What we should be most worried about are the parents who both work, but don't need to, who shuttle their kids from activity to activity but never really spend time with their kids just letting the child be a child. I look back on my childhood and the fondest memories are of playing in the woods or by the creek. Exploring a fallen tree or catching crawdads or garter snakes, sitting on the hill and watching clouds form into a summer thunder storm. Or catching fireflies at night or watching heat lightening. I really feel sorry for these kids strapped into minivans going from one thing to the next without anytime for reflection.
I can't recall who said it but "A life without reflection is a life not worth living."
You're an ...you're not thinking clearly. Controlling DNS' is like telling you what street you can stand on to give your speech. All that will be left if corporate America gets its way will be alleys and swamps. If all the good streets (recognized and traveled by most people) are owned by major corporations then your right to speech is effectively denied. Think of it this way, how much free speech is there in a mall? No, there is no free speech in a mall. Its not a public space. People may falsly beleive they are public but they are not. There are no homeless in a mall. Malls are great places to feel safe and to consume while ignoring the truth of our society. And that's what corporations would wish to do to the internet. They don't want those pesky people gathering to discuss why GM cars are unsafe at GM.sucks.
You have no loyalty to management because loyalty is not something MBA types are taught or understand. If fact, most MBA types would see loyalty as a sign of weakness.
Try to get upper management to get off their ass' and change the direction of the company such that in the short term your company is at least meeting its cash needs. But do not let on that you are thinking of jumping ship. Most managers will see that as a sign to attack you. Its amazing how lacking in leadership skills most MBA/manager types are. Anyway, if they refuse, seem less than motivated, or you don't think they are up to it then you should tell those programmers you feel loyal to and you trust what your plans are and give them a timeline. That's all you need to do. Then its up to them to either take the risk of staying or planning a timely retreat.
I would hope your management gets off their duffs but I wouldn't hold my breath. Most managers were party types in school who don't like to work hard. They would rather use politics and games to get ahead than real work. Keep that in mind.
Lastly when you do leave only tell management that you are leaving because you were offered more money. That's the only reason they will understand. Any other reason and you can expect a Homer Simpson level knee-jerk response. Basically managers never think its their fault that things suck.
Its just as dangerous to worship tech as it is fear it.
The real question when you look at technology has to be if the current culture is capable of understanding it(technologically, economically, historically, ethically, and morally) and therefore aware of how it could be used for bad and when people are making false claims of its use. When you look at Genetically Modified Oraganisms we something even more dangerous happening. We see a government, the US, not informing its people that they are eating GMOs. The US government assumes that the food is safe but has done no studies to prove or disprove this. They are also making blind claims of ecosystem safety but have done no tests or studies. These are the kind of arrogent actions we can see from history that lead to very undesirable results. Think of DDT. The government promised it was safe, and strayed it everywhere. Later we come to find DDT moving up the food chain and in higher and higher concentrations. In Eagle's it causes the shells to be thin and the eggs die. That lead to the near extinction of the Bald Eagle.
Or think Agent Orange.
Appearantly we have not learned any lessons and are throwing caution to the wind in the name of profit.
Its like we are freaking Feringi.
Go watch your parents, if they are typical parents, try to use the internet. Watch how slow and cautious they are. If they hit one of these crappy sites they are going to get trapped. They aren't going to know how to get out. This makes the internet something people don't want to use and it will hurt the internet, and net programmers, in the long run. There needs to be standards of conduct but at the same time if we let big business write these laws they will be worded to be used as weapons against smaller competition. Big business has a real stake in making sure they can the internet in such a way that it favors big money. So watch out for exactly how things are worded, be critical, and use your imagination.
For starters there would be a clear survival advantage to being able to reach the tree tops. And what else are you going to do with a silly long nick? These bonehead profs are so damn arrogent. How do they know the animal didn't have a special organ in the nick to help pumping or that allowed them to raised their nicks only for brief periods? Maybe they had highly specialized nick veins? Nature has no lack of creativity when survival is on the line! And I have seen people with PhDs be wrong too often to beleive them on what is obvious to the most casual observer. PhD must grow on trees because every pencil-nicked geek has one.
It doesn't matter if you are guilty or a threat to society, the FBI is all about impressions. The FBI is looking for someone to make an example of. The FBI is all about terror, see Waco and Ruby Ridge. They came in your home(dorm) and seized your property...so what is more freightening? Only if you have never read the history of the FBI would you not be afraid. Check out COINTELPRO. And dude they have enough on you to get a conviction because you are not going to be on trial with a jury of peers (other programmers) but with a jury of the general population which might not know a thing about Linux except what the FBI will tell them. And who will most people trust the FBI or some hacker? Get BestCrypt and encypt everything!
Let's do a mind experiment: Let say corporations have to pay taxes. What is a CEO of a corporation going to do? Is he: A) Going to take a pay cut? B) Going to fire some people to off set new cost of taxes? C) Raise prices to offset new cost of taxes? I think our little experiment leads to some combination of B and C. Corporations are never going to let a cost that effects everyone effect their bottom line. They will just pass it on to consumers or cut expenses (labor is usually the biggest expense companies have). The real question is: Does the money we already give to the government (1.4 trillion/year) get used well? I think not. Before we decide to screw someone else over the way we(private citizens) get screwed just head down to a IRS office or a Social Security office and see what your $1.4 trillion is getting you!
I don't think we have to worry about this predicted future. I think some well meaning politician will regulate us before then. Look at the accounting profession. It was regulated because accounting is seen as vital to maintaining the financial well-being of the nations industries. Could it possibly be argues that computers are not vital? So how long before the government decides we need to be protected? Don't think it sounds like too bad of an idea? Have you ever read a FASB(Financial Accounting Standards Board) ruling? Amazingly boring. What the scares the hell out of me is the the government will pressure programmers into joining such organizations without outright regulation, the way accountants and doctors are regulated by professional organizations. "Programing is so vital to our economy that we need to make sure certain standards and rules are followed", they will say. I used to work as an accountant and there is nothing more boring. On one hand standards and governing rules make sence. On the other hand they make work/life as boring as can be and they make workers highly replacable. Safe vs. a life of boring work. Accounting is now a 5 year degree and it pays nothing. Or at least next to nothing. And there is no career growth. I think this is our future.
rather than try to find keywords, which will never work, limit users to a set of sites. This is very limiting...but that's what you want. All .gov, .mil, .edu sites are probably safe.
Besides as you said these are very none tech types so they won't know the difference. And if someone has a site added have a moderated procedure to do so.