I used to work for HP at a large outsource customer's site. I looked after a select group of users. After a few months, myself and another guy, managed to get everything so down pat, that requests for assistance dropped dramatically, and our quality of service was pretty high. The manager was happy. He basically let us do anything we wanted, preferably to educate ourselves or help other team members, as long as our requests for help or special projects were attended to first, which we always did. Reading teh internet because boring after a while, because you can do all that in an hour, then you run out of things of interest to read.
I learned and managed to introduce Linux into the environment. We also developed a sophisticated network interrogation tool to gather infomration about a user's environement, applications and PC status: basically about 3 of us worked out that if we have enough information, most of the time we can fix a user's PC remotely, or do preventative maintenance prior to problems occuring. All this was done via Windows scripts which dumped data into a central folder, then another perl guru in our trio did some parsing of the reports and populated a database. This database was visible on a web site searcheable by host name. It was so useful and successful, that word reached the upper echelons of the company. We did not charge the customer anythign for this. It was all to help us do our jobs quicker. Pretty much two or three times a week we'd go out for a 2-hour lunch, and the boss sometimes joined us. On quiet days we used to even play networked games, and before the manager's responsibilities grew drastically, he used to join in.
After six years, the contract was terminated, and so the team got disbanded. That was the sad thing, the team as a whole, I later found out, was number one in terms of SLAs and customer satisfaction in the whole Asia Pacific region. It also had the lowest ratio of admin to technical staff at about 1 to 20 or so. The average in AP was about 1 to 5 and for some customers it was close to 1 to 1.
On a side note, when word reached the top of the management chain about the tools we've developed, they tried to make us stop using it because it threatened the potential sale of a "management" tool that they were trying to sell to the customer.
Back on topic, it all depends on what your manager can tolerate. A good manager would let you do whatever as long as your work comes first.
It frightens you? Why?
Because when Heads of State violently die it tends to cause chaos, political/economic instability and/or wars.
This is true for absolute leaders (such as in the USA). For Westminister system democracies (UK, Australia, Canada etc) the death of a leader does not lead to instability. The party will usually vote for a replacment leader. It is the party that leads the country (with a strong leader obviously) rather than an individual.
The reason I'm saying this is because in such countries, the leader, although protected, is not living in total isolation behind barricades and barriers. I've seen our leaders (in Australia) on many occasions, and I usually cross to the other side of the street so I don't bump into them.
I remember one occasion in Perth when the defence minister (back then) walked in with his family to a food court to have lunch. No guards, no security (at least none we could see). That's the kind of country I want to live in.
I wrote my thesis using Wordperfect 3.5. Best and lightest word processor I used (along with MS Word 5.1). The scripting in WP3.5 was the best. Ah... the memories. Pity these things die and are lost forever.
This is like all ISPs now offering spam filtered email. I love it. It cuts down on an enourmnous amount of junk from my inbox. But, I could untick that box, and I will happily receive spam to my heart's content. The same principle will apply to "filtering". The ISP will offer it as an option. Currently they only offer windows based client software. In the new plan (according to the PM, he's worked it out with the major ISPs) the filtering will also be optional at the ISP side. The simplest way this could be done, is for the ISPs to offer a special proxy server which will filter a fair bit of nasties. They will then instruct the parents to go through the proxy. Any other way will require that the connections be routed separately, which is unlikely. At the end of the day, I don't think it's such a bad idea.
Well, I Didn't read the article, but I'd still like to put out my two cents on the Symantec service. Recently, I've had to contact Symantec on several occasions to ask for their assistance with some problems I couldn't figure out on my own (I support small business customers). Anyway, on every occasion, I was put through within a reasonable timeframe (usually less than 20 minutes) to someone who was able to help me sort out the problem. On one occasion, even after the problem was fixed, the technician who helped called again. I was quite surprised, but he said that he wanted to make sure that some other service is also working because he was not sure that he told me to switch it back on or not. I was quite impressed, and still am with their level of service. I have on a couple of occasion been put through to the consumer helpdesk in India, but they were quite helpful. Once I told them that I am an enterprise customer, they would transfer the call to the right number (or just give me a number and tell me the options I should select). I may sound like a fanboy here, but I actually do have a very high regard for their service centre people.
Where I have a problem with Symantec is with their myriad of products and licensing. It is much harder to get to figure out what product should be purchased for a particular customer, or what the differences are between the various versions of a product than it is to get support from their call centre. Symantec needs to wisen up and reduce the complexity of their choices. Too many choices doesn't always make for a happy customer.
I have to agree. Exchange/Shared Calendar are the only reason why enterprises use Windows on the desktop.
I worked for a large telecoms company that was 90% running on Macs. They spent millions converting to PCs (not including hardware) because "its enterprise capabilities" ie Outlook/Exchange could not be replicated on Macs. All their custom apps had to be ported (90% were terminal based anyway). The whole conversion process took them about 5 years to complete (ie drop the Mac penetration to about 10%) So, yes. Linux on the desktop will not go anywhere without the right applications Calendar/Exchange applications.
I must say, I agree with your statement about God requiring faith. I don't need faith to believe in God because I have "seen" evidence of God. But that is a different discussion.
In the same way, I don't need a theory to prove to me that God created the universe or created human kind. If I believe that God is Omnipotent (all powerful), then I have to believe that he's capable of "creating" everything. Think of "existence" as an equation with n variables, where n=infinity Only someone who's "bigger than infinity" can solve it.
There is an interesting verse in Genesis which, in some translations, states that God commanded the "Earth" to produce all kinds of animals and plants etc, but it clearly says that "God said: I will create" humans. This to me is a clear indication that (If I believe the literal Bible and God) I am created not evolved.
I do not have to disprove evolution to be safe in my faith in God. I think it is a lame argument and leads absolutely no where.
People who are looking for proof that God exists to believe, will never find it outside of themselves. By the same token, those who try to "defend" God will always fail because people, in the middle of "miracles" still worshipped animals.
But, these discussions are always entertaining, even though at time the sheer ignorance of people on both sides of the argument (it's not a debate) is both frustrating and astounding.
We recently purchased a Sony Vaio for a customer of ours. It came preloaded with Vista (so it counts towards the Vista total sales). But the first thing we did was "downgrade" to XP Pro. So, do the investors know about this?
Actually, my concern is not for the 2 year old. They won't be able to open the car doors. I'm more concerned about the 9 year olds or such. I have had a friend of mine, a long time ago, when I was about 11 or 12, who got into his dad's Beetle, managed to roll it down the driveway (a bit steep) and roll it in a neighbour's paddock. Fortunately, he ended up with only some broken ribs and a broken arm. Yes, I think the ad is cute, and silly, but I also think they could do better. The cliche "think of the children" is quite appropriate. Most of the time they can't think for themselves. As an aside to the people who say, ah, but shouldn't parents switch off the TV. Gee, since when do you switch off the TV when a cute ad that you happen to like come up?
I see a lot of people complaining about the taxman taking money from me. Well, I for one welcome the opportunity to pay taxes. You see my taxes are used by the people I've placed in office (efficiently or not, that's besides the question) to do things that benefit me. I can see a doctor for free. If I need an operation, I can have it for free. I drive on a road paid for by my taxes. You see, I see the benefits of my taxes everyday. I have also lived in a country (3rd world, non-oil rich country) where there is no income tax, or at least no one pays it. It's not nice. It's every man to himself. There are no utilities, no good roads, health costs an arm an a leg (literally in some cases). Are my taxes high (33%), I sure would like to take home more.
Well, as a foreigner, I decided to not even visit the US on my next North American visit because they will fingerprint me. It is too much traouble really for me in AUstralia. There are no direct flights to Canada from here. I will have to stopover at the US (there is no such thing as "transit" anymore) which means I'll get finger printed, or I'll have to add several hours to my trip and increase the cost of the tickets to fly though HK or Seoul. It's all a PITA. So, I agree with you. Run if you have to be "tagged" as a forgeiner. They lose not you.
If the goal is to learn how Linux works, then stay clear from Ubuntu. It's too user friendly. In this case, I'm not sure what to recommend. Never used Debian, I used Slackware for about a week, and I think it is a good choice in this scenario, or Fedora. I know it is possible to "learn Linux" with any distribution, but the tendency is to use a shortcut when it is available than to go the long "unix" way about doing it. For an excellent learning experience, try Linux from Scratch.
Ofcourse, if all you want is to just use the PC to do stuff (assignments, internet, and such) then like most people are recommending use Ubuntu.
I've read through most of the comments in this thread (and many more over the years) comparing RPM with Debs and ports and others. But I still have a question that I haven't been able to get a satisfactory answer to. I may have missed it though, so bear with me while I articulate my thoughts. Why all the fuss about a package manger? I spend most of my time on Windows and OSX, and only occasionally (when doing some dev work) on Fedora 5. Almost all installations on OSX and Windows are self sufficient. For those who remember Win95 and 98 or OS7 and OS8 will no doubt remember the problems with DLL and Extention conflicts or missing. Nowadays, almost all applications store their dependecy files in their own folders. Yes it leads to bloat, but at least I don't break App1 when I install App2 because of a version conflict in some module. Besides, who's still running Linux on a 4GB drive and installing multiple applications these days? Is there anything like this on Linux (now or in the future)? I reckon, if a similar approach is take, then dependencies will no longer be an issue on Linux, and applications can be more portable. This approach obviously does not preclude the use of common operating system libraries.
But the fact is that there is a large number of copyright holders for the Linux kernel, not just Linus himself. Not all of these copyright holders accept binary kernel modules, and thus they should be considered illegal to distribute with the kernel.
You're right that there are more than one copyright holders, but that is precisely the reason why Linus is the arbiter. If it was not so, then the whole development process will fall into disarray.
Or for that matter, when might we see FMPro on Linux. I've got nothing against SQL DBs. Horses for courses and all.
What i'm after is something similar to FMPRo where I quickly create a database from Raw data, manipulate it in some fashion, create a layout to present it nicely and have some scripts do stuff. This is the beauty of FMPro. It simple, quick and to boot you can even create run-time solutions. Yes, Filemaker is quite limited compared to "proper" RDBMS, but hey, I don't want to run a webserver to view my data and create reports.
Anway, I know it's slightly off topic, but a good place to ask the question.
You obviously don't have access or don't read the Israeli newspapers. Just like there are a lot of Moslems wanting the remove the "new-comer" Israelis, there are also many Jews in Israel who also advocate removing (some have used exterminate) the "Arabs" (that's their way of refering to the "natives" also known as Palestinians).
This is not about IP. This is about the freedom to meet customer needs and to create competition. That problem is, you can be either for freedom and collaboration, or you can take a different approach. These companies are trying to do both. I can at least respect Microsoft, because they don't pretend to be an open source company.
Intersting jibe at Novell. Although I agree. I've got nothing against MS' products, but their philosophy and that of "Linux" companies are diamerically opposed. I see no logic in Novell's moves at all. MS gains by improving virtualisation (and VMWARE is the real threat) for linux products.
For all it's worth though, in 5, 10 maybe 15 years, the landscape wil be totally different, and the consumer will still be able to do their work just as effectively if not more so than today.
I see a lot of comments mentioning Katrina and why or why not the federal government didn't do more or on time etc. I'm an outsider (Aussie) and I am talking from experience having been in the Emergency services here for over 10 years. The problem in the US is that the emergency management (from my perspective, so take the following comment with some salt) is completely disorganised and not clearly demarcated. Let me explain: In Australia there emergencies are classified as follows:
1- Storm, Tempest and Floods (Katrnina fits here) is managed by the SES (correct term is Combat Agency) 2- Bush Fires: Combat Agency is the rural/country fire service 3- Man made/urban disasters (building collapses etc.): Combat agency is the "regular" fire brigade There are others, but these are the "major" ones. By the way, the majority of emergency service agencies are made up of volunteers (unpaid) except for the "regular" or metro fire brigades who are paid employees.
A combat agency means they are the only and sole coordinating agency, regardless of the scale. Almost all major emergencies require the cooperation of all emergency services, under the direction of the Combat Agency. The chain of command is very clear. An example, about 4 years ago a, major storm hit sydney damaging over 10000 homes. Once local area alone had over 4000 damaged homes. This area's emergency service unit consisted of no more that 40 members. However, all the state's resources were at it's disposal. In a matter of hours, through the right channels, the fire brigades, parks services, the police and a few other organisations had stationed liaison officers in their HQ to start receiving orders. Even with an operation of this scale, the State did not interfere except to declare a "state of emergency" which give the "combat agency" extra powers, like forcibly remove residents, employment protection etc. The scenario was replicated across the several other regions that were affected. The operation worked flawlessly (in general terms) even though most of the people involved were not experienced in such large scale operations (it lasted for over two weeks and an extra week or so of tidy up work) because everyone knew the correct chain of command, and the government responses available. Everything worked in this operation because everyone respected the supremacy of the combat agency in their own operation, unlike a year or so earlier. That time, i think it was 1999 or 2000, another freak storm hit a different part of sydney and caused a similar amount of damage, but there was so much jostling for the media limelight and the actions of a couple of very politically powerful "shock jocks" or talkback radio hosts. The government started interfering and some of the non-combat agencies wanted to assume responsibility etc. It caused a lot of confusion among the rank and file of the emergency services volunteers and the result was a shambles. The operation took 3 months to complete, although the bulk was done in under 4 weeks.
The investigations aftwerards reaffirmed the need to respect the supremacy of the Combat Agency.
Long message I know, but the point i'm trying to make is a clear mandate for a "combat agency" would have minimised the damaage of the Katrina huricane. It was not how slow or fast the feds moved or who did what. It was because no one single person was in charge. In my examples above, if the scale was the same as Katrina, then the state's Director General would've been the person in charge, and everyone else: police, army, FBs, the governor you name, would have had to defer to him. What we saw on the news was a shambles, it was politicians running an emergency. Politicians are not trained or experienced to run an emergency. But, anyway, it appears to us outsiders that there are too much framentation in your civil structures to work cooperatively together. An example is communications, here in NSW, there is one emergency radio network called GRM (Government Radio Network) with pretty much all police, SES, Fire Brigades (soo I think) and even the ambulance service owning parts of the spectrum, and there is also the ability to interlink because it is a digital network. Makes it much easier to talk the same language.
This is a genuine question, and I haven't been able to figure out a logical answer. Why is it "important" or "useful" or whatever, to know where the Fire trucks are responding at any one time? Maybe a weekly report or even daily, is enough for people to see the big picture, but real time? This is really a case of "because we can, we should" even if the outcome is useless.
Here in Sydney, every now and then there's a promiotion by some energy company where they give away for free a 6 pack of CFLs for free. All it usually takes is a promotional form to be filled in. Obviously a marketing ploy, but hey, the CFL are free, and the worst they can do is send you paper advertising their services. I replaced almost all the light bulbs at home for free. Not looking back.
not so much for any concern I have for the brats, but more because the damn stuff seems to be single-handedly ending any semblance of privacy on the internet
You sir, make me sick. Sitting in your ivory tower bleating about your privacy concerns and completely forgetting the misery that the "brats" live with for the rest of their lives. "Think of the kids" seems to have become a derisive statement when it comes to "privacy" issues here on Slashdot; but those who harp on in that vein seem to miss the point. It is not the "children" per se, but rather the weak and the helpless. Yes, there is moral responsibility to look after the weak and the helpless because they can't look after themselves. Children are the primary example, but not the only ones. I suggest you work with some of these "brats" sometime, or at least get to know some of them before you start talking about privacy issues.
I totally agree. I bought my microwave in 1998. I couldn't afford the "electronic" ones at the time, so I got one with two knobs. One for the timer, and the other for the power. Now, I wouldn't want to replace it at all. I love the simplicity. The one at work is "digital" and all it has are different buttons that have to be pressed multiple times to get the desired results.
I can think of another scenario. I have flown several light aircraft. There was one in particular, the Eagle X aircraft from Perth had a digital cockpit. It annoyed the hell out of me because there were no dials to indicate readings (with green normal bands) they were all numerical. Fancy, but very distracting.
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I used to work for HP at a large outsource customer's site. I looked after a select group of users. After a few months, myself and another guy, managed to get everything so down pat, that requests for assistance dropped dramatically, and our quality of service was pretty high. The manager was happy.
He basically let us do anything we wanted, preferably to educate ourselves or help other team members, as long as our requests for help or special projects were attended to first, which we always did. Reading teh internet because boring after a while, because you can do all that in an hour, then you run out of things of interest to read.
I learned and managed to introduce Linux into the environment. We also developed a sophisticated network interrogation tool to gather infomration about a user's environement, applications and PC status: basically about 3 of us worked out that if we have enough information, most of the time we can fix a user's PC remotely, or do preventative maintenance prior to problems occuring. All this was done via Windows scripts which dumped data into a central folder, then another perl guru in our trio did some parsing of the reports and populated a database. This database was visible on a web site searcheable by host name. It was so useful and successful, that word reached the upper echelons of the company. We did not charge the customer anythign for this. It was all to help us do our jobs quicker. Pretty much two or three times a week we'd go out for a 2-hour lunch, and the boss sometimes joined us. On quiet days we used to even play networked games, and before the manager's responsibilities grew drastically, he used to join in.
After six years, the contract was terminated, and so the team got disbanded. That was the sad thing, the team as a whole, I later found out, was number one in terms of SLAs and customer satisfaction in the whole Asia Pacific region. It also had the lowest ratio of admin to technical staff at about 1 to 20 or so. The average in AP was about 1 to 5 and for some customers it was close to 1 to 1.
On a side note, when word reached the top of the management chain about the tools we've developed, they tried to make us stop using it because it threatened the potential sale of a "management" tool that they were trying to sell to the customer.
Back on topic, it all depends on what your manager can tolerate. A good manager would let you do whatever as long as your work comes first.
This is true for absolute leaders (such as in the USA). For Westminister system democracies (UK, Australia, Canada etc) the death of a leader does not lead to instability. The party will usually vote for a replacment leader. It is the party that leads the country (with a strong leader obviously) rather than an individual.
The reason I'm saying this is because in such countries, the leader, although protected, is not living in total isolation behind barricades and barriers. I've seen our leaders (in Australia) on many occasions, and I usually cross to the other side of the street so I don't bump into them.
I remember one occasion in Perth when the defence minister (back then) walked in with his family to a food court to have lunch. No guards, no security (at least none we could see).
That's the kind of country I want to live in.
I wrote my thesis using Wordperfect 3.5. Best and lightest word processor I used (along with MS Word 5.1). The scripting in WP3.5 was the best.
Ah... the memories. Pity these things die and are lost forever.
This is like all ISPs now offering spam filtered email. I love it. It cuts down on an enourmnous amount of junk from my inbox. But, I could untick that box, and I will happily receive spam to my heart's content.
The same principle will apply to "filtering". The ISP will offer it as an option. Currently they only offer windows based client software. In the new plan (according to the PM, he's worked it out with the major ISPs) the filtering will also be optional at the ISP side.
The simplest way this could be done, is for the ISPs to offer a special proxy server which will filter a fair bit of nasties. They will then instruct the parents to go through the proxy. Any other way will require that the connections be routed separately, which is unlikely.
At the end of the day, I don't think it's such a bad idea.
Well, I Didn't read the article, but I'd still like to put out my two cents on the Symantec service.
Recently, I've had to contact Symantec on several occasions to ask for their assistance with some problems I couldn't figure out on my own (I support small business customers). Anyway, on every occasion, I was put through within a reasonable timeframe (usually less than 20 minutes) to someone who was able to help me sort out the problem.
On one occasion, even after the problem was fixed, the technician who helped called again. I was quite surprised, but he said that he wanted to make sure that some other service is also working because he was not sure that he told me to switch it back on or not.
I was quite impressed, and still am with their level of service. I have on a couple of occasion been put through to the consumer helpdesk in India, but they were quite helpful. Once I told them that I am an enterprise customer, they would transfer the call to the right number (or just give me a number and tell me the options I should select).
I may sound like a fanboy here, but I actually do have a very high regard for their service centre people.
Where I have a problem with Symantec is with their myriad of products and licensing. It is much harder to get to figure out what product should be purchased for a particular customer, or what the differences are between the various versions of a product than it is to get support from their call centre.
Symantec needs to wisen up and reduce the complexity of their choices. Too many choices doesn't always make for a happy customer.
I have to agree. Exchange/Shared Calendar are the only reason why enterprises use Windows on the desktop.
I worked for a large telecoms company that was 90% running on Macs. They spent millions converting to PCs (not including hardware) because "its enterprise capabilities" ie Outlook/Exchange could not be replicated on Macs. All their custom apps had to be ported (90% were terminal based anyway).
The whole conversion process took them about 5 years to complete (ie drop the Mac penetration to about 10%)
So, yes. Linux on the desktop will not go anywhere without the right applications Calendar/Exchange applications.
I must say, I agree with your statement about God requiring faith. I don't need faith to believe in God because I have "seen" evidence of God. But that is a different discussion. In the same way, I don't need a theory to prove to me that God created the universe or created human kind. If I believe that God is Omnipotent (all powerful), then I have to believe that he's capable of "creating" everything. Think of "existence" as an equation with n variables, where n=infinity Only someone who's "bigger than infinity" can solve it. There is an interesting verse in Genesis which, in some translations, states that God commanded the "Earth" to produce all kinds of animals and plants etc, but it clearly says that "God said: I will create" humans. This to me is a clear indication that (If I believe the literal Bible and God) I am created not evolved. I do not have to disprove evolution to be safe in my faith in God. I think it is a lame argument and leads absolutely no where. People who are looking for proof that God exists to believe, will never find it outside of themselves. By the same token, those who try to "defend" God will always fail because people, in the middle of "miracles" still worshipped animals. But, these discussions are always entertaining, even though at time the sheer ignorance of people on both sides of the argument (it's not a debate) is both frustrating and astounding.
We recently purchased a Sony Vaio for a customer of ours. It came preloaded with Vista (so it counts towards the Vista total sales). But the first thing we did was "downgrade" to XP Pro.
So, do the investors know about this?
October sure is in Spring, well, more like mid spring for us. http://www.cultureandrecreation.gov.au/articles/we ather/.
You obviously don't have kids.
Actually, my concern is not for the 2 year old. They won't be able to open the car doors. I'm more concerned about the 9 year olds or such. I have had a friend of mine, a long time ago, when I was about 11 or 12, who got into his dad's Beetle, managed to roll it down the driveway (a bit steep) and roll it in a neighbour's paddock. Fortunately, he ended up with only some broken ribs and a broken arm.
Yes, I think the ad is cute, and silly, but I also think they could do better. The cliche "think of the children" is quite appropriate. Most of the time they can't think for themselves.
As an aside to the people who say, ah, but shouldn't parents switch off the TV. Gee, since when do you switch off the TV when a cute ad that you happen to like come up?
I see a lot of people complaining about the taxman taking money from me. Well, I for one welcome the opportunity to pay taxes. You see my taxes are used by the people I've placed in office (efficiently or not, that's besides the question) to do things that benefit me. I can see a doctor for free. If I need an operation, I can have it for free. I drive on a road paid for by my taxes. You see, I see the benefits of my taxes everyday.
I have also lived in a country (3rd world, non-oil rich country) where there is no income tax, or at least no one pays it. It's not nice. It's every man to himself. There are no utilities, no good roads, health costs an arm an a leg (literally in some cases). Are my taxes high (33%), I sure would like to take home more.
Well, as a foreigner, I decided to not even visit the US on my next North American visit because they will fingerprint me. It is too much traouble really for me in AUstralia. There are no direct flights to Canada from here. I will have to stopover at the US (there is no such thing as "transit" anymore) which means I'll get finger printed, or I'll have to add several hours to my trip and increase the cost of the tickets to fly though HK or Seoul. It's all a PITA.
So, I agree with you. Run if you have to be "tagged" as a forgeiner. They lose not you.
If the goal is to learn how Linux works, then stay clear from Ubuntu. It's too user friendly. In this case, I'm not sure what to recommend. Never used Debian, I used Slackware for about a week, and I think it is a good choice in this scenario, or Fedora. I know it is possible to "learn Linux" with any distribution, but the tendency is to use a shortcut when it is available than to go the long "unix" way about doing it.
For an excellent learning experience, try Linux from Scratch.
Ofcourse, if all you want is to just use the PC to do stuff (assignments, internet, and such) then like most people are recommending use Ubuntu.
I've read through most of the comments in this thread (and many more over the years) comparing RPM with Debs and ports and others.
But I still have a question that I haven't been able to get a satisfactory answer to. I may have missed it though, so bear with me while I articulate my thoughts.
Why all the fuss about a package manger? I spend most of my time on Windows and OSX, and only occasionally (when doing some dev work) on Fedora 5. Almost all installations on OSX and Windows are self sufficient. For those who remember Win95 and 98 or OS7 and OS8 will no doubt remember the problems with DLL and Extention conflicts or missing. Nowadays, almost all applications store their dependecy files in their own folders. Yes it leads to bloat, but at least I don't break App1 when I install App2 because of a version conflict in some module. Besides, who's still running Linux on a 4GB drive and installing multiple applications these days?
Is there anything like this on Linux (now or in the future)? I reckon, if a similar approach is take, then dependencies will no longer be an issue on Linux, and applications can be more portable.
This approach obviously does not preclude the use of common operating system libraries.
You're right that there are more than one copyright holders, but that is precisely the reason why Linus is the arbiter. If it was not so, then the whole development process will fall into disarray.
Yes, it may be more interesting/rewarding to go to an asteroid, but if it aint staying in the neighbourhood, how do we get anything back?
Or for that matter, when might we see FMPro on Linux.
I've got nothing against SQL DBs. Horses for courses and all.
What i'm after is something similar to FMPRo where I quickly create a database from Raw data, manipulate it in some fashion, create a layout to present it nicely and have some scripts do stuff.
This is the beauty of FMPro. It simple, quick and to boot you can even create run-time solutions.
Yes, Filemaker is quite limited compared to "proper" RDBMS, but hey, I don't want to run a webserver to view my data and create reports.
Anway, I know it's slightly off topic, but a good place to ask the question.
THat's such a simplistic view.
You obviously don't have access or don't read the Israeli newspapers. Just like there are a lot of Moslems wanting the remove the "new-comer" Israelis, there are also many Jews in Israel who also advocate removing (some have used exterminate) the "Arabs" (that's their way of refering to the "natives" also known as Palestinians).
Intersting jibe at Novell. Although I agree. I've got nothing against MS' products, but their philosophy and that of "Linux" companies are diamerically opposed. I see no logic in Novell's moves at all. MS gains by improving virtualisation (and VMWARE is the real threat) for linux products.
For all it's worth though, in 5, 10 maybe 15 years, the landscape wil be totally different, and the consumer will still be able to do their work just as effectively if not more so than today.
I see a lot of comments mentioning Katrina and why or why not the federal government didn't do more or on time etc.
I'm an outsider (Aussie) and I am talking from experience having been in the Emergency services here for over 10 years.
The problem in the US is that the emergency management (from my perspective, so take the following comment with some salt) is completely disorganised and not clearly demarcated.
Let me explain:
In Australia there emergencies are classified as follows:
1- Storm, Tempest and Floods (Katrnina fits here) is managed by the SES (correct term is Combat Agency)
2- Bush Fires: Combat Agency is the rural/country fire service
3- Man made/urban disasters (building collapses etc.): Combat agency is the "regular" fire brigade
There are others, but these are the "major" ones.
By the way, the majority of emergency service agencies are made up of volunteers (unpaid) except for the "regular" or metro fire brigades who are paid employees.
A combat agency means they are the only and sole coordinating agency, regardless of the scale. Almost all major emergencies require the cooperation of all emergency services, under the direction of the Combat Agency. The chain of command is very clear.
An example, about 4 years ago a, major storm hit sydney damaging over 10000 homes. Once local area alone had over 4000 damaged homes. This area's emergency service unit consisted of no more that 40 members. However, all the state's resources were at it's disposal. In a matter of hours, through the right channels, the fire brigades, parks services, the police and a few other organisations had stationed liaison officers in their HQ to start receiving orders.
Even with an operation of this scale, the State did not interfere except to declare a "state of emergency" which give the "combat agency" extra powers, like forcibly remove residents, employment protection etc.
The scenario was replicated across the several other regions that were affected. The operation worked flawlessly (in general terms) even though most of the people involved were not experienced in such large scale operations (it lasted for over two weeks and an extra week or so of tidy up work) because everyone knew the correct chain of command, and the government responses available.
Everything worked in this operation because everyone respected the supremacy of the combat agency in their own operation, unlike a year or so earlier.
That time, i think it was 1999 or 2000, another freak storm hit a different part of sydney and caused a similar amount of damage, but there was so much jostling for the media limelight and the actions of a couple of very politically powerful "shock jocks" or talkback radio hosts. The government started interfering and some of the non-combat agencies wanted to assume responsibility etc. It caused a lot of confusion among the rank and file of the emergency services volunteers and the result was a shambles. The operation took 3 months to complete, although the bulk was done in under 4 weeks.
The investigations aftwerards reaffirmed the need to respect the supremacy of the Combat Agency.
Long message I know, but the point i'm trying to make is a clear mandate for a "combat agency" would have minimised the damaage of the Katrina huricane. It was not how slow or fast the feds moved or who did what. It was because no one single person was in charge. In my examples above, if the scale was the same as Katrina, then the state's Director General would've been the person in charge, and everyone else: police, army, FBs, the governor you name, would have had to defer to him. What we saw on the news was a shambles, it was politicians running an emergency. Politicians are not trained or experienced to run an emergency.
But, anyway, it appears to us outsiders that there are too much framentation in your civil structures to work cooperatively together. An example is communications, here in NSW, there is one emergency radio network called GRM (Government Radio Network) with pretty much all police, SES, Fire Brigades (soo I think) and even the ambulance service owning parts of the spectrum, and there is also the ability to interlink because it is a digital network. Makes it much easier to talk the same language.
This is a genuine question, and I haven't been able to figure out a logical answer.
Why is it "important" or "useful" or whatever, to know where the Fire trucks are responding at any one time? Maybe a weekly report or even daily, is enough for people to see the big picture, but real time?
This is really a case of "because we can, we should" even if the outcome is useless.
Anyone care to enlighten me?
Here in Sydney, every now and then there's a promiotion by some energy company where they give away for free a 6 pack of CFLs for free.
All it usually takes is a promotional form to be filled in. Obviously a marketing ploy, but hey, the CFL are free, and the worst they can do is send you paper advertising their services.
I replaced almost all the light bulbs at home for free. Not looking back.
You sir, make me sick. Sitting in your ivory tower bleating about your privacy concerns and completely forgetting the misery that the "brats" live with for the rest of their lives.
"Think of the kids" seems to have become a derisive statement when it comes to "privacy" issues here on Slashdot; but those who harp on in that vein seem to miss the point. It is not the "children" per se, but rather the weak and the helpless. Yes, there is moral responsibility to look after the weak and the helpless because they can't look after themselves. Children are the primary example, but not the only ones.
I suggest you work with some of these "brats" sometime, or at least get to know some of them before you start talking about privacy issues.
I totally agree. I bought my microwave in 1998. I couldn't afford the "electronic" ones at the time, so I got one with two knobs. One for the timer, and the other for the power.
Now, I wouldn't want to replace it at all. I love the simplicity. The one at work is "digital" and all it has are different buttons that have to be pressed multiple times to get the desired results.
I can think of another scenario. I have flown several light aircraft. There was one in particular, the Eagle X aircraft from Perth had a digital cockpit. It annoyed the hell out of me because there were no dials to indicate readings (with green normal bands) they were all numerical. Fancy, but very distracting.
Bring back the analog.