I find it slightly disturbing that in the entire Google news catalog, only Slashdot is carrying this 'story', and linked from NewsForge, no less.
Who is this guy doing this "press release" anyway? Why isn't there an official statement from the company?
And why did Timothy post this himself, linking to NewsForge (no less), instead of posting one of the hundreds of submissions he undoubtedly must've received, given the "hot topic"?
That's the problem with Windows - it doesen't scale
That's a nice, sweeping statement with no factual backup whatsoever. Companies like EBay and Dell would disagree with you. But what do they know, right?
You're oversimplifying the type of rig required to run a service like Hotmail. I can ascribe that to either naivete or just plain hostility towards Microsoft, I guess.
With most Unix varients you have clear upgrade path.
What?
their a toy, apenetly it takes 6 of them to do 120,000 transactions
*chuckle* Those six boxes do much more than run the two applications that handle those external transactions from service stations out in the field. Much, much more.
It's simple - if you don't do it, you're out of a job. In this economy that's not a very good idea.
Be a team player and suck it up. BUT, demand something in return. More vacation, a raise, whatever. ANYTHING. I've been in this type of situation and let me tell you - in the long run it pays off. But asking something extra in return from the PHBs makes it feel like you're using better quality vaseline.
The part about the consultants - well, being one I can't really sympathize with you. Them's the dregs. You should've become one if you want to work more and get paid more as well. Employees are always whining about how we make so much more money, but they're rarely up to the challenge, both in terms of time and technical ability.
So, suck it up, play nice and demand something in return. You'll thank yourself in a few years, especially if you've decided to stick around the company for the long run.
He's not cynical, he's just fucked in the head. Just like all the ACs that post stupid "you suck" messages from their parent's basements and then giggle for three days when they think back at how clever they were.
It's easy to dismiss things like these with a "oh, that's impossible", but it's really hard to tell what type of impact this sort of culture shock will have on an isolated society. Take for example this part of the article:
Every week, the letters page carries columns of worried correspondence: "Dear Editor, TV is very bad for our country... it controls our minds... and makes [us] crazy. The enemy is right here with us in our own living room. People behave like the actors, and are now anxious, greedy and discontent."
Is this stupid? Funny? Bizarre? Remember that Bhutan does not follow the same societal traits we are accustomed to in the west. I'd be inclined to see this report in a different light for just that reason.
The moon does not emit light; it does shine light in the same way that light shines from a bald head. It's like a TCP packet hopping from node to node from its source address to its destination address.
So what you're saying here is that you post on Slashdot to defend the right of governments to choose the software they use. Right? So if this was an article about the government of Bolivia switching its milk delivery trucks from Mercedes Benz to Ford, we'd be having the same conversation.
why would I use it for anything important like, say, financial transations?
Perhaps you're confused. Let me guess - you subscribe to that myth that goes "OMFG M$ IS RUNNING HOTMAIL ON BSD!!!"?
Pair.com
I don't quite see the relationship here. Do you know how many active users Hotmail has? "Several email addresses"? Is that a joke?
Guess what Microsoft uses for their financial records
So? Do you know what they run on those AS/400 boxes? I know companies that are all-Microsoft shops and still keep HP-UX and Minis around because they have applications they don't want to port. Sourceforge uses DB2. I'm sure there are many examples of that out in the real world.
BTW, off the top of my head, the Phillips-Conoco data center in Houston serves 120,000 transactions a day on six clustered Windows 2000 AS boxes. So spare me the "nobody runs Windows for important stuff like financial transactions" party line, mmkay? In any case, real shit like the Amex worldwide processing center in Phoenix uses mainframes anyway. Nothing else, not even your beloved Linux can cut it in those scenarios. Just thought you'd want a reality check there.
I don't know much Java, but.NET has an entire CodeDOM namespace that can be used to generate assemblies and code on the fly. DOM being the keyword - it presents C# code as a parsed object tree. I haven't played with it beyond generating simple assemblies but I wonder if it could be somehow cajoled into creating a tree representation that also understands flow. That would be a neat thing to play around with.
Note that, for example, "Managed C++" is something very different from C++
MC++ is a misnomer. The VC++ compiler has a set of extensions that allow you to easily hook into the managed CLR using a few new pragmas and keywords. Other than that, your code looks pretty darn much like your average C++ application. You can use the STL, ATL or just about any C++ library that is compatible with VC++. Even MFC, if that's your poison.
C++ is really just that, C++. Even if you're using the managed extensions. About the only thing I don't like about MC++ is the whole casting thing for managed types. That stuff can get nasty at times... it looks like bad macros on crack =)
Would you like to share with us why you consider Hotmail a "silly little system"? Do you perchance run something bigger at home, maybe? At work? Maybe it's just perception but it seems to me that Hotmail is down right massive.
It may be a piece of shit service (IMO), but ~100 million people who use it every day and the folks that actually run it would disagree on the "silly little" part, I think.
Unless you're just calling it "silly" because it's owned by Microsoft. That I would understand to a certain extent. But it doesn't quite make it "silly", you know?
Microsoft isen't ready for the server room
Your insistence on spelling "isn't" incorrectly aside, I have to take issue here. Have you ever worked for a company that runs a large Windows 2000-based network? Maybe you're harking back to the days of Windows 3.1, when networking under Windows really, really sucked. It's gotten better in the past ten years, trust me.
We often hear about companies, government agencies, schools and other organizations that migrate from Microsoft to open source based systems
We do, don't we? I'd actually like to hear some follow ups on these stories that are always promptly reported as a victory of sorts.
For example, how long it took to actually migrate x,000 of servers and workstations after the [government | company | school] decided to "give M$ the shaft". How much money for re-training users? How much lost (or gained) productivity? How much churn on the HR side because admins|programmers could not cope with the platform change? How much cost for replacing or rewriting business applications? Buying new ones? And so on.
I've always thought in looking at those "success stories" that they were rather long on hype and short on substance. I personally know of a few successful moves to things like OpenOffice or different mail servers and databases, but never a wholesale large scale Windows->Linux migration that in the end actually worked to everyone's satisfaction and ended up being cheaper than it was before.
To a certain extent yes, but that doesn't balance the scales. Balancing the scales would be to post another front page story with the real facts. Hiding it in a/back does not work. The original "OMG M$ IS TEH SUX" story gets 200,000 reads, this one gets 2,000.
Slashdot Mirror
Fair enough. I just thought it was a bit suspicious, but if that's the case then kudos to roblimo.
Thanks for the clarification.
Who is this guy doing this "press release" anyway? Why isn't there an official statement from the company?
And why did Timothy post this himself, linking to NewsForge (no less), instead of posting one of the hundreds of submissions he undoubtedly must've received, given the "hot topic"?
Sometimes I just wonder...
Self-regulation has largely failed, so I really don't see why not. Because of the actions of a few (in Internet scale), the rest of us must pay.
But the question is not really "would the law work". It's "would it be enforceable?", and "at what cost?". And "cost" is not only monetary...
Hardly trying to "impress" you, because...
SINGLE 486 OS/2 box.
That's the problem with Windows - it doesen't scale
That's a nice, sweeping statement with no factual backup whatsoever. Companies like EBay and Dell would disagree with you. But what do they know, right?
You're oversimplifying the type of rig required to run a service like Hotmail. I can ascribe that to either naivete or just plain hostility towards Microsoft, I guess.
With most Unix varients you have clear upgrade path.
What?
their a toy, apenetly it takes 6 of them to do 120,000 transactions
*chuckle* Those six boxes do much more than run the two applications that handle those external transactions from service stations out in the field. Much, much more.
Be a team player and suck it up. BUT, demand something in return. More vacation, a raise, whatever. ANYTHING. I've been in this type of situation and let me tell you - in the long run it pays off. But asking something extra in return from the PHBs makes it feel like you're using better quality vaseline.
The part about the consultants - well, being one I can't really sympathize with you. Them's the dregs. You should've become one if you want to work more and get paid more as well. Employees are always whining about how we make so much more money, but they're rarely up to the challenge, both in terms of time and technical ability.
So, suck it up, play nice and demand something in return. You'll thank yourself in a few years, especially if you've decided to stick around the company for the long run.
He's not cynical, he's just fucked in the head. Just like all the ACs that post stupid "you suck" messages from their parent's basements and then giggle for three days when they think back at how clever they were.
Every week, the letters page carries columns of worried correspondence: "Dear Editor, TV is very bad for our country... it controls our minds... and makes [us] crazy. The enemy is right here with us in our own living room. People behave like the actors, and are now anxious, greedy and discontent."
Is this stupid? Funny? Bizarre? Remember that Bhutan does not follow the same societal traits we are accustomed to in the west. I'd be inclined to see this report in a different light for just that reason.
No link this time!
Religious geeks - god save us.
Come to think of it, I doubt they even know languages other than Engrish and 1337 exist.
Ah, OK. Just wanted to get that out of the way.
$13.00? I'd probably get more for recycling my stash of AOL CDs.
So what you're saying here is that you post on Slashdot to defend the right of governments to choose the software they use. Right? So if this was an article about the government of Bolivia switching its milk delivery trucks from Mercedes Benz to Ford, we'd be having the same conversation.
Perhaps you're confused. Let me guess - you subscribe to that myth that goes "OMFG M$ IS RUNNING HOTMAIL ON BSD!!!"?
Pair.com
I don't quite see the relationship here. Do you know how many active users Hotmail has? "Several email addresses"? Is that a joke?
Guess what Microsoft uses for their financial records
So? Do you know what they run on those AS/400 boxes? I know companies that are all-Microsoft shops and still keep HP-UX and Minis around because they have applications they don't want to port. Sourceforge uses DB2. I'm sure there are many examples of that out in the real world.
BTW, off the top of my head, the Phillips-Conoco data center in Houston serves 120,000 transactions a day on six clustered Windows 2000 AS boxes. So spare me the "nobody runs Windows for important stuff like financial transactions" party line, mmkay? In any case, real shit like the Amex worldwide processing center in Phoenix uses mainframes anyway. Nothing else, not even your beloved Linux can cut it in those scenarios. Just thought you'd want a reality check there.
If they were mandating a switch to Windows you'd be crying bloody murder, so spare us the sophistic dramatizations.
Who uses MI these days anyway =)
I don't know much Java, but .NET has an entire CodeDOM namespace that can be used to generate assemblies and code on the fly. DOM being the keyword - it presents C# code as a parsed object tree. I haven't played with it beyond generating simple assemblies but I wonder if it could be somehow cajoled into creating a tree representation that also understands flow. That would be a neat thing to play around with.
Oh, wait. That's helium.
MC++ is a misnomer. The VC++ compiler has a set of extensions that allow you to easily hook into the managed CLR using a few new pragmas and keywords. Other than that, your code looks pretty darn much like your average C++ application. You can use the STL, ATL or just about any C++ library that is compatible with VC++. Even MFC, if that's your poison.
C++ is really just that, C++. Even if you're using the managed extensions. About the only thing I don't like about MC++ is the whole casting thing for managed types. That stuff can get nasty at times... it looks like bad macros on crack =)
Would you like to share with us why you consider Hotmail a "silly little system"? Do you perchance run something bigger at home, maybe? At work? Maybe it's just perception but it seems to me that Hotmail is down right massive.
It may be a piece of shit service (IMO), but ~100 million people who use it every day and the folks that actually run it would disagree on the "silly little" part, I think.
Unless you're just calling it "silly" because it's owned by Microsoft. That I would understand to a certain extent. But it doesn't quite make it "silly", you know?
Microsoft isen't ready for the server room
Your insistence on spelling "isn't" incorrectly aside, I have to take issue here. Have you ever worked for a company that runs a large Windows 2000-based network? Maybe you're harking back to the days of Windows 3.1, when networking under Windows really, really sucked. It's gotten better in the past ten years, trust me.
You are so 1337.
We do, don't we? I'd actually like to hear some follow ups on these stories that are always promptly reported as a victory of sorts.
For example, how long it took to actually migrate x,000 of servers and workstations after the [government | company | school] decided to "give M$ the shaft". How much money for re-training users? How much lost (or gained) productivity? How much churn on the HR side because admins|programmers could not cope with the platform change? How much cost for replacing or rewriting business applications? Buying new ones? And so on.
I've always thought in looking at those "success stories" that they were rather long on hype and short on substance. I personally know of a few successful moves to things like OpenOffice or different mail servers and databases, but never a wholesale large scale Windows->Linux migration that in the end actually worked to everyone's satisfaction and ended up being cheaper than it was before.
To a certain extent yes, but that doesn't balance the scales. Balancing the scales would be to post another front page story with the real facts. Hiding it in a /back does not work. The original "OMG M$ IS TEH SUX" story gets 200,000 reads, this one gets 2,000.
That has been tried before, "dummy". It was called communism. It didn't work.
In Spanish it would actually be something like "JJefe" (ugh) or "JPatron" (ugh ugh). How about "JTaco" instead =)