"I only use ms products at work. i never learn how to play with them"
It really bugs me when people pretend to know how to support a product in a work environment, but yet can't be bothered to learn how to actually support it well. This isn't the type of employee I want working at my company.
There are many ways of automating the installation of Microsoft products, included scripted installs or imaging tools such as Ghost. Since this setting is probably a registry entry you could probably have a one time event run in a logon script, as well, etc.
Actually when Office 97 was first released, this paperclip thing did seem like a good idea.
Microsoft does extensive in-house usability testing. They may have found that people unfamiliar with the product liked it, but beta testers did not. And unfortunately ignored beta testers.
In Office 2000 you could click it off permanently. With Office97 you had to delete a file from the harddrive.
That's interesting, because for me moving to Windows 2000 eliminated a lot of the things which annoy the hell out of me with NT 4.
One of the things that annoys me in NT4 is how apps can grab focus from me when I'm trying to do something else. Win2k prevents this, if an app wants attention the icon blinks down on the start bar.
That's not the only thing, there are a number of other improvements that just make the whole environment smoother.
I'm not sure about Win XP. I haven't tried the beta. What I see of the user interface it looks much improved.
The anti-piracy system annoys me. But I also can subvert it by making a copy of the CD at work which won't have that system on it.
I think the consumers will very likely revolt against the new system. We'll see.
Now that's interesting... The GOP recently pushed forward a bill that would make it harder for people declaring bankruptcy to get out of credit card debt.
Then to find that there is a direct connection between the GOP and Mastercard.
Well actually, not surprised. Just didn't realize the connection was so direct.
It's interesting, but you've just provided yet another example of the problem with reality.
Your reality states that the Erin Brockovich story is false.
Yet every reality I have encountered suggests it is true, that PG&E did release toxics into the water.
The difference is, that I don't read neo-conservative right-wing anti-environmental sites for my news.
I think this is the problem and the danger with the internet, you can allow yourself to only be subjected to news stories you agree with, rather than getting a nice balance of points for and against your own views.
That's interesting that you say "poor showing in the debates", because the Media was painting it as if Bush had won the debates clearly.
Honestly, I was not a big proponent of Gore at first. But I had an opportunity to see how he handled himself while on campus at Microsoft after the April court decision. It was televised on C-Span, and I was amazed at just how well he handled such a delicate and tough situation.
He would have been a far better choice than President-by-default that we have today.
But ohwell.
As far as Corruption in the Clinton administration. This is difficult to say. The majority of all charges that had been thrown up against Clinton failed to stick because they were untrue. But that didn't stop Republicans from continuing to throw charges.
Personally I think there was an ulterior motive, not so much to take down Clinton but as to wipe out the long image of Corruption which had charecterized the Reagan/Bush administration of the past.
As much as one might dislike Clinton for being self-absorbed and corrupt, the Reagan/Bush administrations were far far worse and blatantly public about it.
We even see that today with the new Bush administration, he's rolled over on many issues solely based on who funded his campaign.
I received a notice not to long ago that a class action lawsuit had been filed against a Mortgage Insurance company on my behalf. The claim was they misrepresented something and overcharged me.
I have been paying this company $60/month for for the past 30 months.
But as a result of the class action lawsuit, I am now entitled to a check for $20.
Just think of all the things I can do with $20!? Why I could buy an entire case of beer!
WHOOOP DEEEE DOOOOO!!!!!
I'm not saying that the company might not have done something wrong. But was it really worth it?
Class action lawsuits are only a benefit for the lawyers. They will receive about $40 million in legal fees, and everybody else gets $1.98. Then the company has to raise their current product cost by $3 to cover the expenses.
My 4 years of professional experience with Unix revolved around a product called Arc/Info. It's a GIS package from ESRI. At the time it was $18,000 and only ran on Unix workstations.
Today Arc/Info is also available for NT/Win2k. It is still available for Tru64 Unix, HP-UX, Solaris, AIX, etc.
Yet there is no mention of a Linux port.
Re:Where are IBM's priorities?
on
CPRM Voted Down
·
· Score: 2
You don't seriously think IBM is talking about Linux because they are a bunch of nice guys?
They have an agenda, and Linux right now fits into that agenda.
IBM isn't an underdog by any means, they still have higher revenues and profits than Microsoft.
From a desktop admin side, most companies I have been at typically have one support person per 100 desktops. Then perhaps 1 server admin per 500 users.
A lot of it depends on what services you are trying to offer.
I was at one insurance company once with about 1500 employees and we had about 20 people supporting desktops, servers and the LAN hardware.
At a bank I was at, the department I was in had 6 people supporting 80 users. But it was the stock trading floor. The remainder of the 2,000 employees in the company had perhaps 40 people supporting them.
I don't know the size of the support staff where I'm at now, but I would imagine a ratio of 1:50 is about ballpark.
"Further, when you consider the anecdotal evidence suggesting that a single, competent UNIX admin can handle more machines with less downtime than a competent Windows admin can handle Windows boxen"
It is anecdotal.
I've admined both Unix and NT servers. We have both Unix and NT here at our company.
The problem with this comparison is that the two types of servers do different things.
Is it less time consuming to admin a file/print server than a Database server? No
What you say is partly true, but your reasoning is out of touch.
The Recession occured between 90-92.
The Migration from Netware to Windows NT didn't begin to occur until 96-97.
But the cost cutting wasn't driven by the Bush Recession(especially considering that had occured years previous), but rather because of the new revolution occuring in desktop computing. The introduction of Netware 3.x, Windows 3.x, etc. had caused a huge increase in the signifigance, importance and usage of desktop computers in companies.
Prior to this point they had generally just been somewhat distributed PC's running some DOS apps such as 123 and Wordperfect for personal use.
Obviously as PC usage started to displace Mainframe usage in the companies, the costs assocaited with supporting these solutions went up. This was primarily because of all these individual solutions that grew up at the department level.
In the mid 90's there was the movement to bring all these individual department solutions under the umbrella of corporate IT using the catch phrase "enterprise solution".
This was also about the same time as Novell released their Netware 4.x product line. Which was notable for being one of the buggiest software releases ever.
At this time Microsoft did introduce NT with a very competitive pricing structure as compared to Netware. But they did more than that, they also introduced a platform which could do more than Netware. They were quick to point out that you could also run your email server, database server, web server, etc. all on the same box.
While you could sort of do this with Netware, the solutions were not elegant, and from a developer point of view a pain in the butt to create.
So Microsoft won that war through a combination of competitive licensing, but also better product alignment. By offering the one size fits most all, they allowed for a reduction in support staff, which was part of what IT was looking for at the time.
Today this new found integration of various solutions has resulted in incredible productivity improvements to companies.
If you think Linux is going to come in and replace this existing solution, you had best think again.
Right now we're not looking for ways to cut software licensing costs, because they are a small part of our budget, as is hardware procurement.
Half our IT cost is custom software development, and thus are goal is to more rapidly create and deploy software.
I do not see the tools out there today to allow us to do this well on Linux.
Not to mention the tools to replace our existing productivity tools don't exist.
If the RedHat salesman comes calling with numbers in hand, I'm going to ask him "Fine, but how will this be better than what we have now?"
This is a *GOOD* thing. Moving from Win95 to WinXP is as big of a move as moving from 3.1 to 95 was. It's a huge evolutionary step which is really going to boost the possible uses of our desktop computers.
As far as the upgrade treadmill. Honestly, at some point the software does become good enough.
I believe with XP we have reached this point.
There has been a movement to upgrade to Win2k, but it is not as high of a priority as just completing day to day work. Also many companies at this point are just going to wait for XP on the desktop.
Barring a complete overhaul of the way we use computers, I just don't see much motivating factors in jumping to the next version.
There is also the same upgrade treadmill with Linux as there is with Windows, and the costs are nearly identical. The problem is *NOT* the cost of software licensing, but rather the cost of DEPLOYMENT.
You would have had to be involved in a large scale upgrade to understand this. Imagine the number of people involved in planning, testing, rolling out, etc.
Even with automated tools to push the installations, there is a signifigant amount of prep work involved.
Actually the only thing about Linux that threatens anybody is the price.
In the latest round of year 2000 marketshare reports, both Linux and Windows NT showed market growth. Linux is cutting into commercial Unix market, which historically has been more stable and secure than their Linux counterparts.
Why would I choose Linux if I could instead choose Solaris or HPUX? The only answer I can conceive of is cost.
Article I, Section 1. states: "All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives."
Pay particular attention to that last part. If you doubt the Senate was controlled by Republicans, go to www.senate.gov and look it up yourself.
Slashdot Mirror
You mean that Apple was shitting product using Microsoft Xenix!?
:)
Ok, about that protected memory. Did Apple release that last weekend as well?
You mean like preemptive multitasking?
Oh wait, Apple just released that last weekend.
"I only use ms products at work. i never learn how to play with them"
It really bugs me when people pretend to know how to support a product in a work environment, but yet can't be bothered to learn how to actually support it well. This isn't the type of employee I want working at my company.
There are many ways of automating the installation of Microsoft products, included scripted installs or imaging tools such as Ghost. Since this setting is probably a registry entry you could probably have a one time event run in a logon script, as well, etc.
Delete or rename the 'Actors' directory will prevent the paperclip or any of his buddies to come up.
Actually when Office 97 was first released, this paperclip thing did seem like a good idea.
Microsoft does extensive in-house usability testing. They may have found that people unfamiliar with the product liked it, but beta testers did not. And unfortunately ignored beta testers.
In Office 2000 you could click it off permanently. With Office97 you had to delete a file from the harddrive.
:-)
That's interesting, because for me moving to Windows 2000 eliminated a lot of the things which annoy the hell out of me with NT 4.
One of the things that annoys me in NT4 is how apps can grab focus from me when I'm trying to do something else. Win2k prevents this, if an app wants attention the icon blinks down on the start bar.
That's not the only thing, there are a number of other improvements that just make the whole environment smoother.
I'm not sure about Win XP. I haven't tried the beta. What I see of the user interface it looks much improved.
The anti-piracy system annoys me. But I also can subvert it by making a copy of the CD at work which won't have that system on it.
I think the consumers will very likely revolt against the new system. We'll see.
Now that's interesting... The GOP recently pushed forward a bill that would make it harder for people declaring bankruptcy to get out of credit card debt.
Then to find that there is a direct connection between the GOP and Mastercard.
Well actually, not surprised. Just didn't realize the connection was so direct.
It's interesting, but you've just provided yet another example of the problem with reality.
Your reality states that the Erin Brockovich story is false.
Yet every reality I have encountered suggests it is true, that PG&E did release toxics into the water.
The difference is, that I don't read neo-conservative right-wing anti-environmental sites for my news.
I think this is the problem and the danger with the internet, you can allow yourself to only be subjected to news stories you agree with, rather than getting a nice balance of points for and against your own views.
Anyway...
That's interesting that you say "poor showing in the debates", because the Media was painting it as if Bush had won the debates clearly.
Honestly, I was not a big proponent of Gore at first. But I had an opportunity to see how he handled himself while on campus at Microsoft after the April court decision. It was televised on C-Span, and I was amazed at just how well he handled such a delicate and tough situation.
He would have been a far better choice than President-by-default that we have today.
But ohwell.
As far as Corruption in the Clinton administration. This is difficult to say. The majority of all charges that had been thrown up against Clinton failed to stick because they were untrue. But that didn't stop Republicans from continuing to throw charges.
Personally I think there was an ulterior motive, not so much to take down Clinton but as to wipe out the long image of Corruption which had charecterized the Reagan/Bush administration of the past.
As much as one might dislike Clinton for being self-absorbed and corrupt, the Reagan/Bush administrations were far far worse and blatantly public about it.
We even see that today with the new Bush administration, he's rolled over on many issues solely based on who funded his campaign.
Ahh, more Republican lies.
The newspaper looked at the votes, and if they had been counted the way the Republicans wanted them to be, Gore won by 1 vote.
Unfortunately there is a lot more to the story than that.
Actually Tivoli is what we use, and it's worse than SMS. At least for software distribution.
But again, you missed the point I was making. The costs have little to do with the actual file copy. That's the easy part.
I received a notice not to long ago that a class action lawsuit had been filed against a Mortgage Insurance company on my behalf. The claim was they misrepresented something and overcharged me.
I have been paying this company $60/month for for the past 30 months.
But as a result of the class action lawsuit, I am now entitled to a check for $20.
Just think of all the things I can do with $20!? Why I could buy an entire case of beer!
WHOOOP DEEEE DOOOOO!!!!!
I'm not saying that the company might not have done something wrong. But was it really worth it?
Class action lawsuits are only a benefit for the lawyers. They will receive about $40 million in legal fees, and everybody else gets $1.98. Then the company has to raise their current product cost by $3 to cover the expenses.
Well obviously since UDP is a connectionless protocol, it solves your problem by...
:)
Uhh
Uhh, oh hell it actually makes the problem worse.
Ok, once again Malcontent is obviously showing his ignorance. Sigh.
I didn't say the problem was Software distribution, that's actually quite easy as well under Windows using tools such as Tivoli, SMS, etc.
I said the issue was Deployment. I then went on to talk about the various issues surrounding coordination, testing, etc.
Does Linux have more applications available?
My 4 years of professional experience with Unix revolved around a product called Arc/Info. It's a GIS package from ESRI. At the time it was $18,000 and only ran on Unix workstations.
Today Arc/Info is also available for NT/Win2k. It is still available for Tru64 Unix, HP-UX, Solaris, AIX, etc.
Yet there is no mention of a Linux port.
You don't seriously think IBM is talking about Linux because they are a bunch of nice guys?
They have an agenda, and Linux right now fits into that agenda.
IBM isn't an underdog by any means, they still have higher revenues and profits than Microsoft.
From a desktop admin side, most companies I have been at typically have one support person per 100 desktops. Then perhaps 1 server admin per 500 users.
A lot of it depends on what services you are trying to offer.
I was at one insurance company once with about 1500 employees and we had about 20 people supporting desktops, servers and the LAN hardware.
At a bank I was at, the department I was in had 6 people supporting 80 users. But it was the stock trading floor. The remainder of the 2,000 employees in the company had perhaps 40 people supporting them.
I don't know the size of the support staff where I'm at now, but I would imagine a ratio of 1:50 is about ballpark.
"Further, when you consider the anecdotal evidence suggesting that a single, competent UNIX admin can handle more machines with less downtime than a competent Windows admin can handle Windows boxen"
It is anecdotal.
I've admined both Unix and NT servers. We have both Unix and NT here at our company.
The problem with this comparison is that the two types of servers do different things.
Is it less time consuming to admin a file/print server than a Database server? No
What you say is partly true, but your reasoning is out of touch.
The Recession occured between 90-92.
The Migration from Netware to Windows NT didn't begin to occur until 96-97.
But the cost cutting wasn't driven by the Bush Recession(especially considering that had occured years previous), but rather because of the new revolution occuring in desktop computing. The introduction of Netware 3.x, Windows 3.x, etc. had caused a huge increase in the signifigance, importance and usage of desktop computers in companies.
Prior to this point they had generally just been somewhat distributed PC's running some DOS apps such as 123 and Wordperfect for personal use.
Obviously as PC usage started to displace Mainframe usage in the companies, the costs assocaited with supporting these solutions went up. This was primarily because of all these individual solutions that grew up at the department level.
In the mid 90's there was the movement to bring all these individual department solutions under the umbrella of corporate IT using the catch phrase "enterprise solution".
This was also about the same time as Novell released their Netware 4.x product line. Which was notable for being one of the buggiest software releases ever.
At this time Microsoft did introduce NT with a very competitive pricing structure as compared to Netware. But they did more than that, they also introduced a platform which could do more than Netware. They were quick to point out that you could also run your email server, database server, web server, etc. all on the same box.
While you could sort of do this with Netware, the solutions were not elegant, and from a developer point of view a pain in the butt to create.
So Microsoft won that war through a combination of competitive licensing, but also better product alignment. By offering the one size fits most all, they allowed for a reduction in support staff, which was part of what IT was looking for at the time.
Today this new found integration of various solutions has resulted in incredible productivity improvements to companies.
If you think Linux is going to come in and replace this existing solution, you had best think again.
Right now we're not looking for ways to cut software licensing costs, because they are a small part of our budget, as is hardware procurement.
Half our IT cost is custom software development, and thus are goal is to more rapidly create and deploy software.
I do not see the tools out there today to allow us to do this well on Linux.
Not to mention the tools to replace our existing productivity tools don't exist.
If the RedHat salesman comes calling with numbers in hand, I'm going to ask him "Fine, but how will this be better than what we have now?"
This is a *GOOD* thing. Moving from Win95 to WinXP is as big of a move as moving from 3.1 to 95 was. It's a huge evolutionary step which is really going to boost the possible uses of our desktop computers.
As far as the upgrade treadmill. Honestly, at some point the software does become good enough.
I believe with XP we have reached this point.
There has been a movement to upgrade to Win2k, but it is not as high of a priority as just completing day to day work. Also many companies at this point are just going to wait for XP on the desktop.
Barring a complete overhaul of the way we use computers, I just don't see much motivating factors in jumping to the next version.
There is also the same upgrade treadmill with Linux as there is with Windows, and the costs are nearly identical. The problem is *NOT* the cost of software licensing, but rather the cost of DEPLOYMENT.
You would have had to be involved in a large scale upgrade to understand this. Imagine the number of people involved in planning, testing, rolling out, etc.
Even with automated tools to push the installations, there is a signifigant amount of prep work involved.
This is slashdot!
When slashdot's connection to the internet fails and I can no longer read posts about goat sex, it is Microsoft's fault!
Actually the only thing about Linux that threatens anybody is the price.
In the latest round of year 2000 marketshare reports, both Linux and Windows NT showed market growth. Linux is cutting into commercial Unix market, which historically has been more stable and secure than their Linux counterparts.
Why would I choose Linux if I could instead choose Solaris or HPUX? The only answer I can conceive of is cost.
Well, it's true that virtually everybody in both parties caved into this thing.
I was chiefly referring to who sponsored and presented the amendment which made this all possible. None other than Senator McCain.
It was passed 95-3, with 2 abstaining.
But of the 3 people voting against the amendment, they were all Democrats i.e. Senators Feingold, Kerrey, and Lautenberg.
Kerrey and Lautenberg are no longer in the Senate.
(E) You need a lesson in US History...
Article I, Section 1. states: "All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives."
Pay particular attention to that last part. If you doubt the Senate was controlled by Republicans, go to www.senate.gov and look it up yourself.
All your morons are belong to us
There was no Democratic congress from 1981-1986.
And Reagan submitted budgets which were far larger than anything Congress ever adopted from 1981-1988.
If Christianity wasn't the key issue to most republicans, they wouldn't be kissing Jerry Falwells fat ass.