Well I remember when our OS market was like this. Each OS had it's own little niche, there was no incentive to try to outdo anybody else rather they worked to lock you in to their particular product. Companies like Sun would charge $200 for manuals to their system because they knew they could get away with it, and so forth.
The OS market has had more innovation and more excitement in just the past 4-5 years than in the 20 years previous to that.
I would definately have to disagree with nearly everything said with the exception of "the only way to reduce expenditures is to not buy things."
I've been using Quicken/Money since 1994 and as a result on any given day I know exactly how much money I have in any one of my accounts, how much I owe on any one of my lines of credit, as well as a general estimate of what bills I will be expecting to pay over the next several weeks. It's nice to have an estimated loan payoff figure at your fingertips without having to call the bank.
This allows me to forcast and budget appropriately.
While I don't do the automagically syncing thing(I do prefer to enter transactions by hand), I am subscribed to my banks online banking and bill pay service. This is $6.95 a month, but considering that the service allows me to schedule payments to be sent for any bill I might have, the convenience more than pays for itself. On top of that is the cost savings of no longer having to buy checks, as well as no longer having to buy stamps. When you figure that it costs about 45 cents to mail a check(cost of stamp + cost of check)... sending 15 bills in a month using the automated service breaks even.
Furthermore I no longer have late fees on credit cards because the bill is sitting in my pocket while I wait to find some time to hit the post office to buy a bloody stamp.
While Quicken/Money is not going to be a substitute for good financial management, the automation that they provide makes the job a hell of a lot easier. I highly recommend either of these packages.
On the other hand, without any way to a company responsible for their incompetence, they will continue to be incompetent and then the consumers definately don't benefit.
"When you consider that the vast majority of businesses are of 10 or less people, then this turns into a medium size company."
So when you compare Wal-Mart to Joe's bait shop, Joe's shoe store and Joe's acting academy... you are saying that three fourths of the companies in the world are small businesses...
Somehow I think Wal-Mart due to it's sheer size should count as a larger data point than just '1 company.'
i.e. it's a worthless statistic you quote if the vast majority of people don't work for small businesses.
50 is a small business. A mid-sized would be something like 500-1000.
"I'm not real clear on the history, but i think the real Nuremberg trials were pretty ex post facto, too"
I guess that would assume that there were no laws banning murder prior to the start of WWII.
Nuremberg was about the slaughter of civilians, not soldiers. While killing soldiers can be justified, killing civilians is not.
The Geneva Convention was updated in '49 to make this explicitly clear, but I think you'd be hard pressed to argue that what the Nazis did was justified under current law even in 1942.
First, sysadmin job does suck, but it can be a lot of fun and give you valuable experience when you are young. So I don't want to discourage anybody from pursuing it, but I think the larger point is are you going to still want to be doing this when you are 45 years old?
If you have a college degree, you can be a sysadmin and it will open doors to doing other things. Perhaps you don't want to be an admin but rather a system architect, maybe you later want to do programming... who knows.
Without the degree, you are more likely to get stuck in the same old job rut. Not just because of the line on the resume but because you do learn a lot of valuable skills from college.
As to the army comment. Not sure about that, but maybe the Navy or Air Force. I was never in the military, but of the coworkers I have had who were it looks to be very valuable experience. It teaches you discipline and an ability to tune out distractions and work on the problem at hand. That's not something you learn in college, but it's a valuable life lesson.
Re:"Single" user license.
on
StarOffice 6.0
·
· Score: 2
You mean three computers.
The Office EULA allows you to install it on two computers... your desktop and your laptop.
I do have to agree with the timezone issues. Our company is somewhat global, and we have a hard time working with our team in England while being in the Midwest. The California office has an even more difficult time because England is gone for the day when they show up to work, practically.
I've also had to work with application support from companies located in Hawaii and Israel. That is also a challenge. Hawaii was a bit easier as I just had to stay late in the day, but for Israel it was a two day turnaround on every communication.
My recommendation for outsourcing to India... You better have awesome specifications. If you write in extreme detail what you want, chances are someone can code it for you. But if there has to be interaction back and forth with the analysts or users, forget about it.
I remember what it was like in 1982. I remember what it was like to own a computer system that was totally incompatible with what others had.
I remember what it was like to have to buy software to load onto your Morrow so you could read Osborne and Kaypro diskettes.
I remember what it was like to be handed a diskette with a Supercalc spreadsheet on it and wonder what you were going to do with it because you didn't have access to an Apple II.
I remember what it was like to buy a TI Personal Computer which promised to run MS-DOS, but wasn't really compatible with any other PCs running DOS and required software compiled just for the TI.
I remember dumping that TI PC in the trash, along with all the software because it was totally incompatible with the new Zenith systems we had bought.
If I sit for a while I could probably remember about AmiPro and the upgrade to WordPro that Lotus released which had memory leaks so bad you could only work with it about an hour at a time before closing it down and restarting, and how wonderfully this was received by the magazine reviewers.
You know the more I remember those times, the less I want to go back. Thank you for showing me how much easier my world is now that consumers have adopted Microsoft's inferior products.
I can find no mention of RAID being offered on the XServe. It's a $499 add-on card for the Dell, plus another $350 minimum for a second drive to do RAID-1.
It's rare to see a server installed without RAID-1 at least. Unless you really don't mind losing data, and can afford to take the time to restore a machine from backups in the event of a failure. Even our clustered web servers have mirrored system drives... it's cheap insurance.
You don't need Win2k AS unless you are doing clustering. Save well over $1600 off your price that way.
There's no need for the Dell Remote Assistant Card unless this server is in another state. Win2k can be administered remotely quite easily, th only time this card is needed is in the event of failures where you want to see the boot up sequence.
You may or may not need the added drive space, if this is a web server chances are not. Just because 60Gb is the smallest Apple offers, does not mean it's a valid comparison.
Gigabit ethernet may not be required if your data center is not equipped to support it.
I'm surprised you didn't try to include a Firewire card on the Dell, even though that may not be needed as well.
You also forgot the $950 charge for Apple Premium care. The XServer only comes with a 90 days of tech support and 1 year of hardware repairs. Furthermore Apple does not offer 24x7 hardware support, and only offers 4hour response time in certain markets.
I think the point is, this comparison is pretty bloody stupid. It all depends on what you are going to be using the machine for, and what risks your business is capable of accepting.
Windows XP is a desktop OS, it's not commonly offered on servers.
So, if Apple sees any sort of success with Xserve, you'll probably see the other OEMs putting pressure on Microsoft to let them offer Linux or at least reduce their Windows licensing fees, meaning more, cheaper choices for the customers.
More likely Apple will see a great deal of success working with Graphics studios wanting to build up 3D rendering farms. They will also see a great deal of success in school districts who buy Apple gear.
As far as using them to put pressure on Microsoft... that doesn't result in actual sales for Apple.
OEM: "Well if you don't lower the prices, we're going to buy an Apple XServer." MS: "How about we give it to you at half the price?" OEM: "Ok."
Look, don't play the music industry game. Don't bother to figure out how to defeat the copy protection that just makes them try harder.
Just don't buy the CDs.
Or better yet, buy them, open them, then take them back to the store and complain that they don't work. If the store will only offer an exchange, take the exchange and bring that one back too. Just keep doing this until they learn that they do not work.
The stores can't put them back on the shelves, they have to ship them back to the distributor. I guarantee you when 25% of their stock comes back defective, someone is going to start to notice what a really bad idea this is.
Hmm, I work right next door to a Best Buy. I could buy and return a CD every day for lunch. Might be kind of fun.
"Sheldon, you become more and more a troll every time you post. "
Let me get this straight... Because you disagree with my opinion, but can't quite formulate an effective argument... that makes me a troll?
"Do you really want to show the world that proprietary software is better than open? "
No, that's never been my goal.
"Prove it. "
Prove what? I'm not the one making the claim that all open source software is better than commercial software. Why do you feel the burden of proof is upon me for questioning the statement?
"This is the last troll of yours I'm going to reply to until you have something worthwhile to say."
In other words, you admit you were wrong but are too gutless to apologize.
"If there is truly any real thought behind that sneer of yours, then show it."
Oh good grief. Can you blame me for having contempt towards people who make ridiculous claims and can't substantiate them?
Blind faith... It's a wonderful thing drinking that kool-aid.
Well you certainly have the blind faith thing going for you.
The author said that all open source software is better than closed source because of the development model. He didn't talk about specific types or circumstances of use like you appear to be rationalizing on.
What impact do you think this actually had on software sales? I mean come on, sheesh.
"You may also not remember, but Win95 was publicized as requiring MSDOS."
No, Win95 was publicized as no longer requiring DOS because the functionality as integrated.
"Novell (or whoever owned DRDOS then) made Win95 work with DRDOS just fine."
That's nice, but it has no benefit to the consumer.
"Netscape may not be much competition for IE now, but when it was better, there were enough tricks dumping on NN. "
Of course Netscape was dumping their own tricks, purposefully not following the W3C standards process... dumping their product on the market so as to kill Spyglass and other competitors.
But back to that beta version... What were you thinking?
But let's assume that RealNames sells the Japanese word for "Cookies" to the Japanese division of Nabisco.
What does this mean to Fuji Cookies? They can't have the same word linked to their website with this mechanism. Whereas at least with a search engine, while Nabisco might get top placement because they paid more, other companies would also be listed.
Again, as others have pointed out, what is needed is google.jp or something similar... that is all.
Point #3 as to why MSN is moving away from RealNames mentions the hostility that.Net My Services was received, and how Microsoft is moving away from creating basic infrastructure services. Especially when said service appears to offer a mechanism to control what users see on the Internet. They specifically mention if RealNames became extremely popular(120M entries), this would be greeted by even more hostility towards Microsoft.
So it's interesting how the slashbot editors have tried to spin this as a negative, as this is exactly the type of responsible attitude that they have previously desired to come from Microsoft.
I love this little quip: "We all know that the open and distributed model for development described in Eric S. Raymond's book "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" is much better and creates more reliable products than any closed non-distributed development model. "
I'm wondering if the author can substantiate this claim with facts.
This is the primary problem with Open Source advocacy, it relies a lot upon blind faith.
Slashdot Mirror
Well I remember when our OS market was like this. Each OS had it's own little niche, there was no incentive to try to outdo anybody else rather they worked to lock you in to their particular product. Companies like Sun would charge $200 for manuals to their system because they knew they could get away with it, and so forth.
The OS market has had more innovation and more excitement in just the past 4-5 years than in the 20 years previous to that.
Bah, then Sony will sue Microsoft for product bundling. :)
I would definately have to disagree with nearly everything said with the exception of "the only way to reduce expenditures is to not buy things."
I've been using Quicken/Money since 1994 and as a result on any given day I know exactly how much money I have in any one of my accounts, how much I owe on any one of my lines of credit, as well as a general estimate of what bills I will be expecting to pay over the next several weeks. It's nice to have an estimated loan payoff figure at your fingertips without having to call the bank.
This allows me to forcast and budget appropriately.
While I don't do the automagically syncing thing(I do prefer to enter transactions by hand), I am subscribed to my banks online banking and bill pay service. This is $6.95 a month, but considering that the service allows me to schedule payments to be sent for any bill I might have, the convenience more than pays for itself. On top of that is the cost savings of no longer having to buy checks, as well as no longer having to buy stamps. When you figure that it costs about 45 cents to mail a check(cost of stamp + cost of check)... sending 15 bills in a month using the automated service breaks even.
Furthermore I no longer have late fees on credit cards because the bill is sitting in my pocket while I wait to find some time to hit the post office to buy a bloody stamp.
While Quicken/Money is not going to be a substitute for good financial management, the automation that they provide makes the job a hell of a lot easier. I highly recommend either of these packages.
On the other hand, without any way to a company responsible for their incompetence, they will continue to be incompetent and then the consumers definately don't benefit.
There does need to be a balance...
"When you consider that the vast majority of businesses are of 10 or less people, then this turns into a medium size company."
So when you compare Wal-Mart to Joe's bait shop, Joe's shoe store and Joe's acting academy... you are saying that three fourths of the companies in the world are small businesses...
Somehow I think Wal-Mart due to it's sheer size should count as a larger data point than just '1 company.'
i.e. it's a worthless statistic you quote if the vast majority of people don't work for small businesses.
50 is a small business. A mid-sized would be something like 500-1000.
"I'm not real clear on the history, but i think the real Nuremberg trials were pretty ex post facto, too"
I guess that would assume that there were no laws banning murder prior to the start of WWII.
Nuremberg was about the slaughter of civilians, not soldiers. While killing soldiers can be justified, killing civilians is not.
The Geneva Convention was updated in '49 to make this explicitly clear, but I think you'd be hard pressed to argue that what the Nazis did was justified under current law even in 1942.
I have to agree with everything this guy says.
First, sysadmin job does suck, but it can be a lot of fun and give you valuable experience when you are young. So I don't want to discourage anybody from pursuing it, but I think the larger point is are you going to still want to be doing this when you are 45 years old?
If you have a college degree, you can be a sysadmin and it will open doors to doing other things. Perhaps you don't want to be an admin but rather a system architect, maybe you later want to do programming... who knows.
Without the degree, you are more likely to get stuck in the same old job rut. Not just because of the line on the resume but because you do learn a lot of valuable skills from college.
As to the army comment. Not sure about that, but maybe the Navy or Air Force. I was never in the military, but of the coworkers I have had who were it looks to be very valuable experience. It teaches you discipline and an ability to tune out distractions and work on the problem at hand. That's not something you learn in college, but it's a valuable life lesson.
You mean three computers.
The Office EULA allows you to install it on two computers... your desktop and your laptop.
I do have to agree with the timezone issues. Our company is somewhat global, and we have a hard time working with our team in England while being in the Midwest. The California office has an even more difficult time because England is gone for the day when they show up to work, practically.
I've also had to work with application support from companies located in Hawaii and Israel. That is also a challenge. Hawaii was a bit easier as I just had to stay late in the day, but for Israel it was a two day turnaround on every communication.
My recommendation for outsourcing to India... You better have awesome specifications. If you write in extreme detail what you want, chances are someone can code it for you. But if there has to be interaction back and forth with the analysts or users, forget about it.
I find it fascinating how willfully you wish to lose an argument by discrediting yourself so.
I remember what it was like in 1982. I remember what it was like to own a computer system that was totally incompatible with what others had.
I remember what it was like to have to buy software to load onto your Morrow so you could read Osborne and Kaypro diskettes.
I remember what it was like to be handed a diskette with a Supercalc spreadsheet on it and wonder what you were going to do with it because you didn't have access to an Apple II.
I remember what it was like to buy a TI Personal Computer which promised to run MS-DOS, but wasn't really compatible with any other PCs running DOS and required software compiled just for the TI.
I remember dumping that TI PC in the trash, along with all the software because it was totally incompatible with the new Zenith systems we had bought.
If I sit for a while I could probably remember about AmiPro and the upgrade to WordPro that Lotus released which had memory leaks so bad you could only work with it about an hour at a time before closing it down and restarting, and how wonderfully this was received by the magazine reviewers.
You know the more I remember those times, the less I want to go back. Thank you for showing me how much easier my world is now that consumers have adopted Microsoft's inferior products.
"Really, linux should be a complete non-issue in this case - bringing it up is just clever legal obfuscation by Microsoft."
I thought it was the non-settling States lawyers that brought it up by trying to introduce this memo?
let's mention the lack of Firewire, but no big deal there
HA! I knew you were going to bring this up.
Oh I forgot to mention.
I can find no mention of RAID being offered on the XServe. It's a $499 add-on card for the Dell, plus another $350 minimum for a second drive to do RAID-1.
It's rare to see a server installed without RAID-1 at least. Unless you really don't mind losing data, and can afford to take the time to restore a machine from backups in the event of a failure. Even our clustered web servers have mirrored system drives... it's cheap insurance.
A couple of points:
You don't need Win2k AS unless you are doing clustering. Save well over $1600 off your price that way.
There's no need for the Dell Remote Assistant Card unless this server is in another state. Win2k can be administered remotely quite easily, th only time this card is needed is in the event of failures where you want to see the boot up sequence.
You may or may not need the added drive space, if this is a web server chances are not. Just because 60Gb is the smallest Apple offers, does not mean it's a valid comparison.
Gigabit ethernet may not be required if your data center is not equipped to support it.
I'm surprised you didn't try to include a Firewire card on the Dell, even though that may not be needed as well.
You also forgot the $950 charge for Apple Premium care. The XServer only comes with a 90 days of tech support and 1 year of hardware repairs. Furthermore Apple does not offer 24x7 hardware support, and only offers 4hour response time in certain markets.
I think the point is, this comparison is pretty bloody stupid. It all depends on what you are going to be using the machine for, and what risks your business is capable of accepting.
Windows XP is a desktop OS, it's not commonly offered on servers.
So, if Apple sees any sort of success with Xserve, you'll probably see the other OEMs putting pressure on Microsoft to let them offer Linux or at least reduce their Windows licensing fees, meaning more, cheaper choices for the customers.
More likely Apple will see a great deal of success working with Graphics studios wanting to build up 3D rendering farms. They will also see a great deal of success in school districts who buy Apple gear.
As far as using them to put pressure on Microsoft... that doesn't result in actual sales for Apple.
OEM: "Well if you don't lower the prices, we're going to buy an Apple XServer."
MS: "How about we give it to you at half the price?"
OEM: "Ok."
Look, don't play the music industry game. Don't bother to figure out how to defeat the copy protection that just makes them try harder.
Just don't buy the CDs.
Or better yet, buy them, open them, then take them back to the store and complain that they don't work. If the store will only offer an exchange, take the exchange and bring that one back too. Just keep doing this until they learn that they do not work.
The stores can't put them back on the shelves, they have to ship them back to the distributor. I guarantee you when 25% of their stock comes back defective, someone is going to start to notice what a really bad idea this is.
Hmm, I work right next door to a Best Buy. I could buy and return a CD every day for lunch. Might be kind of fun.
"Sheldon, you become more and more a troll every time you post. "
Let me get this straight... Because you disagree with my opinion, but can't quite formulate an effective argument... that makes me a troll?
"Do you really want to show the world that proprietary software is better than open? "
No, that's never been my goal.
"Prove it. "
Prove what? I'm not the one making the claim that all open source software is better than commercial software. Why do you feel the burden of proof is upon me for questioning the statement?
"This is the last troll of yours I'm going to reply to until you have something worthwhile to say."
In other words, you admit you were wrong but are too gutless to apologize.
"If there is truly any real thought behind that sneer of yours, then show it."
Oh good grief. Can you blame me for having contempt towards people who make ridiculous claims and can't substantiate them?
Blind faith... It's a wonderful thing drinking that kool-aid.
I think this is funny. Slashbot tries to slur Microsoft because of the BMW iDrive, yet doesn't even realize that the iDrive uses Windows CE.
http://www.microsoft.com/insider/bmw7series.htm
The system was actually built by Siemens along with all the custom software and such.
Christ slashbot is so out of touch with the computing world it's not even funny, this thing has been in the news for the past year.
Well you certainly have the blind faith thing going for you.
The author said that all open source software is better than closed source because of the development model. He didn't talk about specific types or circumstances of use like you appear to be rationalizing on.
But anecdotal evidence is just that, it is solely your experience.
Is GIMP really better than Photoshop? That's what this author is claiming in his quote. Are you claiming the same?
A Beta version? Not a shipping version?
What impact do you think this actually had on software sales? I mean come on, sheesh.
"You may also not remember, but Win95 was publicized as requiring MSDOS."
No, Win95 was publicized as no longer requiring DOS because the functionality as integrated.
"Novell (or whoever owned DRDOS then) made Win95 work with DRDOS just fine."
That's nice, but it has no benefit to the consumer.
"Netscape may not be much competition for IE now, but when it was better, there were enough tricks dumping on NN. "
Of course Netscape was dumping their own tricks, purposefully not following the W3C standards process... dumping their product on the market so as to kill Spyglass and other competitors.
But back to that beta version... What were you thinking?
Ok, great.
But let's assume that RealNames sells the Japanese word for "Cookies" to the Japanese division of Nabisco.
What does this mean to Fuji Cookies? They can't have the same word linked to their website with this mechanism. Whereas at least with a search engine, while Nabisco might get top placement because they paid more, other companies would also be listed.
Again, as others have pointed out, what is needed is google.jp or something similar... that is all.
Point #3 as to why MSN is moving away from RealNames mentions the hostility that .Net My Services was received, and how Microsoft is moving away from creating basic infrastructure services. Especially when said service appears to offer a mechanism to control what users see on the Internet. They specifically mention if RealNames became extremely popular(120M entries), this would be greeted by even more hostility towards Microsoft.
So it's interesting how the slashbot editors have tried to spin this as a negative, as this is exactly the type of responsible attitude that they have previously desired to come from Microsoft.
I love this little quip:
"We all know that the open and distributed model for development described in Eric S. Raymond's book "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" is much better and creates more reliable products than any closed non-distributed development model. "
I'm wondering if the author can substantiate this claim with facts.
This is the primary problem with Open Source advocacy, it relies a lot upon blind faith.