And in fact in Saturday's episode the villain tried to dupe the world into handing over permission to start a nuclear war by claiming there were aliens with "massive weapons of destruction" that could be "launched within 45 seconds". And all this in the middle of an election campaign, too.
Actually, you typically have a transaction processor sitting in front of the database to manage the atomicity of the transaction. That's the thing that protects you. Traditionally this was IBM's IMS software (which also handled the database stuff at the back end). I guess these days it's some message queueing software instead. I very much doubt the banks rely on the database's rollback/commit function alone, since quite apart from anything else, it can't guarantee the transaction end to end (from the client to the database).
Windows has been used on (at least) Natwest ATM's for a loooong time
Yes indeedy, and the entire network crashed catastrophically for three days back in 1998 - see this cached article in Google
I remember it since I worked for IBM at the time. A journalist rang me to tell me Microsoft were blaming the IBM software for which I was responsible... unfortunately (for the story) it wasn't running on the computers in question.
This was on BBC Radio 5 the other day, the Siemens spokeswoman said it would come onto the market at UKP900, that it had already been selling well in Germany, that UKP900 meant it should pay for itself in laundry costs over the course of a year, and that ironing has been voted the UK's least favourite chore in a recent survey.
Apparently it's like a tailor's dummy which blows hot and cold jets to inflate the shirt into position and then press it. And it takes 90 seconds to iron a shirt, as opposed to 8 mins by hand (or rather, by a hand holding a hot iron).
It's also used to make the paper the book is made from, and (mixed with morphine) to treat diarrhoea. Not sure whether Brin wanted all these allusions though.
Re:Where I have heard this before?
on
Kiln People
·
· Score: 1
There's no such thing as a new concept. WCRR was 1988. Thunder Agents' Noman first appeared in 1965. I always thought Noman was a great idea, and was reminded of it when I recently picked up the Brin book.
We have (about) a 50 person company. Half (development and development-related teams, including some "less technical" users) are on Linux. The other half are on Win2K.
On the Linux side we strictly enforce RedHat (currently 7.2). Mail client is Ximian Evolution, using the Connector in conjunction with our main Exchange/2k server. Exchange/2k is a disaster, generally, but sales absolutely needs the diary functions.
WP etc. for the Linux community is StarOffice/OpenOffice. Absolutely no problems with document interoperability (presentations, documents and spreadsheets). Some minor functions are missing from OO - notable minor irritation is that in presentations it doesn't let me have a different background for a title page. On the other hand, the XML storage mechanisms have allowed us to integrate our internal doc handling with CVS, far better than we could have with Word.
Some people on the "Linux side of the house" are still on Windows, by reason of applications support. Notably our docs person uses FrameMaker, and usability/graphics use a bunch of Adobe stuff (even if they just used Photoshop, Gimp is still distressingly behind).
Biggest issues that I can see:
font handling, as the guy mentioned. It's better than it used to be, since if you can get xfs to recognise your TT fonts StarOffice will pick it up. Linux lacks the Adobe Type Manager kind of interface Windows had back in 3.1.
Games, which are the only reason I use Windows at home
Sysadmins. Windows sysadmins are cheaper, basically because they know less. They don't need to know less, in reality, but windows still leaves you with the feeling that it's simpler to set up and configure, even when it isn't. Linux could do with better, more integrated systems management tools for the server side.
Evolution should be able to handle offline stuff better.
Lack of certain apps. There are fewer than you think though. Most of our business apps are web based
That's it though. Maybe 2 years ago you would have said lack of integrated email clients and decent office productivity were insurmountable obstacles. All the obstacles around now are easily surmountable. At some stage a very large (and probably public sector) organisation will realise that it's cheaper to commission open source fixes to problems, and maybe new applicaitons, than to go with large scale windows licensing. I expect that to be the big next step forward on the business desktop side.
Ximian Evolution (www.ximian.com) has a pretty good Outlook Today type feature called Summary.
Also and as an alternative for those of us in mixed *ix/MS environments, I'm told that Insight (www.bynari.com) can interact with MS Exchange for the purpose of calendar booking/sharing, etc.
I run a 40 person development organisation, using Linux as the default desktop. The thing that gives me most grief is lack of good office productivity tools for the platform, and the resulting inability to integrate properly into the windows world (which is what our salesmen and most of our customers inhabit). If the following products were available, natively, on Linux we'd buy them:
Smartsuite (WordPro, Freelance and 1-2-3, probably not Approach)
Notes client (possibly) or at least some calendaring tool
probably NetView
Some equivalent of MS Project
I realise there are some fast-evolving tools out there (for example gnumeric) but they are still way behind what is available on Windows.
So, are there plans to provide native implementations of the above (I think Java and web enabled front ends are doomed, since they always lag behind the native versions), preferably (and for bonus points) based on gtk?
works better with truetype fonts? I had an older version of Staroffice worked fine with them, but haven't been able (not that I tried much) to get the current version to work... there's probably a hack but joe user wanting a word processor shouldn't have to hack.
junk the desktop. let the tools run standalone
make it less of a memory hog
as someone else mentioned, better capabilities for special chars such as m-dash etc.
may as well take out the email and web authoring stuff - does anyone use either of these?
While I'm no fan of Microsoft OSs they do make good office software. Powerpoint 2000 is a dream and comes with great templates. Even Outlook, security nightmare that it is, at least looks really nice. If Sun really wants to compete with MS to lure people from office tools it has a lot of catching up to do.
He jointly created Spiderman with Kirby (who designed the character) and Ditko (who drew the early issues - at Marvel the stories were briefly plotted, then drawn, then written so the artist had a major hand in the story).
Lee's not an artist and given the Marvel system anything he created was effectively co-created - mostly with Kirby but occasionally with others (I think for example Daredevil was designed by Wally Wood, and Lee's Captain Marvel was drawn by Gene Colan).
The accusation elsewhere on this page that Lee ripped off Kirby isn't strictly true - Marvel ripped off Kirby.
At some point during the Iraq debate Rob posted his view of what was postable, and what came out of that was that he left a fair degree of latitude to the people he trusts to edit the site. I don't mind occasionally indulging sengan - by and large the stuff he posts stuff well within the mainstream Rob described in the referenced post. But I object to the term "standard disclaimer" - better this stuff be an exception rather than Slashdot's remit be extended to include reviews of every film, or discussions of the political state of the (what is for me) Far East. If it's not an exception, you get lists like the one just posted, and precedents start getting quoted, and so on. If you follow this through to its conclusion, you'll get freeloaders like Jon Katz posting his favourite films and TV shows of the year, to avoid rolling his sleeves up and getting Linux working.
maybe as a result [of not buying a pre-installed linux box], [pournelle]'s had far less flamage.
Actually, that's not what I meant. I don't begrudge anyone buying a preconfigured Linux box, and in fact I hope a lot more people do so. I might get picky with the fact that someone purporting to be investigating Linux misses out the first step, but we already know that it's difficult for new users to install, and I'm more interested in how difficult it is for new users to use.
On the other hand, I do find him patronising of people who help him, and I think this "geeks" thing is just a hook he uses - Jon Katz, talker-to-geeks.
Look at the way he treated the poor guy who helped him at CompUSA - he could have been a hero. Instead he ended up being portrayed as a nervous, dysfunctional "geek" who still managed to make his employer look bad.
And he still hasn't got Linux working. For the insight we've had, he might as well have been explaining the trials of ordering a pizza.
I was going to write more, but it's been said already... This post (titled culture: a flame) is as good a summary as I've seen of the view I share. I think we're being taken for a ride; I hope I'm pleasantly surprised, but I doubt it.
Having said which, I still would be genuinely interested in a long time Mac user's first view of Linux - there was someone else posted earlier who fell into that category. Maybe the soapbox should be ripped from under Mr Katz and let someone with serious intentions have a turn.
(by the way - thanks for not descending into name calling in this discussion - it's increasingly a rarity on this site to be able to get away with reasoned criticism)
While I also dislike (actually dislike is too strong a word) JP for other reasons, he has been dabbling in linux and has managed to get a darn sight farther than Jon Katz has. As usual he's used a lot of help to get there, but he didn't give up immediately and buy a preconfigured box, and he doesn't generalise and insult people who help him as "geeks". And, maybe as a result, he's had far less flamage.
For I all I may disagree with the Pournelle's politics, and for all that I'm not so keen on his fiction, I'd take him any day over Jon Katz.
I think the common thread from both efforts, by the way, is that RedHat really need to take a look at their install manuals if they want to live up to the hype they're getting.
Much as I think Jon Katz adds little to no value to Slashdot, I've thus far taken the attitude of live and let live. But there now seems to be even less consideration of the international audience that a site like Slashdot caters to. This reads like the Life section of USA Today, with about as much relevance. Is this what Slashdot is now about?
Slashdot Mirror
interesting that they are black... Why is that I wonder?
stealth.
And in fact in Saturday's episode the villain tried to dupe the world into handing over permission to start a nuclear war by claiming there were aliens with "massive weapons of destruction" that could be "launched within 45 seconds". And all this in the middle of an election campaign, too.
Actually, you typically have a transaction processor sitting in front of the database to manage the atomicity of the transaction. That's the thing that protects you. Traditionally this was IBM's IMS software (which also handled the database stuff at the back end). I guess these days it's some message queueing software instead. I very much doubt the banks rely on the database's rollback/commit function alone, since quite apart from anything else, it can't guarantee the transaction end to end (from the client to the database).
Windows has been used on (at least) Natwest ATM's for a loooong time
Yes indeedy, and the entire network crashed catastrophically for three days back in 1998 - see this cached article in Google
I remember it since I worked for IBM at the time. A journalist rang me to tell me Microsoft were blaming the IBM software for which I was responsible ... unfortunately (for the story) it wasn't running on the computers in question.
This was on BBC Radio 5 the other day, the Siemens spokeswoman said it would come onto the market at UKP900, that it had already been selling well in Germany, that UKP900 meant it should pay for itself in laundry costs over the course of a year, and that ironing has been voted the UK's least favourite chore in a recent survey.
Apparently it's like a tailor's dummy which blows hot and cold jets to inflate the shirt into position and then press it. And it takes 90 seconds to iron a shirt, as opposed to 8 mins by hand (or rather, by a hand holding a hot iron).
It's
also used to make the paper the book is made from, and (mixed with morphine) to treat diarrhoea. Not sure whether Brin wanted all these allusions though.
There's no such thing as a new concept. WCRR was 1988. Thunder Agents' Noman first appeared in 1965. I always thought Noman was a great idea, and was reminded of it when I recently picked up the Brin book.
We have (about) a 50 person company. Half (development and development-related teams, including some "less technical" users) are on Linux. The other half are on Win2K.
On the Linux side we strictly enforce RedHat (currently 7.2). Mail client is Ximian Evolution, using the Connector in conjunction with our main Exchange/2k server. Exchange/2k is a disaster, generally, but sales absolutely needs the diary functions.
WP etc. for the Linux community is StarOffice/OpenOffice. Absolutely no problems with document interoperability (presentations, documents and spreadsheets). Some minor functions are missing from OO - notable minor irritation is that in presentations it doesn't let me have a different background for a title page. On the other hand, the XML storage mechanisms have allowed us to integrate our internal doc handling with CVS, far better than we could have with Word.
Some people on the "Linux side of the house" are still on Windows, by reason of applications support. Notably our docs person uses FrameMaker, and usability/graphics use a bunch of Adobe stuff (even if they just used Photoshop, Gimp is still distressingly behind).
Biggest issues that I can see:
- font handling, as the guy mentioned. It's better than it used to be, since if you can get xfs to recognise your TT fonts StarOffice will pick it up. Linux lacks the Adobe Type Manager kind of interface Windows had back in 3.1.
- Games, which are the only reason I use Windows at home
- Sysadmins. Windows sysadmins are cheaper, basically because they know less. They don't need to know less, in reality, but windows still leaves you with the feeling that it's simpler to set up and configure, even when it isn't. Linux could do with better, more integrated systems management tools for the server side.
- Evolution should be able to handle offline stuff better.
- Lack of certain apps. There are fewer than you think though. Most of our business apps are web based
That's it though. Maybe 2 years ago you would have said lack of integrated email clients and decent office productivity were insurmountable obstacles. All the obstacles around now are easily surmountable. At some stage a very large (and probably public sector) organisation will realise that it's cheaper to commission open source fixes to problems, and maybe new applicaitons, than to go with large scale windows licensing. I expect that to be the big next step forward on the business desktop side.Ximian Evolution (www.ximian.com) has a pretty good Outlook Today type feature called Summary.
Also and as an alternative for those of us in mixed *ix/MS environments, I'm told that Insight (www.bynari.com) can interact with MS Exchange for the purpose of calendar booking/sharing, etc.
I run a 40 person development organisation, using Linux as the default desktop. The thing that gives me most grief is lack of good office productivity tools for the platform, and the resulting inability to integrate properly into the windows world (which is what our salesmen and most of our customers inhabit). If the following products were available, natively, on Linux we'd buy them:
I realise there are some fast-evolving tools out there (for example gnumeric) but they are still way behind what is available on Windows.
So, are there plans to provide native implementations of the above (I think Java and web enabled front ends are doomed, since they always lag behind the native versions), preferably (and for bonus points) based on gtk?
Things I'd like to see:
While I'm no fan of Microsoft OSs they do make good office software. Powerpoint 2000 is a dream and comes with great templates. Even Outlook, security nightmare that it is, at least looks really nice. If Sun really wants to compete with MS to lure people from office tools it has a lot of catching up to do.
M
He jointly created Spiderman with Kirby (who designed the character) and Ditko (who drew the early issues - at Marvel the stories were briefly plotted, then drawn, then written so the artist had a major hand in the story).
Lee's not an artist and given the Marvel system anything he created was effectively co-created - mostly with Kirby but occasionally with others (I think for example Daredevil was designed by Wally Wood, and Lee's Captain Marvel was drawn by Gene Colan).
The accusation elsewhere on this page that Lee ripped off Kirby isn't strictly true - Marvel ripped off Kirby.
The slightly fuller press release is here
M
At some point during the Iraq debate Rob posted his view of what was postable, and what came out of that was that he left a fair degree of latitude to the people he trusts to edit the site. I don't mind occasionally indulging sengan - by and large the stuff he posts stuff well within the mainstream Rob described in the referenced post. But I object to the term "standard disclaimer" - better this stuff be an exception rather than Slashdot's remit be extended to include reviews of every film, or discussions of the political state of the (what is for me) Far East. If it's not an exception, you get lists like the one just posted, and precedents start getting quoted, and so on. If you follow this through to its conclusion, you'll get freeloaders like Jon Katz posting his favourite films and TV shows of the year, to avoid rolling his sleeves up and getting Linux working.
Actually, that's not what I meant. I don't begrudge anyone buying a preconfigured Linux box, and in fact I hope a lot more people do so. I might get picky with the fact that someone purporting to be investigating Linux misses out the first step, but we already know that it's difficult for new users to install, and I'm more interested in how difficult it is for new users to use.
On the other hand, I do find him patronising of people who help him, and I think this "geeks" thing is just a hook he uses - Jon Katz, talker-to-geeks.
Look at the way he treated the poor guy who helped him at CompUSA - he could have been a hero. Instead he ended up being portrayed as a nervous, dysfunctional "geek" who still managed to make his employer look bad.
And he still hasn't got Linux working. For the insight we've had, he might as well have been explaining the trials of ordering a pizza.
I was going to write more, but it's been said already ... This post (titled culture: a flame) is as good a summary as I've seen of the view I share. I think we're being taken for a ride; I hope I'm pleasantly surprised, but I doubt it.
Having said which, I still would be genuinely interested in a long time Mac user's first view of Linux - there was someone else posted earlier who fell into that category. Maybe the soapbox should be ripped from under Mr Katz and let someone with serious intentions have a turn.
(by the way - thanks for not descending into name calling in this discussion - it's increasingly a rarity on this site to be able to get away with reasoned criticism)
For I all I may disagree with the Pournelle's politics, and for all that I'm not so keen on his fiction, I'd take him any day over Jon Katz.
I think the common thread from both efforts, by the way, is that RedHat really need to take a look at their install manuals if they want to live up to the hype they're getting.
Much as I think Jon Katz adds little to no value to Slashdot, I've thus far taken the attitude of live and let live.
But there now seems to be even less consideration of the international audience that a site like Slashdot caters to. This reads like the Life section of USA Today, with about as much relevance. Is this what Slashdot is now about?