Never name your company the same as your product
on
A Gator By Any Other Name
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· Score: 5, Insightful
He fails to mention what "Claria" is supposed to mean or how it accomplishes this goal
It just illustrates why you don't name your company after a single product line. If that product turns out to have bad side effects (like cancer or flipping SUV's over) then you need to change the company name so prospective investors and customers don't think it's the only thing you do.
Did you know Bridgestone is the parent company of Firestone? Of course you didn't. And while you would probably think twice about buying a Firestone tire for your SUV (even though it was only one model of tire involved out of Firestone's entire lineup), you wouldn't think twice about putting on a Bridgestone tire.
Likewise, if Gator wanted to come out with a second product tomorrow, they couldn't - because who would install Gator Calculator or whatever? Nobody. But who would install Claria Calculator? The same millions of users who installed Gator.
In a related story, the University of Utah pointed out that modern desktop computer processes consume roughly 14 tons per hour of running SETI, a popular screen saver. "At some point, you have to wonder just how important it is to find alien life," said Professor Ima T. Hugger, "when you're killing so much life here on our own planet just to find out. One little green man simply isn't worth twenty redwood trees - try shutting down your machine once in a while, or switch to that nice screen saver with the rotating Windows logo."
When asked about the energy required to create his polyester pants, Hugger refused comment.
BrentO writes: "According to Common Sense, computer purchasers, tired of the low-powered CPUs and high prices of the much-hyped tablet PC, are beginning to speak out with their wallets, complaining that they just don't want to spend two thousand dollars for 1998-era computing performance. The predicted productivity for the devices has not materialized; faced with the tablet's premium pricing, manufacturers are finally getting the picture."
Seriously, when I talk about buying computers with network admins, and ask them to name a price point at which tablets make sense, the number seems to be (normal laptop) + $150. As it is now, the price penalty is much stiffer, and you end up comparing low-powered tablets with high-powered laptops. Sure, you can get a $1400 Compaq tablet - but it's got less than half the CPU power of their $1400 laptops.
I've been using the very inexpensive ServersAlive from Woodstone since 1999, and I've been very pleased with it. It's much friendlier to use than Big Brother or MRTG (and yes, I use both of those as well). The user interface is great, very easy to point-click your way through, and you can also SSH or Telnet into it to do other administrative tasks.
It can check everything from pings, snmp, databases, web pages, services, processes, port checks, and more. For whatever it doesn't check, you can design external checks, and users share their external checks for things like Lotus Notes and file counts.
The alerting is absolutely top-notch: you can set up teams and people, and each person can have their own notification settings & schedules via ICQ, MSN, email, pager, and more. I love it because I can have my alerts delivered to the right place at the right time.
The user community is very active: there's a great email list with a lot of helpful people. I've personally written lots of web templates for it, and other users have added external checks for stuff like Lotus Notes, ODBC database checking, and more. The developers are also extremely responsive, and they do beta builds every few days with new features. For example, MSN recently turned off their old protocols, but Woodstone had already made available a new version that works with the new protocol, and explained to the email list what the ramifications were.
The newest version 4 added an Enterprise Version that can log to ODBC, so you can build web-based analytical reporting as well. That version goes for $179, but there's a free 10-check-only version and a $99 normal version.
Can't say enough good stuff about this - it's outlasted four network admins at my company because the alerting at from my house (using ServersAlive) has always outperformed every solution we've put in at the office, including Big Brother, WhatsUpGold, and a few others.
They're testing "desktop" applications... who has RAID (besides me) at home?
Well, me, for starters - but of course, you're asking Slashdot readers. We're the kinds of guys who know that even our in-car computers should have RAID, since the environment is tough. But besides, anybody who'd shell out the money for an Opteron is probably a Slashdot reader anyway....
I had a little fun with a Yahoo press release the other day, and made a version on my own site that's database-driven, so you can stuff somebody's name in an innocuous link. In this one, it's Julian Morales, but here you can put in anybody's name and email them the link to scare the pants off 'em.
The names in the press release are dynamically generated, though, so you can put in a friend's name & occupation and point them to the site, making them think their name was in the press release. (Okay, so I've got too much spare time.) You can set them up here:
Voters, workplaces and the government were to be linked together by a new, interactive national communications network, which would transform their relationship into something profoundly more equal and responsive than before - a sort of socialist internet, decades ahead of its time.
Uhhh, no, that's nothing like the Internet, actually. The Internet links men with chicks, to transform their relationship into something profoundly more equal and responsive than before - the guys shell out money and get pr0n. Nothing socialist about it, and certainly nothing to do with voters.
If it showed your exact speed while driving, the needle would jump around much quicker....if you have GPS that can calculate speed, check it against your speedometer and you will see what I mean.
Wait, lemme get this straight: you saw the speed jumping up and down on the GPS display, and you thought the SPEEDO was wrong? Did you feel the car jerking back and forth at the time? Or could you not tell because you were so high on crack?
You got it backwards: if you want your ground speed from your GPS, you need to average the GPS readings over at least several seconds.
Hey, if I told you that one in every two Ferrari F-40's explode for no reason, but only 1 in every 1000 Honda Civics explode for no reason, which explosions are going to be more noticed?
The Ferraris, because nobody important drives a Civic.
Knock off balding middle-aged, filthy rich tycoon, and that'll get more press than offing a bunch of morons who put rear spoilers on front-wheel-drive cars.
But isn't the point that Microsoft IS the biggie out there, and Linux isn't, but we all (well, there is an assumption here) would like to see that reversed? If that's true, then your arguement is effectively null and void.
That's actually the point: there are a ton of anti-Microsoft people out there who would love to see Microsoft go down in flames, and Linux take its place. Those people are more technically inclined. While I would never go so far as to say that Linux people purposely write virii to take down Microsoft, I certainly wouldn't say that Microsoft users are the guys writing virii to take down Windows Update. You don't bite the hand that feeds you, and I've never met anybody who was smart enough to write a good virus and simultaneously preferred using Microsoft Windows as his/her desktop OS.
First, the user base for Linux is inherently more systems-savvy and internet-knowledgable than the Windows user base: it comes back to the old Linux-on-the-desktop argument. As long as you've got less systems-savvy users on a particular operating system, it will be more vulnerable to attack. As a result, people with more tech knowledge tend to also run a more secure system - just like my lawyer friends know not to let the cops search your car.
Anti-establishment psychology also comes into play: for example, you don't see anti-business graffiti on your local coffee shop, you see it at Starbucks. When people want to make a statement about animal cruelty and food, they often picket at McDonald's - not the local Mom & Pop restaurant. Why? Because it's perceived as cool to go after the big business. Writing a Linux virus isn't nearly as cool as taking down Microsoft. The recent viruses attacked Windows Update for a reason: to make a statement. Calling Linux secure because people love DDOS'ing Microsoft is faulty logic.
If people really are blowing through town all the time, then I'd suggest you target your services at them.
Advertise at the local hotels. At least once per month, drop off fliers with a listing of the services your lab offers and the class schedule. Most small town hotels have truly horrible business centers with one or two outdated PC's with no dialup access. Travelers love finding places to surf.
Have traveler-starter classes, such as how to check your home email account from anywhere, how to research flights online, how to get weather, etc.
And above all, ask people. You're on the right track by asking around - now ask the hotel people to find out what their guests want.
Are you asking about .NET, or something else?
on
Can .NET Really Scale?
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· Score: 5, Insightful
2. SOAP is too damn heavy weight to scale well beyond 60 concurrent requests for a single CPU 3ghz system.
It doesn't sound like you're talking about.NET specifically, but just SOAP in general. Make sure you separate out the platform from the product. Saying web services with SOAP won't work is a long way away from saying.NET doesn't scale.
3. SQL Server doesn't support C# triggers or a way to embed C# applications within the database
Embedding applications in the database violates basic scaling principals: you need to separate out into n-tier, right? You don't want the database server doing anything but serving databases. Now, having said that, Yukon (the next version of MS SQL) will indeed let you do certain things in the database with.NET languages, but that's rarely going to be a way to make your system run faster and scale more. Plus, I'm confused - what's your alternative? What database are you going to recommend that allows you to embed C# (C++, whatever) programs in the database itself?
9. I asked a MS SQL Server DBA about real-time replication across multiple servers and his remark was "it doesn't work, don't use it."
Sounds like it's time to get a more informed consultant who can demonstrate failure or success beyond a throwaway line. I'm not saying replication does or doesn't work, but you can't base your enterprise plans on a single line from a single guy - let alone strangers like me on Slashdot. Furthermore, this isn't a.NET question, it's an SQL question.
It's easy to make big decisions if you break them up into a series of smaller ones. Look at each of your questions and decide if it pertains to.NET, or just a particular product. You might go with.NET and not use MS SQL Server, for that matter.
Nothing seems to happen? Hello, what of all these features:
All of the features you mention were added more than a year ago, if I recall correctly. The comment was pointing out that Mozilla hasn't done anything groundbreaking in the last year or so.
I really WISH the advertisers knew which ads I was skipping, and which ones make me rewind to see what exactly they were doing. There are some good ads out there that are hilarious - the first time I saw the "Stripperella" ads on TNN, for example, you'd better believe I backed the remote up. On the other hand, the guy with the polka-dotted suit needs to quit throwing his money away and get with the program....
Read the article. There's a graph with some stats on Windows vs the two Linux distros, but it's not a comparison between all three - only between the two Linux distros. The last page makes it pretty clear when they only rate the two Linux distros, and Red Hat wins that comparison.
This is *not* a long-awaited comparison between Windows and Linux. It's not even a long-awaited comparison between Linux distros - the whole article spans a whopping three pages, and it's woefully incomplete.
Uh, I just went to the Dell online store and configured a Precision 650 with dual 3.06 Xeons, a DVD burner, 512 MB RAM, 150 GB IDE drive, and no monitor.
Jobs figured out a while ago that you've got to make the top model competitive by throwing in a DVD burner. Rather than pricing that one, try comparing really similar models:
Apple G5 1.8ghz single CPU with 256mb ram, 80gb drive, and SuperDrive - $1,999
Dell Precision 450 with dual P4 2.4ghz, 256mb ram, 80gb drive, and 4x DVD burner - $1,932
Even if the single G5 is pretty quick, it's still not quicker than a faster clocked, dual-cpu model.
It worked quite well for the companies that actually did the price undercutting, Wal-Mart and Southwest Airlines.
You hit the nail on the head. It also worked well for the companies that differentiated themselves by giving a higher level of service and/or product quality, and charged more for it. In the airline industry, Continental has refused to cut meals, service quality, etc., and actually improved service levels - and they're doing quite well. Not Southwest well, but pretty well. In the retail arena, Target is trying to be the designer Wal-Mart, with quality goods from guys like Michael Graves, and doing a bang-up job of it.
Slashdot Mirror
He fails to mention what "Claria" is supposed to mean or how it accomplishes this goal
It just illustrates why you don't name your company after a single product line. If that product turns out to have bad side effects (like cancer or flipping SUV's over) then you need to change the company name so prospective investors and customers don't think it's the only thing you do.
Did you know Bridgestone is the parent company of Firestone? Of course you didn't. And while you would probably think twice about buying a Firestone tire for your SUV (even though it was only one model of tire involved out of Firestone's entire lineup), you wouldn't think twice about putting on a Bridgestone tire.
Likewise, if Gator wanted to come out with a second product tomorrow, they couldn't - because who would install Gator Calculator or whatever? Nobody. But who would install Claria Calculator? The same millions of users who installed Gator.
In a related story, the University of Utah pointed out that modern desktop computer processes consume roughly 14 tons per hour of running SETI, a popular screen saver. "At some point, you have to wonder just how important it is to find alien life," said Professor Ima T. Hugger, "when you're killing so much life here on our own planet just to find out. One little green man simply isn't worth twenty redwood trees - try shutting down your machine once in a while, or switch to that nice screen saver with the rotating Windows logo."
When asked about the energy required to create his polyester pants, Hugger refused comment.
BrentO writes: "According to Common Sense, computer purchasers, tired of the low-powered CPUs and high prices of the much-hyped tablet PC, are beginning to speak out with their wallets, complaining that they just don't want to spend two thousand dollars for 1998-era computing performance. The predicted productivity for the devices has not materialized; faced with the tablet's premium pricing, manufacturers are finally getting the picture."
Seriously, when I talk about buying computers with network admins, and ask them to name a price point at which tablets make sense, the number seems to be (normal laptop) + $150. As it is now, the price penalty is much stiffer, and you end up comparing low-powered tablets with high-powered laptops. Sure, you can get a $1400 Compaq tablet - but it's got less than half the CPU power of their $1400 laptops.
I've been using the very inexpensive ServersAlive from Woodstone since 1999, and I've been very pleased with it. It's much friendlier to use than Big Brother or MRTG (and yes, I use both of those as well). The user interface is great, very easy to point-click your way through, and you can also SSH or Telnet into it to do other administrative tasks.
It can check everything from pings, snmp, databases, web pages, services, processes, port checks, and more. For whatever it doesn't check, you can design external checks, and users share their external checks for things like Lotus Notes and file counts.
The alerting is absolutely top-notch: you can set up teams and people, and each person can have their own notification settings & schedules via ICQ, MSN, email, pager, and more. I love it because I can have my alerts delivered to the right place at the right time.
The user community is very active: there's a great email list with a lot of helpful people. I've personally written lots of web templates for it, and other users have added external checks for stuff like Lotus Notes, ODBC database checking, and more. The developers are also extremely responsive, and they do beta builds every few days with new features. For example, MSN recently turned off their old protocols, but Woodstone had already made available a new version that works with the new protocol, and explained to the email list what the ramifications were.
The newest version 4 added an Enterprise Version that can log to ODBC, so you can build web-based analytical reporting as well. That version goes for $179, but there's a free 10-check-only version and a $99 normal version. Can't say enough good stuff about this - it's outlasted four network admins at my company because the alerting at from my house (using ServersAlive) has always outperformed every solution we've put in at the office, including Big Brother, WhatsUpGold, and a few others.
They're testing "desktop" applications... who has RAID (besides me) at home?
Well, me, for starters - but of course, you're asking Slashdot readers. We're the kinds of guys who know that even our in-car computers should have RAID, since the environment is tough. But besides, anybody who'd shell out the money for an Opteron is probably a Slashdot reader anyway....
You, my friend, are brilliant. Thanks. Updated the link.
I had a little fun with a Yahoo press release the other day, and made a version on my own site that's database-driven, so you can stuff somebody's name in an innocuous link. In this one, it's Julian Morales, but here you can put in anybody's name and email them the link to scare the pants off 'em.
Heh - funny, of all the coincidences. I see you've got GlassUser rated as a friend - I know the guy, we both live in Houston. Odd!
I whipped up a fake news release using Yahoo's story yesterday, just for yuks. It looks like this:x =10600&Language=EN&&partner=GOOGLE&Refer=5
http://www.brentozar.com/breakingnews/riaa.aspx?e
The names in the press release are dynamically generated, though, so you can put in a friend's name & occupation and point them to the site, making them think their name was in the press release. (Okay, so I've got too much spare time.) You can set them up here:
http://www.brentozar.com/breakingnews/
Voters, workplaces and the government were to be linked together by a new, interactive national communications network, which would transform their relationship into something profoundly more equal and responsive than before - a sort of socialist internet, decades ahead of its time.
Uhhh, no, that's nothing like the Internet, actually. The Internet links men with chicks, to transform their relationship into something profoundly more equal and responsive than before - the guys shell out money and get pr0n. Nothing socialist about it, and certainly nothing to do with voters.
If it showed your exact speed while driving, the needle would jump around much quicker....if you have GPS that can calculate speed, check it against your speedometer and you will see what I mean.
Wait, lemme get this straight: you saw the speed jumping up and down on the GPS display, and you thought the SPEEDO was wrong? Did you feel the car jerking back and forth at the time? Or could you not tell because you were so high on crack?
You got it backwards: if you want your ground speed from your GPS, you need to average the GPS readings over at least several seconds.
Back in 1981, I was working at CDC as a lab assistant....Same for leageneers(sp) disease.
I bet I know why you lost your job.
Hey, if I told you that one in every two Ferrari F-40's explode for no reason, but only 1 in every 1000 Honda Civics explode for no reason, which explosions are going to be more noticed?
The Ferraris, because nobody important drives a Civic.
Knock off balding middle-aged, filthy rich tycoon, and that'll get more press than offing a bunch of morons who put rear spoilers on front-wheel-drive cars.
But I digress...
But isn't the point that Microsoft IS the biggie out there, and Linux isn't, but we all (well, there is an assumption here) would like to see that reversed? If that's true, then your arguement is effectively null and void.
That's actually the point: there are a ton of anti-Microsoft people out there who would love to see Microsoft go down in flames, and Linux take its place. Those people are more technically inclined. While I would never go so far as to say that Linux people purposely write virii to take down Microsoft, I certainly wouldn't say that Microsoft users are the guys writing virii to take down Windows Update. You don't bite the hand that feeds you, and I've never met anybody who was smart enough to write a good virus and simultaneously preferred using Microsoft Windows as his/her desktop OS.
First, the user base for Linux is inherently more systems-savvy and internet-knowledgable than the Windows user base: it comes back to the old Linux-on-the-desktop argument. As long as you've got less systems-savvy users on a particular operating system, it will be more vulnerable to attack. As a result, people with more tech knowledge tend to also run a more secure system - just like my lawyer friends know not to let the cops search your car.
Anti-establishment psychology also comes into play: for example, you don't see anti-business graffiti on your local coffee shop, you see it at Starbucks. When people want to make a statement about animal cruelty and food, they often picket at McDonald's - not the local Mom & Pop restaurant. Why? Because it's perceived as cool to go after the big business. Writing a Linux virus isn't nearly as cool as taking down Microsoft. The recent viruses attacked Windows Update for a reason: to make a statement. Calling Linux secure because people love DDOS'ing Microsoft is faulty logic.
If people really are blowing through town all the time, then I'd suggest you target your services at them.
Advertise at the local hotels. At least once per month, drop off fliers with a listing of the services your lab offers and the class schedule. Most small town hotels have truly horrible business centers with one or two outdated PC's with no dialup access. Travelers love finding places to surf.
Have traveler-starter classes, such as how to check your home email account from anywhere, how to research flights online, how to get weather, etc.
And above all, ask people. You're on the right track by asking around - now ask the hotel people to find out what their guests want.
2. SOAP is too damn heavy weight to scale well beyond 60 concurrent requests for a single CPU 3ghz system.
.NET specifically, but just SOAP in general. Make sure you separate out the platform from the product. Saying web services with SOAP won't work is a long way away from saying .NET doesn't scale.
.NET languages, but that's rarely going to be a way to make your system run faster and scale more. Plus, I'm confused - what's your alternative? What database are you going to recommend that allows you to embed C# (C++, whatever) programs in the database itself?
.NET question, it's an SQL question.
.NET, or just a particular product. You might go with .NET and not use MS SQL Server, for that matter.
It doesn't sound like you're talking about
3. SQL Server doesn't support C# triggers or a way to embed C# applications within the database
Embedding applications in the database violates basic scaling principals: you need to separate out into n-tier, right? You don't want the database server doing anything but serving databases. Now, having said that, Yukon (the next version of MS SQL) will indeed let you do certain things in the database with
9. I asked a MS SQL Server DBA about real-time replication across multiple servers and his remark was "it doesn't work, don't use it."
Sounds like it's time to get a more informed consultant who can demonstrate failure or success beyond a throwaway line. I'm not saying replication does or doesn't work, but you can't base your enterprise plans on a single line from a single guy - let alone strangers like me on Slashdot. Furthermore, this isn't a
It's easy to make big decisions if you break them up into a series of smaller ones. Look at each of your questions and decide if it pertains to
Nothing seems to happen? Hello, what of all these features:
All of the features you mention were added more than a year ago, if I recall correctly. The comment was pointing out that Mozilla hasn't done anything groundbreaking in the last year or so.
Sure its definately cool, but its scary too. Imagine directions being constantly spoken into your ear as you perform your job.
Ah, so augmented reality is like my mother-in-law riding in the back of my car? Yeah, that IS scary.
Now if only these came with a bedroom module then maybe I'd know what to do when I found a girl in my bed.
Assuming that the module was done by computer programmers, I'm not so sure I'd want to follow the directions.
I really WISH the advertisers knew which ads I was skipping, and which ones make me rewind to see what exactly they were doing. There are some good ads out there that are hilarious - the first time I saw the "Stripperella" ads on TNN, for example, you'd better believe I backed the remote up. On the other hand, the guy with the polka-dotted suit needs to quit throwing his money away and get with the program....
Read the article. There's a graph with some stats on Windows vs the two Linux distros, but it's not a comparison between all three - only between the two Linux distros. The last page makes it pretty clear when they only rate the two Linux distros, and Red Hat wins that comparison.
This is *not* a long-awaited comparison between Windows and Linux. It's not even a long-awaited comparison between Linux distros - the whole article spans a whopping three pages, and it's woefully incomplete.
Show us a dual-processor Opteron/Itanium system from a major computer manufacturer and we'll be happy to benchmark them for you...
You mean like HP or Dell? Yeah, I can see why it would be hard to find those, eh?
Uh, I just went to the Dell online store and configured a Precision 650 with dual 3.06 Xeons, a DVD burner, 512 MB RAM, 150 GB IDE drive, and no monitor.
Jobs figured out a while ago that you've got to make the top model competitive by throwing in a DVD burner. Rather than pricing that one, try comparing really similar models:
Apple G5 1.8ghz single CPU with 256mb ram, 80gb drive, and SuperDrive - $1,999
Dell Precision 450 with dual P4 2.4ghz, 256mb ram, 80gb drive, and 4x DVD burner - $1,932
Even if the single G5 is pretty quick, it's still not quicker than a faster clocked, dual-cpu model.
It worked quite well for the companies that actually did the price undercutting, Wal-Mart and Southwest Airlines.
You hit the nail on the head. It also worked well for the companies that differentiated themselves by giving a higher level of service and/or product quality, and charged more for it. In the airline industry, Continental has refused to cut meals, service quality, etc., and actually improved service levels - and they're doing quite well. Not Southwest well, but pretty well. In the retail arena, Target is trying to be the designer Wal-Mart, with quality goods from guys like Michael Graves, and doing a bang-up job of it.