Well, are they really giving it away for free? The way I see it this is really good for Microsoft, with server sales predicted to slow down over the next few years due to the rise of increasing more powerful machines with multiple cores and cheaper memory, people are less likely to buy a new server because there will be so much more spare resources and capacity on an existing one, so if you could keep on virtualizing a multi-cpu/core system then you could keep on charging for extra vm's using your using your vm pricing model.
So bang you've now decoupled your license sales from dwindling hardware sales and there will typically always be a need to separate your servers either physically or virtually due to application or security needs so you lower the bar by reducing the cost, with the promise of lower power and cooling costs.
If I was Microsoft I'd bundled the VM functionality into the OS as quick as I could and make it exceptionally good so I could provide it as a value add to Enterprise, why deal with VMWare when I could do it all in house and control the quality of the product as well, more license sales for me and increased likelihood that the host os is Microsoft.
I attempted to roll out linux desktop's in my organisation but one thing stopped us going the whole hog and removing the windows machines from many of the users, what was that? Calendering, most organisations which grow beyond a certain size need more than email they need groupware, the ability to effectively share info and book meetings.
My organisation uses Exchange 2000 (and typically once that's in there's usually no getting it out) so the first requirement was to integrate Ximian Evolution into it, so we dutifully used the evolution connector which works well but can not be guaranteed 100%, we had problems with people re-scheduling meetings i.e. those with Evolution had problem when organiser rescheduled their meetings, many times it would not update and sometimes the meeting disappeared altogether. When you have a few high-level managers blaming you for members of their teams not missing meetings because they are using evolution you soon find a way to ditch it pretty damn quick, I'm hired to allow people to work together effectively and manager just want solutions to just work.
Another problem was that some emails sent from evolution could not be read (or even easily deleted) by outlook clients due to them having "invalid active content" these problematic emails could only be deleted by holding shift and delete at the same time.
I thought the situation would improve when we moved from 1.x to 2.x version of Evolution but I couldn't even access the calendar properly.
Now all these issues combined with the fact that evolution causes OWA on exchange to produce a lot of web temp files that tend to fill up the exchange server's hard disk forced us to abandon it.
If I had the chance to start from ground zero this would not have been a problem I would have used postfix and cyrus imap amd I would also have used thunderbird since it's got a smaller footprint, is faster and is more extendable (in my view e.g. check out enigmail and other plugins)
What Linux really needs is either an open mapi connector with client which is 100% compatible with Exchange or a full featured groupware application with calendaring which has a free linux and windows client that can interface with AD & LDAP and other exchange systems e.g. handle ics/vcal/ical files from other systems, show and share contact info and integrate with other productivity applications e.g. word, saleslogix, excel, openoffice, etc.
I think its greating them getting involved, LTSP is quite a mature project and while I'm not quite sure what kind of extra value they would add hopefully they will be looking at solidifying LDAP/Edirectory integration and other enhancements (like bandwidth optimisation).
I'd like to know if they are going to make a "REAL" concerted effort to make this a success by adopting a new business model rather than trying half-hearted tactics and blaming Kazaa et al for its failure rather than their own lack of understanding or attempts to build up more legal collateral for legislation.
There's a saying, give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day, teach a man how to fish and he'll eat for a life time.
In this vein the Simputer is a good thing since it could teach you how to build a still to purify water, how to diagnose simple ailments. $250(USD) is a hell of a lot of money but it will go down due to two key factors the source and design is open and Moore's law.
Now if there was a charity to help purchase and distribute these things to people in third world countries that would get the ball rolling.
There are 3 main options you have here in order to stay in IT and do the type of work you love:
1. Read the Market 2. Lead the Market 3. Find a Niche
1. Read the Market This is probably the easiest but involves a lot of research and retraining on your part. What you do is find out what the HR types are looking for and acquire those skills. Sounds hard? Well its not as hard as you may think. You go to a load of job sites e.g. Dice, Monster, etc. and find which skills are consistently requested e.g. for a Support Analyst typically a CCNA, MCSE, etc. and then train yourself up in these skills making sure you back them up with real experience of using them in either a paid or voluntary role. Do this you are essentially a market trend follower.
2. Leading the market, now this is a bit trickier you essentially have to predict what is going to be the next "big thing". This carries some risk because there are a lot of "silver bullet" technologies that never make it off the ground or take years to come into their own. Your best for finding these is to read the industry press, check what the analyst are saying or look for the early adopters of that technology and carefully research the benefits they acquired from the technology and evaluate whether it's a "good thing" to press ahead with.
3. Find a niche, there is quite of lot of this about and your skills may be best suited for it, there are still a lot of shops running legacy technologies or very specific vertical industry applications e.g. Geology s/w, Automotive s/w. You'd be amazed how many shops still run cobol and in Y2K those old cobol programmers came into their own again, so a cobol programmer with a second high level language and a specialism in migrations would be worth their weight in gold when there are changes in the legal or economical framework of an economy e.g. Europe and the implementation of the Euro.
I've been in IT for 9 years and I have to admit that from my point of view experience is king and counts for a hell of a lot, in fact its amazing how much experience of these older technologies helps you when migrating to these newer technologies (as they say there's nothing new under the sun).
But now you have a new adversary i.e. the HR team who have no idea about IT and all they do is look for those certifications so you need them to get your foot in the door (yep I know its a pain).
You also have face the what certification has done to the industry a key example is the MCSE once regarded as a high level certification now regarded as a entry level one, Microsoft and the industry in general really screwed the pooch on this one, they really should have got the MCSA out the door before the MCSE now we've got a huge back peddling job going on while trying to re-alter the perception of the MCSE.
Next you have to face the IT manager who really needs 3 people but because of cut backs he can only have one, so what does he do? He lumbers "all" his requirements into one job spec.
All the above combined with the sheer number of people you are competiting against with the same or similar skills because of a soft economy doesn't paint a pretty picture but you can survive if you play it smart, ditch a bit of pride and box clever (we are no longer the Princes of the Universe)
Its hard being in IT at the moment and its going to get harder coming up to Christmas so I wish you luck matey
Funnily enough the actual cost of the phone doesn't really matter that much to the service providers, they'll just use it as a measure of how much they should mark up their margins. In the UK only phone's sold without a contract cost full price e.g. My old T68 cost £180 with a contract but if I bought it without one it would have cost £400.
Talking about competitive phones anyone remember the Nortel/Matracom phone, poor design and very expensive but still made it to market.
The register has released and update on their website explaining the key reason for their decision to pull out was related to lack of access to the source code.
Well there are no stupid questions I suppose.. Here are 4 Reasons:
1. I don't own a laptop, but I am required to do presentations using the customer equipment,just try going into a meeting with a staroffice document in a Microsoft shop
2. Initially I created the presentation using OpenOffice.org 1.0.1 but I had problems with the large amount of OLE graphics (they kept disappearing!) I was using so I had to switch back to powerpoint.
3. I tried to find a way to convert the powerpoint document to a PDF using OpenOffice and Ghostview but couldn't find a way to easily do it, then I tried Ghostview for Windows but it corrupted the fonts, so I had to go to Distiller for Windows
4. I am not zealot, I love Linux and Opensource source but I would not advocate that everyone should use Linux and Opensource, I advocate choice, you can use Windows and you can use Linux but make an educated choice on which you use and why, if your happy doing somethings on Windows then stick to Windows (but know what you are sticking to) and if you want to use Linux then use Linux.
I have both a Linux box and a Window 2000 box under my desk, I use both interactively, I hope to get rid of Windows completely but some things are just easier to get done in Windows e.g. administering a Watchguard firebox.
I've been going around trying to convince my clients that Linux is a viable corporate alternative ( see here) and every story avocating its use for political (free speech), environmental (recycling and making those old 386s usable again), societal (adding value to people in third-world countries) and technological (A Globally Wide pool of people with diverse ideas rather than those in Redmond) as well as valid business reasons (increases profitability, adds value, reduces costs, etc) make the Linux argument even stronger.
We need more of the "I switched to Linux because it was good for my business model" rather than "I switched cos Microsoft was mean and horrible to me so I took my ball and went to another park" because mean and 'orrible Microsoft will just replace the usual suspects with new friendly (and more insidious) faces and rebrand themselves as the NEW microsoft and pull those customers back in again (Hey look they said they were sorry and I can go back to the park again).
Slashdot Mirror
Well, are they really giving it away for free? The way I see it this is really good for Microsoft, with server sales predicted to slow down over the next few years due to the rise of increasing more powerful machines with multiple cores and cheaper memory, people are less likely to buy a new server because there will be so much more spare resources and capacity on an existing one, so if you could keep on virtualizing a multi-cpu/core system then you could keep on charging for extra vm's using your using your vm pricing model.
So bang you've now decoupled your license sales from dwindling hardware sales and there will typically always be a need to separate your servers either physically or virtually due to application or security needs so you lower the bar by reducing the cost, with the promise of lower power and cooling costs.
If I was Microsoft I'd bundled the VM functionality into the OS as quick as I could and make it exceptionally good so I could provide it as a value add to Enterprise, why deal with VMWare when I could do it all in house and control the quality of the product as well, more license sales for me and increased likelihood that the host os is Microsoft.
I attempted to roll out linux desktop's in my organisation but one thing stopped us going the whole hog and removing the windows machines from many of the users, what was that? Calendering, most organisations which grow beyond a certain size need more than email they need groupware, the ability to effectively share info and book meetings.
My organisation uses Exchange 2000 (and typically once that's in there's usually no getting it out) so the first requirement was to integrate Ximian Evolution into it, so we dutifully used the evolution connector which works well but can not be guaranteed 100%, we had problems with people re-scheduling meetings i.e. those with Evolution had problem when organiser rescheduled their meetings, many times it would not update and sometimes the meeting disappeared altogether. When you have a few high-level managers blaming you for members of their teams not missing meetings because they are using evolution you soon find a way to ditch it pretty damn quick, I'm hired to allow people to work together effectively and manager just want solutions to just work.
Another problem was that some emails sent from evolution could not be read (or even easily deleted) by outlook clients due to them having "invalid active content" these problematic emails could only be deleted by holding shift and delete at the same time.
I thought the situation would improve when we moved from 1.x to 2.x version of Evolution but I couldn't even access the calendar properly.
Now all these issues combined with the fact that evolution causes OWA on exchange to produce a lot of web temp files that tend to fill up the exchange server's hard disk forced us to abandon it.
If I had the chance to start from ground zero this would not have been a problem I would have used postfix and cyrus imap amd I would also have used thunderbird since it's got a smaller footprint, is faster and is more extendable (in my view e.g. check out enigmail and other plugins)
What Linux really needs is either an open mapi connector with client which is 100% compatible with Exchange or a full featured groupware application with calendaring which has a free linux and windows client that can interface with AD & LDAP and other exchange systems e.g. handle ics/vcal/ical files from other systems, show and share contact info and integrate with other productivity applications e.g. word, saleslogix, excel, openoffice, etc.
If they could work on other enhancements to LTSP or X such as "screen" like session management or vnc session management or load balancing like Citrix.
I think its greating them getting involved, LTSP is quite a mature project and while I'm not quite sure what kind of extra value they would add hopefully they will be looking at solidifying LDAP/Edirectory integration and other enhancements (like bandwidth optimisation).
I'd like to know if they are going to make a "REAL" concerted effort to make this a success by adopting a new business model rather than trying half-hearted tactics and blaming Kazaa et al for its failure rather than their own lack of understanding or attempts to build up more legal collateral for legislation.
There's a saying, give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day, teach a man how to fish and he'll eat for a life time.
In this vein the Simputer is a good thing since it could teach you how to build a still to purify water, how to diagnose simple ailments. $250(USD) is a hell of a lot of money but it will go down due to two key factors the source and design is open and Moore's law.
Now if there was a charity to help purchase and distribute these things to people in third world countries that would get the ball rolling.
Knowledge = Power to control your destiny
-Action
There are 3 main options you have here in order to stay in IT and do the type of work you love:
1. Read the Market
2. Lead the Market
3. Find a Niche
1. Read the Market
This is probably the easiest but involves a lot of research and retraining on your part. What you do is find out what the HR types are looking for and acquire those skills. Sounds hard? Well its not as hard as you may think. You go to a load of job sites e.g. Dice, Monster, etc. and find which skills are consistently requested e.g. for a Support Analyst typically a CCNA, MCSE, etc. and then train yourself up in these skills making sure you back them up with real experience of using them in either a paid or voluntary role. Do this you are essentially a market trend follower.
2. Leading the market, now this is a bit trickier you essentially have to predict what is going to be the next "big thing". This carries some risk because there are a lot of "silver bullet" technologies that never make it off the ground or take years to come into their own. Your best for finding these is to read the industry press, check what the analyst are saying or look for the early adopters of that technology and carefully research the benefits they acquired from the technology and evaluate whether it's a "good thing" to press ahead with.
3. Find a niche, there is quite of lot of this about and your skills may be best suited for it, there are still a lot of shops running legacy technologies or very specific vertical industry applications e.g. Geology s/w, Automotive s/w. You'd be amazed how many shops still run cobol and in Y2K those old cobol programmers came into their own again, so a cobol programmer with a second high level language and a specialism in migrations would be worth their weight in gold when there are changes in the legal or economical framework of an economy e.g. Europe and the implementation of the Euro.
I've been in IT for 9 years and I have to admit that from my point of view experience is king and counts for a hell of a lot, in fact its amazing how much experience of these older technologies helps you when migrating to these newer technologies (as they say there's nothing new under the sun).
But now you have a new adversary i.e. the HR team who have no idea about IT and all they do is look for those certifications so you need them to get your foot in the door (yep I know its a pain).
You also have face the what certification has done to the industry a key example is the MCSE once regarded as a high level certification now regarded as a entry level one, Microsoft and the industry in general really screwed the pooch on this one, they really should have got the MCSA out the door before the MCSE now we've got a huge back peddling job going on while trying to re-alter the perception of the MCSE.
Next you have to face the IT manager who really needs 3 people but because of cut backs he can only have one, so what does he do? He lumbers "all" his requirements into one job spec.
All the above combined with the sheer number of people you are competiting against with the same or similar skills because of a soft economy doesn't paint a pretty picture but you can survive if you play it smart, ditch a bit of pride and box clever (we are no longer the Princes of the Universe)
Its hard being in IT at the moment and its going to get harder coming up to Christmas so I wish you luck matey
-Martin
Funnily enough the actual cost of the phone doesn't really matter that much to the service providers, they'll just use it as a measure of how much they should mark up their margins. In the UK only phone's sold without a contract cost full price e.g. My old T68 cost £180 with a contract but if I bought it without one it would have cost £400.
Talking about competitive phones anyone remember the Nortel/Matracom phone, poor design and very expensive but still made it to market.
The register has released and update on their website explaining the key reason for their decision to pull out was related to lack of access to the source code.
Well there are no stupid questions I suppose..
Here are 4 Reasons:
1. I don't own a laptop, but I am required to do presentations using the customer equipment,just try going into a meeting with a staroffice document in a Microsoft shop
2. Initially I created the presentation using OpenOffice.org 1.0.1 but I had problems with the large amount of OLE graphics (they kept disappearing!) I was using so I had to switch back to powerpoint.
3. I tried to find a way to convert the powerpoint document to a PDF using OpenOffice and Ghostview but couldn't find a way to easily do it, then I tried Ghostview for Windows but it corrupted the fonts, so I had to go to Distiller for Windows
4. I am not zealot, I love Linux and Opensource source but I would not advocate that everyone should use Linux and Opensource, I advocate choice, you can use Windows and you can use Linux but make an educated choice on which you use and why, if your happy doing somethings on Windows then stick to Windows (but know what you are sticking to) and if you want to use Linux then use Linux.
I have both a Linux box and a Window 2000 box under my desk, I use both interactively, I hope to get rid of Windows completely but some things are just easier to get done in Windows e.g. administering a Watchguard firebox.
I hope this answers your question
This sort of coverage is great news,
I've been going around trying to convince my clients that Linux is a viable corporate alternative ( see here) and every story avocating its use for political (free speech), environmental (recycling and making those old 386s usable again), societal (adding value to people in third-world countries) and technological (A Globally Wide pool of people with diverse ideas rather than those in Redmond) as well as valid business reasons (increases profitability, adds value, reduces costs, etc) make the Linux argument even stronger.
We need more of the "I switched to Linux because it was good for my business model" rather than "I switched cos Microsoft was mean and horrible to me so I took my ball and went to another park" because mean and 'orrible Microsoft will just replace the usual suspects with new friendly (and more insidious) faces and rebrand themselves as the NEW microsoft and pull those customers back in again (Hey look they said they were sorry and I can go back to the park again).
Action
Here's a few
MBONE VCR on Demand Service
http://www.informatik.uni-mannheim.de/~whd/mvod/
The MASH Project
http://mash.cs.berkeley.edu/mash/
A Good list of VOD related applications
http://www.infres.enst.fr/~dax/guides/vod/
The Berkeley Continuous Media Toolkit
http://bmrc.berkeley.edu/frame/research/cmt/
Good example of a simple but it works VOD system can be found at
http://lvsp.or.kr/index_en.html (It's mostly in Korean)
You might also want to look at this slashdot article as well:
http://slashdot.org/askslashdot/99/01/01/1243259.s html
-Action Jax
"I may not know about it today but there's always tomorrow"