mod parent up: a while ago I was thinking about getting a fireproof safe for my own backups, but fireproof (as defined by manufacturers) doesn't really mean 'compatible with magnetic media', since an inside temperature that doesn't make paper burn and/or plastic liquefy, is still a temperature that will probably cook your cdr dye and/or play havoc with other magnetic media.
There are various types and quality levels of fire resistant (not fire "proof") safes. Different types are required for paper vs. magnetic media (the ones for paper have a moisture-containing material in the walls that releases the moisture above a certain temperature, preventing paper from turning into dust as it heats up). And while the $75 ones from Wal-Mart are better than nothing, commercial quality safes with most of the gotchas engineered out usually start around $500.
However, an on-site fire resistant safe is just a starting point. I am sure there were lots of them in the WTC towers and they didn't help much.
I am not trying to sway the humble reader in one direction or the other, but I would like to add two modest points.
First, what is the probability that the commercial vendor will still be in business, supporting the version of the product that you want to use, in 5 years? 10 years? 15 years? Vendors typically have an end-of-life schedule and forced upgrades for products. Going through an upgrade, particularly an unwanted upgrade, can be just as expensive as re-writing the product from scratch.
There are a few very large systems vendors that have been in business for a long time and will commit to supporting any version of a product. Typically such contracts carry price tags that increase at least to the power of 1.5 per year. At least. Used to work for a company that paid for support on a 1950s vintage application (in the 1990s!). The cost was a significant percentage of their total revenue.
However, there is also one very large system vendor that has a habit of buying marginally successful software vendors, milking their support contracts for three years, then terminating the product. Do you have guarantees that won't happen?
Second, you make it sound as if when a problem occurs with the commercial product, you pop a punch card in a slot and *bam* a solution appears.
In fact, handling the vendor/support relationship on complex commercial products is an art and can easily become more than a full-time position. Software vendors have to be managed in much the same way that pre-teen children do: encourage them, praise them, lead them toward answers but don't do their homework, pick up their laundry off the floor, and discipline if and only if necessary. That is not an easy job, and one that generally takes a lot of time (again - just like children). Finally - what does your client do when the vendor just refuses to fix a problem? Which they will, eventually: "Sorry. Working as designed. Submit an enhancement request.". What now?
In the future, you may want to consider being a little bit less snide about people posting feature requests. Feature requests give a project direction, by allowing the coders to get a feel for what people would like the product to be like. Scoffing at them is intentionally ignoring the requests of your audience.
Well said. The NTLM thing really puzzles me. It has been out there for almost two years. It is absolutely vital to acceptance of Mozilla at corporate sites (read "most of the marketplace"). Yet it doesn't seem to get any respect. Oh well.
I'd say a good intro to ANSI-standard SQL could probably be done in 30 pages.
SQL is like chess: 1 hour to learn. 8-12 hours to figure out how to play. 5000 hours to determine whether or not you actually understand it.
Don't get me wrong - you can do useful work in SQL with 20-30 hours of practice. But if you think that SQL can be taught in 30 pages you do not understand it.
Actually, usage changed sometime around 1994. Prior to that most people said "Ess - Que - Ell"; after that date people started saying "see-quell". Never did understand why the change occured.
a) South America switches completely to Open Source as they have already threathened so often. No more sales in South America.
Believe me, I wish I could agree with you. But as October_30th describes below, it doesn't seem to be happening that way. A fair number of people are somewhat upset about Microsoft's licensing policies and costs. Hundreds of millions are physically, legally, and/or psychologically locked into Microsoft products, particuarly Office. Think about law offices in North America - they are still locked into WordPerfect, 10 years after that product lost the fight. Now multiply that by several 100,000,000s.
And realistically, does the typical purchaser care if he pays $213 or $232 for that bundled copy of Office on his shiny new Dude PC? Does he even know?
I am afraid that while there may be some smoke around the idea of replacing Microsoft on the desktop, it isn't happening yet.
The US response will be very significant. If the US government complains and retaliates, its intentions WRT Microsoft will be clear.
If OTOH the US government keeps quiet, as it did with the Honeywell case, MS is in for a beating in Europe.
It cannot afford to stop trading in Europe. It cannot escape a fine, since it has a financial presence in Europe.
OK, so the EU imposes a fine. A nice big one, say 10,000,000,000 euro.
Microsoft (1) pays the fine out of its current cash reserve of ~40,000,000,000 USD (2) the following January 1st, notifies all their customers in the United States, Asia, and South America that in order to pay the "unjust fine levied by European bureaucrats", they will have to raise the price of Office 15%.
Result: amount of fine earned back in two years, huge resentment created by Microsoft against EU.
If one looks at the entire history of Airbus, or the more recent histories of the Eurofigher and the A400M projects, it isn't much of a stretch to conclude that those who direct the EU do not want their agglomeration to be dependent on the United States in any way for critical technology. And that that they are willing to pay (or have their taxpayers pay) a substantial price to avoid that dependence.
The A400M is particularly instructive: the required capabilities are available today, off-the-shelf, at lower cost, in the form of the C-17 and C-130J. But the EU continues to push the A400 project despite it being 10 years late and at least 8 years from availability. And I suspect they will get their plane, in the end.
So, does the EU plan the same process with Microsoft? Remember that those who direct the EU behind the scenes don't have the same concerns about "cost" as managers of private companies, because they impose "directives" that governments and private companies must obey. Are the recent announcements by SuSE a testing of the waters for the imposition of a Linux desktop on EU organizations?
Please review the history of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) over the last three years. Please note that yesterday evening, after he was appointed to the new SEC "watchdog" panel, William Webster admitted that he was on the board of a company being investigated by the SEC for cooking the books.
Kind of like, how interesting is an Office 95 killer?
Actually, there are a lot of shops out there running Exchange 5.5. In its day it was a reasonably good, Y2K compliant client/server mail system for those who had outgrown cc:Mail and didn't want to go the route of Lotus Notes.
Now however its day has passed. Many sites want to go to something more secure/stable, more manageable, more scalable. Problem is that Exchange 2000 brings along baggage and licensing fees that midsized shops in particular don't want to deal with.
So - an Exchange 5.5 "drop in" (please - without the security holes) would find a big market. As did Samba in replacing NT systems. And that might actually open the doors to Linux desktop + Open Office conversions.
In case you are unaware, when the first proposals were made by the engineer responsible for the B2 stealth bomber, everyone said "Theres no damn way that thing is leaving the ground. That thing can't fly."
Care to provide a reference for that quote? Since the basic flying wing design was validated in 1949 with the YB-49 (caution - Quicktime image of YB-49 takeoff on linked page). It turned out that fly-by-wire control was needed for the flying wing to be fully reliable, but that was certainly available in 1975.
Absolutely on target (no pun intended). I used to think that half the WordPerfect programmers in the world (mid 90s) were kept employed building forms templates at $75/hour, 20 hours per template, every template changing at least once per week - when just sticking the bloody form in a typewriter would have done the job faster and better!
Two points about manual typewriters: (1) there are a number of "inking" tasks which are quite easy with a manual typewriter and quite difficult with any form of electronic devices, such as creating hardcopy labels of odd sizes on odd materials (2) Manual typewriters are invulnerable to electromagnetic attack, which cannot be said for other typing devices!
On point 2, back in the 70s the Chicago Board of Education made a large purchase of manual typewriters to equip typing classrooms. Turned out they were the manufacturer's second-largest customer after the US Army. Location of the manufacturer: German Democratic Republic (East Germany)! That was the only place high-quality manual typewriters were still being made. Presumably the Red Army used the same model.
Hopefully Bush, in need of popular support, will finally stand up to the big pharm companies and tell the FAA to approve so-called "alternative medicines" which have been languishing.
Would those be medicines that allow you to fly? Cause otherwise I don't see why the FAA would be holding them back!
Over the course of the next two weeks, eBay responded to each email I sent, about 48 hours after I sent it, but although they quoted back my question to me, they would not answer or even discuss the issue of what is a "bypassing event." I suspect my responses were coming from a collection of boilerplate replies. Each time I received a reply, I wrote back, repeating the single question, "What is a bypassing event," and citing my transaction number and other data. Each time, they replied after 48 hours without answering the question.
e-mail is a great tool when everyone is working together on one page like a great big happy family.
When things start to go wrong, however, the only method of communication that will preserve your rights is ink on paper, sent by good old US Mail, registered, return receipt requested. After the 3rd round of e-mail, you should have sent a letter to eBay's CFO asking the question. With a copy to the Corporate Secretary, stating "please consider this a communication to the Audit Committee of {legal name of eBay} and place a copy in the correspondence log of the Board of Directors". That will usually get their attention.
Ebay is a vendor, just like any other store they have no power to police, the only power they do have is over your account with them; Everything else product recovery/monetary reimbersement, has to go through the proper law enforcement channels.
Considering the United States only, if Jane Consumer gets raped in Bigco Department Store, and it can be shown that Bigco was aware of other rapes on its premises but took no action (additional security guards, cameras, lighting in dark corners, etc.), well, Jane's children are now department store heirs. Even if the rapist is in no way affiliated with Bigco. Why should eBay be any different?
The company apparently 'went out of business'. Right. Within a few weeks there were over 200 negative responses. And at about $500 a pop, that's a pretty good amount of cash that went to who-knows-where. And ebay did *nothing* about it. Absolutely *nothing*. I'm willing to bet that whoever was selling just changed their name and did it all over again. That's why I stopped using ebay. And I felt really bad about telling my friend that her money disappeared into a bottomless pit.
I am always a bit dumbfounded when I read stories like this. The laws that apply the the rest of the US economy do not stop at the eBay web site. Did you pay with a postal money order? Then did you file a complaint of mail fraud with the postmaster? File a complaint with your state's attorney general? With the US District Attorney? Did you write a letter to eBay's corporate secretay stating that you expected eBay to pursue this matter to a satisfactory conclusion?
More importantly, did you contact the 200 other people and ask them to send copies of their letters of complaint to one postmaster and one US district attorney? 200 * 500 = 100,000, which is way way into grand theft and RICO territory IMHO (non-lawyer's opinion).
For every case where you can name a big time moneyed winner, I can name a small time non-moneyed winner. That implies a 50/50 split between money winning and money not winning. Therefore, the system isnt dependent on money. Its a simple stastical/logic problem.
Could you provide some of those examples please? From cases decided in the last 15 years? Even leaving aside the situations where Joe Citizen gave up because he couldn't afford to fight Big Corp to the Supreme Court, I have a hard time coming up with a lot of cases where a monied interest lost vs. the interests of the average Citizen. I hope you can prove me wrong, but as the voice in the Mouse Hunt trailer said, "I don't think so!
The computer techs shouldn't need to know the business.
If you are just talking about providing e-mail and a bog-standard Word and Excel install, with no support to any greater level than the included Help files, sure.
But beyond that, thre is no such thing as a "computer tech without business knowledge". Even the lowest printer repair tech has to make decisions such as "respond to VP A's call or Executive VP B's call first?". Anc unless you are aware that although VP A is lower on the totem pole his team is working on a company-saving proposal and needs priority support, you aren't going to make the right choice.
Then there is the simple 1st-level help desk call, "Why don't the numbers on my Crystal Report add up?" That one could take from 30 seconds of mouse training to 30 hours of analyzing the business rules behind the data to resolve. The outsourced provider will either refuse to answer the question, or will miss the deeper significance.
Of course, the 1st year savings get booked and credited to the CxO who decided to outsource; the pain gets booked to the rest of the business units down the road. Oh well.
Well, when one chooses to use a 200-blade Swiss Army Knife, one takes one's chances!
But seriously, I believe it is actually part of the design spec of PL/I that it compile FORTRAN 66 "decks" correctly. Of course, we know now how well that little marketing trick worked out.
Well, for starters, Fortran 2000 is different than Ada and PL/I in that it will be backwards compatible with F90, allowing the MILLIONS of lines of F90 code in production to move forward.
Mind you, this is all tongue in cheek. No language wars needed today!
But IRRC, a PL/I compiler will compile FORTRAN 66 code with no complaints.
Could someone please explain how FORTRAN 2000 is different from Ada? Or PL/I for that matter? Talk about extending something past the point of its intended use until it reaches escape velocity from reality...
Slashdot Mirror
However, an on-site fire resistant safe is just a starting point. I am sure there were lots of them in the WTC towers and they didn't help much.
sPh
sPh
First, what is the probability that the commercial vendor will still be in business, supporting the version of the product that you want to use, in 5 years? 10 years? 15 years? Vendors typically have an end-of-life schedule and forced upgrades for products. Going through an upgrade, particularly an unwanted upgrade, can be just as expensive as re-writing the product from scratch.
There are a few very large systems vendors that have been in business for a long time and will commit to supporting any version of a product. Typically such contracts carry price tags that increase at least to the power of 1.5 per year. At least. Used to work for a company that paid for support on a 1950s vintage application (in the 1990s!). The cost was a significant percentage of their total revenue.
However, there is also one very large system vendor that has a habit of buying marginally successful software vendors, milking their support contracts for three years, then terminating the product. Do you have guarantees that won't happen?
Second, you make it sound as if when a problem occurs with the commercial product, you pop a punch card in a slot and *bam* a solution appears.
In fact, handling the vendor/support relationship on complex commercial products is an art and can easily become more than a full-time position. Software vendors have to be managed in much the same way that pre-teen children do: encourage them, praise them, lead them toward answers but don't do their homework, pick up their laundry off the floor, and discipline if and only if necessary. That is not an easy job, and one that generally takes a lot of time (again - just like children). Finally - what does your client do when the vendor just refuses to fix a problem? Which they will, eventually: "Sorry. Working as designed. Submit an enhancement request.". What now?
sPh
sPh
Don't get me wrong - you can do useful work in SQL with 20-30 hours of practice. But if you think that SQL can be taught in 30 pages you do not understand it.
sPh
sPh
sPh
And realistically, does the typical purchaser care if he pays $213 or $232 for that bundled copy of Office on his shiny new Dude PC? Does he even know?
I am afraid that while there may be some smoke around the idea of replacing Microsoft on the desktop, it isn't happening yet.
sPh
Microsoft (1) pays the fine out of its current cash reserve of ~40,000,000,000 USD (2) the following January 1st, notifies all their customers in the United States, Asia, and South America that in order to pay the "unjust fine levied by European bureaucrats", they will have to raise the price of Office 15%.
Result: amount of fine earned back in two years, huge resentment created by Microsoft against EU.
Net benefit to EU?
sPh
The A400M is particularly instructive: the required capabilities are available today, off-the-shelf, at lower cost, in the form of the C-17 and C-130J. But the EU continues to push the A400 project despite it being 10 years late and at least 8 years from availability. And I suspect they will get their plane, in the end.
So, does the EU plan the same process with Microsoft? Remember that those who direct the EU behind the scenes don't have the same concerns about "cost" as managers of private companies, because they impose "directives" that governments and private companies must obey. Are the recent announcements by SuSE a testing of the waters for the imposition of a Linux desktop on EU organizations?
sPh
Any more questions?
sPh
Now however its day has passed. Many sites want to go to something more secure/stable, more manageable, more scalable. Problem is that Exchange 2000 brings along baggage and licensing fees that midsized shops in particular don't want to deal with.
So - an Exchange 5.5 "drop in" (please - without the security holes) would find a big market. As did Samba in replacing NT systems. And that might actually open the doors to Linux desktop + Open Office conversions.
sPh
sPh
sPh
On point 2, back in the 70s the Chicago Board of Education made a large purchase of manual typewriters to equip typing classrooms. Turned out they were the manufacturer's second-largest customer after the US Army. Location of the manufacturer: German Democratic Republic (East Germany)! That was the only place high-quality manual typewriters were still being made. Presumably the Red Army used the same model.
sPh
sPh
When things start to go wrong, however, the only method of communication that will preserve your rights is ink on paper, sent by good old US Mail, registered, return receipt requested. After the 3rd round of e-mail, you should have sent a letter to eBay's CFO asking the question. With a copy to the Corporate Secretary, stating "please consider this a communication to the Audit Committee of {legal name of eBay} and place a copy in the correspondence log of the Board of Directors". That will usually get their attention.
sPh
sPh
More importantly, did you contact the 200 other people and ask them to send copies of their letters of complaint to one postmaster and one US district attorney? 200 * 500 = 100,000, which is way way into grand theft and RICO territory IMHO (non-lawyer's opinion).
No? You didn't? Why not?
sPh
sPh
sPh
But beyond that, thre is no such thing as a "computer tech without business knowledge". Even the lowest printer repair tech has to make decisions such as "respond to VP A's call or Executive VP B's call first?". Anc unless you are aware that although VP A is lower on the totem pole his team is working on a company-saving proposal and needs priority support, you aren't going to make the right choice.
Then there is the simple 1st-level help desk call, "Why don't the numbers on my Crystal Report add up?" That one could take from 30 seconds of mouse training to 30 hours of analyzing the business rules behind the data to resolve. The outsourced provider will either refuse to answer the question, or will miss the deeper significance.
Of course, the 1st year savings get booked and credited to the CxO who decided to outsource; the pain gets booked to the rest of the business units down the road. Oh well.
sPh
But seriously, I believe it is actually part of the design spec of PL/I that it compile FORTRAN 66 "decks" correctly. Of course, we know now how well that little marketing trick worked out.
sPh
But IRRC, a PL/I compiler will compile FORTRAN 66 code with no complaints.
sPh
sPh