have no interest in or use for source code themselves.... the noisy "community" couldn't care less. >/i>
Hmmm, I'd expect bits and pieces of the code, and the mind-set that accompanies them, to show up in lots of strange places. A good web search is fine but I suspect Google's real value will be in corporate infrastructure.
Except, of course, that you are still stuck with a system which is outside of your control.
Not entirely, but they are trying. Since they've sabatoged the power switch, I've taken to unplugging the power cord. Much safer when you need to reboot. Consider, when you need to reboot, there's something wrong with the system state, ie the computer memory is messed up. Windows wants desperately to preserve this messed up state by writing it to disk so it will be available for the next boot. Figure that Microsoft has pretty well debugged how to recover from a power failure and has debugged very little of cleanly shutting down from exponentially complex error states. Seems to work pretty well. NT Workstations get rebooted by power failures. NT Server, on a UPS, has been up for a year or two. Stable? Only if you don't rock the boat. XP? It's subtle, but probably less stable than NT. They've cured some superficial stuff and increased the deep-seated instabilities.
Now if you don't know what you're doing, Microsoft is pretty easy to set up and it will actually do some stuff. Wow, look at us. We're using computers. Past the trivial, it's probably possible to do a fair amount, but that require a lot of effort, skill and training. More trouble than it's worth in most cases, I'd guess.
As for Windows being scriptable, yeah it can do some things, it has lots of features, it is loaded with features. Problem is they all seem to belong in some make-believe world, hardly industrial strength. Seriously, when Cygwin almost makes Windows useable, and you can say that with a straight face, Windows is seriously lacking. No disrespect to Cygwin, it's quite an accomplishment, but it feels very antiquated.
Novell's near ruin was largely the result of thinking that a 90% market share makes you unaccountable to your customers.
That probably holds true for any company in any industry. Seems it almost did in IBM. Seems also that Linux has rejuvenated IBM, maybe moreso that Linux is an antidote for the same-old same-old than Linux itself. Assuming that Novell can provide value for its customers, highly likely since most businesses would rather deal with Novell than the Open Source rabble, both Novell and SuSE should do nicely.
My sympathy levels for Microsoft engineers skyrocketted after...
It is not a level playing field. With Open Source, you let them as committed the horrors figure out how to handle the horrors. With Open Source, they are less likely to have committed the horrors in the first place, and even if they did, they are much more likely to have taken precautions so as to make a timely remedy much easier. With Open Source, it is much easier to solve problems where the problems reside rather than having to concoct screweys to work around the problems because you are denied access to where the problems really are. With Open Source it is much harder to shift the blame for problems off onto someone else.
Sign of the times, I guess. Safety/security/whatever. Two aspects. What I get to keep. What I keep others out of.
Companies have gone out of business because they couldn't recover their own data. Maybe somebody has gone out of business because somebody else could, but I've never heard of it.
I would expect this from Microsoft. They can blame the spam filters, to try and save face, but the simple fact is, they are simply taking a page from their own rulebook; they don't want to lose advertising revenue from people switching to Gmail, so they are breaking the law and interfering with email.
That Microsoft would even consider doing any such thing. Consider how safe your data is in a Microsoft proprietary format.
I can't even begin to understand what "MySQL" is supposed to mean.
Derived from and/or to be consistent with muSQL. Also the name of a daughter of one of the developers was "My". At least it's not "My SQL" with the embedded blank./etc/my.cnf is the configuration, so MySQL AB has at least some legitimate claim to the prefix "my".
"My Computer" belongs to whoever stuck the "My" label on "Computer". It wasn't me who did that. MySQL belongs to MySQL AB. They happen to be nice enough to allow me to use their SQL.
Or you can derive WNT by adding one to each of VMS.
The odds of a particular coincidence may be very small, but the odds of being able to find some unusual coincidence is quite good. Finding some coincidence in the name of a character of some science fiction writer is not particularly remarkable.
IIRC Novell was designed for corporate networks, routable and securable. TCP/IP is fundamentally designed to let anybody in, very routable and hardly securable. It's essentially a difference between private roads and public roads.
Just on the basis of where Novell is coming from, I'd expect a Linux coming from Novell to be somehow much more "business-friendly". Just a different bias in setting various tweaks and configurations would be enough.
The prefixes are used as a convenience, because they're close enough.
That IS the standard definitions for computer usage.
No wonder IT is FUBAR.
Re:What is google gaining from your personal life?
on
Gmail in the News
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· Score: 1
There are some fundamental differences between an old established business and fly-by-night operations.
The advertising revenue couldn't possibly amount to a significant fraction of the costs involved with these services. Consider placing an ad in a context that Google selects versus placing an ad in a context that Hotmail selects versus placing an ad in some SPAM. I expect there would be a substantial premium for a Google ad. It's definitely more likely to produce positive results.
Google has a reputation, which is a very valuable asset. Google is unlikely to jepordize this very valuable asset for pigeon feed.
What are their plans for it? They obviously plan to datamine it - but how will and how can it be used? Why should they have "plans" for it. Most likely they just store it for when and if I have plans for it. (or some researchers 50-100 years after I'm dead;)
In any event, I imagine the big money is in doing much the same thing in a large corporate environment. For that to work, it has to be very well shaken out first.
kilo, mega, giga prefixes refer to multiples of 1000, 1000000, 1000000000.
Just because computers go crazy if something that is aproximately 1k is exactly 1.000k instead of 1.024k doesn't mean that the standard definitions are wrong.
If the marketers at Maxtor wanted to quote inflated numbers, they could easily list the unformatted capacity which is much higher than the formatted capacity.
I'd guess that the real market for gmail is corporate email and the ability to track and recover correspondence over a long time-span. To be effective it has to be shaken out very thoroughly and that looks to be what Google is doing with it.
French fries --> Freedom fries. French --> Freedom.
From the "Land of the Free".
So the French intend to take their rightful place as one of the world's leaders? Why not? The USA is still at that awkward adolescent stage as a world leader.
One thing that I haven't seen in any of the TCO studies. You can load up a lot of services on one Linux box and expect to survive rather well. If you load up a lot of services on Microsoft Windows they tend to mess with each other. Incremental upgrading has to be a nightmare.
Important hairs to split, methinks. The French language is not comprehendable in terms of the American English language. The Open Source phenomenon is not comprehendable in terms of the Closed Source phenomenon. The French care about their language in ways that are totally foreign to us Americans.
What means this term "free"? The French Language is free. I am free to speak French if I choose. I don't have to pay tribute to France to speak French. It's almost as if I own the language. (However, I speak French and the French get incensed about how I'm murdering the language. Yes, I'm really that bad;) Open Source is nothing like public domain, even if it's hard to make a distinction from a Closed Source perspective. Vive la diference!
This is why so many people in the industry have problems; the value is not IN the IT, but what the IT enables you to DO.
After 30-40 years seems like maybe, just maybe, some people are finally catching on. You measure cost inside IT. You measure value outside of IT.
Open source gives free tools to everybody. World class, kick ass tools. This is slightly contrived, but the same principles apply to Open Source software. The French language is free. Anyone is free to use it. Now if the French were unwilling to make any expenditures the language would stay free but become whatever time and the Germans or whatever happen to make of it. To oversimplify, the software is free but an opinion (that matters) is not. Just try to have an opinion of what OpenBSD should be/do. Compare a whim of Linus versus IBM's agenda regarding Linux. Don't let the apparent low cost fool you. It can be had for cheap, but it is really exorbitantly expensive software that is affordable. For a ridiculously large range of definitions of affordable.
The problem with micropayments is keeping good accurate and secure and auditable records of the stuff. Imagine road taxes with different rates depending on use, time of day, stretch of road, etc.
There's a classic internal bank scam involving round-off errors of less than a cent on interest computations. Micropayments should be much easier to scam.
Slashdot Mirror
Bah, flumble flingers.
have no interest in or use for source code themselves. ... the noisy "community" couldn't care less. >/i>
Hmmm, I'd expect bits and pieces of the code, and the mind-set that accompanies them, to show up in lots of strange places. A good web search is fine but I suspect Google's real value will be in corporate infrastructure.
Except, of course, that you are still stuck with a system which is outside of your control.
Not entirely, but they are trying. Since they've sabatoged the power switch, I've taken to unplugging the power cord. Much safer when you need to reboot. Consider, when you need to reboot, there's something wrong with the system state, ie the computer memory is messed up. Windows wants desperately to preserve this messed up state by writing it to disk so it will be available for the next boot. Figure that Microsoft has pretty well debugged how to recover from a power failure and has debugged very little of cleanly shutting down from exponentially complex error states. Seems to work pretty well. NT Workstations get rebooted by power failures. NT Server, on a UPS, has been up for a year or two. Stable? Only if you don't rock the boat. XP? It's subtle, but probably less stable than NT. They've cured some superficial stuff and increased the deep-seated instabilities.
Now if you don't know what you're doing, Microsoft is pretty easy to set up and it will actually do some stuff. Wow, look at us. We're using computers. Past the trivial, it's probably possible to do a fair amount, but that require a lot of effort, skill and training. More trouble than it's worth in most cases, I'd guess.
As for Windows being scriptable, yeah it can do some things, it has lots of features, it is loaded with features. Problem is they all seem to belong in some make-believe world, hardly industrial strength. Seriously, when Cygwin almost makes Windows useable, and you can say that with a straight face, Windows is seriously lacking. No disrespect to Cygwin, it's quite an accomplishment, but it feels very antiquated.
Novell's near ruin was largely the result of thinking that a 90% market share makes you unaccountable to your customers.
That probably holds true for any company in any industry.
Seems it almost did in IBM. Seems also that Linux has rejuvenated IBM, maybe moreso that Linux is an antidote for the same-old same-old than Linux itself. Assuming that Novell can provide value for its customers, highly likely since most businesses would rather deal with Novell than the Open Source rabble, both Novell and SuSE should do nicely.
My sympathy levels for Microsoft engineers skyrocketted after ...
It is not a level playing field.
With Open Source, you let them as committed the horrors figure out how to handle the horrors.
With Open Source, they are less likely to have committed the horrors in the first place, and even if they did, they are much more likely to have taken precautions so as to make a timely remedy much easier.
With Open Source, it is much easier to solve problems where the problems reside rather than having to concoct screweys to work around the problems because you are denied access to where the problems really are.
With Open Source it is much harder to shift the blame for problems off onto someone else.
Sign of the times, I guess.
Safety/security/whatever. Two aspects.
What I get to keep.
What I keep others out of.
Companies have gone out of business because they couldn't recover their own data.
Maybe somebody has gone out of business because somebody else could, but I've never heard of it.
So at least hotmail isn't using dirty tactics.
For you.
At the moment.
I would expect this from Microsoft. They can blame the spam filters, to try and save face, but the simple fact is, they are simply taking a page from their own rulebook; they don't want to lose advertising revenue from people switching to Gmail, so they are breaking the law and interfering with email.
That Microsoft would even consider doing any such thing.
Consider how safe your data is in a Microsoft proprietary format.
I can't even begin to understand what "MySQL" is supposed to mean.
/etc/my.cnf is the configuration, so MySQL AB has at least some legitimate claim to the prefix "my".
Derived from and/or to be consistent with muSQL. Also the name of a daughter of one of the developers was "My".
At least it's not "My SQL" with the embedded blank.
"My Computer" belongs to whoever stuck the "My" label on "Computer". It wasn't me who did that.
MySQL belongs to MySQL AB. They happen to be nice enough to allow me to use their SQL.
Maybe they'll start abusing the data but as soon as they do they'll scare people away and cut off their own revenue stream.
And the people who are scared away would go where?
How would you "unsign up" for Passport?
A bad implementation that exists is always better than a perfect implementation that is perpetually on paper.
The "bad" implementation will get better where it matters.
The "perfect" implementation will get better where it doesn't matter.
Or you can derive WNT by adding one to each of VMS.
The odds of a particular coincidence may be very small, but the odds of being able to find some unusual coincidence is quite good. Finding some coincidence in the name of a character of some science fiction writer is not particularly remarkable.
IIRC Novell was designed for corporate networks, routable and securable.
TCP/IP is fundamentally designed to let anybody in, very routable and hardly securable. It's essentially a difference between private roads and public roads.
Just on the basis of where Novell is coming from, I'd expect a Linux coming from Novell to be somehow much more "business-friendly". Just a different bias in setting various tweaks and configurations would be enough.
The prefixes are used as a convenience, because they're close enough.
That IS the standard definitions for computer usage.
No wonder IT is FUBAR.
There are some fundamental differences between an old established business and fly-by-night operations.
The advertising revenue couldn't possibly amount to a significant fraction of the costs involved with these services.
Consider placing an ad in a context that Google selects versus placing an ad in a context that Hotmail selects versus placing an ad in some SPAM. I expect there would be a substantial premium for a Google ad. It's definitely more likely to produce positive results.
Google has a reputation, which is a very valuable asset. Google is unlikely to jepordize this very valuable asset for pigeon feed.
What are their plans for it? They obviously plan to datamine it - but how will and how can it be used?
Why should they have "plans" for it. Most likely they just store it for when and if I have plans for it. (or some researchers 50-100 years after I'm dead;)
In any event, I imagine the big money is in doing much the same thing in a large corporate environment. For that to work, it has to be very well shaken out first.
kilo, mega, giga prefixes refer to multiples of 1000, 1000000, 1000000000.
Just because computers go crazy if something that is aproximately 1k is exactly 1.000k instead of 1.024k doesn't mean that the standard definitions are wrong.
If the marketers at Maxtor wanted to quote inflated numbers, they could easily list the unformatted capacity which is much higher than the formatted capacity.
But the madness for gmail accounts is amazing.
I'd guess that the real market for gmail is corporate email and the ability to track and recover correspondence over a long time-span. To be effective it has to be shaken out very thoroughly and that looks to be what Google is doing with it.
French fries --> Freedom fries.
French --> Freedom.
From the "Land of the Free".
So the French intend to take their rightful place as one of the world's leaders?
Why not? The USA is still at that awkward adolescent stage as a world leader.
One thing that I haven't seen in any of the TCO studies.
You can load up a lot of services on one Linux box and expect to survive rather well. If you load up a lot of services on Microsoft Windows they tend to mess with each other. Incremental upgrading has to be a nightmare.
Just splitting hairs :)
Important hairs to split, methinks.
The French language is not comprehendable in terms of the American English language.
The Open Source phenomenon is not comprehendable in terms of the Closed Source phenomenon.
The French care about their language in ways that are totally foreign to us Americans.
What means this term "free"?
The French Language is free. I am free to speak French if I choose. I don't have to pay tribute to France to speak French. It's almost as if I own the language.
(However, I speak French and the French get incensed about how I'm murdering the language. Yes, I'm really that bad;)
Open Source is nothing like public domain, even if it's hard to make a distinction from a Closed Source perspective. Vive la diference!
This is why so many people in the industry have problems; the value is not IN the IT, but what the IT enables you to DO.
After 30-40 years seems like maybe, just maybe, some people are finally catching on. You measure cost inside IT. You measure value outside of IT.
Open source gives free tools to everybody. World class, kick ass tools.
This is slightly contrived, but the same principles apply to Open Source software. The French language is free. Anyone is free to use it. Now if the French were unwilling to make any expenditures the language would stay free but become whatever time and the Germans or whatever happen to make of it.
To oversimplify, the software is free but an opinion (that matters) is not.
Just try to have an opinion of what OpenBSD should be/do.
Compare a whim of Linus versus IBM's agenda regarding Linux.
Don't let the apparent low cost fool you. It can be had for cheap, but it is really exorbitantly expensive software that is affordable. For a ridiculously large range of definitions of affordable.
There was an old rule of thumb (pre Brooks).
If one programmer can do it in one year, two programmers can do it in two years.
There is a reason that we assume that centralised systems work better; they are easier to establish, coordinate and control.
The assumption that what we cannot see doen't exist.
Centralised systems work better for a very few things that we can measure and control effectively.
Essentially, the centralised system doesn't scale.
Methinks it's more that the Catholic Church got it's hierarchial command structures from society than that it gave them to society.
A varmit with a political agenda will fare better to the extent he can make it seem religious rather than political.
The problem with micropayments is keeping good accurate and secure and auditable records of the stuff. Imagine road taxes with different rates depending on use, time of day, stretch of road, etc.
There's a classic internal bank scam involving round-off errors of less than a cent on interest computations. Micropayments should be much easier to scam.