Well, they haven't exactly blown away the home computer market.
That depends on how you define what 'blowing away a market' means. If you mean 'blow away'='monopolize' then no, they haven't. If, however, you also include factors like product quality and innovation then things look somewhat different. The Ohhhs and Ahhhs coming from the computer press every time Microsoft releases a new iteration of Windows are usually quite modest compared to the headlines you get when Apple does the same. I wonder if the splash surrounding the debut of Windows Vista (when it finally materializes out of it's cloud of vapor) and all it's new features will manage to equal that you got when Apple releasesed, say, OS.X 10.3 or 10.4 or even the iPod nano. We'll have to wait and see...
Realistically, I would imagine that it's a teaser that will be Vista only, or will only be fully featured on Vista.
Even assuming you are right, what is wrong with that? Or are you just saying this because this is Microsoft we are talking about here? Just for example, Apple does this regularly and so do many application manufacturers to encourage users to buy new software versions. Would you expect software makers to make every feature of the newest iteration/major-version of their software products available to all users of older iterations as patches? Take for example 'Exposé' which is a very useful OS.X feature that you quickly get addicted to. It is not available for OS.X versions earlier than 10.3 and it hasn't been provided to users of earlier versions than 10.3 with a patch from Apple. You only have it as in OS.X 10.3 and 10.4 and the same goes for 'Spotlight' which is also very a very useful feature which is only available in OS.X 10.4. Of those two features Exposé at least should be relatively easy to integrate into say, OS.X 10.2. The patch probably would not be of such elephantine size it couldn't be distributed through Apples update utility. The reason this isn't done is simply to sell new OS.X versions. If you want new features upgrade, if you don't feel like spending the money then learn to do without but don't complain.
The end result is that OS X is a pretty damn nice solution for the home or SOHO user. But whether Apple's approach would work for the market as a whole? Don't think so.
For SOHO or home use?!?!?! I have been using OS.X in a corporate (Largely Microsoft) environment for years now! I do aggree that Apple is a package solution and it won't work for the market as a whole, I don't think Apple even means it to be. The real threat to Windows in the competition for the love and loyalty of the ushaven masses of desktop PC users is Linux and the first manifestation of that is Novell's desktop distro. If Linux does start to take off on the desktop and I expect it will since emerging IT markets in Asia, Africa, S-America and elsewhere are much more likely to be open to the prospect of Linux desktops as opposed to the Western Microsoft only world. Also keep in mind that governments in these areas are actively encouraging Linux use for reasons ragning from cost to security (and not just malware, they plain don't trust Micorsoft). If Linux does take off as a desktop system in a big way in Asia, Africa and S-America expect this to force changes here in the West. This wil happer for a variety of reasons. For example because of a flood of proprietery applications (including the all important video games) made for the non-western Linux market alluvasudden becoming available in the west but also because there is a generation crawling out of schools in Europe and the USA that have grown up around computers. These kids will be the managers of tomorrow they have grown up seeing Linux (and OS.X for that matter) as a real alternative and they won't hesitate to switch unlike their parents who often spent year getting over their pathalogical fear of computers and are thus be more conservative in matters IT. I'm not saying Microsoft will crumble and fall away into the depths of bankruptcy hell in the next 10 or 15 years but I do expect that Microfosts dominanace will be steadily eroded.
My vision of what will be required in the future will be the stealth equivalent (although they are already stealthed to some extent) version of a super Arleigh Burke destroyer with a serious bone in its teeth.
I agree, the Swedes of all people have been doing some really interesting work with their Visby class corvette. I'm not is a position to assess how tactically viable this project is but it certainly looks REALLY interesting.
It'll be green skinned monsters and parallel universes before you know it!
The Icelanders already have both of those, the green skinned monsters work for the local Internal Revenue Service and the Parallel Universe management is handeld by the state Lutheran church.
In a major fleet engagement against a worthy adversary (Which the US and NATO hans't had since the demize of the USSR) yes, one suspects the US super carriers of today are excessively vulnerable and losing even one of them would certainly be extremenly painful experience for the Americans both in terms of money and expecially prestiege and civillan morale/political support on the home front. They are, however, valuable when it comes to projecting strategic air power agianst third world dictatorships and regional powers such as Iran that cannot or have, at most, only a limited chance of penetrating the protective screen of a super carrier and seriously threatenting it. Basically super carriers are still useful for quiclkly making air support available for conflicts such as the US led wars in Iraq. Conflicts which a 19th century British general of the Victorian army would instantly reckognize as being similar in character to the a colonial punitive expeditions of his own time. What is really interesting is how would one of these new carriers would cope when hit by, say, a salvo of large sized modern ASW missiles? I mean one would expect that the skeleton crew would have extreme troube coping with the extensive damage since most of the automated systems would either be out of commission or working at limited capacity.
Don't get me started on how well these things perform as phones. With the exception on the 7100 series, Blackberries are generally awful as phones. The form factor is all wrong, the UI is all wrong, it's just plain wrong. Put your voice plan on a decent wireless phone, and put the data plan on the Blackberry if you must have one. Of course if you're going to go this route, and don't need live access to your email, then forget the Blackberry, get a Bluetooth phone, a Bluetooth PocketPC or Palm, and access the net through the phone.
I can only second that, I don't understand what all the fuss is about. The Blackberry is really a rather mediocre package which makes me wonder why it is so popular. I have used the Blackberry but ditched it in favor of a PocketPC PDA phone which does not have push mail but is in every other respece superior to the Blackberry, as an organizer, an email client, it is pretty equal as a telephone and now that Exchange 2003 with push-mail is available even the Blackberry service is losing it's appeal. Blackberry fans keep telling me their 72xx, 77xx or 87xx series phones are smaller and weigh less than my PDA phone but when I put it down on the table and physically compare the two the difference betwen the bigger (supposedly so small and neat) model of Blackberry phone and my (supposedly big as a king-sized club sandwich) PDA phone is marginal. Also keep in mind that my PDA phone is OLD, these days, you can actually get PDA phones with Windows Mobile 5, Linux or some other OS installed that are both ligher and handyer than the Blackberry plus the ones with Windows Moble 5 into the bargain are also push mail capable vis-a-vi an Exchange 2003 server.
Open Office and the Apple farmers
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Office Delayed, Too
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· Score: 4, Insightful
So why don't Apple help out in the porting effort? Linux companies like Novell help gnomify the program to behave better on the gnome desktop. OS X is a small proprietary technology and it's understandable it's hard to keep a port without funding.
One reason might be Open Office's ties to Sun which AFAIK controls the project. This fact has scared a lot of companies out of either making a as great a contribution as they could have or even scared them out of making a contribution at all. Another reason might be Apple's desite not to piss of Microsoft whose Office suite is available for the Mac and is an important part of making the Mac an option alot of people who use Macs in corporate environments in a forest of Windows boxes. My own Mac would be pretty close to useless for use at work without Microsoft Office which is the only fully featured, native and mature Office Suite available for the Mac and it isn't (at least in my humble opinion) a bad product. True, there are alternatives but none of them really measures up in every way. The one that comes closest is probably Open Office which has been ported to the Mac but it isn't 100% native it runs on X11 which only makes it an option as a last resort. I would feel alot safer as a corporate Mac user if there was an 100% OS.X native Open Office port but that has been vaporware for years and is regarded as the Mac-users equivalent of Duke Nukem forever. Another thing I have been wondering about is what will happen when Microsoft decides to scrap MS Office for OS.X? What would Apple replace it with? It would have to have top notch Microsoft inter-operability or the usability factor of the Macintosh/OS.X package will take a considerable hit.
Actually, MySQL overtook Oracle last year as the number one most popular database and is installed on over 55% of ALL servers (not just web servers).
MySQL still can't hold a candle to OracleDB in terms of features, scalability and on some levels also performance. MySQL's advangate is mostly lower costs. All a lump statistic like that tells you very little. What is probably happening (among other things) is that people using databases are beginning to deploy databases strategically, keeping costs in mind, aggressively using low end solutions where they get away with it and only deploying expensive high end stuff like OacleDB only where it is absolutely needed. Another thing is that more and more websites and small businesses are starting to use database driven solutions, usually this involves relatively basic DB functionality, and the first choice in that arena is not exactly an expensive full featured OracleDB license (again, think costs). This is possibly also why Oracle has been looking into a low end database manufacturer with a healthy market share to buy up so that they can integrate a low end solution into their product line and quickly move into this lower end market. Last I looked they were sniffing around none other than MySQL it self.
oftware written for Windows isn't usually anything a Mac user would want to use, anyway. Windows software is software aimed at the fratboy demographic, essentially, and Macs have never been for fratboys. The best applications in arts, design, music, and other creative pursuits always come out for Macs first, and Windows later, if ever.
True enough, but there is life outside those circles. If I had my way I'd never even look at an MS logo for the rest of my life. Unfortunately the unshaven masses of average coputer users either love Windows to death or don't know that alternatives exist. The result is that I'm actually looking forward to something like Crossover Office for Mac (according to wikipedia it's being ported as we speak) in the hope that I can run Windows apps like Microsoft OneNote and Visio. Not an optimal situation but at least it will save me the agony of having to use the Windows Desktop environment as well as the Windows App.
The other is to accept the facts and surrender to the new reality. Move up in the chain. Learn another language, so that you can communicate better with THEM in their language, and can still manage the project. Keep them still dependent on you, instead of THEM learning your language instead *and* your skills and eliminating you from the equation completely.
So what are we to become? Nations of Project managers? There is a limit to what you can outsource, and if you have any kind of sense there is also a limit to what you should want to outsource for all sorts of resons ranging from security to limiting knowledge transfer to potential future competitors. Of course greed has a way of disabling people's Common Sense Processing Unit, especially in managers. Low end tech jobs and certainly also some high end ones are going to be outsourced, there is a certain advantage (Mesured in money of course) to being able to contract consultants and let them go, sort of like the 'Just In Time' logistics principle preaches, rather than having, say a Sysadmin or an Oracle DBA permanently on staff. Businesses are going to spend some time finding out the painful way just how much staff to keep on permanent call and how much to outsource. The suggestion that you can run a business in the USA using entirely IT staff based in some IT-sweatshop in India for every single conceivable IT function that needs to be performed is idiotic, you will need a mix. Workers her in the west are going to have to get used to the fact that there will be no such thing as a secure job for life (yes, there are still people who believe in that myth), they will spend the rest of their life obsessing about where to go next and keeping their skillset marketable and that if necessity demands they will have to be willing to move clear accross the country or even to another country if that's where the jobs are. This is also the reason why the subject of 'Economic and Job market reform' is causing such panic in places like Germany and France where there are still people who believe the 'job for life', with the same corporation, in a calm static jobmarket is a practical proposition for the majority of the population. The thought of a job market in total flux scares the shit out of them and I won't say I enjoy the place myself but I have adapted to what is happening now and am not banging my head against a wall of memories of how things used to be.
However, I'm using PostgreSQL now because I keep running into problems with the Oracle server. The listener isn't listening to the network, so I only have local access and I need to share the data with others.
Having tried to install Oracle on all sorts of operating systems over the years it has been my experience that it really helps to run OracleDB on one of the certified Linux distributions: SUSE Linux Enterprise Server or Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS/ES. Oracle does not guarantee that an OracleDB will run smoothly on any random Linux distro. According to their latest installation guide they only test it on the above two although AFAIK some versions were also certified for United Linux. If you don't have the budget to buy one of those Enterprise Linux distros try to find one that is binary compatible with one of them such as Centos. Using Red Had Fedora or Open SUSE is not to guaranteed to result in a smooth installation and a stable OracleDB system. This is not to say that you can't install Oracle on your favorite uncertified distro sucessfully. You simply run the risk of running into problems that may take you a long time to solve and that you would be rid of if you used a certified Enterprise distro or an open source distro that is binary compatable with the SUSE or RedHat Enterprise Linux distros. Developers and researchers unlike hobbyists usually have better things to do than deal with problems resulting from software compatability issues.
The inevitable result of wave after wave of cost cutting is that we have a fraction of the manpower we need to do our work, so some things just don't happen. We used to have two DBA's locally and everything was efficient. Now we have part of one whose work hours rarely overlap with mine, so getting things done is painful.
Thier lawyers seem even better at p****ng off European judges. Only this time there is no President of Texas to ride to the rescue. They are not a major generator of jobs or revenue for any european state, and, they cannot legally contibute to any European polititions campaign fund. Thier only hope was a sound legal case and ass kissing, but, its too late for that now. I think this is just starting out and Microsoft will be paying anf paying for years to come.
They should have used the tried and tested method of offering 'Sales commissions' and 'Consultancy fees' to key officials like Lockheed did to convince certain European leaders to spend obscene amounts of money on a mediocre combat aircraft called the Locheed F-104 Starfighter. Judges may have strange delusions of independence over here but our politicians can certainly be rented, leased or bought just like their US counterparts and politicians as we all know can 'persuade' judges to think of the 'greater picture' by dropping hints about career death.
Bull. While that can't do anything but help, I don't buy it. I think Linux has proven that you can run an operating system on a very diverse set of hardware (that is, the same hardware Windows runs on) and be entirely stable enough to run for months without issue (Windows has gotten there, for the most part). OS X is stable not because there are only 3 pieces of hardware it runs on, but because it was well designed and well built, based on a stable and mature architecture (BSD). It's perfectly stable (from what I hear) when installed on generic Intel computers that it was never designed for.
You are quite right that limited hardware helps but you underestimate just how much it helps. If you think for a single second that a bleeding edge Linux installation running on some built-at-home-with-noname-parts pizzabox can compare to something like AIX, Sun Solaris, or an good Enterprise Linux Distro like Red Hat or Suse running on certified hardware you have got another thing coming. Any idiot can build a Linux server, stick it in a corner doing nothing worth mentinoing other than download movies and music off the internet, serve a blog page half a dozen people read and brag about uptimes. Does that mean his server can measure up to Enterprise level systems that are expected to run for months on end at very high loads without incident? The answer is a big fat NO. The most stable Linux installations (and when I say stabe I mean stable at huge loads, running highly complex and demanding enterprise level appliactions) are exactly what I just described, Linux distros engineered by professionals, not for bleeding edge features but for stability and they are usually certified to run stably on a very limited collection of hardware for which they are exahaustively tested. And this, surprise surprise, is also a major reason for the stability of OS.X on Apple hardware. Much as I like OS.X, it is a well designed solid operating system and better designed in many ways than Windows, I am also aware of the fact that if you start installing OS.X on random crapware it's reputation for stability would take a major hit. This, incidentally, is also why Apple will never release OS.X for installation on random Intel PCs as long as they care about their reputation for quality.
Soccer: Eh? Never heard of it. (This not ignorance on my part, it is a health issue, apparently there are places in the UK where you can get beaten to a bloody pulp for even uttering that word).
Football: A game that is usually played on a rectangular grass field with a goal at each end using a round leather ball. Football involves two teams of eleven players of whom one player in each team is the goalkeeper. The goalkeepers are the only two players on the field allowed to touch the ball with their hands. The object of the game is for the attacking players of your team (strikers and midfielders) to convey the ball accross the field, past the opposing team's defense (midfielders and defenders), past their goalkeeper and into the opposing team's goal. Your players are only allowed to use their feet to accomplish this although it is also acceptable to bounce the ball off of the chest the hips or hit it with one's head just so long as one does not touch it with one's hands. Successfully landing the ball in the opposing team's goal earns your team one point. IMPORTANT: At no time whatsoever are is any player, goalkeepers included, allowed to pick the ball up and run accross the playing field carrying it in his arms like a sissy.
My 6310i is now over 3 years old and I've seen nothing on the Canadian market that looks like it. I have a great Palm PDA - why would I want a $500 colour phone discounted to $99 with a 3 year contract?
Why indeed? These smartphones are full of features that you either never use or UI is to basic allow you to be able to use them properly. I prefer a PDA so I settled for a combination PDA/GSM-phone, it's a bit big for a GSM phone, getting a bluetooth headset helps but it's not ideal. One other advantage is that the PDA-phone makes up for it's size by virtue of the fact that I now have one less item to carry around and worry about that I may forget/misplace it..
In order to take Tron seriously, you have to not take it so seriously.
It is amazing how many people fail to understand that simple truth. Take for example 'The Mummy' and it's sequel 'The Mummy returns' It's always funny to read reviews of those movies talking about overacting, a bad plot, bad script, over reliance on special effects etc... It's fun to read those reviews because the snobby film critics who write them have completely missed the point which is: "For god's sake man it's a MUMMY MOVIE! The fact that it's full of cheesy clichés is exactly what makes it such fun to watch!". No matter how many times I watch hat scene in 'The Mummy Returns' where the Pygmy mummys run over the log with the one in the lead carrying a stick of dynamite like an Olympic torch it always makes me laugh. It's actually worth while to go down some 'worst movie ever' list and watch those sorry pieces of cinematic catastrophe just for laughs. Just make sure 'Plan 9 from Outer Space' is on the list. It's a well known classic and watching it at least once is mandatory.
I'm thinking $14 grand would stand-in for an outpouring of apologies. It would for me:-)
From my point of view no amount of money could replace the satisfaction of watching somebody who questioned my honor or professionalism eat crow and offer a public apology. I'd actually pass up the $14000 if that's what it would take to keep my reputation in tact.:-D
China and India have been at war a few times in living memory; they've still got unresolved border issues and are not about to integrate their weapons systems.
For one thing their relationship has been thawing lately. Secondly the Idea the Russians are pushing is somewhat akin to the JFS program, with China/India doing much of the financing and Russian companies much of the development with some of the development being passed on to China/India as technological exchange. The individual countries would then manufacture the design on their own and arrange their own domestically developed weapons, electronics and power packages if they wanted to. Russia would thus be acting as a kind of trusted intermediary and all parties concerned would be getting alot more from pooling their resources into the development of one aircraft than if they did three seperate projects. Even if this only suceeds in a constellation with, say, Russia, China and a group of richer-than-god Oil-States from the gulf region but excluding India it is something for the Neocons in Washington to worry about. Note that Russia has pushed simiar ideas vis-a-vi a GPS independency, ie. a GLONASS successor
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Well, they haven't exactly blown away the home computer market.
That depends on how you define what 'blowing away a market' means. If you mean 'blow away'='monopolize' then no, they haven't. If, however, you also include factors like product quality and innovation then things look somewhat different. The Ohhhs and Ahhhs coming from the computer press every time Microsoft releases a new iteration of Windows are usually quite modest compared to the headlines you get when Apple does the same. I wonder if the splash surrounding the debut of Windows Vista (when it finally materializes out of it's cloud of vapor) and all it's new features will manage to equal that you got when Apple releasesed, say, OS.X 10.3 or 10.4 or even the iPod nano. We'll have to wait and see...
Realistically, I would imagine that it's a teaser that will be Vista only, or will only be fully featured on Vista.
Even assuming you are right, what is wrong with that? Or are you just saying this because this is Microsoft we are talking about here? Just for example, Apple does this regularly and so do many application manufacturers to encourage users to buy new software versions. Would you expect software makers to make every feature of the newest iteration/major-version of their software products available to all users of older iterations as patches? Take for example 'Exposé' which is a very useful OS.X feature that you quickly get addicted to. It is not available for OS.X versions earlier than 10.3 and it hasn't been provided to users of earlier versions than 10.3 with a patch from Apple. You only have it as in OS.X 10.3 and 10.4 and the same goes for 'Spotlight' which is also very a very useful feature which is only available in OS.X 10.4. Of those two features Exposé at least should be relatively easy to integrate into say, OS.X 10.2. The patch probably would not be of such elephantine size it couldn't be distributed through Apples update utility. The reason this isn't done is simply to sell new OS.X versions. If you want new features upgrade, if you don't feel like spending the money then learn to do without but don't complain.
The end result is that OS X is a pretty damn nice solution for the home or SOHO user. But whether Apple's approach would work for the market as a whole? Don't think so.
For SOHO or home use?!?!?! I have been using OS.X in a corporate (Largely Microsoft) environment for years now! I do aggree that Apple is a package solution and it won't work for the market as a whole, I don't think Apple even means it to be. The real threat to Windows in the competition for the love and loyalty of the ushaven masses of desktop PC users is Linux and the first manifestation of that is Novell's desktop distro. If Linux does start to take off on the desktop and I expect it will since emerging IT markets in Asia, Africa, S-America and elsewhere are much more likely to be open to the prospect of Linux desktops as opposed to the Western Microsoft only world. Also keep in mind that governments in these areas are actively encouraging Linux use for reasons ragning from cost to security (and not just malware, they plain don't trust Micorsoft). If Linux does take off as a desktop system in a big way in Asia, Africa and S-America expect this to force changes here in the West. This wil happer for a variety of reasons. For example because of a flood of proprietery applications (including the all important video games) made for the non-western Linux market alluvasudden becoming available in the west but also because there is a generation crawling out of schools in Europe and the USA that have grown up around computers. These kids will be the managers of tomorrow they have grown up seeing Linux (and OS.X for that matter) as a real alternative and they won't hesitate to switch unlike their parents who often spent year getting over their pathalogical fear of computers and are thus be more conservative in matters IT. I'm not saying Microsoft will crumble and fall away into the depths of bankruptcy hell in the next 10 or 15 years but I do expect that Microfosts dominanace will be steadily eroded.
Please don't feed the troll!
My vision of what will be required in the future will be the stealth equivalent (although they are already stealthed to some extent) version of a super Arleigh Burke destroyer with a serious bone in its teeth.
I agree, the Swedes of all people have been doing some really interesting work with their Visby class corvette. I'm not is a position to assess how tactically viable this project is but it certainly looks REALLY interesting.
Do they not watch Doctor Who in Iceland?
It'll be green skinned monsters and parallel universes before you know it!
The Icelanders already have both of those, the green skinned monsters work for the local Internal Revenue Service and the Parallel Universe management is handeld by the state Lutheran church.
Aircraft carriers are obselete.
In a major fleet engagement against a worthy adversary (Which the US and NATO hans't had since the demize of the USSR) yes, one suspects the US super carriers of today are excessively vulnerable and losing even one of them would certainly be extremenly painful experience for the Americans both in terms of money and expecially prestiege and civillan morale/political support on the home front. They are, however, valuable when it comes to projecting strategic air power agianst third world dictatorships and regional powers such as Iran that cannot or have, at most, only a limited chance of penetrating the protective screen of a super carrier and seriously threatenting it. Basically super carriers are still useful for quiclkly making air support available for conflicts such as the US led wars in Iraq. Conflicts which a 19th century British general of the Victorian army would instantly reckognize as being similar in character to the a colonial punitive expeditions of his own time. What is really interesting is how would one of these new carriers would cope when hit by, say, a salvo of large sized modern ASW missiles? I mean one would expect that the skeleton crew would have extreme troube coping with the extensive damage since most of the automated systems would either be out of commission or working at limited capacity.
Don't get me started on how well these things perform as phones. With the exception on the 7100 series, Blackberries are generally awful as phones. The form factor is all wrong, the UI is all wrong, it's just plain wrong. Put your voice plan on a decent wireless phone, and put the data plan on the Blackberry if you must have one. Of course if you're going to go this route, and don't need live access to your email, then forget the Blackberry, get a Bluetooth phone, a Bluetooth PocketPC or Palm, and access the net through the phone.
I can only second that, I don't understand what all the fuss is about. The Blackberry is really a rather mediocre package which makes me wonder why it is so popular. I have used the Blackberry but ditched it in favor of a PocketPC PDA phone which does not have push mail but is in every other respece superior to the Blackberry, as an organizer, an email client, it is pretty equal as a telephone and now that Exchange 2003 with push-mail is available even the Blackberry service is losing it's appeal. Blackberry fans keep telling me their 72xx, 77xx or 87xx series phones are smaller and weigh less than my PDA phone but when I put it down on the table and physically compare the two the difference betwen the bigger (supposedly so small and neat) model of Blackberry phone and my (supposedly big as a king-sized club sandwich) PDA phone is marginal. Also keep in mind that my PDA phone is OLD, these days, you can actually get PDA phones with Windows Mobile 5, Linux or some other OS installed that are both ligher and handyer than the Blackberry plus the ones with Windows Moble 5 into the bargain are also push mail capable vis-a-vi an Exchange 2003 server.
So why don't Apple help out in the porting effort? Linux companies like Novell help gnomify the program to behave better on the gnome desktop. OS X is a small proprietary technology and it's understandable it's hard to keep a port without funding.
One reason might be Open Office's ties to Sun which AFAIK controls the project. This fact has scared a lot of companies out of either making a as great a contribution as they could have or even scared them out of making a contribution at all. Another reason might be Apple's desite not to piss of Microsoft whose Office suite is available for the Mac and is an important part of making the Mac an option alot of people who use Macs in corporate environments in a forest of Windows boxes. My own Mac would be pretty close to useless for use at work without Microsoft Office which is the only fully featured, native and mature Office Suite available for the Mac and it isn't (at least in my humble opinion) a bad product. True, there are alternatives but none of them really measures up in every way. The one that comes closest is probably Open Office which has been ported to the Mac but it isn't 100% native it runs on X11 which only makes it an option as a last resort. I would feel alot safer as a corporate Mac user if there was an 100% OS.X native Open Office port but that has been vaporware for years and is regarded as the Mac-users equivalent of Duke Nukem forever. Another thing I have been wondering about is what will happen when Microsoft decides to scrap MS Office for OS.X? What would Apple replace it with? It would have to have top notch Microsoft inter-operability or the usability factor of the Macintosh/OS.X package will take a considerable hit.
Actually, MySQL overtook Oracle last year as the number one most popular database and is installed on over 55% of ALL servers (not just web servers).
MySQL still can't hold a candle to OracleDB in terms of features, scalability and on some levels also performance. MySQL's advangate is mostly lower costs. All a lump statistic like that tells you very little. What is probably happening (among other things) is that people using databases are beginning to deploy databases strategically, keeping costs in mind, aggressively using low end solutions where they get away with it and only deploying expensive high end stuff like OacleDB only where it is absolutely needed. Another thing is that more and more websites and small businesses are starting to use database driven solutions, usually this involves relatively basic DB functionality, and the first choice in that arena is not exactly an expensive full featured OracleDB license (again, think costs). This is possibly also why Oracle has been looking into a low end database manufacturer with a healthy market share to buy up so that they can integrate a low end solution into their product line and quickly move into this lower end market. Last I looked they were sniffing around none other than MySQL it self.
I say: absolve the House of Lords and the House of Commons, and revert all power to HRH Elizabeth Regina.
... Wait ... sorry ... wrong millennium.
Or at least untill Charles takes the thrown.
Yes and he will invade France, reconquer the holy land, restore the British Empire, reintroduce serfdom
oftware written for Windows isn't usually anything a Mac user would want to use, anyway. Windows software is software aimed at the fratboy demographic, essentially, and Macs have never been for fratboys. The best applications in arts, design, music, and other creative pursuits always come out for Macs first, and Windows later, if ever.
True enough, but there is life outside those circles. If I had my way I'd never even look at an MS logo for the rest of my life. Unfortunately the unshaven masses of average coputer users either love Windows to death or don't know that alternatives exist. The result is that I'm actually looking forward to something like Crossover Office for Mac (according to wikipedia it's being ported as we speak) in the hope that I can run Windows apps like Microsoft OneNote and Visio. Not an optimal situation but at least it will save me the agony of having to use the Windows Desktop environment as well as the Windows App.
Welcome to the big, bad world of free-market capitalism - if you can't stand the heat, get out of the sweatshop.
Sorry to disappoint, but I am already there, I have the burns, whip-marks and bite-wounds to prove it.
The other is to accept the facts and surrender to the new reality. Move up in the chain. Learn another language, so that you can communicate better with THEM in their language, and can still manage the project. Keep them still dependent on you, instead of THEM learning your language instead *and* your skills and eliminating you from the equation completely.
So what are we to become? Nations of Project managers? There is a limit to what you can outsource, and if you have any kind of sense there is also a limit to what you should want to outsource for all sorts of resons ranging from security to limiting knowledge transfer to potential future competitors. Of course greed has a way of disabling people's Common Sense Processing Unit, especially in managers. Low end tech jobs and certainly also some high end ones are going to be outsourced, there is a certain advantage (Mesured in money of course) to being able to contract consultants and let them go, sort of like the 'Just In Time' logistics principle preaches, rather than having, say a Sysadmin or an Oracle DBA permanently on staff. Businesses are going to spend some time finding out the painful way just how much staff to keep on permanent call and how much to outsource. The suggestion that you can run a business in the USA using entirely IT staff based in some IT-sweatshop in India for every single conceivable IT function that needs to be performed is idiotic, you will need a mix. Workers her in the west are going to have to get used to the fact that there will be no such thing as a secure job for life (yes, there are still people who believe in that myth), they will spend the rest of their life obsessing about where to go next and keeping their skillset marketable and that if necessity demands they will have to be willing to move clear accross the country or even to another country if that's where the jobs are. This is also the reason why the subject of 'Economic and Job market reform' is causing such panic in places like Germany and France where there are still people who believe the 'job for life', with the same corporation, in a calm static jobmarket is a practical proposition for the majority of the population. The thought of a job market in total flux scares the shit out of them and I won't say I enjoy the place myself but I have adapted to what is happening now and am not banging my head against a wall of memories of how things used to be.
However, I'm using PostgreSQL now because I keep running into problems with the Oracle server. The listener isn't listening to the network, so I only have local access and I need to share the data with others.
Having tried to install Oracle on all sorts of operating systems over the years it has been my experience that it really helps to run OracleDB on one of the certified Linux distributions: SUSE Linux Enterprise Server or Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS/ES. Oracle does not guarantee that an OracleDB will run smoothly on any random Linux distro. According to their latest installation guide they only test it on the above two although AFAIK some versions were also certified for United Linux. If you don't have the budget to buy one of those Enterprise Linux distros try to find one that is binary compatible with one of them such as Centos. Using Red Had Fedora or Open SUSE is not to guaranteed to result in a smooth installation and a stable OracleDB system. This is not to say that you can't install Oracle on your favorite uncertified distro sucessfully. You simply run the risk of running into problems that may take you a long time to solve and that you would be rid of if you used a certified Enterprise distro or an open source distro that is binary compatable with the SUSE or RedHat Enterprise Linux distros. Developers and researchers unlike hobbyists usually have better things to do than deal with problems resulting from software compatability issues.
The inevitable result of wave after wave of cost cutting is that we have a fraction of the manpower we need to do our work, so some things just don't happen. We used to have two DBA's locally and everything was efficient. Now we have part of one whose work hours rarely overlap with mine, so getting things done is painful.
Why does that sound familiar????
Thier lawyers seem even better at p****ng off European judges. Only this time there is no President of Texas to ride to the rescue. They are not a major generator of jobs or revenue for any european state, and, they cannot legally contibute to any European polititions campaign fund. Thier only hope was a sound legal case and ass kissing, but, its too late for that now. I think this is just starting out and Microsoft will be paying anf paying for years to come.
They should have used the tried and tested method of offering 'Sales commissions' and 'Consultancy fees' to key officials like Lockheed did to convince certain European leaders to spend obscene amounts of money on a mediocre combat aircraft called the Locheed F-104 Starfighter. Judges may have strange delusions of independence over here but our politicians can certainly be rented, leased or bought just like their US counterparts and politicians as we all know can 'persuade' judges to think of the 'greater picture' by dropping hints about career death.
Bull. While that can't do anything but help, I don't buy it. I think Linux has proven that you can run an operating system on a very diverse set of hardware (that is, the same hardware Windows runs on) and be entirely stable enough to run for months without issue (Windows has gotten there, for the most part). OS X is stable not because there are only 3 pieces of hardware it runs on, but because it was well designed and well built, based on a stable and mature architecture (BSD). It's perfectly stable (from what I hear) when installed on generic Intel computers that it was never designed for.
You are quite right that limited hardware helps but you underestimate just how much it helps. If you think for a single second that a bleeding edge Linux installation running on some built-at-home-with-noname-parts pizzabox can compare to something like AIX, Sun Solaris, or an good Enterprise Linux Distro like Red Hat or Suse running on certified hardware you have got another thing coming. Any idiot can build a Linux server, stick it in a corner doing nothing worth mentinoing other than download movies and music off the internet, serve a blog page half a dozen people read and brag about uptimes. Does that mean his server can measure up to Enterprise level systems that are expected to run for months on end at very high loads without incident? The answer is a big fat NO. The most stable Linux installations (and when I say stabe I mean stable at huge loads, running highly complex and demanding enterprise level appliactions) are exactly what I just described, Linux distros engineered by professionals, not for bleeding edge features but for stability and they are usually certified to run stably on a very limited collection of hardware for which they are exahaustively tested. And this, surprise surprise, is also a major reason for the stability of OS.X on Apple hardware. Much as I like OS.X, it is a well designed solid operating system and better designed in many ways than Windows, I am also aware of the fact that if you start installing OS.X on random crapware it's reputation for stability would take a major hit. This, incidentally, is also why Apple will never release OS.X for installation on random Intel PCs as long as they care about their reputation for quality.
Soccer:
Eh? Never heard of it. (This not ignorance on my part, it is a health issue, apparently there are places in the UK where you can get beaten to a bloody pulp for even uttering that word).
Football:
A game that is usually played on a rectangular grass field with a goal at each end using a round leather ball. Football involves two teams of eleven players of whom one player in each team is the goalkeeper. The goalkeepers are the only two players on the field allowed to touch the ball with their hands. The object of the game is for the attacking players of your team (strikers and midfielders) to convey the ball accross the field, past the opposing team's defense (midfielders and defenders), past their goalkeeper and into the opposing team's goal. Your players are only allowed to use their feet to accomplish this although it is also acceptable to bounce the ball off of the chest the hips or hit it with one's head just so long as one does not touch it with one's hands. Successfully landing the ball in the opposing team's goal earns your team one point. IMPORTANT: At no time whatsoever are is any player, goalkeepers included, allowed to pick the ball up and run accross the playing field carrying it in his arms like a sissy.
END_OF_DISCUSSION
My 6310i is now over 3 years old and I've seen nothing on the Canadian market that looks like it. I have a great Palm PDA - why would I want a $500 colour phone discounted to $99 with a 3 year contract?
Why indeed? These smartphones are full of features that you either never use or UI is to basic allow you to be able to use them properly. I prefer a PDA so I settled for a combination PDA/GSM-phone, it's a bit big for a GSM phone, getting a bluetooth headset helps but it's not ideal. One other advantage is that the PDA-phone makes up for it's size by virtue of the fact that I now have one less item to carry around and worry about that I may forget/misplace it..
In order to take Tron seriously, you have to not take it so seriously.
It is amazing how many people fail to understand that simple truth. Take for example 'The Mummy' and it's sequel 'The Mummy returns' It's always funny to read reviews of those movies talking about overacting, a bad plot, bad script, over reliance on special effects etc... It's fun to read those reviews because the snobby film critics who write them have completely missed the point which is: "For god's sake man it's a MUMMY MOVIE! The fact that it's full of cheesy clichés is exactly what makes it such fun to watch!". No matter how many times I watch hat scene in 'The Mummy Returns' where the Pygmy mummys run over the log with the one in the lead carrying a stick of dynamite like an Olympic torch it always makes me laugh. It's actually worth while to go down some 'worst movie ever' list and watch those sorry pieces of cinematic catastrophe just for laughs. Just make sure 'Plan 9 from Outer Space' is on the list. It's a well known classic and watching it at least once is mandatory.
Time to "crack out" Goatse again, eh? ;)
Please don't! The Cowboy Neal is still in therapy after the last time you did that.
..That thing looks like an industrial computer somebody liberated from an instrument panel a powerstation.
Could MS actually be taking security seriously?
Naaahh...
I think Microsoft takes anything seriously that they can make money off, especially if it involves charging you for protection against the results of Microsoft's own cockups.
I'm thinking $14 grand would stand-in for an outpouring of apologies. It would for me :-)
:-D
From my point of view no amount of money could replace the satisfaction of watching somebody who questioned my honor or professionalism eat crow and offer a public apology. I'd actually pass up the $14000 if that's what it would take to keep my reputation in tact.
China and India have been at war a few times in living memory; they've still got unresolved border issues and are not about to integrate their weapons systems.
For one thing their relationship has been thawing lately. Secondly the Idea the Russians are pushing is somewhat akin to the JFS program, with China/India doing much of the financing and Russian companies much of the development with some of the development being passed on to China/India as technological exchange. The individual countries would then manufacture the design on their own and arrange their own domestically developed weapons, electronics and power packages if they wanted to. Russia would thus be acting as a kind of trusted intermediary and all parties concerned would be getting alot more from pooling their resources into the development of one aircraft than if they did three seperate projects. Even if this only suceeds in a constellation with, say, Russia, China and a group of richer-than-god Oil-States from the gulf region but excluding India it is something for the Neocons in Washington to worry about. Note that Russia has pushed simiar ideas vis-a-vi a GPS independency, ie. a GLONASS successor