You should check your contract. Three nines of service is nine hours of (unscheduled) downtime per year. The vast majority of contracts will specify an SLA of four or five nines and you're barely getting three.
Carrier grade means not only uptime of the machine, but also that the machine correctly responds to requests within the limits set out in a Service Level Agreement (SLA).
But note that telcos usually only offer service with an SLA to customers paying through the nose.
Most notably, it exports to MS WORD format. Unfortunately, it does an utterly craptastic job at the conversion. If you thought your resume looked bad written in word (horrible justification, fuzzy bullet points, etc.) just wait to see how bad it looks when it starts as a PDF and gets exported to Word format.
The first thing that came to my mind, and the minds of numerous other posters, are the hundreds of thousands of Americans who have families overseas. Given the thousands of birth, wedding, christmas visit and graduation notifications that will fit this exact pattern, it is questionable as to whether looking for that pattern is very useful in tracking down terrorists.
But to be fair, this begs the question of whether or not this type of pattern might be useful in conjuction with other data. Which leads to the real concern. To be useful to the NSA, they have to store this data long term. They also have to start keeping track of things that look suspicious to them. I can't say that I'm comfortable with the idea of getting a visit by the men in black if (a) I have family overseas and (b) I call a flight school and (c) I call a life insurance company. The amount of information that the NSA can collect is astonishing.
First, philosophy is the foundation upon which logic, math and science are built. For example, without Parmenides' principle of Identity, the law of non-contradiction cannot be formulated and without the law of non-contradiction there is no basis on which to build the equals sign in math for being equal to something has no evening. Further, it was philosophers such as Descartes that formulated the modern scientific method.
Second, a proper symbolic logic class is the possibly the single most important class any position that has to do with computer science could take. A proper class on this topic will provide the `why' of logic, a rigorous approach to translating human language into assertions that can be evaluated for truth, and the technical skills of evaluating logical constructions for truth or falsity. All of these are paramount not only to the programmer, but to the requirements analyst, the computer engineer, the comp. sci. researcher and more.
Third, a proper upper level class in philosophy will teach more about analysis than any business or comp. sci. class that I've ever heard of. The technical skill of teasing the full implications out of a given text is greatly undervalued in most comp. sci. programs.
That said, is it possible for someone to be a good computer scientist without a background in philosophy? Certainly. Most comp. sci. programs will teach the Cartesian method of scientist, even if only implicitly. Logic will still be taught. Analysis will still be taught. They just aren't usually taught to their fullest extent and, in many cases, are taught without looking at the principles upon which they rest.
No application has been released that works with assistive technologies and, based on their past experience, this group is worried that it will take prohibitively long for such applications to be released.
Further, if present applications won't work with assistive technologies when reading/writing the ODF format, then it follows that it is the file format itself that is breaking existing solutions. If Word can presently be useful for people with certain disabilities except when using ODF documents and if ODF format is required, then requiring the file format is harming those people.
But, let's be clear, that is a big if. I don't know enough about MS Office internals and the way they handle imported documents with regards to assistive technologies. My point is only that this MAY be a valid complaint, not that it IS a valid complaint. And it is a complaint that I think ought to be seriously addressed and one that most of the posters here don't really understand because they're assuming that if Application X works in a particular way with format Y, then it will also work that same way with format Z. That's a bad assumption and one that has the possibility of making lives difficult for a fair number of people.
A million liters per year certainly isn't a very large quantity of fuel. But if this were done in a hundred places, in New Zealand alone, it would start to add up. The conversion of bio-matter to diesel fuel is not a very complicated process. Aside from algae grown on sewage, just about any organic waste can be used. One of my favorite current trends is to set up biodiesel plants next to meat rendering plants to consume the waste of the rendering.
Not only that, but there is an very important side affect here. The growing and harvesting of the algae purifies the waste water. This would be a fantastic process to move to developing countries. Out of their waste, they would get both fuel and clean water.
But you are correct that this isn't a silver bullet. There is no silver bullet. But there are quite a few things that can be done that cumulatively help to solve the problem.
Right now, all we know is that Microsoft Office has some great accessibility tools for disabled people and that a filter exists to allow some parts of Office to import/export ODF files.
But what we don't know is how well the accessibility features of MS Office interact with data that is in ODF format. For example, Microsoft Word probably understands sections when a Word formatted document is opened. A screen reader might say ``section one: blah, blah, blah'' and later ``section two: blah, blah, blah.'' But this screen reader might be unaware that the bold, oversized text from an imported ODF document signifies a new section.
The big boys in the facilities management arena (MP2 and Maximo) can often be leased. For example, my employer, hosts Maximo for an annual fee that is far smaller than what you would pay for buying the licenses directly from MRO. And we're not the only ones.
A good number of people use Adobe tools, especially Acrobat, because they're cross platform. If Adobe were to ditch OS X as a platform, I'd be quite surprised if they didn't lose market share on Windows. It's kind of like IT companies selling round the clock support. Very few companies will ever/use/ the after-hours support, but they go with the companies that offer it to increase their options should they ever need it. Another good parallel is the Wendy's tripple patty hamburger. Few people order it, but a significant number of people go to Wendy's simply because they/could/ order it should they ever want to.
Boosting over all speed by up to a quarter is not a tremendous advance? Heck, I'd consider a 10% raise in my paycheck to be pretty tremendous. If my paycheck went up by a quarter, I'd blow a gasket.
I feel the same about computing. If I could boost my laptop's overall performance by 10% by making a single change, I consider that pretty impressive.
The latest version of Oracle is supported on not only Red Hat, but most Debian derivatives including Ubuntu.
Or maybe you mean desktop apps like just about anything based on Eclipse?
I will concede that Microsoft doesn't support Office on any non-Redhat version of Linux. But, then again, they don't support Office on Redhat Linux either.
It utterly befuddles me how so many comments in this discussion conflate the IT sector in general with the field of computer science. The truth is that the vast majority of IT jobs do not require a computer scientist nor have all that much to do with computer science. Just like there is a difference between a plumber that puts together a system of pipes and the engineer who designed the system and a difference between an electrician who wires a house and a scientist who studies various forms of electricity, there is also a vast difference between a computer scientist and a programmer, dba, network admin or help desk monkey. While it is true that these positions deal with some aspects of computer science, they dont require computer scientists anymore than a rocket scientist is required to pilot a rocket into space.
... but on the other hand you seem to be conflating computer science with the IT field. The vast majority of IT positions do not require computer scientists to fill them in the same way that the vast majority of positions in the construction industry do not require architects or engineers.
In the linked article, 2 out of the three companies migrated to Microsoft solutions based on services available from Microsoft because their internal IT departments didn't have the requisite knowledge to keep entirely open source solutions up to speed with regards to internal growth. The third company remained with Linux as a result of Linux services offered by Sun as part of a package with new Opteron based servers.
The other interesting bit is that a key part of decisions made in all three cases was the available software. The first two companies went with Microsoft because of Sharepoint. The last one stayed with Linux on Sun hardware because of 64bit J2EE.
But you have to realize that the vast majority of IT jobs don't have a whole lot to do with computer science. According to US government predictions, there is no foreseeable shortage of systems analysts or computer scientists. Programming jobs, on the other hand, are the likeliest to get shipped overseas. So if you like hard core comp sci or you like requirements gathering and writing specifications, you're golden. But if you're a code monkey that does little more than translate business rules from English into code, then you might want to worry. If you want to see some pretty solid projections on the future of any particular job title in the US, I highly recommend that you visit the website of the bureau of labor statistics.
Network types are also pretty safe, especially the ones that work with hardware. While it might be easy for a company to outsource networking, it's hard to get away from the fact that so much networking requires a warm body on site.
But as for me, I've had it with IT. After ten years doing helpdesk, software testing and/or programming, I've had my fill. I'm saving my pennies to be able to afford to go back to work on a doctorate and become a cranky old professor out in the middle of nowhere.
First, you already point out a huge difference, Apple presently treats it's developers a heck of a lot better than IBM did during the OS/2 days. Every Mac ships with Apple's Developer Tools. Can you imagine if IBM had done that with Visual Age for OS/2 what Apple is doing with XCode?
Second, IBM never gained as many third party developers because the market was just never there. Apple has an installed base of OS X users that dwarfs anything IBM ever had.
Well, preloads (actuall, lack thereof) also had something to do with it. The OS/2 division within IBM couldn't get the PC division to offer OS/2 version 2 through 4 on stock hardware. When industry execs from other PC companies like Compaq were interviewed their response was, ``why would I load my competitor's operating system onto my PCs?''
But on top of this, between v.3 and v.4 of OS/2, IBM gambled almost their entire budget on OS/2 PPC and, well, lost that gamble when neither CHRP nor PREP took off, Microsoft ditched NT for the PPC and the only commodity computer running the PPC chip was the Macintosh. Guessing wrong not only cost IBM billions, but also lost quite a few turf battles for OS/2 proponents inside IBM.
It also didn't help that IBM kept insisting that certain key flaws (can you say synchronous input queue?) were actually features and would not be fixed.
But by comparisson, rather than having to fight internal battles to get OS X preloaded on Macs, every Mac ships with OS X. Tens, if not hundreds, of Hackers are trying to get OS X to run on stock PC hardware despite Apple saying that they'll not support stuff. CEOs of competing hardware makers, like Michael Dell, are saying that they'd love to be able to preload OS X onto their gear. The situation is clearly different.
But the biggest difference between now and 1995 when IBM's best chance at making OS/2 make it big is that thanks to Linux, most people understand that a choice in operating systems exists. In the nineties, you got either got a Windows machine or a Mac; most people had no clue that you get load other system software.
Let's assume the truth of the proposition that Dell's lack of growth is due to using only Intel CPUs rather than including AMD chips in some lines. This proposition is quite debateable, but let's assume that it is true for the sake of argument.
Is Intel forcing Dell to include Intel chips? It seems to me that this decision is being made by Dell management rather than Intel. Is there evidence to support predatory pricing by Intel that affects Dell moreso than any other manufacturer? If not, I don't think we can set the blame on Intel. Rather the blame lies on Dell.
So the headline should read Dell's Marketshare Decline Due to Dell, no?
But in any case, I think there are other explanations for Dell's slow growth, chief of which is marketshare. Dell's current US shipments rose 0.2% reducing their marketshare to 32%. In contrast HP's US shipments rose marketshare rose 15% to a marketshare of 19%. It seems to me that if you're already shipping 1 out of every three PCs being purchased in the US, it's a good deal harder to increase your number of sales than if you're selling 1 out of 5 or 1 out of 6.
on the hardware front, it was revealed that the Xbox 360 sold through just under 200,000 copies in North America in March, showing the continued shortages of the console, allegedly now ameliorated. Elsewhere, the PlayStation 2 still led the way with almost 275,000 sales, and the Xbox (just under 85,000) and GameCube (just under 65,000) brought up the rear.
According to industry sources, more than 160,000 Xbox 360s were sold in February. That compares to more than 300,000 PlayStation 2's, more than 170,000 PlayStation Portables, and over 150,000 Nintendo DS units sold during the month of February.
The only really interesting number to me is that almost six months after the launch of the 360, PS2s are still moving off the shelves faster than 360s. But before one reads to much into that, it ought to be recognized that the 360 hasn't been introduced into all markets while the PS2 has pretty much gone into every geographic area where it will be sold. Hence when the March numbers were released, which included Australia for the first time, it wasn't the same comparison as for February. The flip side of that fact, though, is that XBOX sales in existing markets may have declined in March. I don't know how many units were sold in Australia and other new markets that ought to be subtracted from the 200k March figure to compare to the 160k Feb figure.
In any case, better numbers won't really be availible next year. IMO, the key numbers to watch for (assuming Revolution and PS2 launches this fall) will be the Q4 2006 reports. Although, it will be significant if the PS2 continues to outsell the 360 in Q2 and Q3 of 2006.
I work for a company with fewer than 20 people. But we do have more than 50 PCs between 2 training labs, assorted experimental projects, and workstations and laptops for most of our staff. As economical as site licensing may be, it's more expensive than OEM pricing for machines we've purchased in the past and transfering those licenses to their replacements.
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You should check your contract. Three nines of service is nine hours of (unscheduled) downtime per year. The vast majority of contracts will specify an SLA of four or five nines and you're barely getting three.
Carrier grade means not only uptime of the machine, but also that the machine correctly responds to requests within the limits set out in a Service Level Agreement (SLA).
But note that telcos usually only offer service with an SLA to customers paying through the nose.
Most notably, it exports to MS WORD format. Unfortunately, it does an utterly craptastic job at the conversion. If you thought your resume looked bad written in word (horrible justification, fuzzy bullet points, etc.) just wait to see how bad it looks when it starts as a PDF and gets exported to Word format.
The first thing that came to my mind, and the minds of numerous other posters, are the hundreds of thousands of Americans who have families overseas. Given the thousands of birth, wedding, christmas visit and graduation notifications that will fit this exact pattern, it is questionable as to whether looking for that pattern is very useful in tracking down terrorists.
But to be fair, this begs the question of whether or not this type of pattern might be useful in conjuction with other data. Which leads to the real concern. To be useful to the NSA, they have to store this data long term. They also have to start keeping track of things that look suspicious to them. I can't say that I'm comfortable with the idea of getting a visit by the men in black if (a) I have family overseas and (b) I call a flight school and (c) I call a life insurance company. The amount of information that the NSA can collect is astonishing.
First, philosophy is the foundation upon which logic, math and science are built. For example, without Parmenides' principle of Identity, the law of non-contradiction cannot be formulated and without the law of non-contradiction there is no basis on which to build the equals sign in math for being equal to something has no evening. Further, it was philosophers such as Descartes that formulated the modern scientific method.
Second, a proper symbolic logic class is the possibly the single most important class any position that has to do with computer science could take. A proper class on this topic will provide the `why' of logic, a rigorous approach to translating human language into assertions that can be evaluated for truth, and the technical skills of evaluating logical constructions for truth or falsity. All of these are paramount not only to the programmer, but to the requirements analyst, the computer engineer, the comp. sci. researcher and more.
Third, a proper upper level class in philosophy will teach more about analysis than any business or comp. sci. class that I've ever heard of. The technical skill of teasing the full implications out of a given text is greatly undervalued in most comp. sci. programs.
That said, is it possible for someone to be a good computer scientist without a background in philosophy? Certainly. Most comp. sci. programs will teach the Cartesian method of scientist, even if only implicitly. Logic will still be taught. Analysis will still be taught. They just aren't usually taught to their fullest extent and, in many cases, are taught without looking at the principles upon which they rest.
No application has been released that works with assistive technologies and, based on their past experience, this group is worried that it will take prohibitively long for such applications to be released.
Further, if present applications won't work with assistive technologies when reading/writing the ODF format, then it follows that it is the file format itself that is breaking existing solutions. If Word can presently be useful for people with certain disabilities except when using ODF documents and if ODF format is required, then requiring the file format is harming those people.
But, let's be clear, that is a big if. I don't know enough about MS Office internals and the way they handle imported documents with regards to assistive technologies. My point is only that this MAY be a valid complaint, not that it IS a valid complaint. And it is a complaint that I think ought to be seriously addressed and one that most of the posters here don't really understand because they're assuming that if Application X works in a particular way with format Y, then it will also work that same way with format Z. That's a bad assumption and one that has the possibility of making lives difficult for a fair number of people.
A million liters per year certainly isn't a very large quantity of fuel. But if this were done in a hundred places, in New Zealand alone, it would start to add up. The conversion of bio-matter to diesel fuel is not a very complicated process. Aside from algae grown on sewage, just about any organic waste can be used. One of my favorite current trends is to set up biodiesel plants next to meat rendering plants to consume the waste of the rendering.
Not only that, but there is an very important side affect here. The growing and harvesting of the algae purifies the waste water. This would be a fantastic process to move to developing countries. Out of their waste, they would get both fuel and clean water.
But you are correct that this isn't a silver bullet. There is no silver bullet. But there are quite a few things that can be done that cumulatively help to solve the problem.
But what we don't know is how well the accessibility features of MS Office interact with data that is in ODF format. For example, Microsoft Word probably understands sections when a Word formatted document is opened. A screen reader might say ``section one: blah, blah, blah'' and later ``section two: blah, blah, blah.'' But this screen reader might be unaware that the bold, oversized text from an imported ODF document signifies a new section.
The big boys in the facilities management arena (MP2 and Maximo) can often be leased. For example, my employer, hosts Maximo for an annual fee that is far smaller than what you would pay for buying the licenses directly from MRO. And we're not the only ones.
A good number of people use Adobe tools, especially Acrobat, because they're cross platform. If Adobe were to ditch OS X as a platform, I'd be quite surprised if they didn't lose market share on Windows. It's kind of like IT companies selling round the clock support. Very few companies will ever /use/ the after-hours support, but they go with the companies that offer it to increase their options should they ever need it. Another good parallel is the Wendy's tripple patty hamburger. Few people order it, but a significant number of people go to Wendy's simply because they /could/ order it should they ever want to.
Boosting over all speed by up to a quarter is not a tremendous advance? Heck, I'd consider a 10% raise in my paycheck to be pretty tremendous. If my paycheck went up by a quarter, I'd blow a gasket.
I feel the same about computing. If I could boost my laptop's overall performance by 10% by making a single change, I consider that pretty impressive.
The latest version of Oracle is supported on not only Red Hat, but most Debian derivatives including Ubuntu.
Or maybe you mean desktop apps like just about anything based on Eclipse?
I will concede that Microsoft doesn't support Office on any non-Redhat version of Linux. But, then again, they don't support Office on Redhat Linux either.
Or maybe not. Perhaps there was a reason that the anthropologist was picked over the comp sci major.
It utterly befuddles me how so many comments in this discussion conflate the IT sector in general with the field of computer science. The truth is that the vast majority of IT jobs do not require a computer scientist nor have all that much to do with computer science. Just like there is a difference between a plumber that puts together a system of pipes and the engineer who designed the system and a difference between an electrician who wires a house and a scientist who studies various forms of electricity, there is also a vast difference between a computer scientist and a programmer, dba, network admin or help desk monkey. While it is true that these positions deal with some aspects of computer science, they dont require computer scientists anymore than a rocket scientist is required to pilot a rocket into space.
... but on the other hand you seem to be conflating computer science with the IT field. The vast majority of IT positions do not require computer scientists to fill them in the same way that the vast majority of positions in the construction industry do not require architects or engineers.
In the linked article, 2 out of the three companies migrated to Microsoft solutions based on services available from Microsoft because their internal IT departments didn't have the requisite knowledge to keep entirely open source solutions up to speed with regards to internal growth. The third company remained with Linux as a result of Linux services offered by Sun as part of a package with new Opteron based servers.
The other interesting bit is that a key part of decisions made in all three cases was the available software. The first two companies went with Microsoft because of Sharepoint. The last one stayed with Linux on Sun hardware because of 64bit J2EE.
Q: What's the difference between a tenured professor and a terrorist?
A: You can negotiate with a terrorist.
My new career goal is to end up being a cranky old professor at a podunk liberal arts college off in the middle of nowhere.
But you have to realize that the vast majority of IT jobs don't have a whole lot to do with computer science. According to US government predictions, there is no foreseeable shortage of systems analysts or computer scientists. Programming jobs, on the other hand, are the likeliest to get shipped overseas. So if you like hard core comp sci or you like requirements gathering and writing specifications, you're golden. But if you're a code monkey that does little more than translate business rules from English into code, then you might want to worry. If you want to see some pretty solid projections on the future of any particular job title in the US, I highly recommend that you visit the website of the bureau of labor statistics.
Network types are also pretty safe, especially the ones that work with hardware. While it might be easy for a company to outsource networking, it's hard to get away from the fact that so much networking requires a warm body on site.
But as for me, I've had it with IT. After ten years doing helpdesk, software testing and/or programming, I've had my fill. I'm saving my pennies to be able to afford to go back to work on a doctorate and become a cranky old professor out in the middle of nowhere.
Does that not mean that MS has a legal right to all of OS X as of 2002, including the version that was running on Intel in the basement?
First, you already point out a huge difference, Apple presently treats it's developers a heck of a lot better than IBM did during the OS/2 days. Every Mac ships with Apple's Developer Tools. Can you imagine if IBM had done that with Visual Age for OS/2 what Apple is doing with XCode?
Second, IBM never gained as many third party developers because the market was just never there. Apple has an installed base of OS X users that dwarfs anything IBM ever had.
Third, see here
Well, preloads (actuall, lack thereof) also had something to do with it. The OS/2 division within IBM couldn't get the PC division to offer OS/2 version 2 through 4 on stock hardware. When industry execs from other PC companies like Compaq were interviewed their response was, ``why would I load my competitor's operating system onto my PCs?''
But on top of this, between v.3 and v.4 of OS/2, IBM gambled almost their entire budget on OS/2 PPC and, well, lost that gamble when neither CHRP nor PREP took off, Microsoft ditched NT for the PPC and the only commodity computer running the PPC chip was the Macintosh. Guessing wrong not only cost IBM billions, but also lost quite a few turf battles for OS/2 proponents inside IBM.
It also didn't help that IBM kept insisting that certain key flaws (can you say synchronous input queue?) were actually features and would not be fixed.
But by comparisson, rather than having to fight internal battles to get OS X preloaded on Macs, every Mac ships with OS X. Tens, if not hundreds, of Hackers are trying to get OS X to run on stock PC hardware despite Apple saying that they'll not support stuff. CEOs of competing hardware makers, like Michael Dell, are saying that they'd love to be able to preload OS X onto their gear. The situation is clearly different.
But the biggest difference between now and 1995 when IBM's best chance at making OS/2 make it big is that thanks to Linux, most people understand that a choice in operating systems exists. In the nineties, you got either got a Windows machine or a Mac; most people had no clue that you get load other system software.
But if you're going to add XBox + XBox 360 to make a comparison, should you not also add PSP + PS/2 and Game Boy + DS + Game Cube to compare it to?
I still maintain that the most interesting numbers won't come out until early next year.
Is Intel forcing Dell to include Intel chips? It seems to me that this decision is being made by Dell management rather than Intel. Is there evidence to support predatory pricing by Intel that affects Dell moreso than any other manufacturer? If not, I don't think we can set the blame on Intel. Rather the blame lies on Dell.
So the headline should read Dell's Marketshare Decline Due to Dell, no?
But in any case, I think there are other explanations for Dell's slow growth, chief of which is marketshare. Dell's current US shipments rose 0.2% reducing their marketshare to 32%. In contrast HP's US shipments rose marketshare rose 15% to a marketshare of 19%. It seems to me that if you're already shipping 1 out of every three PCs being purchased in the US, it's a good deal harder to increase your number of sales than if you're selling 1 out of 5 or 1 out of 6.
This compares to 160k XBOX 360s sold in Februrary according to February game sales continue slide:
The only really interesting number to me is that almost six months after the launch of the 360, PS2s are still moving off the shelves faster than 360s. But before one reads to much into that, it ought to be recognized that the 360 hasn't been introduced into all markets while the PS2 has pretty much gone into every geographic area where it will be sold. Hence when the March numbers were released, which included Australia for the first time, it wasn't the same comparison as for February. The flip side of that fact, though, is that XBOX sales in existing markets may have declined in March. I don't know how many units were sold in Australia and other new markets that ought to be subtracted from the 200k March figure to compare to the 160k Feb figure.
In any case, better numbers won't really be availible next year. IMO, the key numbers to watch for (assuming Revolution and PS2 launches this fall) will be the Q4 2006 reports. Although, it will be significant if the PS2 continues to outsell the 360 in Q2 and Q3 of 2006.
I work for a company with fewer than 20 people. But we do have more than 50 PCs between 2 training labs, assorted experimental projects, and workstations and laptops for most of our staff. As economical as site licensing may be, it's more expensive than OEM pricing for machines we've purchased in the past and transfering those licenses to their replacements.