I got my ass chewed for putting it in writing, but it got their attention. We ended up getting legal in most of the larger packages.
I've been fired for doing that. No, that wasn't the reason why they gave, but it was one of the impetus causes that led to the manager coming up with (fraudulent) reasons.
The real trick is dealing with licensing issues which aren't 100% "unlicensed" or "licensed". IE, buying Student licensing for a company, or "migrating" OEM Windows install licenses from one system onto new, naked hardware (or similar). Or Windows Server CALs. Or you've got $number of OEM licenses for $number of Windows installs that aren't installed with said licensing certs (but a single image + key).
You can't just say "we don't have licenses for the software we use" because it's arguable to the contrary. They don't realize that the BSA and the like don't care if you've got an OEM license for all your installed software; if it's an illegitimate install, it counts against you regardless.
Well, even something that's based off of at-the-time sound principles can end up being a mess.
Take, for instance, a product falled FileMaker. It's a product with a long software lineage - it's origins were FoxPro, way back when. I don't know how it performed back then, or how it was designed, but now it's got a massive WYSIWYG themableing 'frontend' to make a custom application, and the database is not directly accessible by the designer (just logical containers). It probably can be normalized, to some degree, but...
But it's not a good database for large amounts of data. In fact, I'd argue something like Access might even be faster/better than the modern incarnations. It might work fine for a small, initial dataset, but it doesn't scale all that well.
I guess my point is: a rational database can be poorly normalized, but a 'slacker' database can't be improved upon. The slacker db might work OK for what you initially intend it for, but data will often grow faster than estimated, and beyond the original design.
That's why relational/SQL is preferred by most technical people: not only can it be poorly designed and work well for small stuff (then normalized w/o changing all that much, and used for larger projects), but then it can be relatively easily migrated to a larger/more robust SQL database if need be.
Wait, this is thie iPhone we're talking about, right? Made by Apple with the geniuses who pioneered the one-button mouse? Surely they can harness some new synergistic paradigm and market it differently so it works.
I mean, the iPhone already has one button. How many more do they need, anyway?
I suspect MS will do something dastardly, like customizing the various CMS systems they use to use MS SQL when they did not do so previously, with different table and row names within the database, providing no ways for your an average user to export the data into any other format than MS SQL.
Sure, it's workable, but for someone who doesn't know how to install things manually - never mind what was installed in the first place? Good luck. He's locked in and stuck using IIS on Windows, now.
Ironic: free software will be providing MS with another avenue for vendor lock in.
Clicky server application installs, made publicly available on the Internet, is akin to a blind man saying "look, I can drive a train!" if they've ridden on the subway a time or two.
Open Source != Good. Closed Source != Bad. Just as open source and bad are not mutually exclusive, closed source and good are not mutually exclusive, regardless of what Stallman thinks.
I don't know. Just like the next guy, I think Stallman is probably as crazy as a shit house bat, but my experience has typically been both:
1) Open source = good 2) Closed source = bad
Now, I'm not talking about ALL representative examples of each model. But the representative/preferred examples of major applications within those categories do tend to be better, in my experience: OpenOffice > MS Office, vlc or xine/mplayer > windows mediap layer, Firefox > IE/Opera, Linux > Windows, deb/rpm > msi, etc. - all better than the commercial (usually MS) alternatives. There are a lot more examples.
It's not a rule without exception, granted. But the point remains that when it comes to software users can actually use without it interfering with their work (or preventing them from working) Open Source almost invariably does provide a better option.
Oh yeah? I can use an RFID reader to log into my Windows laptop. If I pull out the card, the laptop locks itself, if I put it back in it unlocks. Where's that technology in OS X or Linux? What about the fingerprint reader my laptop also has? (Which, frankly, I never use. But slick anyway.)
Biometrics and RFID are, in terms of useful functions, marginal. It's not a feature most people want or need, and is usually a specialty use.
They are also not OS functions, but functions of the hardware and drivers, as supplied by the hardware vendors. Hardware support is not an OS feature, especially when it's not developed as a part of the OS but by a third party (do note I said "Microsoft" in my initial post).
That said, there's also little difference between those devices and bar code scanners which have been in use for decades. And do note that your trendy fingerprint reader would also likely work in Linux.
There's also Fast User Switching, which XP had long before any other OS picked it up.
There's a reason for that - a very good one, in fact. No other OS has "Fast User Switching". FUS is a Microsoft 'feature' to make up for the fact that it does not allow for multiple, concurrent logins on the same machine.
Though, if you're right, I guess we'll have to go back to AT&T/Bell labs in the 1970s and tell those guys to knock off all that research on allowing dozens of users to use graphical display terminals, with full system access, concurrently. Microsoft isn't supposed to invent that for another 30 years!
(I will say one thing... Microsoft's RDP is a good protocol and a good implementation. It beats the pants off of anything else available for what it does.)
You mean Shadow Copy? That was introduced in Windows 2000 Server-side, and Windows XP client-side? And does the same thing Time Machine does? You're so full of crap.
Na, I was thinking of a feature like Shadow Copy, which actually worked in a pragmatic fashion and is not fundamentally incompatible with other products released by Microsoft. But then, I'm prone to bouts of fantasy.
VSC is almost entirely useless on XP, at that. In 2003, it's marginally useful - it helps work around some design flaws in Outlook, NTFS, and other programs that make running a Windows network a bit of a pain. So I can thank them for that, I suppose.
It's hard to "rip something off" in the event that what you offer actually works.
Hell, they don't even have simple search indexing working well in Vista, yet.
In what way is it "not working well?" Although I suppose "not working well" is so vague that you could just handwave an answer even if it was perfect.
By "not work well" I mean "still consumes massive amounts of resources for what it does, and when it does it, it does it excessively".
But, consider: Windows still can not approximately estimate the time it will take to copy a file from one local directory to another.
I haven't seen an OS yet that does a good job of this.
Maybe it's the tools I use, but I experience a "good job" of this kind of indication on a daily basis - or, at least, a good enough job at faking it that I don't notice. Any time I scp a file, or copy a file with thunar, extract a file from an archive file - and so on. For that matter, various archive programs in Windows do a half decent job at it.
It's not so much that Windows doesn't do it perfectly. It's not even in the realm of reasonable. A message saying "12 hours remaining" for copying 20Mb of files to a CDR? That, and similar things, are regular occurrences. (Then there's the "progress bar" on such copies/moves, which when copying many small files, typically 'fills up' long before the process is completed... or did they finally hide/fix that?)
I agree with your analogy/example. It's like saying "we shouldn't have cruise control in cars because people won't know how to use it". Uh, yeah we should, actually - because a lot of people can and will use it.
That said, a universal remote trumps a smartphone for anything like this. I'll gree with you on that one.
If you want to do full virtualization look for server class CPUs. Xeons and Opterons. Using Newegg's power search [newegg.com] there is an option to filter by CPU's that support virtualization technology.
You can do that with "desktop" class CPUs, too - just fine. Only substantial difference between Opteron and Phenom 1 and 2 is the ability to have multiple CPUs; a Phenom or even an Athlon 64 x2, or I believe an Intel Core or Intel Core Duo, will do the job just fine. They all (iirc) have VT extensions.
You say you want to go "cheap", that you don't want to spent too much money, yadda yadda... and then you go on to mention things like "cheap" shared disk and "cheap" blade servers?
What you realistically need and want are two different things.
I'd suggest a cheap quad-core AMD Phenom II system with 8G or so of RAM. Nothing too fancy. that I assume you're going to be running a Windows host OS, or VMWare ESX. More RAM will be needed for the Windows host OS, obviously.
Absolute lowest-end hardware you'd want to look at getting is an AMD Athlon 64 x2 or Intel Core (IIRC) based system. In other words, you want/need the VT support, or it'll be purely an emulated environment, and substantially slower than native (30%?), not just marginally (10%?).
I recommend AMD hardware because it's got a better price/performance point, and because unlike the other stuff in the "reasonable midprice" range for Intel, it's got the memory controller/north bridge integrated into the CPU (for newer gen stuff). I'd say go Phenom or Phenom II without any hesitation.
With a CPU like this, there's no reason you couldn't build a full system for around $450-500, sans storage. You could probably find a suitable "starter"/deal system for $300 from TigerDirect that'll do the job just fine with a little more RAM and another drive.
For disk, just go with an SATA RAID card (LSI are good) and 3 1Tb disks. That's about as cheap as you'll get and still have room to work.
I'll be honest and note that I've not actually used Vista since shortly after SP1 was released. At the time, "Vista Ready" hardware was still commonplace, but still... no reason for that kind of kludgery.
But, also: writes might be low for the indexer, but how about reads? 3M RAM also sounds pretty reasonable to me for a 'dumb' indexing tool. So maybe they've improved the things.
This isn't "big time desktop software". This is "what comes with all the distributions". Nobody sane is going to build (say) GNOME 1 or a prior KDE for one of these devices (and nor should they have to). But even the current lightweight DEs are somewhat heavy on these machines, after you consider the memory use of basic applications like Firefox, OpenOffice, and Tbird. For whatever reason, this combination seems a bit heavier under Linux than it is under Windows (XP).
And using twm or similar? Surely you jest (or are simply out of touch). There's a reason why nobody uses that anymore. It sucked, hard: it was/is awkward and cluttered.
Saying there was a single cause to the Roman decline and falls is myopic. The causes are many and varied - endemic to the Roman culture and political system, just as our problems are. Sadly, many Roman societal faults are being mimicked by our country (USA) and our culture (Western society as a whole):
- Currency devaluation - Loss of a societal will and identity - Increased 'multiculturalism' without assimilation followed by overwhelming foreigner immigration - Bread and circuses - Political power consolidation - Increased demagoguery - Political partisanship - Rhetoric/propaganda increases - Lack of focus on essential societal functions/preference for money changers and entertainment type roles - sapping of the treasury by war efforts - sapping of the treasury by bread and circuses - sapping of the treasury by crooked politicians - increased corruption in general (due to the loss of cultural standards and expectations) - depletion of the young generations through war - decreased breeding resulting in/from affluence resulting in a further top-heavy society - the slow destruction of the basis of their military/political/economic power (in the case of the Romans, salt (from/and) slavery; in the case of Americans, oil).
And many more, I'm sure. However, it is ingenious to say that it comes down to "trying to impose its political power and military will far more broadly than it could manage". That neither adequately describes the Roman situation (or the US), or gives any honesty to the matter. It wasn't so much that the military was over-extended; it's that it was over-extended with everything else going on at home, with a military largely composed of people seeking Roman citizenry and/or brought into the military from the fighters from conquered people. The fall of Rome was not a military fall - though that was how the fall was punctuated. The fall of Rome was largely cultural - endemic, like a cancer - and the flu was simply what did them in.
No, we're not in the same boat. But anyone who takes more than a cursory look can see quite a few similarities between the two models. We may or may not be headed in the same direction; there might be still be time to change course. Maybe.
You're right, it would be better to increase the ranks of the National Guard and, when they're not on active duty, they can just take over the role of police officers! After all, most cops are ex-military anyway, right?
Or, I know! Let the CIA take over the role of the FBI. Because they both do the basic same thing, right?
Or the Coast Guard can take over the State Police jobs. Because they've got similar mobility and response requirements.
(That was sarcasm.)
You're either a troll or lacking knowledge about the division of power/authority/responsibility in this country to such a degree that you should listen, and learn a little bit before splurting out prematurely.
Now, making suggestions about the reorganization of the various agencies/roles within the Federal government is one thing. Suggesting what you suggest is kinda batty.
As for your initial, potentially rhetorical question: you call the police. Usually, this means you call 911 - just like every 5-year-old knows how to do. High-speed car chase, murder, espionage, etc. - it really doesn't matter. The local police have all the other appropriate agencies on speed dial due to frequent inter-operation. And if for some odd reason they don't, they know how to use a phone book.
Really, it's not that hard. This shit is broken down by role and realm for a reason: local knowledge isn't terribly useful at the global level, and vice versa.
I'll believe it when I see it. Dismantling government agency power has most certainly not been Obama's agenda in the scant months he's been President. In fact, it's quite the opposite.
What are the notable things Obama has done in his Presidency so far? He's substantially increased government control of the private sector, ensuring private industry and banking will be beholden to government for a good time to come. He's increased the power and responsibility of various agencies (by unconstitutional fiat) substantially. He's done quite a bit in the direction of not splitting power up into different agencies to prevent an 'ubergovernment' agency/unit.
Also: how is moving cybersecurity directly under the authority of the President anything approaching a move to "split power"? It looks like a move to aggregate and increase power to me - IE, more of the same kind of thing that you say lead to the formation of DHS.
Now, you might be right. But in my assessment of the man, such a move runs contrary not only to his policy, but his very grain. There has been no indication that he prefers anything but centralized, omnipresent control, and I'll be gratefully, if somewhat skeptically, surprised if he moves in any other direction.
I'm not entirely sure if this will play out as you think it will, but I'm certain it's not good news for us "consumers" - previously known as citizens.
DHS, at least, has bureaucracy to worry about and fight through. The Executive is, essentially, the President. Thats worrisome: the Presidency already has substantially more authority than the President did 4, 8, or 12 years ago. Bush drastically increased that authority, and Obama does not seem like the kind of person who wouldn't use it to its fullest extent.
Moving yet-another (major) responsibility/power under the President makes me uneasy. Unlike DHS, the President is an innately political creature. The potential for abuse of political opponents is very high.
For those of us following the doublespeak-inspired Fairness Doctrine, this is kind of scary. I really don't want them to push through the same BS "fairness" filters to the Internet, especially since all major news is now being filtered through said Internet, now that the newspapers are going tits up.
A file search index should not constantly result in your disks spinning as the indexer does its job. The Vista services don't. Really, if you're going to do indexing, index once a day, or do it "live" by monitoring the filesystem live (aka Spotlight, I think it's called, on OSX). This is one of those either-or propositions, as otherwise it's entirely too consumptive of resources for how often it's realistically used.
As for browsers and "thin clients" (did you mean dumb terminal? TCs are the 'new' era)... the irony is that these monsterous browsers are going to keep us shackled to the workstation, because putting (say) 50 users on a terminal server, each running a browser clocking in at 150-250+ Mb and running CPU-hungry javascript and Flash... well, that's not fun or cheap, and a server maintenance nightmare to boot.
Well, it's bad news for a reason he didn't quite mention. The bad news is that it's likely, in part, due to how pokey Linux has gotten on the desktop in the last 5 years.
We need a serious initiative within open source to push for a feature-lock for a year or two (or even 6 months), and focus on improving the ability of OSS to run within small constraints. Granted, a lot of this is happening currently (see: Firefox), but I think a more concerted effort needs to be taken.
Microsoft's fascination with taking advantage of new hardware and technologies has led to a consistent decrease in performance over the years, with Vista perhaps being the most obvious and poorly received example.
Oh, please. A "fascination with taking advantage of new hardware and technologies" is not why Windows has sucked on an an epic level. Windows has always been an "also ran" when it comes to adapting "new hardware and technologies". Always.
Hardware support? Even the abysmal Mac OS 9 had more leading-edge hardware support than W9x and W2K on their respective releases. Windows XP and 2k3 can, and have been, a huge pain to install if you've got SATA and/or necessary USB devices on the system. Sure, decent support is available after you're installed - but that's not due to Microsoft.
Emerging technologies? Can you name one software/OS/desktop feature which MS was first-to-market on for Windows? I seem to remember something called Cairo that was making news back in the mid-90s, which had a feature list similar to what we now know as Time Machine - on OS X. MS still hasn't come up with such a functionality. Hell, they don't even have simple search indexing working well in Vista, yet.
No, MS has been behind the curve with implementation - and well ahead of it with outright lies and broken promises ("Vista Ready", anyone?)
Historically, these are the things a new version of Windows has been certain to bring to the table: * Slower performance * Bigger memory footprint with little related advantage (see "slower performance"). * The first release/pre-SP will be buggy, unstable, and nearly unusable. * A lot of stuff that's supposed to work, won't. This includes applications which are supposedly designed for said OS. * If it's a complete lemon, they'll silently drop actual support and focus their efforts on their next release (See: ME -> 2k, Vista -> W7).
Yes, there are various other improvements to new Windows releases. But, consider: Windows still can not approximately estimate the time it will take to copy a file from one local directory to another. That's hardly a focus on new technologies.
Though, I absolutely agree with you on the whole low-end focus in the IT industry being a good deal for everyone. Now, if only we could get away from the "the browser is the OS" idea, as we're running into all sorts of the same bloat and instability we got with OSes, as browser developers re-implement containers and other OS-level features at a highly abstracted level.
Well, there's another factor in there, too: the level of technical competence required to 'break in' to IT was much lower than it has been for the past 5+ years. Back then, there was a huge demand, and a lot of people who shouldn't have been allowed near a computer, were. (Which isn't to say this was you, mind.)
The competent IT people with science backgrounds ended up making a lot of the rules by which we play today, but just the same, I highly doubt many of them had resumes at the time which would, once translated into modern technology terms, get them in the door for an interview.
Finally, "it's difficult as hell and you've got to know the right people" is slightly different than "it's a tenable possibility". Getting to know the right people can, and likely will, take more time and effort on the OPs part than acquiring the necessary technical skills - and that's just to get in the door for an interview.
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And when it happens shortly after you're compliant, again? What then? Is it your fault, or is it Windows? Apparently your initial excuse was a lie.
I got my ass chewed for putting it in writing, but it got their attention. We ended up getting legal in most of the larger packages.
I've been fired for doing that. No, that wasn't the reason why they gave, but it was one of the impetus causes that led to the manager coming up with (fraudulent) reasons.
The real trick is dealing with licensing issues which aren't 100% "unlicensed" or "licensed". IE, buying Student licensing for a company, or "migrating" OEM Windows install licenses from one system onto new, naked hardware (or similar). Or Windows Server CALs. Or you've got $number of OEM licenses for $number of Windows installs that aren't installed with said licensing certs (but a single image + key).
You can't just say "we don't have licenses for the software we use" because it's arguable to the contrary. They don't realize that the BSA and the like don't care if you've got an OEM license for all your installed software; if it's an illegitimate install, it counts against you regardless.
Well, even something that's based off of at-the-time sound principles can end up being a mess.
Take, for instance, a product falled FileMaker. It's a product with a long software lineage - it's origins were FoxPro, way back when. I don't know how it performed back then, or how it was designed, but now it's got a massive WYSIWYG themableing 'frontend' to make a custom application, and the database is not directly accessible by the designer (just logical containers). It probably can be normalized, to some degree, but...
But it's not a good database for large amounts of data. In fact, I'd argue something like Access might even be faster/better than the modern incarnations. It might work fine for a small, initial dataset, but it doesn't scale all that well.
I guess my point is: a rational database can be poorly normalized, but a 'slacker' database can't be improved upon. The slacker db might work OK for what you initially intend it for, but data will often grow faster than estimated, and beyond the original design.
That's why relational/SQL is preferred by most technical people: not only can it be poorly designed and work well for small stuff (then normalized w/o changing all that much, and used for larger projects), but then it can be relatively easily migrated to a larger/more robust SQL database if need be.
That was actually intended to be somewhat tongue-in-cheek and mocking of the Windows and its users. Linux distro makers rock.
Wait, this is thie iPhone we're talking about, right? Made by Apple with the geniuses who pioneered the one-button mouse? Surely they can harness some new synergistic paradigm and market it differently so it works.
I mean, the iPhone already has one button. How many more do they need, anyway?
I suspect MS will do something dastardly, like customizing the various CMS systems they use to use MS SQL when they did not do so previously, with different table and row names within the database, providing no ways for your an average user to export the data into any other format than MS SQL.
Sure, it's workable, but for someone who doesn't know how to install things manually - never mind what was installed in the first place? Good luck. He's locked in and stuck using IIS on Windows, now.
Ironic: free software will be providing MS with another avenue for vendor lock in.
Analogy:
Clicky server application installs, made publicly available on the Internet, is akin to a blind man saying "look, I can drive a train!" if they've ridden on the subway a time or two.
Open Source != Good. Closed Source != Bad. Just as open source and bad are not mutually exclusive, closed source and good are not mutually exclusive, regardless of what Stallman thinks.
I don't know. Just like the next guy, I think Stallman is probably as crazy as a shit house bat, but my experience has typically been both:
1) Open source = good
2) Closed source = bad
Now, I'm not talking about ALL representative examples of each model. But the representative/preferred examples of major applications within those categories do tend to be better, in my experience: OpenOffice > MS Office, vlc or xine/mplayer > windows mediap layer, Firefox > IE/Opera, Linux > Windows, deb/rpm > msi, etc. - all better than the commercial (usually MS) alternatives. There are a lot more examples.
It's not a rule without exception, granted. But the point remains that when it comes to software users can actually use without it interfering with their work (or preventing them from working) Open Source almost invariably does provide a better option.
Yeah? So what? In Linux or BSD, do you get the nice user experience with a pretty icon to click to install the product? No? I didn't think so!
You have got to be kidding me.
Oh yeah? I can use an RFID reader to log into my Windows laptop. If I pull out the card, the laptop locks itself, if I put it back in it unlocks. Where's that technology in OS X or Linux? What about the fingerprint reader my laptop also has? (Which, frankly, I never use. But slick anyway.)
Biometrics and RFID are, in terms of useful functions, marginal. It's not a feature most people want or need, and is usually a specialty use.
They are also not OS functions, but functions of the hardware and drivers, as supplied by the hardware vendors. Hardware support is not an OS feature, especially when it's not developed as a part of the OS but by a third party (do note I said "Microsoft" in my initial post).
That said, there's also little difference between those devices and bar code scanners which have been in use for decades. And do note that your trendy fingerprint reader would also likely work in Linux.
There's also Fast User Switching, which XP had long before any other OS picked it up.
There's a reason for that - a very good one, in fact. No other OS has "Fast User Switching". FUS is a Microsoft 'feature' to make up for the fact that it does not allow for multiple, concurrent logins on the same machine.
Though, if you're right, I guess we'll have to go back to AT&T/Bell labs in the 1970s and tell those guys to knock off all that research on allowing dozens of users to use graphical display terminals, with full system access, concurrently. Microsoft isn't supposed to invent that for another 30 years!
(I will say one thing... Microsoft's RDP is a good protocol and a good implementation. It beats the pants off of anything else available for what it does.)
You mean Shadow Copy? That was introduced in Windows 2000 Server-side, and Windows XP client-side? And does the same thing Time Machine does? You're so full of crap.
Na, I was thinking of a feature like Shadow Copy, which actually worked in a pragmatic fashion and is not fundamentally incompatible with other products released by Microsoft. But then, I'm prone to bouts of fantasy.
VSC is almost entirely useless on XP, at that. In 2003, it's marginally useful - it helps work around some design flaws in Outlook, NTFS, and other programs that make running a Windows network a bit of a pain. So I can thank them for that, I suppose.
It's hard to "rip something off" in the event that what you offer actually works.
Hell, they don't even have simple search indexing working well in Vista, yet.
In what way is it "not working well?" Although I suppose "not working well" is so vague that you could just handwave an answer even if it was perfect.
By "not work well" I mean "still consumes massive amounts of resources for what it does, and when it does it, it does it excessively".
But, consider: Windows still can not approximately estimate the time it will take to copy a file from one local directory to another.
I haven't seen an OS yet that does a good job of this.
Maybe it's the tools I use, but I experience a "good job" of this kind of indication on a daily basis - or, at least, a good enough job at faking it that I don't notice. Any time I scp a file, or copy a file with thunar, extract a file from an archive file - and so on. For that matter, various archive programs in Windows do a half decent job at it.
It's not so much that Windows doesn't do it perfectly. It's not even in the realm of reasonable. A message saying "12 hours remaining" for copying 20Mb of files to a CDR? That, and similar things, are regular occurrences. (Then there's the "progress bar" on such copies/moves, which when copying many small files, typically 'fills up' long before the process is completed... or did they finally hide/fix that?)
I agree with your analogy/example. It's like saying "we shouldn't have cruise control in cars because people won't know how to use it". Uh, yeah we should, actually - because a lot of people can and will use it.
That said, a universal remote trumps a smartphone for anything like this. I'll gree with you on that one.
If you want to do full virtualization look for server class CPUs. Xeons and Opterons. Using Newegg's power search [newegg.com] there is an option to filter by CPU's that support virtualization technology.
You can do that with "desktop" class CPUs, too - just fine. Only substantial difference between Opteron and Phenom 1 and 2 is the ability to have multiple CPUs; a Phenom or even an Athlon 64 x2, or I believe an Intel Core or Intel Core Duo, will do the job just fine. They all (iirc) have VT extensions.
You say you want to go "cheap", that you don't want to spent too much money, yadda yadda... and then you go on to mention things like "cheap" shared disk and "cheap" blade servers?
What you realistically need and want are two different things.
I'd suggest a cheap quad-core AMD Phenom II system with 8G or so of RAM. Nothing too fancy. that I assume you're going to be running a Windows host OS, or VMWare ESX. More RAM will be needed for the Windows host OS, obviously.
Absolute lowest-end hardware you'd want to look at getting is an AMD Athlon 64 x2 or Intel Core (IIRC) based system. In other words, you want/need the VT support, or it'll be purely an emulated environment, and substantially slower than native (30%?), not just marginally (10%?).
I recommend AMD hardware because it's got a better price/performance point, and because unlike the other stuff in the "reasonable midprice" range for Intel, it's got the memory controller/north bridge integrated into the CPU (for newer gen stuff). I'd say go Phenom or Phenom II without any hesitation.
With a CPU like this, there's no reason you couldn't build a full system for around $450-500, sans storage. You could probably find a suitable "starter"/deal system for $300 from TigerDirect that'll do the job just fine with a little more RAM and another drive.
For disk, just go with an SATA RAID card (LSI are good) and 3 1Tb disks. That's about as cheap as you'll get and still have room to work.
I'll be honest and note that I've not actually used Vista since shortly after SP1 was released. At the time, "Vista Ready" hardware was still commonplace, but still... no reason for that kind of kludgery.
But, also: writes might be low for the indexer, but how about reads? 3M RAM also sounds pretty reasonable to me for a 'dumb' indexing tool. So maybe they've improved the things.
Windows/Live Search is another matter entirely.
Uh, what?
This isn't "big time desktop software". This is "what comes with all the distributions". Nobody sane is going to build (say) GNOME 1 or a prior KDE for one of these devices (and nor should they have to). But even the current lightweight DEs are somewhat heavy on these machines, after you consider the memory use of basic applications like Firefox, OpenOffice, and Tbird. For whatever reason, this combination seems a bit heavier under Linux than it is under Windows (XP).
And using twm or similar? Surely you jest (or are simply out of touch). There's a reason why nobody uses that anymore. It sucked, hard: it was/is awkward and cluttered.
Saying there was a single cause to the Roman decline and falls is myopic. The causes are many and varied - endemic to the Roman culture and political system, just as our problems are. Sadly, many Roman societal faults are being mimicked by our country (USA) and our culture (Western society as a whole):
- Currency devaluation
- Loss of a societal will and identity
- Increased 'multiculturalism' without assimilation followed by overwhelming foreigner immigration
- Bread and circuses
- Political power consolidation
- Increased demagoguery
- Political partisanship
- Rhetoric/propaganda increases
- Lack of focus on essential societal functions/preference for money changers and entertainment type roles
- sapping of the treasury by war efforts
- sapping of the treasury by bread and circuses
- sapping of the treasury by crooked politicians
- increased corruption in general (due to the loss of cultural standards and expectations)
- depletion of the young generations through war
- decreased breeding resulting in/from affluence resulting in a further top-heavy society
- the slow destruction of the basis of their military/political/economic power (in the case of the Romans, salt (from/and) slavery; in the case of Americans, oil).
And many more, I'm sure. However, it is ingenious to say that it comes down to "trying to impose its political power and military will far more broadly than it could manage". That neither adequately describes the Roman situation (or the US), or gives any honesty to the matter. It wasn't so much that the military was over-extended; it's that it was over-extended with everything else going on at home, with a military largely composed of people seeking Roman citizenry and/or brought into the military from the fighters from conquered people. The fall of Rome was not a military fall - though that was how the fall was punctuated. The fall of Rome was largely cultural - endemic, like a cancer - and the flu was simply what did them in.
No, we're not in the same boat. But anyone who takes more than a cursory look can see quite a few similarities between the two models. We may or may not be headed in the same direction; there might be still be time to change course. Maybe.
You're right, it would be better to increase the ranks of the National Guard and, when they're not on active duty, they can just take over the role of police officers! After all, most cops are ex-military anyway, right?
Or, I know! Let the CIA take over the role of the FBI. Because they both do the basic same thing, right?
Or the Coast Guard can take over the State Police jobs. Because they've got similar mobility and response requirements.
(That was sarcasm.)
You're either a troll or lacking knowledge about the division of power/authority/responsibility in this country to such a degree that you should listen, and learn a little bit before splurting out prematurely.
Now, making suggestions about the reorganization of the various agencies/roles within the Federal government is one thing. Suggesting what you suggest is kinda batty.
As for your initial, potentially rhetorical question: you call the police. Usually, this means you call 911 - just like every 5-year-old knows how to do. High-speed car chase, murder, espionage, etc. - it really doesn't matter. The local police have all the other appropriate agencies on speed dial due to frequent inter-operation. And if for some odd reason they don't, they know how to use a phone book.
Really, it's not that hard. This shit is broken down by role and realm for a reason: local knowledge isn't terribly useful at the global level, and vice versa.
I'll believe it when I see it. Dismantling government agency power has most certainly not been Obama's agenda in the scant months he's been President. In fact, it's quite the opposite.
What are the notable things Obama has done in his Presidency so far? He's substantially increased government control of the private sector, ensuring private industry and banking will be beholden to government for a good time to come. He's increased the power and responsibility of various agencies (by unconstitutional fiat) substantially. He's done quite a bit in the direction of not splitting power up into different agencies to prevent an 'ubergovernment' agency/unit.
Also: how is moving cybersecurity directly under the authority of the President anything approaching a move to "split power"? It looks like a move to aggregate and increase power to me - IE, more of the same kind of thing that you say lead to the formation of DHS.
Now, you might be right. But in my assessment of the man, such a move runs contrary not only to his policy, but his very grain. There has been no indication that he prefers anything but centralized, omnipresent control, and I'll be gratefully, if somewhat skeptically, surprised if he moves in any other direction.
I'm not entirely sure if this will play out as you think it will, but I'm certain it's not good news for us "consumers" - previously known as citizens.
DHS, at least, has bureaucracy to worry about and fight through. The Executive is, essentially, the President. Thats worrisome: the Presidency already has substantially more authority than the President did 4, 8, or 12 years ago. Bush drastically increased that authority, and Obama does not seem like the kind of person who wouldn't use it to its fullest extent.
Moving yet-another (major) responsibility/power under the President makes me uneasy. Unlike DHS, the President is an innately political creature. The potential for abuse of political opponents is very high.
For those of us following the doublespeak-inspired Fairness Doctrine, this is kind of scary. I really don't want them to push through the same BS "fairness" filters to the Internet, especially since all major news is now being filtered through said Internet, now that the newspapers are going tits up.
GNOME and KDE are painfully slow on machines with Netbook type specs, though. KDE4, in particular.
A file search index should not constantly result in your disks spinning as the indexer does its job. The Vista services don't. Really, if you're going to do indexing, index once a day, or do it "live" by monitoring the filesystem live (aka Spotlight, I think it's called, on OSX). This is one of those either-or propositions, as otherwise it's entirely too consumptive of resources for how often it's realistically used.
As for browsers and "thin clients" (did you mean dumb terminal? TCs are the 'new' era)... the irony is that these monsterous browsers are going to keep us shackled to the workstation, because putting (say) 50 users on a terminal server, each running a browser clocking in at 150-250+ Mb and running CPU-hungry javascript and Flash... well, that's not fun or cheap, and a server maintenance nightmare to boot.
Well, it's bad news for a reason he didn't quite mention. The bad news is that it's likely, in part, due to how pokey Linux has gotten on the desktop in the last 5 years.
We need a serious initiative within open source to push for a feature-lock for a year or two (or even 6 months), and focus on improving the ability of OSS to run within small constraints. Granted, a lot of this is happening currently (see: Firefox), but I think a more concerted effort needs to be taken.
Microsoft's fascination with taking advantage of new hardware and technologies has led to a consistent decrease in performance over the years, with Vista perhaps being the most obvious and poorly received example.
Oh, please. A "fascination with taking advantage of new hardware and technologies" is not why Windows has sucked on an an epic level. Windows has always been an "also ran" when it comes to adapting "new hardware and technologies". Always.
Hardware support? Even the abysmal Mac OS 9 had more leading-edge hardware support than W9x and W2K on their respective releases. Windows XP and 2k3 can, and have been, a huge pain to install if you've got SATA and/or necessary USB devices on the system. Sure, decent support is available after you're installed - but that's not due to Microsoft.
Emerging technologies? Can you name one software/OS/desktop feature which MS was first-to-market on for Windows? I seem to remember something called Cairo that was making news back in the mid-90s, which had a feature list similar to what we now know as Time Machine - on OS X. MS still hasn't come up with such a functionality. Hell, they don't even have simple search indexing working well in Vista, yet.
No, MS has been behind the curve with implementation - and well ahead of it with outright lies and broken promises ("Vista Ready", anyone?)
Historically, these are the things a new version of Windows has been certain to bring to the table:
* Slower performance
* Bigger memory footprint with little related advantage (see "slower performance").
* The first release/pre-SP will be buggy, unstable, and nearly unusable.
* A lot of stuff that's supposed to work, won't. This includes applications which are supposedly designed for said OS.
* If it's a complete lemon, they'll silently drop actual support and focus their efforts on their next release (See: ME -> 2k, Vista -> W7).
Yes, there are various other improvements to new Windows releases. But, consider: Windows still can not approximately estimate the time it will take to copy a file from one local directory to another. That's hardly a focus on new technologies.
Though, I absolutely agree with you on the whole low-end focus in the IT industry being a good deal for everyone. Now, if only we could get away from the "the browser is the OS" idea, as we're running into all sorts of the same bloat and instability we got with OSes, as browser developers re-implement containers and other OS-level features at a highly abstracted level.
Well, there's another factor in there, too: the level of technical competence required to 'break in' to IT was much lower than it has been for the past 5+ years. Back then, there was a huge demand, and a lot of people who shouldn't have been allowed near a computer, were. (Which isn't to say this was you, mind.)
The competent IT people with science backgrounds ended up making a lot of the rules by which we play today, but just the same, I highly doubt many of them had resumes at the time which would, once translated into modern technology terms, get them in the door for an interview.
Finally, "it's difficult as hell and you've got to know the right people" is slightly different than "it's a tenable possibility". Getting to know the right people can, and likely will, take more time and effort on the OPs part than acquiring the necessary technical skills - and that's just to get in the door for an interview.
What is that, and why is it hosted on the cia.gov site?