It's funny you should mention grease under fingernails. I've known a couple IT people to quit paying IT jobs for, of all things, mechanics jobs or something as trivial as
Why are they doing it? Well, for one, it pays better, and two, there is less "shit" to put up with. Managers hire people who are, by nature of their field, tinkerers at heart despite the various lifecycle and project management techniques for software development, etc. and then get pissed when their software engineers aren't as "productive" as they "should" be (say, mechanical engineers or environmental engineers). Software is expensive - as is its upkeep and support - but companies simply don't want to pay it. They also don't want to have to hear "no, that's not possible," from a "highly paid employee", even if it's qualified with "but we can do it this way".
I've heard of a lot more people jumping ship than just the few I've known, too. And while it's not exactly something that's happening everywhere, there appears to be an increase from where I sit. A mechanic here, a building contractor there... hell, I'm thinking of going back to school and becoming a machinist.
It astounds me that, 50+ years after the inception of the "cubicle farm" we still have people who not only defend it as "just as good", but actually seem to think it's better for workers and company alike.
"The issue managers are facing is with retention, not hiring. That means the work environment is not living up to the employee's expectation," he says. For instance, many younger workers expect to get an office immediately or be paid at a rate higher than entry level.
I've got a couple points to add (subtract) from this.
First - and this is speaking personally - it might be easier to retain employees if you would advertise honestly for positions. I have seen so many jobs which are advertised as this-or-that developer, or such-and-such administrator, and when I finally get ahold of a human during the hiring process, I find out that - voila! - no, you'll primarily be doing tech support.
Secondly, it seems reasonable to me - entirely so - that a person interviewing for a job should be able to expect that they will be compensated for the 5 years of experience they have and which was required for the position. It is not only rude, it is insulting to offer someone an entry-level salary. It's even worse when you've got nonsense like "IT Professional" positions being advertised as requiring a bachelors' and several years' experience, and all they're offering is a couple dollars over minimum wage. This bullshit is only possible because, despite what "IT Managers" are saying, there is a serious glut of IT people out there with little to no experience, and who are unable to get any due to stringent hiring requirements.
As for managers' jobs being hard? Cry me a freakin' river. People are different and require different approachs; that's the primary job of a manager, and probably the one that matters most from the perspective of subordinates. Either you do it, or you're not a manager, and should be fired.
Twenty-three percent of respondents said retaining existing staff is the top concern, while 22% said they struggle to find new qualified candidates.
Yeah, it's going to be difficult to find qualified candidates if you're only offering entry wages with few benefits to people in their 30s....
While I concur that he is indeed full of shit, OS X (I've seen 10.1 and 10.3) did/does run surprisingly well on my iMac G3 333Mhz w/ 512Mb. it initially had 64Mb, and the system indeed installed; compared to, say, WXP or Enlightenment E17 at the time (or what there was of it), the -visual- performance was stellar. Yes, it was grindy and slow to do anything with that much RAM, but short of disk access, 512Mb appears more than sufficient.
(I should note that I'm an IBM Thinkpad/Linux/Debian/XFCE4 user myself, though I used E16 exclusively up until KDE3 came out, tried it, and then found XFCE)
Hmm! I wonder whether there might be one, single over-riding change in the West's work force which might account for these changes in approach. What might account for:
- juniors thinking they know better than seniors - no clear pecking order - wagging the dog - not focusing on what matters - plenty of politics
I don't think it's so simple as "incompetents" running the show. There was a systemic change which resulted in those incompetents being able to make it to the top; a systemic change which put away with excellence, effort, and what have you. I might even say the changes had a significant "socialist/Marxist" bent to them, though I don't think that cultural shift is to blame.
The "Atlantis Blueprint" supposes that Atlantis was/is on Antarctica. The last pole shift resulted in the Antarctic ice cap to migrate where it was previously - the South Pacific/Australia area - to where it is now - Atlantis/Antarctica.
This book also addresses all/most other possible locations for it, IIRC including the (submerged) plateaus in the Gulf of Mexico, a Mediterranean and East Atlantic island or three, and a touch on the "Mu" legend (which is the Pacific version of the Atlantis legend: interestly, both the Atlantic and Pacific have direct access to Antarctica. If the magnetic poles were (say) 10 degrees further north (from what they are now), a large percentage of Antarctica's land mass would be not that much different than the US.
If you look at how Atlantis was described (center of the world, surrounded by oceans - plural - and with mountains, amongst other things), the location would have to be fairly large, or at least immensely wealthy, to garter the kind of fame they earned worldwide through the Atlantis/Mu/Lemuria myths.
Oh yeah, and the Atlantis story shares a great deal in common with ancient religious books; for instance, the angels who visited Noah before the flood (white, shimmering, etc.) are similar to divine beings as described by native Americans and other races throughout the globe - and a peoples capable of traveling the world-over fairly effortlessly is consistent with the remains they've likely left.
The biggest shortcoming of the C66 was, of course, the fact that it couldn't display realistic porn. Brave humanitarians have, fortunately, fixed this problem with modern computers quite sufficiently.
The book "The Atlantis Blueprint" is one of, if not the, best books I've seen on this topic; it goes into the topics of shared myths and geological/geographical/archaeological evidence which pertains to the possibility of, not only an "Atlantis" but also looks at other possible explanations. I could not read the book without coming to the conclusion that there truly was a "prehistory" civilization here which we now vaguely refer to as "Atlantis" which new of a coming cataclysmic disaster, and learned a lot about the legends of the world and world-impacting elements which occurred in the past which may have been that cataclysmic disaster.
Of note as it pertains to your post, the Plato account of the destruction of Atlantis is covered specifically in this book. It is likely that Plato, while in Egypt, read an account of that very thing which had been written several thousand years prior and passed down through time.
In some versions of this "myth" the Pyramids and Great Sphynx have a very central role, as do the many pyramids and "holy sites" throughout the world. (Look up this in relation to ley lines/Roslyn line/golden ratio - there are literally thousands of pyramids and religious structures on predictable intersects too concise to be random or chance).
This is akin to the inexperienced or unfamiliar system administrator making a minute change he thinks will do one thing, but due to extenuating circumstances unbeknown to him, have broad implications. Except an order of magnitude more complex, with much more drastic possible implications.
No, we can't really find these things out until we experiment some more, but we really do need to find out a) a good picture of what exactly the jelly fish's genome is, and how and what other genes in that jellyfish interact with the 'glow' gene, and b) a complete understanding of the modified organism. We have neither. We're like the inexperienced user who's installing christmas light programs on the desktop, unaware of the bundled spyware, or possible DLL conflicts.
This is astoundingly disturbing and irresponsible. I can't get over it, especially in light of where this took place: Asia.
It's already profoundly simple for diseases to jump from one species to another, with either one species being a host carrier or an ill, infected carrier, and it's all the more common to happen with species which are:
a) genetically and physiologically similar, ie. from pigs to humans, or from primates to humans (monkeypox) b) creatures which have regular contact, i.e. from cats to humans, deer to humans (chronic wasting disease), cattle to humans (mad cow), etc.
And, specifically, a combination of the two: something like AIDS/HIV.
Combining a species which has close, daily proximity with both humans and other cats, and which has the propensity to have large, expansive populations seems downright foolish. A parasite or virus from normal cats manages to get into the cloned cat (where it wouldn't infect the human, normally), mutates to the newer genes, and then migrates to the researchers. Voila, instant new disease (with potentially horrid results).
(on a side note: anyone with kids who have been scared by cat eyes in a dark corner (my 3-year-old son would not go past the 'spare room' which is the cat's room for weeks after he saw the cat's eyes reflecting the hallway light) realize the potential for these cats as useful babysitters: kids, leave your room and the demoncat will get you!)
My boss was considering allowing XP onto our network and I was sweating bullets. That was one administration nightmare I did not want. In all honesty, I'd rather hop back to win98 instead of Vista, and that's a scary thought.
There is no such thing as absolute security, and your statement demonstrates an ignorance of this.
A key is not necessarily an insecure solution. It's as secure as any major computing authentication mechanism, at least. No, the key is only as secure as the lock is strong and as careful as the key owner is. Which, in most of both cases, is "not very", but usually it's strong enough to keep out all but the most determined criminal.
I don't disagree about armed guards, but there are plenty of ways in which that's not a perfect system, too. Plastic surgery, synthetics, impersonators, bribes, subterfuge, etc. - they can all be used to circumvent the image recognition of the guard.
First off, NTFS isn't a legacy filesystem. It's a bit slow and poorly designed, but it's got quite a lot of features that are right up there with the most modern filesystems.
Second, a relational database operating at the level of a filesystem - that is, on physical disks as opposed to in RAM - is beyond stupid. Yes, being able to index everything seamlessly and have an instant reference to a file you just saved is nice, but to do it the way MS was attempting to do it was stupid - there are ways to do the same thing in a much cleaner fashion.
What is the single most important characteristic of a database server? Memory! Why? Because database transactions are expensive, and digging into swap - that is, physical disk - to perform them would slow the system to a crawl. It's a cute idea, but it is absolutely foolhardy to attempt to add database functionality as an abstraction layer to an existing filesystem (and if any were capable of it, NTFS, HFS+ or reiserfs would be) is horribly ignorant of the tax such operations would take on hardware.
As for better ways to perform the same task: there's the way Apple indexes files in their latest versions of OS X (10.4-10.5?), which is frankly astounding in how seamlessly it works. Not only the backup feature they added to 10.5 but also their indexing service, which afaik sits with an open socket or similar between the filesystem and API for disk operations and keeps an actively updated index.
Hell, even slocate is preferable: how often do you add all that many files? How often can you not find what you've worked on that day? Not very, in either case - which are the only real scenarios where such a tool would be useful, and not just "hey look at this" neat (which is what I esteem the instantaneous nature of the mac indexing service - neat, but not really necessary).
No, what you propose isn't really workable, re: support. However, it would be reasonable to expect a more open approach to things - like, say, use and/or documentation of file formats used, and public access to the access mechanisms. Most proprietary software works in such a fashion which would be analogous to, say, a Ford engine breaking if a mechanic hooked up a non-Ford diagnostic tool.
I don't know. I'd personally go up for an A64 x2 processor. It is absolutely astounding how much an extra core will speed up Windows on routine tasks while using WXP Pro 64 bit- though I'll admit to not being much of a gamer.
I'll reserve judgement on both Intel and AMD's coming offerings until they're out - or, at least, until I see a decent price/performance breakdown. The one thing I can almost be certain of is that AMD will have a better price/performance break point - and depending on how much better Intel's new offering is, that'll be enough for most people. Lately, I've been looking more at heat, noise, and power consumption than speed, because frankly I don't need the speed and I've grown tired of buying a new computer every x years because the previous one cooked itself.
And AMD still trounces Intel in memory management, without even a doubt. Might take Intel a while to catch up on that - and the memory management seems to have a much bigger impact on perceived performance than raw clock and processor performance, I've noticed.
Oh but security and usability are at odds. While, inside a void, the statement that they aren't at odds is certainly true, that is an idyllic situation and not something even remotely real-world.
In the real world, users have gotten accustomed to the status quo. Any change is, therefore, at odds with them getting their real work done through interference with their work flow - whether it's something like a new OS upgrade, different software to learn, or something as simple as a password change. User friendliness can be defined by how familiar and comfortable the software is for the user, as well as how easy it is to use intuitively - though not one or the other holding higher than the other. Any change, whether for security purposes or not, will mess that up. If a user has to change or interfere with their process of getting work done, then work friendliness has been impeded.
So, a change - an increase - in security is indeed a decrease in user friendliness, no matter how small. Short of using DNA sequences scanned at the time of log-on - and doing so automatically - this will always be the case.
As a crude analogy: having to unlock your front door when coming home with a bag of groceries is an impediment to user friendliness. It would be so much more user friendly to not require the lock - or the door, for that matter. However, that door and lock are necessary components. Inconvenient, yes, but tough shit.
FOr most people, there's a lot more to it than just speed, though. Speed is a big one, but price is also big, and so is product loyalty - though most people are hesitant to admit it. There are an awful lot of people who started buying AMD because they were cheaper (even if they were technically inferior in many/most/all respects), and have continued to do so for that very same reason. A change in relative status of price will not impact the decision making process of these people: AMD has a track record of about 8 years of superior processors to back them up, unlike Intel which has had a number of spectacularly unimpressive products in the same time frame.
For that matter, the release of this CPU won't change the decision making process of almost everyone else who buys AMD, either. I don't know about you, but a low price/performance ratio is a pretty big factor when I and the people I know buy. AMD still wins that fight hands down, and is likely to do so for some time: anyone who buys on price/performance, and anyone who buys "whatever's cheapest" will be getting AMD.
That's a possibility, but consider: more bugs don't only inherently come with added complexity, but it's also more difficult to sort out that complexity from an attacker's standpoint - especially when it's almost recombinant, with so many different options for virtualization.
Think of it as open-faced obscurity. Not only does an attack have to take advantage of the world-facing component and operating system, but then it's got to take advantage of the underlying host OS. That host OS isn't always going to be the same, let alone the same version.
Or a (crude) analogy: an interrogator can try the same technique on three psychopathic murderers and only see results on one of the three. Why? Because each of those three psychopaths are going to have different underpinnings that make them tick. Even if their world-facing qualities are the same, and their motivations similar, no two are going to be -exactly- alike. Flawed or not, each additional layer between the shell and the delicious nougat in the center is going to protect all that much better.
I don't know about anyone else, but when I think of Sandisk, I don't think of "that market-leading company that makes flash drives and CF cards" I think of them as "that company which makes trendy products at inflated prices with a lower cost/benefit than the competition, and often a lower quality".
In a word: ridiculous. This is really short of nothing but a marketing gimick, and if anything it should speak of the possible lack of quality of the game.
This isn't 1995 anymore - you know, when high-end gaming stations were still doing 2.5D and the graphics in games like Carmagedon taxed the machine? Even a relatively small (movie) shop can produce the polygon/render quality of Toy Story without much problem, in terms of computing quality; a single gaming computer of today has probably close to 10 times (or more) the raw computing ability of one from that era - and that's not even including the advances in the graphical technologies which manifest that computing ability.
Sure, your computer (Playstation 3, XB2, whatever) can, in all-likelihood, render a scene of comparable quality to Toy Story. But so what? What made Toy Story (and Pixar in general) as successful as they were (are) is the fact that they're a company with good animators, storytellers, and film makers. Granted, they'd probably not be as large or as successful now as they are if it wasn't for their groundbreaking use of technology, but they could've made the same (basic) film with traditional animation methods, too.
What, is the sensitive urbanite concerned about dangerous moral precedence?
If that concerns you, maybe you should think about your carbon footprint and what living in a city/urban environment does to the environment compared to living elsewhere, and seriously consider stop consuming/buying so much. You'll kill a lot fewer bugs if you stop eating grain, for instance.
As long as we're going to get relativistic: wouldn't it be better to have one cow killed and eat it, than to have a whole field of corn/wheat/grain killed - as well as the bugs on it - to make a couple loaves of bread? I mean, that's like planticide or bugicide or something.
So much for the antitrust stuff and monopoly laws, eh?
Microsoft controls upwards of 90% of the desktop market, and a substantial percentage of the server market. And now they're flirting with buying up companies which cater to the majority of the customers who don't buy MS products - the people who do a lot just to avoid MS for political and technical reasons. This is just bad...
Trouble for eating meat? Buddy, if you're going to take an absolutely literalist interpretation of the KJV (which says "kill" and not "murder" like many modern translations), eating plants would be breaking a commandment, too. They are, after all, alive prior to being cut down for food.
No, according to that interpretation, Christians would have to be complete fruitarians.
Oh, I won't disagree with you there. But, in the cases where I've had hosed data, at least MSO was able to recover the data. Don't ask me how, but a non-formated 100-printed-page OOo document shouldn't be over 9Mb, especially if it has no images in it. Running strings, trying to extract the archive, etc. were unable to recover its content (if there was any content left in it). One moment I'm typing, and the next, *bam* down OOo goes; then it repeatedly crashed while trying to recover the document before I tried to figure out what was going on...
Slashdot Mirror
It's funny you should mention grease under fingernails. I've known a couple IT people to quit paying IT jobs for, of all things, mechanics jobs or something as trivial as
Why are they doing it? Well, for one, it pays better, and two, there is less "shit" to put up with. Managers hire people who are, by nature of their field, tinkerers at heart despite the various lifecycle and project management techniques for software development, etc. and then get pissed when their software engineers aren't as "productive" as they "should" be (say, mechanical engineers or environmental engineers). Software is expensive - as is its upkeep and support - but companies simply don't want to pay it. They also don't want to have to hear "no, that's not possible," from a "highly paid employee", even if it's qualified with "but we can do it this way".
I've heard of a lot more people jumping ship than just the few I've known, too. And while it's not exactly something that's happening everywhere, there appears to be an increase from where I sit. A mechanic here, a building contractor there... hell, I'm thinking of going back to school and becoming a machinist.
Absolutely!
It astounds me that, 50+ years after the inception of the "cubicle farm" we still have people who not only defend it as "just as good", but actually seem to think it's better for workers and company alike.
What a bunch of hokum.
"The issue managers are facing is with retention, not hiring. That means the work environment is not living up to the employee's expectation," he says. For instance, many younger workers expect to get an office immediately or be paid at a rate higher than entry level.
I've got a couple points to add (subtract) from this.
First - and this is speaking personally - it might be easier to retain employees if you would advertise honestly for positions. I have seen so many jobs which are advertised as this-or-that developer, or such-and-such administrator, and when I finally get ahold of a human during the hiring process, I find out that - voila! - no, you'll primarily be doing tech support.
Secondly, it seems reasonable to me - entirely so - that a person interviewing for a job should be able to expect that they will be compensated for the 5 years of experience they have and which was required for the position. It is not only rude, it is insulting to offer someone an entry-level salary. It's even worse when you've got nonsense like "IT Professional" positions being advertised as requiring a bachelors' and several years' experience, and all they're offering is a couple dollars over minimum wage. This bullshit is only possible because, despite what "IT Managers" are saying, there is a serious glut of IT people out there with little to no experience, and who are unable to get any due to stringent hiring requirements.
As for managers' jobs being hard? Cry me a freakin' river. People are different and require different approachs; that's the primary job of a manager, and probably the one that matters most from the perspective of subordinates. Either you do it, or you're not a manager, and should be fired.
Twenty-three percent of respondents said retaining existing staff is the top concern, while 22% said they struggle to find new qualified candidates.
Yeah, it's going to be difficult to find qualified candidates if you're only offering entry wages with few benefits to people in their 30s....
While I concur that he is indeed full of shit, OS X (I've seen 10.1 and 10.3) did/does run surprisingly well on my iMac G3 333Mhz w/ 512Mb. it initially had 64Mb, and the system indeed installed; compared to, say, WXP or Enlightenment E17 at the time (or what there was of it), the -visual- performance was stellar. Yes, it was grindy and slow to do anything with that much RAM, but short of disk access, 512Mb appears more than sufficient.
(I should note that I'm an IBM Thinkpad/Linux/Debian/XFCE4 user myself, though I used E16 exclusively up until KDE3 came out, tried it, and then found XFCE)
Hmm! I wonder whether there might be one, single over-riding change in the West's work force which might account for these changes in approach. What might account for:
- juniors thinking they know better than seniors
- no clear pecking order
- wagging the dog
- not focusing on what matters
- plenty of politics
I don't think it's so simple as "incompetents" running the show. There was a systemic change which resulted in those incompetents being able to make it to the top; a systemic change which put away with excellence, effort, and what have you. I might even say the changes had a significant "socialist/Marxist" bent to them, though I don't think that cultural shift is to blame.
The "Atlantis Blueprint" supposes that Atlantis was/is on Antarctica. The last pole shift resulted in the Antarctic ice cap to migrate where it was previously - the South Pacific/Australia area - to where it is now - Atlantis/Antarctica.
This book also addresses all/most other possible locations for it, IIRC including the (submerged) plateaus in the Gulf of Mexico, a Mediterranean and East Atlantic island or three, and a touch on the "Mu" legend (which is the Pacific version of the Atlantis legend: interestly, both the Atlantic and Pacific have direct access to Antarctica. If the magnetic poles were (say) 10 degrees further north (from what they are now), a large percentage of Antarctica's land mass would be not that much different than the US.
If you look at how Atlantis was described (center of the world, surrounded by oceans - plural - and with mountains, amongst other things), the location would have to be fairly large, or at least immensely wealthy, to garter the kind of fame they earned worldwide through the Atlantis/Mu/Lemuria myths.
Oh yeah, and the Atlantis story shares a great deal in common with ancient religious books; for instance, the angels who visited Noah before the flood (white, shimmering, etc.) are similar to divine beings as described by native Americans and other races throughout the globe - and a peoples capable of traveling the world-over fairly effortlessly is consistent with the remains they've likely left.
The biggest shortcoming of the C66 was, of course, the fact that it couldn't display realistic porn. Brave humanitarians have, fortunately, fixed this problem with modern computers quite sufficiently.
The book "The Atlantis Blueprint" is one of, if not the, best books I've seen on this topic; it goes into the topics of shared myths and geological/geographical/archaeological evidence which pertains to the possibility of, not only an "Atlantis" but also looks at other possible explanations. I could not read the book without coming to the conclusion that there truly was a "prehistory" civilization here which we now vaguely refer to as "Atlantis" which new of a coming cataclysmic disaster, and learned a lot about the legends of the world and world-impacting elements which occurred in the past which may have been that cataclysmic disaster.
Of note as it pertains to your post, the Plato account of the destruction of Atlantis is covered specifically in this book. It is likely that Plato, while in Egypt, read an account of that very thing which had been written several thousand years prior and passed down through time.
In some versions of this "myth" the Pyramids and Great Sphynx have a very central role, as do the many pyramids and "holy sites" throughout the world. (Look up this in relation to ley lines/Roslyn line/golden ratio - there are literally thousands of pyramids and religious structures on predictable intersects too concise to be random or chance).
No, I do know what I'm talking about.
This is akin to the inexperienced or unfamiliar system administrator making a minute change he thinks will do one thing, but due to extenuating circumstances unbeknown to him, have broad implications. Except an order of magnitude more complex, with much more drastic possible implications.
No, we can't really find these things out until we experiment some more, but we really do need to find out a) a good picture of what exactly the jelly fish's genome is, and how and what other genes in that jellyfish interact with the 'glow' gene, and b) a complete understanding of the modified organism. We have neither. We're like the inexperienced user who's installing christmas light programs on the desktop, unaware of the bundled spyware, or possible DLL conflicts.
This is astoundingly disturbing and irresponsible. I can't get over it, especially in light of where this took place: Asia.
It's already profoundly simple for diseases to jump from one species to another, with either one species being a host carrier or an ill, infected carrier, and it's all the more common to happen with species which are:
a) genetically and physiologically similar, ie. from pigs to humans, or from primates to humans (monkeypox)
b) creatures which have regular contact, i.e. from cats to humans, deer to humans (chronic wasting disease), cattle to humans (mad cow), etc.
And, specifically, a combination of the two: something like AIDS/HIV.
Combining a species which has close, daily proximity with both humans and other cats, and which has the propensity to have large, expansive populations seems downright foolish. A parasite or virus from normal cats manages to get into the cloned cat (where it wouldn't infect the human, normally), mutates to the newer genes, and then migrates to the researchers. Voila, instant new disease (with potentially horrid results).
(on a side note: anyone with kids who have been scared by cat eyes in a dark corner (my 3-year-old son would not go past the 'spare room' which is the cat's room for weeks after he saw the cat's eyes reflecting the hallway light) realize the potential for these cats as useful babysitters: kids, leave your room and the demoncat will get you!)
My boss was considering allowing XP onto our network and I was sweating bullets. That was one administration nightmare I did not want. In all honesty, I'd rather hop back to win98 instead of Vista, and that's a scary thought.
There is no such thing as absolute security, and your statement demonstrates an ignorance of this.
A key is not necessarily an insecure solution. It's as secure as any major computing authentication mechanism, at least. No, the key is only as secure as the lock is strong and as careful as the key owner is. Which, in most of both cases, is "not very", but usually it's strong enough to keep out all but the most determined criminal.
I don't disagree about armed guards, but there are plenty of ways in which that's not a perfect system, too. Plastic surgery, synthetics, impersonators, bribes, subterfuge, etc. - they can all be used to circumvent the image recognition of the guard.
First off, NTFS isn't a legacy filesystem. It's a bit slow and poorly designed, but it's got quite a lot of features that are right up there with the most modern filesystems.
Second, a relational database operating at the level of a filesystem - that is, on physical disks as opposed to in RAM - is beyond stupid. Yes, being able to index everything seamlessly and have an instant reference to a file you just saved is nice, but to do it the way MS was attempting to do it was stupid - there are ways to do the same thing in a much cleaner fashion.
What is the single most important characteristic of a database server? Memory! Why? Because database transactions are expensive, and digging into swap - that is, physical disk - to perform them would slow the system to a crawl. It's a cute idea, but it is absolutely foolhardy to attempt to add database functionality as an abstraction layer to an existing filesystem (and if any were capable of it, NTFS, HFS+ or reiserfs would be) is horribly ignorant of the tax such operations would take on hardware.
As for better ways to perform the same task: there's the way Apple indexes files in their latest versions of OS X (10.4-10.5?), which is frankly astounding in how seamlessly it works. Not only the backup feature they added to 10.5 but also their indexing service, which afaik sits with an open socket or similar between the filesystem and API for disk operations and keeps an actively updated index.
Hell, even slocate is preferable: how often do you add all that many files? How often can you not find what you've worked on that day? Not very, in either case - which are the only real scenarios where such a tool would be useful, and not just "hey look at this" neat (which is what I esteem the instantaneous nature of the mac indexing service - neat, but not really necessary).
Do you get free maintenance on your car, too?
No, what you propose isn't really workable, re: support. However, it would be reasonable to expect a more open approach to things - like, say, use and/or documentation of file formats used, and public access to the access mechanisms. Most proprietary software works in such a fashion which would be analogous to, say, a Ford engine breaking if a mechanic hooked up a non-Ford diagnostic tool.
I don't know. I'd personally go up for an A64 x2 processor. It is absolutely astounding how much an extra core will speed up Windows on routine tasks while using WXP Pro 64 bit- though I'll admit to not being much of a gamer.
I'll reserve judgement on both Intel and AMD's coming offerings until they're out - or, at least, until I see a decent price/performance breakdown. The one thing I can almost be certain of is that AMD will have a better price/performance break point - and depending on how much better Intel's new offering is, that'll be enough for most people. Lately, I've been looking more at heat, noise, and power consumption than speed, because frankly I don't need the speed and I've grown tired of buying a new computer every x years because the previous one cooked itself.
And AMD still trounces Intel in memory management, without even a doubt. Might take Intel a while to catch up on that - and the memory management seems to have a much bigger impact on perceived performance than raw clock and processor performance, I've noticed.
Oh but security and usability are at odds. While, inside a void, the statement that they aren't at odds is certainly true, that is an idyllic situation and not something even remotely real-world.
In the real world, users have gotten accustomed to the status quo. Any change is, therefore, at odds with them getting their real work done through interference with their work flow - whether it's something like a new OS upgrade, different software to learn, or something as simple as a password change. User friendliness can be defined by how familiar and comfortable the software is for the user, as well as how easy it is to use intuitively - though not one or the other holding higher than the other. Any change, whether for security purposes or not, will mess that up. If a user has to change or interfere with their process of getting work done, then work friendliness has been impeded.
So, a change - an increase - in security is indeed a decrease in user friendliness, no matter how small. Short of using DNA sequences scanned at the time of log-on - and doing so automatically - this will always be the case.
As a crude analogy: having to unlock your front door when coming home with a bag of groceries is an impediment to user friendliness. It would be so much more user friendly to not require the lock - or the door, for that matter. However, that door and lock are necessary components. Inconvenient, yes, but tough shit.
FOr most people, there's a lot more to it than just speed, though. Speed is a big one, but price is also big, and so is product loyalty - though most people are hesitant to admit it. There are an awful lot of people who started buying AMD because they were cheaper (even if they were technically inferior in many/most/all respects), and have continued to do so for that very same reason. A change in relative status of price will not impact the decision making process of these people: AMD has a track record of about 8 years of superior processors to back them up, unlike Intel which has had a number of spectacularly unimpressive products in the same time frame.
For that matter, the release of this CPU won't change the decision making process of almost everyone else who buys AMD, either. I don't know about you, but a low price/performance ratio is a pretty big factor when I and the people I know buy. AMD still wins that fight hands down, and is likely to do so for some time: anyone who buys on price/performance, and anyone who buys "whatever's cheapest" will be getting AMD.
Autobots, transform?
That's a possibility, but consider: more bugs don't only inherently come with added complexity, but it's also more difficult to sort out that complexity from an attacker's standpoint - especially when it's almost recombinant, with so many different options for virtualization.
Think of it as open-faced obscurity. Not only does an attack have to take advantage of the world-facing component and operating system, but then it's got to take advantage of the underlying host OS. That host OS isn't always going to be the same, let alone the same version.
Or a (crude) analogy: an interrogator can try the same technique on three psychopathic murderers and only see results on one of the three. Why? Because each of those three psychopaths are going to have different underpinnings that make them tick. Even if their world-facing qualities are the same, and their motivations similar, no two are going to be -exactly- alike. Flawed or not, each additional layer between the shell and the delicious nougat in the center is going to protect all that much better.
Basically, you're right, I think.
I don't know about anyone else, but when I think of Sandisk, I don't think of "that market-leading company that makes flash drives and CF cards" I think of them as "that company which makes trendy products at inflated prices with a lower cost/benefit than the competition, and often a lower quality".
In a word: ridiculous. This is really short of nothing but a marketing gimick, and if anything it should speak of the possible lack of quality of the game.
This isn't 1995 anymore - you know, when high-end gaming stations were still doing 2.5D and the graphics in games like Carmagedon taxed the machine? Even a relatively small (movie) shop can produce the polygon/render quality of Toy Story without much problem, in terms of computing quality; a single gaming computer of today has probably close to 10 times (or more) the raw computing ability of one from that era - and that's not even including the advances in the graphical technologies which manifest that computing ability.
Sure, your computer (Playstation 3, XB2, whatever) can, in all-likelihood, render a scene of comparable quality to Toy Story. But so what? What made Toy Story (and Pixar in general) as successful as they were (are) is the fact that they're a company with good animators, storytellers, and film makers. Granted, they'd probably not be as large or as successful now as they are if it wasn't for their groundbreaking use of technology, but they could've made the same (basic) film with traditional animation methods, too.
What, is the sensitive urbanite concerned about dangerous moral precedence?
If that concerns you, maybe you should think about your carbon footprint and what living in a city/urban environment does to the environment compared to living elsewhere, and seriously consider stop consuming/buying so much. You'll kill a lot fewer bugs if you stop eating grain, for instance.
As long as we're going to get relativistic: wouldn't it be better to have one cow killed and eat it, than to have a whole field of corn/wheat/grain killed - as well as the bugs on it - to make a couple loaves of bread? I mean, that's like planticide or bugicide or something.
So much for the antitrust stuff and monopoly laws, eh?
Microsoft controls upwards of 90% of the desktop market, and a substantial percentage of the server market. And now they're flirting with buying up companies which cater to the majority of the customers who don't buy MS products - the people who do a lot just to avoid MS for political and technical reasons. This is just bad...
Trouble for eating meat? Buddy, if you're going to take an absolutely literalist interpretation of the KJV (which says "kill" and not "murder" like many modern translations), eating plants would be breaking a commandment, too. They are, after all, alive prior to being cut down for food.
No, according to that interpretation, Christians would have to be complete fruitarians.
Oh, I won't disagree with you there. But, in the cases where I've had hosed data, at least MSO was able to recover the data. Don't ask me how, but a non-formated 100-printed-page OOo document shouldn't be over 9Mb, especially if it has no images in it. Running strings, trying to extract the archive, etc. were unable to recover its content (if there was any content left in it). One moment I'm typing, and the next, *bam* down OOo goes; then it repeatedly crashed while trying to recover the document before I tried to figure out what was going on...