According to the charts in the article the fall off in Doctorates in Scientific fields occured in 98-99. Additionally, By the mid 90's we could say we started to slow down a bit overall in the sciences.
I don't find that all too surprising considering I graduated HS in 92 in the Seattle area, I distinctly recall most "techie" people I knew at that time getting CS degrees so they could get a job at the Death Star in Redmond. I went the artsy route and worked on video and CD-ROM games until the web started to catch on big in 98 and transitioned to that world. If you look at the charts, the fallof is most pronounced during the dot-com boom.
While this is pure speculation, I think the rise of "computer science" stole some of the thunder of the "hard sciences" such as Physics, Engineering and Biology. If I recall corrrectly, Universities have seen enrollment in CS majors drop dramatically in the last couple years because IT isn't "it" right now.
In that light I don't see the article as doom and gloom. These days, bio and nano technology are starting to take off. Both these emerging industries rely upon strong education where as "computer science" as far as software and especially web development do not require advanced degrees such as doctorates.
So I'd expect to see the US showing some of it's former dominance in a few years from now after the HS grads get hip to those industries and sign up for the schooling.
I'm surprised that no one has filed suit claiming ownership of a patent which describes the mechanisms of email based spam.
You'd think with the DoJ and corporate suits out and about, someone would be trying to cash out on their chips....of course claiming ownership of spam would not be too handy for your image, but if you're a patently litigious batage image probably isn't a 10th as important as the payola.
In fact, a spam patent is probably the one item I wouldn't mind seeing used and abused through the legal system. Yeah... hypocrosy, but it's the thought that counts right?
Perhaps I wasn't the only one that read the headline and thought this was just an update to the Installing Linux on dead badgers article. Next week on Slashdot how to optimize your Linux Mummy Cluster.
Yarrr... Share me some MP3's on yon fat pipe matey.... Yarrr
And not a peg leg amongst the lot of 'em. These swabbies aren't much for piratin, but I ain't never met me a pirate worth his salt hailing from Sweden.
Back when I was earnin me sea-legs we'd be out a rapin' and a pillagin' and a downloading our warez over 28baud... and ain't no p2p in those days either.
Yarrr, more rapin and a pillagin and a downloadin' and less parades say me.
Last time I read a drunken rant by a blogger EVAR!!!!
I read and read and read... but still don't quite get it all.
I think he's whinging about the lack of developer exodus from the wintell.NET camp on over to CoCoa/Objective C.
Well durrr... I think it comes down to wanting to fill your pocket with something more than lint.
Not intending to troll, and I'm typing this on one of my 2 powerbooks, it's just that not many a 3rd party have gotten rich developing for Apple platforms. And when people do have a successfull product, Apple has tended to come up with their own version in house that kills the 3rd party app. On occasion, Apple has been known to be nice and just acquire said tech, but lately, they've taken no prisoners. Most the big apple apps these days are apps that used to be made by third parties. Most are rather raw at this time such as Garage Bad (Acid Wannabe) while Final Cut has slaughtered Premier.
When looking at Apples treatment of 3rd party apps and developers, their monolithic approach and the fact that in the last 5 years they've gone through a MAJOR OS change and have now migrated their processor architecture to 64-bit I'd expect most people to be keenly interested but taking a wait and see tact.
Surely, OS X is a beautiful OS and Apple puts out some sexy hardware, but with ~5% marketshare, not many are exactly looking at OS X as *the* platform to be developing for when it comes to reaching the masses and driving your sales figures.
Hopefully the G5 will catch on when they release the die-shrink to 90nm and the speed boosts to both 2.5ghz and 3.0ghz over the course of the summer. Personally, I've been waiting for that boost myself and plan on buying one when the 3ghz comes out.
But when it comes to 3rd party development for OS X desktop software? I'm not holding my breath waiting for a glut of new 3rd party apps anytime soon.
Just over a year ago I paid my CoLo provider $200.00 to do an install of RH9 on my Server and installed RH9 on my LAN server... if I'd only known then that RH would be end of lifing everything but it's enterprise products, I'd probably have opted for something else.
After this experience, I'm feeling very underwhelmed by Fedora, not that I'm worried about it being end of lifed, but feeling ditched by an OS, does not make one want to sign up for something related to that OS. Plus, reviewing Fedora's website, I found it very hard to find any actual documentation, the RH support site was very helpful, easy to use and made my life less stressfull when it came to dependancy issues with RPM packages or problems with source compiles.
Right now I don't have time to research alternative OS's to determine if I should go with SuSe, Debian or BSD. I am tempted to buy a shiny xserver from Apple, since all my desktops/laptops are OS X, and it offers a GUI remote admin tool, which *should* be rather slick. But, it also occured to me that upgrading full releases of the OS could require a CD, and that would be a pain in the ass in a CoLo situation. Then again, having everything run OS X would make life much simpler. And typically, any decent CoLo would be more than happy to perform a simple OS install for a bit of cash.
However, I must admit that I have grown rather accustomed to RPM and up2date and with OS X most everything GNU needs to be compiled from source, as I for one refuse to use FINK if only because I despise it and found it more a pain in the ass than just compiling sources. Since I can afford the 500$ for an RH ES license, I might just opt for that route to save myself the hassle of a major server migration.
On the otherhand, I've heard great things about Debians apt-get...
Ahhhh crap... Guess I'll just have to throw together a rig for Linux Release comparisons, give me an excuse to check out Gentoo as well.
Sorry for the lengthy post, but I think it describes the problems that RH has saddled me with in their move to enterprise only.
I for one will not stand for such speciesist slurrs to be posted online or otherwise.
Ugly bag of mostly water indeed. Atleast I don't look like someone squated over my head and took a crap on my forehead.
And besides, if Klingons are so great, why doesn't speaking their language get you laid?!?!? You try saying "ghu neH Ha' lItHa'?" to some chick and see what happens.
Name the country that used the following law enforcement tactics
- Authorizes the use "Secret" Search Warrants that may be carried out without the recipients knowledge and prevent the recipient from discussing said warrant and search with anyone including legal council, which do not define the nature of the search in any means.
- Makes it a Federal Offence to discuss any "secret action" taken by law enforcement by any knowledgeable party.
- Where National Security reasons apply allows suspects to be secretely detained only on law enforcements "reasonable" suspicion and to be held indefinitely without any formal charge nor the ability to seek council or contact anyone to infomr them of their detainment.
- Allows for Court proceedings to be held in secret and all records thereof to be sealed from the public.
Select the answer from the Following List
A) Soviet Russia (USSR) B) Nazi Germany C) United States of America D) All of the above
From the submitter: "Just one step close to Eric Arthur Blair's vision of 1984"
Sir, CCTV being used to monitor traffic is nothing new and being a slashdot reader muchless, lucky article submitter, I'd advise you to check the fastenings of your cranial mindwave protection device.
All who got the memo know quite well that 1984 conditions will have arrived in full when the TiVo records you.
This is a great business model for the RIAA. File lawsuits a few hundred at a time and let the checks roll in.
Too bad no one stands to gain financially by fighting back. Also too bad (correct me if I'm wrong) they choose to sue people who are either quite young or who are quite old. Have yet to hear of the RIAA sue someone who is say... 30's to 40's, owns a house and can afford some decent attornies.
Considering the age groups I've seen publicised, it makes me wonder just how random the RIAA's Kazaa user sampling really is. Until someone actively stands up and fights back, no precedent shall be set on this. Sure, the person might loose and have to pay more than they would have if they just settled... guess what we need is a good samaritan to step forth and martyr his/her self. I don't mind the RIAA getting *something* for the bits that were downloaded for free, what about 0.99$ US per provably non-fair use download plus court costs for their time?
This sue for bags of cash and take a few grand to be "mercifull" crap needs to stop.
Hold the menu key down for three seconds and the backlite activates without changing the screen location.
Hold down the "select" button during song play changes the time position indicator to a diamond allowing me to fast forward rewind with the jog dial without interuption in playing while holding down the ffw/rwd buttons for 3 seconds allows for skippy-style repositioning.
And what about directly inverse methods? Car lighters pop out when they are ready... Toasters pop the toast out when they are done and eggos are button shaped.
And when the elevator door tries to close and it senses an ubstruction, it recoils, if the obstruction persists, it starts dinging cause it's mad at you and wants to kick your ass.
Personally, I think the notion of Sun's Java Desktop to be entirely underwhelming. Almost pointless in fact. Actually, if it were a post on Slashdot, I'd moderate it redundant, if it weren't at -1 redundant already.
From what I've read at the Sun site, you get something based on SuSe with a hacked up Gnome front end and Java tied into as many things they could think of. Nothing reveloutionary... seems mainly to be an attempt to get StarOffice in front of people who might not otherwise even know it exists.... in fact, isn't this part of the walmart deal? So I guess that would explain it. Sun Java Desktop is for the walmart shopper and not the Linux/OSS initiate.
So in that light, it makes perfect sense to try to put the wizard behind the curtain and let the user deal with the smoke and mirrors, The average Walmart user will generally be too clueless to know what it really is other than that it's not windows. When looked at in that perspective, it actually makes sense to hide the underpinnings as much as possible, lest the curious and ignorant do something catastrophic since the more advanced users would be able to figure it out anyway.
Personally, if you want a unix-like system with a great desktop UI and productivity/development software, go with Apple if you can afford it. Linux on the desktop is still a few years off, AFAIAC.
Sh!t PHP coding is as old as the hills. Some of my favorite things I see _ALL_ the time:
Something bad happens while executing the code? Let's <? die("here's my database connection info in case you wanted it"); ?>
Then there was the client who's previous developer was some moron who stored the database connection info into a.inc file under htdocs!
The web "design" group who's MySQL database was wide open without authorizing with a password.
The arsehole developers who built themselves little backdoor webpages during development to exec shell commands and upload/exec files... not so much as an HTTP_AUTH to secure it with and would handily chmod 777 all uploaded files and put them under htdocs for ease in execution.
I've seen about 3 websites store credit card numbers unencrypted into a MySQL database.
I could go on and on and on, being a development gun for hire since 98, I've seen some things that defy all logic and explanation. In fact, I still wonder why they call it Computer Science. Now, Computational Arts I could buy into.
Everytime some new advance in bio-tech get's posted the gadget geeks and code pushers get ramped up into a ludite rage against this new evil threat to civilization itself.
Maybe if some of the readers who find themselves espousing the peril of eco-terror that awaits due to "mans ignoble tinkering with what it best left untouched" applied that same feverous perspective at lawmakers who vote for things like the DMCA and Patriot Act, they might find they have something in common.
This is a bad idea, what this would mean is that if you have a cold, have dental work done or go hoarse you would be unable to make purchases until the ailment subsided.
Do you want to be denied your Niquill purchase at 2am because some piece of plastic with a chip couldn't recognize your voice?
Yeah... I'm gonna sqitch from Oracle to MySQL
on
Why MySQL Grew So Fast
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
"On the other side of me, at that lunch, sat a database administrator whose facility is planning a migration from Oracle to MySQL"
Whatever moron made that decision needs to be outsourced to India. Thats sort of like trading in a shiny BMW for a freakin go-cart.
Sure, MySQL has gotten better, has always been speedy and is great for down and dirty webservices. But the bottom line is still the same: It's not a **real** database. Transactions? Stored Procedures? Triggers? Schemas? Groups? Views? Uhhhh Hello!!!
Granted, MySQL is popular; just about every cheapo hosting service has installed it and offers it up as part of their base level $20.00 a month hosting pack.
Being a seasoned webdeveloping gun for hire I deal with online data services all the time. Time and time again I use postgreSQL. Sure, the client always brings up the MySQL question, but when I show them what can be done with postgreSQL and what can't with MySQL it becomes glaringly obvious that MySQL is __NOT__ the tool to use if you have any real service to offer or data to mine.
For all you MySQL advocating web developers out there: If you put all the SQL functionality where it should be -- in the database -- and not the middleware you'd never even think of MySQL as a real alternative, because MySQL doesn't support that.
I'm not too up on Windows but isn't FAT depricated? IIRC it's all about NTFS these days and FAT is mainly used for dual-boot linux situations or where you need backward compatabilty. So if correct, this dispute shouldn't be monumental, but still interesting. Good to see some one's out there trying to kill off as many bogus patents as possible, though I'm sure no one envies that job. Also I'm still surprised no ones show up with archaeological evidence showing that Windows was first used in earthen hovels eons ago.
Personally, I'd like to advocate this... but can't Look at meat examples like the simple peep-hole in the door. Every front door (esp. apartments) have a peep-hole in the front door to see who's awaiting. So on the face, it's a good thing.
So a simple pass/fail concept online is good. But I see no gaurantees against spoofing.
This idea is one that relies upon trust. Trust in DRM concepts, which I am sure most here on/. would spit on at the slightest mention.
I would venture to say that anything DRM related needs to be regulated (for privacy relations) where individual actions (pr0n surfing -- it is a puritanical reality here in the US) should be insured against monitoring.
So ignore this post, I stand in the face of reason, and under Ashcroft my reason can not withstand. In fact, these words in 10 years time would stand as unrefutable treason as speech in the aid of terrorists.
"Gee nice laptop Bob, looks like one of those new DRM models" "Yeah, but none of my MP3's work!" "But you got more features Bob... and besides, MP3's are illegal." "Really???" "Really Bob."
I definitely plan on investing somewhere in the ballpark of 6-10k (no, I'm not rich) in this company the day it is available.
Sure, not that much, but if I can get in sub-$30.00 a share and see it go up to $40.00-60.00 within 24 weeks, that's money in the bank for me.
Looks like a sure fire winner, what with the stagnant economy and a viral marketer filing for an IPO, this ought to be a hot item.
Ohhhhh and as for my personal agenda besides a quick in and out ride on this ticket? I run nothing but OS X, IRIX and Redhat 9 (soon to be debian) at home and at my colo provider, so anything that makes Windows a nasty experience is A-OK by me.
I think all *nix enthusiasts should by in and feed the cause. The more virus, spam and crap on Windows the better I say.
Exactly, spot on about the windows rewrite. I'd been expecting Windows to crumple since 99 when it was completely obvious that the code was so huge and the company so micro-managed that no one person or group of people had any concept of the code as a whole.
I'm sure they plowed ahead on the NT-ization concept because starting from scratch is extremely costly. Even though MS has an army of programmers, imagine the hell that would have been stirred if MS suddenly announced that Windows was being end of lifed for a shiny new MS OS?
Plus a new OS requires all the existing apps to be ported, which is costly to both MS to write and the consumer to buy/integrate.
So in this case you can see that MS is locked into it's user base just as the users to MS's proprietary formats.
If you look at Apple, they had nothing to lose when they swapped out the OS, but found a novel way to allow for backwards compatability for their own and 3rd party apps.
However, MS has a lot to lose, approx 90% worldwide desktop market share. Not that they would lose all of it, but I could imagine a major exodus to other OS's or hardware platforms. And can you think of what that would do to MS's stock price?
Personally I think they made the right call in building on what they had but over-estimated themselves and have proven to not be able to deliver on all those promises.
And with that I come full-circle to my original post on this thread.
"MS's products have only gotten better, especially over the past 2-3 years."
That's a statement of praise for MS fulfilling basic expectations. Of course it's better.
What I am referring to is yesterdays announcement of the cutting of many features from longhorn-leghorn which shows that they are having some MAJOR problems with Windows development.
Consider their marketing hype over.Net that they publicly announced Blackbird (longhorn) in 2000 as the pure.NET Windows OS. Managers bought into.Net because MS hyped all these nifty things that were in the works for OS's after XP. So 6 years since that announcement they will still be without the full meal deal on.NET as advertised... And even saying it could take a decade to deliver some of these things they hyped longhorn over. think that might make some major customers look elsewhere for a server/client solution? And what happens when it's shown that Longhorn-leghorn is just as insecure as XP especially after all that "security is job 1" crap that the Gatester huffed about?
Imagine limiting the model. Impose the tax-levy at market share of 70% or greater. That would encourage companies to get big, but not get too big. That is, it would create a very strong incentive to not kill off too much competition.
But the problem there is that microsoft is engaged in many markets and some products that attain monopoly in their markets are given away for free... So in the case of Netscape, how would the government applied such a tax-levy?
Perhaps rather than a tax, perhaps the revocation of all patents on said companies products in the given market. So in the event of IE's market monopoly, all patents obtained by MS related to IE's functionality would be revoked, allowing for new competition to step in and compete without having to worry about IP infringement.
Slashdot Mirror
Wake me up when they get it going faster than the speed of light. Now, that would be a speed record worthy of a slashdotting.
According to the charts in the article the fall off in Doctorates in Scientific fields occured in 98-99. Additionally, By the mid 90's we could say we started to slow down a bit overall in the sciences.
I don't find that all too surprising considering I graduated HS in 92 in the Seattle area, I distinctly recall most "techie" people I knew at that time getting CS degrees so they could get a job at the Death Star in Redmond. I went the artsy route and worked on video and CD-ROM games until the web started to catch on big in 98 and transitioned to that world. If you look at the charts, the fallof is most pronounced during the dot-com boom.
While this is pure speculation, I think the rise of "computer science" stole some of the thunder of the "hard sciences" such as Physics, Engineering and Biology. If I recall corrrectly, Universities have seen enrollment in CS majors drop dramatically in the last couple years because IT isn't "it" right now.
In that light I don't see the article as doom and gloom.
These days, bio and nano technology are starting to take off.
Both these emerging industries rely upon strong education where as "computer science" as far as software and especially web development do not require advanced degrees such as doctorates.
So I'd expect to see the US showing some of it's former dominance in a few years from now after the HS grads get hip to those industries and sign up for the schooling.
I'm surprised that no one has filed suit claiming ownership of a patent which describes the mechanisms of email based spam.
...of course claiming ownership of spam would not be too handy for your image, but if you're a patently litigious batage image probably isn't a 10th as important as the payola.
:P
You'd think with the DoJ and corporate suits out and about, someone would be trying to cash out on their chips.
In fact, a spam patent is probably the one item I wouldn't mind seeing used and abused through the legal system.
Yeah... hypocrosy, but it's the thought that counts right?
Right?
Perhaps I wasn't the only one that read the headline and thought this was just an update to the Installing Linux on dead badgers article. Next week on Slashdot how to optimize your Linux Mummy Cluster.
But a bunch of bright lights a pretty PC does not make.
Yarrr ... Share me some MP3's on yon fat pipe matey .... Yarrr
... and ain't no p2p in those days either.
And not a peg leg amongst the lot of 'em. These swabbies aren't much for piratin, but I ain't never met me a pirate worth his salt hailing from Sweden.
Back when I was earnin me sea-legs we'd be out a rapin' and a pillagin' and a downloading our warez over 28baud
Yarrr, more rapin and a pillagin and a downloadin' and less parades say me.
Last time I read a drunken rant by a blogger EVAR!!!!
.NET camp on over to CoCoa/Objective C.
I read and read and read...
but still don't quite get it all.
I think he's whinging about the lack of developer exodus from the wintell
Well durrr... I think it comes down to wanting to fill your pocket with something more than lint.
Not intending to troll, and I'm typing this on one of my 2 powerbooks, it's just that not many a 3rd party have gotten rich developing for Apple platforms. And when people do have a successfull product, Apple has tended to come up with their own version in house that kills the 3rd party app. On occasion, Apple has been known to be nice and just acquire said tech, but lately, they've taken no prisoners. Most the big apple apps these days are apps that used to be made by third parties. Most are rather raw at this time such as Garage Bad (Acid Wannabe) while Final Cut has slaughtered Premier.
When looking at Apples treatment of 3rd party apps and developers, their monolithic approach and the fact that in the last 5 years they've gone through a MAJOR OS change and have now migrated their processor architecture to 64-bit I'd expect most people to be keenly interested but taking a wait and see tact.
Surely, OS X is a beautiful OS and Apple puts out some sexy hardware, but with ~5% marketshare, not many are exactly looking at OS X as *the* platform to be developing for when it comes to reaching the masses and driving your sales figures.
Hopefully the G5 will catch on when they release the die-shrink to 90nm and the speed boosts to both 2.5ghz and 3.0ghz over the course of the summer. Personally, I've been waiting for that boost myself and plan on buying one when the 3ghz comes out.
But when it comes to 3rd party development for OS X desktop software? I'm not holding my breath waiting for a glut of new 3rd party apps anytime soon.
Just over a year ago I paid my CoLo provider $200.00 to do an install of RH9 on my Server and installed RH9 on my LAN server... if I'd only known then that RH would be end of lifing everything but it's enterprise products, I'd probably have opted for something else.
After this experience, I'm feeling very underwhelmed by Fedora, not that I'm worried about it being end of lifed, but feeling ditched by an OS, does not make one want to sign up for something related to that OS. Plus, reviewing Fedora's website, I found it very hard to find any actual documentation, the RH support site was very helpful, easy to use and made my life less stressfull when it came to dependancy issues with RPM packages or problems with source compiles.
Right now I don't have time to research alternative OS's to determine if I should go with SuSe, Debian or BSD.
I am tempted to buy a shiny xserver from Apple, since all my desktops/laptops are OS X, and it offers a GUI remote admin tool, which *should* be rather slick. But, it also occured to me that upgrading full releases of the OS could require a CD, and that would be a pain in the ass in a CoLo situation. Then again, having everything run OS X would make life much simpler. And typically, any decent CoLo would be more than happy to perform a simple OS install for a bit of cash.
However, I must admit that I have grown rather accustomed to RPM and up2date and with OS X most everything GNU needs to be compiled from source, as I for one refuse to use FINK if only because I despise it and found it more a pain in the ass than just compiling sources. Since I can afford the 500$ for an RH ES license, I might just opt for that route to save myself the hassle of a major server migration.
On the otherhand, I've heard great things about Debians apt-get...
Ahhhh crap... Guess I'll just have to throw together a rig for Linux Release comparisons, give me an excuse to check out Gentoo as well.
Sorry for the lengthy post, but I think it describes the problems that RH has saddled me with in their move to enterprise only.
I for one will not stand for such speciesist slurrs to be posted online or otherwise.
Ugly bag of mostly water indeed.
Atleast I don't look like someone squated over my head and took a crap on my forehead.
And besides, if Klingons are so great, why doesn't speaking their language get you laid?!?!?
You try saying "ghu neH Ha' lItHa'?" to some chick and see what happens.
Name the country that used the following law enforcement tactics
- Authorizes the use "Secret" Search Warrants that may be carried out without the recipients knowledge and prevent the recipient from discussing said warrant and search with anyone including legal council, which do not define the nature of the search in any means.
- Makes it a Federal Offence to discuss any "secret action" taken by law enforcement by any knowledgeable party.
- Where National Security reasons apply allows suspects to be secretely detained only on law enforcements "reasonable" suspicion and to be held indefinitely without any formal charge nor the ability to seek council or contact anyone to infomr them of their detainment.
- Allows for Court proceedings to be held in secret and all records thereof to be sealed from the public.
Select the answer from the Following List
A) Soviet Russia (USSR)
B) Nazi Germany
C) United States of America
D) All of the above
From the submitter:
"Just one step close to Eric Arthur Blair's vision of 1984"
Sir, CCTV being used to monitor traffic is nothing new and being a slashdot reader muchless, lucky article submitter, I'd advise you to check the fastenings of your cranial mindwave protection device.
All who got the memo know quite well that 1984 conditions will have arrived in full when the TiVo records you.
Good day.
This is a great business model for the RIAA.
File lawsuits a few hundred at a time and let the checks roll in.
Too bad no one stands to gain financially by fighting back.
Also too bad (correct me if I'm wrong) they choose to sue people who are either quite young or who are quite old.
Have yet to hear of the RIAA sue someone who is say... 30's to 40's, owns a house and can afford some decent attornies.
Considering the age groups I've seen publicised, it makes me wonder just how random the RIAA's Kazaa user sampling really is. Until someone actively stands up and fights back, no precedent shall be set on this.
Sure, the person might loose and have to pay more than they would have if they just settled... guess what we need is a good samaritan to step forth and martyr his/her self.
I don't mind the RIAA getting *something* for the bits that were downloaded for free, what about 0.99$ US per provably non-fair use download plus court costs for their time?
This sue for bags of cash and take a few grand to be "mercifull" crap needs to stop.
Hold the menu key down for three seconds and the backlite activates without changing the screen location.
Hold down the "select" button during song play changes the time position indicator to a diamond allowing me to fast forward rewind with the jog dial without interuption in playing while holding down the ffw/rwd buttons for 3 seconds allows for skippy-style repositioning.
And what about directly inverse methods?
Car lighters pop out when they are ready...
Toasters pop the toast out when they are done and eggos are button shaped.
And when the elevator door tries to close and it senses an ubstruction, it recoils, if the obstruction persists, it starts dinging cause it's mad at you and wants to kick your ass.
Personally, I think the notion of Sun's Java Desktop to be entirely underwhelming. Almost pointless in fact.
Actually, if it were a post on Slashdot, I'd moderate it redundant, if it weren't at -1 redundant already.
From what I've read at the Sun site, you get something based on SuSe with a hacked up Gnome front end and Java tied into as many things they could think of. Nothing reveloutionary... seems mainly to be an attempt to get StarOffice in front of people who might not otherwise even know it exists.... in fact, isn't this part of the walmart deal? So I guess that would explain it. Sun Java Desktop is for the walmart shopper and not the Linux/OSS initiate.
So in that light, it makes perfect sense to try to put the wizard behind the curtain and let the user deal with the smoke and mirrors, The average Walmart user will generally be too clueless to know what it really is other than that it's not windows.
When looked at in that perspective, it actually makes sense to hide the underpinnings as much as possible, lest the curious and ignorant do something catastrophic since the more advanced users would be able to figure it out anyway.
Personally, if you want a unix-like system with a great desktop UI and productivity/development software, go with Apple if you can afford it. Linux on the desktop is still a few years off, AFAIAC.
Sh!t PHP coding is as old as the hills.
.inc file under htdocs!
... not so much as an HTTP_AUTH to secure it with and would handily chmod 777 all uploaded files and put them under htdocs for ease in execution.
Some of my favorite things I see _ALL_ the time:
Something bad happens while executing the code?
Let's <? die("here's my database connection info in case you wanted it"); ?>
Then there was the client who's previous developer was some moron who stored the database connection info into a
The web "design" group who's MySQL database was wide open without authorizing with a password.
The arsehole developers who built themselves little backdoor webpages during development to exec shell commands and upload/exec files
I've seen about 3 websites store credit card numbers unencrypted into a MySQL database.
I could go on and on and on, being a development gun for hire since 98, I've seen some things that defy all logic and explanation. In fact, I still wonder why they call it Computer Science. Now, Computational Arts I could buy into.
Everytime some new advance in bio-tech get's posted the gadget geeks and code pushers get ramped up into a ludite rage against this new evil threat to civilization itself.
Maybe if some of the readers who find themselves espousing the peril of eco-terror that awaits due to "mans ignoble tinkering with what it best left untouched" applied that same feverous perspective at lawmakers who vote for things like the DMCA and Patriot Act, they might find they have something in common.
Popcorn anyone?
This is a bad idea, what this would mean is that if you have a cold, have dental work done or go hoarse you would be unable to make purchases until the ailment subsided.
Do you want to be denied your Niquill purchase at 2am because some piece of plastic with a chip couldn't recognize your voice?
"On the other side of me, at that lunch, sat a database administrator whose facility is planning a migration from Oracle to MySQL"
Whatever moron made that decision needs to be outsourced to India. Thats sort of like trading in a shiny BMW for a freakin go-cart.
Sure, MySQL has gotten better, has always been speedy and is great for down and dirty webservices. But the bottom line is still the same: It's not a **real** database. Transactions? Stored Procedures? Triggers? Schemas? Groups? Views? Uhhhh Hello!!!
Granted, MySQL is popular; just about every cheapo hosting service has installed it and offers it up as part of their base level $20.00 a month hosting pack.
Being a seasoned webdeveloping gun for hire I deal with online data services all the time. Time and time again I use postgreSQL.
Sure, the client always brings up the MySQL question, but when I show them what can be done with postgreSQL and what can't with MySQL it becomes glaringly obvious that MySQL is __NOT__ the tool to use if you have any real service to offer or data to mine.
For all you MySQL advocating web developers out there:
If you put all the SQL functionality where it should be -- in the database -- and not the middleware you'd never even think of MySQL as a real alternative, because MySQL doesn't support that.
I'm not too up on Windows but isn't FAT depricated?
IIRC it's all about NTFS these days and FAT is mainly used for dual-boot linux situations or where you need backward compatabilty. So if correct, this dispute shouldn't be monumental, but still interesting. Good to see some one's out there trying to kill off as many bogus patents as possible, though I'm sure no one envies that job.
Also I'm still surprised no ones show up with archaeological evidence showing that Windows was first used in earthen hovels eons ago.
Personally, I'd like to advocate this... but can't
/. would spit on at the slightest mention.
Look at meat examples like the simple peep-hole in the door.
Every front door (esp. apartments) have a peep-hole in the front door to see who's awaiting.
So on the face, it's a good thing.
So a simple pass/fail concept online is good.
But I see no gaurantees against spoofing.
This idea is one that relies upon trust.
Trust in DRM concepts, which I am sure most here on
I would venture to say that anything DRM related needs to be regulated (for privacy relations) where individual actions (pr0n surfing -- it is a puritanical reality here in the US) should be insured against monitoring.
So ignore this post, I stand in the face of reason, and under Ashcroft my reason can not withstand. In fact, these words in 10 years time would stand as unrefutable treason as speech in the aid of terrorists.
In my office I'm the guerilla marketer. I buy the latest and greatest and most useless tech and hype it up while I swagger around the cubes all day.
...A week later...
It's done like this:
"hey Fred, nice laptop!"
"You betcha Bob!!! This is the latest thing, it has DRM"
"ohhhh really!?!?" -- looks confused.
"Really Bob."
"Gee nice laptop Bob, looks like one of those new DRM models"
"Yeah, but none of my MP3's work!"
"But you got more features Bob... and besides, MP3's are illegal."
"Really???"
"Really Bob."
I definitely plan on investing somewhere in the ballpark of 6-10k (no, I'm not rich) in this company the day it is available.
Sure, not that much, but if I can get in sub-$30.00 a share and see it go up to $40.00-60.00 within 24 weeks, that's money in the bank for me.
Looks like a sure fire winner, what with the stagnant economy and a viral marketer filing for an IPO, this ought to be a hot item.
Ohhhhh and as for my personal agenda besides a quick in and out ride on this ticket? I run nothing but OS X, IRIX and Redhat 9 (soon to be debian) at home and at my colo provider, so anything that makes Windows a nasty experience is A-OK by me.
I think all *nix enthusiasts should by in and feed the cause.
The more virus, spam and crap on Windows the better I say.
Exactly, spot on about the windows rewrite.
I'd been expecting Windows to crumple since 99 when it was completely obvious that the code was so huge and the company so micro-managed that no one person or group of people had any concept of the code as a whole.
I'm sure they plowed ahead on the NT-ization concept because starting from scratch is extremely costly.
Even though MS has an army of programmers, imagine the hell that would have been stirred if MS suddenly announced that Windows was being end of lifed for a shiny new MS OS?
Plus a new OS requires all the existing apps to be ported, which is costly to both MS to write and the consumer to buy/integrate.
So in this case you can see that MS is locked into it's user base just as the users to MS's proprietary formats.
If you look at Apple, they had nothing to lose when they swapped out the OS, but found a novel way to allow for backwards compatability for their own and 3rd party apps.
However, MS has a lot to lose, approx 90% worldwide desktop market share. Not that they would lose all of it, but I could imagine a major exodus to other OS's or hardware platforms. And can you think of what that would do to MS's stock price?
Personally I think they made the right call in building on what they had but over-estimated themselves and have proven to not be able to deliver on all those promises.
And with that I come full-circle to my original post on this thread.
"MS's products have only gotten better, especially over the past 2-3 years."
.Net that they publicly announced Blackbird (longhorn) in 2000 as the pure .NET Windows OS. Managers bought into .Net because MS hyped all these nifty things that were in the works for OS's after XP. So 6 years since that announcement they will still be without the full meal deal on .NET as advertised... And even saying it could take a decade to deliver some of these things they hyped longhorn over. think that might make some major customers look elsewhere for a server/client solution? And what happens when it's shown that Longhorn-leghorn is just as insecure as XP especially after all that "security is job 1" crap that the Gatester huffed about?
That's a statement of praise for MS fulfilling basic expectations. Of course it's better.
What I am referring to is yesterdays announcement of the cutting of many features from longhorn-leghorn which shows that they are having some MAJOR problems with Windows development.
Consider their marketing hype over
I agree but disagree.
Imagine limiting the model. Impose the tax-levy at market share of 70% or greater. That would encourage companies to get big, but not get too big. That is, it would create a very strong incentive to not kill off too much competition.
But the problem there is that microsoft is engaged in many markets and some products that attain monopoly in their markets are given away for free... So in the case of Netscape, how would the government applied such a tax-levy?
Perhaps rather than a tax, perhaps the revocation of all patents on said companies products in the given market.
So in the event of IE's market monopoly, all patents obtained by MS related to IE's functionality would be revoked, allowing for new competition to step in and compete without having to worry about IP infringement.
But there is no silver bullet here unfortunately.