...that no-one spotted that the "Axentra" link (www.axentra.com) goes to a completely different company, that offers an on-line contact management, etc. system.
What a frightening document. I rarely find myself pitying Microsoft but Caldera (aka SCO) seems (and I admit to taking MSFT's word here) incredibly dishonest...
For example... In paragraph 100, Caldera cites a presentation that Steve Ballmer gave to financial analysts on July 26, 1990 as evidence in support of its claim that Microsoft falsely preannounced MS-DOS 5.0. (See Exhibit 66.) Caldera asserts that Ballmer "specifically represented that MS-DOS 5.0 would 'launch this year throughout the world'" (emphasis in original). In fact, the referenced presentation says no such thing, and the page to which Caldera refers (Exhibit 66 at X565339) does not even mention MS-DOS. The presentation instead states that Microsoft planned to launch a "worldwide business" in 1990. (Id.) On the subject of MS-DOS 5.0, the presentation states on a different page that Microsoft anticipated releasing the product during "FY 1991", the fiscal year in which it was released. (Id. at X565315.)
The weavers who were put out of jobs by the development of the Spinning Jenny weren't too happy either.
The typists in the typing pool who were put out of work when their boss got a word processor were hardly chuffed.
The textile workers who found that Americans were more than happy to buy stuff from India or China probably didn't feel great.
Work will always move to the place where it can be done most cheaply. That is called free market "global" capitalism. That is what got you the Lexus or the Toyota in your garage. That is why the memory in your PC is probably made by Winbond or Samsung. That is why your Hi-Fi is probably made by Sony or MEI.
I want code written, I can ask anyone in the world to write it. Really. That is my right.
How dare anyone say I cannot ask an Indian in Bangalore to write it? How dare you say I must pay for an American?
If you want to live in a country where foreign goods and services are banned try Bhutan.
You violate my rights (while almost certainly demonstrating a revealed preference for Japanese consumer electronics) when you deny me the ability to hire who I want in whatever country I want to do my work.
Sorry this is turning into a rant. But...
Would you ban books by Indian authors because they put American authors out of work?
There is something rather disgusting about this letter from SCO, and the following passage highlights it rather well:
"There is no question about the affiliation of the attacker - Open Source leader Eric Raymond was quoted as saying that he was contacted by the perpetrator and that "he's one of us." To Mr Raymond's partial credit, he asked the attacker to stop. However, he has yet to disclose the identity of the perpetrator so that justice can be done.
No one can tolerate DDoS attacks and other kinds of attacks in this Information Age economy that relies so heavily on the Internet. Mr Raymond and the entire Open Source community need to aggressively help the industry police these types of crimes. If they fail to do so it casts a shadow over the entire Open Source movement."
Now, substitute the phrases "black people", "black person", and "black community" for "Open Source"...
That the DDoS attackers were "members of the open source community" is irrelevent. It is like saying they had red hair, and therefore ALL red-haired people should bear responsibility. No. No. No. No.
You cannot generalise from a person, or even several people, to an entire community. That is wrong. Indeed, the whole letter is full of generalisations from (often inaccurate) specifics.
I found myself with WhenU software installed on my computer. (Just for the record, I am reasonably techno-literate, and did not click on the "Yes!" button myself. I blame my family, but that's another story altogether.)
Now, the constant ads were only mildly irritating. But I thought, "Hey! I can always use Add/Remove Programs to get rid of this." So I removed WhenU, and my machine was happy.
Until, that is, I rebooted. And it was back, with its stupid pop-ups.
Now I got really annoyed, and downloaded AdAware. It found WhenU, and removed it. Phew.
Until, again, I rebooted. Damned thing was back again.
(Finally AdAware Pro got rid of it, but that is frankly ridiculous.)
Now, I don't know about EULAs. But when a software package REINSTALLS itself without asking you, when you have specifically tried to uninstall it, now that is unethical.
If there is anyway Slashdotters can suggest that would help me inflict much pain on WhenU executives, that would be greatly appreciated...
$22.5 x 10 = $225m x 10 = $2.25bn x 10 = $22.5bn x 2 = $45bn
i.e. 1/2000 (or 0.05%)
(ehich is *still* less than MSFT cash at hand...)
But I digress. This looks like a pretty fair settlement to me. If you look at who Be's was really compeating with, it was probably Apple, and to a lesser extent SGI. I really don't think there were many BeBox buyers that thought... hmmm.. I really want a Pentium 66 running Windows 95.
This is like Dugati extracting a settlement from Ford, as it's predatory pricing on cars was affecting Ducati's motorbike sales. There are many, many people who can claim to have been harshly affected by Miscrosoft's unfair competitive practices: Be is probably pushing it. Which is why it picked up just 0.05% of MSFT's cash balances...
PostgreSQL and mySQL are real, undeniable threats to Oracle. Not threats in the sense that Oracle's business will disappear, or that either of these databases will become de facto standards, but threats in that they will indisputably affect Oracle's ability to grow its database revenues.
My forecast, for what it's worth, is that Oracle's database business is in secular decline.
It doesn't matter that mySQL or PostgreSQL can't do everything that Oracle 9i does. That they do some of it, do it better and do it cheaper is what is key.
Five years ago, if you wanted to build a web-based application of any size, you probably went with Oracle. Now there is a free option. At the very least corporate purchasers will use this as a way to extract price concessions from their Oracle salesperson. More likely, in a few places (at first) PostgreSQL and mySQL will work their way into the corporate psyche by being used. Maybe for internal stuff, where budgets are tight. Or where projects are being "hidden" from management. But slowly, open source databases are taking hold.
The next stage is for the enterprise application vendors (SAP, PeopleSoft, Siebel) to start supporting OSS databases. They'll want to, because it lowers the cost of projects to clients, while safeguarding their (falling) application license revenues. Hence, SAP "donating" SAP DB to mySQL. My forecast (number two) is that we'll see all three of the application vendors at least trialling OSS databases with beta customers by end '03. (Yes, I know SAP is already doing it, and that PeopleSoft has issued press releases but no product.)
And in this way, in the same way Linux slipped quietly into corporates, OSS databases will take off.
My only hope is that PostgreSQL, which is a much superior product to mySQL, will get the publicity it richly deserves.
I tend to agree. I really don't see what all the fuss is about.
That said, I have a terrible admission to make: I use Windows as my desktop OS, and Linux on my server.
The reason I haven't changed is not because there isn't a standard desktop UI for Linux, it's because well.. Windows XP works well enough. Truth be told, I'd rather have a couple of PuTTy windows open, than use xterm. And I have yet to come across a text editor to beat TextPad. (Now, there's a program worth paying for!)
Will I move to Linux on the desktop at some point? Probably.
Will it be because the choice has been sucked out? No. It'll be because someone has come up with some must-have, completely new, feature I didn't previously know I needed. Trying to ape Windows is not the answer! Trying to out-innovate it is...
Can I bet on which site will be the next to be Slashdotted?
Site admins can watch the betting and then when CowboyNeal starts (inside) buying their site's futures, they can pull the plug and save themselves a massive ISP bill.
Three and a half years ago I left Goldman Sachs, my stock options, my health plan, and my (high) six-figure salary.
With my colleagues, I started a company doing exactly what I had done before. Except without a big company looming over me.
Our first rule, day one, was that everyone should have a *meaningful* share of the business. Not 400 shares out of 3.2 million. A real percentage they could shake their hat at. Now, in the case of the secretaries, that was maybe 1% or 2%. But this was the fiest time in their life they'd been made a part of the company. The first time they felt any association with the company they worked for.
Result: one of thise secretaries has gone on to become COO (really). And in the company as a whole we've had virtually zero staff turnover. Everyone is incredibly committed to the business. It's unbelievable the chaneg in attitude created by the real (not HR-envoked) statement:
YOU'RE IMPORTANT, AND WE MEAN IT. HERE'S YOUR SHARE OF THE BUSINESS.
Americans, Brits, Germans, Japanese can compete with the best in the world. But we do it best by being inclusive, not exlusive.
Lets play a game: it's called freedom, responsibility, and the absurdness of trade barriers.
Say, you are on the board of directors of a public company. Lets call that company NasDow Inc. You make - ohhh - networking equipment.
You have a responsibility to you shareholders. (You know, the guys that put their 401K money into your company so they can hopefully retire some day.) That, as a director of a public company is your prime concern. That you serve the owners of the company.
Now, you sell a lot of stuff in America, and a lot of stuff in Europe, and a bit of stuff in Asia.
It's a cut-throat business. There are Chinese manufacturers like Huwaeie with cheaper labour costs. But that's OK, you have silicon valley, Stanford grads, designing your kit. So you can hold level with them and compete when you are selling your boxen to say - Electricite de France, or Asahi Corporation.
But it's tough. These guys want technical support. Most of your customers problems can be solved by reading through a simple check-list. You want someone at the other end of the line for Asahi Corp if they have a problem. Someone polite, someone technical, and - if you want to beat the Chinese (or Taiwanese or Korean, etc.) - someone cheap.
That's right, if you want to make sales, you need to make sure - say - your call centres or tech support centres - are as cheap as possible. That's your fidicuary duty. You owe your loyalty to those people whose retirement depends on you getting this contract and making these profits. If you fail to take advantage of cheaper, off-shore, labour then you will lose the deal.
Your call.
Lose a few guys in California answering the phone?
Or save the jobs of the techies and the savings of the would be retirees?
But that's really not the point. That's the intellectual argument for free trade.
There is a much more important thing: how dare you suggest from where I should buy things? Why can't I buy from Wipro or Infosys? Why do you have the god-given right to *force* me to buy from EDS?
That's simply not true: I'm currently studying for my PPL in England, and one of the things you are taught is how to deal with spiral dives and stalls.
Now, no matter what I do in MS Flight Simulator, in whatever plane, have I ever been able to enduce a spiral dive or spin. (Trust me, it's real easy in a plane. That's why they teach you how to recover.)
And the low speed stall, particularly in the Cessna model, is a lot more benign than the real thing.
That said, MSFS is great for learning instrument work. And if you want to practise a hundred circuits, or the effects of cross-wind on landings then its good.
But I shall try X-Plane, certainly,/.'ers seem to love it.
Oh how easy it is to attack America. But lets take a look at where the US 'won' and which regime (the US or the other) you would rather have lived under...
China (1945-46); The Cultural Revolution of Mao, or Taiwan?
Korea (1950-53); South Korea or North?
My history is too poor for:
Guatemala (1954, 1967-69);
Cuba (1959-60);
Belgian Congo (1964);
Vietnam (1961-73); America lost.
Cambodia (1969-70); Pol Pot. Hmmm. Real liberal.
My history is too poor for:
Grenada (1983);
Libya (1986);
El Salvador (1980-92);
Nicaragua (1981-90);
Panama (1989);
Iraq (1991); Forget weapons of mass destruction (or mass deception...), think mass graves.
Bosnia (1995); Right. Can somebody tell me about how preventing ethnic cleansing is a bad thing?
Sudan (1998); OK. I know nothing about this, I know.
Yugoslavia (1999); Blood thirsty Americans... errr... weren't blood thirsty Americans trying to stop people killing each other?
Afghanistan (2001-02); Ahh yes, the Taliban. Lovely human rights respectors them. (Funny how racism, as practised by South Africa, was an utter anaethma to liberals, yet sexism - as practised by Saudi Arabia, etc. - is tolerated because it's a religious belief... Please, nobody tell the KKK.)
Iraq (2003 - ongoing); See above
"killed several million people, and condemned many millions more to lives of agony, poverty and despair, not bad for a nation of "peace lovers""
OK. Well funny that, because more than "several million" died in the war Saddam Hussein *started* against Iran. And funny how the millions saved from poverty in South Korea are never mentioned. And funny how those denied basic human rights in Afghanistan are ignored.
"That's why I fully place my trust in governments and corporations to tell me what's healthy and what's not."
Ah yes. But if it's a company, and they're wrong, you can sue them.
Take smoking - everyone has known it's unhealthy for a long time. (I have a 1930s Biggles book, in which the - smoking - hero refers to cigarettes as coffin nails.)
But, even when you know it's unsafe, as long as the corporation says it is safe, then you can sue and win billions of dollars.
(Actually results may differ materially from those promised. Past performance is no guarantee of future success.)
Look, I consider myself a reasonably adept computer user. Not a techie, to be sure, but reasonably adept.
Now someone (I have my suspicions, but I don't particularly want to become single right now, so my suspicions stay just that...) managed to install WhenU on my system.
No problem, I thought... and went off to Google. "Remove WhenU" I typed in. I followed the instructions... WhenU gone.
For about five minutes. Then it was back. Irritatingly supplying me with advertising.
So, I adjust my hosts file: do the old point it at 127.0.0.1 trick.
No joy.
Then I dowload AdAware. At last... it works. No more WhenU. Until the moment I reset. When WhenU "magically" reappears. I use Adware again. It disappears... then it reappears again.
Arrggggghhhh I mean WTF!
It's one thing to install yourself after someone has (and I choose my words advisedly... just to be safe...) accidently clicked "Yes". It's another to circumvent all obvious ways of unistalling the program.
Interestingly, smoking has clear economic benefits.
(I kid you not, by the way.)
The major problem that many Western mature economies have is an ageing population. The proportion of earners to retired is getting worse and worse. Currently there about 30 retired people for every 100 of working age in the US and the EU. By 2040 (when most Slashdotters will be retiring to a life of permanent trolling), the ratio will be something like 60 or 70 to 100. In some countries - if current low birth rates continue - it will be even worse. A combination of people having fewer babies, and living longer (also, although rather bizarrely, related; the WHO has a nice article on it) means public pension and healthcare systems will be stretched to the limit.
Welcome to the solution (Philip Morris didn't change its name to Altria - kinda' sounds like altruism, don't it? - for nothing, you know!). Smoking.
This has the wonderful effect of most afflicting people past retirement age. You don't lose many years of productive work, but you lose a lot of time when you might be leaching of Medicare, etc. In Europe, where there are (ridiculous) public funded pension schemes, the system will become rapidly unsustainable. (Can the governemt *really* give out more than half its tax revenues in pension plans? Oh yes, they'll have no choice because retired people are more diligent voters than young people...)
Anyway, this is so off-topic it's a laugh. Smoking (especially other people smoking) has great *positive* effects for the government's finances, and ergo the people.
But - I wouldn't advise you to smoke, as it's obviously bad for you. That said, you might want to encourage your neigbour to restart his 30 a day Marlboro habit...
In the quarter to May '00, Oracle sold $250m of new application licenses in the Americas. (A pretty solid number all round.)
Three years later it sold half that number.
SAP, PeopleSoft both did better. (And in SAP's case, they did it despite some really horrible currency disadvantages.)
In Europe, the numbers are even more frightening.
Oracle's share of the enterprise applications market on a rolling 12-month view - and I'm happy to send my spreadsheet to anyone who's interested - has fallen from 12% to 8% in the last two years.
How much moeny did Oracle make off it? Not as much as some might like to think.
Oracle has $7bn of cash in the bank. But most of that came from the sales of Liberate and Oracle Japan (which netted it $6bn in the last three years). If this is removed, Oracle doesn't look nearly so profitable.
Anyway, rant over. Oracle has performed horribly relative to most peers (i2 excepted). Their software is technically interesting, but on customer satisfaction surveys, only Siebel looks worse.
Well, now that I've upset every single employee of every enterprise software vendor, I'm off to bed.
I think you're missing the point. The state is trying to work out how much drivers will pay to get into the carpool lane. That is, this is an excercise.
So, they auction (say) 1,000 car pool stickers for a month in the fast lane (so to speak). By seeing what price is paid on eBay, they can calculate what pricing will allow new road building, public transport investment etc.
I live in Central London (in England). They recently imposed a congestion charge. Had they used eBay first, they might have discovered that the "correct" price was £3, not £5 to get traffic down to required levels.
Further, eBay is not a bad mechanism to rationing. Spaces in the car pool lane are a scarse resource (they won't sell more than they have room for... actually this government, scratch that) - why not work out what the right charge is using eBay, not by a fiat (or guess work).
Slashdot Mirror
...that no-one spotted that the "Axentra" link (www.axentra.com) goes to a completely different company, that offers an on-line contact management, etc. system.
"Homebase Anywhere"...
Glad to see no-one RTFA.
(RTFA? You must be new here...)
What a frightening document. I rarely find myself pitying Microsoft but Caldera (aka SCO) seems (and I admit to taking MSFT's word here) incredibly dishonest...
For example... In paragraph 100, Caldera cites a presentation that Steve Ballmer gave to financial analysts on July 26, 1990 as evidence in support of its claim that Microsoft falsely preannounced MS-DOS 5.0. (See Exhibit 66.) Caldera asserts that Ballmer "specifically represented that MS-DOS 5.0 would 'launch this year throughout the world'" (emphasis in original). In fact, the referenced presentation says no such thing, and the page to which Caldera refers (Exhibit 66 at X565339) does not even mention MS-DOS. The presentation instead states that Microsoft planned to launch a "worldwide business" in 1990. (Id.) On the subject of MS-DOS 5.0, the presentation states on a different page that Microsoft anticipated releasing the product during "FY 1991", the fiscal year in which it was released. (Id. at X565315.)
For example...
OK.
The weavers who were put out of jobs by the development of the Spinning Jenny weren't too happy either.
The typists in the typing pool who were put out of work when their boss got a word processor were hardly chuffed.
The textile workers who found that Americans were more than happy to buy stuff from India or China probably didn't feel great.
Work will always move to the place where it can be done most cheaply. That is called free market "global" capitalism. That is what got you the Lexus or the Toyota in your garage. That is why the memory in your PC is probably made by Winbond or Samsung. That is why your Hi-Fi is probably made by Sony or MEI.
I want code written, I can ask anyone in the world to write it. Really. That is my right.
How dare anyone say I cannot ask an Indian in Bangalore to write it? How dare you say I must pay for an American?
If you want to live in a country where foreign goods and services are banned try Bhutan.
You violate my rights (while almost certainly demonstrating a revealed preference for Japanese consumer electronics) when you deny me the ability to hire who I want in whatever country I want to do my work.
Sorry this is turning into a rant. But...
Would you ban books by Indian authors because they put American authors out of work?
There is something rather disgusting about this letter from SCO, and the following passage highlights it rather well:
"There is no question about the affiliation of the attacker - Open Source leader Eric Raymond was quoted as saying that he was contacted by the perpetrator and that "he's one of us." To Mr Raymond's partial credit, he asked the attacker to stop. However, he has yet to disclose the identity of the perpetrator so that justice can be done.
No one can tolerate DDoS attacks and other kinds of attacks in this Information Age economy that relies so heavily on the Internet. Mr Raymond and the entire Open Source community need to aggressively help the industry police these types of crimes. If they fail to do so it casts a shadow over the entire Open Source movement."
Now, substitute the phrases "black people", "black person", and "black community" for "Open Source"...
That the DDoS attackers were "members of the open source community" is irrelevent. It is like saying they had red hair, and therefore ALL red-haired people should bear responsibility. No. No. No. No.
You cannot generalise from a person, or even several people, to an entire community. That is wrong. Indeed, the whole letter is full of generalisations from (often inaccurate) specifics.
Down with SCO!
I found myself with WhenU software installed on my computer. (Just for the record, I am reasonably techno-literate, and did not click on the "Yes!" button myself. I blame my family, but that's another story altogether.)
Now, the constant ads were only mildly irritating. But I thought, "Hey! I can always use Add/Remove Programs to get rid of this." So I removed WhenU, and my machine was happy.
Until, that is, I rebooted. And it was back, with its stupid pop-ups.
Now I got really annoyed, and downloaded AdAware. It found WhenU, and removed it. Phew.
Until, again, I rebooted. Damned thing was back again.
(Finally AdAware Pro got rid of it, but that is frankly ridiculous.)
Now, I don't know about EULAs. But when a software package REINSTALLS itself without asking you, when you have specifically tried to uninstall it, now that is unethical.
If there is anyway Slashdotters can suggest that would help me inflict much pain on WhenU executives, that would be greatly appreciated...
Really, really a lot less than 1%.
$22.5 x 10 = $225m
x 10 = $2.25bn
x 10 = $22.5bn
x 2 = $45bn
i.e. 1/2000 (or 0.05%)
(ehich is *still* less than MSFT cash at hand...)
But I digress. This looks like a pretty fair settlement to me. If you look at who Be's was really compeating with, it was probably Apple, and to a lesser extent SGI. I really don't think there were many BeBox buyers that thought... hmmm.. I really want a Pentium 66 running Windows 95.
This is like Dugati extracting a settlement from Ford, as it's predatory pricing on cars was affecting Ducati's motorbike sales. There are many, many people who can claim to have been harshly affected by Miscrosoft's unfair competitive practices: Be is probably pushing it. Which is why it picked up just 0.05% of MSFT's cash balances...
Just my 2c.
PostgreSQL and mySQL are real, undeniable threats to Oracle. Not threats in the sense that Oracle's business will disappear, or that either of these databases will become de facto standards, but threats in that they will indisputably affect Oracle's ability to grow its database revenues.
My forecast, for what it's worth, is that Oracle's database business is in secular decline.
It doesn't matter that mySQL or PostgreSQL can't do everything that Oracle 9i does. That they do some of it, do it better and do it cheaper is what is key.
Five years ago, if you wanted to build a web-based application of any size, you probably went with Oracle. Now there is a free option. At the very least corporate purchasers will use this as a way to extract price concessions from their Oracle salesperson. More likely, in a few places (at first) PostgreSQL and mySQL will work their way into the corporate psyche by being used. Maybe for internal stuff, where budgets are tight. Or where projects are being "hidden" from management. But slowly, open source databases are taking hold.
The next stage is for the enterprise application vendors (SAP, PeopleSoft, Siebel) to start supporting OSS databases. They'll want to, because it lowers the cost of projects to clients, while safeguarding their (falling) application license revenues. Hence, SAP "donating" SAP DB to mySQL. My forecast (number two) is that we'll see all three of the application vendors at least trialling OSS databases with beta customers by end '03. (Yes, I know SAP is already doing it, and that PeopleSoft has issued press releases but no product.)
And in this way, in the same way Linux slipped quietly into corporates, OSS databases will take off.
My only hope is that PostgreSQL, which is a much superior product to mySQL, will get the publicity it richly deserves.
*r
I tend to agree. I really don't see what all the fuss is about.
That said, I have a terrible admission to make: I use Windows as my desktop OS, and Linux on my server.
The reason I haven't changed is not because there isn't a standard desktop UI for Linux, it's because well.. Windows XP works well enough. Truth be told, I'd rather have a couple of PuTTy windows open, than use xterm. And I have yet to come across a text editor to beat TextPad. (Now, there's a program worth paying for!)
Will I move to Linux on the desktop at some point? Probably.
Will it be because the choice has been sucked out? No. It'll be because someone has come up with some must-have, completely new, feature I didn't previously know I needed. Trying to ape Windows is not the answer! Trying to out-innovate it is...
Can I bet on which site will be the next to be Slashdotted?
Site admins can watch the betting and then when CowboyNeal starts (inside) buying their site's futures, they can pull the plug and save themselves a massive ISP bill.
Neat, huh?
"When was the last time a major drop or surge in the NYSE or NASDAQ was accurately predicted by the majority of investors?"
Ummm... OK... if the majority of investors knew a drop was coming, they would sell. So, the market would go down then, rather than in the future.
So, we'd have to say, why didn't the majority of investors recognise it the day before. Etc.
This is going to sound like a troll but...
Be grateful she wasn't called Tawnee...
(Apologies to Autopr0n...)
Three and a half years ago I left Goldman Sachs, my stock options, my health plan, and my (high) six-figure salary.
With my colleagues, I started a company doing exactly what I had done before. Except without a big company looming over me.
Our first rule, day one, was that everyone should have a *meaningful* share of the business. Not 400 shares out of 3.2 million. A real percentage they could shake their hat at. Now, in the case of the secretaries, that was maybe 1% or 2%. But this was the fiest time in their life they'd been made a part of the company. The first time they felt any association with the company they worked for.
Result: one of thise secretaries has gone on to become COO (really). And in the company as a whole we've had virtually zero staff turnover. Everyone is incredibly committed to the business. It's unbelievable the chaneg in attitude created by the real (not HR-envoked) statement:
YOU'RE IMPORTANT, AND WE MEAN IT. HERE'S YOUR SHARE OF THE BUSINESS.
Americans, Brits, Germans, Japanese can compete with the best in the world. But we do it best by being inclusive, not exlusive.
Lets play a game: it's called freedom, responsibility, and the absurdness of trade barriers.
Say, you are on the board of directors of a public company. Lets call that company NasDow Inc. You make - ohhh - networking equipment.
You have a responsibility to you shareholders. (You know, the guys that put their 401K money into your company so they can hopefully retire some day.) That, as a director of a public company is your prime concern. That you serve the owners of the company.
Now, you sell a lot of stuff in America, and a lot of stuff in Europe, and a bit of stuff in Asia.
It's a cut-throat business. There are Chinese manufacturers like Huwaeie with cheaper labour costs. But that's OK, you have silicon valley, Stanford grads, designing your kit. So you can hold level with them and compete when you are selling your boxen to say - Electricite de France, or Asahi Corporation.
But it's tough. These guys want technical support. Most of your customers problems can be solved by reading through a simple check-list. You want someone at the other end of the line for Asahi Corp if they have a problem. Someone polite, someone technical, and - if you want to beat the Chinese (or Taiwanese or Korean, etc.) - someone cheap.
That's right, if you want to make sales, you need to make sure - say - your call centres or tech support centres - are as cheap as possible. That's your fidicuary duty. You owe your loyalty to those people whose retirement depends on you getting this contract and making these profits. If you fail to take advantage of cheaper, off-shore, labour then you will lose the deal.
Your call.
Lose a few guys in California answering the phone?
Or save the jobs of the techies and the savings of the would be retirees?
But that's really not the point. That's the intellectual argument for free trade.
There is a much more important thing: how dare you suggest from where I should buy things? Why can't I buy from Wipro or Infosys? Why do you have the god-given right to *force* me to buy from EDS?
That's simply not true: I'm currently studying for my PPL in England, and one of the things you are taught is how to deal with spiral dives and stalls.
/.'ers seem to love it.
Now, no matter what I do in MS Flight Simulator, in whatever plane, have I ever been able to enduce a spiral dive or spin. (Trust me, it's real easy in a plane. That's why they teach you how to recover.)
And the low speed stall, particularly in the Cessna model, is a lot more benign than the real thing.
That said, MSFS is great for learning instrument work. And if you want to practise a hundred circuits, or the effects of cross-wind on landings then its good.
But I shall try X-Plane, certainly,
Oh how easy it is to attack America. But lets take a look at where the US 'won' and which regime (the US or the other) you would rather have lived under...
China (1945-46);
The Cultural Revolution of Mao, or Taiwan?
Korea (1950-53);
South Korea or North?
My history is too poor for:
Guatemala (1954, 1967-69);
Cuba (1959-60);
Belgian Congo (1964);
Vietnam (1961-73);
America lost.
Cambodia (1969-70);
Pol Pot. Hmmm. Real liberal.
My history is too poor for:
Grenada (1983);
Libya (1986);
El Salvador (1980-92);
Nicaragua (1981-90);
Panama (1989);
Iraq (1991);
Forget weapons of mass destruction (or mass deception...), think mass graves.
Bosnia (1995);
Right. Can somebody tell me about how preventing ethnic cleansing is a bad thing?
Sudan (1998);
OK. I know nothing about this, I know.
Yugoslavia (1999);
Blood thirsty Americans... errr... weren't blood thirsty Americans trying to stop people killing each other?
Afghanistan (2001-02);
Ahh yes, the Taliban. Lovely human rights respectors them. (Funny how racism, as practised by South Africa, was an utter anaethma to liberals, yet sexism - as practised by Saudi Arabia, etc. - is tolerated because it's a religious belief... Please, nobody tell the KKK.)
Iraq (2003 - ongoing);
See above
"killed several million people, and condemned many millions more to lives of agony, poverty and despair, not bad for a nation of "peace lovers""
OK. Well funny that, because more than "several million" died in the war Saddam Hussein *started* against Iran. And funny how the millions saved from poverty in South Korea are never mentioned. And funny how those denied basic human rights in Afghanistan are ignored.
Bah.
If you go to the comments bit of the original ZDNet article (from August '02), you get lots of people saying how "sound" Caldera/SCO is.
/ it updatetb.tpt/@thread@8089@forward@1@D-,D@ALL/@arti cle@8089?EXP=ALL&VWM=hr&ROS=1&
/ it updatetb.tpt/@thread@8256@forward@1@D-,D@ALL/@arti cle@8256?EXP=ALL&VWM=hr&ROS=1
Viz:
http://forums.zdnet.com/group/zd.Tech.Update/it
http://forums.zdnet.com/group/zd.Tech.Update/it
You also get Darl McBride saying that United Linux is sometimes the best solution. Ahhh, how times change...
Enjoy,
Robert
"That's why I fully place my trust in governments and corporations to tell me what's healthy and what's not."
Ah yes. But if it's a company, and they're wrong, you can sue them.
Take smoking - everyone has known it's unhealthy for a long time. (I have a 1930s Biggles book, in which the - smoking - hero refers to cigarettes as coffin nails.)
But, even when you know it's unsafe, as long as the corporation says it is safe, then you can sue and win billions of dollars.
(Actually results may differ materially from those promised. Past performance is no guarantee of future success.)
You also missed...
I learnt how to chat up women from Leisure Suit Larry
and
How to have a normal healthy relationship with a human being from... errr... I forget that one.
Sorry.
Look, I consider myself a reasonably adept computer user. Not a techie, to be sure, but reasonably adept.
Now someone (I have my suspicions, but I don't particularly want to become single right now, so my suspicions stay just that...) managed to install WhenU on my system.
No problem, I thought... and went off to Google. "Remove WhenU" I typed in. I followed the instructions... WhenU gone.
For about five minutes. Then it was back. Irritatingly supplying me with advertising.
So, I adjust my hosts file: do the old point it at 127.0.0.1 trick.
No joy.
Then I dowload AdAware. At last... it works. No more WhenU. Until the moment I reset. When WhenU "magically" reappears. I use Adware again. It disappears... then it reappears again.
Arrggggghhhh I mean WTF!
It's one thing to install yourself after someone has (and I choose my words advisedly... just to be safe...) accidently clicked "Yes". It's another to circumvent all obvious ways of unistalling the program.
WhenU - I HateU
OK; the US phone system is completely fucked up.
In England, you pay to send, not to recieve. At 5p a time, spamming is not economic. I have never recieved a spam sms.
Now, in Houston, if my girlfriend dumped me, I could amuse myself for hours sending her 100s of SMSs, and racking up a great big for her. Wheeeeeee!
Interestingly, smoking has clear economic benefits.
(I kid you not, by the way.)
The major problem that many Western mature economies have is an ageing population. The proportion of earners to retired is getting worse and worse. Currently there about 30 retired people for every 100 of working age in the US and the EU. By 2040 (when most Slashdotters will be retiring to a life of permanent trolling), the ratio will be something like 60 or 70 to 100. In some countries - if current low birth rates continue - it will be even worse. A combination of people having fewer babies, and living longer (also, although rather bizarrely, related; the WHO has a nice article on it) means public pension and healthcare systems will be stretched to the limit.
Welcome to the solution (Philip Morris didn't change its name to Altria - kinda' sounds like altruism, don't it? - for nothing, you know!). Smoking.
This has the wonderful effect of most afflicting people past retirement age. You don't lose many years of productive work, but you lose a lot of time when you might be leaching of Medicare, etc. In Europe, where there are (ridiculous) public funded pension schemes, the system will become rapidly unsustainable. (Can the governemt *really* give out more than half its tax revenues in pension plans? Oh yes, they'll have no choice because retired people are more diligent voters than young people...)
Anyway, this is so off-topic it's a laugh. Smoking (especially other people smoking) has great *positive* effects for the government's finances, and ergo the people.
But - I wouldn't advise you to smoke, as it's obviously bad for you. That said, you might want to encourage your neigbour to restart his 30 a day Marlboro habit...
Just my packet's worth.
Right, I take it you're an Oracle employee.
Lets start with some figures...
In the quarter to May '00, Oracle sold $250m of new application licenses in the Americas. (A pretty solid number all round.)
Three years later it sold half that number.
SAP, PeopleSoft both did better. (And in SAP's case, they did it despite some really horrible currency disadvantages.)
In Europe, the numbers are even more frightening.
Oracle's share of the enterprise applications market on a rolling 12-month view - and I'm happy to send my spreadsheet to anyone who's interested - has fallen from 12% to 8% in the last two years.
How much moeny did Oracle make off it? Not as much as some might like to think.
Oracle has $7bn of cash in the bank. But most of that came from the sales of Liberate and Oracle Japan (which netted it $6bn in the last three years). If this is removed, Oracle doesn't look nearly so profitable.
Anyway, rant over. Oracle has performed horribly relative to most peers (i2 excepted). Their software is technically interesting, but on customer satisfaction surveys, only Siebel looks worse.
Well, now that I've upset every single employee of every enterprise software vendor, I'm off to bed.
Regards,
Robert
OK...
I live about 30 seconds walk from Oxford Street, and can report exactly no change in business due to the congestion charge.
Due to the relatively weak economic conditions? Sure.
Due, as you say, to the numerous tube problems? Sure.
But due to the congestion charge? Give me a break. How many parking spots *during the week* are used by shoppers? I would guess a very few.
Please, please, please, please...
;)
Tell us who accepted your terms, and who rejected them! This has to be good for a laugh...
Oooohhhh... Oracle, I have you now
Ummm.
I think you're missing the point. The state is trying to work out how much drivers will pay to get into the carpool lane. That is, this is an excercise.
So, they auction (say) 1,000 car pool stickers for a month in the fast lane (so to speak). By seeing what price is paid on eBay, they can calculate what pricing will allow new road building, public transport investment etc.
I live in Central London (in England). They recently imposed a congestion charge. Had they used eBay first, they might have discovered that the "correct" price was £3, not £5 to get traffic down to required levels.
Further, eBay is not a bad mechanism to rationing. Spaces in the car pool lane are a scarse resource (they won't sell more than they have room for... actually this government, scratch that) - why not work out what the right charge is using eBay, not by a fiat (or guess work).