The company that work for used to run Exchange 5.5 with Outlook 98/2000. It was an adminstrators dream. Everything just worked.
Sure it did. That's what the employees were used to. The main reason Lotus Notes was not appreciated was it was different. It has different behavior and a different interface.
This is why I silently curse when I ever have to use MS Outlook...it just has all sorts of quirks that Emacs does not--and vice versa. Emacs just works, too, but I'm sure the typical Outlook lacky would hate it.
Let's see...in Outlook, how do I file my e-mail into archive folders automatically using regular expressions against the "From" and "Sender" fields...oh, I can't?...oh, darn. Let's see...in Emacs, how do I open this attachment sent for my advice...oh, I have to save it and manually open it in another viewer...hmm, that sure is inconvenient.
One thing that is encouraging is that Software Engineering may become a real discipline and not just a buzzword. It is inevitable that Software Engineering will take the same course as other traditional engineering disciplines. Our reputations depend on it.
One thing that is discouraging is the possibility that hobbyists will be shut out depending on what sort of legislation occurs. This is something that hasn't happened in many other disciplines. Would wonders like TLC's "Junk Yard Wars" be possible if the Mechanical Engineering industry were regulated to death? What about model rockets? Home chemistry sets? Do-it-yourself electronics? Helping your neighbor build a tree-house for the kids?
I hope the people behind any new legislation understand that purely non-commercial efforts, where the would-be customers pay nothing and nothing is promised, should not be regulated.
Free Software is non-commercial and nothing is promised to the end-user, so it should be left as-is. However, those who choose to commercialize it, such as Red Hat or IBM, should be willing to accept some liability. After all, they are making money off of it.
In conclusion, software should be treated just like any other product. If money is being made off of it, then the customers are due what they paid for. If no money is involved, the lawyers and politicians should just keep their hands off.
Well said. The M$ tradition of getting it right on the third try will fail with respect to a database schema (or any complex object-flavored system).
If they don't create something clean and well abstracted early on, the problems of the Registry will pale in comparison to those of the new file system.
There is no evidence that Sun actually does make a profit on the initial shipment. They may be gambling that many customers will choose to activate CPUs in the future, so they defer the profit.
Or, their profit on the non-CPU components of the server--enclosure, backplane, I/O controllers, etc.--cover the additional CPUs so they make a reduced profit initially.
You can choose to pay per-CPU on Sun servers, too. This alone isn't indicative of a monopoly--unless IBM provides no choice at all.
Sun provides this pricing option to reduce the price-barrier to high-end servers when a customer truly cannot afford all the CPUs now but forsees the possibility of turning them on in a moments notice.
it just seems that IBM delivered what customers wanted, and their competitors waffled
This is certainly arguable. Once a company reaches a certain critical mass in a market, they can become arrogant and begin driving what the customer wants. Is IBM doing this in the mainframe market? Perhaps--I don't know that much about IBM mainframes. Is Microsoft doing this right now? Absolutely.
Once real choices in the market disappear, monopolies form and the customers become enslaven. This is one reason behind the growing popularity of Free Software, where many people are trying to find a way out of the Microsoft regime.
Re:All I want for Christmas...
on
SSSCA Editorials
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
One thing I just realized is that the SSSCA is raising way too many questions. Just look through all the recent Slashdot comments about it for proof. A piece of legislation that has such a high ratio of questions to answers is obviously not good.
Hmm...how does DRM affect RAID? Will a single RAID device be okay, since the physical drives are part of a unit? Or, will RAID become illegal, because each physical drive could contain illegal copies of copyrighted material? Or, will I have to pay three times for a three-way mirror?
"innovation" is/was Microsoft's main marketing word. If GWB really said, "I prefer inovation [sic] over legislation," then Microsoft's commercials really sank into him. If Microsoft has successfully brainwashed the U.S. President and the U.S. DOJ, then Bill Gates really is the Dictator of what used to be the United States of America and, soon, will be the Dictator of Earth.
When will the release of Microsoft World Government be on the shelves at Best Buy? I'm sure the stores in Washington D.C. will be sold out within a week.
The telephone line is analog, also. I don't know how modems are designed, however, so the LED could flash either the analog signal of the phone line or the packet-by-packet flash like that on a network hub. Which type of signal goes to the LED is probably a design decision made by the modem company.
For example, in high school, I attached an LED to the output of a radio or microphone (can't remember which) and then aimed it at a solar cell attached to the input of a speaker. And it worked! I'm not sure if the quality was good enough to capture a modem signal, but it was certainly a poor-man's wireless speaker.
If the spy has more sensitive equipment, and if the LED on a modem really is tied to the phone line, then there should be nothing stopping the spy from capturing the transmission and decoding it later.
The gov't rigged its missle tests (and those still failed!).
I think you must be referring to the "missile shield" missle test, where there was a transponder in the drone. My interpretation of the test is that the engineers must have been focusing on a few variables, which would be more scientifically valuable if they didn't have to worry about the guidance system, too. This is perfectly legitimate testing, even if the marketeers talking to the media didn't disclose it accurately.
The problem of the "missile shield" is so incomprehensibly complex that even getting the missle and drone to collide is a feat in itself whether or not the guidance system was complete.
The "rigged" missle test really is not a good criticism of the "missile shield". What will be interesting, though, is if the engineers really overcome the remaining technical obstacles. Hitting a missle with a missle is quite ambitious and may be a tad beyond current technology.
Beware, Solaris no longer costs an arm and a leg. Try downloading it for free or purchase the media kit for <$50US.
Solaris gets expensive only when you set up an SMP server. Generally, the licensing fee is included in the invoice for the hardware. Even then, it really isn't hard to digest.
I believe Sun provides good deals for Universities. My alma mater had close to 200 Sun Ultra workstations (at the time they were top-of-the-line beauties). I heard rumours that the school really got an awesome educational/bulk purchase deal.
I bet Sun would be eating out of your hand if you land a 500 Sunray deal with them. Put a couple of Sun Fire 4800s behind the Sunrays and you would really have a potent setup that needs only a few staff members to maintain it. Even better, if a disgruntled student trashes a Sunray, you are only out a few hundred dollars--the Sun Fires will be safe in your machine rooms.
The huge variation in the cost of living among cities is why those "What Programmers Get Paid" surveys are one of my pet peeves.
I always feel a bit inferior--for a second--when I look at how underpaid I am relative to the statistics in these articles. However, I quickly realize that these statistics are mostly from people in places like Silicon Valley, where a pup tent in someone's back yard costs $150,000.
The fact is that these articles include naieve and misguided analyses of income. It is much better to just rely on a few real data points, such as those from recent job offers, and use local consumer-price-index numbers to scale the salaries accordingly. It is suprising how $40,000/yr. in a small south-east city can easily equal $60,000/yr. in Chicago, for example.
the Linux crowd is the least qualified to comment about design
I disagree. Who else is more qualified? The M$ Office UI team?
These people don't realize that good design does not involve compromizes.
Get that "no-compromises" website to work with Nescape 4.X, Netscape 6.X, IE 4.x, IE 5.x, Lynx, Opera, etc., and see what is left when you are done. With the current state of the browser market, you cannot have your cake and eat it too. Universal accessiblity is much more important than nifty JavaScript pop-ups or spiffy Flash videos.
It's obvious to me that the majority of Linux developers and users really don't care.
Linux follows the great tradition of UNIX, where developers care a great deal about the user interface. Just because you can't click and drool, doesn't mean the interface isn't good. Highly refined CLI interfaces are clean, efficient, intuitive, and highly productive. Perhaps you should learn to read and type.
web site is designed by a real graphic designer
Web sites should be engineered as real software. Graphic designers can make pretty-looking stuff that doesn't work. I'd rather just have something that works.
If this is really true, then Mr. Hollings and Mr. Gates will be ushering us into a Technological Dark Age, where learning and free expression will be crushed under the rule of Microsoft. Oh, how history will repeat itself!
Where can I trade in my laptop for a rake, so I can better tend your land, Mr. Gates?
What will scientists and engineers do when they need to do some really important general-purpose computing, but that sorely needed general-purpose computer is illegal???
The importance of the U.S. Constitution cannot be overemphasized when trying to regulate websites in the U.S.A. When people post material onto their website, they are making a willing expression of their ideals, which are protected under the First Admendment.
I know that I will encounter material on the Web that I find offensive, bigoted, and hateful. This is no different than walking through the wrong part of town or watching day-time talk shows. However, restricting the people behind this material will only restrict me in the long run. This is the irony of free speech, but we must not let it sour our attitude towards content on the WWW.
Censorship is never the solution. We just need to know when to avoid the dark alleyways of the Web.
'bunch of little bitty CPUs, each with their own whack of RAM, and they do their own thing'
I remember hearing some grad students talking about this. This is real technology that is the subject of at least some research, but it seems to be distant from becoming mainstream.
Also, on a larger scale, this is how some supercomputers are set up (beowulf, for example).
Benchmarks are a mixed blessing. It's always nice when a benchmark favors your brand, but the tables are easily turned just by citing another benchmark. A newer jbb2000 result, for example.
This is why benchmarks are so highly overrated. What seems to be true one day isn't the next.
Fact is, the IBM pSeries compete in the same market as the Sun Starfire servers. In this arena, the benchmarks are just going to bounce around as each company edges forward. The SPEC historical data reflects this.
Slashdot Mirror
What about SunSource?
Even if Sun made questionable decisions with the JSR 99, don't forget that Sun's Open Source involvement goes beyond Java.
The company that work for used to run Exchange 5.5 with Outlook 98/2000. It was an adminstrators dream. Everything just worked.
Sure it did. That's what the employees were used to. The main reason Lotus Notes was not appreciated was it was different. It has different behavior and a different interface.
This is why I silently curse when I ever have to use MS Outlook...it just has all sorts of quirks that Emacs does not--and vice versa. Emacs just works, too, but I'm sure the typical Outlook lacky would hate it.
Let's see...in Outlook, how do I file my e-mail into archive folders automatically using regular expressions against the "From" and "Sender" fields...oh, I can't?...oh, darn. Let's see...in Emacs, how do I open this attachment sent for my advice...oh, I have to save it and manually open it in another viewer...hmm, that sure is inconvenient.
One thing that is encouraging is that Software Engineering may become a real discipline and not just a buzzword. It is inevitable that Software Engineering will take the same course as other traditional engineering disciplines. Our reputations depend on it.
One thing that is discouraging is the possibility that hobbyists will be shut out depending on what sort of legislation occurs. This is something that hasn't happened in many other disciplines. Would wonders like TLC's "Junk Yard Wars" be possible if the Mechanical Engineering industry were regulated to death? What about model rockets? Home chemistry sets? Do-it-yourself electronics? Helping your neighbor build a tree-house for the kids?
I hope the people behind any new legislation understand that purely non-commercial efforts, where the would-be customers pay nothing and nothing is promised, should not be regulated.
Free Software is non-commercial and nothing is promised to the end-user, so it should be left as-is. However, those who choose to commercialize it, such as Red Hat or IBM, should be willing to accept some liability. After all, they are making money off of it.
In conclusion, software should be treated just like any other product. If money is being made off of it, then the customers are due what they paid for. If no money is involved, the lawyers and politicians should just keep their hands off.
Well said. The M$ tradition of getting it right on the third try will fail with respect to a database schema (or any complex object-flavored system).
If they don't create something clean and well abstracted early on, the problems of the Registry will pale in comparison to those of the new file system.
There is no evidence that Sun actually does make a profit on the initial shipment. They may be gambling that many customers will choose to activate CPUs in the future, so they defer the profit.
Or, their profit on the non-CPU components of the server--enclosure, backplane, I/O controllers, etc.--cover the additional CPUs so they make a reduced profit initially.
You can choose to pay per-CPU on Sun servers, too. This alone isn't indicative of a monopoly--unless IBM provides no choice at all.
Sun provides this pricing option to reduce the price-barrier to high-end servers when a customer truly cannot afford all the CPUs now but forsees the possibility of turning them on in a moments notice.
it just seems that IBM delivered what customers wanted, and their competitors waffled
This is certainly arguable. Once a company reaches a certain critical mass in a market, they can become arrogant and begin driving what the customer wants. Is IBM doing this in the mainframe market? Perhaps--I don't know that much about IBM mainframes. Is Microsoft doing this right now? Absolutely.
Once real choices in the market disappear, monopolies form and the customers become enslaven. This is one reason behind the growing popularity of Free Software, where many people are trying to find a way out of the Microsoft regime.
One thing I just realized is that the SSSCA is raising way too many questions. Just look through all the recent Slashdot comments about it for proof. A piece of legislation that has such a high ratio of questions to answers is obviously not good.
The market is just not ready for SSSCA.
Hmm...how does DRM affect RAID? Will a single RAID device be okay, since the physical drives are part of a unit? Or, will RAID become illegal, because each physical drive could contain illegal copies of copyrighted material? Or, will I have to pay three times for a three-way mirror?
"innovation" is/was Microsoft's main marketing word. If GWB really said, "I prefer inovation [sic] over legislation," then Microsoft's commercials really sank into him. If Microsoft has successfully brainwashed the U.S. President and the U.S. DOJ, then Bill Gates really is the Dictator of what used to be the United States of America and, soon, will be the Dictator of Earth.
When will the release of Microsoft World Government be on the shelves at Best Buy? I'm sure the stores in Washington D.C. will be sold out within a week.
The telephone line is analog, also. I don't know how modems are designed, however, so the LED could flash either the analog signal of the phone line or the packet-by-packet flash like that on a network hub. Which type of signal goes to the LED is probably a design decision made by the modem company.
It really can be done.
For example, in high school, I attached an LED to the output of a radio or microphone (can't remember which) and then aimed it at a solar cell attached to the input of a speaker. And it worked! I'm not sure if the quality was good enough to capture a modem signal, but it was certainly a poor-man's wireless speaker.
If the spy has more sensitive equipment, and if the LED on a modem really is tied to the phone line, then there should be nothing stopping the spy from capturing the transmission and decoding it later.
The gov't rigged its missle tests (and those still failed!).
I think you must be referring to the "missile shield" missle test, where there was a transponder in the drone. My interpretation of the test is that the engineers must have been focusing on a few variables, which would be more scientifically valuable if they didn't have to worry about the guidance system, too. This is perfectly legitimate testing, even if the marketeers talking to the media didn't disclose it accurately.
The problem of the "missile shield" is so incomprehensibly complex that even getting the missle and drone to collide is a feat in itself whether or not the guidance system was complete.
The "rigged" missle test really is not a good criticism of the "missile shield". What will be interesting, though, is if the engineers really overcome the remaining technical obstacles. Hitting a missle with a missle is quite ambitious and may be a tad beyond current technology.
The reason the adult industry consists of many successful capitalists is that they are willing to try anything for a buck.
Sun Microsystems really expensive server OS
Beware, Solaris no longer costs an arm and a leg. Try downloading it for free or purchase the media kit for <$50US.
Solaris gets expensive only when you set up an SMP server. Generally, the licensing fee is included in the invoice for the hardware. Even then, it really isn't hard to digest.
I believe Sun provides good deals for Universities. My alma mater had close to 200 Sun Ultra workstations (at the time they were top-of-the-line beauties). I heard rumours that the school really got an awesome educational/bulk purchase deal.
I bet Sun would be eating out of your hand if you land a 500 Sunray deal with them. Put a couple of Sun Fire 4800s behind the Sunrays and you would really have a potent setup that needs only a few staff members to maintain it. Even better, if a disgruntled student trashes a Sunray, you are only out a few hundred dollars--the Sun Fires will be safe in your machine rooms.
The huge variation in the cost of living among cities is why those "What Programmers Get Paid" surveys are one of my pet peeves.
I always feel a bit inferior--for a second--when I look at how underpaid I am relative to the statistics in these articles. However, I quickly realize that these statistics are mostly from people in places like Silicon Valley, where a pup tent in someone's back yard costs $150,000.
The fact is that these articles include naieve and misguided analyses of income. It is much better to just rely on a few real data points, such as those from recent job offers, and use local consumer-price-index numbers to scale the salaries accordingly. It is suprising how $40,000/yr. in a small south-east city can easily equal $60,000/yr. in Chicago, for example.
the Linux crowd is the least qualified to comment about design
I disagree. Who else is more qualified? The M$ Office UI team?
These people don't realize that good design does not involve compromizes.
Get that "no-compromises" website to work with Nescape 4.X, Netscape 6.X, IE 4.x, IE 5.x, Lynx, Opera, etc., and see what is left when you are done. With the current state of the browser market, you cannot have your cake and eat it too. Universal accessiblity is much more important than nifty JavaScript pop-ups or spiffy Flash videos.
It's obvious to me that the majority of Linux developers and users really don't care.
Linux follows the great tradition of UNIX, where developers care a great deal about the user interface. Just because you can't click and drool, doesn't mean the interface isn't good. Highly refined CLI interfaces are clean, efficient, intuitive, and highly productive. Perhaps you should learn to read and type.
web site is designed by a real graphic designer
Web sites should be engineered as real software. Graphic designers can make pretty-looking stuff that doesn't work. I'd rather just have something that works.
Given the variety of popular browsers:
New 1. The World Wide Web Consortium is a God no one really listens to--they just pretend to.
New 3. JavaScript should be used only for the absolutely most trivial functionality. It is best to just not use it at all.
New 7. Style sheets should never be used. They simply don't work consistently across browsers.
New 8. Proprietary HTML add-ons should never even be considered. They just go counter to the principles of the WWW.
In short, HTML 2.0 is the best HTML developed so far. Since then, it has just gone downhill.
If this is really true, then Mr. Hollings and Mr. Gates will be ushering us into a Technological Dark Age, where learning and free expression will be crushed under the rule of Microsoft. Oh, how history will repeat itself!
Where can I trade in my laptop for a rake,
so I can better tend your land, Mr. Gates?
What will scientists and engineers do when they need to do some really important general-purpose computing, but that sorely needed general-purpose computer is illegal???
The importance of the U.S. Constitution cannot be overemphasized when trying to regulate websites in the U.S.A. When people post material onto their website, they are making a willing expression of their ideals, which are protected under the First Admendment.
I know that I will encounter material on the Web that I find offensive, bigoted, and hateful. This is no different than walking through the wrong part of town or watching day-time talk shows. However, restricting the people behind this material will only restrict me in the long run. This is the irony of free speech, but we must not let it sour our attitude towards content on the WWW.
Censorship is never the solution. We just need to know when to avoid the dark alleyways of the Web.
This discussion does not apply to all HP printers.
...
gs -sDEVICE=laserjet
works just fine for my Laserjet 6L, although I have to play with the margins a bit to get it just right.
Perhaps this discussion is about the ink jet printers?
'bunch of little bitty CPUs, each with their own whack of RAM, and they do their own thing'
I remember hearing some grad students talking about this. This is real technology that is the subject of at least some research, but it seems to be distant from becoming mainstream.
Also, on a larger scale, this is how some supercomputers are set up (beowulf, for example).
Benchmarks are a mixed blessing. It's always nice when a benchmark favors your brand, but the tables are easily turned just by citing another benchmark. A newer jbb2000 result, for example.
This is why benchmarks are so highly overrated. What seems to be true one day isn't the next.
Fact is, the IBM pSeries compete in the same market as the Sun Starfire servers. In this arena, the benchmarks are just going to bounce around as each company edges forward. The SPEC historical data reflects this.