Youâ(TM)ve been moderated troll but you speak the truth. Weather forecasting is becoming significantly more automated, though it has always been a running joke that âoeyou should be a weather forecaster, the only job you can be wrong more than half the time and keep your jobâ.
Also, why are there public sector unions at all? Isnâ(TM)t a union designed to band employees against their employer? Didnâ(TM)t Lincoln say our government was âoeof, by, and for the people?â So by that line of thinking isnâ(TM)t the union against us, the people?
I don't think a veteran would say they are a vet _and_ a SGT. Are you a chairborne ranger? I specifically was a combat MOS. I think anything that lowers the fighting prowness of our armed forces is a very bad thing .
I could not say it better myself.... being able to correctly express yourself (and timeframes) is the true gist of all these agile develoment models. I often say that there are a thousand ways to say the same thing, and how you say it (notice it is not what you say, since you are delivering the same information) is greatly dependant upon the listener. This is no different. Unfortunately, interpersonal communication is so nuanced that it is so much more than a language barrier, and unfortunately, so many developers around the world are lacking in this skill. If they weren't, many organizations would simply not use them.
I hope that all of these resubmitted patches are exactly the same as they were before. I would hate to see that this was used as a vector to add a backdoor into the kernal.
I want to apologize beforehand; You sir, are an idiot. If I had the inclination, I would explain the difference between buckshot, deerslugs, and how the tumbling of a ar-15 round can cause major injuries. However, I almost feel as if your response is simply a troll. Your comment about sound in a enclosed space with a firearm shows that you really do not have that much knowledge about SPL level either.
China has a law prohibiting the importation of encrypted devices. They want you to boot up latptops at the airport to verify that TrueCrypt or something similar isn't running.
Please don't consider me out of touch with current technology. I will be the first one to admit that I am not an expert in everything, but please don't make generalization accusing me that I don't know specific software. Yes, I know exactly what Cobbler and Puppet are. They still don't do _everything_ that AD does. It's like saying Calc is just as good as excel because it has 95% of the features. If you are a heavy user of one of those 5%... well, then it isn't good enough.
I could say you don't know how to program in prolog or ada, and therefore you can't possibly understand some of the programming issues that I have had to resolve in production systems.
Your response is a perfect characterization of the arrogance of linux. There just isn't a simple solution. Linux does work great on the backend, but please give me a solution for Visio, for Project, for Sharepoint, for Photoshop, for Dynamics, for CATIA or Creo Elements? And no, WINE doesn't work in these scenarios. Too slow, and if it crashes, now you have engineers who make as much as high end programmer who are sitting there twittling their thumbs while I spend hours or weeks trying to figure it out. Give me a (good) FEA software that doesn't run on Windows. Now give me software that won't take weeks or months of downtime for training.
I am also not referring to a large organization, which have their own intrinsic issues in migrating legacy application so that they may utilize Linux. I am personally much more knowledgeable about small and mid size businesses. (under 2000 employees) Are you recommending that each and every company have on staff programmers to customize beta software that used to be solved by purchasing commercial off the shelf solutions? Now how about telling those same organizations that due to the GPL, that those customizations have to be given back to the community and can then be utilized directly by their competitors. Trust me, it ain't an easy sell.
I am also not talking about back end system but rather the interface for them.
I don't simply work in the IT department as a lackey. (although that was me 15 years ago) I have to interface with many people in the company, and out side the company in my consulting practice. The fact is, Microsoft has set up a wonderful (kidding) system of certifications. We all remember the "book" certified MSCE2k who couldn't admin their way out of a paper bag in the boom. They could easily be let go. However, you can hire another one for 40k a year, and if he doesn't work out, replace him, rather than finding a RHEL certified person at 85k to 95k a year who may not work out (Did he set up everything correctly? As he was pressed for time, did he actually document everything, as you know there are 1000 ways to do the same thing. If you let him go, it will take the new guy 6 months to figure out how and why things are set up.. Have you actually used Red Hat support? At three in the morning on a Sunday?
I know CPA's who _only_ know quickbooks, and make over 250k a year working _only_ in quickbooks. I have seen companies with 100M/year in sales still using Great Plains in DOS. Don't underestimate the power of _not_ changing.
Hey, I didn't make the rules... I just know enough of them 'em to be moderately successful. I have many linux and FreeBSD servers running at many companies. Although well documented, I doubt many C level employees (other than the CIO) even realize it, because I didn't take away their precious outlook or excel. People abhor major change. Finance and accounting people even more so than normal people. Just look at the pushback with the ribbon interface in office.
If I were to start a new brick and mortar business, I would run Linux on the desktop (actually, I would run dumb terminals like a HP t410 AiO linking back to a main server, going full circle back to the 1970's.)
When I was referring to "a lot of people" I was not referring to people in the IT department, but rather other departments, or the "man on the street".
1) Excel. Sorry Libreoffice can't compare to someone who has 15 years of experience ( and a masters in finance/ econ/ 10 years of experience at company) making pivot tables and doesn't wish to learn another way of doing things. It's nice when you have a 10 year old formula in excel and can boot up office 2k and it works. Keep in mind a fair share of companies are still on office 2k, for better or worse. You can sit there in your chair and say "well, upgrade", but for a 40 seat license, it can cost 3500 usd, and many companies refuse to pay for it, especially when Office 2k is "good enough".
2) Active directory. Yes, you can control file access via samba. Yes, you can have user control via (one of many) means, but active directory is not (too) difficult, and any 1st year admin should be able to set up simple file access.
3) Standard installs. If I go to CompUSA, Wal-Mart, Best Buy or Target, I can buy a computer or laptop with Windows. Windows is the de facto standard because (for better or worse) that is what is able to be bought at the retail level. I would wager 95% of all computer available through retail channels has windows preinstalled.
4) Support. Microsoft is a Global 100 company. As they used to say 20 years ago... Nobody gets fired for buying IBM. If everyone else is purchasing office, and by default windows, then any issues that you encounter are the same issues that your competitors have. That (in it's own way) levels the playing field. We can all sit here and talk about how great Ernie Ball is for standardizing on Linux, but that is less than 1% of the marketplace. If I have an issue, I have a number to call, and the support I get is from a company that I can pay to get support from that everyone has heard of. Everyone hasn't heard of canonical. Hell, a lot of people have never heard of SAP or Oracle.
Mod down this rant if you want, but it is an objective opinion of the consensus of this thread.
Everyone here talks about how they can't leave IT, and "boo-hoo" that this corporation that cares little for you offshores your job.
The PhD in question realized that plumbing pays more (and to reply to another thread, a plumber can make much more than 100k USD if they want to).
Personally, I hate my IT job. I do network administration for a logistics company. We also have a help desk (which for some strange reason is my boss) and three programmers who program in something easier than VB (magic software out of israel if you are interested...shudder).
I loathe my IT job, loathe the fact that nobody understand what I do, loathe the fact that I am forgotten about, loathe the fact that I put in 80 hour weeks and get chastised for the raise I threaten to quit over if I didn't get it. I am going to quit. As someone else stated, money is the best form of flattery. Who will pay me better than me? Nobody. So I am starting my own buisness.
Yes it is a horrible plan (ebay selling combined with windshield repair) but I do have aspiritions (would like to start developing games for cell phones and pdas)
So I am leaving my position in about 3 months to start it. Will I make as much? No. I only make 40k now, but with benefits that is probably nearer to 50k a year ( no bonus, no matching 401k ). Do I have to potential to make more? Hell yes I do. I am greatly suprized that people haven't taken the ititiative to start up there own niche based software companies. I am about to, and plan on hiring part time java programmers from wherever they pop up, as so long as they can do the work.
Not everyone has the prudence to start there own buisness, not everyone can code 4000 (good) lines in a week, not everyone can program a pix without looking at it.
If you love coding, but hate your job, find a niche that nobody else has filled. Write damn good software, and actively work on getting it marketed to the people who will use it. Maybe a niche to you is an answering machine for your linux box that emails you the ogg version of the message. Maybe it is a good time management system. Or software for logistics, or dental offices, or time management. Is each one of these things something that will make you a millionare? Of course not. If you change certain aspects of it, and spin the marketing a certain way, and sell it correctly, you could easily be sucessful enough and make enough bread for your family.
I still come back here even though 95% of the posters on slashdot haven't a clue, and usually don't mod up the intellegent posts because they don't agree with them.
Look at Gnome and KDE. Both great windowing managers. Both took great amounts of time and effort to make.
Yet for joe-six-pack-end-user (which everyone here on slashdot eventually wants as linux users, right?) , there isn't "multiple window managers", there is the start menu, and he doesn't really care whether it is a "K" or a "foot" down in the lower left hand corner.
The article basically is correct in stating that passionate dissagreements fork projects. The doubling up of energies on very similar projects (like Gnome and KDE) work against open source.
Why?
Because all of the man hours spent building up Gnome were spent on KDE (or K-Office, Konquerer, etc), the code would be much tighter, with greater functionality.
What isn't stated in the article is that there aren't that many human interface experts working in open source. Most interfaces are done either by programmers themselves, or graphic designers who have no idea how most users navigate through systems. What good open source projects need is human interface experts who are willing to lend their knowledge to make a easier navagatable program.
I have a lazy eye. I do not see things in 3D. I see things with one eye.
Do I still store things in 3D? I don't really have much of an issue recognizing friends and people I just met ( though I have a problem with names, but that is another issue).
Try this, cover one eye, and then without opening it, try to touch a pen tip at arms length by comming down on it vertically. I bet you you miss. This is my life, and how I operate on a day to day basis. (not seeing things in 3d)
I am not saying your wrong, in fact, you are most definately correct. But I get along just fine with only one eye functioning.
>I'm happy that you have a budget that permits >you to spend more than I can. Bravo. Now get >your high horse.
My budget was less than.5% of revenue last year, thank you very much.
>I'm charged with keeping the system operating >with a dearth of resources and a limited labor >budget. They aren't throwing money at me to buy >equipment. Hell, I have volunteers going >through our old stuff to find out what is worth >selling on ebay.
Cry me a river. How do you think I purchased many of the things I have now? I sold unused racks on ebay, and old computers to employees.
>You have more storage space for email than my >entire flipping data center. Now tell me, what >do you use to back that up? My measly 100GB >array, plus our databases and the email server >take about 20 hours to back up on a SCSI tape.
>You do back your systems up every night, don't >you?
If you are using tape, well, what decade are you in? I use USB 2.0 Drives. Several of them, in fact. Then all of the backup is live data, meaning I can access it for restore purposes immediately. I also do backups 4 times a day, and this is with over 20 Gig of data. Get over yourself. There are better faster cheaper ways of doing stuff. Why don't you sell your obsolute tape backup and replace it with something much more modern and cheaper. Hell buy a Dell Axiom with extra money you save.
>You see, I don't have customers. I have people >relying on me to keep this shop running come >hell, high water, or hogs in sneakers. The last >thing I need to be growing a storage farm >because someone can't figure out how to delete >a bloody attachment when they are finished with >it.
The employees in my company are my customers. That is customer service. You sound like an angry jaded sysadmin or netadmin. I appreciate where you are comming from, but you with your additude of "my way or no way" hurts everyone in this field. I do what I am told, and I do it in the manner I see fit. That is it. The company wanted to have backups for disaster recovery. I sold two $3k tape drive on ebay for $2200. Purchased a USB 2.0 High speed card. $50. 5 USB 2.0 HD's (at $240 apiece, 120 Gig). Wow. I saved our company money by putting money back into our department's coffers. I then took that and bought Interscan and put it on an old workstation. How am I wasteful with my companies money?
You will also not that You are pulling away attachments on email. I have no idea what your company does. I work in the freight forwarding buisness. If I am not industry standard (and I believe email attachments are industry standard whatever industry you are in) then we will give up that on a competative front. I don't want my sales rep (who in the end bring in revenue that pays me) unable to recieve email that has a bid on it because I have become anal retentive on viruses. On workstations that have Outlook, I have simply disabled the ability to have any type of attachments except.doc,.pdf,.xls, and a couple others. Why couldn't you do the same thing?
I run IMAP as well. Good system. Yes it is on Windows. IMail from ipswitch. I even have Outlook on the desktop No I don't have any issues with viruses via email. Viruses get removed.
Why?
I run an email proxy from Trend Micro. Interscan Messaging Security Suite. It does Virus Scanning with automagic updates, and can also do meta filtering. (which I don't use)
I had 3 sobig.e viruses stopped on Thursday from Nextel and Dell employees.
Email comes in, hits proxy, viruses get removed, on to the IMAP server. How hard is that?
Installing a $1500 Program on a $800 win 2k pro Machine to me fixes a whole lot more problems than banning the software and standard operating procedures the executives at my company use (outlook, or netscape 4.7 but that is a different story).
Banning attachments? How insane are you? Yes, I know email wasn't designed for attachments, and I don't know how large your company is, but at my company, we do millions in buisness, and a lot of that buisness is based upon email. Finding a solution that works, without stopping users from doing what they need to do.
My IMAP server is 180 gig RAID 5 Array. I have 190 users of email. I also have scripts to remove email older than 1 year. I run this script every quarter, and let people know what is going on. If they have mail they want to save, I have them put it into a "save" folder. I also have it set up where users can't go over 500 Megs each for mail.
From a corporate standpoint, I sincerely hope that you are not in my industry. Because if you are, your rash decisions are going to easily allow my company to offer better service while allowing our customers to do THE SAME THINGS THAT THEY ALWAYS HAVE.
Yes, for a company that has only 3% of computer marketshare, and an even smaller percent (85% ? of Mac users use OSX and lets imagine 90% downloaded Itunes 4) For a company that caters to this small of an audience, I would say two million songs in two weeks isn't bad. Macs have often been stepping stones before major software breaks out (I call it getting usability down, think AOL started on the Mac)
>This means total sales for the year would be >about $50 million, which in corporate terms is >pocket change.
It is pocket change. Now lets do some extrapolation of data shall we? 2 million songs in 16 days. Imagine if (when) this software is realeased for free on Windows, as it is currently under development. Lets say 90,000 downloads per day for mac users would extrapolate to be almost 3,000,000 for PC users, (thinking in strict terms of market share) so in two weeks time (after this software is set up for windows) we could see a revenue stream of over $1 Billion a year. Hardly chump change.
>Two million songs means that the average Apple >user is buying songs at a rate of 2-3 a year. >Hardly a figure that would impress anyone.
Are you Alomex, the great spreader of Fear uncertainty and doubt (FUD)? Or do you just wanna be a karma whore? The fact remains that the service has only been available for a little of two weeks, so each mac user downloaded two to three songs in two weeks. A song a week. (using your data)
>The only positive spin out of two million songs >sold is that it does prove that iTunes is not a >dud. Any other implication beyond that is pure >hype.
Positive Spin, in two weeks Apple has become the largest legit online music service company. And they can make money at this. They HAVE the backing of the music industry. They will soon have indy bands.
Please, take a moment to look at what the facts are before posting. I am getting annoyed with Karma whores spreading fake information about Microsoft, Apple, anything that doesn't run on or is Linux. The right tool for the right job.
Slashdot has a way of posting news, but no backup information sometimes. Or maybe I am the only one who actually reads the articles....
Here is an overview of the technology.
Here is a link to the company making this product, speral solar power.
Not much in great detail about the strength of these products, other than "very strong" or "stronger than regular solar cells".
If you read the article, how much more additional funding is needed? The equipment is already purchased, the systems are in place. Yes, they need to pay for expansion, and upkeep, (In other words the rest of the ROI), but that usually is much easier to get than the initial purchase.
Slashdot Mirror
Youâ(TM)ve been moderated troll but you speak the truth. Weather forecasting is becoming significantly more automated, though it has always been a running joke that âoeyou should be a weather forecaster, the only job you can be wrong more than half the time and keep your jobâ.
Also, why are there public sector unions at all? Isnâ(TM)t a union designed to band employees against their employer? Didnâ(TM)t Lincoln say our government was âoeof, by, and for the people?â So by that line of thinking isnâ(TM)t the union against us, the people?
I would give you my mod points if I had any.
Get a powered signal amplifier
They are $25 bucks on Amazon for a decent one.
I lived rurally for many years. Makes a hell of a difference.
I don't think a veteran would say they are a vet _and_ a SGT. Are you a chairborne ranger? I specifically was a combat MOS. I think anything that lowers the fighting prowness of our armed forces is a very bad thing .
I could not say it better myself.... being able to correctly express yourself (and timeframes) is the true gist of all these agile develoment models. I often say that there are a thousand ways to say the same thing, and how you say it (notice it is not what you say, since you are delivering the same information) is greatly dependant upon the listener. This is no different. Unfortunately, interpersonal communication is so nuanced that it is so much more than a language barrier, and unfortunately, so many developers around the world are lacking in this skill. If they weren't, many organizations would simply not use them.
"I see!" said the blind man. Thank you AC :)
I was a cub scout, and a boy scout.
I was also a Cavalry Scout in the United States Army. MOS is 19D.
"Scouts" as a term predates Baden-Powell (the founder of the scouting movement). He took the term from the definition of reconnoitering - "scouting".
I don't know about the legal ramifications, but I know that they aren't the only organization to use the term "Scouts"
I hope that all of these resubmitted patches are exactly the same as they were before. I would hate to see that this was used as a vector to add a backdoor into the kernal.
I want to apologize beforehand; You sir, are an idiot. If I had the inclination, I would explain the difference between buckshot, deerslugs, and how the tumbling of a ar-15 round can cause major injuries. However, I almost feel as if your response is simply a troll. Your comment about sound in a enclosed space with a firearm shows that you really do not have that much knowledge about SPL level either.
China has a law prohibiting the importation of encrypted devices. They want you to boot up latptops at the airport to verify that TrueCrypt or something similar isn't running.
Please don't consider me out of touch with current technology. I will be the first one to admit that I am not an expert in everything, but please don't make generalization accusing me that I don't know specific software. Yes, I know exactly what Cobbler and Puppet are. They still don't do _everything_ that AD does. It's like saying Calc is just as good as excel because it has 95% of the features. If you are a heavy user of one of those 5%... well, then it isn't good enough.
I could say you don't know how to program in prolog or ada, and therefore you can't possibly understand some of the programming issues that I have had to resolve in production systems.
Your response is a perfect characterization of the arrogance of linux. There just isn't a simple solution. Linux does work great on the backend, but please give me a solution for Visio, for Project, for Sharepoint, for Photoshop, for Dynamics, for CATIA or Creo Elements? And no, WINE doesn't work in these scenarios. Too slow, and if it crashes, now you have engineers who make as much as high end programmer who are sitting there twittling their thumbs while I spend hours or weeks trying to figure it out. Give me a (good) FEA software that doesn't run on Windows. Now give me software that won't take weeks or months of downtime for training.
I am also not referring to a large organization, which have their own intrinsic issues in migrating legacy application so that they may utilize Linux. I am personally much more knowledgeable about small and mid size businesses. (under 2000 employees) Are you recommending that each and every company have on staff programmers to customize beta software that used to be solved by purchasing commercial off the shelf solutions? Now how about telling those same organizations that due to the GPL, that those customizations have to be given back to the community and can then be utilized directly by their competitors. Trust me, it ain't an easy sell.
I am also not talking about back end system but rather the interface for them.
I don't simply work in the IT department as a lackey. (although that was me 15 years ago) I have to interface with many people in the company, and out side the company in my consulting practice. The fact is, Microsoft has set up a wonderful (kidding) system of certifications. We all remember the "book" certified MSCE2k who couldn't admin their way out of a paper bag in the boom. They could easily be let go. However, you can hire another one for 40k a year, and if he doesn't work out, replace him, rather than finding a RHEL certified person at 85k to 95k a year who may not work out (Did he set up everything correctly? As he was pressed for time, did he actually document everything, as you know there are 1000 ways to do the same thing. If you let him go, it will take the new guy 6 months to figure out how and why things are set up.. Have you actually used Red Hat support? At three in the morning on a Sunday?
I know CPA's who _only_ know quickbooks, and make over 250k a year working _only_ in quickbooks. I have seen companies with 100M/year in sales still using Great Plains in DOS. Don't underestimate the power of _not_ changing.
Hey, I didn't make the rules... I just know enough of them 'em to be moderately successful. I have many linux and FreeBSD servers running at many companies. Although well documented, I doubt many C level employees (other than the CIO) even realize it, because I didn't take away their precious outlook or excel. People abhor major change. Finance and accounting people even more so than normal people. Just look at the pushback with the ribbon interface in office.
If I were to start a new brick and mortar business, I would run Linux on the desktop (actually, I would run dumb terminals like a HP t410 AiO linking back to a main server, going full circle back to the 1970's.)
When I was referring to "a lot of people" I was not referring to people in the IT department, but rather other departments, or the "man on the street".
I can give you four good reasons.
1) Excel. Sorry Libreoffice can't compare to someone who has 15 years of experience ( and a masters in finance/ econ/ 10 years of experience at company) making pivot tables and doesn't wish to learn another way of doing things. It's nice when you have a 10 year old formula in excel and can boot up office 2k and it works. Keep in mind a fair share of companies are still on office 2k, for better or worse. You can sit there in your chair and say "well, upgrade", but for a 40 seat license, it can cost 3500 usd, and many companies refuse to pay for it, especially when Office 2k is "good enough".
2) Active directory. Yes, you can control file access via samba. Yes, you can have user control via (one of many) means, but active directory is not (too) difficult, and any 1st year admin should be able to set up simple file access.
3) Standard installs. If I go to CompUSA, Wal-Mart, Best Buy or Target, I can buy a computer or laptop with Windows. Windows is the de facto standard because (for better or worse) that is what is able to be bought at the retail level. I would wager 95% of all computer available through retail channels has windows preinstalled.
4) Support. Microsoft is a Global 100 company. As they used to say 20 years ago... Nobody gets fired for buying IBM. If everyone else is purchasing office, and by default windows, then any issues that you encounter are the same issues that your competitors have. That (in it's own way) levels the playing field. We can all sit here and talk about how great Ernie Ball is for standardizing on Linux, but that is less than 1% of the marketplace. If I have an issue, I have a number to call, and the support I get is from a company that I can pay to get support from that everyone has heard of. Everyone hasn't heard of canonical. Hell, a lot of people have never heard of SAP or Oracle.
Centrino isn't a processor, it is a chipset^^^marketing spin.
Are you meaning celeron or P4m?
American Express does this
Too early to look for a link, but I have used it before
Mod down this rant if you want, but it is an objective opinion of the consensus of this thread.
Everyone here talks about how they can't leave IT, and "boo-hoo" that this corporation that cares little for you offshores your job.
The PhD in question realized that plumbing pays more (and to reply to another thread, a plumber can make much more than 100k USD if they want to).
Personally, I hate my IT job. I do network administration for a logistics company. We also have a help desk (which for some strange reason is my boss) and three programmers who program in something easier than VB (magic software out of israel if you are interested...shudder).
I loathe my IT job, loathe the fact that nobody understand what I do, loathe the fact that I am forgotten about, loathe the fact that I put in 80 hour weeks and get chastised for the raise I threaten to quit over if I didn't get it. I am going to quit. As someone else stated, money is the best form of flattery. Who will pay me better than me? Nobody. So I am starting my own buisness.
Yes it is a horrible plan (ebay selling combined with windshield repair) but I do have aspiritions (would like to start developing games for cell phones and pdas)
So I am leaving my position in about 3 months to start it. Will I make as much? No. I only make 40k now, but with benefits that is probably nearer to 50k a year ( no bonus, no matching 401k ). Do I have to potential to make more? Hell yes I do. I am greatly suprized that people haven't taken the ititiative to start up there own niche based software companies. I am about to, and plan on hiring part time java programmers from wherever they pop up, as so long as they can do the work.
Not everyone has the prudence to start there own buisness, not everyone can code 4000 (good) lines in a week, not everyone can program a pix without looking at it.
If you love coding, but hate your job, find a niche that nobody else has filled. Write damn good software, and actively work on getting it marketed to the people who will use it. Maybe a niche to you is an answering machine for your linux box that emails you the ogg version of the message. Maybe it is a good time management system. Or software for logistics, or dental offices, or time management. Is each one of these things something that will make you a millionare? Of course not. If you change certain aspects of it, and spin the marketing a certain way, and sell it correctly, you could easily be sucessful enough and make enough bread for your family.
I still come back here even though 95% of the posters on slashdot haven't a clue, and usually don't mod up the intellegent posts because they don't agree with them.
Counterpane? Not the open source loving counterpane?
http://passwordsafe.sourceforge.net/
Or should we just realize that all companies are evil and good in their own way.
Hense why I am starting up my own company. Fuck this working for other people crap. You just need interpersonal skills.
Look at Gnome and KDE. Both great windowing managers. Both took great amounts of time and effort to make.
Yet for joe-six-pack-end-user (which everyone here on slashdot eventually wants as linux users, right?) , there isn't "multiple window managers", there is the start menu, and he doesn't really care whether it is a "K" or a "foot" down in the lower left hand corner.
The article basically is correct in stating that passionate dissagreements fork projects. The doubling up of energies on very similar projects (like Gnome and KDE) work against open source.
Why?
Because all of the man hours spent building up Gnome were spent on KDE (or K-Office, Konquerer, etc), the code would be much tighter, with greater functionality.
What isn't stated in the article is that there aren't that many human interface experts working in open source. Most interfaces are done either by programmers themselves, or graphic designers who have no idea how most users navigate through systems. What good open source projects need is human interface experts who are willing to lend their knowledge to make a easier navagatable program.
Ask your Mom to get me one too :)
I have a lazy eye. I do not see things in 3D. I see things with one eye.
Do I still store things in 3D? I don't really have much of an issue recognizing friends and people I just met ( though I have a problem with names, but that is another issue).
Try this, cover one eye, and then without opening it, try to touch a pen tip at arms length by comming down on it vertically. I bet you you miss. This is my life, and how I operate on a day to day basis. (not seeing things in 3d)
I am not saying your wrong, in fact, you are most definately correct. But I get along just fine with only one eye functioning.
>I'm happy that you have a budget that permits >you to spend more than I can. Bravo. Now get >your high horse.
.5% of revenue last year, thank you very much.
.doc, .pdf, .xls, and a couple others. Why couldn't you do the same thing?
My budget was less than
>I'm charged with keeping the system operating >with a dearth of resources and a limited labor >budget. They aren't throwing money at me to buy >equipment. Hell, I have volunteers going >through our old stuff to find out what is worth >selling on ebay.
Cry me a river. How do you think I purchased many of the things I have now? I sold unused racks on ebay, and old computers to employees.
>You have more storage space for email than my >entire flipping data center. Now tell me, what >do you use to back that up? My measly 100GB >array, plus our databases and the email server >take about 20 hours to back up on a SCSI tape.
>You do back your systems up every night, don't >you?
If you are using tape, well, what decade are you in? I use USB 2.0 Drives. Several of them, in fact. Then all of the backup is live data, meaning I can access it for restore purposes immediately. I also do backups 4 times a day, and this is with over 20 Gig of data. Get over yourself. There are better faster cheaper ways of doing stuff. Why don't you sell your obsolute tape backup and replace it with something much more modern and cheaper. Hell buy a Dell Axiom with extra money you save.
>You see, I don't have customers. I have people >relying on me to keep this shop running come >hell, high water, or hogs in sneakers. The last >thing I need to be growing a storage farm >because someone can't figure out how to delete >a bloody attachment when they are finished with >it.
The employees in my company are my customers. That is customer service. You sound like an angry jaded sysadmin or netadmin. I appreciate where you are comming from, but you with your additude of "my way or no way" hurts everyone in this field. I do what I am told, and I do it in the manner I see fit. That is it. The company wanted to have backups for disaster recovery. I sold two $3k tape drive on ebay for $2200. Purchased a USB 2.0 High speed card. $50. 5 USB 2.0 HD's (at $240 apiece, 120 Gig). Wow. I saved our company money by putting money back into our department's coffers. I then took that and bought Interscan and put it on an old workstation. How am I wasteful with my companies money?
You will also not that You are pulling away attachments on email. I have no idea what your company does. I work in the freight forwarding buisness. If I am not industry standard (and I believe email attachments are industry standard whatever industry you are in) then we will give up that on a competative front. I don't want my sales rep (who in the end bring in revenue that pays me) unable to recieve email that has a bid on it because I have become anal retentive on viruses. On workstations that have Outlook, I have simply disabled the ability to have any type of attachments except
-Dan
I run IMAP as well. Good system. Yes it is on Windows. IMail from ipswitch. I even have Outlook on the desktop No I don't have any issues with viruses via email. Viruses get removed.
Why?
I run an email proxy from Trend Micro. Interscan Messaging Security Suite. It does Virus Scanning with automagic updates, and can also do meta filtering. (which I don't use)
I had 3 sobig.e viruses stopped on Thursday from Nextel and Dell employees.
Email comes in, hits proxy, viruses get removed, on to the IMAP server. How hard is that?
Installing a $1500 Program on a $800 win 2k pro Machine to me fixes a whole lot more problems than banning the software and standard operating procedures the executives at my company use (outlook, or netscape 4.7 but that is a different story).
Banning attachments? How insane are you? Yes, I know email wasn't designed for attachments, and I don't know how large your company is, but at my company, we do millions in buisness, and a lot of that buisness is based upon email. Finding a solution that works, without stopping users from doing what they need to do.
My IMAP server is 180 gig RAID 5 Array. I have 190 users of email. I also have scripts to remove email older than 1 year. I run this script every quarter, and let people know what is going on. If they have mail they want to save, I have them put it into a "save" folder. I also have it set up where users can't go over 500 Megs each for mail.
From a corporate standpoint, I sincerely hope that you are not in my industry. Because if you are, your rash decisions are going to easily allow my company to offer better service while allowing our customers to do THE SAME THINGS THAT THEY ALWAYS HAVE.
>Two million songs is not impressive at all.
Yes, for a company that has only 3% of computer marketshare, and an even smaller percent (85% ? of Mac users use OSX and lets imagine 90% downloaded Itunes 4) For a company that caters to this small of an audience, I would say two million songs in two weeks isn't bad. Macs have often been stepping stones before major software breaks out (I call it getting usability down, think AOL started on the Mac)
>This means total sales for the year would be >about $50 million, which in corporate terms is >pocket change.
It is pocket change. Now lets do some extrapolation of data shall we? 2 million songs in 16 days. Imagine if (when) this software is realeased for free on Windows, as it is currently under development. Lets say 90,000 downloads per day for mac users would extrapolate to be almost 3,000,000 for PC users, (thinking in strict terms of market share) so in two weeks time (after this software is set up for windows) we could see a revenue stream of over $1 Billion a year. Hardly chump change.
>Two million songs means that the average Apple >user is buying songs at a rate of 2-3 a year. >Hardly a figure that would impress anyone.
Are you Alomex, the great spreader of Fear uncertainty and doubt (FUD)? Or do you just wanna be a karma whore? The fact remains that the service has only been available for a little of two weeks, so each mac user downloaded two to three songs in two weeks. A song a week. (using your data)
>The only positive spin out of two million songs >sold is that it does prove that iTunes is not a >dud. Any other implication beyond that is pure >hype.
Positive Spin, in two weeks Apple has become the largest legit online music service company. And they can make money at this. They HAVE the backing of the music industry. They will soon have indy bands.
Please, take a moment to look at what the facts are before posting. I am getting annoyed with Karma whores spreading fake information about Microsoft, Apple, anything that doesn't run on or is Linux. The right tool for the right job.
Damn
Wait Wait Wait..
Nope, Still don't care.
Slashdot has a way of posting news, but no backup information sometimes. Or maybe I am the only one who actually reads the articles.... Here is an overview of the technology. Here is a link to the company making this product, speral solar power. Not much in great detail about the strength of these products, other than "very strong" or "stronger than regular solar cells".
If you read the article, how much more additional funding is needed? The equipment is already purchased, the systems are in place. Yes, they need to pay for expansion, and upkeep, (In other words the rest of the ROI), but that usually is much easier to get than the initial purchase.
Frightning indeed