Many people claim to be competent windows admins, when really they're nothing of the sort. Most windows users only ever use a few percent of the overall functionality, and in many cases don't even realise there's a huge level of complexity underneath. Those who have mastered the top level interface, but haven't noticed the hidden complexity often falsely claim to be windows experts.
You could use linux in the same way, and many people do, only using the simple interfaces exposed by gnome, kde, webmin, cobalt etc... The difference is the underlying system is not hidden, so these people *know* they're not experts. However, if you do choose to dig deeper, you'll find that underneath it all, linux is actually a much simpler and far more logical system than windows.
On windows, you have incompetent staff claiming to be experts. On linux, you have people of the same level who admit to not being experts.
And then there are the real experts, and linux has more true experts than windows because it is easier to gain in-depth knowledge, and more information is available as to how everything works under the hood.
So who would you hire, an incompetent windows admin who claims to be an expert, an incompetent linux admin who admits his own lack of knowledge but wants to learn, or expert staff who are much harder to find and much more expensive.
I'd rather hire experts, and windows experts are rarer and more expensive than linux experts. As an alternative, i'd hire (cheaper) people who are not experts but are willing to learn, and they'd learn linux more quickly.
That's very true... People will call themselves "windows experts" or "windows admins" when they have a rudimentary knowlege of it... People will rarely claim to be able to use Linux or Unix unless they really know what theyre doing.
For example, i know several people who claim to be windows experts, and they have a mediocre knowlege of windows.... They make no claims about being linux experts, but they also have a similarly mediocre knowlege of linux. These people could therefore perform the task of being a mediocre windows or linux admin with relative ease. These people spend their working lives maintaining windows systems, and a very small amount of linux maintenence (since less things go wrong). The difference is that they learn linux more quickly, because it's more logical.
If the people with mediocre knowledge of linux claimed to be experts like those with mediocre windows knowledge did, there would be much less of a staff shortage and resulting lower costs for these staff. And, if they had to do a job running linux machines for a while, they'd usually learn fairly quickly.
Ofcourse, you don't really want mediocre staff running your systems, you want *GOOD* staff... If someone applies claiming to be a linux expert, theres a much greater chance that they really are, than if they claim to be a windows expert.
Windows is actually a far more complex system than linux, where linux is built on a few basic principles, windows is a big mishmash of different ideas and "current fads" bolted together. It's much harder to become an expert on windows than it is on linux, the difference is that people are more willing to lie, and are more likely to have basic exposure to windows (so that they can use maybe 5% of it) and that windows hides the underlying complexity so that a lot of these mediocre people truly believe they are experts, because they aren't even aware of the underlying complexity.
Linux can also get bogged down with garbage if you manually install/remove apps (and thus relying on their inbuilt uninstall procedures)... But if you use the package managers supplied with virtually all distributions, you can easily install and remove packages cleanly... Windows has nothing like this, which is why it gradually deteriorates as apps are moved around.
That's why the standard needs to be mandated, Then whoever is mandating the standard can state that ms's implementation doesn't comply with the standard and is therefore not allowed to be used until they fix it.
This is utterly ridiculous... How arrogant must these people be to assume that people will listen to anything other than their over-hyped drivel. Not to mention that it's grossly unfair to tax people who are not using ipods to listen to downloaded mp3s... Infact, many people will simply take the attitude of "I've already paid, therefore i can download what i like"
You can use sync4j/funambol (www.funambol.com) to sync with your mobile device... I believe it can use CalDAV or iCal servers at the backend to get its data from, and there are plenty of clients and web based solutions which will be able to sync with caldav servers. Sync4j is great because it can sync with virtually any mobile device, not just certain types of PDA. It will quite happily sync with quite a large number of regular cellphones too, and it can do it over the network (so you get updates even when your out of the office).
Horde... OpenXchange OpenGroupware PHPGroupware Zimbra etc etc... Most offer a web based interface, and some let you connect certain clients to them, all are free and most are relatively easy to set up.
Funnily enough, unix has had this for years... Systems running CDE (That is most commercial unixes since the early 90s) came with CMSD, the Calender Management Service Daemon (not sure about service daemon... first part is correct) which let users share calendars... However, aside from a few gaping security holes which let people remotely own your boxes, very few people actually used CMSD for it's intended purpose.
Not to mention potential future costs... If your locked in to proprietary products like microsoft's, they can easily escalate the costs in future... The more difficult and expensive they make it to migrate away, the more they can charge... If it costs a million to move away, they can easily charge 800k to stay and most people will, because it's cheaper, but only because they have artificially raised the price of migration by locking you in.
Actually, they owe a lot more to Britain and the USSR... America was a late entry into the war against Germany, and Hitler was already on the back foot by this point.
Those vast majority of people who don't care aren't the people making the purchasing decisions anyway. Those who run and/or own the company, who do have a vested interest in it's continued success, and do make decisions, really should care very much about freedom. How many people complain they can't migrate away from windows because they're locked in to various proprietary technologies and freeing themselves of these proprietary bonds is too costly? How many more areas will they need to get locked in to, before they realise how badly they've screwed themselves over?
I second that... I have introduced quite a few people to openoffice, and for purposes of experimentation showed msoffice 2007 betas to a few people too... Most of these people had previously been using msoffice 2000 - 2003.
One person, who'd started out on wordperfect years ago greatly preferred openoffice... Most people were simply indifferent, or didn't even notice any difference with openoffice. One guy really loved the mouse based cut+paste (select, paste with middle button) on X11, and found it much faster to the clunkier windows method which involves switching between mouse and keyboard repeatedly (incidentally, you can do this on linux too if you really must)
Those who looked at msoffice 2007, mostly thought it looked prettier but found it difficult to get to grips with, since the interface is so different from what they've used before. Most of them couldn't work out how to open a file, infact even several technical people took considerable time to open a file, and some even resorted to using explorer to invoke word and open the file.
You point out a lot of situations where you've got locked in to a proprietary technology, and then cite the difficulty of migrating away from it as reason not to... To turn this around, isn't this a reason to migrate as soon as possible? Before the problem gets worse, and you're even more locked in. What happens ten years down the line, if microsoft go bust or raise their prices to even more ridiculous levels, or include even more obnoxious clauses in their license agreements... The costs of sticking with microsoft could massively eclipse what a migration today would have cost (even taking into account inflation) and yet they can rip you off to this extent, because your so locked in that a migration would still cost even more.
You just need to think long term, and consider the long term business risks of being dependant on a single vendor. Infact, it seems utterly ridiculous that any business will make a purchasing decision without finding at least a second source for what they're buying, and having an exit strategy. Aren't these the most BASIC things that should be considered when running a business?
And many of those office workers came from running DOS and WordPerfect... They know that change will happen, and while they might not like it, they accept it. There weren't large multinationals trying to force people to stay on DOS by shouting about the retraining costs etc.
Funnily enough, msoffice 2007 does away with the file menu, you have a circular button with an msoffice logo on it which takes the place of the file menu, but performs much the same function.
Could it just be that Novell found themselves with two projects aiming to achieve the same goal, and figured the suse one was better to concentrate their development effort on?
As a kid, had i not pirated games, i wouldn't have been able to afford the hardware on which to play them... So i had a choice: Legit games, no hardware to play them on (stupid, obviously) Hardware, with no games (i guess i could learn to code in BASIC) Hardware, with pirated games Obviously i chose the latter, and frequently traded games with friends at school.
There's no reason for you to keep the full quality versions, but it's still preferable to have the choice... You could burn it to CD, compress it to whatever degree you like using lossy compression etc.
I always wondered, when you have multiple sites in a shared hosting environment using IIS... What user does dynamic content like asp scripts run as? Is it a separate user for every site, do all the sites run as the same user (iis user etc?) Usually with most apache setups i've seen, everything runs as the apache user.
The reason for not hiring a linux admin in a small business like that, is because once the linux admin has the initial systems running, he will spend the rest of his time doing very little, waiting for a new customer so he can spend all of 10 seconds logging in and adding a user. For this reason, you perhaps only need 5% or less of a linux admin's time, so this is where outsourcing comes in. If you have a consultancy who supplies you with linux admins, after the initial setup 99% of the work can be done remotely so it needn't be very expensive. You pay for the 5% of a linux admin's time that you use, and his remaining 95% gets pimped out to other companies in the same boat as you. And if your company grows such as it's big enough to support a full time admin or two, then you can easily go and employ one.
Don't forget that remote desktop is fundamentally insecure... Not only does it quite happily tell users what OS it's running and what domains it can log into, but it's vulnerable to an easy man in the middle attack because it does absolutely nothing to ensure your connecting to the host you think you are. Unlike SSH, which checks the host key and will scream at you / not let you connect if the host key is wrong.
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Many people claim to be competent windows admins, when really they're nothing of the sort.
Most windows users only ever use a few percent of the overall functionality, and in many cases don't even realise there's a huge level of complexity underneath. Those who have mastered the top level interface, but haven't noticed the hidden complexity often falsely claim to be windows experts.
You could use linux in the same way, and many people do, only using the simple interfaces exposed by gnome, kde, webmin, cobalt etc... The difference is the underlying system is not hidden, so these people *know* they're not experts. However, if you do choose to dig deeper, you'll find that underneath it all, linux is actually a much simpler and far more logical system than windows.
On windows, you have incompetent staff claiming to be experts.
On linux, you have people of the same level who admit to not being experts.
And then there are the real experts, and linux has more true experts than windows because it is easier to gain in-depth knowledge, and more information is available as to how everything works under the hood.
So who would you hire, an incompetent windows admin who claims to be an expert, an incompetent linux admin who admits his own lack of knowledge but wants to learn, or expert staff who are much harder to find and much more expensive.
I'd rather hire experts, and windows experts are rarer and more expensive than linux experts. As an alternative, i'd hire (cheaper) people who are not experts but are willing to learn, and they'd learn linux more quickly.
That's very true...
People will call themselves "windows experts" or "windows admins" when they have a rudimentary knowlege of it...
People will rarely claim to be able to use Linux or Unix unless they really know what theyre doing.
For example, i know several people who claim to be windows experts, and they have a mediocre knowlege of windows.... They make no claims about being linux experts, but they also have a similarly mediocre knowlege of linux. These people could therefore perform the task of being a mediocre windows or linux admin with relative ease. These people spend their working lives maintaining windows systems, and a very small amount of linux maintenence (since less things go wrong). The difference is that they learn linux more quickly, because it's more logical.
If the people with mediocre knowledge of linux claimed to be experts like those with mediocre windows knowledge did, there would be much less of a staff shortage and resulting lower costs for these staff. And, if they had to do a job running linux machines for a while, they'd usually learn fairly quickly.
Ofcourse, you don't really want mediocre staff running your systems, you want *GOOD* staff... If someone applies claiming to be a linux expert, theres a much greater chance that they really are, than if they claim to be a windows expert.
Windows is actually a far more complex system than linux, where linux is built on a few basic principles, windows is a big mishmash of different ideas and "current fads" bolted together. It's much harder to become an expert on windows than it is on linux, the difference is that people are more willing to lie, and are more likely to have basic exposure to windows (so that they can use maybe 5% of it) and that windows hides the underlying complexity so that a lot of these mediocre people truly believe they are experts, because they aren't even aware of the underlying complexity.
Linux can also get bogged down with garbage if you manually install/remove apps (and thus relying on their inbuilt uninstall procedures)...
But if you use the package managers supplied with virtually all distributions, you can easily install and remove packages cleanly... Windows has nothing like this, which is why it gradually deteriorates as apps are moved around.
Vmware ESX runs linux at it's core, and lots of companies use it to run windows images... Even if they don't realise it's linux based.
That's why the standard needs to be mandated,
Then whoever is mandating the standard can state that ms's implementation doesn't comply with the standard and is therefore not allowed to be used until they fix it.
This is utterly ridiculous...
How arrogant must these people be to assume that people will listen to anything other than their over-hyped drivel.
Not to mention that it's grossly unfair to tax people who are not using ipods to listen to downloaded mp3s... Infact, many people will simply take the attitude of "I've already paid, therefore i can download what i like"
You can use sync4j/funambol (www.funambol.com) to sync with your mobile device... I believe it can use CalDAV or iCal servers at the backend to get its data from, and there are plenty of clients and web based solutions which will be able to sync with caldav servers.
Sync4j is great because it can sync with virtually any mobile device, not just certain types of PDA. It will quite happily sync with quite a large number of regular cellphones too, and it can do it over the network (so you get updates even when your out of the office).
Horde...
OpenXchange
OpenGroupware
PHPGroupware
Zimbra
etc etc... Most offer a web based interface, and some let you connect certain clients to them, all are free and most are relatively easy to set up.
You have to agree to a lot of those things when you use microsoft products too...
Funnily enough, unix has had this for years...
Systems running CDE (That is most commercial unixes since the early 90s) came with CMSD, the Calender Management Service Daemon (not sure about service daemon... first part is correct) which let users share calendars...
However, aside from a few gaping security holes which let people remotely own your boxes, very few people actually used CMSD for it's intended purpose.
Not to mention potential future costs...
If your locked in to proprietary products like microsoft's, they can easily escalate the costs in future... The more difficult and expensive they make it to migrate away, the more they can charge... If it costs a million to move away, they can easily charge 800k to stay and most people will, because it's cheaper, but only because they have artificially raised the price of migration by locking you in.
Actually, they owe a lot more to Britain and the USSR... America was a late entry into the war against Germany, and Hitler was already on the back foot by this point.
Those vast majority of people who don't care aren't the people making the purchasing decisions anyway.
Those who run and/or own the company, who do have a vested interest in it's continued success, and do make decisions, really should care very much about freedom.
How many people complain they can't migrate away from windows because they're locked in to various proprietary technologies and freeing themselves of these proprietary bonds is too costly? How many more areas will they need to get locked in to, before they realise how badly they've screwed themselves over?
I second that...
I have introduced quite a few people to openoffice, and for purposes of experimentation showed msoffice 2007 betas to a few people too... Most of these people had previously been using msoffice 2000 - 2003.
One person, who'd started out on wordperfect years ago greatly preferred openoffice...
Most people were simply indifferent, or didn't even notice any difference with openoffice.
One guy really loved the mouse based cut+paste (select, paste with middle button) on X11, and found it much faster to the clunkier windows method which involves switching between mouse and keyboard repeatedly (incidentally, you can do this on linux too if you really must)
Those who looked at msoffice 2007, mostly thought it looked prettier but found it difficult to get to grips with, since the interface is so different from what they've used before. Most of them couldn't work out how to open a file, infact even several technical people took considerable time to open a file, and some even resorted to using explorer to invoke word and open the file.
You point out a lot of situations where you've got locked in to a proprietary technology, and then cite the difficulty of migrating away from it as reason not to...
To turn this around, isn't this a reason to migrate as soon as possible? Before the problem gets worse, and you're even more locked in.
What happens ten years down the line, if microsoft go bust or raise their prices to even more ridiculous levels, or include even more obnoxious clauses in their license agreements... The costs of sticking with microsoft could massively eclipse what a migration today would have cost (even taking into account inflation) and yet they can rip you off to this extent, because your so locked in that a migration would still cost even more.
You just need to think long term, and consider the long term business risks of being dependant on a single vendor.
Infact, it seems utterly ridiculous that any business will make a purchasing decision without finding at least a second source for what they're buying, and having an exit strategy. Aren't these the most BASIC things that should be considered when running a business?
And many of those office workers came from running DOS and WordPerfect... They know that change will happen, and while they might not like it, they accept it. There weren't large multinationals trying to force people to stay on DOS by shouting about the retraining costs etc.
Funnily enough, msoffice 2007 does away with the file menu, you have a circular button with an msoffice logo on it which takes the place of the file menu, but performs much the same function.
Could it just be that Novell found themselves with two projects aiming to achieve the same goal, and figured the suse one was better to concentrate their development effort on?
As a kid, had i not pirated games, i wouldn't have been able to afford the hardware on which to play them...
So i had a choice:
Legit games, no hardware to play them on (stupid, obviously)
Hardware, with no games (i guess i could learn to code in BASIC)
Hardware, with pirated games
Obviously i chose the latter, and frequently traded games with friends at school.
There's no reason for you to keep the full quality versions, but it's still preferable to have the choice...
You could burn it to CD, compress it to whatever degree you like using lossy compression etc.
What we need is a packaging system, so you can roll your own firefox installer with a bundle of default extensions...
Which forums? I've never had such issues, firefox seems pretty solid for me..
I always wondered, when you have multiple sites in a shared hosting environment using IIS... What user does dynamic content like asp scripts run as? Is it a separate user for every site, do all the sites run as the same user (iis user etc?)
Usually with most apache setups i've seen, everything runs as the apache user.
The reason for not hiring a linux admin in a small business like that, is because once the linux admin has the initial systems running, he will spend the rest of his time doing very little, waiting for a new customer so he can spend all of 10 seconds logging in and adding a user.
For this reason, you perhaps only need 5% or less of a linux admin's time, so this is where outsourcing comes in. If you have a consultancy who supplies you with linux admins, after the initial setup 99% of the work can be done remotely so it needn't be very expensive. You pay for the 5% of a linux admin's time that you use, and his remaining 95% gets pimped out to other companies in the same boat as you.
And if your company grows such as it's big enough to support a full time admin or two, then you can easily go and employ one.
Don't forget that remote desktop is fundamentally insecure...
Not only does it quite happily tell users what OS it's running and what domains it can log into, but it's vulnerable to an easy man in the middle attack because it does absolutely nothing to ensure your connecting to the host you think you are. Unlike SSH, which checks the host key and will scream at you / not let you connect if the host key is wrong.