All the frequent flyer lounges I've ever been in have either free internet terminals or WiFi - so airlines have already taken care of that.
As for poorer passengers (who are stuck out in the main terminal anyway) - I'm pretty sure that the duty free shops would rather have people browsing out of boredom rather than glued to their laptops. After all, that's how the shops make sales.
Airlines have demonstrated on many occasions that they don't give a s*** about non-premium class passengers - why are they going to bother offering them free web access? If you want that I suggest you fly business class from now on.
Seriously think about this instead of posting such an idiotic comment, Mr "Vrai" (as in "Ivraie").
I assume that was an attempt at an ad hominem. However given that I don't have a f***ing clue what 'Ivraie' means it wasn't very effective.
Spend thousands of dollars/pounds/swiss-francs installing WiFi hotspots and allow completely free access to them.
???
Profit!
How could this fail? Surely companies will be queuing up to invest money with no hope of every recouping it! It could herald a who new era of a financial planning... mirkonomics.
Advertisers have targeted children for years, yet most of the people I know had parents who had some inkling about raising a child.
Food made from basic ingredients (fresh meat, fresh veg, brown rice etc...), as little refined sugar as possible (raisins instead of M&Ms), no caffiene (why people give kids stimulant packed drinks is beyond me) and at least two hours a day away from the TV/computer doing some exercise (footy, cycling, anything outside).
This isn't rocket science but sadly fewer and fewer parents manage to do this, instead allow television to raise their kids for them.
The only thing you might not like is that iTunes manages the directory structure for you by/Artist/Albumname/Track. You have no control over how it does this.
Too bloody right you have no control. My experience with the Windows version of iTunes was...
Install iTunes and point it at my MP3 directory tree
Wait
Admire the nice interface and have a play
Think, this isn't too bad
... time passes...
Rip a new track and upload it to my main server
RSync the Windows machine, notice that it's retrieving the entire MP3 tree
Hit Ctrl-C and take a look and what iTunes has done to the file structure
Swear, delete MP3 tree, rsync it from scratch, and uninstall iTunes.
When Apple can produce a piece of software that adapts to the way I organise files, rather than expecting me to adapt to it, then I'll buy an iPod. Until then I'll just have to keep my money.
Very good point. I run an Ultra 5 with Blackbox and a few of the KDE apps (all hail the mighty KMail). Apart from the fact that there's a type 5 keyboard in front of the monitor it looks identical to the setup running on my SuSE laptop. Such is the wonder of X and open-source window managers I suppose, no matter what Unix like OS you're using you can have your favourite WM and apps.
That said, KDE is most easily setup on a i386/Linux box (Solaris now ships with GNOME), so it's likely that the props/set-design team would go with Linux over other OSs.
click on something and it dosn't work (eg. the CNN poles
Honestly, those lazy Polish bastards. CNN give them nice jobs in the US compiling polls for their website, and do they work? Some people have no sense of gratitude!
The scary thing is that they let clowns like Accenture and IBM's consulantcy divison anywhere near financial software. I work for a bank and having dealt with both IBM and the company formerly known as Anderson Consulting I have come to the following conclusions:
The only IBM staff that should be allowed on to a banks premises are those installing the servers. If they offer to look at your software or processes: shoot them.
Shoot everyone at Accenture because they're all clueless motherf***ers. They make MSCEs look like technical gurus.
Crashing back on topic - the problem with Games companies is that, for PC/Mac games, it's all to easy to stick a patch on the net and expect your customers to download it. Thus the incentive to get it right the first time that exists with console games isn't present.
That said console games are getting worse all the time. I never had my Gameboy or SNES crash on me, but both my PS2 and my XBox have either hung or glitched badly. The worst offenders are obviously rushed games like The Getaway - I actually had to take that back because the stream stopped working, thus trapping you in certain area of the city.
The solution would be for more people to return console games when they're clearly not finished. In the UK at least it is perfectly legal to return faulty products. If a developer/publisher is losing money because of QA issues they are likely to solve them sharpish.
To an extent. However according to this EU Document on state aid the UK Government has committed a large amount of money to the scheme (including 1.5GBP billion in grants and 3.25GBP billion in guaranteed bonds). Also, and most importantly, they provided 13GBP billion worth of Hedging guarantees, with unlimited exposure to the Government.
Essentially, whilst private companies stumped up the cash, it was the Government (along with the French Government) who accepted the bulk of the risk. However even with this guarantee it took a lot of convincing to get backers on board, which suggests that without this Government backing the tunnel would never have been built.
Maybe someone will do it right, without gargantuan govermnent subisidies throwing sand in the gears that corrupts the whole design, at some time in the future.
Sadly most of the great engineering projects have required at least some Government subsidy - simply because Governments are the only organisations capable of outlaying the required level of capital. This is especially true for the more risky projects (such as Concorde).
As well as Concorde government subsidies have bought us things like the Apollo programme, the Channel Tunnel, the trans-continental rail[way|road] in the US, the Internet, the world-wide-web, the first digital programmable computers, and the first inter-continental telegraph cables.
These are not only fantastic technological achievements, but have made people's lives better (with the exception of the trans-continental railway vis-a-vis the Indians).
I'd rather the UK spent its money on projects like the Chunnel and Concorde than subsidiing EU farmers or fighting American wars.
This plane was only for the rich. It may be a symbol of human progress, but if it has to come at the cost of so much, then no way. Travel should be for everyone, no matter the speed.
Rubbish. International travel is for those who can afford it - it is not right. Both the UK and France waste far more each year supporting work-shy scroungers than they spent on Concorde through-out its entire lifetime. Speaking as a British citizen I'd much rather my tax money went on building a replacement for Concorde (which would create jobs for skilled professionals) than employing another 300,000 useless bureaucrats in the National Health Service.
Yes, because everyone who's rich is an 'asshat'. I assume you put yourself forward as proof that everyone who is poor is a bitter little retard?
Anyway whether you could afford to travel on Concorde or not isn't the point - I will never travel on a Saturn 5 but that doesn't stop me thinking it was a cool piece of technology. Concorde was unique (at least after the Russia version was cancelled), technically brilliant and a stunning piece of modern design. If it were to be replaced with a bigger/better SST then it wouldn't be so bad. But as it is only a luddite could fail to mourn its passing.
Still, AFAICR you could build a hypertransport-based server that would take a SPARC's memory bandwidth apart. The questions are.. could they make money on it, and would anyone trust their billion dollar software on it?
Sun are part of the Hypertransport consortium (as are Apple) so it's possible that the next generation of SunFires could use the technology, especially in the SBUS/PCI role. If it's got a Sun badge on it, and is backed by Sun's service contracts then people will trust it. Just like with IBM, you don't get fired for buying a Sun.
As for Apple buying Sun - in terms of relative size it is unlikely either company could by each other. Though the rumours about Apple buying SGI are interesting - it would give Apple an excellent foothold in the world of 3D graphics. Plus an SGI with G5s in is a mouth-watering prospect. The MIPS family hasn't been developed at all in the last few years, a shame since up to about '95 SGI workstations were well ahead of the curve. The rumour also has the added plausability bonus that Apple have been trying to surplant SGI Workstations for years, where as Apple and Sun have never really been in competition (ultra-low end web server market excepted).
Trends aren't the issue. Banks are amongst the richest companies in the world and they like Sun hardware. This provides a good market for Sun. I was at the Manchester (UK) Sun Performance Centre last year - companies represented included a major financial software company, three banks, and a massive telecoms firm. All existing Sun customers, all looking to buy more machines.
I was also consider the fact that apple and IBM can take the time to build servers with 64 processors and destroy sun's remaining customer base
IBM alreay make machines which are comparible to Sun's, after all they are Sun's primary competitor. As of yet they haven't destroyed Sun's remaining customer base.
Apple make nice friendly computers for home users and the occasional corporate desktop. They will never attempt to enter the big iron market because they a) don't have the expertise, b) wouldn't want to as it's outside their (profitable) niche, and c) no company on Earth would by a 64 processor Apple over a Sun or IBM box.
The reason I focus on desktops is because that is how Microsoft and Apple entered the server markets.
They've entered the market for very small servers - such as web servers and corporate email machines. It was a mistake for Sun to attempt to compete in the blade market and would do well to drop its line in this area. However it is not Sun's primary focus and Microsoft have never attempt to enter the big iron market. Again because a) they don't have 1/100 of the expertise required, b) the anti-trust authorities would be on them in an instant, and c) because no CTO in his right mind is going to install Microsoft Windows on a 120 processor IBM mainframe.
What Sun need to do is stop being distracted by the shiny desktop market and focus their energies on what they do best - making real computers for real business.
I don't think you fully understand why banks and other large institutions use these types of computer. For many tasks it is all about I/O bandwidth (a 1.2Ghz UltraIII is hardly lacking in processing power) - an E15K can move huge amounts of data around making sure that all of its 106 processors are never I/O bound.
Now for things like Montecarlo simulations you are better off with 200 cheap machines running as a cluster. But for tasks such as risk calculation your Mac is only useful as a GUI display device. In the world of financial software a two thousand dollar machine is a toy - real computers start at half a million and upwards.
Sorry if this all sounds condecending but a single/dual processor machine isn't going to replace a huge multi-processor monster. Machines like the Ultra {5,10,30,60} series were not servers - they were desktop machines, and yes, they weren't worth paying for when a better desktop machine could be had for a tenth of the price. However Sun is about big iron, and they do that better than anyone.
Because large companies require big iron machines. Not all tasks are suitable for clustering and in these situations (requiring 64+ processors and four nine reliability) you have two choices:
IBM
Sun
Maybe one day a company will build an AMD64/Linux machine that can compete (I won't even bother comparing the OSNeXT desktop machines), but until that day Sun and IBM are kings of the big iron boxes.
"A perfectly innocent drug test could quickly turn into a peek at your genetic code."
IMHO there is no such thing as an 'innocent' drug test, and I'd refuse to work for any company that insisted on one. Not because I'm worried that I'd fail, but because the contents of a person's urine/hair/blood are utterly irrevelant for 99% of jobs.
Luckily, in the UK at least, the companies that you'd actually want to work for don't have testing. So any company that does insist might as well stick a poster outside of their HR office proclaiming: "Don't work for us, we'll treat you like s***".
If you're using a sun4m (such as SS5), you can optimize for that, which makes SSH go a LOT faster.
Excellent - will rebuild it ASAP.
If you're using sun4u (i.e., Sun Ultra series), you could optimize it further, too.
I've never noticed a problem with performance on my U5. Though this is probably because the machine has a 360Mhz UltraIIi compared to the SS5's coal powered CPU. However I do use the prebuilt Solaris OpenSS{L,H} packages for the U5, which could well be optimised for the Ultra series already.
I've got one of those as well! Mine runs as my mp3/cvs server with an 8Gb root HD and an additional 9.1Gb HD (from a now dead SGI Indigo 2) duct-taped in to the CD bay. The only problem is that it's little 110Mhz microSparc takes about 30 seconds to open a SSH connection. It runs NFS/Samba under debian fine though, even with only 64Mb of RAM.
It is worth pointing out that I use a Sun Ultra 5 as a desktop machine (sol9/blackbox), so I probably count as some kind of retro-Sun fetishist.
Very few people ever use the X11 protocol over a network, firstly, because most people who use X are using it for X applications running locally on their desktop computer
Sorry but that's simply not true. Every company I've ever worked at uses X11 over networks. It's much nicer than VNC because each remote window maps to a single local one, and over a corporate LAN there's no need for compression. It's not limited to work either: I, like many of my colleagues, use it at home and over SSH from remoate locations.
I'm sick of people trying to turn Linux/X11 in to Windows. Linux and X11 are a replacement for proprietary Unixs, that's why they both offer massive configurability. If people find this confusing or difficult to use then it's usually a sign that they should be using Windows/OSX instead.
I'd love to a see a modern replacement for X11. But not at the cost of flexibility and feature set. Network transparency is a vital feature and should not be sacrificed. Especially as it's perfectly possible to have lots of pointless eye-candy and still maintain it.
Apparently, Oracle software runs on more platforms than there are C++ compilers for. ... then... So it's either C, or Java (lately)
Name me a platform for which there exists a JVM, but no C++ compiler. The only one I can think of is Java itself, but unless there's a C -> Java bytecode compiler out there it's not a lot of use to Oracle.
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As for poorer passengers (who are stuck out in the main terminal anyway) - I'm pretty sure that the duty free shops would rather have people browsing out of boredom rather than glued to their laptops. After all, that's how the shops make sales.
Airlines have demonstrated on many occasions that they don't give a s*** about non-premium class passengers - why are they going to bother offering them free web access? If you want that I suggest you fly business class from now on.
I assume that was an attempt at an ad hominem. However given that I don't have a f***ing clue what 'Ivraie' means it wasn't very effective.How could this fail? Surely companies will be queuing up to invest money with no hope of every recouping it! It could herald a who new era of a financial planning ... mirkonomics.
Food made from basic ingredients (fresh meat, fresh veg, brown rice etc ...), as little refined sugar as possible (raisins instead of M&Ms), no caffiene (why people give kids stimulant packed drinks is beyond me) and at least two hours a day away from the TV/computer doing some exercise (footy, cycling, anything outside).
This isn't rocket science but sadly fewer and fewer parents manage to do this, instead allow television to raise their kids for them.
Too bloody right you have no control. My experience with the Windows version of iTunes was ...
When Apple can produce a piece of software that adapts to the way I organise files, rather than expecting me to adapt to it, then I'll buy an iPod. Until then I'll just have to keep my money.
That said, KDE is most easily setup on a i386/Linux box (Solaris now ships with GNOME), so it's likely that the props/set-design team would go with Linux over other OSs.
Blunkett's an idiot, he'd have to be blind not to see that ID cards aren't a huge infringement on personal liberty. Oh wait a second ...
Honestly, those lazy Polish bastards. CNN give them nice jobs in the US compiling polls for their website, and do they work? Some people have no sense of gratitude!
Thus spake a man who has never visted Hull.
Crashing back on topic - the problem with Games companies is that, for PC/Mac games, it's all to easy to stick a patch on the net and expect your customers to download it. Thus the incentive to get it right the first time that exists with console games isn't present.
That said console games are getting worse all the time. I never had my Gameboy or SNES crash on me, but both my PS2 and my XBox have either hung or glitched badly. The worst offenders are obviously rushed games like The Getaway - I actually had to take that back because the stream stopped working, thus trapping you in certain area of the city.
The solution would be for more people to return console games when they're clearly not finished. In the UK at least it is perfectly legal to return faulty products. If a developer/publisher is losing money because of QA issues they are likely to solve them sharpish.
Result - point-and-click copying of these alledgly 'protected' emails. Remember if you can see or hear it, then it can be easily copied.
Essentially, whilst private companies stumped up the cash, it was the Government (along with the French Government) who accepted the bulk of the risk. However even with this guarantee it took a lot of convincing to get backers on board, which suggests that without this Government backing the tunnel would never have been built.
As well as Concorde government subsidies have bought us things like the Apollo programme, the Channel Tunnel, the trans-continental rail[way|road] in the US, the Internet, the world-wide-web, the first digital programmable computers, and the first inter-continental telegraph cables.
These are not only fantastic technological achievements, but have made people's lives better (with the exception of the trans-continental railway vis-a-vis the Indians).
I'd rather the UK spent its money on projects like the Chunnel and Concorde than subsidiing EU farmers or fighting American wars.
Rubbish. International travel is for those who can afford it - it is not right. Both the UK and France waste far more each year supporting work-shy scroungers than they spent on Concorde through-out its entire lifetime. Speaking as a British citizen I'd much rather my tax money went on building a replacement for Concorde (which would create jobs for skilled professionals) than employing another 300,000 useless bureaucrats in the National Health Service.
Anyway whether you could afford to travel on Concorde or not isn't the point - I will never travel on a Saturn 5 but that doesn't stop me thinking it was a cool piece of technology. Concorde was unique (at least after the Russia version was cancelled), technically brilliant and a stunning piece of modern design. If it were to be replaced with a bigger/better SST then it wouldn't be so bad. But as it is only a luddite could fail to mourn its passing.
So basically Yahoo! are moving from an interpreted language written in C, to an interpreted language written in C. Woo hoo.
As for Apple buying Sun - in terms of relative size it is unlikely either company could by each other. Though the rumours about Apple buying SGI are interesting - it would give Apple an excellent foothold in the world of 3D graphics. Plus an SGI with G5s in is a mouth-watering prospect. The MIPS family hasn't been developed at all in the last few years, a shame since up to about '95 SGI workstations were well ahead of the curve. The rumour also has the added plausability bonus that Apple have been trying to surplant SGI Workstations for years, where as Apple and Sun have never really been in competition (ultra-low end web server market excepted).
IBM alreay make machines which are comparible to Sun's, after all they are Sun's primary competitor. As of yet they haven't destroyed Sun's remaining customer base.
Apple make nice friendly computers for home users and the occasional corporate desktop. They will never attempt to enter the big iron market because they a) don't have the expertise, b) wouldn't want to as it's outside their (profitable) niche, and c) no company on Earth would by a 64 processor Apple over a Sun or IBM box.
They've entered the market for very small servers - such as web servers and corporate email machines. It was a mistake for Sun to attempt to compete in the blade market and would do well to drop its line in this area. However it is not Sun's primary focus and Microsoft have never attempt to enter the big iron market. Again because a) they don't have 1/100 of the expertise required, b) the anti-trust authorities would be on them in an instant, and c) because no CTO in his right mind is going to install Microsoft Windows on a 120 processor IBM mainframe.What Sun need to do is stop being distracted by the shiny desktop market and focus their energies on what they do best - making real computers for real business.
Now for things like Montecarlo simulations you are better off with 200 cheap machines running as a cluster. But for tasks such as risk calculation your Mac is only useful as a GUI display device. In the world of financial software a two thousand dollar machine is a toy - real computers start at half a million and upwards.
Sorry if this all sounds condecending but a single/dual processor machine isn't going to replace a huge multi-processor monster. Machines like the Ultra {5,10,30,60} series were not servers - they were desktop machines, and yes, they weren't worth paying for when a better desktop machine could be had for a tenth of the price. However Sun is about big iron, and they do that better than anyone.
Maybe one day a company will build an AMD64/Linux machine that can compete (I won't even bother comparing the OSNeXT desktop machines), but until that day Sun and IBM are kings of the big iron boxes.
Luckily, in the UK at least, the companies that you'd actually want to work for don't have testing. So any company that does insist might as well stick a poster outside of their HR office proclaiming: "Don't work for us, we'll treat you like s***".
Excellent - will rebuild it ASAP.
I've never noticed a problem with performance on my U5. Though this is probably because the machine has a 360Mhz UltraIIi compared to the SS5's coal powered CPU. However I do use the prebuilt Solaris OpenSS{L,H} packages for the U5, which could well be optimised for the Ultra series already.
It is worth pointing out that I use a Sun Ultra 5 as a desktop machine (sol9/blackbox), so I probably count as some kind of retro-Sun fetishist.
I'm sick of people trying to turn Linux/X11 in to Windows. Linux and X11 are a replacement for proprietary Unixs, that's why they both offer massive configurability. If people find this confusing or difficult to use then it's usually a sign that they should be using Windows/OSX instead.
I'd love to a see a modern replacement for X11. But not at the cost of flexibility and feature set. Network transparency is a vital feature and should not be sacrificed. Especially as it's perfectly possible to have lots of pointless eye-candy and still maintain it.
Apparently, Oracle software runs on more platforms than there are C++ compilers for.
... then ...
So it's either C, or Java (lately)
Name me a platform for which there exists a JVM, but no C++ compiler. The only one I can think of is Java itself, but unless there's a C -> Java bytecode compiler out there it's not a lot of use to Oracle.
Probably because in the online election their votes actually count for something.