They are all quite happy to provide slower DSL speeds. After all, if the telcos did offer high speed connections to their customers, that would mean they would have to ramp up their infrastructure to cope with the demand which would mean lower profits.
Not gonna happen unless another competitor steps in and offers what they are unwilling to provide.
Either your datacenter is fully redundant with every critical system or it isn't. Having a single point of failure anywhere makes all other redundancy moot. Either you have double (and separate) the HVAC capacity necessary to cool your servers or you don't. It sounds to me like this datacenter falls into the "don't" category and therefore whomever was in charge of its design should be fired immediately.
The only way this wouldn't be that person's fault is if this was force majeure.
Opinion of intellects that are in the know = X Opinion of groups that are usuallly diametrically opposed to each other = X Opinion of group that stands to benefit financially from not having net neutrality = Y
I trust that X is more in line with what is "right" than that of Y.
Lightning is capable of striking more than 10 miles from a storm. In an instance of being near an isolated thunderstorm, it is possible you could be sitting on your back porch in the sun and get struck by a lightning bolt from such an isolated storm that you can't even see hidden by trees or whatever.
Right. So we don't need to backup data, have spare tires, insurance of any kind or disaster recovery plans. Because, after all, those are just measures that ignore the problems.
Substitution codes are subject to statistical weaknesses. Of course, you need a wide data set to use statistics to break the code. If you are substituting random phrases instead of whole words, that would make it quite a bit more difficult, but not impossible.
No, not native. But in the process they are contributing back to Wine. So you get Google apps in Linux and Wine is improved in the process. Sounds good to me.
There isn't any mystery behind why you didn't get that advice from a doctor. The medical profession in general is about treating an illness and not specifically preventing it. Although that has changed somewhat recently for some illnesses such as heart disease, treatment still prevails. If you are lucky, you can find a personal doctor that has enough sense about him or herself to research further into your symptoms to provide you not only treatment, but also lifestyle advice to help prevent. Mine does a good job of this.
Also, it helps to understand that the sexy diseases get the most attention and research. Lesser known or non-life threatening illnesses are more ignored than anything.
I can't speak for everyone here, but to me, it boils down to this--any software that controls the functionality of my computer and it's resources (i.e. the OS and underlying drivers) should be open source. Any data that is important to me such as documents, images and music should be in an open format such as ODF and OGG. Of course if currently proprietary formats are opened up with no strings attached, they would be added to the list.
While it is nice if the applications to use that data (such as Open Office) are open source, as long as the data is open, switching to another application would be mostly trivial from a technical standpoint in the event that a company stops selling software or raises prices.
While games fall in neither of those categories, I guess it is possible that someone might want to move their saved game data from one platform to another. This should work fine unless a developer saw some reason to make saved game data different from one platform to another. Regardless, there is little reason beyond the philosophical for them to be open source except to ensure that your games will play on all platforms going forward provided someone will take the time to make necessary tweaks so that it will compile.
At least be honest and say that while, yes, those players DO have the functionality to play MP3s, WMAs and all the other proprietary formats, most (if not all) distros don't come with it out of the box. Your next explanation will be to say "go here, download this, compile that, ooops, resolve that dependency first, install that, now install the codecs . .."
That process is not trivial. I contend it isn't easier than any installation process I've ever encountered on Windows. Oh, and that's not even covering the frustration someone might feel if they listen to people who say MPlayer does it all. Try installing that on the latest Ubuntu or Suse. Good luck and let me know how that goes.
I understand and "get" that if it weren't a legal minefield to install all of that by default that it would be a snap for Linux out of the box, it isn't and won't be for some time to come. Streamlining the process is needed. And right now it is so far away from streamlined that it would take effort to make it worse.
Their new PC won't run anything else, because Walmart doesn't sell PCs loaded with anything else in-store
Interesting you bring this up since it only points out the obvious--Wal-Mart in-store PCs do NOT represent the high-end systems. I'm not even sure they qualify as mid-range. Since today's high-end systems aren't likely to run Vista well at all, what is the likelihood that Wal-Mart will sell PCs equipped with Vista? When support on XP Home disappear and Microsoft stops selling it (and, by extension, retailers) what will all of those PCs that can't run Vista but can't be sold with XP run? Or will the in-store PCs hardware specs increase enough by then to run Vista?
I have a deep desire when I install an OS for my hardware to "just work" without having to spend hours configuring what should be done automatically. Of course, I also want those devices to always work without random driver breakages during kernel upgrades and such.
I guess when it boils down to it, I want the source driver with all the freedoms of the GPL. That way I always have control and know that any future kernel updates that kill the driver will result in the possibility of fixing it with or without the help from the manufacturer.
I decided that Fedora has gone beyond bloated and sucky, and that if I were to ever prefessionally [sic] recommend any Linux flavors, they'd be Gentoo and the free Redhat Enterprise clones (Whitebox, etc.).
I am only guessing by professional, you mean business. So let me get this straight--you are looking to professionally recommend a Linux distro and you are complaining about a distro that is openly NOT a professional distro not being professioinal enough. How does that make sense? See Red Hat's brief explanation here:
While the article doesn't state explicitly how the fuel is processed and what the "waste" byproduct is, if it is just pure soybean oil for fuel, then the rest of the food matter could still be processed and eaten.
It isn't in the uploader that you find that option, but rather in the web interface for your account when you login to video.google.com using your Gmail account. You can configure many options for a video. Under advanced options you find the ability to limit by country.
The Earth's climate is a chaotic system that strives to achieve balance. Continually modifying the atmosphere so that it has properties that cause it to hold more heat means that as balance is being achieved, things will likely be out of sync. Record highs in cold places and record lows in warm places makes so much more sense when thinking about it that way. As does record number of hurricanes.
Energy is neither created nor destroyed. By modifying the atmosphere to hold more heat, it HAS to go somewhere. Will it cause an 80 degree day in Siberia in the dead of winter or cause a record number of hurricanes in the gulf? Nobody knows, but as more and more heat gets added to the equation, you can bet that the AVERAGE temperature will indeed go up as we see it doing.
You could easily argue that the fourth amendment provides the framework for privacy rights:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Or you could also look to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights article 12 which was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly of which the US is a part:
No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.
While the UNDHR is not legally binding to the US Government, the US Constitution is. I would love to see the President's actions taken to court. Short of pardoning himself, I'd love to see how he can argue he is above the Constitution. Good luck with that.
Yeah, I saw something about that on Google with the side bar that LILO works with no changes, so I just went ahead and used LILO. Since it is a VM, what do I care what boot loader is used since there will only be one OS on that VM instance?
For anyone getting ready to load a Linux instance on a VMWare virtual machine, save yourself some time and use LILO. GRUB does not work as best I can tell. Boots to a fun error message after initial install. LILO works like a charm.
By kicking them out of their market. The EU is not a trivial sized market for MS. I do not think MS wants their software kicked out so Linux can take it over. That is just the sort of thing which would cause a monumental shift in the overall market.
I am the IT Manager for a manufacturer with government contracts as well. First, you need to gain a bigger picture of things. The "I" in "IS" stands for "information" and as such, you deal not only with the connectivity/hardware, but the information being stored, how it is used and the protection of it therein. Therefore, you MUST have an understanding of the company, how things operate and such to be most effective. Otherwise, you will not be very effective at capacity planning. Most importantly is that in order to cost-justify your infrastructure, you must understand how it will effect business processes--the expensive firewall will help the sales people on the road via VPN, super duper server will be able to host the ERP software they desperately need to track cost variance on manufacturing so you can track real time costs and profit.
You cannot possibly pitch those as such without understanding the business. Remember, if you are head of the IS department, you are effectively the CIO. As CIO, you need to understand how your division interacts with the others. As much as you want to be, you are not an island by yourself that has limited dealings with your surrounding neighbors. Your department is the fundamental technological enabler to allow the profit generating divisions to be most effective. Your department generates costs, not profit. You have to show how your costs can increase profit.
First and foremost, you need to become very close to the CFO so you can work together to understand where the heavy costs are, what needs to happen to address them and how you can make his/her job easier in terms of understanding the bottom line. Second, you need to become good friends with the Plant Manager. Find out what his/her biggest issues are. Are any of those issues caused by inadequate technology? Is lacking technology causing manufacturing bottlenecks? Third, you need to learn who your largest customers are and how technology is being utilized in doing business with them. Are you doing EDI? Should you be?
Once you understand the business, have made these relationships and know how your IT infrastructure fits in the big picture with the largest customers, then you can begin to make magic happen. Anytime you want to improve infrasctructure or make a technology purpose you must follow this simple guideline:
1) Does it improve or cut costs of current business processes?
2) If not, is it creating a new business process or addressing a serious security issue? (If both 1 and 2 are no, you are probably buying a toy)
3) Can you explain in unambiguous language how the answer to 1 or 2 is yes? (if not, you will hit a wall with the decision makers)
I don't know about spontaneous combusting registries, but I hate little things like Office refusing to uninstall because whatever its original source of installation was is no longer available. Why the heck do I need the disk to remove it from the system? I've seen that many times before. I've had to resort to removing all registry entries and then manually deleting all files and DLLs. That's beyond poor design. That was on Windows 2000 AND XP with Office 2000 AND 2003.
Or perhaps we could talk about DLLs being corrupted (seen that a few times too) and the misery that comes if you don't have your Windows disk with you or whatever related software disk. Since it isn't OSS, finding the corresponding DLL available on the net is unlikely not to mention not very safe. Contrast that with going to any number of "safe" (assuming no hacked servers) linux distributors and download any piece of the OS you need.
How about odd behavior from hibernating a laptop? Everything from wireless cards stopping working (ok, blame it on the driver) to Windows never recovering.
Or one of my personal favorites -- trying to use some obscure method or control in Office or Visual Studio only to get an error message saying something like "This method not yet implemented" despite being documented and such. So maybe that isn't a bug, but I've seen error messages that are circular saying something such as "You can't set this variable until it is initialized" only to get the message saying "You can't initialize this variable while it is not set" when you try to resolve the issue. So which is it?
I could go on, but don't pretend Microsoft software isn't buggy. It is. Many bugs are swept under the rug by some fancy exception handling or are the kind that while present, don't make a big enough fuss for someone to really notice. I'm not saying OSS doesn't have its share, but at least be honest and admit that Microsoft software is quite buggy as well.
Don't hold your breath. Owners of FM/AM licenses are good paying customers to the Friendly Candy Company. They won't shut down that revenue stream anytime soon. While the profits of radio stations do stand to suffer, they aren't going away anytime soon.
There are many people that listen to radio that are not going to stop regardless of what competing technology is available. Radio is free for people to listen and thus will always have a loyal following. While there are still listeners, there will be advertisers reaching for that market.
Any [idea] how long are we going to have to pay a surchare for touch tone service? What a joke and rip-off.
Up to and until one or more of the following happens:
1) The US Government takes control of all infrastructure and leases access to private companies.
2) US Regulations force Bellsouth and other ILECs to play nice with competitors. Despite what anyone here thinks, they don't have to and they take advantage of that fact. Bellsouth charges more per DSL port for a competitor just to get access to (under new contracts) than they charge for home service. Kind of hard to compete like that.
3) Someone shells out buckets of cash to reinvent their infrastructure to every town along the way, runs copper to each home and sells service at a competitive rate. That should read never.
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They are all quite happy to provide slower DSL speeds. After all, if the telcos did offer high speed connections to their customers, that would mean they would have to ramp up their infrastructure to cope with the demand which would mean lower profits.
Not gonna happen unless another competitor steps in and offers what they are unwilling to provide.
Either your datacenter is fully redundant with every critical system or it isn't. Having a single point of failure anywhere makes all other redundancy moot. Either you have double (and separate) the HVAC capacity necessary to cool your servers or you don't. It sounds to me like this datacenter falls into the "don't" category and therefore whomever was in charge of its design should be fired immediately.
The only way this wouldn't be that person's fault is if this was force majeure.
No, it's:
Opinion of intellects that are in the know = X
Opinion of groups that are usuallly diametrically opposed to each other = X
Opinion of group that stands to benefit financially from not having net neutrality = Y
I trust that X is more in line with what is "right" than that of Y.
Lightning is capable of striking more than 10 miles from a storm. In an instance of being near an isolated thunderstorm, it is possible you could be sitting on your back porch in the sun and get struck by a lightning bolt from such an isolated storm that you can't even see hidden by trees or whatever.
Yes this guy was committing theft and should be charged.
If it is theft, they shouldn't advertise "free wifi" anywhere otherwise that would be false advertising.
Right. So we don't need to backup data, have spare tires, insurance of any kind or disaster recovery plans. Because, after all, those are just measures that ignore the problems.
Substitution codes are subject to statistical weaknesses. Of course, you need a wide data set to use statistics to break the code. If you are substituting random phrases instead of whole words, that would make it quite a bit more difficult, but not impossible.
most of our exciting free applications are only available for Windows!
What, you mean like Picasa?
Or maybe you mean Google Earth.
No, not native. But in the process they are contributing back to Wine. So you get Google apps in Linux and Wine is improved in the process. Sounds good to me.
There isn't any mystery behind why you didn't get that advice from a doctor. The medical profession in general is about treating an illness and not specifically preventing it. Although that has changed somewhat recently for some illnesses such as heart disease, treatment still prevails. If you are lucky, you can find a personal doctor that has enough sense about him or herself to research further into your symptoms to provide you not only treatment, but also lifestyle advice to help prevent. Mine does a good job of this.
Also, it helps to understand that the sexy diseases get the most attention and research. Lesser known or non-life threatening illnesses are more ignored than anything.
I can't speak for everyone here, but to me, it boils down to this--any software that controls the functionality of my computer and it's resources (i.e. the OS and underlying drivers) should be open source. Any data that is important to me such as documents, images and music should be in an open format such as ODF and OGG. Of course if currently proprietary formats are opened up with no strings attached, they would be added to the list.
While it is nice if the applications to use that data (such as Open Office) are open source, as long as the data is open, switching to another application would be mostly trivial from a technical standpoint in the event that a company stops selling software or raises prices.
While games fall in neither of those categories, I guess it is possible that someone might want to move their saved game data from one platform to another. This should work fine unless a developer saw some reason to make saved game data different from one platform to another. Regardless, there is little reason beyond the philosophical for them to be open source except to ensure that your games will play on all platforms going forward provided someone will take the time to make necessary tweaks so that it will compile.
At least be honest and say that while, yes, those players DO have the functionality to play MP3s, WMAs and all the other proprietary formats, most (if not all) distros don't come with it out of the box. Your next explanation will be to say "go here, download this, compile that, ooops, resolve that dependency first, install that, now install the codecs . . ."
That process is not trivial. I contend it isn't easier than any installation process I've ever encountered on Windows. Oh, and that's not even covering the frustration someone might feel if they listen to people who say MPlayer does it all. Try installing that on the latest Ubuntu or Suse. Good luck and let me know how that goes.
I understand and "get" that if it weren't a legal minefield to install all of that by default that it would be a snap for Linux out of the box, it isn't and won't be for some time to come. Streamlining the process is needed. And right now it is so far away from streamlined that it would take effort to make it worse.
Their new PC won't run anything else, because Walmart doesn't sell PCs loaded with anything else in-store
Interesting you bring this up since it only points out the obvious--Wal-Mart in-store PCs do NOT represent the high-end systems. I'm not even sure they qualify as mid-range. Since today's high-end systems aren't likely to run Vista well at all, what is the likelihood that Wal-Mart will sell PCs equipped with Vista? When support on XP Home disappear and Microsoft stops selling it (and, by extension, retailers) what will all of those PCs that can't run Vista but can't be sold with XP run? Or will the in-store PCs hardware specs increase enough by then to run Vista?
I have a deep desire when I install an OS for my hardware to "just work" without having to spend hours configuring what should be done automatically. Of course, I also want those devices to always work without random driver breakages during kernel upgrades and such.
I guess when it boils down to it, I want the source driver with all the freedoms of the GPL. That way I always have control and know that any future kernel updates that kill the driver will result in the possibility of fixing it with or without the help from the manufacturer.
People are giving up on Redhat.
...
I decided that Fedora has gone beyond bloated and sucky, and that if I were to ever prefessionally [sic] recommend any Linux flavors, they'd be Gentoo and the free Redhat Enterprise clones (Whitebox, etc.).
I am only guessing by professional, you mean business. So let me get this straight--you are looking to professionally recommend a Linux distro and you are complaining about a distro that is openly NOT a professional distro not being professioinal enough. How does that make sense? See Red Hat's brief explanation here:
https://www.redhat.com/apps/download/
While the article doesn't state explicitly how the fuel is processed and what the "waste" byproduct is, if it is just pure soybean oil for fuel, then the rest of the food matter could still be processed and eaten.
It isn't in the uploader that you find that option, but rather in the web interface for your account when you login to video.google.com using your Gmail account. You can configure many options for a video. Under advanced options you find the ability to limit by country.
The Earth's climate is a chaotic system that strives to achieve balance. Continually modifying the atmosphere so that it has properties that cause it to hold more heat means that as balance is being achieved, things will likely be out of sync. Record highs in cold places and record lows in warm places makes so much more sense when thinking about it that way. As does record number of hurricanes.
Energy is neither created nor destroyed. By modifying the atmosphere to hold more heat, it HAS to go somewhere. Will it cause an 80 degree day in Siberia in the dead of winter or cause a record number of hurricanes in the gulf? Nobody knows, but as more and more heat gets added to the equation, you can bet that the AVERAGE temperature will indeed go up as we see it doing.
You could easily argue that the fourth amendment provides the framework for privacy rights:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Or you could also look to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights article 12 which was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly of which the US is a part:
No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.
While the UNDHR is not legally binding to the US Government, the US Constitution is. I would love to see the President's actions taken to court. Short of pardoning himself, I'd love to see how he can argue he is above the Constitution. Good luck with that.
Yeah, I saw something about that on Google with the side bar that LILO works with no changes, so I just went ahead and used LILO. Since it is a VM, what do I care what boot loader is used since there will only be one OS on that VM instance?
For anyone getting ready to load a Linux instance on a VMWare virtual machine, save yourself some time and use LILO. GRUB does not work as best I can tell. Boots to a fun error message after initial install. LILO works like a charm.
By kicking them out of their market. The EU is not a trivial sized market for MS. I do not think MS wants their software kicked out so Linux can take it over. That is just the sort of thing which would cause a monumental shift in the overall market.
I am the IT Manager for a manufacturer with government contracts as well. First, you need to gain a bigger picture of things. The "I" in "IS" stands for "information" and as such, you deal not only with the connectivity/hardware, but the information being stored, how it is used and the protection of it therein. Therefore, you MUST have an understanding of the company, how things operate and such to be most effective. Otherwise, you will not be very effective at capacity planning. Most importantly is that in order to cost-justify your infrastructure, you must understand how it will effect business processes--the expensive firewall will help the sales people on the road via VPN, super duper server will be able to host the ERP software they desperately need to track cost variance on manufacturing so you can track real time costs and profit.
You cannot possibly pitch those as such without understanding the business. Remember, if you are head of the IS department, you are effectively the CIO. As CIO, you need to understand how your division interacts with the others. As much as you want to be, you are not an island by yourself that has limited dealings with your surrounding neighbors. Your department is the fundamental technological enabler to allow the profit generating divisions to be most effective. Your department generates costs, not profit. You have to show how your costs can increase profit.
First and foremost, you need to become very close to the CFO so you can work together to understand where the heavy costs are, what needs to happen to address them and how you can make his/her job easier in terms of understanding the bottom line. Second, you need to become good friends with the Plant Manager. Find out what his/her biggest issues are. Are any of those issues caused by inadequate technology? Is lacking technology causing manufacturing bottlenecks? Third, you need to learn who your largest customers are and how technology is being utilized in doing business with them. Are you doing EDI? Should you be?
Once you understand the business, have made these relationships and know how your IT infrastructure fits in the big picture with the largest customers, then you can begin to make magic happen. Anytime you want to improve infrasctructure or make a technology purpose you must follow this simple guideline:
1) Does it improve or cut costs of current business processes?
2) If not, is it creating a new business process or addressing a serious security issue? (If both 1 and 2 are no, you are probably buying a toy)
3) Can you explain in unambiguous language how the answer to 1 or 2 is yes? (if not, you will hit a wall with the decision makers)
Good luck.
I don't know about spontaneous combusting registries, but I hate little things like Office refusing to uninstall because whatever its original source of installation was is no longer available. Why the heck do I need the disk to remove it from the system? I've seen that many times before. I've had to resort to removing all registry entries and then manually deleting all files and DLLs. That's beyond poor design. That was on Windows 2000 AND XP with Office 2000 AND 2003.
Or perhaps we could talk about DLLs being corrupted (seen that a few times too) and the misery that comes if you don't have your Windows disk with you or whatever related software disk. Since it isn't OSS, finding the corresponding DLL available on the net is unlikely not to mention not very safe. Contrast that with going to any number of "safe" (assuming no hacked servers) linux distributors and download any piece of the OS you need.
How about odd behavior from hibernating a laptop? Everything from wireless cards stopping working (ok, blame it on the driver) to Windows never recovering.
Or one of my personal favorites -- trying to use some obscure method or control in Office or Visual Studio only to get an error message saying something like "This method not yet implemented" despite being documented and such. So maybe that isn't a bug, but I've seen error messages that are circular saying something such as "You can't set this variable until it is initialized" only to get the message saying "You can't initialize this variable while it is not set" when you try to resolve the issue. So which is it?
I could go on, but don't pretend Microsoft software isn't buggy. It is. Many bugs are swept under the rug by some fancy exception handling or are the kind that while present, don't make a big enough fuss for someone to really notice. I'm not saying OSS doesn't have its share, but at least be honest and admit that Microsoft software is quite buggy as well.
Don't hold your breath. Owners of FM/AM licenses are good paying customers to the Friendly Candy Company. They won't shut down that revenue stream anytime soon. While the profits of radio stations do stand to suffer, they aren't going away anytime soon.
There are many people that listen to radio that are not going to stop regardless of what competing technology is available. Radio is free for people to listen and thus will always have a loyal following. While there are still listeners, there will be advertisers reaching for that market.
Any [idea] how long are we going to have to pay a surchare for touch tone service? What a joke and rip-off.
Up to and until one or more of the following happens:
1) The US Government takes control of all infrastructure and leases access to private companies.
2) US Regulations force Bellsouth and other ILECs to play nice with competitors. Despite what anyone here thinks, they don't have to and they take advantage of that fact. Bellsouth charges more per DSL port for a competitor just to get access to (under new contracts) than they charge for home service. Kind of hard to compete like that.
3) Someone shells out buckets of cash to reinvent their infrastructure to every town along the way, runs copper to each home and sells service at a competitive rate. That should read never.