Windows compatibility is pretty pointless, actually.
Why would I run Linux just to run Windows applications? I might as well run Windows.
This is the problem with desktop Linux- it doesn't do anything BETTER than Windows. I mean, what's the "killer app" for desktop Linux? I can't think of one. Lack of viruses and stability are nice, no question, but aren't really enough to make up for the lack of compelling apps that are better than their Windows equivalents.
'We're wrapped up in all this crap right now. We made a mistake. We're sorry. It doesn't detract from all the good things we've done. I am not responsible for the financial crisis."
Actually, it *is* your fault, and it *does* detract from everything you've done.
It's like a daycare provider saying "Sorry that we sold your kids' organs. It seemed like a good investment. But it shouldn't detract from the great job we were doing before that!"
Banks are supposed to MAKE money, not lose it. And they lost money on a MASSIVE scale due to incompetence and especially greed. Everything they do is tainted, forever.
That's great, until ISPs in the US start moving to a "metered" service. Which they are already doing.
You won't be watching all of your TV over the internet if you only have 5GB of data transfer/month.
The solution? City-run internet utilities. They aren't as ridiculously greedy as the private ISPs are, and you can, to some degree, control how they run their operation by voting in city elections.
It's true. I just re-read the "Sprawl Trilogy" in the last couple of weeks, just to see if "Count Zero" and "Mona Lisa Overdrive" were any better than I remember. They weren't. They're tedious-as-fuck.
"Neuromancer" is great, but Gibson went up his own ass after that.
Still, he wrote "Neuromancer", which gets him a lifetime pass.
We're at a stage in the computer industry where innovation is the LAST thing we need.
What we need is bug fixes and "refinement". Microsoft didn't need to force Metro on us...they just needed to perfect Windows 7. Apple isn't redesigning OS X every 2 years. They're tweaking it an making it better.
The endless push for NEW products is what screws up the computer industry. Nothing is ever actually *finished*.
Ballmer is a clueless prick, and he doesn't care about providing good products so much as he cares about playing political games with Microsoft employees. Plus, he's an egomaniac, who refuses to believe that MS ever does anything wrong.
Metro is the result of a few "powerful" interests at MS protecting their collective asses. It's easier for them to just shove Metro out there, and then start pointing fingers when everyone hates it, than it is to risk the wrath of idiot managers like Ballmer and his cronies.
Ballmer needs to be replaced if MS wants to be relevant in the future.
The states and local boards of education are THE PROBLEM.
Public education in this country is a magnet for failed middle-managers and failed politicians. They use local school districts to build their little fiefdoms, and to line the pockets of their friends with government contracts for construction, and books, and computers, and all that crap. Education is the LAST thing on their minds, and the glorification of standardized testing works right into their hands. Standardized testing means that school districts don't need to worry about actually TEACHING. They just need to teach the test. And they don't want to "teach the test" TOO well, because they want the federal government to keep throwing money at them, which the feds don't like to do for schools that are performing well already.
It's a giant mess. And almost ALL of the mess starts at the local school board level. They're crooks, the lot of them.
The advantages of virtualization are too great to not do it whenever possible.
The only limiting factor is, really, is how much money you have to spend on your virtualization infrastructure. VMWare's licensing got a little nutty, and SAN storage got really pricy last year.
But it's worth it. Once you have a nice VMWare cluster running, SO many things become easier. And some things that were damn near impossible before become simple.
That said, you probably want to keep at least one domain controller and one DNS server as physical boxes. Makes maintenance of the VMs easier, if you ever have to reboot the whole thing.
It's still a very *efficient* OS, but it lacks about a zillion features that any modern OS has. Protected memory, for one.
But for day-to-day use? It's pointless and stupid. You can't do anything with AmigaOS that you can't do faster and better (anc cheaper- modern Amiga hardware is ridiculously expensive) on Linux, MacOS, or Windows.
Still, AmigaOS has a lot of neat features. It's still very well-designed, and it's interesting to think about what it would be like if it had sold well enough to become a viable alternative.
1. Money. Someone has to get paid to design this thing, and the BBC probably prefers to pay somebody (or some firm) with the right political connections, regardless of their design talent.
2. Sports fans are tacky motherfuckers. Have you seen what sports fans wear? Neon fucking nightmares, every one of them. They probably LOVE the new design.
If the answer to either of those questions is "No", then you better do what they tell you.
Sure, they're violating your rights. But in the United States, you have no recourse except to go to court. Which will costs LOTS of money. More than you have, probably. And don't forget that the cops and TSA will make your life hell while the case slowly progresses.
If Verizon buys Netflix, we'll be paying $15/month for streaming to ONE device at a time, and the DVD delivery will be dropped entirely.There will be a limit of 15 streams a month per account, or 50GB of data, whichever comes first. Additional streams will cost $3.99 each. And you'll have to sign a 2-year contract. And if you want to stream to your PHONE, that will be another $15 a month, on top of the $15/month membership.
Exactly. If the manufacturers/carriers just gave us plain-old-Android, all they would have to do is get their drivers installed.
Samsung is the worst. Their software sucks so bad, it makes their phones unusable. And of course, Verizon loads their crap, too.
Google needs to drop the hammer on that bullshit. They should say "Look, quit loading up our OS with your crap, or we'll delist you from our search engine and block your networks from accessing our sites".
The fundamental problem is that most people don't understand that while they think that piece of software they want installed is PERFECT for their needs, it might not be something that integrates well into the rest of the company's systems.
The IT department KNOWS that any new system/software that is brought in has the potential to stick around for YEARS, and that it is likely that someone will want to integrate the data generated by that system/software into some OTHER system. Contrary to popular belief, not every file can be opened by every program. Not easily or cheaply anyway.
Basically, IT wants to make sure that we don't get into a situation where we are FORCED to develop expensive custom software (or expensive support procedures) because some non-IT management-type decided they wanted to use MS Publisher to create webpages.
It doesn't require less IT staff. It requires the same amount, if not more.
The iPad doesn't exist in a vacuum. It still has to be managed, which isn't particularly simple since it's so locked down. And since basically NO custom business apps run on it, that means that most iPad users are going to be using Terminal Services (or similar) to get anything done. Unless apps are written to run on the iPad, or run via a web page. But that's unlikely in most businesses.
So..considering all that, what's the real advantage of an iPad for business? Well, it's light and the battery lasts forever, and it's easier to carry than a laptop. That's ALL. In every other way, it's inferior.
That's why IT departments hate it. It's basically a big iPhone, but people want to use it to replace their notebook. Ugh.
HTML and JS probably *are* the best tool for *this* job. Which is basically scripting.
JS and HTML are familiar and easy. And they're powerful enough.
What would you prefer? PERL? Python? Those would be good, too, but let's face it- JavaScript integrates better with most things that you would do with an Office document. It's almost the unofficial scripting language of Windows.
Or the kids that are the problem. It's the school boards and administration in most cities that is the problem. The administrations is full of failed middle-management idiots, that have transferred their complete lack of skills into D-level politics.
And the school board is usually nothing but lunatics just trying to draw a paycheck, and hoping to somehow jumpstart a political career.
And, of course, there are kickbacks and deals at every level.
Basically, every school district in the country is representative of the absolute WORST aspects of government corruption and incompetence. And it's not the system, it's the people.
VOTE IN YOUR SCHOOL BOARD ELECTIONS! Throw the idiots out. Run for the board yourself. That's the only way.
The textbook publishers are going to throw a FIT. So are the universities, probably, because most of them run for-profit bookstores.
I expect that Amazon is going to be forced to kill this new service within a few months.
The way textbooks are bought and sold and approved is one of the biggest scams in education. But it's hugely profitable. Amazon is going to have a battle on their hands.
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When a company starts thinking that Salesforce (or any CRM, or any single piece of software) is going to save them, that means they are DOOMED.
The fact that HP doesn't know this says a lot about how clueless they really are about IT, software, *and* business needs in general.
You're on the right track, I think.
For a CNC place, you *need* a well-sealed, clean server room with a good independent air-conditioning system. Dust is the enemy.
The room should have LOTS of power outlets. 220 would be nice.
Everything else can be done later. But a decent server room is fundamental.
Pay them more money.
Anything else is an insult to their intelligence. "Cake Day"? Jesus. Are you fucking kidding?
Windows compatibility is pretty pointless, actually.
Why would I run Linux just to run Windows applications? I might as well run Windows.
This is the problem with desktop Linux- it doesn't do anything BETTER than Windows. I mean, what's the "killer app" for desktop Linux? I can't think of one. Lack of viruses and stability are nice, no question, but aren't really enough to make up for the lack of compelling apps that are better than their Windows equivalents.
'We're wrapped up in all this crap right now. We made a mistake. We're sorry. It doesn't detract from all the good things we've done. I am not responsible for the financial crisis."
Actually, it *is* your fault, and it *does* detract from everything you've done.
It's like a daycare provider saying "Sorry that we sold your kids' organs. It seemed like a good investment. But it shouldn't detract from the great job we were doing before that!"
Banks are supposed to MAKE money, not lose it. And they lost money on a MASSIVE scale due to incompetence and especially greed. Everything they do is tainted, forever.
Don't forget that Haiku/BeOS are *single user* operating systems. There are no file permissions.
That all by itself makes it a joke, honestly.
That's great, until ISPs in the US start moving to a "metered" service. Which they are already doing.
You won't be watching all of your TV over the internet if you only have 5GB of data transfer/month.
The solution? City-run internet utilities. They aren't as ridiculously greedy as the private ISPs are, and you can, to some degree, control how they run their operation by voting in city elections.
It's true. I just re-read the "Sprawl Trilogy" in the last couple of weeks, just to see if "Count Zero" and "Mona Lisa Overdrive" were any better than I remember. They weren't. They're tedious-as-fuck.
"Neuromancer" is great, but Gibson went up his own ass after that.
Still, he wrote "Neuromancer", which gets him a lifetime pass.
RIM isn't dying because they couldn't innovate, they are dying because BlackberryOS sucks, and they refused to fix it in a reasonable amount of time.
Like I said, it's not innovation that most companies need, it's quality products.
We're at a stage in the computer industry where innovation is the LAST thing we need.
What we need is bug fixes and "refinement". Microsoft didn't need to force Metro on us...they just needed to perfect Windows 7. Apple isn't redesigning OS X every 2 years. They're tweaking it an making it better.
The endless push for NEW products is what screws up the computer industry. Nothing is ever actually *finished*.
Ballmer is a clueless prick, and he doesn't care about providing good products so much as he cares about playing political games with Microsoft employees. Plus, he's an egomaniac, who refuses to believe that MS ever does anything wrong.
Metro is the result of a few "powerful" interests at MS protecting their collective asses. It's easier for them to just shove Metro out there, and then start pointing fingers when everyone hates it, than it is to risk the wrath of idiot managers like Ballmer and his cronies.
Ballmer needs to be replaced if MS wants to be relevant in the future.
You've got it exactly backwards.
The states and local boards of education are THE PROBLEM.
Public education in this country is a magnet for failed middle-managers and failed politicians. They use local school districts to build their little fiefdoms, and to line the pockets of their friends with government contracts for construction, and books, and computers, and all that crap. Education is the LAST thing on their minds, and the glorification of standardized testing works right into their hands. Standardized testing means that school districts don't need to worry about actually TEACHING. They just need to teach the test. And they don't want to "teach the test" TOO well, because they want the federal government to keep throwing money at them, which the feds don't like to do for schools that are performing well already.
It's a giant mess. And almost ALL of the mess starts at the local school board level. They're crooks, the lot of them.
The advantages of virtualization are too great to not do it whenever possible.
The only limiting factor is, really, is how much money you have to spend on your virtualization infrastructure. VMWare's licensing got a little nutty, and SAN storage got really pricy last year.
But it's worth it. Once you have a nice VMWare cluster running, SO many things become easier. And some things that were damn near impossible before become simple.
That said, you probably want to keep at least one domain controller and one DNS server as physical boxes. Makes maintenance of the VMs easier, if you ever have to reboot the whole thing.
Can you feel it? The government wants to get control of the internet, and computers, and all communications devices in general.
They're going to pretend it's for our safety. They just want to protect us from hackers, after all.
I'm not a "government is evil" guy, but this is the kind of thing governments typically want to do. And it has to be prevented. Call your congressman.
No, no advantage.
It's still a very *efficient* OS, but it lacks about a zillion features that any modern OS has. Protected memory, for one.
But for day-to-day use? It's pointless and stupid. You can't do anything with AmigaOS that you can't do faster and better (anc cheaper- modern Amiga hardware is ridiculously expensive) on Linux, MacOS, or Windows.
Still, AmigaOS has a lot of neat features. It's still very well-designed, and it's interesting to think about what it would be like if it had sold well enough to become a viable alternative.
Why does it look awful? Here's why:
1. Money. Someone has to get paid to design this thing, and the BBC probably prefers to pay somebody (or some firm) with the right political connections, regardless of their design talent.
2. Sports fans are tacky motherfuckers. Have you seen what sports fans wear? Neon fucking nightmares, every one of them. They probably LOVE the new design.
If the answer to either of those questions is "No", then you better do what they tell you.
Sure, they're violating your rights. But in the United States, you have no recourse except to go to court. Which will costs LOTS of money. More than you have, probably. And don't forget that the cops and TSA will make your life hell while the case slowly progresses.
This country is so fucked.
If Verizon buys Netflix, we'll be paying $15/month for streaming to ONE device at a time, and the DVD delivery will be dropped entirely.There will be a limit of 15 streams a month per account, or 50GB of data, whichever comes first. Additional streams will cost $3.99 each. And you'll have to sign a 2-year contract. And if you want to stream to your PHONE, that will be another $15 a month, on top of the $15/month membership.
Exactly. If the manufacturers/carriers just gave us plain-old-Android, all they would have to do is get their drivers installed.
Samsung is the worst. Their software sucks so bad, it makes their phones unusable. And of course, Verizon loads their crap, too.
Google needs to drop the hammer on that bullshit. They should say "Look, quit loading up our OS with your crap, or we'll delist you from our search engine and block your networks from accessing our sites".
The fundamental problem is that most people don't understand that while they think that piece of software they want installed is PERFECT for their needs, it might not be something that integrates well into the rest of the company's systems.
The IT department KNOWS that any new system/software that is brought in has the potential to stick around for YEARS, and that it is likely that someone will want to integrate the data generated by that system/software into some OTHER system. Contrary to popular belief, not every file can be opened by every program. Not easily or cheaply anyway.
Basically, IT wants to make sure that we don't get into a situation where we are FORCED to develop expensive custom software (or expensive support procedures) because some non-IT management-type decided they wanted to use MS Publisher to create webpages.
It doesn't require less IT staff. It requires the same amount, if not more.
The iPad doesn't exist in a vacuum. It still has to be managed, which isn't particularly simple since it's so locked down. And since basically NO custom business apps run on it, that means that most iPad users are going to be using Terminal Services (or similar) to get anything done. Unless apps are written to run on the iPad, or run via a web page. But that's unlikely in most businesses.
So..considering all that, what's the real advantage of an iPad for business? Well, it's light and the battery lasts forever, and it's easier to carry than a laptop. That's ALL. In every other way, it's inferior.
That's why IT departments hate it. It's basically a big iPhone, but people want to use it to replace their notebook. Ugh.
HTML and JS probably *are* the best tool for *this* job. Which is basically scripting.
JS and HTML are familiar and easy. And they're powerful enough.
What would you prefer? PERL? Python? Those would be good, too, but let's face it- JavaScript integrates better with most things that you would do with an Office document. It's almost the unofficial scripting language of Windows.
You're right.
MS would've been better off just giving developers the better automated tools that were "included" with .NET, and skipping the actual .NET part.
The .NET *environment* is really nice, but the "managed code" aspect of it is more-or-less worthless.
Or the kids that are the problem. It's the school boards and administration in most cities that is the problem. The administrations is full of failed middle-management idiots, that have transferred their complete lack of skills into D-level politics.
And the school board is usually nothing but lunatics just trying to draw a paycheck, and hoping to somehow jumpstart a political career.
And, of course, there are kickbacks and deals at every level.
Basically, every school district in the country is representative of the absolute WORST aspects of government corruption and incompetence. And it's not the system, it's the people.
VOTE IN YOUR SCHOOL BOARD ELECTIONS! Throw the idiots out. Run for the board yourself. That's the only way.
The textbook publishers are going to throw a FIT. So are the universities, probably, because most of them run for-profit bookstores.
I expect that Amazon is going to be forced to kill this new service within a few months.
The way textbooks are bought and sold and approved is one of the biggest scams in education. But it's hugely profitable. Amazon is going to have a battle on their hands.