But by plan or shear incompetence, Micrsofts releases are quite a bit more spread out, making the TCO of keeping an updated systems surprisingly: lower.
That said, I could be totally off the mark here, like I said I have limited experience with OS X as an inventory item. Was just a little of a surprise. I do understand that their 'point' releases also provide additional functionality or enhancements from time to time, which is clearly something Microsoft is not doing.
But lets leave off the 'Parroted' snipes. I made some what I believe legitimate statements along with some open questions. Your post, aside from being somewhat abrasive, clearly addressed some of my questions and others a tad more hastily (probably because you quickly scanned my original post).
As for the 80% of revenue, we have to play this game in terms of volume. I absolutely agree Apple would be taking a hit in hardware based revenue and then the dual hit with the loss of platform control, which is certainly nothing to snuff at. Which I do mention.
But on the flip-side there's the increase in revenue generated through software sales.
Here's the sticky part, you seem to have understood that I believed Apple, by following my off-the-cuff remarks, could dominate the OS market and de-throne Microsoft.
But both you and I know nothing is that simple. Microsoft is quite entrenched. But Apple could increase its market share and if the numbers provided by 'hitslink.com' are to be trusted it wouldn't take much to make a significant increase. Which translates into revenue, which might help off-set the loss of some of their hardware revenue (I'd assume they'd still be in the hardware market and still be the first choice for believers and high-end users).
And lets be fair, OS/2 is not a decent analogy. It did fail, but there are a lot of reasons for that and I don't see a strong connection.
Frankly, no-one with a strong platform has ever tried to challenge Microsoft. Thats just a fact. Apple does have a strong platform and could, thats just another fact. How it would work out is impossible to foretell.
But if you don't think there would be a note-worthy migration to Apple you're kidding yourself. Its trendy. Its different. It looks nice and it does everything 90% of the users need it to do.
All the while Vista languishes with rewrite after rewrite, components being scrapped. Seems like a fine time for making in-roads.
Which is why I believe Apple is simply not willing to go up against the 10,000 lb gorilla. Sure, drivers would be a drag, but Apple would simply point back to the manufactures. I mean if you really want Apple without the Windows headaches, buy Apple manufactured/Apple certified/Apple endorsed hardware (oh wait, another revenue stream).
Anyway, I'm not saying Apple will or should go after Redmond. I'm simply stating that if they were willing to make some hard decisions they are the only players that have something resembling a serious chance. That doesn't mean taking 90% of the market. That means displacing Windows systems in large enough numbers to get into the double digits. (IMHO) Doable.
Maybe you're not part of the iPod generation, but there is serious interest out there. And it just so happens that Apples ported the OS completely to Intel's architecture. Interesting, but your right, Steve might be perfectly happy with what they've got. I'm sure the board is happy and their customers seem happy.
Not likely. Alliance or not. In fact no-ones even ready to challenge them, Apple being the strongest contender, but to do *that* Apple would have to give something up I don't believe their willing to do.
Namely, their hardward platform. Let OS X/Tiger/Cheetah/whatever run on the same commodity hardware Windows has for ages and watch uses start to drift. Of course there's give and theirs take, Apple will have lost the ability to micromanage the hardware like they always have (mostly for the better I think) but then there are a lot of people like me who have invested heavily in PC hardware (built from commodity/specialized PC parts) who wouldn't dream of scrapping the whole system to change the operating system.
Then there's the question that *really* puzzles me. I always heard the story of how Apple makes most of its revenue off its hardware sales, and that sounded reasonable enough, then (for testing, my company does web-app development) we get an Apple and find out even point releases are sold seperately as upgrades. Is it just me or does that make it look like Micrsoft is really doing *me* a favor, namely by continuing to update and support their software platform until its end of life?
Thats a legitimate question by the way. I'm not an Apple basher (I'd pay $120 or whatever the going price is to see if I liked it on PC hardware), I do use Windows (XP Pro, on Workstations) and I manage more Linux servers (RHELu3) then any and all of that combined.
But in business Micrsoft is kind and not just because its the right OS (although that it and always has been Microsofts target market). Take any mid-sized business, inventory their hardware and tell me how much its going to cost to replace each system? Because you can't just do one, one there, thats where the compatibility issues come in. Say we've got 100 workstation no at EOL, nobody is going to sign off on a purchase order to replace all those functioning systems unless they have a lot of extra cash and a serious bias. Because in business sense it just doesn't add up. Then remember those EOL systems, you know, the ones the interns use, file stores, backup systems, whatever. Companies invest a lot of capitol into a solution like that and you're absolutely right, its going to be hard to topple.
I'm still not sure what Apples strategy is with the move to Intel, but so far it seem clear that moving into Micrsofts territory is not on the map. Things could change, I'd like that, or Redmond could be the 10,000 lb gorilla they aren't willing to challenge.
First there is Tramadol. A pain killer with serotonin-reuptake inhibiting abilities. It has good analgesic properties and at least anecdotal evidence that it might be somewhat effective in the treatment of depression.
Amineptine (dopamine reuptake blocker) showed promise, until dose escalation (read: your abuse) showed that it had the potential for misuse which resulted in it being essentially taken off the market and becoming Schedule II drug last I checked.
Opioids. Always an interesting, these narcotics, at least in the emotional/pain sense of the thing. I'm sure PubMed would yield a few papers. And I'm sure I don't need to mention the horrible down side, serious addiction.
And of course, not to be left out ar the psychostimulants such as Adrafinil and Modafinil, yet again with potential for abuse outweighing their effects on the reward system (guess what, a lot of depressed people are lethargic and lack both ennergy and motivation, that sounds like a cycle).
Personally I think its kind of funny that the treatment of depression and the elevating of mood are somehow considered mutually exclusive. Granted, the potential for abuse is certainly a valid concern (getting high is most definately not what I'd consider an answer) but our fear of moving from a model that seems focused on basically 'numbing' emotions vs. enhancing seems somewhat topsy-turvy.
Personally I'd like to see a shift, something of a compramise. Granted, we can't have people running around on 'happy pills'. But from what I've read our current approach seams at best very, very hit and miss, at worst simply bad.
No thank you. I'm sure there are a lot of people who have been helped, but I think fear is still driving us in the wrong direction and guess where that leads: self-medication. Opps. Drug abuse.
4400 (okay, not SciFi channel and not the smartest show but it can have its moments, like the messiah).
Eureka (funny premise, funny characters, funny story and it can even be interesting).
Battlestar Galactica. Thats period, as in a TV series that top just about anything anywhere.
Atlantis. Its getting better and better. Thats good.
Now the wrestling thing someone should get repeatedly kicked in the nuts for, preferably by one of their own wrestlers. But I digress.
Battlestar Galactica alone has created a franchise that justifies the SciFi channels existence.
And who knows, maybe they'll fill its spot with something really interesting? Because if they keep adding wrestling programs or other gay men in tights (*eye the super heros*) I'll just drop cable and torrent.
Thank you. Thats a pretty interesting response. I'm familiar with Buprenorphine treatment but I must confess only in passing (psychopharmacology is an interest, and had thing worked out differently probably would have been my focus, but systems administration and related projects take the majority of my time).
Obviously I've been out of the loop for a while, but what happened with the mixed agonist/antagonist compounds that were supposed to essentially eliminate dose escalation (read: abuse, a major problem with pain management). I always thought that it (at least in theory) sounded like an interesting solution, with potential applications beyond pain medication (would MDMA be a viable treatment for depression if escalation and the euphoric 'high' was taken out of the equation?).
I was also wondering about novel alkaloid 7-hydroxymitragynine which was also purported to have opioid like effects with a somewhat different dependency profile, but it looks like I found my answer.
You're missing my point. I am using Windows (as I clearly state). But thats incidental. I am a systems admin (RHEL4u3) and I still dual-boot. I'm just not nearly as blindly idealistic as I used to be. Linux distros are still seriously lacking as a DE and I don't pretend otherwise.
Frankly I've been using Linux long enough I know exactly where being to afraid to go against the grain gets us, 50 different versions of the same cobbled together OS. No thanks.
To me it all kind of comes down to something one of the Gnome team told me once when I asked about what distro would be the best for me (I was starting out, and he was visiting San Diego for a conference and staying at the hostel I was working at). He said the best distro is the one I'm the most comfortable with. Thats pretty simple and makes sense, but extrapolate that a second: what makes A better then B? Should I just pretend that Linux is DE prime time because I appreciate (some of) the politics behind it? Or should I be more pragmatic and use the best tool for the job I'm trying to accomplish? Because thats why we've got racks of Linux servers and also the reason I'm here at home using XP Pro to respond to someone who clearly is missing my mark.
Anyway, I just feel that its really important in life (in general) to be open to critically analyzing the things around you. That doesn't mean picking at little flaws, but being honest about where what is working and where it isn't. Somehow we've got a lot of really smart people working in the Linux space that probably apply that to all sorts of area's in their life, but manage to skip right over Linux. Its a blind spot thats not helping anyone. Yet you respond like you think I'm simply trolling. Maybe you should stop and analyze whats wrong with criticizing aspects of Linux distros? Because I'd bet real money Linus wouldn't be so apposed to the dialog, even if you don't agree, I think its always worth talking about.out.
And disappointingly, its always still current. Linux has a seriously split personality and I don't think its ever been the right way to be. On one hand we have this excellent well documented, stable server platform. Here I love it. Couldn't ask for anything more (don't hate me BSD users!).
Of course the flip is the 'ready to dominate the desktop' thing. I've been using Linux for about 8 years and the one thing I haven't seen is a distro thats ready to take the place of a real, dedicated user environment.
Now I'm guessing that making it ugly and cludgy by trying to keep both the archaic (but server friendly) aspects together with the newer (and definitely still immature) GUI pieces is a big part of the problem.
I've got a box that can do everything, but only half as well. Its silly really. Top it off with the nuts and their struggle against *any* real change and you get exactly what you should expect to get: a system thats terminally mired in a wealth of old-school ideas (filesystem layout, lack of consistent driver API, DE abstraction, application fragmentation, etc).
For a lot of people these things are all very good, but for the 'average' user it make Linux the subtle nightmare that it really is.
I've been practically begging, for years, for someone to break the rules. Piss RMS off. I don't care really. Just give me an operating system that works like its 2006, proprietary drives and ALL.
I'm using XP Pro now. I'll probably end up moving to Apple at some point because I respect them for focusing on the front end and still giving their users the power on the back end (exactly where Linux distro's get it all cocked up).
Anyway, basically, I think its fear of rocking the boat and if there is *anything* more constricting then proprietary code thats definitely it.
Seriously though, am I the only one who watched Outfoxed? And don't get me wrong, I don't blame Fox, I think apathy is a social problem and businesses are in the business of widening their bottom line. Or maybe ignorance *is* bliss? I've probably got the whole thing backwards.:)
Well put. Sometimes as a systems administrator you're just stuck. You know the right thing to do, but business doesn't always see things in terms of black or white. It's called compromise and yes, it can have terrible results sometimes. Sometimes it doesn't.
What I do know is most system admins *I* know aren't remotely interested in going back to school to get an MBA and at the end of the day those are (generally) the people who get the final say (if your lucky enough to be able to talk that far up the food chain).
Its definitely a process and it takes some getting used to.
Personally I find it interesting.
I do the best I can do with the constrains I'm faced with. If something related to my field causes a problem I can offer real solutions, maybe they will be listened to (sometimes problems help define how 'doing the right thing' can actually impact your bottom line, which makes it a much simpler business decision:) maybe they won't. Worse case scenario is something goes wrong but I did the best that I could. I can live with that. And if a mid-level manager needs me to take the fall for that I can live with that too. Who need the hassle really?:)
Hasn't anyone ever heard of a bb gun? If this thing is as much a nuisance as the poster suggests it is this should be a walk in the park. Don't do it yourself, but if all of the kids in your neighborhood are too lazy to figure it out themselves 'gently' point one of them in the right direction.
I'm not *that* old and I remember the bb gun being as much a destructive tool as a toy.
Its just a matter of finding the right too for the task. He's a pensioner, how many of those damn things do you think he's going to buy?
He's hitting you with kid-gloves and you need to 'ask slashdot'?:) What, you want like an invisibility cloak or someone to send you the schematics for a high powered noise canceling device?
This was a Windows problem thats be covered on Slashdot no less. So, erm....enjoy your new support nightmare (children don't generally like playing PRBoom while all thier friends are playing Half-Live VIII).
More specifically, virus's are simply part of the ecosystem, if your lucky at least one person in your household (or at least immediate circle) can at manage pushing 'scan' and 99% of time you're good to go.
Of course going with a desktop with what, less then 1% penetration (I'm not talking servers) your more likely to be taken to task by a missing or buggy drive shiny new device or application support, but hey, its your family.:)
FTR, if you can manage the support and deal with irregularities as they might come up, as it sounds like your company probably can, I totally agree. I'd even go so far as to recommend ClarkConnect, personally.
But these still don't deal with the issues of hardware/platform stability (yes, its a *lot* easier to design, troubleshoot and design driver modules if you control the platform first), QA (testing commercial *before* sending a product out the door), organized 'knowledge bases' (assuming your appliance has large enough penetration), commercial support because things *will* go wrong and if your running mission critical applications behind your 'appliance' you'd better be able to get fixed fast and have the CMOA part dealt with too (after all, the large the company the less forgiving they can be for mission critical application/server/network downtime).
So, ya, if you've got the wiggle room and need to allocate re$ources elsewhere and have someone onboard who's stable (hate to inherit someone elses 'customized' framework) I think its very useful.
But if your company/job/livelyhood/client-base depends on it I feel pretty strongly about using something start to finish purpose built.
As an aside I did a lot of research on firewall appliances before we purchased our own and of the sys admins I know Sonicwall was the one product that almost unanimously was not recommended. So its probably not just you, just bad luck. We've gone with Astaro, who aside from making a software distrobution also does build an appliance. Its Linux, so I know if things every really went south I could get my hands dirty and make things right, but I don't and shouldn't have to. I can dynamically update rules, add nodes, do hot/cold or hot/hot failover and I don't have to string together a bunch of software applications of varying quality and flexabilty.
And best of all, although possibly alarming, if I should ever leave the company whoever picks up my work will be able to quickly learn to manage the software. The network doesn't skip a beat.
Anyway, I'm not trying to argue against what your saying. If it suits your needs use it. You know your company better then I do. I work for a medium sized sompany and some large (fortune 500) sized clients. So we've got a little room in the budget (of course its always a fine line) and certainly a justified need. I don't know if you've ever had to sit in a meeting and explain your network topology and how you handle things like redundancy but when you start naming OSS products outside of say the top 10 you get some pretty disarming looks.:)
Enjoy IPCop. I'd say take a look a ClarkConnect but until they get the rules/insert method updated I won't touch it, they were using Shorewall and even a minor change (like say opening an FTP port for a new client) requires a Shorewall/IPTables restart (or a CLI insert, but I always though those were more prone to error...as in sleep deprived, up at the colo human error then a clean GUI) and that, at least in my case, is totally unacceptable. Maybe IPCop has dealt with this differently since I last used it, but on the fly changes should be the first priority of any serious firewall solution (well, after overall system security).
Anyway, I'm just throwing out my $.02. You certainly don't sound like an idiot.
Sometimes purpose built products simply make more sense. Lets skip the obvious reasons like tested, reliable (hardware) platforms, extensive QA, depending on the user-base even more extensive discovery and bug reporting.
Na, lets forget about the piddly stuff. I work at a systems admin: do you really want to build a product without the aforementioned benifits (hey, your production systems is now doing beta testing!) and take the heat for to save a few dollars?
Sure, I'm sure it works pretty good. It might even be the perfect solution for a lot of scenarios. But when you build off a non-supported OSS projects *you* become support. *You* take the blame. If my Cisco router goes south (not that I've ever had that happen) I call technical support and no matter how little my CEO might know about hardware its now *Ciscos* problem.
That said we do use a lot of OSS software, even in production, but where I feel strongly about 'appliances' is in task-specific applications, ie: router ios's, loadbalancers, firewalls, switches (sure, as in routers).
Besides, any of you who work as system admins know that Radware hardware has more bling.:) I walk past racks everyday and you can see the people who spend the money to do things right (standardized hardware, good cable management, serious components, nicely organised) and the people who cut corners, because the people who cut corners are the ones who are there, fixing problems while that rack of X4100's with the database using the dual-channel fiber interconnects and the managed gigabit switches and the shiny firewall appliance just kind of clicks along.
If that sounds like a rant its only because we've cut some of these corners and I've had to work pretty hard to start getting things turned back around (commodity desktop building oem server vendor > specialized oem server vendor (the kind that knows what Linux is and installs and burns in your OS) > Sun/Dell/HP/[Insert favorite vendor here]) all the while convincing the company I work for that saving a few dollars to build a firewall on last gen hardware didn't make as much sense as buying a documented, supports and stable 'boxed' firewall. Not to mention the rest of the network. So ya, I'm a little bitter.:)
this same argument. I'm glad for NTFS support myself, but a Linux recovery disk is definitely not the best solution for actual systems recovery. And were did we all seem to get this idea that Linux bootable disk were the only bootable disks anyway?
I'd suggest taking a good long look at UBCD4WIN. Its *is* a bootable disk. It runs the Windows kernel of your choice (you build it off your own disk, but the process is much less painful then it sounds). It also happens to include a slew of native Windows programs/utilities for doing things like...password blanking, virus/spyware detection/recovery, partition recovery/disk repair, Windows networking, including SMB access for recoveryies where you can't get the core functioning but still need to retrieve those files.
It is an all around good project and I'm sure I'm not even remotely doing it justice. Of course best of all, its native NTFS (assuming you build XP or a variety that supports it) so you don't have to worry about write problems in the same way.
I work as a systems admin at a mainly Linux shop so I don't get much cause to use it, but its something I'd never leave home without. I'm sure I've got a Knoppix disk sitting around somewhere, but for (Windows) system repair there's simply no advantage.
I sound like a commercial.:) Donate some money or something if you find it useful. Its free after all, but the guys time can't be.
Or lack there of. The site is built on Cold Fusion, an out of date language, but hardware is where I'd be seriously curious to hear what they've been doing wrong and how Rupert Murdocks billions can't fix it?
For all the tech jokes M/S does serve its purpose, it simple does it fairly incompetently. Name a single major site with such latency problems. If you in hte business of heavy traffic you'd better also be in the business of heavy hardware with big webfarms, fat pipes and geoloadbalancing ala google or anyone else serious about high availability.
I use My Space because the recording industry insiders and the outsiders do. Its like torture waiting for their databases and even regular page loads can be embarrassingly slow. And these are all issues we've worked out years ago.
Why don't I ever seem to hear anyone mentioning this, is it part of the charm or something?
Anyway, I'm with the parent post. Give me something that has the flexibility with a more serious foundation and I'd love the see these kids jump ship. Its a fine site for what it is but you've got to be high to thing incredibly slow page loads and database connection drops are acceptable.
Anyone technically inclined enough to rip mp3 streams is perfectly capable of doing the same with Real Media or Windows Media. Neither streams are truly encrypted and requiring a key to listen to streaming audio would effectively kill it anyway.
This is stupidity on the highest order. I run an internet radio station and I have and active interest in protecting my artists assets. There's a balance and if no-one's read everybodies favorite groups webcasting policies read up. I think they've pretty much got it covered.
I'm sure Real Media and Microsoft would love the extra royalties, but as a solution to a problem this does, how do we say? Fuck-all.
The high ticket prices only apply to select artists. Particularly the big stars from some of the other decades.
Nothing against that, but if you want to relive your childhood don't be surprised if their pricing it as high as they can (I'm guessing its get what you can get while you can get it).
Meanwhile the contemporary musicians seem *mostly* to be playing at or around standard cost.
I think this dudder simple hasn't been out to see a new act in a while and can't believe the inflation since he last saw ZZ Top perform. You know, when they were still sort of new and stuff.
Mandriva/Mandrakes committed to following the GPL with all their additional software.
Of course not to be left out Novell released YaST under the GPL too.
I won't bother googling for it, but since its part of the FC development cycle I've got to imagine RHEL's system-config* set is another GPL release.
Thats 3 major configuration utilities.
Now for marketing I agree differentiation *is* important. But the under-the-hood configuration area is the wrong place to try to strut your stuff. You lose (what do I care which distro I use if I have to use vi > 50% to get stuff done anyway) your customers *still* lose and you're absolutely right 90% of the market is serving up products that are 99% the same.
What something to market? Stop fscking with distro specific configuration toolsets and work on a completely integrated DE. Give me a copy buffer that doesn't care if I'm in X, KDE or Gnome. Or better yet scrap KDE/Gnome/etc and build a good DE from scratch.
Linux and OSS in general have done so much of the footwork already. All thats missing is someone willing to make it more then the patchwork it is today.
Its time for someone to take a real risk and shift the paradigm. Is Linux a toolset or a desktop? If your a company you'd better start thinking about which you think it is.
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But by plan or shear incompetence, Micrsofts releases are quite a bit more spread out, making the TCO of keeping an updated systems surprisingly: lower.
That said, I could be totally off the mark here, like I said I have limited experience with OS X as an inventory item. Was just a little of a surprise. I do understand that their 'point' releases also provide additional functionality or enhancements from time to time, which is clearly something Microsoft is not doing.
But lets leave off the 'Parroted' snipes. I made some what I believe legitimate statements along with some open questions. Your post, aside from being somewhat abrasive, clearly addressed some of my questions and others a tad more hastily (probably because you quickly scanned my original post).
As for the 80% of revenue, we have to play this game in terms of volume. I absolutely agree Apple would be taking a hit in hardware based revenue and then the dual hit with the loss of platform control, which is certainly nothing to snuff at. Which I do mention.
But on the flip-side there's the increase in revenue generated through software sales.
Here's the sticky part, you seem to have understood that I believed Apple, by following my off-the-cuff remarks, could dominate the OS market and de-throne Microsoft.
But both you and I know nothing is that simple. Microsoft is quite entrenched. But Apple could increase its market share and if the numbers provided by 'hitslink.com' are to be trusted it wouldn't take much to make a significant increase. Which translates into revenue, which might help off-set the loss of some of their hardware revenue (I'd assume they'd still be in the hardware market and still be the first choice for believers and high-end users).
And lets be fair, OS/2 is not a decent analogy. It did fail, but there are a lot of reasons for that and I don't see a strong connection.
Frankly, no-one with a strong platform has ever tried to challenge Microsoft. Thats just a fact. Apple does have a strong platform and could, thats just another fact. How it would work out is impossible to foretell.
But if you don't think there would be a note-worthy migration to Apple you're kidding yourself. Its trendy. Its different. It looks nice and it does everything 90% of the users need it to do.
All the while Vista languishes with rewrite after rewrite, components being scrapped. Seems like a fine time for making in-roads.
Which is why I believe Apple is simply not willing to go up against the 10,000 lb gorilla. Sure, drivers would be a drag, but Apple would simply point back to the manufactures. I mean if you really want Apple without the Windows headaches, buy Apple manufactured/Apple certified/Apple endorsed hardware (oh wait, another revenue stream).
Anyway, I'm not saying Apple will or should go after Redmond. I'm simply stating that if they were willing to make some hard decisions they are the only players that have something resembling a serious chance. That doesn't mean taking 90% of the market. That means displacing Windows systems in large enough numbers to get into the double digits. (IMHO) Doable.
Maybe you're not part of the iPod generation, but there is serious interest out there. And it just so happens that Apples ported the OS completely to Intel's architecture. Interesting, but your right, Steve might be perfectly happy with what they've got. I'm sure the board is happy and their customers seem happy.
Not likely. Alliance or not. In fact no-ones even ready to challenge them, Apple being the strongest contender, but to do *that* Apple would have to give something up I don't believe their willing to do.
Namely, their hardward platform. Let OS X/Tiger/Cheetah/whatever run on the same commodity hardware Windows has for ages and watch uses start to drift. Of course there's give and theirs take, Apple will have lost the ability to micromanage the hardware like they always have (mostly for the better I think) but then there are a lot of people like me who have invested heavily in PC hardware (built from commodity/specialized PC parts) who wouldn't dream of scrapping the whole system to change the operating system.
Then there's the question that *really* puzzles me. I always heard the story of how Apple makes most of its revenue off its hardware sales, and that sounded reasonable enough, then (for testing, my company does web-app development) we get an Apple and find out even point releases are sold seperately as upgrades. Is it just me or does that make it look like Micrsoft is really doing *me* a favor, namely by continuing to update and support their software platform until its end of life?
Thats a legitimate question by the way. I'm not an Apple basher (I'd pay $120 or whatever the going price is to see if I liked it on PC hardware), I do use Windows (XP Pro, on Workstations) and I manage more Linux servers (RHELu3) then any and all of that combined.
But in business Micrsoft is kind and not just because its the right OS (although that it and always has been Microsofts target market). Take any mid-sized business, inventory their hardware and tell me how much its going to cost to replace each system? Because you can't just do one, one there, thats where the compatibility issues come in. Say we've got 100 workstation no at EOL, nobody is going to sign off on a purchase order to replace all those functioning systems unless they have a lot of extra cash and a serious bias. Because in business sense it just doesn't add up. Then remember those EOL systems, you know, the ones the interns use, file stores, backup systems, whatever. Companies invest a lot of capitol into a solution like that and you're absolutely right, its going to be hard to topple.
I'm still not sure what Apples strategy is with the move to Intel, but so far it seem clear that moving into Micrsofts territory is not on the map. Things could change, I'd like that, or Redmond could be the 10,000 lb gorilla they aren't willing to challenge.
First there is Tramadol. A pain killer with serotonin-reuptake inhibiting abilities. It has good analgesic properties and at least anecdotal evidence that it might be somewhat effective in the treatment of depression.
Amineptine (dopamine reuptake blocker) showed promise, until dose escalation (read: your abuse) showed that it had the potential for misuse which resulted in it being essentially taken off the market and becoming Schedule II drug last I checked.
Opioids. Always an interesting, these narcotics, at least in the emotional/pain sense of the thing. I'm sure PubMed would yield a few papers. And I'm sure I don't need to mention the horrible down side, serious addiction.
And of course, not to be left out ar the psychostimulants such as Adrafinil and Modafinil, yet again with potential for abuse outweighing their effects on the reward system (guess what, a lot of depressed people are lethargic and lack both ennergy and motivation, that sounds like a cycle).
Personally I think its kind of funny that the treatment of depression and the elevating of mood are somehow considered mutually exclusive. Granted, the potential for abuse is certainly a valid concern (getting high is most definately not what I'd consider an answer) but our fear of moving from a model that seems focused on basically 'numbing' emotions vs. enhancing seems somewhat topsy-turvy.
Personally I'd like to see a shift, something of a compramise. Granted, we can't have people running around on 'happy pills'. But from what I've read our current approach seams at best very, very hit and miss, at worst simply bad.
Sexual disfunction. Weight gain. Cessation effects. Nervousness. Nausea, Sleeping problems. Drowsiness. Impaired cognitive function.
No thank you. I'm sure there are a lot of people who have been helped, but I think fear is still driving us in the wrong direction and guess where that leads: self-medication. Opps. Drug abuse.
4400 (okay, not SciFi channel and not the smartest show but it can have its moments, like the messiah).
Eureka (funny premise, funny characters, funny story and it can even be interesting).
Battlestar Galactica. Thats period, as in a TV series that top just about anything anywhere.
Atlantis. Its getting better and better. Thats good.
Now the wrestling thing someone should get repeatedly kicked in the nuts for, preferably by one of their own wrestlers. But I digress.
Battlestar Galactica alone has created a franchise that justifies the SciFi channels existence.
And who knows, maybe they'll fill its spot with something really interesting? Because if they keep adding wrestling programs or other gay men in tights (*eye the super heros*) I'll just drop cable and torrent.
Thank you. Thats a pretty interesting response. I'm familiar with Buprenorphine treatment but I must confess only in passing (psychopharmacology is an interest, and had thing worked out differently probably would have been my focus, but systems administration and related projects take the majority of my time).
Obviously I've been out of the loop for a while, but what happened with the mixed agonist/antagonist compounds that were supposed to essentially eliminate dose escalation (read: abuse, a major problem with pain management). I always thought that it (at least in theory) sounded like an interesting solution, with potential applications beyond pain medication (would MDMA be a viable treatment for depression if escalation and the euphoric 'high' was taken out of the equation?).
I was also wondering about novel alkaloid 7-hydroxymitragynine which was also purported to have opioid like effects with a somewhat different dependency profile, but it looks like I found my answer.
You're missing my point. I am using Windows (as I clearly state). But thats incidental. I am a systems admin (RHEL4u3) and I still dual-boot. I'm just not nearly as blindly idealistic as I used to be. Linux distros are still seriously lacking as a DE and I don't pretend otherwise.
Frankly I've been using Linux long enough I know exactly where being to afraid to go against the grain gets us, 50 different versions of the same cobbled together OS. No thanks.
To me it all kind of comes down to something one of the Gnome team told me once when I asked about what distro would be the best for me (I was starting out, and he was visiting San Diego for a conference and staying at the hostel I was working at). He said the best distro is the one I'm the most comfortable with. Thats pretty simple and makes sense, but extrapolate that a second: what makes A better then B? Should I just pretend that Linux is DE prime time because I appreciate (some of) the politics behind it? Or should I be more pragmatic and use the best tool for the job I'm trying to accomplish? Because thats why we've got racks of Linux servers and also the reason I'm here at home using XP Pro to respond to someone who clearly is missing my mark.
Anyway, I just feel that its really important in life (in general) to be open to critically analyzing the things around you. That doesn't mean picking at little flaws, but being honest about where what is working and where it isn't. Somehow we've got a lot of really smart people working in the Linux space that probably apply that to all sorts of area's in their life, but manage to skip right over Linux. Its a blind spot thats not helping anyone. Yet you respond like you think I'm simply trolling. Maybe you should stop and analyze whats wrong with criticizing aspects of Linux distros? Because I'd bet real money Linus wouldn't be so apposed to the dialog, even if you don't agree, I think its always worth talking about.out.
And disappointingly, its always still current. Linux has a seriously split personality and I don't think its ever been the right way to be. On one hand we have this excellent well documented, stable server platform. Here I love it. Couldn't ask for anything more (don't hate me BSD users!).
Of course the flip is the 'ready to dominate the desktop' thing. I've been using Linux for about 8 years and the one thing I haven't seen is a distro thats ready to take the place of a real, dedicated user environment.
Now I'm guessing that making it ugly and cludgy by trying to keep both the archaic (but server friendly) aspects together with the newer (and definitely still immature) GUI pieces is a big part of the problem.
I've got a box that can do everything, but only half as well. Its silly really. Top it off with the nuts and their struggle against *any* real change and you get exactly what you should expect to get: a system thats terminally mired in a wealth of old-school ideas (filesystem layout, lack of consistent driver API, DE abstraction, application fragmentation, etc).
For a lot of people these things are all very good, but for the 'average' user it make Linux the subtle nightmare that it really is.
I've been practically begging, for years, for someone to break the rules. Piss RMS off. I don't care really. Just give me an operating system that works like its 2006, proprietary drives and ALL.
I'm using XP Pro now. I'll probably end up moving to Apple at some point because I respect them for focusing on the front end and still giving their users the power on the back end (exactly where Linux distro's get it all cocked up).
Anyway, basically, I think its fear of rocking the boat and if there is *anything* more constricting then proprietary code thats definitely it.
Obviously that post was simply too taxing for me to enclose text in the link. Who'd have thunk?
Here's a Doonesbury rundown on the video for the broadband challenged (or...erm, Doonesbury fans) .
You mean the producers!
:)
Seriously though, am I the only one who watched Outfoxed? And don't get me wrong, I don't blame Fox, I think apathy is a social problem and businesses are in the business of widening their bottom line. Or maybe ignorance *is* bliss? I've probably got the whole thing backwards.
Well put. Sometimes as a systems administrator you're just stuck. You know the right thing to do, but business doesn't always see things in terms of black or white. It's called compromise and yes, it can have terrible results sometimes. Sometimes it doesn't.
:)
What I do know is most system admins *I* know aren't remotely interested in going back to school to get an MBA and at the end of the day those are (generally) the people who get the final say (if your lucky enough to be able to talk that far up the food chain).
Its definitely a process and it takes some getting used to.
Personally I find it interesting.
I do the best I can do with the constrains I'm faced with. If something related to my field causes a problem I can offer real solutions, maybe they will be listened to (sometimes problems help define how 'doing the right thing' can actually impact your bottom line, which makes it a much simpler business decision:) maybe they won't. Worse case scenario is something goes wrong but I did the best that I could. I can live with that. And if a mid-level manager needs me to take the fall for that I can live with that too. Who need the hassle really?
Hasn't anyone ever heard of a bb gun? If this thing is as much a nuisance as the poster suggests it is this should be a walk in the park. Don't do it yourself, but if all of the kids in your neighborhood are too lazy to figure it out themselves 'gently' point one of them in the right direction.
:) What, you want like an invisibility cloak or someone to send you the schematics for a high powered noise canceling device?
I'm not *that* old and I remember the bb gun being as much a destructive tool as a toy.
Its just a matter of finding the right too for the task. He's a pensioner, how many of those damn things do you think he's going to buy?
He's hitting you with kid-gloves and you need to 'ask slashdot'?
This was a Windows problem thats be covered on Slashdot no less. So, erm....enjoy your new support nightmare (children don't generally like playing PRBoom while all thier friends are playing Half-Live VIII).
:)
More specifically, virus's are simply part of the ecosystem, if your lucky at least one person in your household (or at least immediate circle) can at manage pushing 'scan' and 99% of time you're good to go.
Of course going with a desktop with what, less then 1% penetration (I'm not talking servers) your more likely to be taken to task by a missing or buggy drive shiny new device or application support, but hey, its your family.
Speaking of sleep deprived, I'm hoping you can read through all the spelling errors. :)
FTR, if you can manage the support and deal with irregularities as they might come up, as it sounds like your company probably can, I totally agree. I'd even go so far as to recommend ClarkConnect, personally.
:)
But these still don't deal with the issues of hardware/platform stability (yes, its a *lot* easier to design, troubleshoot and design driver modules if you control the platform first), QA (testing commercial *before* sending a product out the door), organized 'knowledge bases' (assuming your appliance has large enough penetration), commercial support because things *will* go wrong and if your running mission critical applications behind your 'appliance' you'd better be able to get fixed fast and have the CMOA part dealt with too (after all, the large the company the less forgiving they can be for mission critical application/server/network downtime).
So, ya, if you've got the wiggle room and need to allocate re$ources elsewhere and have someone onboard who's stable (hate to inherit someone elses 'customized' framework) I think its very useful.
But if your company/job/livelyhood/client-base depends on it I feel pretty strongly about using something start to finish purpose built.
As an aside I did a lot of research on firewall appliances before we purchased our own and of the sys admins I know Sonicwall was the one product that almost unanimously was not recommended. So its probably not just you, just bad luck. We've gone with Astaro, who aside from making a software distrobution also does build an appliance. Its Linux, so I know if things every really went south I could get my hands dirty and make things right, but I don't and shouldn't have to. I can dynamically update rules, add nodes, do hot/cold or hot/hot failover and I don't have to string together a bunch of software applications of varying quality and flexabilty.
And best of all, although possibly alarming, if I should ever leave the company whoever picks up my work will be able to quickly learn to manage the software. The network doesn't skip a beat.
Anyway, I'm not trying to argue against what your saying. If it suits your needs use it. You know your company better then I do. I work for a medium sized sompany and some large (fortune 500) sized clients. So we've got a little room in the budget (of course its always a fine line) and certainly a justified need. I don't know if you've ever had to sit in a meeting and explain your network topology and how you handle things like redundancy but when you start naming OSS products outside of say the top 10 you get some pretty disarming looks.
Enjoy IPCop. I'd say take a look a ClarkConnect but until they get the rules/insert method updated I won't touch it, they were using Shorewall and even a minor change (like say opening an FTP port for a new client) requires a Shorewall/IPTables restart (or a CLI insert, but I always though those were more prone to error...as in sleep deprived, up at the colo human error then a clean GUI) and that, at least in my case, is totally unacceptable. Maybe IPCop has dealt with this differently since I last used it, but on the fly changes should be the first priority of any serious firewall solution (well, after overall system security).
Anyway, I'm just throwing out my $.02. You certainly don't sound like an idiot.
Sometimes purpose built products simply make more sense. Lets skip the obvious reasons like tested, reliable (hardware) platforms, extensive QA, depending on the user-base even more extensive discovery and bug reporting.
:) I walk past racks everyday and you can see the people who spend the money to do things right (standardized hardware, good cable management, serious components, nicely organised) and the people who cut corners, because the people who cut corners are the ones who are there, fixing problems while that rack of X4100's with the database using the dual-channel fiber interconnects and the managed gigabit switches and the shiny firewall appliance just kind of clicks along.
:)
Na, lets forget about the piddly stuff. I work at a systems admin: do you really want to build a product without the aforementioned benifits (hey, your production systems is now doing beta testing!) and take the heat for to save a few dollars?
Sure, I'm sure it works pretty good. It might even be the perfect solution for a lot of scenarios. But when you build off a non-supported OSS projects *you* become support. *You* take the blame. If my Cisco router goes south (not that I've ever had that happen) I call technical support and no matter how little my CEO might know about hardware its now *Ciscos* problem.
That said we do use a lot of OSS software, even in production, but where I feel strongly about 'appliances' is in task-specific applications, ie: router ios's, loadbalancers, firewalls, switches (sure, as in routers).
Besides, any of you who work as system admins know that Radware hardware has more bling.
If that sounds like a rant its only because we've cut some of these corners and I've had to work pretty hard to start getting things turned back around (commodity desktop building oem server vendor > specialized oem server vendor (the kind that knows what Linux is and installs and burns in your OS) > Sun/Dell/HP/[Insert favorite vendor here]) all the while convincing the company I work for that saving a few dollars to build a firewall on last gen hardware didn't make as much sense as buying a documented, supports and stable 'boxed' firewall. Not to mention the rest of the network. So ya, I'm a little bitter.
this same argument. I'm glad for NTFS support myself, but a Linux recovery disk is definitely not the best solution for actual systems recovery. And were did we all seem to get this idea that Linux bootable disk were the only bootable disks anyway?
:) Donate some money or something if you find it useful. Its free after all, but the guys time can't be.
I'd suggest taking a good long look at UBCD4WIN. Its *is* a bootable disk. It runs the Windows kernel of your choice (you build it off your own disk, but the process is much less painful then it sounds). It also happens to include a slew of native Windows programs/utilities for doing things like...password blanking, virus/spyware detection/recovery, partition recovery/disk repair, Windows networking, including SMB access for recoveryies where you can't get the core functioning but still need to retrieve those files.
It is an all around good project and I'm sure I'm not even remotely doing it justice. Of course best of all, its native NTFS (assuming you build XP or a variety that supports it) so you don't have to worry about write problems in the same way.
I work as a systems admin at a mainly Linux shop so I don't get much cause to use it, but its something I'd never leave home without. I'm sure I've got a Knoppix disk sitting around somewhere, but for (Windows) system repair there's simply no advantage.
I sound like a commercial.
Ah, cowards. FTR I work for a proprietary shop. But I do like my OSS. :)
And yes, FTR, I am retarded after just waking up. I'm also a grouchy and lazy bastard. :)
But my ruminations stand. I've pondered this later in the afternoons too (omfg, at night even!).
Or lack there of. The site is built on Cold Fusion, an out of date language, but hardware is where I'd be seriously curious to hear what they've been doing wrong and how Rupert Murdocks billions can't fix it?
For all the tech jokes M/S does serve its purpose, it simple does it fairly incompetently. Name a single major site with such latency problems. If you in hte business of heavy traffic you'd better also be in the business of heavy hardware with big webfarms, fat pipes and geoloadbalancing ala google or anyone else serious about high availability.
I use My Space because the recording industry insiders and the outsiders do. Its like torture waiting for their databases and even regular page loads can be embarrassingly slow. And these are all issues we've worked out years ago.
Why don't I ever seem to hear anyone mentioning this, is it part of the charm or something?
Anyway, I'm with the parent post. Give me something that has the flexibility with a more serious foundation and I'd love the see these kids jump ship. Its a fine site for what it is but you've got to be high to thing incredibly slow page loads and database connection drops are acceptable.
Anyone technically inclined enough to rip mp3 streams is perfectly capable of doing the same with Real Media or Windows Media. Neither streams are truly encrypted and requiring a key to listen to streaming audio would effectively kill it anyway.
This is stupidity on the highest order. I run an internet radio station and I have and active interest in protecting my artists assets. There's a balance and if no-one's read everybodies favorite groups webcasting policies read up. I think they've pretty much got it covered.
I'm sure Real Media and Microsoft would love the extra royalties, but as a solution to a problem this does, how do we say? Fuck-all.
The high ticket prices only apply to select artists. Particularly the big stars from some of the other decades.
Nothing against that, but if you want to relive your childhood don't be surprised if their pricing it as high as they can (I'm guessing its get what you can get while you can get it).
Meanwhile the contemporary musicians seem *mostly* to be playing at or around standard cost.
I think this dudder simple hasn't been out to see a new act in a while and can't believe the inflation since he last saw ZZ Top perform. You know, when they were still sort of new and stuff.
Mandriva/Mandrakes committed to following the GPL with all their additional software.
Of course not to be left out Novell released YaST under the GPL too.
I won't bother googling for it, but since its part of the FC development cycle I've got to imagine RHEL's system-config* set is another GPL release.
Thats 3 major configuration utilities.
Now for marketing I agree differentiation *is* important. But the under-the-hood configuration area is the wrong place to try to strut your stuff. You lose (what do I care which distro I use if I have to use vi > 50% to get stuff done anyway) your customers *still* lose and you're absolutely right 90% of the market is serving up products that are 99% the same.
What something to market? Stop fscking with distro specific configuration toolsets and work on a completely integrated DE. Give me a copy buffer that doesn't care if I'm in X, KDE or Gnome. Or better yet scrap KDE/Gnome/etc and build a good DE from scratch.
Linux and OSS in general have done so much of the footwork already. All thats missing is someone willing to make it more then the patchwork it is today.
Its time for someone to take a real risk and shift the paradigm. Is Linux a toolset or a desktop? If your a company you'd better start thinking about which you think it is.