How can Apple sell this mythical ipod device so cheap?
Easy, Apple can sell the unit at cost and make it up in $99 battery sales. If you live in Europe (and are a loyal Apple customer), you can even sign a petition asking them to please lower replacement battery prices. I personally won't buy anything from Apple until I know what the accessories and replacement parts cost.
However, as most Linux kernel testing efforts have only been conducted over short periods of time, this series of tests provides us first-hand data and results of longer runs. The series of tests also provides data for heavy-stress workloads on Linux kernel components, as well as TCP, NFS, and other test components. The tests demonstrate that the Linux system is reliable and stable over long durations and can provide a robust, enterprise-level environment.
BIG NEWS!!!... IBM says the 2.4.19 kernel in the Suse Distro SLES 8 is enterprise ready. Too bad 2.4 is yesterday's news. I wonder when IBM will start testing the 2.6.0 kernel:) This test report should at least make Ford happy, too bad IBM timed this annoucement while Ford is closed for holiday break. I also wonder why IBM didn't use Redhat for the stress test. Things that make you go hmmmmm....... maybe it's time to learn SUSE and YAST.
On a side note, does anyone know if Suse's SLES 8 will run on a single CPU home PC? I've always wanted to take that version for a test drive, but could never find install CD's for a non SMP, low end Intel machine.
They could elect someone as their Linus to check in every major change.
You hit the nail on the head. MS needs a single final authority who implicity understands what is going on with the O/S kernel and can unilaterally reject, rewrite, or include any change. This type of strategy probably doesn't work well in the corporate world since every group has their pet change that they want hacked in. In the Linux world, Linus isn't afraid to break something old if a much improved method comes along. Microsoft and Intel must maintain legacy backward comptability or no one will ever upgrade since most users can't simply recompile old code against new libraries and migrate their apps forward. If canned apps only came with source code, the world would be a better place. To me it's amusing to see DOS and Win32 applications still grinding away on Win2k and WinXP servers.
BTW, I thought Microsoft already had the best Chief Software Architect money can buy, "Bill Gates" the 5 billion dollar man.
I can't view that OSL page with my Mozilla or Firebird web browser. I must need to upgrade to IE, NOT! Also, OSL sounds a lot like an acronymn for Open Source License:)
Alas, another poor victim on online gaming trying to steathily use the computer. Shhh..... be verrry quiet, I don't want anyone to know that the computer is on or that I am typing or clicking.:)
When XP hits critical mass, imagine the havoc that would be caused if a virus/worm deactived all the MS XP and Office XP applications. That would be a NIGHTMARE and shut down most large corporations until the problem could be resolved.
MS is building on a house of cards and putting WPA at the foundation of the stack. Worse yet, image if WPA did contain a bug and accidentally shut everyone down.
WPA reminds me of what a local car dealer tried to do recently. He wanted to put a black box in all the cars that would kill the ignition in the event you didn't make your monthly payment. The courts ruled that he couldn't do that and stopped the practice. WPA is essentially the same type of device, but no one has challenged it yet. I wonder when XP hits end of life if MS will decided to deactive everyone and justify it by saying, "You clicked the I AGREE" box?
Let me see, do I give the use a loaded 6-shot revolver (Win 98) or a loaded 9mm-Uzi (Win2k/XP)? Let's face it, Win2k and XP is basically a server even if you run it as a desktop. There is a lot that can happen when used by inexperienced/bored users. Heck, just leaving the Win2k and XP on when you aren't around can easily lead to bad things happening. When I say bad things, I am referring to Blaster, Nachi, Code Red, zombies that send email and lauch DoS attacks etc...
I keep most of the fleet I support at Win98 because less bad things can happen. When the next round of worms and virii comes across the Internet, through the firewall, and attack all the Win2k and XP boxes, it is so nice to know that there are only a handfull of them running which can be exploited.
I wish MS, would release a desktop version called MS Windows-Basic which didn't install all the extra fluff. Just give me a basic webbrowser (No Active Anything), a basic spreadsheet, word processor, and email client with I'm good to go. I don't need sliding menus that hog CPU's and require high end video cards. I don't need so much bloat that the machine won't function without 256MB of RAM. I don't need all sorts of other services which are just accidents waiting to happen. Oh, an throw in a a good solitare and minesweeper game. Users like that.
Note to Bill and Steve, that's all we need to get the job done. Desktop PC's don't need to be servers! It increases support costs and downtime for the enterprise when the next round of network worms come through.
Don't NASA engineers ever watch Star Trek or buy the Blue Prints for the ships? Geeeez... The solution to this problem is trivial, all NASA needs to do is equip the ship with a deflector array to protect the ship from stray radiation , debris, and high energy cosmic particles.
I think an alternate solution to this problem is to develop a cloaking device since it acts as a lens and diverts electromagnetic radiation around the ship instead of through it. However, NASA probably isn't up to cloaking devices just yet and should probably stick with the deflector array.
Also, the article had this quote which I found interesting: Dr Borg said, any possible license conflicts - with digital radio advocates, and with the remaining users of the appropriate spectrum - would have to be resolved..
I wonder if the resolution will sound like this? All your VHF Bandwidth are belong to US! Resistance is futile. We will use your bandwith for irrelevant Christmas Music Remixes.
Hunt around and find a registrar offering a sweet deal on 10 years of registration and forget about it. Usually you can get them down to $10-$15 per year and maybe cheaper if you transfer a bunch of domains over. I converted all my domains to the 10 year plan when tucows ran their last special and now I don't have to go crazy worrying about it anymore.
In 10 years, the Internet and world will probably be a very different place. Get the monkey off your back.
Sorry, the automotive design studios still use clay for mockups. Ever see a clay SUV? It's quite a sight to behold before the artists paint it up. Also, automotive modeling clay has a very distinct odor which smells much different than the final product.:)
As long as people continue to use easy to guess passwords and protocols like POP3 which send clear text passwords, it just doesn't matter what algorithm you use to encode or encrypt passwords. It's just another example of the screen door on the submarine with the really expensive titanium lock.
Mark my words boy, and mark them well "SECURITY IS AN ILLUSION!" When is the last time you changed your password?
Yeah, I think it's funny too. MS is trying to woo UNIX admins over to take care of their junk. As the leader of the Unix admin team I have one simple rule, "We don't do windows." I tell the MS crazed developers that they can drag in whatever they want to support, this usually calms them down immediately.
In addition to windows being a less-stable, harder to manage platform, toss in a bunch of mouse wigglers and the platform gets even more unstable. I think MS believes that if they can get the UNIX guys to take care of the MS servers then reliability will increase.
I actually paid MS the $11.90 and bought the "Services for UNIX". It's almost worth it. The following day they sent me another offer for the MS Action Pack which is essentially MSDN-Lite for $300. Yes, nearly everything MS makes (except for the developers tools) for $300.
This shows me how desperate they are to get people (especially UNIX people) to use their *new* stuff. Here is the link to the MS action pack. $25,000 worth of software for $300. However, it expires every year unless you renew and I bet they can/will disable all your software. I think Windows 2000 is going to be the last MS product on my desktop. I am hoping the Linux desktop will be a polished reality before the Windows 2000 hits end of life. Microsoft can't even kill Windows NT4 and it was EOL'ed long ago. NT4 is like a zombie that won't die.
And I quoth from the article: 3980750 8642406493 7397125500 5503864911 9906436234 2526708406 3851895759 4638895726 1768583317
x
4727721 4610743530 2536223071 9730482246 3291469530 2097116459 8521711305 2071125636 3590397527
which can easily be multiplied to verify that they do indeed give the original number.
Does anyone have a calculator that can "easily" multiply these two numbers... Holy Cow!
If we could outsource at the C-level there would be significantly more money available to companies to hire IT staff and skilled workers. C-Level = CEO, CFO, CIO, CPO, and of course C3P0.
Outsourcing is an extremely short-sighted solution to increased quarterly profitability. It simply boils down to the fact that C level people and their cronies COST TOO MUCH and in order for them to keep receiving the same level of compensation (while keeping shareholders happy) they need to squeeze out every last bit of cash out of every other expense.
I plan to start a new company soon which deals with outsourcing, except you will pay large premiums for me to come in and fix the disaster created by the offshore developers. Mark may words boy, and mark them well, offshore outsourcing is going to be one of the biggest largescale disasters in the history of US business. However as I read the ever increasing reports of outsourcing disasters, I am beginning to realize that there is money to be made here!:) Also, smarter companies that want to hold or gain market share my begin to realize that not outsourcing gives them a competitive advantage and keeps customers happy.
Also, I wonder if C-Level types forget about the geopolitical instability of the world. Isn't the US at war right now? What if Pakistan decided to go cut all the fiber optic cable connecting India to the US? Oh the mess this is going to create. I laugh at the nearsighted fools!
Developers whine about not being able to willy nilly install anything tools they desire, code in the "cool" language of the week, or drag in any middle ware which is fun for them to playwith i.e. (Tomcat, Jaguar).
The developers then work on their little projects, get them finished, and DUMP IT ON THE ADMINS and RUN AWAY (off to the next exciting project). Yes, the developers are typically able to coble together their cool Java Beans J2EE to.NET using CORBA, XML and exotic middleware, however they don't understand it, nor do they have any desire to feed and care for it. This results in yet another orphaned system that will probably need to be rewritten in just a few years since there will be no one around to understand it. However, nowadays it looks like the next re-write will take place in India.
Unfortunatly, for the sake of the users and the corporation, the Admin ocassionly has to say, "No". Believe me, I'd like to let everyone install EVERYTHING and play all day and all night. Innovation, innovation, innovation to the extreme. And that security stuff, who needs it. Just turn off all that annoying ActiveX security for the ease of development. We wouldn't want to slow anybody down. Also, disable all the Java security and let applets connect to and from anywhere. Ditch it all, after all the world is a safe place. There aren't any bad people out there creating hostile ActiveX and Java applications, plus the firewall and virus checker will save us, right?
Systems must function for the sake of the customer and the customer's business. For this to happens, there must exist a well understood development framework and compotent people to manage and maitain the framework. Without this, you are in the wild-wild west of systems and are heading for the land of perpetual system rewrites
I am an ex-developer admin so I work with my developers to help them logically design their applications and database objects. I even tune their SQL, but I resist letting them go off in "cool" direction of the week, just so they can add a new line to their resume and dump yet another one-off application on me which is guaranteed to misbehave and be nearly impossible to upgrade.
I bought the N75. It's much lighter to carry around than the heavy ALL METAL FE and, when I can justify a buying a digital SLR I won't begrudge the investment in the N75 which is very small (under $300). Don't forget to get a SB-28 flash off EBAY, it's rocks with the Nikon SLR's. If you have any more questions, feel free to continue the thread. I'll check back.
The Redhat test is harder than this. What is this sissy stuff about configuring Novell Services and performing basic Linux tasks.
I was excited when I first heard about the Novell CLE, but it looks pretty watered down. The Red Hat (RHCE) test is 6 hours and includes troubleshooting, a written test, and configuring services with advanced administrative tasks.
IMHO Novell should start out a lot tougher. They can always relax the program, but if they set the initial bar too low and anyone can obtain the certification then it's tarnished forever. I agree the MCSE is definately something a chimp could be trained to pass. The only certs I really have respect for are OCM (Oracle Certified Master), CCIE (Cisco Internet Engineer), and the RHCE (Red Hat Certified Engineer). If the final test isn't performance based you will never get a measure of the skill of the individual taking the test.
Device drivers have always been the Achille's heel of Windows. Maybe MS is making a play for the hardware market too and WANG-FU-LI won't be able to make scanners anymore and sell them at SAMS club because he won't be able to write a signed device driver.
However, your point about selling the DRM SDK and certificate for big bucks is something I hadn't considered. The only problem facing DRM is when companies or governments go through the hassle of installing all this DRM junk and then get hammered by the next Microsoft Virus or Worm, they are going to be really upset. They will cry out and wonder why their investment in DRM (Digital Restrictions Management) didn't save their enterprise and only prevented the CEO's secretary from listening to her MP3's.
It's all so sad. I had hoped that MS would acutally try and innovate some new stuff instead of trying to lock down and control everything.
I would turn them all on at once and aim them at the moon and see if you can get it to explode! Just make sure you don't hit any aircraft.
Have fun!
Everyone is a widget, nothing matters anymore
on
Does IT Matter?
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I was actually very pissed off about this today. I call it the widgetizing of America. Everyone and everyjob is neatly classified and catergorized so that it can be easy outsourced or "right shored". "Right Shore" is the new buzzword for shipping jobs to Asia/India. Anyone is High School or College should really be thinking hard about two things 1) voting and 2) what job can they prepare for that can't be "right-shored".
IT, manufacturing, technical design work, medical diagnostic work, financial analysis, text book proofing, medical research.... and according to CEO's all this stuff is commidity (sic).
What's really happening is that UnFree Trade is killing America. As long as overcompensated CEO's can achieve their quarterly earning targets, they could care less what long-term damage they do to the country or companies they are running. This is nothing more than blind, stupid, greed. The only question is "How hard is America going to crash?" I wonder how many people will lose their jobs, pentions, and healthcare this year as our CEO's continue to commoditize, outsource, and offshore with the blessing of our politicians (and ultimately consumers).
It's tragic that a country founded on the pioneer spirit, hard work ethic, and innovation is now dismissing everything that made it great, calling it a commidity and then getting the service performed by what amounts to slave labor. I am personally trying to break my additiction to cheap foreign goods, but can't seem to find anything made here. Recently I found a manufacturer called Jaton that makes nvidia video cards in California. I was so impressed I bought 4 of them.
To answer your question, I am not sure if you can cluster MySQL but it beats the pants off Oracle if you lay out your data intelligently. However, MySQL doesn't support read consistency, rollbacks, or the concept of a transaction in super speedy mode. I use MySQL for quick data analysis. MySQL is easy to setup, is light on resources, and can load data like a banshee. Oracle is not so speedy to setup and is a resource pig, however I trust Oracle with all my important data since it's a very solid product.
Everything is a tradeoff. In my opinion, TPS/TPC reports are mostly worthless now that your can create hot standby databases for running the grinder reports in Oracle 9i. The biggest bang for the buck in database performance is still good relational database design and optimized SQL queries. Even with the biggest baddest hardware in the universe a bad developer doing cartesian joins can bring it to to it's knees.
Slashdot Mirror
How can Apple sell this mythical ipod device so cheap?
Easy, Apple can sell the unit at cost and make it up in $99 battery sales. If you live in Europe (and are a loyal Apple customer), you can even sign a petition asking them to please lower replacement battery prices. I personally won't buy anything from Apple until I know what the accessories and replacement parts cost.
I gave my Grandma Mozilla Firebird and it works fine on her old 300Mhz celeron. Both Mozilla and IE6 are equaly slow on her old Windows machine.
Conclusions
.0 kernel :) This test report should at least make Ford happy, too bad IBM timed this annoucement while Ford is closed for holiday break. I also wonder why IBM didn't use Redhat for the stress test. Things that make you go hmmmmm....... maybe it's time to learn SUSE and YAST.
However, as most Linux kernel testing efforts have only been conducted over short periods of time, this series of tests provides us first-hand data and results of longer runs. The series of tests also provides data for heavy-stress workloads on Linux kernel components, as well as TCP, NFS, and other test components. The tests demonstrate that the Linux system is reliable and stable over long durations and can provide a robust, enterprise-level environment.
BIG NEWS!!!... IBM says the 2.4.19 kernel in the Suse Distro SLES 8 is enterprise ready. Too bad 2.4 is yesterday's news. I wonder when IBM will start testing the 2.6
On a side note, does anyone know if Suse's SLES 8 will run on a single CPU home PC? I've always wanted to take that version for a test drive, but could never find install CD's for a non SMP, low end Intel machine.
They could elect someone as their Linus to check in every major change.
You hit the nail on the head. MS needs a single final authority who implicity understands what is going on with the O/S kernel and can unilaterally reject, rewrite, or include any change. This type of strategy probably doesn't work well in the corporate world since every group has their pet change that they want hacked in. In the Linux world, Linus isn't afraid to break something old if a much improved method comes along. Microsoft and Intel must maintain legacy backward comptability or no one will ever upgrade since most users can't simply recompile old code against new libraries and migrate their apps forward. If canned apps only came with source code, the world would be a better place. To me it's amusing to see DOS and Win32 applications still grinding away on Win2k and WinXP servers.
BTW, I thought Microsoft already had the best Chief Software Architect money can buy, "Bill Gates" the 5 billion dollar man.
I can't view that OSL page with my Mozilla or Firebird web browser. I must need to upgrade to IE, NOT! Also, OSL sounds a lot like an acronymn for Open Source License :)
Alas, another poor victim on online gaming trying to steathily use the computer. Shhh..... be verrry quiet, I don't want anyone to know that the computer is on or that I am typing or clicking. :)
Does anyone sell silent soundcards and speakers?
When XP hits critical mass, imagine the havoc that would be caused if a virus/worm deactived all the MS XP and Office XP applications. That would be a NIGHTMARE and shut down most large corporations until the problem could be resolved.
MS is building on a house of cards and putting WPA at the foundation of the stack. Worse yet, image if WPA did contain a bug and accidentally shut everyone down.
WPA reminds me of what a local car dealer tried to do recently. He wanted to put a black box in all the cars that would kill the ignition in the event you didn't make your monthly payment. The courts ruled that he couldn't do that and stopped the practice. WPA is essentially the same type of device, but no one has challenged it yet. I wonder when XP hits end of life if MS will decided to deactive everyone and justify it by saying, "You clicked the I AGREE" box?
Let me see, do I give the use a loaded 6-shot revolver (Win 98) or a loaded 9mm-Uzi (Win2k/XP)? Let's face it, Win2k and XP is basically a server even if you run it as a desktop. There is a lot that can happen when used by inexperienced/bored users. Heck, just leaving the Win2k and XP on when you aren't around can easily lead to bad things happening. When I say bad things, I am referring to Blaster, Nachi, Code Red, zombies that send email and lauch DoS attacks etc ...
I keep most of the fleet I support at Win98 because less bad things can happen. When the next round of worms and virii comes across the Internet, through the firewall, and attack all the Win2k and XP boxes, it is so nice to know that there are only a handfull of them running which can be exploited.
I wish MS, would release a desktop version called MS Windows-Basic which didn't install all the extra fluff. Just give me a basic webbrowser (No Active Anything), a basic spreadsheet, word processor, and email client with I'm good to go. I don't need sliding menus that hog CPU's and require high end video cards. I don't need so much bloat that the machine won't function without 256MB of RAM. I don't need all sorts of other services which are just accidents waiting to happen. Oh, an throw in a a good solitare and minesweeper game. Users like that.
Note to Bill and Steve, that's all we need to get the job done. Desktop PC's don't need to be servers! It increases support costs and downtime for the enterprise when the next round of network worms come through.
Don't NASA engineers ever watch Star Trek or buy the Blue Prints for the ships? Geeeez... The solution to this problem is trivial, all NASA needs to do is equip the ship with a deflector array to protect the ship from stray radiation , debris, and high energy cosmic particles.
I think an alternate solution to this problem is to develop a cloaking device since it acts as a lens and diverts electromagnetic radiation around the ship instead of through it. However, NASA probably isn't up to cloaking devices just yet and should probably stick with the deflector array.
Let's see them push this streaming chrismas carol over their VHF connection :)
Also, the article had this quote which I found interesting: Dr Borg said, any possible license conflicts - with digital radio advocates, and with the remaining users of the appropriate spectrum - would have to be resolved..
I wonder if the resolution will sound like this? All your VHF Bandwidth are belong to US! Resistance is futile. We will use your bandwith for irrelevant Christmas Music Remixes.
Ding Fries are Done! Merry Christmas!
Ok, here ya go, these guys are running the special this month.. REGISTER YOUR DOMAIN FOR 10 YEARS for $79.95
http://www.koredomains.com/
Make the problem go away!
Hunt around and find a registrar offering a sweet deal on 10 years of registration and forget about it. Usually you can get them down to $10-$15 per year and maybe cheaper if you transfer a bunch of domains over. I converted all my domains to the 10 year plan when tucows ran their last special and now I don't have to go crazy worrying about it anymore.
In 10 years, the Internet and world will probably be a very different place. Get the monkey off your back.
Sorry, the automotive design studios still use clay for mockups. Ever see a clay SUV? It's quite a sight to behold before the artists paint it up. Also, automotive modeling clay has a very distinct odor which smells much different than the final product. :)
As long as people continue to use easy to guess passwords and protocols like POP3 which send clear text passwords, it just doesn't matter what algorithm you use to encode or encrypt passwords. It's just another example of the screen door on the submarine with the really expensive titanium lock.
Mark my words boy, and mark them well "SECURITY IS AN ILLUSION!" When is the last time you changed your password?
Yeah, I think it's funny too. MS is trying to woo UNIX admins over to take care of their junk. As the leader of the Unix admin team I have one simple rule, "We don't do windows." I tell the MS crazed developers that they can drag in whatever they want to support, this usually calms them down immediately.
In addition to windows being a less-stable, harder to manage platform, toss in a bunch of mouse wigglers and the platform gets even more unstable. I think MS believes that if they can get the UNIX guys to take care of the MS servers then reliability will increase.
I actually paid MS the $11.90 and bought the "Services for UNIX". It's almost worth it. The following day they sent me another offer for the MS Action Pack which is essentially MSDN-Lite for $300. Yes, nearly everything MS makes (except for the developers tools) for $300.
This shows me how desperate they are to get people (especially UNIX people) to use their *new* stuff. Here is the link to the MS action pack. $25,000 worth of software for $300. However, it expires every year unless you renew and I bet they can/will disable all your software. I think Windows 2000 is going to be the last MS product on my desktop. I am hoping the Linux desktop will be a polished reality before the Windows 2000 hits end of life. Microsoft can't even kill Windows NT4 and it was EOL'ed long ago. NT4 is like a zombie that won't die.
And I quoth from the article:
3980750 8642406493 7397125500 5503864911 9906436234 2526708406 3851895759 4638895726 1768583317
x
4727721 4610743530 2536223071 9730482246 3291469530 2097116459 8521711305 2071125636 3590397527
which can easily be multiplied to verify that they do indeed give the original number.
Does anyone have a calculator that can "easily" multiply these two numbers... Holy Cow!
AMEN BROTHER!
If we could outsource at the C-level there would be significantly more money available to companies to hire IT staff and skilled workers. C-Level = CEO, CFO, CIO, CPO, and of course C3P0.
:) Also, smarter companies that want to hold or gain market share my begin to realize that not outsourcing gives them a competitive advantage and keeps customers happy.
Outsourcing is an extremely short-sighted solution to increased quarterly profitability. It simply boils down to the fact that C level people and their cronies COST TOO MUCH and in order for them to keep receiving the same level of compensation (while keeping shareholders happy) they need to squeeze out every last bit of cash out of every other expense.
I plan to start a new company soon which deals with outsourcing, except you will pay large premiums for me to come in and fix the disaster created by the offshore developers. Mark may words boy, and mark them well, offshore outsourcing is going to be one of the biggest largescale disasters in the history of US business. However as I read the ever increasing reports of outsourcing disasters, I am beginning to realize that there is money to be made here!
Also, I wonder if C-Level types forget about the geopolitical instability of the world. Isn't the US at war right now? What if Pakistan decided to go cut all the fiber optic cable connecting India to the US? Oh the mess this is going to create. I laugh at the nearsighted fools!
Developers whine about not being able to willy nilly install anything tools they desire, code in the "cool" language of the week, or drag in any middle ware which is fun for them to playwith i.e. (Tomcat, Jaguar).
.NET using CORBA, XML and exotic middleware, however they don't understand it, nor do they have any desire to feed and care for it. This results in yet another orphaned system that will probably need to be rewritten in just a few years since there will be no one around to understand it. However, nowadays it looks like the next re-write will take place in India.
The developers then work on their little projects, get them finished, and DUMP IT ON THE ADMINS and RUN AWAY (off to the next exciting project). Yes, the developers are typically able to coble together their cool Java Beans J2EE to
Unfortunatly, for the sake of the users and the corporation, the Admin ocassionly has to say, "No". Believe me, I'd like to let everyone install EVERYTHING and play all day and all night. Innovation, innovation, innovation to the extreme. And that security stuff, who needs it. Just turn off all that annoying ActiveX security for the ease of development. We wouldn't want to slow anybody down. Also, disable all the Java security and let applets connect to and from anywhere. Ditch it all, after all the world is a safe place. There aren't any bad people out there creating hostile ActiveX and Java applications, plus the firewall and virus checker will save us, right?
Systems must function for the sake of the customer and the customer's business. For this to happens, there must exist a well understood development framework and compotent people to manage and maitain the framework. Without this, you are in the wild-wild west of systems and are heading for the land of perpetual system rewrites
I am an ex-developer admin so I work with my developers to help them logically design their applications and database objects. I even tune their SQL, but I resist letting them go off in "cool" direction of the week, just so they can add a new line to their resume and dump yet another one-off application on me which is guaranteed to misbehave and be nearly impossible to upgrade.
I bought the N75. It's much lighter to carry around than the heavy ALL METAL FE and, when I can justify a buying a digital SLR I won't begrudge the investment in the N75 which is very small (under $300). Don't forget to get a SB-28 flash off EBAY, it's rocks with the Nikon SLR's. If you have any more questions, feel free to continue the thread. I'll check back.
The Redhat test is harder than this. What is this sissy stuff about configuring Novell Services and performing basic Linux tasks.
I was excited when I first heard about the Novell CLE, but it looks pretty watered down. The Red Hat (RHCE) test is 6 hours and includes troubleshooting, a written test, and configuring services with advanced administrative tasks.
IMHO Novell should start out a lot tougher. They can always relax the program, but if they set the initial bar too low and anyone can obtain the certification then it's tarnished forever. I agree the MCSE is definately something a chimp could be trained to pass. The only certs I really have respect for are OCM (Oracle Certified Master), CCIE (Cisco Internet Engineer), and the RHCE (Red Hat Certified Engineer). If the final test isn't performance based you will never get a measure of the skill of the individual taking the test.
Device drivers have always been the Achille's heel of Windows. Maybe MS is making a play for the hardware market too and WANG-FU-LI won't be able to make scanners anymore and sell them at SAMS club because he won't be able to write a signed device driver.
However, your point about selling the DRM SDK and certificate for big bucks is something I hadn't considered. The only problem facing DRM is when companies or governments go through the hassle of installing all this DRM junk and then get hammered by the next Microsoft Virus or Worm, they are going to be really upset. They will cry out and wonder why their investment in DRM (Digital Restrictions Management) didn't save their enterprise and only prevented the CEO's secretary from listening to her MP3's.
It's all so sad. I had hoped that MS would acutally try and innovate some new stuff instead of trying to lock down and control everything.
Security is an illusion.
In California it's a felony to aim a laser pointer at an aircraft.
Laser pointers can blind pilots.
I would turn them all on at once and aim them at the moon and see if you can get it to explode! Just make sure you don't hit any aircraft.
Have fun!
I was actually very pissed off about this today. I call it the widgetizing of America. Everyone and everyjob is neatly classified and catergorized so that it can be easy outsourced or "right shored". "Right Shore" is the new buzzword for shipping jobs to Asia/India. Anyone is High School or College should really be thinking hard about two things 1) voting and 2) what job can they prepare for that can't be "right-shored".
.... and according to CEO's all this stuff is commidity (sic).
IT, manufacturing, technical design work, medical diagnostic work, financial analysis, text book proofing, medical research
What's really happening is that UnFree Trade is killing America. As long as overcompensated CEO's can achieve their quarterly earning targets, they could care less what long-term damage they do to the country or companies they are running. This is nothing more than blind, stupid, greed. The only question is "How hard is America going to crash?" I wonder how many people will lose their jobs, pentions, and healthcare this year as our CEO's continue to commoditize, outsource, and offshore with the blessing of our politicians (and ultimately consumers).
It's tragic that a country founded on the pioneer spirit, hard work ethic, and innovation is now dismissing everything that made it great, calling it a commidity and then getting the service performed by what amounts to slave labor. I am personally trying to break my additiction to cheap foreign goods, but can't seem to find anything made here. Recently I found a manufacturer called Jaton that makes nvidia video cards in California. I was so impressed I bought 4 of them.
To answer your question, I am not sure if you can cluster MySQL but it beats the pants off Oracle if you lay out your data intelligently. However, MySQL doesn't support read consistency, rollbacks, or the concept of a transaction in super speedy mode. I use MySQL for quick data analysis. MySQL is easy to setup, is light on resources, and can load data like a banshee. Oracle is not so speedy to setup and is a resource pig, however I trust Oracle with all my important data since it's a very solid product.
Everything is a tradeoff. In my opinion, TPS/TPC reports are mostly worthless now that your can create hot standby databases for running the grinder reports in Oracle 9i. The biggest bang for the buck in database performance is still good relational database design and optimized SQL queries. Even with the biggest baddest hardware in the universe a bad developer doing cartesian joins can bring it to to it's knees.