I can only imagine the call:
Me: "Yea, so go in and edit your/etc/fstab"
And how likely is there to be a problem that requires editing fstab? I have not edited a/etc/fstab for al least three years.
Why does the user have root? why is he doing an admin task rather than an administrator sshing in and doing it? Who added a drive or partition and failed to check it was working? Why have you come up with such a totally improbably scenario - is it that difficult to think of realistic suport problems with Linux?
Imagine how many dead-beat dads would be forced to pay.
You need ID cards for that? Its not difficult to trace people if they are in the country, if they are not the ID card does not help either.
Imagine how many jobs would would newly occupied by legal workers.
Imaging how much more expensive everything will be
Imagine how much nicer getting on a commercial airplane would be.
Imagine having to use an intrusive ID card and still being searched,scanned etc: just because they know who you are does not mean they know what you might do.
Imagine if the person reading the card knew that the ID information they were seeing was coming from an encrypted database in some locked room, as opposed to being produced in the back of a van somewhere.
Imagine everyone you enter into any transaction with knowing 30 pieces of personal information including your religion (as proposed for UK ID cards)
Imagine everyone with access to the database having so much of your personal information that once they forge the card ID theft is easy.
Imagine easy ID theft will be once the card is forged or the database falsified
Imagine every government official seeing all your personal info - if you think governments are inclined to limit their official's access information think of the British government's (failed) attempt in 2002 to give 1,039 different public bodies the power to authorise phone-tapping (eventually it was cut down to intelligence, police and customs and revenue).
Imagine a nice number to help match and co-ordinate different sources of info to create massive marketing databases.
Imagine being required to show ID to buy a mobile phone - once the government know who owns a mobile phone they know where you are whenever you are carrying it.
Imagine the whole system breaking down if the network or the database breaks
Imagine you life coming to a complete standstill because you lost your card or there is an error in your database entry.
Given the other projects the people behind this are involved in - like http://explorerdestroyer.com/ I would guess they are pretty committed to open source and open access.
1) Apache ran more sites in all 2) Most visits were to sites running on Apache 3) If the biggest SSL sites ran Apache, most visits to SSL sites were to sites running on Apache
I am not clear if the GP endorsed the idea that greater SSL market share meant greater "serious site" market share, but that does not follow: the most visited serious sites are information and search sites. Certainly almost all the work related sites I use are information sites that run Apache - although to the fair the single site I use the most runs IIS.
I few years ago I used to have access to some investment banks institutional customer only sites and they ran on a good variety of platforms. I can remember at least one ran on Lotus Domino.
In a non tech business which is 100% MS and the IT staff only knows windows
I have found that the IT staff in SMEs often can not even configure Windows correctly and are terrified of taking any risk at all. I have seen plenty of examples of incompetence.
I think there is a reason for this. Consider the pool of people who are bright enough to make good admins and interested in IT. They have a choice of careers and most of them probably choose another path (being a developer is probably more obviously attractive to most people).
Of those who are left, most of the good ones get hired by a few big organisations that are willing to pay well to get good people to run mission critical systems.
This leaves SMEs with a limited talent pool.
Now if a company is hiring a Chief Financial Officer the CEO and directors will know enough about accounts to judge who is a good candidate. The same applies to hiring marketing people and any function to do with a company's core business.
Now consider this. How many CEO's have a clue about IT? How well equipped are they to select a head of IT?
So the job of head of IT goes to the best talker - i.e. it is almost a random choice in terms of competence. If the head of IT is an idiot, their hiring decisions are not going to be good.
Now combine all that with a limited talent pool and a cost that is seen as an overhead and the result is pretty much want you see.
I have also noticed the kiss of death is a small company whose IT people claim "a good relationship" with Microsoft. No, if you buy a few tens of desktop licences for Windows and Office a year and a have have a few services you do not matter to MS at all. What they mean is that they have a good relationship with an MS salesman.
I suspect the MS camp did not want to mention the figures too often as it would draw attention to the survey which also showed Apache well ahead in market share.
Well its not unknown for companies to buy bigger ones, but that happens when the management of the bigger company are screwing up so badly that shareholders are willing to sell for shares in the new combined business.
Buying something like Oracle would also not fit in with IBM's strategy of expanding services - their last big acquisition was a consultancy, and I bet their next one will be as well.
Turning off java does speed up Openoffice considerably.
So does increasing the memory settings.
However it still takes about 3 or 4 seconds to start up on my desktop. As far as I remember from when I still used Windows this is not all that different from MS Office on XP on similar hardware. Does any one else who has done the same tweaks differ?
However Abiword or Lyx starts instantly. I mostly use Lyx (which I find more productive) and Gnumeric (faster, with some nice features) rather than OO.
So, in fact religion now is a free for all where you can discard what you think silly and believe what is holy?
What is strange on going on the evidence available to you?
Although religous belief is not based on evidence that is scientifically testable (in that it is not possible to devise repeatable experiments to test it) it is still based on evidence.
We use evidence that is not science in all sorts of things: maths an philosophy (pure logic), criminal trials (eye-witness accounts), everyday life (you believe what some-one says because you trust them personally or because you respect their expert knowledge).
Religious belief is based on a mixture of these: Personal experience (of God's presence), faith (in God as One you trust completely), logic (with axioms derived from faith and personal experience) as well as other evidence (once you are convinced that particular scriptures are true that gives you a lot to derive beliefs from).
the problem is that they insist on believing their 2000-year-old fairytale
Not 200 years old
The six day creation myth is from the book of Genesis which is MUCH older than that
On the other hand, biblical literalism was not necessarily part of early Christianity. St Augustine of Hippo even suggested a picture of creation vaguely reminiscent of evolution. The tradition of literalism you are talking about originated in the reformation, so it is only a few centuries old.
And MS (like a lot of US multinationals) stuctures is European operations to generate as much of its profits as possible in Ireland (because Ireland has low corporate tax rates).
The results are:
1) Ireland gets a lot of tax revenue 2) Ireland does what its told to by MS and others
This is also why Ireland was behind the EU attempt to introduce software patents.
All that trouble to get independence from Britain... and a few decades later they sell themselves to the US.
If it is installation that is worrying you and you do not want to buy a PC with Linux pre-installed, either:
1) lose your fear of doing the install. It is not as bad was you may think.
2) take your PC to an installfest. Lots of Linux user groups hold them fairly regularly.
As for the "tweaking" issue, once installed Linux is very stable. New software installation and updating varies from distro to distro, but the most user friendly ones have a single GUI that handles it all with a few clicks. It could not be easier.
Having switched from Mandrake to Ubuntu my experience is:
Mandrake is less likely to have problems on OS installation and is easier to configure though the GUI.
Ubuntu is easier to upgrade - you can even upgrade to a new version of the OS through a GUI installer. This also means all security patches get installed promptly. Installing new applications is easier as well.
Ubuntu's biggest weakness is lack of multimedia (lots of formats you can not play) in the default install - there is a script (Automatix?) avaiable that installs everything in one go though so it is a one-off problem.
Which is why she is trying to find evidence that video games are bad, than, for example, campaigning to stop children from watching television, when there is plenty of evidence and an existing consensus that TV does a lot of harm to children:
Of course they should - but there are a lot of uncertainties in even short term forecasts about a company like Google (how much share have Yahoo and MSN taken? will the competitiona affect ad rates? how much has the web advertising market grown? etc.)
This is actually a very good reason for Google not to issue guidance - because even they can not be sure of what will happen in the next quarter.
From the analysts' point of view, the uncertainty means that THEY are likely to get it wrong and lose clients money. It is preferable for Google to get it wrong so it is not the analysts fault.
In many other markets (including major ones like London) earnings guidance is not always given and analysts live with it. If you get guidance its good, if you do not you do your own forecast.
Yes I have worked as an analyst. Mostly buy-side although I started on the sell-side many years ago.
My last job was in a software company that gave everyone who wanted it admin on their own PC.
People were a lot more productive because they could use the software they were happiest with (e.g. Firefox rather than IE makes a huge difference to anyone who uses the web for research rather than entertainment).
On the other hand the place I worked at with the most central control, had some obviously badly configured PCs - e.g. access to a remote serve was given to anyone who logged in to a particular PC, rather to particular users.
What it seems to boil down to is whether you want to make users productive or the IT dept productive.
Why isn't Net present value used as the benchmark for comparing two IT projects? It really is the only one that makes sense because TCO doesn't take into account the interest rate.
Because everyone (i.e. including management) knows that NPVs are very uncertain thanks to all the assumptions that have to be made in order to calculate them.
As non-IT people are less familiar with TCO they are less likely to be suspicious about the numbers.
Slashdot Mirror
And how likely is there to be a problem that requires editing fstab? I have not edited a /etc/fstab for al least three years.
Why does the user have root? why is he doing an admin task rather than an administrator sshing in and doing it? Who added a drive or partition and failed to check it was working? Why have you come up with such a totally improbably scenario - is it that difficult to think of realistic suport problems with Linux?
You need ID cards for that? Its not difficult to trace people if they are in the country, if they are not the ID card does not help either.
Imagine how many jobs would would newly occupied by legal workers.
Imaging how much more expensive everything will be
Imagine how much nicer getting on a commercial airplane would be.
Imagine having to use an intrusive ID card and still being searched ,scanned etc: just because they know who you are does not mean they know what you might do.
Imagine if the person reading the card knew that the ID information they were seeing was coming from an encrypted database in some locked room, as opposed to being produced in the back of a van somewhere.
Imagine everyone you enter into any transaction with knowing 30 pieces of personal information including your religion (as proposed for UK ID cards)
Imagine everyone with access to the database having so much of your personal information that once they forge the card ID theft is easy.
Imagine easy ID theft will be once the card is forged or the database falsified
Imagine every government official seeing all your personal info - if you think governments are inclined to limit their official's access information think of the British government's (failed) attempt in 2002 to give 1,039 different public bodies the power to authorise phone-tapping (eventually it was cut down to intelligence, police and customs and revenue).
Imagine a nice number to help match and co-ordinate different sources of info to create massive marketing databases.
Imagine being required to show ID to buy a mobile phone - once the government know who owns a mobile phone they know where you are whenever you are carrying it.
Imagine the whole system breaking down if the network or the database breaks
Imagine you life coming to a complete standstill because you lost your card or there is an error in your database entry.
That deserves to be modded +5 funny.
Given the other projects the people behind this are involved in - like http://explorerdestroyer.com/ I would guess they are pretty committed to open source and open access.
1) Apache ran more sites in all
2) Most visits were to sites running on Apache
3) If the biggest SSL sites ran Apache, most visits to SSL sites were to sites running on Apache
I am not clear if the GP endorsed the idea that greater SSL market share meant greater "serious site" market share, but that does not follow: the most visited serious sites are information and search sites. Certainly almost all the work related sites I use are information sites that run Apache - although to the fair the single site I use the most runs IIS.
I few years ago I used to have access to some investment banks institutional customer only sites and they ran on a good variety of platforms. I can remember at least one ran on Lotus Domino.
In a non tech business which is 100% MS and the IT staff only knows windows
I have found that the IT staff in SMEs often can not even configure Windows correctly and are terrified of taking any risk at all. I have seen plenty of examples of incompetence.
I think there is a reason for this. Consider the pool of people who are bright enough to make good admins and interested in IT. They have a choice of careers and most of them probably choose another path (being a developer is probably more obviously attractive to most people).
Of those who are left, most of the good ones get hired by a few big organisations that are willing to pay well to get good people to run mission critical systems.
This leaves SMEs with a limited talent pool.
Now if a company is hiring a Chief Financial Officer the CEO and directors will know enough about accounts to judge who is a good candidate. The same applies to hiring marketing people and any function to do with a company's core business.
Now consider this. How many CEO's have a clue about IT? How well equipped are they to select a head of IT?
So the job of head of IT goes to the best talker - i.e. it is almost a random choice in terms of competence. If the head of IT is an idiot, their hiring decisions are not going to be good.
Now combine all that with a limited talent pool and a cost that is seen as an overhead and the result is pretty much want you see.
I have also noticed the kiss of death is a small company whose IT people claim "a good relationship" with Microsoft. No, if you buy a few tens of desktop licences for Windows and Office a year and a have have a few services you do not matter to MS at all. What they mean is that they have a good relationship with an MS salesman.
I suspect the MS camp did not want to mention the figures too often as it would draw attention to the survey which also showed Apache well ahead in market share.
Which is quite right, although it still leaves us with idiotic parents who are quite happy for example to let an eight year old play GTA
Yes we need sensible names like "Longhorn" and "Panther"......
Well its not unknown for companies to buy bigger ones, but that happens when the management of the bigger company are screwing up so badly that shareholders are willing to sell for shares in the new combined business.
Buying something like Oracle would also not fit in with IBM's strategy of expanding services - their last big acquisition was a consultancy, and I bet their next one will be as well.
On Slashdot. Its the first I have heard of it.
A radio gives you the information a small number of broadcasters want you to have, as and when they decide.
The net gives you the ability to find what you want, from a source of your choosing, when you want it.
Which is more useful? Which is more empowering?
Obviously the thinking behind American policy is:
"guns don't kill people, websites kill people"
Turning off java does speed up Openoffice considerably.
So does increasing the memory settings.
However it still takes about 3 or 4 seconds to start up on my desktop. As far as I remember from when I still used Windows this is not all that different from MS Office on XP on similar hardware. Does any one else who has done the same tweaks differ?
However Abiword or Lyx starts instantly. I mostly use Lyx (which I find more productive) and Gnumeric (faster, with some nice features) rather than OO.
Really? I suppose they "capable of" is accurate....
So how do you pronounce it? Is it "see octothorpe or "see hash"?
Its not just MS either, "guh-nome" is just as bad.
What is strange on going on the evidence available to you?
Although religous belief is not based on evidence that is scientifically testable (in that it is not possible to devise repeatable experiments to test it) it is still based on evidence.
We use evidence that is not science in all sorts of things: maths an philosophy (pure logic), criminal trials (eye-witness accounts), everyday life (you believe what some-one says because you trust them personally or because you respect their expert knowledge).
Religious belief is based on a mixture of these: Personal experience (of God's presence), faith (in God as One you trust completely), logic (with axioms derived from faith and personal experience) as well as other evidence (once you are convinced that particular scriptures are true that gives you a lot to derive beliefs from).
Not 200 years old
The six day creation myth is from the book of Genesis which is MUCH older than that
On the other hand, biblical literalism was not necessarily part of early Christianity. St Augustine of Hippo even suggested a picture of creation vaguely reminiscent of evolution. The tradition of literalism you are talking about originated in the reformation, so it is only a few centuries old.
And MS (like a lot of US multinationals) stuctures is European operations to generate as much of its profits as possible in Ireland (because Ireland has low corporate tax rates).
... and a few decades later they sell themselves to the US.
The results are:
1) Ireland gets a lot of tax revenue
2) Ireland does what its told to by MS and others
This is also why Ireland was behind the EU attempt to introduce software patents.
All that trouble to get independence from Britain
If it is installation that is worrying you and you do not want to buy a PC with Linux pre-installed, either: 1) lose your fear of doing the install. It is not as bad was you may think. 2) take your PC to an installfest. Lots of Linux user groups hold them fairly regularly. As for the "tweaking" issue, once installed Linux is very stable. New software installation and updating varies from distro to distro, but the most user friendly ones have a single GUI that handles it all with a few clicks. It could not be easier.
Having switched from Mandrake to Ubuntu my experience is:
Mandrake is less likely to have problems on OS installation and is easier to configure though the GUI.
Ubuntu is easier to upgrade - you can even upgrade to a new version of the OS through a GUI installer. This also means all security patches get installed promptly. Installing new applications is easier as well.
Ubuntu's biggest weakness is lack of multimedia (lots of formats you can not play) in the default install - there is a script (Automatix?) avaiable that installs everything in one go though so it is a one-off problem.
Which is why she is trying to find evidence that video games are bad, than, for example, campaigning to stop children from watching television, when there is plenty of evidence and an existing consensus that TV does a lot of harm to children:
http://www.med.umich.edu/1libr/yourchild/tv.htm http://www.stanford.edu/dept/bingschool/rsrchart/b andura.htm
http://www.apa.org/releases/childrenads.html
Even reseachers who say TV can be good, emphasise that only applies to VERY restricted viewing:
http://www.aap.org/family/tv1.htm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/3506854.stm
This is actually a very good reason for Google not to issue guidance - because even they can not be sure of what will happen in the next quarter.
From the analysts' point of view, the uncertainty means that THEY are likely to get it wrong and lose clients money. It is preferable for Google to get it wrong so it is not the analysts fault.
In many other markets (including major ones like London) earnings guidance is not always given and analysts live with it. If you get guidance its good, if you do not you do your own forecast.
Yes I have worked as an analyst. Mostly buy-side although I started on the sell-side many years ago.
My last job was in a software company that gave everyone who wanted it admin on their own PC.
People were a lot more productive because they could use the software they were happiest with (e.g. Firefox rather than IE makes a huge difference to anyone who uses the web for research rather than entertainment).
On the other hand the place I worked at with the most central control, had some obviously badly configured PCs - e.g. access to a remote serve was given to anyone who logged in to a particular PC, rather to particular users.
What it seems to boil down to is whether you want to make users productive or the IT dept productive.
Oh yes they can
All those power the police have been given to supposedly fight terrorism means they can investigate anyone they like.
The same probably applies in other countries.
Because everyone (i.e. including management) knows that NPVs are very uncertain thanks to all the assumptions that have to be made in order to calculate them.
As non-IT people are less familiar with TCO they are less likely to be suspicious about the numbers.