I don't know about an also ran. Our entire infrastructure is BSD based from the routers (Juniper) to our web servers (FreeBSD) to the database servers running PostgreSQL (FreeBSD & OpenBSD). We're now working on an embedded low powered version of one of our products and testing both NetBSD and FreeBSD depending on whether the final product is ARM or x86 based. And we're doing that expressly because license compliance vs. GPL is something we just don't have to worry about. Given the number of other things we've got going on, I'll take the one less problem...
Revenue? No, I remember distinctly drawing lots of curved lines to maximize PROFIT in Econ and operations management. There does come a point where seeking out the most revenue starts the law of diminishing returns.
It depends, if said developer is completing the most work, but also one of the highest paid, then the next round of down sizing it goes something like this:
PHB: Hmmm, Bob is making over $X. I see he's the most productive, but we could higher two new grads and an intern for the same amount. They'd be at least that productive right?
That's why we give our customers 5 methods of export: PDF, Word, Excel, CSV, and XML. Every order, customer, report, and product can be exported for back up or to take elsewhere. The only thing they can't get to is credit card details. And we won't release those for obvious reasons. So that might be a headache if they switched to another service, but...
Xgrid is basically Beep. I've able to get Linux nodes, and even FreeBSD nodes to attach to the system and preform basic tasks. I never went beyond that because it was more or less playing around with an old PC box.
I did have 15 older Mac Minis up until a storm destroyed my house earlier this year. But I had a PowerMac with OS 10.4-Server and 15 Mac Minis (9 1.25/512, 5 1.42/512, 1 Core Solo (1.5Ghz I think) that I had picked up cheap. Used it for a few tasks like 3d animation and compressing video, etc..
I'd say more like 3 - 5 years, because it can take 3 years of R&D to take an idea and actually make a functioning product, let alone figure out how to mass produce said product. We have something like that we developed 3 years ago as a prototype. It's taken that long to build a functional unit at the size we wanted that was throughly tested and we're confident that it will work as advertised. That includes going down a couple paths that turned out not to work in practice.
When the shuttle program ends, it will be the end of the US manned space flight program. People have been asking why are when spending $X (what seems like a really big number) on manned space flight when we've been there, done that, and have Y number of problems still back on earth. This has been going on since Apollo 11. We stop sending people to space, people won't miss it. NASA may continue to fund some great robotic programs, but it doesn't capture the public's mind. And if they can't do that, they'll find their budget dwindle a little more each year. How many people, outside of slashdot, really care that the Mars Rovers are still going how many years later? And I think it barely survived the last budget cut. Even then you get into the politics of , "Yeah, it maybe doing something, but your eating up $Z dollars that could be funding my new flashy thingy!".
Back in the 1960's, NASA had a mission. Since they completed that mission, they've been floundering in the wind. They still done a lot of good work, but they've not really had a well defined goal to reach since 1969.
And as far as costs go, what is NASA's budget, $18B or there abouts. Didn't the Federal Government just give the state of New York $18B to improve the IT department of the states health services.
I dare you to tell any professional 3D graphics artists that GIMP is superior to Photoshop and that Blender 3D is superior to 3D Studio Max or even Lightwave. Then wait for the laughter. Hell Max artists can now import their 3D Studio models and texture them in Photoshop pretty seamlessly.
Don't get me wrong, I like Blender. I like to do 3D stuff in my spare time and I can do some fun things in Blender, but to this day, I still can't create the same quality of scenes as I could get out of the box with Lightwave without hours of tinkering. Since I no longer work with 3D and video for a living, I'm not willing to invest $1000 for Lightwave anymore. So I use Blender. It's a great tool to learn the basics or for people who are more hobby/enthusiasts.
Over the past year we've been looking at enterprise level database platforms. PostgreSQL served us well in development and initial stages of production. Initial consideration was given to SUN, IBM, and Teradata. But it was clear a year ago that SUN's days were numbered. After they started talks with IBM we didn't give SUN much thought after that. Also they lacked a true enterprise level database (sorry MySQL fans, but NDBCLUSTER is still horribly buggy and what we need goes beyond Master/salve replication) & hardware platform and we wanted both from the same vender. Sorry, but I've been in the "It's a hardware problem, no it's a software problem" disputes between venders too many times.
I know a lot of other businesses who thought the same way once the talks were underway with IBM. Why buy a platform that you don't the future of 6 months from now?
Which is sort of sad. I worked around Sun machines 12 years ago. We had a few boxes that were from the 1980's running Solaris 2 (or 3 I can't remember now) that were STILL supported. Something went wrong, they sent in the old grey beards to fix it. Same with applications. We had a certified app that broke in Solaris 8 or 9 and Sun sent a team of engineers to help us fix it.
No, the reason Apple doesn't switch to verizon is that they'd have to add a CDMA radio for basically one carrier in the world: Verizon. Nobody outside the USA uses CDMA, they all use GSM. And if your trying to produce a product in bulk to cash on economies of scale, then it makes sense to stick with a GSM design. One design that has at least one carrier in every country. That makes sense to me.
Now with the switch to 4G and everyone agreeing to use the same technology, this won't be a problem after 2015.
But can you run Final Cut Studio on the machine you buy from new egg?
But anyone who buys high end macs know you don't buy RAM from Apple. You go to Crucial after market. When I bought my last PowerMac (Quad-core G5), I spend about $4500 on the machine and had it shipped with 512MB of ram. Even got a call from Apple making sure that was the config I wanted. Went to Crucial the same day and got 8GB of Ram for around $1800. Apple wanted $4k for the RAM. Don't forget another $2k for the HD Cinema display.
I used the unit to do video editing as Final Cut wasn't going to be Intel ready at that time for at least another year. During that year I made about $70k editing HD videos as I was one of the few with all the HD equipment in the area. So I rented out the cameras and did the editing for other when their clients wanted HD video of a wedding or corporate event until they upgraded/HD equipment came down in price.
Recently that machine got destroyed after my house was damaged from a storm and the room got flooded. I've got the insurance money, but since I don't do video production on a regular basis anymore, I've not replaced it. And when I do, it will likely be with an iMac. My 13.3" iBook has been perfect for what I've needed.
I like flight sims. Only games I still play are Falcon 4.0: Allied Force and X-Plane. But If I'm not mistaken, there a professional version of X-plane that's FAA rated. Why not start there?
Why pay for Sat or Cable when I can watch Hulu for free? Before that I bought seasons on iTunes. Honestly, for the 3 - 4 TV shows I liked to watch, it was cheaper to buy from iTunes than paying for cable for a year. Much cheaper.
If you want your computer to work in the background and be a tool that makes you money, get a mac. If you want to try it and your free time is worth it, by all means give Linux a try. I started to use Linux around 2000. I switched to Apple back in 2002 and haven't looked back. I deal with technology all day long. If our desktops & laptop systems aren't working, then we're wasting time and money making those work instead of making bug fixes and adding new features to our software products that make us money.
Not too long ago, we installed OpenSuSE on a machine for testing one of our desktop JAVA apps to make sure it would run on Linux. We went and grabbed an off the shelf PCI wifi card to put in it. Card was made in 2003 and I still had to use the NDIS wrapper to get it to work.
We've spent a lot of the past 6 months optimizing a mobile version of our website & ecommerce systems as well as developing native apps for the iPhone and Blackberry. I go around and test on anyone with a smartphone I see. And I've yet to meet a single person with a G1 or MyTouch.
We do about $3k a month online. Here is our fee schedule:
For VI/MC/Discover Auth Fee: $0.15 per transaction Transaction Percentage: 1.69% - 1.95% depending on the card. Averages out that our transaction fee is about 1.7354% 1.75% is a nice round number. Gateway: $10/month. PCI Compliance Scans: $75 Per Year Monthly Min: $30 Paper Statement: $5.95/month ($0.00 if the owner would go to paperless, but likes to have paper records) No Batching fees. Voice Auth: $.075, but we've never done one.
American Express is a little different beast. But we get those on one statement now.
Now if we were doing $100k a month we could qualify for interchange rates, which goes down to about $.08 + 1.35% per transaction iirc.
I lived in Germany for a few years as a private citizen, not part of the US Military. I had great health care. Oh yeah, I also had private health insurance. Germany has a two teired system. Those of us with private insurance always got to the front of the line.
What people in flyover country don't really like is the fact is we get marginalized, or seem to since we have a lower population density, we also seem to come up on the bottom of the pole when it comes to cost/benefit analysis. We see the taxes come out of our paycheck, sent to the state capitol or DC and we really don't see a lot of that return in our communities. We have to have higher property taxes to fund the local schools because of more federal mandates, etc..
Right now there is an MRI machine at the local hospital. Under a government system, I could see that going away and moved to a more centrally located town 30 miles from here (who also have an MRI at their hospital) or maybe even as far as 90 miles away in a major population center. (Maybe not, we have a med school in town, but...)
The thing is, people around here do tend to help each other. Because if you wait for the government, that's a train that doesn't come around too often. Last may we had 100MPH+ straight line winds. Knocked out power for better part of a week and did a lot of damage. Those of us with chainsaws were making calls and helping out those who didn't. Took the city a few days to get in the big trucks to help remove debris. But we didn't wait for the government. We just did.
I don't agree with a single payer system. In this country, the rural population is going to get shafted and it's a big country. A lot of the socialized programs work very well when you have smaller populations and those are concentrated. And I see my fair share of Idocriacy in progress (so-so movie, wonderful premise).
Healthcare does needs reforms.
As an example: 1) Hospitals and Doctors should have a one price policy. ABC operation costs $X. Not $X if you have insurance a, $Y if you have insurance b, and ($X + $Y) * 3 if you don't have insurance like it is now. Now they can set their price, but it's the same price to anyone who walks in the door.
2) Tort reform. We don't have many OB/GYN's in the area. Why? The states tort laws makes it almost impossible to practice. Especially since specialists can set up shop 20 minutes away in another state and pay half the malpractice insurance rates.
3) Government Defines a series of heath care plans. All insurance companies have to offer the exact same coverage as outlined by the government. Basically this is what they do with Medicare supplemental coverage. Medicare part B is the same wether you buy from GHP, United Health Care, or someone else. Some have slightly different coverage around the edges, but the basics are all the same. Choose the one with the frills you are willing to pay for at the cheapest price.
The dirty word, though, is that health care (especially end of life care) is going to have to be rationed. That's just a fact of economic reality many do not want to face. The question really is who do we want to decide how that is done. The government or economics. Either option is going to be a bitch.
I call it Time Sharing 2.0. I'm young enough to have skipped those days, but old enough to have heard the war stories from the "old timers". Two years ago when I was sitting down to design our product I stuck with what I knew. We started by having our own in house server for development, but as soon as we moved to production I called up Pair Networks and got a couple managed dedicated servers. Why Pair? I've used them for big projects since 1999. They had always been reliable and their servers are managed. Order an SSL, it's installed within 30 minutes. Something needs updating, they take care of it. It costs us about $2500 a month for all our servers. However, it is still cheaper than hiring a network and systems admin people not to mention having to build and equip a datacenter.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know about an also ran. Our entire infrastructure is BSD based from the routers (Juniper) to our web servers (FreeBSD) to the database servers running PostgreSQL (FreeBSD & OpenBSD). We're now working on an embedded low powered version of one of our products and testing both NetBSD and FreeBSD depending on whether the final product is ARM or x86 based. And we're doing that expressly because license compliance vs. GPL is something we just don't have to worry about. Given the number of other things we've got going on, I'll take the one less problem...
Revenue? No, I remember distinctly drawing lots of curved lines to maximize PROFIT in Econ and operations management. There does come a point where seeking out the most revenue starts the law of diminishing returns.
It depends, if said developer is completing the most work, but also one of the highest paid, then the next round of down sizing it goes something like this:
PHB: Hmmm, Bob is making over $X. I see he's the most productive, but we could higher two new grads and an intern for the same amount. They'd be at least that productive right?
It's whatever is "reasonable" to the side with the most lobbyist $$$
I knew I ran FreeBSD over Linux for a reason.
*ducks*
SuSE had KDE by default back in 2000 when I was using it.
That's why we give our customers 5 methods of export: PDF, Word, Excel, CSV, and XML. Every order, customer, report, and product can be exported for back up or to take elsewhere. The only thing they can't get to is credit card details. And we won't release those for obvious reasons. So that might be a headache if they switched to another service, but...
If I had mod points I would mod you up just for the use of Perl.
....somehow this isn't going to end well.
Xgrid is basically Beep. I've able to get Linux nodes, and even FreeBSD nodes to attach to the system and preform basic tasks. I never went beyond that because it was more or less playing around with an old PC box.
I did have 15 older Mac Minis up until a storm destroyed my house earlier this year. But I had a PowerMac with OS 10.4-Server and 15 Mac Minis (9 1.25/512, 5 1.42/512, 1 Core Solo (1.5Ghz I think) that I had picked up cheap. Used it for a few tasks like 3d animation and compressing video, etc..
I'd say more like 3 - 5 years, because it can take 3 years of R&D to take an idea and actually make a functioning product, let alone figure out how to mass produce said product. We have something like that we developed 3 years ago as a prototype. It's taken that long to build a functional unit at the size we wanted that was throughly tested and we're confident that it will work as advertised. That includes going down a couple paths that turned out not to work in practice.
When the shuttle program ends, it will be the end of the US manned space flight program. People have been asking why are when spending $X (what seems like a really big number) on manned space flight when we've been there, done that, and have Y number of problems still back on earth. This has been going on since Apollo 11. We stop sending people to space, people won't miss it. NASA may continue to fund some great robotic programs, but it doesn't capture the public's mind. And if they can't do that, they'll find their budget dwindle a little more each year. How many people, outside of slashdot, really care that the Mars Rovers are still going how many years later? And I think it barely survived the last budget cut. Even then you get into the politics of , "Yeah, it maybe doing something, but your eating up $Z dollars that could be funding my new flashy thingy!".
Back in the 1960's, NASA had a mission. Since they completed that mission, they've been floundering in the wind. They still done a lot of good work, but they've not really had a well defined goal to reach since 1969.
And as far as costs go, what is NASA's budget, $18B or there abouts. Didn't the Federal Government just give the state of New York $18B to improve the IT department of the states health services.
I dare you to tell any professional 3D graphics artists that GIMP is superior to Photoshop and that Blender 3D is superior to 3D Studio Max or even Lightwave. Then wait for the laughter. Hell Max artists can now import their 3D Studio models and texture them in Photoshop pretty seamlessly.
Don't get me wrong, I like Blender. I like to do 3D stuff in my spare time and I can do some fun things in Blender, but to this day, I still can't create the same quality of scenes as I could get out of the box with Lightwave without hours of tinkering. Since I no longer work with 3D and video for a living, I'm not willing to invest $1000 for Lightwave anymore. So I use Blender. It's a great tool to learn the basics or for people who are more hobby/enthusiasts.
Over the past year we've been looking at enterprise level database platforms. PostgreSQL served us well in development and initial stages of production. Initial consideration was given to SUN, IBM, and Teradata. But it was clear a year ago that SUN's days were numbered. After they started talks with IBM we didn't give SUN much thought after that. Also they lacked a true enterprise level database (sorry MySQL fans, but NDBCLUSTER is still horribly buggy and what we need goes beyond Master/salve replication) & hardware platform and we wanted both from the same vender. Sorry, but I've been in the "It's a hardware problem, no it's a software problem" disputes between venders too many times.
I know a lot of other businesses who thought the same way once the talks were underway with IBM. Why buy a platform that you don't the future of 6 months from now?
Which is sort of sad. I worked around Sun machines 12 years ago. We had a few boxes that were from the 1980's running Solaris 2 (or 3 I can't remember now) that were STILL supported. Something went wrong, they sent in the old grey beards to fix it. Same with applications. We had a certified app that broke in Solaris 8 or 9 and Sun sent a team of engineers to help us fix it.
No, the reason Apple doesn't switch to verizon is that they'd have to add a CDMA radio for basically one carrier in the world: Verizon. Nobody outside the USA uses CDMA, they all use GSM. And if your trying to produce a product in bulk to cash on economies of scale, then it makes sense to stick with a GSM design. One design that has at least one carrier in every country. That makes sense to me.
Now with the switch to 4G and everyone agreeing to use the same technology, this won't be a problem after 2015.
But can you run Final Cut Studio on the machine you buy from new egg?
But anyone who buys high end macs know you don't buy RAM from Apple. You go to Crucial after market. When I bought my last PowerMac (Quad-core G5), I spend about $4500 on the machine and had it shipped with 512MB of ram. Even got a call from Apple making sure that was the config I wanted. Went to Crucial the same day and got 8GB of Ram for around $1800. Apple wanted $4k for the RAM. Don't forget another $2k for the HD Cinema display.
I used the unit to do video editing as Final Cut wasn't going to be Intel ready at that time for at least another year. During that year I made about $70k editing HD videos as I was one of the few with all the HD equipment in the area. So I rented out the cameras and did the editing for other when their clients wanted HD video of a wedding or corporate event until they upgraded/HD equipment came down in price.
Recently that machine got destroyed after my house was damaged from a storm and the room got flooded. I've got the insurance money, but since I don't do video production on a regular basis anymore, I've not replaced it. And when I do, it will likely be with an iMac. My 13.3" iBook has been perfect for what I've needed.
I like flight sims. Only games I still play are Falcon 4.0: Allied Force and X-Plane. But If I'm not mistaken, there a professional version of X-plane that's FAA rated. Why not start there?
Why pay for Sat or Cable when I can watch Hulu for free? Before that I bought seasons on iTunes. Honestly, for the 3 - 4 TV shows I liked to watch, it was cheaper to buy from iTunes than paying for cable for a year. Much cheaper.
If you want your computer to work in the background and be a tool that makes you money, get a mac. If you want to try it and your free time is worth it, by all means give Linux a try. I started to use Linux around 2000. I switched to Apple back in 2002 and haven't looked back. I deal with technology all day long. If our desktops & laptop systems aren't working, then we're wasting time and money making those work instead of making bug fixes and adding new features to our software products that make us money.
Not too long ago, we installed OpenSuSE on a machine for testing one of our desktop JAVA apps to make sure it would run on Linux. We went and grabbed an off the shelf PCI wifi card to put in it. Card was made in 2003 and I still had to use the NDIS wrapper to get it to work.
We've spent a lot of the past 6 months optimizing a mobile version of our website & ecommerce systems as well as developing native apps for the iPhone and Blackberry. I go around and test on anyone with a smartphone I see. And I've yet to meet a single person with a G1 or MyTouch.
We do about $3k a month online.
Here is our fee schedule:
For VI/MC/Discover
Auth Fee: $0.15 per transaction
Transaction Percentage: 1.69% - 1.95% depending on the card. Averages out that our transaction fee is about 1.7354% 1.75% is a nice round number.
Gateway: $10/month.
PCI Compliance Scans: $75 Per Year
Monthly Min: $30
Paper Statement: $5.95/month ($0.00 if the owner would go to paperless, but likes to have paper records)
No Batching fees.
Voice Auth: $.075, but we've never done one.
American Express is a little different beast. But we get those on one statement now.
Now if we were doing $100k a month we could qualify for interchange rates, which goes down to about $.08 + 1.35% per transaction iirc.
And we go through First Data.
Leave and go where? It's not like you can get on another subway company in New York.
I lived in Germany for a few years as a private citizen, not part of the US Military. I had great health care. Oh yeah, I also had private health insurance. Germany has a two teired system. Those of us with private insurance always got to the front of the line.
What people in flyover country don't really like is the fact is we get marginalized, or seem to since we have a lower population density, we also seem to come up on the bottom of the pole when it comes to cost/benefit analysis. We see the taxes come out of our paycheck, sent to the state capitol or DC and we really don't see a lot of that return in our communities. We have to have higher property taxes to fund the local schools because of more federal mandates, etc..
Right now there is an MRI machine at the local hospital. Under a government system, I could see that going away and moved to a more centrally located town 30 miles from here (who also have an MRI at their hospital) or maybe even as far as 90 miles away in a major population center. (Maybe not, we have a med school in town, but...)
The thing is, people around here do tend to help each other. Because if you wait for the government, that's a train that doesn't come around too often. Last may we had 100MPH+ straight line winds. Knocked out power for better part of a week and did a lot of damage. Those of us with chainsaws were making calls and helping out those who didn't. Took the city a few days to get in the big trucks to help remove debris. But we didn't wait for the government. We just did.
I don't agree with a single payer system. In this country, the rural population is going to get shafted and it's a big country. A lot of the socialized programs work very well when you have smaller populations and those are concentrated. And I see my fair share of Idocriacy in progress (so-so movie, wonderful premise).
Healthcare does needs reforms.
As an example:
1) Hospitals and Doctors should have a one price policy. ABC operation costs $X. Not $X if you have insurance a, $Y if you have insurance b, and ($X + $Y) * 3 if you don't have insurance like it is now. Now they can set their price, but it's the same price to anyone who walks in the door.
2) Tort reform. We don't have many OB/GYN's in the area. Why? The states tort laws makes it almost impossible to practice. Especially since specialists can set up shop 20 minutes away in another state and pay half the malpractice insurance rates.
3) Government Defines a series of heath care plans. All insurance companies have to offer the exact same coverage as outlined by the government. Basically this is what they do with Medicare supplemental coverage. Medicare part B is the same wether you buy from GHP, United Health Care, or someone else. Some have slightly different coverage around the edges, but the basics are all the same. Choose the one with the frills you are willing to pay for at the cheapest price.
The dirty word, though, is that health care (especially end of life care) is going to have to be rationed. That's just a fact of economic reality many do not want to face. The question really is who do we want to decide how that is done. The government or economics. Either option is going to be a bitch.
I call it Time Sharing 2.0. I'm young enough to have skipped those days, but old enough to have heard the war stories from the "old timers". Two years ago when I was sitting down to design our product I stuck with what I knew. We started by having our own in house server for development, but as soon as we moved to production I called up Pair Networks and got a couple managed dedicated servers. Why Pair? I've used them for big projects since 1999. They had always been reliable and their servers are managed. Order an SSL, it's installed within 30 minutes. Something needs updating, they take care of it. It costs us about $2500 a month for all our servers. However, it is still cheaper than hiring a network and systems admin people not to mention having to build and equip a datacenter.
Read Mein Kampf. I'm serious, read it then look at Europe today and compare the two. It's kind of eerie at the similarities.