If there are going to be more citizens living in tent cities like during the great depression, corporate America will want to be there to provide desperately needed services, like up to the minute stock quotes and SPAM for new investment opportunities in Nigeria.
I absolutely agree. There is a lot of new COBOL being written, but it is usually done to enhance existing systems.
I am currently on a project at a major insurer on a system that is about 90% COBOL. Over the nextre year most of the Batch functionality will be replaced with smaller Real-time enabled called routines running as headless transactions in a CICS region.
The code base will be greatly reduced because the majority of the field validation is being moved into the new front end web app from the old COBOL based CICS green screens and the Nightly batch routines. The COBOL code will just wait for messages to show up over the Queue and either update, create, read or delete things in DB2.
The software system is really pretty robust for a Mid-80's era design. It has no central database, each separate portion of the company processes transactions in a distributed peer to peer fashion. Quite advanced for mainframe systems of any era let alone when PC's were just breaking into the 16 bit cpu and greater than 640 k era.
Mainframes are much cheaper now as well. The models produced by IBM today run on air cooled power PC CMOS design chips and start in the $300K range (and go way up). Paying for comparable computing power on an Intel based platform would cost less, but if you start demanding the 9 nine's of uptime that mainframes deliver the cost of the high availability Intel based machines goes way up and you get into the $250K range.
People used to believe that 'network' computing would kill the mainframe. Now the mainframe is just a part of the network.
Since the US is the leading user of recreational drugs in the world ( the amount of money US citizens spend on illegal substances dwarfs the budgets of most countries), we should really take illegal drug use into account when we interpret most American social behavior.
The right wingers tend to be split into two big groups: The wealthier old money types and the poorer rural types.
The left wingers are wealthier intellectuals and poorer hipsters.
The wealthy right wingers can afford more cocaine and the poorer use the most popular rural drug Meth. These substances make them jumpier and more paranoid.
The left wingers tend top have the pot smokers, so they are more mellow.
</sarcasm>
Maybe the fear or lack of it follows from the behavior?
One has to apply to allow others to write in their name? That makes no sense.
From Gerrymandering to Jim Crow laws, American politicians have a long history of trying to deny the right to vote, or to vote effectively to large portions of American Citizens.
So yes, in many places in the US the only 'valid' writes ins are write ins for correctly registered candidates. A vote for Pat Paulson usually doesn't count.
So how long until we see the commercial where Jerry and Bill are riding through downtown Seattle on their fixed gears wearing American Apparel hoodies with pheaux graffiti graphics?
If they want Bill to get with the hip computer consumer subculture, they'll have to have him install and use Ubuntu in one of these commercials. Until then its just a couple of old farts cracking wise. Maybe they're auditioning for a Muppet Movie role?
"...I have been with 147 women, most of them in semi-long term polyamorous relationships,(often with my partners hooking up on the side). Not a single one of them was a virgin before me.
How did you manage to find 147 women who were never virgins before you?
Weren't they born virgins? How did you get to do them before they were even born? Who did them before you did before they were even conceived?
I don't think that you mean what you think you mean.
Could the appearance on Colbert's show be part of a wider ranging media blitz by some of these candidates? Could they be appearing on Colbert, Leno, Letterman, Meet the Press, The Muppet Show, and Larry King all over the course of a week or two? Then following it up with a few high profile public publicity events coordinated with a few big fund raising events?
Its called a media blitz.
If there is a 'Colbert Bump' then we need a controlled experiment. Have a Democrat and a Republican appear on Colbert's show, and make no other public appearances for a month after word. Then measure the outcome.
I think it is just an artifact of campaign style differences between the two parties. The Democrats have been fond of the Madison Avenue marketing blitz style for a while (lots of flash and no substance). Republicans are more of the smoke filled back room style. (Have third parties funded by wealthy friends and talk radio media figure-heads smear your opponent with a constant feed of lies and innuendo).
I really doubt the bump in donations is attributable to an appearance on Colbert's show alone.
Religion does not really have a problem with science. Religion has a problem with God. Everytime Religion comes face to face with something God has done, Religions freak out.
If you don't believe in God, you can just skip my reasoning here. If you do believe in God, and believe in a God that made the universe, please bear with me a few minutes.
Western peoples once believed the Earth was the center of the universe and the Sun an all of the planets and stars rotated around the Earth. When the Copernican model of a heliocentric solar system started to be taught, religious leaders opposed it. It contradicted their dogma and their doctrine. They thought that if the dogma and doctrine were proved wrong it would undermine religious authority. This still goes on today and is often portrayed as a 'fight' between 'science and God'.
But, for believers anyway, it was God that made the Earth and the Solar System. Who on Earth is powerful enough to try to dictate to God that God got it wrong? It seems the leaders of most religions think they are!
Religion was being brought face to face with the works of God. In particular a heliocentric Solar System. They didn't like it. Too bad for God! God should have known better! How dare he oppose doctrine and dogma like that. Who did God think they were undermining the Church's authority?
Its still going on today. Science reveals the way a part of the universe works through Evolution, quantum mechanics, or the big bang and Religions get in line to oppose it. They don't like being shown how God does things.
Its not 'science vs. God'. Its 'Religion vs. God'.
Religions don't like the way God chose to create the universe and they want to outlaw the study of God's creation (science). Religions do not like it when God gets God's way!
If Religions don't like the way God made the universe and the mechanisms at work in the universe (like Evolution), then those Religions should make clear to their followers how they disagree with God and don't like how God chose to do things. They should make clear that they prefer a book printed by Mankind or dogma created by Mankind over God's way.
If only God stayed out of their way, most Religions would be much happier.
(non believers can now return to their regularly scheduled programs)
J.K. Rowling and her publisher are known to aggressively fight perceived copyright infringements of her Harry Potter Series of books, as well as the movie and merchandise empire it has inspired.
Works involving Harry Potter generate a lot of income for parties with licenses to produce goods linked with the storyline.
I always thought that it was quite humorous that 10 years before J.K. Rowling first published her copyrighted works there was already a Harry Potter movie that starred Sonny Bono!
Its a great example of how just having a movie about a character named Harry Potter does not immediately imply that Ms. Rowling engaged in any infringement. The 1986 Movie and her 1996 books deal with completely different subject matters.
J.K. Rowling's book deals with a young boy named Harry Potter who must fight against evil magical forces to save his friends and even a family that despises him.
While, on the other hand, B-Movie creator Charles Band's Movie deals with a young boy named Harry Potter Jr. who must fight against evil magical forces to save his friends and even a family that loves him.
All kidding aside, they are completely different stories. Otherwise Sonny Bono might come back and Haunt J.K. Rowling for copyright infringement! That would be way scarier than Voldemort!
Vector's aim is to be a small stable distro for home and small business use.
That pretty much puts it in a class with a few hundred other distros. The difference with Vector is that it is a small stable Slackware based distro for home and small business use.
For most people new to Linux that difference might be like saying 'but our's goes to 11!'. However, for long time Slackware users it is a good thing. If you have year's(or even decade's) of Slackware experience and are looking for a user friendly distro. Vector would be a good choice. Especially for small businesses.
For non-Slackware users and Linux newbies you are absolutely correct that it does not stand out from the crowd.
Vector is for Slackware what Libranet was for Debian. A really great implementation based on the parent distro. I miss Libranet. I keep hoping that Ubuntu or Mepis get up to Libranet quality standards someday.
The British Burned down the White House in Washington D.C.!
To the British it was part of the many French Campaigns that they were fighting around the world at the time. A few battles in a pro-French ex-colony were relatively unimportant to you Brits, but we took the sacking of our capitol pretty seriously.
The US had the largest Merchant navy in the world at the time. The commercial shipping interests had attracted away many ex-Royal Navy Sailors with better pay and benefits. In the wars with France, the Royal Navy began forcing sailors who were former British subjects to fight for Britain once again, something called 'Impressment'.
The US declared War on Britain in protest and tried to invade Canada (didn't go well for the US).
After Britain and France made peace, the US followed (it just took a while for the news to travel across the pond).
As kids we used to tune in between the stations on our short wave radios to listen to charged particles emitting radio waves as they spiraled through the Earth's magnetic fields.
I know its Wikipedia but the difference is not that great. About 172.8 cm average adult male for and 175.8 average adult male for US. This wikipedia article seems to be pretty well annotated.
Japan's diet is much improved since the post WWII days where the stereotype of Japanese being short was spread through US culture. They were shorter due to worse diet.
I have visited castles in Ireland, where my parents were born. Armor there looks like it was made for children, but Europeans in the middle ages were shorter, thanks to poor diet and disease.
A 3 cm diff in avg. Height comes to a little more than an inch. The average waste difference is 5.5 inches in TFA.
Now Humans tend to be taller than they are wide, so you would expect the variation in height to be larger than the variation in width. But the 33.5" to 39" difference is a circumference, not a width. a measurement around the waste should be directly compared to a measurement 'around the height" of the body. Measure foot to head, across the top of the head, back down from head to toe, and then across the bottom of the foot.
We can fudge this by doubling the difference in height and adding a little for the width of the body(a). Or by dividing the waste measurement by a little more than 2(b).
So
(a)5.5" / 2.2 = 2.5" adjusted waste difference compare to
a 1.2" height difference.
(b)1.2" x 2.2 = 2.64" adjusted height difference compare to waste difference of 5.5".
This brings the numbers a little closer, but still the waste differential is greater than the height using either fudge method.
Based on this data, it looks like Americans are carrying a little more around the middle than there Japanese counterparts.
A christian themed burial site would indicate a greater likelihood of intermingling with non-viking cultures from Southern Europe. This could be an indicator of genetic intermingling as well.
A non-christian burial site would not preclude intermingling, but probably be an indicator of lower likelihood.
Besides, TFA said they already did a christian site from around the same time, so this would give them a separate set of data points.
I know its hard to believe the concept of people who profess different religious affiliations being less likely to associate and intermarry. That kind of thing is so middle ages, all the major religions live in such peace and harmony in the enlightened 21st Century!
The number one hope among a lot of Windows geeks was that it would have the smaller modular min win kernel so it could be faster and more responsive on older hardware, and all out lightning on new hardware.
So much for that.
By spring 2010 they should be selling quad core 4GHz machines with 4GB ram standard. That should allow users to run the Vista kernel at a reasonable speed and even leave some of the eye candy turned on.
For patents a patentable thing has to be 'non-obvious' to someone having ordinary skill in the area of invention.
Since making images into links is part of the ISO standard of the subset of SGML that is HTML, it would think that that would be obvious to anyone having ordinary skill in the area of HTML.
Heck, you could probably learn to do it by reading a 'for dummies' book.
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe the PHB's are just trying to market to the many people becoming homeless due to the increase in foreclosures.
If there are going to be more citizens living in tent cities like during the great depression, corporate America will want to be there to provide desperately needed services, like up to the minute stock quotes and SPAM for new investment opportunities in Nigeria.
I absolutely agree. There is a lot of new COBOL being written, but it is usually done to enhance existing systems.
I am currently on a project at a major insurer on a system that is about 90% COBOL. Over the nextre year most of the Batch functionality will be replaced with smaller Real-time enabled called routines running as headless transactions in a CICS region.
The code base will be greatly reduced because the majority of the field validation is being moved into the new front end web app from the old COBOL based CICS green screens and the Nightly batch routines. The COBOL code will just wait for messages to show up over the Queue and either update, create, read or delete things in DB2.
The software system is really pretty robust for a Mid-80's era design. It has no central database, each separate portion of the company processes transactions in a distributed peer to peer fashion. Quite advanced for mainframe systems of any era let alone when PC's were just breaking into the 16 bit cpu and greater than 640 k era.
Mainframes are much cheaper now as well. The models produced by IBM today run on air cooled power PC CMOS design chips and start in the $300K range (and go way up). Paying for comparable computing power on an Intel based platform would cost less, but if you start demanding the 9 nine's of uptime that mainframes deliver the cost of the high availability Intel based machines goes way up and you get into the $250K range.
People used to believe that 'network' computing would kill the mainframe. Now the mainframe is just a part of the network.
Since the US is the leading user of recreational drugs in the world ( the amount of money US citizens spend on illegal substances dwarfs the budgets of most countries), we should really take illegal drug use into account when we interpret most American social behavior.
The right wingers tend to be split into two big groups: The wealthier old money types and the poorer rural types.
The left wingers are wealthier intellectuals and poorer hipsters.
The wealthy right wingers can afford more cocaine and the poorer use the most popular rural drug Meth. These substances make them jumpier and more paranoid.
The left wingers tend top have the pot smokers, so they are more mellow.
</sarcasm>
Maybe the fear or lack of it follows from the behavior?
One has to apply to allow others to write in their name? That makes no sense.
From Gerrymandering to Jim Crow laws, American politicians have a long history of trying to deny the right to vote, or to vote effectively to large portions of American Citizens.
So yes, in many places in the US the only 'valid' writes ins are write ins for correctly registered candidates. A vote for Pat Paulson usually doesn't count.
3. New Slurm didn't work out so well so we'll market old Slurm as Slurm Classic and we'll make billions!
B. But the new slurm will be made with High Fructose Corn Syrup, instead of pure cane sugar, saving us $Billions in production costs!
Holy Grail...
So how long until we see the commercial where Jerry and Bill are riding through downtown Seattle on their fixed gears wearing American Apparel hoodies with pheaux graffiti graphics?
If they want Bill to get with the hip computer consumer subculture, they'll have to have him install and use Ubuntu in one of these commercials. Until then its just a couple of old farts cracking wise. Maybe they're auditioning for a Muppet Movie role?
Three...
"...I have been with 147 women, most of them in semi-long term polyamorous relationships,(often with my partners hooking up on the side). Not a single one of them was a virgin before me.
How did you manage to find 147 women who were never virgins before you?
Weren't they born virgins? How did you get to do them before they were even born? Who did them before you did before they were even conceived?
I don't think that you mean what you think you mean.
Could the appearance on Colbert's show be part of a wider ranging media blitz by some of these candidates? Could they be appearing on Colbert, Leno, Letterman, Meet the Press, The Muppet Show, and Larry King all over the course of a week or two? Then following it up with a few high profile public publicity events coordinated with a few big fund raising events?
Its called a media blitz.
If there is a 'Colbert Bump' then we need a controlled experiment. Have a Democrat and a Republican appear on Colbert's show, and make no other public appearances for a month after word. Then measure the outcome.
I think it is just an artifact of campaign style differences between the two parties. The Democrats have been fond of the Madison Avenue marketing blitz style for a while (lots of flash and no substance). Republicans are more of the smoke filled back room style. (Have third parties funded by wealthy friends and talk radio media figure-heads smear your opponent with a constant feed of lies and innuendo).
I really doubt the bump in donations is attributable to an appearance on Colbert's show alone.
Religion does not really have a problem with science. Religion has a problem with God. Everytime Religion comes face to face with something God has done, Religions freak out.
If you don't believe in God, you can just skip my reasoning here. If you do believe in God, and believe in a God that made the universe, please bear with me a few minutes.
Western peoples once believed the Earth was the center of the universe and the Sun an all of the planets and stars rotated around the Earth. When the Copernican model of a heliocentric solar system started to be taught, religious leaders opposed it. It contradicted their dogma and their doctrine. They thought that if the dogma and doctrine were proved wrong it would undermine religious authority. This still goes on today and is often portrayed as a 'fight' between 'science and God'.
But, for believers anyway, it was God that made the Earth and the Solar System. Who on Earth is powerful enough to try to dictate to God that God got it wrong? It seems the leaders of most religions think they are!
Religion was being brought face to face with the works of God. In particular a heliocentric Solar System. They didn't like it. Too bad for God! God should have known better! How dare he oppose doctrine and dogma like that. Who did God think they were undermining the Church's authority?
Its still going on today. Science reveals the way a part of the universe works through Evolution, quantum mechanics, or the big bang and Religions get in line to oppose it. They don't like being shown how God does things.
Its not 'science vs. God'. Its 'Religion vs. God'.
Religions don't like the way God chose to create the universe and they want to outlaw the study of God's creation (science). Religions do not like it when God gets God's way!
If Religions don't like the way God made the universe and the mechanisms at work in the universe (like Evolution), then those Religions should make clear to their followers how they disagree with God and don't like how God chose to do things. They should make clear that they prefer a book printed by Mankind or dogma created by Mankind over God's way.
If only God stayed out of their way, most Religions would be much happier.
(non believers can now return to their regularly scheduled programs)
J.K. Rowling and her publisher are known to aggressively fight perceived copyright infringements of her Harry Potter Series of books, as well as the movie and merchandise empire it has inspired.
Works involving Harry Potter generate a lot of income for parties with licenses to produce goods linked with the storyline.
I always thought that it was quite humorous that 10 years before J.K. Rowling first published her copyrighted works there was already a Harry Potter movie that starred Sonny Bono!
Its a great example of how just having a movie about a character named Harry Potter does not immediately imply that Ms. Rowling engaged in any infringement. The 1986 Movie and her 1996 books deal with completely different subject matters.
J.K. Rowling's book deals with a young boy named Harry Potter who must fight against evil magical forces to save his friends and even a family that despises him.
While, on the other hand, B-Movie creator Charles Band's Movie deals with a young boy named Harry Potter Jr. who must fight against evil magical forces to save his friends and even a family that loves him.
All kidding aside, they are completely different stories. Otherwise Sonny Bono might come back and Haunt J.K. Rowling for copyright infringement! That would be way scarier than Voldemort!
Cool!
Thanks for the update.
Vector's aim is to be a small stable distro for home and small business use.
That pretty much puts it in a class with a few hundred other distros. The difference with Vector is that it is a small stable Slackware based distro for home and small business use.
For most people new to Linux that difference might be like saying 'but our's goes to 11!'. However, for long time Slackware users it is a good thing. If you have year's(or even decade's) of Slackware experience and are looking for a user friendly distro. Vector would be a good choice. Especially for small businesses.
For non-Slackware users and Linux newbies you are absolutely correct that it does not stand out from the crowd.
Vector is for Slackware what Libranet was for Debian. A really great implementation based on the parent distro. I miss Libranet. I keep hoping that Ubuntu or Mepis get up to Libranet quality standards someday.
"Rich people can't be terrorists!"
Isn't Osama Bin Laden, terrorist and head of a multi million dollar construction empire, considered wealthy>
The war of 1812.
The British Burned down the White House in Washington D.C.!
To the British it was part of the many French Campaigns that they were fighting around the world at the time. A few battles in a pro-French ex-colony were relatively unimportant to you Brits, but we took the sacking of our capitol pretty seriously.
The US had the largest Merchant navy in the world at the time. The commercial shipping interests had attracted away many ex-Royal Navy Sailors with better pay and benefits. In the wars with France, the Royal Navy began forcing sailors who were former British subjects to fight for Britain once again, something called 'Impressment'.
The US declared War on Britain in protest and tried to invade Canada (didn't go well for the US).
After Britain and France made peace, the US followed (it just took a while for the news to travel across the pond).
As kids we used to tune in between the stations on our short wave radios to listen to charged particles emitting radio waves as they spiraled through the Earth's magnetic fields.
How is this process different?
Just some back of the napkin figures to ponder...
I know its Wikipedia but the difference is not that great. About 172.8 cm average adult male for and 175.8 average adult male for US. This wikipedia article seems to be pretty well annotated.
Japan's diet is much improved since the post WWII days where the stereotype of Japanese being short was spread through US culture. They were shorter due to worse diet.
I have visited castles in Ireland, where my parents were born. Armor there looks like it was made for children, but Europeans in the middle ages were shorter, thanks to poor diet and disease.
A 3 cm diff in avg. Height comes to a little more than an inch. The average waste difference is 5.5 inches in TFA.
Now Humans tend to be taller than they are wide, so you would expect the variation in height to be larger than the variation in width. But the 33.5" to 39" difference is a circumference, not a width. a measurement around the waste should be directly compared to a measurement 'around the height" of the body. Measure foot to head, across the top of the head, back down from head to toe, and then across the bottom of the foot.
We can fudge this by doubling the difference in height and adding a little for the width of the body(a). Or by dividing the waste measurement by a little more than 2(b).
So (a)5.5" / 2.2 = 2.5" adjusted waste difference compare to a 1.2" height difference.
(b)1.2" x 2.2 = 2.64" adjusted height difference compare to waste difference of 5.5".
This brings the numbers a little closer, but still the waste differential is greater than the height using either fudge method.
Based on this data, it looks like Americans are carrying a little more around the middle than there Japanese counterparts.
From the Intro:
What if the troops are less than 600 miles away? Does it circle above O'Hare for an hour or two until it reaches its magic 600 mile threshold?
A christian themed burial site would indicate a greater likelihood of intermingling with non-viking cultures from Southern Europe. This could be an indicator of genetic intermingling as well.
A non-christian burial site would not preclude intermingling, but probably be an indicator of lower likelihood.
Besides, TFA said they already did a christian site from around the same time, so this would give them a separate set of data points.
I know its hard to believe the concept of people who profess different religious affiliations being less likely to associate and intermarry. That kind of thing is so middle ages, all the major religions live in such peace and harmony in the enlightened 21st Century!
The number one hope among a lot of Windows geeks was that it would have the smaller modular min win kernel so it could be faster and more responsive on older hardware, and all out lightning on new hardware.
So much for that.
By spring 2010 they should be selling quad core 4GHz machines with 4GB ram standard. That should allow users to run the Vista kernel at a reasonable speed and even leave some of the eye candy turned on.
For patents a patentable thing has to be 'non-obvious' to someone having ordinary skill in the area of invention.
Since making images into links is part of the ISO standard of the subset of SGML that is HTML, it would think that that would be obvious to anyone having ordinary skill in the area of HTML.
Heck, you could probably learn to do it by reading a 'for dummies' book.
Bruno suggested that there could be an infinite number of worlds and that they could be inhabited by intelligent life.
For this they burned him at the stake.
Galileo was only 'shown the instruments' of torture and placed under house arrest.
Bruno is the guy they need to apologize to!
I agree.
I use linux not Windows, but this is ridiculus!
WinXP sp3 is causing hundreds of complaints?
HUNDREDS?
How many millions of XP users were automatically upgraded to sp3?
Hundreds are complaining. That is a pretty good outcome.
There are plenty of things to bash MS about.
This seems like a non-issue to me.
the XBoxes are running a modified version of Windows ME that is running Microsoft Bob in an emulator.
When they come out with the Vista version they will be able to model the behavior of Congress.
By using the most irrational OS it is easy to emulate the politician's irrational behavior.
Very true.
That does add an additional factor for competitors to overcome.