What's the pressure to which the sound will simply bounce off of a person? Probably alot. The advance from levitating fluff to ants probably had to greatly raise the dB. Maybe in quicksand or dirt something could move a human. Like with earthquakes. I'm utterly impressed by news articles and computer articles which have little to no scientific information. I guess the author doesn't really understand what is happening and the audience doesn't really care. Or maybe I totally missed something.
Yeah, that's what bugs me about getting my science from news articles. Any wavelength at high enough decibels is going to levitate stuff and more. Silly to write about a scientific experiment and have almost zero scientific info. TimJowers http://www.serviza.com/ : Join the Open Source revolution. Easily and Quickly.
Whats wrong with Calc? I think Calc is really good but have done tons more with Excel. Heck, I worked on a team which coded a full DSS in Excel macro plus a bunch of Perl and KSH back in the day.:-) Uh, does Excel even support Excel macro language any more? Guess it went the way of OLE and all the other technologies MSFT told us developers to use but never used themselves.
I haven't used Exchange for a long time. In remote, distributed offices one can do alot better with Evolution (great spam filtering), dotproject, and a few other tools. Plus, Courier is quite easy to configure. Of course I also don't have a fax machine so the nifty features of Exchange just are no longer needed by me. The problem with trying to make an app an infrastructure is the resulting products are bloatware. When you get an 80 deep call stack for any web request in WebLogic, then it's time to hit the reset/relearn button. When your answering machine requires $10k worth of Exchange licenses then you need to hit the rethink/clueless button.
Not sure of your implication but I think you are saying Open Source is not mature. First, MySQL was not written by 19 year old kids. Secondly, Posgresql is in lineage older than Oracle of Microsoft's RDBMS. Thridly, most of the Internet runs on Apache and probably most of it runs on MySQL much more than any other RDBMS. Google on google adwords and MySQL. They did not have to revert to MysQL from Oracle because of problem in MySQL.
What I have always seen is some techie or psuedo-techie manager specs out Oracle or a Miscrosoft product. Then the company buys it. The techie is a specialist in something and has been to weeks of indoctrination training in Oracle or Softie so obviously will recommend whatever he/she thinks will give the importance, high pay, and longevity. The manager read a magazine once and went to a tradeshow and wants to pick the system that doesn't rock the boat.
Fortunately, the current generation of techies have used open source. But it takes alonog time to get rid of dead wood. I consulted in 2001 for a huge insurance company which still required 3270 screen scraping and input rather than opening up their mainframe to JDBC. Well, that inefficient process had worked in the 1960's when the now managers/execs started so they knew it and were comfortable with it. Most of all, they had insurance contracts for at least 1 entire state, maybe 1/4 of the nations military and poor, and such. They were set. Nobody is going to compete with them because the choices are political rather than practical. This is the present issue with Open Source. While mega-corps fall bechind theis opens a real opportunity for the SMB's to use the best technology and leap forward.
If you are still recommending Oracle or Microsoft's SQL Server or even db2 then you owe it to your client to get up to speed on MySQL, Postgresql, and other Open Source projects. Of course, if yor client is profitable because of politics or marketing and not because of core value, then you can recommend smoke signals if you want.
BTW, do you even have any clue what the Oracle contract requires WRT publishing benchmarks? Suffice to say, you can't unless they first approve. At least that was the deal back when they did they $1M BS challenge in 1999/2000. You're mention of a CIO with one brain cell is right. Any CIO still buying Oracle must be smoking dope. Plain and simple. (At least unless they have a large installed base of apps using non-standard SQL etc). That reminds me of a story one of the other consultants told about how they walked in on their CEO and he was smoking dope in his office... but that company only had a few $10-$20M J2EE projects it was doing for clients!
Have you ever studied set theory? Have you ever studied computer science? An RDBMS is a real software applciation. No amount of BS or FUD can remove the real engineering and science behind it. Fortunately, this science is well-understood and also mature.
In responce to your implication that an Open Source package is not supported and that it would take down an enterprise, I call "BS". Have you even placed a call to MySQL AB to talk to them about this? Of course Oracle is larger but that's because they are selling a 50 cent belt for $50. The era of globalization leverages mass manpower and Open Source does as well. Why fund $80M submarines and such rather than the ones actually doing the work? You'd do much better for yourself and the world to spend money with an Open Source company than with a proprietary one. At least from the practical viewpoint of future product development.
TimJowers http://www.serviza.com/ : Serviza Monster Linux Computer with Open Source Training Bundles
I really like Postgresql too. It is just easy and works right. And, of course, is the oldest. I'm not sure of how Postgres compares to Mysql. Seen any good comparisons?
Having worked with all of them from the programmer's viewpoint I can definitely say none stands out as steller adn all offer the same feature set. I always hear people state Oracle has high performance but NEVER saw that to be true. What I saw alot of was having to hand-tune the indexes. Oracle's query optimizer must not work. Even in join queries unused fields have to be selected due to Oracle's non-working query optimizer. That said, it probably still performs better than SQL Server. Just about the same as db2 or postgres in my testing. Actually, for some things like inserts Oracle sucks. Of course Teradata could be much faster for complex queries but nwo one is largely talking about hardware - and that's the jist of it. Most of the ideas really are comparing Oracle on a quad server with 12GB RAM to something else on a PC. With today's PC's going toward Dual Core and 4 GB of RAM (that's what Serviza presently sells as a Linux desktop - http://www.serviza.com/ the argument is sorta becoming more clear.
Also, the failure of Oracle to provide even decent programmer tools is disgusting. In the Open Source world I have an arsenal of tools to work with Postgres and Mysql. Really, there is not legitimate reason to pay money for an RDBMS system. Set theory has been well-understood for decades and the major commercial RDBMS vendors are not innovating. In 15 years of software projects I've yet to see one that could not have been done with today's Mysql or Postgresql. But I've seens millions handed to Oracle over and over and tens of thousands handed to Microsoft. To me, Oracle is the premier example of selling the same thing as everyone else but charging 10 times as much. It's like buying a hotdog at the game - you're paying $5 for something that costs 50 cents. "The Million Dollar Pizza" book addresses this waste on a personal level but on a corporate level the exc.s are too busy scamming the company to worry about its long term health. Anyone buying Microsoft SQL Server or Oracle in 2007 ought to have their head examined and probably the investment docked from their paycheck. Of course momentum and other arguments apply and that's why companies still spend millions on Mainframes to do what a PDA of today could do.
This is the most ludicrous posting yet. 1,500 desktops at roughly $4000 USD each? Here's a realistic brakdown of what this would cost in the USA: 1) Hardware: $1000 (let's get something really nice) (Could be as low a $400) 2) Setup the template system. 1 month. Say, $15,000 in manpower 3) Dup disks. $50/PC is the going rate for assembly and SW load. 4) First boot each PC (clearly this could be coded but lets add in this anyways). Have the library staff follow the directions and enter a computer name. I'd venture to say most library systems in the USA already have people who have used Linux or Unix at least. Not like this is the first time they are using a computer or something run by a CPU! Say $50/PC. 5) Shipping to site. $50. Grand Total $1160 per PC. And I'm sure they used crappy hardware so it would be more like $560/PC. If they are paying any more then fire the idiot in purchasing and the idiot managing the project. If they are paying less, then give the genius in purchasing free movie coupons and the genius manager a bonus.
That's just common sense. TimJowers, http://www.serviza.com/ Open Source Linux Computers and Training Bundles
With the patent office working for Microsoft of course Novell figures it cannot win in court. The US Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly (http://www.dcd.uscourts.gov/microsoft-2001.html) gave them carte blanche to run a monopoly and they plan to take full advantage. I heard within the last month from one of the largest computer resellers that they STILL are required to install Windows (or DOS) on EVERY PC they ship.
Clearly Microsoft operates above the law. The US law that is. I like to think they do not operate above the laws of society and progress. Their oppression of technological advance has held us back about 10 years and may just snap back in their face in 2007. Clearly Open Source is the leading software in many countries outside of the USA. The irony for Microsoft is I can download from Sourceforge Open Source softare that does 80% of anything they do and better yet is totally customizable.
I think it is clear to anyone that if Microsoft as much as raises one lawsuit against it will be counter-sued out of business. In fact, that could be the absolute best way to get technology progressing again. The money in Open Source may be in suing the monopoly. Talk about a taste of your own medicine. That said, Microsoft is no more than an IP thug in their recent move and, like any thug, will probably pick on the weakest first. They'll probably try to shutdown strong but fledgling Open Source projects such as TinaPOS or L'ane POS and then work their way up to Linux. Once the courts set a precedent of allowing Microsoft to squash Open Source projects then they will try to do it with the larger projects. Given how they won in US vs. Microsoft one would not be surpirsed to see them get the courts to outlaw MySQL, Linux, and Apache - or at least outlaw useful features. Their current ability to manipulate the courts into absolutely ridiculous findings (e.g. Web Browers is part of an OS!) could lead to the USA being a non-played in the coming Technological Singularity. I guess like Manufacturing in the Wal-Martification of America, Microsoft will have us be a purchaser only in the coming future of technology. They cannot simply fire people ni Seattle and invest Billions in India but will have to outlaw progress here to stop Open Source. In the end, they will of course fail.
Microosft's investment in NOVL reminds me of their investment in APPL a few years back. With their investment in Novell they hedge their bets and could sell SUSE once the gig is up and the general public realizes Windows is inferior to Linux and Microsoft products are inferior to their Open Source competitors. I expected them to start selling Linux in 2007 but this move was not well-orchestrated IMO. It leaves anyone with any sense avoiding NOVL and certainly any business with any desire to survive would never partner with Microsoft. But alot of businesses sell to WMT and lose money. I even know that a major ATM vendor pays WMT (loses money) to maintain their ATMs. Worshiping at the feet of the wealthy will never give you a better life.
TimJowers http://www.serviza.com/ : Serviza Monster Linux Computers and Open Source Training Bundles
I think that is clear too. At the very least Thailand could have accepted the laptops and sold them to buy books. Military governments in the past have accepted food supplies for their starving people and sold or otherwise disposed of them improperly. Better yet, requireed Wikipedia on the lpatops and forget the books. Looks like Thailand is headed to be the next North Korea. Idiots at the helm.
TimJowers http://www.serviza.com/ - Serviza Monster Linux Computers and Open Source Training Bundles
hmmm... $10k on SW per year? Duh, buy Linux once and get more capabilities than you're paying for now.
Linux HW vendors high priced? DSL sells a ~$300 nanoitx. Lots of others sell in the sub-$500 range. The high price you are paying for a 'doze pc is the Microsoft tax although you may not realize how it works. My understanding is soft gives DELL, HP, D&H, SystemMax (Tiger Direct), Frye's and such very deep discounts on the OS ($10 was quoted here on slashdot by someone else). Thus they'd effectively lock in their $300 profit per CD simply on their arrangement with soft. The arrangement I've been told as recently as two weeks ago is still that every laptop and every PC that leaves must have doze or dos (workstations are different). In fact, a head-to-head comparison on 4G, AMD 3800++, 1TB, geForce video systems shows Linux vendors near the low end of the cost on only hardware and a small fraction of the cost once any software (antivirus, office suite, etc) is added in to the package. E.g. DELL starts off leading the dozers in low cost versus Gateway, HPQ, et al but quickly vaults up as they nail the customer on SW upgrades. In contrast, Linux vendors like Serviza offer complete GPL business suites at what would be valued in the $10's of thousands for Windows comparables. That trend will only continue. The Bundle will kill 'soft as we know it. That's why they are buying into NOVL. They're not stupid.
The real benefit of releasing Vista is eliminating the secondary market on Windows XP licenses. Like many others I have a stack of Widnows licenses here I am not using and would like to sell on EBay if I had the time. The fiar market price of an OS such as DOS is around $10-$15. That's what would happen to doze if they did not keep releasing new versions to keep the FUD factor up.
Cheers, TimJowers Serviza Monster Computers, http://www.serviza.com/ We Make Open Source Rock out of the Box.
Softie isn't worried about licensing but just trying to ride this one out. Clearly the Open Source world has moved to compatibility while the softie world is like you say: nightmares of integration. So many venders and even so many non-integrated products from Microsoft. Not sure if you've visited the php-mysql world lately but is it simple, clear, and works. Something people used to claim about 'soft. But the real problem is bundling. Soft is getting wiped away with their own trick. Why buy apps 1,2,3,5,...20 when you can just get RedHat, SUSE, or Fedora Core and, BAM, you've got alot install, configured, and working. Buy an Open Source computer and you'll have it all ready to go. You'll still be months behind in trying to get this work on a Microsoft-based platform. Not to mention the hari-kari that is Oracle and J2EE. On the flip side, you can buy an Open Source computer and have a J2EE server already setup and running and also a complete dev suite. The bundle will kill soft and they know it. Buying into NOVL just shows they actually can follow the market. Sure they're going to try to get as much as they can out of the winds of momentum but within a few years they'll move to the speedboats as well. While Windows may have little future in the bundled world, Office surely doesn't! how ironic is that as Bundling is what made Office! Does Word 07 even support export to PDF or the Open Document Format? 6B cash cow and cannot even meet the needs of the average office worker! That tells you they are putting their money in Linux rather than their existing product set. They see the future as clearly as everyone else and the future (and present actually) is Open Source. TimJowers http://www.serviza.com/ : We Make Open Source Rock out of the Box!
I had to comment as Slashdot is depressing. The entire front page is Vista articels. Who cares? With so much opportunity and excitedment in the Open Source world this reminds me of people talking about Motorola CPUs in the early 1990's. There is just simply so much opportunity in the FLOSS world one is overwhelmed. Jump in and pick one and go with it. Retarded limitations such as the "1 HW" thing are just one simple example of how MSFT has lost it. Hell, they suckered me with their Cairo promise. What liars!!! The ability to block copy NT back in the day was one allure of it. Now, we have so much more with Linux that who cares. And Linux is only a small percentage of what FLOSS has to offer. At Serviza (Serviza Monster Computer) we are just trying to simplify the purchase procedure so businesses can add a new capablity to their network with simply buying the products. The next big hurdle for the computer industry is to graduate from the PC era - both M$FT and PC hardware specs. We are topping out the norm with 4G RAM, 1 TB disk, etc but clearly the future of the computer industry is not in the PC spec. And that also means flexible HW configs. Something M$FT shows they have not foreseen.
World bank loans non-existent money. Loan fake money, get servants.
Not hard to figure out. The rest of the ideas are just noise happening beneath the falsification of money by the central banks and their cohorts. They are committing real, well-defined, well-conspired, and well-known theft from the "ants" and placating the "grasshoppers" in order to remain the masters.
"Neither a borrower nor lender be". Now why would anyone say that? Really think about it. WHY. The reason is intricately tied to the present, rapid, unconstitutional removal of rights. Intricately.
Vote with your feet. Our corporate bigbrothers already have.
Imagine if 10,000 skilled professionals relocated to a country in central America within a six month timeframe. Reminds me of that book about how to Get Rich, Start your own city.
And I'm not joking either. Setup a new America where freedom actually does reign. Not aristrocracy and beurocracy.
I'd also love to hear how many of us have implemented these big brother projects. I worked on one such project for a few months myself. Two if you realize HIPAA is largely about the government being able to track your health status.
That's par for the course in manufacturing. Clearly the author never worked in a board plant in the USA - a few decades ago there were many. Interns and hourly Manpower workers did the repetitive tasks. The company where I worked tried automation and had a tour by Bush I - or maybe it was Reagan - about how great that was but in the end variances cannot be handled well by robots/machines and only certain tasks could be automated (wave solder, surface mount, moving parts from one line to another). From the looks of it these are young adults very similar to the college students and part-time folks who used to do the work in the USA for about 2x minimum wage.
Assembly and manufacturing are not as glamorous as some seem to expect. A challenging QA task nonetheless. Odd to see little to no advancement over what was being done two decades ago. Just moved to a lower cost/lower net tax load locale.
TimJowers P.S> There was no union in the plant where I worked. And, of course, the work eventually was offshored. I think the remnant now defines new processes when new products are to be run and then the bulk is done in Mexico, Tiawan, or such.
Needs a CMS with SVN and integratino with office apps. The only solution I know works today would be a common fileshare shared from the webdirectory of the CMS; so users can access the files via an SVN tool or a web page. The Sharepoint solution is not a whole lot better. It just is not transparent to a user they are checking out a file, editing, and checking back in the file. So, a manual checkout is not much differnt than using menus on a web page.
I've been looking into this a little too and would like to find it. Mambo/Joomla plugin maybe?
Someone ought to mention the min/max/sysmenu/resize ala Motif. I remember reading the motif style guide in about '94 and some sentence where the author's talks about supporting his mother over the phone and, though he did not use Windows, he could because Windows implemented a subset of the Motif style. Sorta funny to praise Windows's "Windows" when they pre-existed in XWindows Motif.
Cheers, TimJowers P.s> Computers are generally user hostile which is why only certain people are "computer people". The same can be said for many other tools as well though. Picture Grandma with a Jackhammer. Do you want a jackhammer made for everyone? Unfortunately the psychology of user interfaces is almost ignored nowadays which is why n00bs have such a steep learning curve. The whole discussion of Linux versus 'doze is silly though as they are both about the same for any naive user. Linux is preferable for Unix-heads and hardcore SW engineers while 'doze is preferable for those with years of 'doze. Neither wants their experience to be antiquated. Having a Windows user lambast Linux is like having a Mac user evaluate Windows. It's just nonsense. The only valid evaluations are from those who've used both for years. Any other is just complaining about the learning curve.
Might I read your paper? I've researched this a bit also. MediaWiki is perfect for managing a knowledge base. Others such as TikiWiki may be good for coordinating efforts. Then move on to Mambo for an equivalent to Sharepoint or Worksite. AFAICT.
People love elixers so want a magical way to be ignorant but still edit web pages. They categorize anything that can allow groups to dynamically edit web pages as a WIKI. The truth is the wiki engine's and webapps are specialized to certain tasks such as managing a knowledge base, shared calendar, project management, document collaboration, discussion groups, polls. Of course these could all be within one CMS/DMS; so, the term wiki then becomes relegated to shared documents in a knowledge base. MediaWiki when the document editing is open to all and another wiki engine with more security when needed.
Comments? Still want to read your paper. Thanks, TimJowers
Yeah, no sense to/dotters with no knowledge of the past. I'm trying to find the reference articles to educate these naive folks. Basically about 15 years ago a Scandanavian telco discovered switches being sold by American companies had backdoors to shut down the phone systems. Corporate world working for military. Also, it is fairly common knowledge printers sold by US companies to Iraq and others contained transmitters. "Export printers". I found an article reference on the Black Art of Electronic Warfare but cannot find articles on these yet. Too much noise on Google.
I also worked with an engineer who'd worked on an undersea cable system where they had to revise the design so submarines could tap in every ten miles or so. Do you recall teh case a few years ago where US spies determined the Spanish government had unfairly awarded a business contract to a Spanish company and not the the company who technically should have won? Business and military are intertwined more than/dotters seem to realize. Finally, Carnivore is SW based so does not lend itself to the argument the espionage/military support would be in BIOS or chipset but does clearly show what goverments are willing to do in order to maintain complete control over communications.
I'm very frustrated so many/dotters seem to believe Lenovo is innocent considering so many past instances of US companies being complicit with this exact sort of activity. Of course it is probably political as with Texas in office one would not be surprised to see DELL become the sole source; but the reality of electronic warfare and complicit companies is documented. Judging from history I believe the Chinese have no qualms about stealing trade secrets, military secrets, and even software from the USA.
BTW, adding in rootkits is not necessarily the only ill which could be done. Consider transmission frequencies helpful in guiding missiles to data centers. Consider a command to have the system reboot into netboot. Consider ability to saveout or remotely read TLB or cache. With such large caches, this could be serious.
Are you guys nuts? Electronic espionage is old. Printers with beacons. Phone switches with shutdown interfaces. Tap points on undersea communications cables. Carnivore. Not to mention controlled encryption algorithms. To pretend Lenovo is not controlled by the Chinese spy agencies is to believe the Senator knows less than you do about what is happening. Very doubtful. You're talking about a government who when confronted with the fact 90% of the software in use by the Chinese government was stolen refused to pay Microsoft and others. $6B trade deficit because we buy from them and they steal from American companies. The Chinese government's answer was that they'd stop using stolen software. Yet they are still a favored nation!
If it was a real pyramid he would have investors to finance ripping off any good stuff before the announcement to the world; at least that was the case with Egyptian and South American pyramids. I remember visiting "Chicken Pizza"....not much left. I also saw some pyramid hills along I-10 and even along the I-405. (:0] better shut up and start digging!)
I've got a box with a Via Eden. 1GHz. Sloooooow. Tiny (embedded style). But sloooow. Our company was considering selling these as app devices but they are just too slow. Talked to a Via vendor at a tradeshow but Via is clueless AFAICT.
BTW, this sort of argument is what I thought about the $100 PC. You can get an almost free old PC from the local charity store. Nobody wants a piece of junk. Even 3rd world people. Rich people think poor people want their old junk. They don't. Don't give them old fish. Teach them to fish.
Slashdot Mirror
What's the pressure to which the sound will simply bounce off of a person? Probably alot. The advance from levitating fluff to ants probably had to greatly raise the dB. Maybe in quicksand or dirt something could move a human. Like with earthquakes. I'm utterly impressed by news articles and computer articles which have little to no scientific information. I guess the author doesn't really understand what is happening and the audience doesn't really care. Or maybe I totally missed something.
TimJowers
http://www.serviza.com/
Yeah, that's what bugs me about getting my science from news articles. Any wavelength at high enough decibels is going to levitate stuff and more. Silly to write about a scientific experiment and have almost zero scientific info.
TimJowers
http://www.serviza.com/ : Join the Open Source revolution. Easily and Quickly.
Whats wrong with Calc? I think Calc is really good but have done tons more with Excel. Heck, I worked on a team which coded a full DSS in Excel macro plus a bunch of Perl and KSH back in the day. :-) Uh, does Excel even support Excel macro language any more? Guess it went the way of OLE and all the other technologies MSFT told us developers to use but never used themselves.
I haven't used Exchange for a long time. In remote, distributed offices one can do alot better with Evolution (great spam filtering), dotproject, and a few other tools. Plus, Courier is quite easy to configure. Of course I also don't have a fax machine so the nifty features of Exchange just are no longer needed by me. The problem with trying to make an app an infrastructure is the resulting products are bloatware. When you get an 80 deep call stack for any web request in WebLogic, then it's time to hit the reset/relearn button. When your answering machine requires $10k worth of Exchange licenses then you need to hit the rethink/clueless button.
TimJowers
http://www.serviza.com/bizbook/ "The Business Guide to Free Information Technology". Free book. Software is FREE!
Plus most email is still run through Sendmail and Postfix I'd wager.
Is HULA the same as Netware OpenExchange (SLOX) and its open source deriv?
TimJowers
http://www.serviza.com/ : Serviza Monster Computers with Open Source Training Bundles
Not sure of your implication but I think you are saying Open Source is not mature. First, MySQL was not written by 19 year old kids. Secondly, Posgresql is in lineage older than Oracle of Microsoft's RDBMS. Thridly, most of the Internet runs on Apache and probably most of it runs on MySQL much more than any other RDBMS. Google on google adwords and MySQL. They did not have to revert to MysQL from Oracle because of problem in MySQL.
What I have always seen is some techie or psuedo-techie manager specs out Oracle or a Miscrosoft product. Then the company buys it. The techie is a specialist in something and has been to weeks of indoctrination training in Oracle or Softie so obviously will recommend whatever he/she thinks will give the importance, high pay, and longevity. The manager read a magazine once and went to a tradeshow and wants to pick the system that doesn't rock the boat.
Fortunately, the current generation of techies have used open source. But it takes alonog time to get rid of dead wood. I consulted in 2001 for a huge insurance company which still required 3270 screen scraping and input rather than opening up their mainframe to JDBC. Well, that inefficient process had worked in the 1960's when the now managers/execs started so they knew it and were comfortable with it. Most of all, they had insurance contracts for at least 1 entire state, maybe 1/4 of the nations military and poor, and such. They were set. Nobody is going to compete with them because the choices are political rather than practical. This is the present issue with Open Source. While mega-corps fall bechind theis opens a real opportunity for the SMB's to use the best technology and leap forward.
If you are still recommending Oracle or Microsoft's SQL Server or even db2 then you owe it to your client to get up to speed on MySQL, Postgresql, and other Open Source projects. Of course, if yor client is profitable because of politics or marketing and not because of core value, then you can recommend smoke signals if you want.
BTW, do you even have any clue what the Oracle contract requires WRT publishing benchmarks? Suffice to say, you can't unless they first approve. At least that was the deal back when they did they $1M BS challenge in 1999/2000. You're mention of a CIO with one brain cell is right. Any CIO still buying Oracle must be smoking dope. Plain and simple. (At least unless they have a large installed base of apps using non-standard SQL etc). That reminds me of a story one of the other consultants told about how they walked in on their CEO and he was smoking dope in his office... but that company only had a few $10-$20M J2EE projects it was doing for clients!
Have you ever studied set theory? Have you ever studied computer science? An RDBMS is a real software applciation. No amount of BS or FUD can remove the real engineering and science behind it. Fortunately, this science is well-understood and also mature.
In responce to your implication that an Open Source package is not supported and that it would take down an enterprise, I call "BS". Have you even placed a call to MySQL AB to talk to them about this? Of course Oracle is larger but that's because they are selling a 50 cent belt for $50. The era of globalization leverages mass manpower and Open Source does as well. Why fund $80M submarines and such rather than the ones actually doing the work? You'd do much better for yourself and the world to spend money with an Open Source company than with a proprietary one. At least from the practical viewpoint of future product development.
TimJowers
http://www.serviza.com/ : Serviza Monster Linux Computer with Open Source Training Bundles
I really like Postgresql too. It is just easy and works right. And, of course, is the oldest. I'm not sure of how Postgres compares to Mysql. Seen any good comparisons?
Having worked with all of them from the programmer's viewpoint I can definitely say none stands out as steller adn all offer the same feature set. I always hear people state Oracle has high performance but NEVER saw that to be true. What I saw alot of was having to hand-tune the indexes. Oracle's query optimizer must not work. Even in join queries unused fields have to be selected due to Oracle's non-working query optimizer. That said, it probably still performs better than SQL Server. Just about the same as db2 or postgres in my testing. Actually, for some things like inserts Oracle sucks. Of course Teradata could be much faster for complex queries but nwo one is largely talking about hardware - and that's the jist of it. Most of the ideas really are comparing Oracle on a quad server with 12GB RAM to something else on a PC. With today's PC's going toward Dual Core and 4 GB of RAM (that's what Serviza presently sells as a Linux desktop - http://www.serviza.com/ the argument is sorta becoming more clear.
Also, the failure of Oracle to provide even decent programmer tools is disgusting. In the Open Source world I have an arsenal of tools to work with Postgres and Mysql. Really, there is not legitimate reason to pay money for an RDBMS system. Set theory has been well-understood for decades and the major commercial RDBMS vendors are not innovating. In 15 years of software projects I've yet to see one that could not have been done with today's Mysql or Postgresql. But I've seens millions handed to Oracle over and over and tens of thousands handed to Microsoft. To me, Oracle is the premier example of selling the same thing as everyone else but charging 10 times as much. It's like buying a hotdog at the game - you're paying $5 for something that costs 50 cents. "The Million Dollar Pizza" book addresses this waste on a personal level but on a corporate level the exc.s are too busy scamming the company to worry about its long term health. Anyone buying Microsoft SQL Server or Oracle in 2007 ought to have their head examined and probably the investment docked from their paycheck. Of course momentum and other arguments apply and that's why companies still spend millions on Mainframes to do what a PDA of today could do.
My $.02,
TimJowers
This is the most ludicrous posting yet. 1,500 desktops at roughly $4000 USD each?
Here's a realistic brakdown of what this would cost in the USA:
1) Hardware: $1000 (let's get something really nice) (Could be as low a $400)
2) Setup the template system. 1 month. Say, $15,000 in manpower
3) Dup disks. $50/PC is the going rate for assembly and SW load.
4) First boot each PC (clearly this could be coded but lets add in this anyways). Have the library staff follow the directions and enter a computer name. I'd venture to say most library systems in the USA already have people who have used Linux or Unix at least. Not like this is the first time they are using a computer or something run by a CPU! Say $50/PC.
5) Shipping to site. $50.
Grand Total $1160 per PC. And I'm sure they used crappy hardware so it would be more like $560/PC. If they are paying any more then fire the idiot in purchasing and the idiot managing the project. If they are paying less, then give the genius in purchasing free movie coupons and the genius manager a bonus.
That's just common sense.
TimJowers, http://www.serviza.com/ Open Source Linux Computers and Training Bundles
But don't you know Microsoft has a patent on the "isnot" operator? http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/19/14 26256&tid=155&tid=109
With the patent office working for Microsoft of course Novell figures it cannot win in court. The US Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly (http://www.dcd.uscourts.gov/microsoft-2001.html) gave them carte blanche to run a monopoly and they plan to take full advantage. I heard within the last month from one of the largest computer resellers that they STILL are required to install Windows (or DOS) on EVERY PC they ship.
Clearly Microsoft operates above the law. The US law that is. I like to think they do not operate above the laws of society and progress. Their oppression of technological advance has held us back about 10 years and may just snap back in their face in 2007. Clearly Open Source is the leading software in many countries outside of the USA. The irony for Microsoft is I can download from Sourceforge Open Source softare that does 80% of anything they do and better yet is totally customizable.
I think it is clear to anyone that if Microsoft as much as raises one lawsuit against it will be counter-sued out of business. In fact, that could be the absolute best way to get technology progressing again. The money in Open Source may be in suing the monopoly. Talk about a taste of your own medicine. That said, Microsoft is no more than an IP thug in their recent move and, like any thug, will probably pick on the weakest first. They'll probably try to shutdown strong but fledgling Open Source projects such as TinaPOS or L'ane POS and then work their way up to Linux. Once the courts set a precedent of allowing Microsoft to squash Open Source projects then they will try to do it with the larger projects. Given how they won in US vs. Microsoft one would not be surpirsed to see them get the courts to outlaw MySQL, Linux, and Apache - or at least outlaw useful features. Their current ability to manipulate the courts into absolutely ridiculous findings (e.g. Web Browers is part of an OS!) could lead to the USA being a non-played in the coming Technological Singularity. I guess like Manufacturing in the Wal-Martification of America, Microsoft will have us be a purchaser only in the coming future of technology. They cannot simply fire people ni Seattle and invest Billions in India but will have to outlaw progress here to stop Open Source. In the end, they will of course fail.
Microosft's investment in NOVL reminds me of their investment in APPL a few years back. With their investment in Novell they hedge their bets and could sell SUSE once the gig is up and the general public realizes Windows is inferior to Linux and Microsoft products are inferior to their Open Source competitors. I expected them to start selling Linux in 2007 but this move was not well-orchestrated IMO. It leaves anyone with any sense avoiding NOVL and certainly any business with any desire to survive would never partner with Microsoft. But alot of businesses sell to WMT and lose money. I even know that a major ATM vendor pays WMT (loses money) to maintain their ATMs. Worshiping at the feet of the wealthy will never give you a better life.
TimJowers
http://www.serviza.com/ : Serviza Monster Linux Computers and Open Source Training Bundles
I think that is clear too. At the very least Thailand could have accepted the laptops and sold them to buy books. Military governments in the past have accepted food supplies for their starving people and sold or otherwise disposed of them improperly. Better yet, requireed Wikipedia on the lpatops and forget the books. Looks like Thailand is headed to be the next North Korea. Idiots at the helm.
TimJowers
http://www.serviza.com/ - Serviza Monster Linux Computers and Open Source Training Bundles
hmmm... $10k on SW per year? Duh, buy Linux once and get more capabilities than you're paying for now.
Linux HW vendors high priced? DSL sells a ~$300 nanoitx. Lots of others sell in the sub-$500 range. The high price you are paying for a 'doze pc is the Microsoft tax although you may not realize how it works. My understanding is soft gives DELL, HP, D&H, SystemMax (Tiger Direct), Frye's and such very deep discounts on the OS ($10 was quoted here on slashdot by someone else). Thus they'd effectively lock in their $300 profit per CD simply on their arrangement with soft. The arrangement I've been told as recently as two weeks ago is still that every laptop and every PC that leaves must have doze or dos (workstations are different). In fact, a head-to-head comparison on 4G, AMD 3800++, 1TB, geForce video systems shows Linux vendors near the low end of the cost on only hardware and a small fraction of the cost once any software (antivirus, office suite, etc) is added in to the package. E.g. DELL starts off leading the dozers in low cost versus Gateway, HPQ, et al but quickly vaults up as they nail the customer on SW upgrades. In contrast, Linux vendors like Serviza offer complete GPL business suites at what would be valued in the $10's of thousands for Windows comparables. That trend will only continue. The Bundle will kill 'soft as we know it. That's why they are buying into NOVL. They're not stupid.
The real benefit of releasing Vista is eliminating the secondary market on Windows XP licenses. Like many others I have a stack of Widnows licenses here I am not using and would like to sell on EBay if I had the time. The fiar market price of an OS such as DOS is around $10-$15. That's what would happen to doze if they did not keep releasing new versions to keep the FUD factor up.
Cheers,
TimJowers
Serviza Monster Computers, http://www.serviza.com/ We Make Open Source Rock out of the Box.
Softie isn't worried about licensing but just trying to ride this one out. Clearly the Open Source world has moved to compatibility while the softie world is like you say: nightmares of integration. So many venders and even so many non-integrated products from Microsoft. Not sure if you've visited the php-mysql world lately but is it simple, clear, and works. Something people used to claim about 'soft. But the real problem is bundling. Soft is getting wiped away with their own trick. Why buy apps 1,2,3,5,...20 when you can just get RedHat, SUSE, or Fedora Core and, BAM, you've got alot install, configured, and working. Buy an Open Source computer and you'll have it all ready to go. You'll still be months behind in trying to get this work on a Microsoft-based platform. Not to mention the hari-kari that is Oracle and J2EE. On the flip side, you can buy an Open Source computer and have a J2EE server already setup and running and also a complete dev suite. The bundle will kill soft and they know it. Buying into NOVL just shows they actually can follow the market. Sure they're going to try to get as much as they can out of the winds of momentum but within a few years they'll move to the speedboats as well. While Windows may have little future in the bundled world, Office surely doesn't! how ironic is that as Bundling is what made Office! Does Word 07 even support export to PDF or the Open Document Format? 6B cash cow and cannot even meet the needs of the average office worker! That tells you they are putting their money in Linux rather than their existing product set. They see the future as clearly as everyone else and the future (and present actually) is Open Source.
TimJowers
http://www.serviza.com/ : We Make Open Source Rock out of the Box!
I had to comment as Slashdot is depressing. The entire front page is Vista articels. Who cares? With so much opportunity and excitedment in the Open Source world this reminds me of people talking about Motorola CPUs in the early 1990's. There is just simply so much opportunity in the FLOSS world one is overwhelmed. Jump in and pick one and go with it. Retarded limitations such as the "1 HW" thing are just one simple example of how MSFT has lost it. Hell, they suckered me with their Cairo promise. What liars!!! The ability to block copy NT back in the day was one allure of it. Now, we have so much more with Linux that who cares. And Linux is only a small percentage of what FLOSS has to offer. At Serviza (Serviza Monster Computer) we are just trying to simplify the purchase procedure so businesses can add a new capablity to their network with simply buying the products. The next big hurdle for the computer industry is to graduate from the PC era - both M$FT and PC hardware specs. We are topping out the norm with 4G RAM, 1 TB disk, etc but clearly the future of the computer industry is not in the PC spec. And that also means flexible HW configs. Something M$FT shows they have not foreseen.
I sometimes wonder if the mennonites don't have something...
Best wishes,
TimJowers
Fiat = no value money. Print fiat, get rich.
World bank loans non-existent money. Loan fake money, get servants.
Not hard to figure out. The rest of the ideas are just noise happening beneath the falsification of money by the central banks and their cohorts. They are committing real, well-defined, well-conspired, and well-known theft from the "ants" and placating the "grasshoppers" in order to remain the masters.
"Neither a borrower nor lender be". Now why would anyone say that? Really think about it. WHY.
The reason is intricately tied to the present, rapid, unconstitutional removal of rights. Intricately.
Vote with your feet. Our corporate bigbrothers already have.
Imagine if 10,000 skilled professionals relocated to a country in central America within a six month timeframe. Reminds me of that book about how to Get Rich, Start your own city.
And I'm not joking either. Setup a new America where freedom actually does reign. Not aristrocracy and beurocracy.
I'd also love to hear how many of us have implemented these big brother projects. I worked on one such project for a few months myself. Two if you realize HIPAA is largely about the government being able to track your health status.
That's par for the course in manufacturing. Clearly the author never worked in a board plant in the USA - a few decades ago there were many. Interns and hourly Manpower workers did the repetitive tasks. The company where I worked tried automation and had a tour by Bush I - or maybe it was Reagan - about how great that was but in the end variances cannot be handled well by robots/machines and only certain tasks could be automated (wave solder, surface mount, moving parts from one line to another).
From the looks of it these are young adults very similar to the college students and part-time folks who used to do the work in the USA for about 2x minimum wage.
Assembly and manufacturing are not as glamorous as some seem to expect. A challenging QA task nonetheless. Odd to see little to no advancement over what was being done two decades ago. Just moved to a lower cost/lower net tax load locale.
TimJowers
P.S> There was no union in the plant where I worked. And, of course, the work eventually was offshored. I think the remnant now defines new processes when new products are to be run and then the bulk is done in Mexico, Tiawan, or such.
Needs a CMS with SVN and integratino with office apps. The only solution I know works today would be a common fileshare shared from the webdirectory of the CMS; so users can access the files via an SVN tool or a web page. The Sharepoint solution is not a whole lot better. It just is not transparent to a user they are checking out a file, editing, and checking back in the file. So, a manual checkout is not much differnt than using menus on a web page.
I've been looking into this a little too and would like to find it. Mambo/Joomla plugin maybe?
TimJowers
Someone ought to mention the min/max/sysmenu/resize ala Motif. I remember reading the motif style guide in about '94 and some sentence where the author's talks about supporting his mother over the phone and, though he did not use Windows, he could because Windows implemented a subset of the Motif style. Sorta funny to praise Windows's "Windows" when they pre-existed in XWindows Motif.
Cheers,
TimJowers
P.s> Computers are generally user hostile which is why only certain people are "computer people". The same can be said for many other tools as well though. Picture Grandma with a Jackhammer. Do you want a jackhammer made for everyone?
Unfortunately the psychology of user interfaces is almost ignored nowadays which is why n00bs have such a steep learning curve. The whole discussion of Linux versus 'doze is silly though as they are both about the same for any naive user. Linux is preferable for Unix-heads and hardcore SW engineers while 'doze is preferable for those with years of 'doze. Neither wants their experience to be antiquated. Having a Windows user lambast Linux is like having a Mac user evaluate Windows. It's just nonsense. The only valid evaluations are from those who've used both for years. Any other is just complaining about the learning curve.
Sounds alot more useful than the "news" article that started this slashdot topic.
Best wishes,
Tim
Might I read your paper? I've researched this a bit also. MediaWiki is perfect for managing a knowledge base. Others such as TikiWiki may be good for coordinating efforts. Then move on to Mambo for an equivalent to Sharepoint or Worksite. AFAICT.
People love elixers so want a magical way to be ignorant but still edit web pages. They categorize anything that can allow groups to dynamically edit web pages as a WIKI. The truth is the wiki engine's and webapps are specialized to certain tasks such as managing a knowledge base, shared calendar, project management, document collaboration, discussion groups, polls. Of course these could all be within one CMS/DMS; so, the term wiki then becomes relegated to shared documents in a knowledge base. MediaWiki when the document editing is open to all and another wiki engine with more security when needed.
Comments? Still want to read your paper.
Thanks,
TimJowers
Yeah, no sense to /dotters with no knowledge of the past. I'm trying to find the reference articles to educate these naive folks. Basically about 15 years ago a Scandanavian telco discovered switches being sold by American companies had backdoors to shut down the phone systems. Corporate world working for military. Also, it is fairly common knowledge printers sold by US companies to Iraq and others contained transmitters. "Export printers". I found an article reference on the Black Art of Electronic Warfare but cannot find articles on these yet. Too much noise on Google.
/dotters seem to realize. Finally, Carnivore is SW based so does not lend itself to the argument the espionage/military support would be in BIOS or chipset but does clearly show what goverments are willing to do in order to maintain complete control over communications.
/dotters seem to believe Lenovo is innocent considering so many past instances of US companies being complicit with this exact sort of activity. Of course it is probably political as with Texas in office one would not be surprised to see DELL become the sole source; but the reality of electronic warfare and complicit companies is documented. Judging from history I believe the Chinese have no qualms about stealing trade secrets, military secrets, and even software from the USA.
I also worked with an engineer who'd worked on an undersea cable system where they had to revise the design so submarines could tap in every ten miles or so. Do you recall teh case a few years ago where US spies determined the Spanish government had unfairly awarded a business contract to a Spanish company and not the the company who technically should have won? Business and military are intertwined more than
I'm very frustrated so many
BTW, adding in rootkits is not necessarily the only ill which could be done. Consider transmission frequencies helpful in guiding missiles to data centers. Consider a command to have the system reboot into netboot. Consider ability to saveout or remotely read TLB or cache. With such large caches, this could be serious.
TimJowers
Enjoy Freedom
Wow, image OpenSource saves the day for Microsoft! TimJowers
Are you guys nuts? Electronic espionage is old. Printers with beacons. Phone switches with shutdown interfaces. Tap points on undersea communications cables. Carnivore. Not to mention controlled encryption algorithms. To pretend Lenovo is not controlled by the Chinese spy agencies is to believe the Senator knows less than you do about what is happening. Very doubtful. You're talking about a government who when confronted with the fact 90% of the software in use by the Chinese government was stolen refused to pay Microsoft and others. $6B trade deficit because we buy from them and they steal from American companies. The Chinese government's answer was that they'd stop using stolen software. Yet they are still a favored nation!
TimJowers
If it was a real pyramid he would have investors to finance ripping off any good stuff before the announcement to the world; at least that was the case with Egyptian and South American pyramids. I remember visiting "Chicken Pizza"....not much left. I also saw some pyramid hills along I-10 and even along the I-405. ( :0] better shut up and start digging!)
I've got a box with a Via Eden. 1GHz. Sloooooow. Tiny (embedded style). But sloooow. Our company was considering selling these as app devices but they are just too slow. Talked to a Via vendor at a tradeshow but Via is clueless AFAICT.
BTW, this sort of argument is what I thought about the $100 PC. You can get an almost free old PC from the local charity store. Nobody wants a piece of junk. Even 3rd world people. Rich people think poor people want their old junk. They don't. Don't give them old fish. Teach them to fish.
TimJowers