Steve Jobs might be a gas station attendant today if not for the
help of Steve Wozniak, who has a degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from Berkeley.
While I'm a bit put out that Jobs (or the coverage of his speech)
doesn't mention Woz, I believe that Jobs point about 'dropping
in' is a good one. Learn. Educate yourself. However that happens, be it university or your moms basement, learn. Connect. Build. Be. Do it. Live it. Learn learn learn.
You don't have to live anybody elses definition of life, include
that of Steve Jobs. Just live your life. Do what you do best.
Yeah, but then I thought we were supposed to whine about all the coal shovelers who lost their job to a machine (or how all programming jobs are disappearing because of Free Software).
Somebody has to run the machine... duh...
I actually agree with you completely, I'm just pointing out that to the user that's still using the old software, and who doesn't have a political or philosophical disagreement with that software, and who isn't techie enough to care about how "under the hood" their software is junk, your argument isn't really going to convince them of anything.
I think you just described workers at the Chicago
slaughterhouses of the 1870's, the Pennsylvannia coal mines of
the 1890's, the New York City sweatshops of the early 1900's
and the migrant workers of the great depression... They didn't
care a whit or a whistle if the job was a plain shit sandwich, they
just did it because it was the only thing available!
Now the point isn't to compare miseries, but to say that there were (are) much better ways of doing things. If you wouldn't let a man
shovel coal for 16 hours, when you know there is a perfectly good machine on which to train him in order to make his productivity, health and income rise, why would you let someone toil at MicroSoft software when you know there exists a better
solution?
First of all Firefox doesn't have a spyware problem simply because it's not used by enough people.
Spyware isn't a problem, per se...it's removing the
spyware. Firefox gets spyware. Clean it up and move on in
just a few minutes. IE gets spyware, there goes the rest of
your day trying to get rid of it and possibly needing a whole
re-install to be totally sure. Choice is yours.
Their criteria included the number of reported vulnerabilities and their severity, as well as the number of patches issued and days of risk -- the period from when a vulnerability is first reported to when a patch is issued.
Doesn't Microsoft, for the most part, control both the announcements of vulnerabilities and the release of patches???
And even if Microsoft doesn't control ALL announcements of
vulnerabilities, it controls enough to make the
statistics worthless; for instance Microsoft can
arbitrarily lower the metric "days of risk" by delaying announcement of vulnerabilities until
a patch is ready, therefore skewing the true number of "days of risk"
This "study" assumes that both Linux and Microsoft have equal levels of control/non-control over the variables examined.
which Linux delivers the best balance of stability, high-level support options, security, rapid updates, and ease of administration?
The whole point of having a Kernel around which
you may configure to your hearts content is to
avoid the situation where you are at the mercy
of somebody else's definition of "the best
balance of X,Y and/or Z".
The very heart of the linux ideal is robustness
in differing situations, and organic responses to
changing situations.
Most of those assessments were made when the "graphologists" in question were under the belief the doodle was Blair's.
Actually, not. The graphologist was working on assessing the doodler. The newspapers are the ones
who focused on the the PM. The graphologist was
hired to speak to the handwriting only. I believe
she was told that it was Tony Blair who did the
writing, but she didn't focus on that...
The graphologist in question was interviewed on
BBC radio this AM. I heard it on my commute. She
said that she did not assess based on the name, but strictly on the handwriting. And she said that her analysis applies to 'whomever wrote the notes'. It's the newspapers that focused on Blair. It's the graphologist who focused on the
handwriting.
"What are the most difficult hurdles for a manager geek to jump, and can our personality be used as an advantage in management?"
First, there are computer geeks, band geeks, stamp geeks,
model railroad geeks and yu-gi-oh geeks. There are technical
aspects to management that can be approached as "geeky". And there are, I'm certain, technical aspects
of 'normal' jobs that can be so approached.
Secondly, you should ask yourself why your boss put a geek
in charge of 'normals'. Perhaps he/she would like you to make
them more 'geeky'? Don't assume that the boss automatically
made a mistake in this placement. Perhaps there is some
underlying systemic issues that only a geek could manage... ?
Perhaps they need be dragged kicking and screaming into
the digital age?
Thirdly, any management position, geeky or not, is about seeing
to their careers. Let them know that you're position is to see that they are on track to having a good career... yes, even the
problem ones. With the problem ones you can mutually agree
to part ways as a way of growing their career. There's less ill
will and hard feeling that way. And they often land on their
feet in a better -for them- situation... and are often thankful.
Those who stay will work for you all the harder and as you move
up in management you'll be able to take some of them with you,
should you find they deserve it.
My official advice for all of you is to refuse
the management position. I realize that with management comes more money and more influence/power, but I've seen FAR too many good geeks, engineers, techies, etc. go to management to die. They cease being involved in the actual work of their department and progress more and more deeply into politics, paperwork, and meetings. Every one of them has moved gradually away from being a geek with a management position and more and more toward just being a manager who used to be a geek.
And this attitude is why software products SUCK!!!
When the people who care about the technical aspects refuse
involvement in management, they cede control of those technical aspects to people who don't care.
Apparently the boys in class embarrassed her and told her girls couldn't wear shoes like that. The shoes have since languished in her closet, she no longer watches the show, and has abandoned the playing cards.I have tried all sorts of things to get her to wear them to school - boys be damned. But the stigma was too much for her to take, and so the shoes sit unused, unloved and unwanted.
The message was clear - there are certain things that are okay for boys to do, but not okay for girls. By the time she is a woman, she will have had that message reinforced thousands of times in subtle and not-so-subtle ways - through interactions with others, messages in the media, and misinterpretation of 'scientific' studies."
This is exactly why Summers is, and should well be, under the gun!!
The problems isn't just that Summers said some patently stupid things... but that Summers
had was saying some patently stupid things THAT HAD
BEEN SUBSTANTIVELY REFUTED EARLIER IN THE DAY. AT THE
VERY CONFERENCE HE WAS ADDRESSING!!! It's in
the article.... What a bonehead! DUH!
It's very hard for smart people to be condescended to, especially
on the topic of whether or not they deserve that condescension.
Suppose, just for a moment that Microsoft,
not Apple, is the odd company. We all like to
think that phenomenal success is our
American Birthright. But how common, in business,
is it truly? I'm not given to believing in "natural monopolies" so I'm less forgiving of MicroSoft that the Ashcroft Justice Dept.
Building a business,
and doing it on your terms, is a crushingly hard
thing to do. Apple has done this.
Microsoft has
not so much built a business as slashed their way
through the competition and many laws: being a monopoly -that is to say, flouting
capitalism, the free market and the legal system-
is a relatively easy thing to do if you are greedy, rapacious and possess little scruples.
So the question isn't "What rational decisions
should Apple have made to be like MicroSoft?"
That just gives MicroSoft a pass on their criminal
behaviour (crimes proven in a court of law and
never disputed) because it assumes that MicroSoft
did not commit crimes and deal underhandedly to get where it is today.
For Apple to be as successful (sic) as
MicroSoft they would have had to fight as dirty
and be as ruthless as MicroSoft. They would have had to commit the same crimes.
While MicroSoft was busy perfecting corporate
weapons and tactics, Apple was busy perfecting
engineering. Apple deserves to be successful on
those terms. They are.
I have never seen someone get so seriously
bent over such flawed logic.
There are several things to consider:
While complexity may provide an opening
for flaws, it does not atutomically mean
the code is flawed if it is complex. People
who care that there code is used ( Apple Engineers) can surmount the problems that complexity poses.
MacOS X is complex because it DOES MORE.
Samba,NFS, CUPS, X11, SSH, shells... and
is INFINITELY more configurable.
XP et all is complex because it does marketing
and because it attempts to deliberately
obscure configurability and portability of code.
These are essentially arbitrary complexities that
are in direct conflict with good code
practices.
Microsoft, with their market share and cold hard cash, couldn't convince people that tablets were a "good idea" but some minute outfit, using an OS that's has the most arcane GUI of any of the major OSs is going to succeed ?
I don't think so.
Microsoft, with their market hubris and cold hard crashingly mediocre version of a third rate software bug
couldn't cram their warped version of a 'good idea' down
anybodys throat but some minute outfit, utilizing the value and leverage of open source is going to succeed in allowing people to
do what they want how they want it?
But seriously... I hope they're talking about the "next release" as in "the version that will go onto the tablet when it ships." A Tablet Pc is just an expensive doodle pad without the handwriting recognition.
Actually, not. I commute by train one hour in the AM and
another in the PM. I have a laptop. But sometimes, if I just
want to read a PDF or a.DOC or something, it's such a
pain to hunch over the keyboard squinting at the screen.
A smaller screen isn't an option, but a too-big screen
really gets cramped with the generic seating on a commuter rail car. Given all this and the fact that I'm a six footer, there's a very narrow window of comfort that encompasses readability, resolution, comfort and elbow mobility on my commute.
I would love a hybrid tablet/PC that I can use to read
PDF's on the train. I would go completely paperless
then. A pen for circling/highlighting/underlining would
be good as well. Something that can be held and viewed,
more or less, like a book would be a huge benefit.
For writing I prefer use of a keyboard but strictly for reading a tablet, with or without handwriting recognition,
would be great. Not to mention that, with a tablet I
wouldn't have to shut down and pack up between getting
off the train and onto the short subway ride to work.
WTF is any IT staff letting a civilian admin his own box in this situation?
In our environment of Windows, Mac, and linux, the only boxes connected are COMPANY BOXES under COMPANY ADMINSTRATION.
Amen! I hear you brother!
Why, in my environment of Pens, Pencils and Paper, the only implements writing are COMPANY IMPLEMENTS under
COMPANY ADMINISTRATION writing COMPANY APPROVED
fascism.
I'll trade you three weeks of meta-moderation for 5 mod points for fascism
In all honesty, if your company PC suffers like this, your IT department is to blame. [anecdotal evidence warning:] I've been using Win2k for over a year now at work, and I do a large amount of *dangerous* work (editing several large files, running 30+ applications simultaneously, writing I/O programs, allocating GBs of memory, etc) and have yet to have my box become unstable or crash.
I think there is some truth to having IT to blame, mostly because, in my experience, IT depts were either understaffed/underfunded or were overstaffed/overfunded but decentralized and distributed across several management "fiefdoms" (for lack of a better word... I think you know what I mean) and were often tugged
back and forth to no productive end. In my past
corporate life, the IT departments I've met up with
only met with you once your machine exhibited problems.
But I wonder... I do some weekly preventive maintenance
(disk defragging, short-cut rewiring, disk-cleanup and simple cold-shutdowns) for a few of the several hundred machines I oversee. I've noticed, overall, far less problems
on the machines with a weekly diet of TLC than in the
others. I even have a few PCs that I've intentionally
left running, with multiple users, for as long as possible
(though not too long lately, as M$ offers a patch every other week or so, that requires reboot). These machines
are often the ones that show the most problems.
Could it be that your *dangerous* work (Cue the bond theme!) keeps the disk and RAM in a fairly steady cycle of churn and burn? Sort of an ongoing defragmentation and garbage-collection? This is, as you may well know, not
something joe-random-user knows to do.
Just because it works great on day one doesn't mean it'll still be great on day 100. That's the main reason our IT dept (and I'd guess most IT depts) has been pushing for a single os. It is not because of ignorance, but because of a drive towards simplification.
Look, there's planning simply and there's planning for
simplicity. They are NOT the same.
The simplicity that you want is on the desktop, not
on the admin's desk. "IT Depts" are service organizations They don't have, nor deserve,
the luxury of dictating to the end user what tool is best for which job. It simply cannot work. It will, can, and should
bring down the enterprise to strangle the productivity in that manner.
If you want simple, you've chosen the wrong career path.
I am the IT dept at a research lab at a university. I can't tell a tenured professor that he can't use this machine, or that a given OS won't connect to that server. I have to make it
work and I do. I have FreeBSD, Linux, Solaris and Windows
servers all co-existing nicely (thank you SAMBA) with FreeBSD, Linux, Solaris, Windows and Mac desktops. I'm
trying to get funding for an Xserver or four as well. Once
I have time... I'll get that old Symbolics machine that's been gathering dust in the corner in the mix as well... Why? Because that's what the researchers need.
ISP = Internet Service Provider. Providing a website with content on the Internet is a service.
We've always associated ISP with Internet Access Provider, but is that really accurate? How is it defined withing the law?
Look, it's easy; Did Lamo pay this guy. McCullagh for internet access? Or for an internet service of any type?
McCullagh provides a service to you and me. Not to Lamo.
So the FBI is WAY out of bounds asking
for an ISP on information on services provided to a third
party.
If you want to believe that Linux is technically better than Windows, fine. I happen to agree on that point. If you think that Microsoft is the evil empire, that's OK; you can form your own opinions. If you can't seperate the two ideas in your mind, then there's a problem, and you probably ought to reexamine your conclusions (or at least your mode of evangelism.)
Linux is superior to Windows. The anger and the
hostility does not stem from that fact, but from the fact that Windows is an imposed inferiority.
Sometimes it's difficult to be both polite and honest at the same time. Paul Krugman writes about this in todays NYTimes OP/ED pages regarding anger at the Bush Administration... The lessons to be learned there are the lessons to be learned here. For example, the statement;
"The ultimate result is that some innovations that would truly benefit consumers never occur for the sole reason that they do not coincide with Microsoft's self-interest."
That's a pretty impolitic statement. It's also
an accurate description of the situation and
part of federal law. The author is US Federal Judge Thomas Penfield
Jackson and it's part of the findings of fact in
the anti-trust trial (don't have a url handy for it, google is your buddy)
Oftentimes it's difficult to answer the honesty
without getting stuck on the sheer nastiness of
the response. In fact, MicroSoft used what they
percieved as nastiness to paint Judge Penfield-Jackson as unfair and biased and thus
were able to overturn some portions of his ruling on appeal.
However, nasty doesn't have to mean untrue. Hatred can sometimes be grounded in reality. I, personally, have a hatred of all things mediocre... to the point, often, of outright
hostility. When that mediocrity is forced upon
me you're right; I will both argue that Linux
is superior and MicroSoft is evil. I might even
use some 'bad' words to do so. Deal with it.
I agree with the general sentiments expressed by
the author. I think, however, that the piece was
very poorly written. Posting it to slashdot directly, I
daresay, would have resulted in downward mods
aplenty.
The crux of Mr. Grannemans two points, that
social engineering and bad software design are
more at fault for worm propagation than anything
else, can be articulated better in just this way: M$
takes the wrong things seriously. Linux, *BSD systems
and MacOS X do not. To wit, M$ has chosen feature-rich clickability over robustness and configurability. Linux, MacOS X and the *BSDs are all about configuration and robustness first.
MicroSofts first mistake is to assume that every user is a novice (of the twenty or thirty so XP and or W2K installs I've done this calendar year, each has that annoying, nay infuriating pop-up..."take a tour of XP" and/or "learn how to keep your computer current with Automatic Updates". That was semi-informative the first time. Annoying the second and very quickly -and continuously- infuriating after that) As such they start with a baseline configuration that is very generic. The second mistake is in assuming that everyone will want a 'wizard' to do the 'advanced' configuration neccessary once they realize the generic
baseline isn't cutting it for them. 'Wizards' are just middleware written to avoid having the user come into direct contact with a config file or the registry. I'm a master sysadmin. I've seen config files. They don't scare me. Nor does the registry
The real, and most important difference between Windows and almost all other OSes is configurability. Consider this:
I can take a Linux, BSD or MacOSX box and, within an hour, tweak the
config it into an unrecognizable shape and still remain
with the use of the thing. It will be a unique, workable,
computer, running the same software, but with different
parameters and purposes as other unix boxen. It will serve the purpose for which I built it, and none other, unless I
say so.
I can take a windows box
and tweak the config all the livelong day... and at the
end of the day I'll have a windows machine that remains very close to most other windows boxes in the entire world. That machine will continue to try to open my
attachments for me, run 'wizards' to do my config work for
me, and generally get in my way trying to add more
'gee-whiz' features I neither want nor need.
Then, when I've 'patched' the thing, I'll find all the unwanted services I just
turned off, back on!
Why is configurability important? Because it leads to diversity. Diversity is the first and best defense against
viruses, worms, plaques and pestilence. Diversity - mutability- is what has allowed the human race to survive the many scourges visited upon us... until M$ that is... =-)
If MS can be held liable for defects, then so can all software producers. Speaking as one, I don't like the sound of that.
You want the option to deliberately put defects in
your code? Speaking as one, I don't like the sound of that. And if any software is put into
either medical systems or military technology,
fuck yeah, I want a warranty. And I want some
one to be held liable when the missiles fire
accidently, or the cat scan scrambles your brain.
the "open" in open source software is an effective
warranty for me. If I find a defect, I can fix
it, or pay someelse to fix it. That's the best
guarantee you can get. 'Warranty' doesn't mean
'some-one you can sue when things go wrong', it
means 'a way to fix it quickly and properly'.
Regardless, in this instance M$ isn't being held liable for defects. M$ is being held liable for monopolistic practices which should render the EULA null and void as a coerced document.
The article heading is rather misleading. It's not like 5% of all Linux servers converted to Windows Server 2003, or 5% of all servers in the world suddenly run Windows Server 2003. No, of all new Windows Server 2003 installations (which still isn't that many), five percent used to run Linux. It is definitely not time to "think about jumping ship" yet...
That's exactly correct. It's HORRIBLY misleading. If you look at the netcraft page
and the stats they list... the top two Win03 install bases (by "active site") are web hosting companies and there combined totals are greater than all the other listed "active sites" combined.... This by a wide margin.
This tells me that two web hosting companies installed the majority of the new Win03 servers.It's entirely possible that the decision to go with
Nx10^3 Win03 servers was made by two people... Management people most likely. Regardless,
the poll treats the sample population as
equivalent, with equivalent purchasing
power, knowledge and technical acumen. This
appears to be a poor assumption to make.
Also, Netcraft seems to think the total number
of servers is constant and that Linux and
Windows each do an equivalent amount of
work, with same efficiency: in my experience, Windows does less with more... meaning you
have to have M # of Win03 servers to service the
same content as N Linux servers (where M is gt N)
This is badly skewed data and the assumptions that
follow are skewed even farther.
Or is it paying off Rob, in order to lie
to Peter and sue Paul?
Wait! I got it! Rob lies to Paul
who sues Peter who's also been lied to
by Sue who's robbing Peter of his source
code which was inspired by different source
code initially written by Paul and debug'd
by Rob when Sue was dating Pauls older brother
Don Knuth.
Meanwhile, Don Knuths older brother, Don Corleone,
was busy making Peter an offer he could not refuse. Unfortunately, Peter, Paul, Rob and
Sue all died in a hail of bullets as Don Corleone
went to war with Darl McBride, head of the Tattaglia family.
Windows appeals to users who have only a polite interest in the internals of an operating system, are utterly pragmatic, capitalistic, comfortable with systems and services that are imperfect but widely available, generally useful and relatively undemanding.
I personally, know of no one who finds
windows 'appealing'. They use it because they
have to; they are locked into it. Only recently
has DARPA and the NSF allowed grant proposals and
other official documents to be submitted in anything other than MS word. Most financial entities live and die by the spreadsheet. Guess
which spreadsheet they use? Nearly every IT/IS incarnation I've known or have been would NEVER recommend Windows on its own merits. They recommend Windows because
there is no choice. So 'appeal'
has nothing to do with the issue at hand.
Knowing little and caring less about the politics and philosophy of free software and open source, they will never read or compile from source, and form a generalist not specialist market, a mass consumer market, in which only a mono culture can thrive.
I don't have any numbers, but I'd venture a guess that well over 90% of (non-home PC) Windows users have a corporate entity or some [person | dept | org] who helps them maintain their machines. I've bought one computer in my entire life (purchased in college). The other 15 or so that I've used have been purchased by various corporations for whom I've toiled. Local professionals, when
heeded, can do a lot to defeat a monoculture. So
the 'mass consumer market' == monoculture doesn't really hold water; there are experts who will tell
you what the best OS is suited to what appeals to
you. It only remains to listen to them. Hell, Michael Milken sold junk bonds on a less authoritative reputation...
Slashdot Mirror
Steve Jobs might be a gas station attendant today if not for the help of Steve Wozniak, who has a degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from Berkeley.
While I'm a bit put out that Jobs (or the coverage of his speech) doesn't mention Woz, I believe that Jobs point about 'dropping in' is a good one. Learn. Educate yourself. However that happens, be it university or your moms basement, learn. Connect. Build. Be. Do it. Live it. Learn learn learn.
You don't have to live anybody elses definition of life, include that of Steve Jobs. Just live your life. Do what you do best.
Yeah, but then I thought we were supposed to whine about all the coal shovelers who lost their job to a machine (or how all programming jobs are disappearing because of Free Software). Somebody has to run the machine... duh...
I actually agree with you completely, I'm just pointing out that to the user that's still using the old software, and who doesn't have a political or philosophical disagreement with that software, and who isn't techie enough to care about how "under the hood" their software is junk, your argument isn't really going to convince them of anything.
I think you just described workers at the Chicago slaughterhouses of the 1870's, the Pennsylvannia coal mines of the 1890's, the New York City sweatshops of the early 1900's and the migrant workers of the great depression... They didn't care a whit or a whistle if the job was a plain shit sandwich, they just did it because it was the only thing available!
Now the point isn't to compare miseries, but to say that there were (are) much better ways of doing things. If you wouldn't let a man shovel coal for 16 hours, when you know there is a perfectly good machine on which to train him in order to make his productivity, health and income rise, why would you let someone toil at MicroSoft software when you know there exists a better solution?
First of all Firefox doesn't have a spyware problem simply because it's not used by enough people.
Spyware isn't a problem, per se...it's removing the spyware. Firefox gets spyware. Clean it up and move on in just a few minutes. IE gets spyware, there goes the rest of your day trying to get rid of it and possibly needing a whole re-install to be totally sure. Choice is yours.
Their criteria included the number of reported vulnerabilities and their severity, as well as the number of patches issued and days of risk -- the period from when a vulnerability is first reported to when a patch is issued.
Doesn't Microsoft, for the most part, control both the announcements of vulnerabilities and the release of patches???
And even if Microsoft doesn't control ALL announcements of vulnerabilities, it controls enough to make the statistics worthless; for instance Microsoft can arbitrarily lower the metric "days of risk" by delaying announcement of vulnerabilities until a patch is ready, therefore skewing the true number of "days of risk"
This "study" assumes that both Linux and Microsoft have equal levels of control/non-control over the variables examined.
which Linux delivers the best balance of stability, high-level support options, security, rapid updates, and ease of administration?
The whole point of having a Kernel around which you may configure to your hearts content is to avoid the situation where you are at the mercy of somebody else's definition of "the best balance of X,Y and/or Z". The very heart of the linux ideal is robustness in differing situations, and organic responses to changing situations.
Most of those assessments were made when the "graphologists" in question were under the belief the doodle was Blair's.
Actually, not. The graphologist was working on assessing the doodler. The newspapers are the ones who focused on the the PM. The graphologist was hired to speak to the handwriting only. I believe she was told that it was Tony Blair who did the writing, but she didn't focus on that...
The graphologist in question was interviewed on BBC radio this AM. I heard it on my commute. She said that she did not assess based on the name, but strictly on the handwriting. And she said that her analysis applies to 'whomever wrote the notes'. It's the newspapers that focused on Blair. It's the graphologist who focused on the handwriting.
"What are the most difficult hurdles for a manager geek to jump, and can our personality be used as an advantage in management?"
First, there are computer geeks, band geeks, stamp geeks, model railroad geeks and yu-gi-oh geeks. There are technical aspects to management that can be approached as "geeky". And there are, I'm certain, technical aspects of 'normal' jobs that can be so approached.
Secondly, you should ask yourself why your boss put a geek in charge of 'normals'. Perhaps he/she would like you to make them more 'geeky'? Don't assume that the boss automatically made a mistake in this placement. Perhaps there is some underlying systemic issues that only a geek could manage... ? Perhaps they need be dragged kicking and screaming into the digital age?
Thirdly, any management position, geeky or not, is about seeing to their careers. Let them know that you're position is to see that they are on track to having a good career... yes, even the problem ones. With the problem ones you can mutually agree to part ways as a way of growing their career. There's less ill will and hard feeling that way. And they often land on their feet in a better -for them- situation... and are often thankful. Those who stay will work for you all the harder and as you move up in management you'll be able to take some of them with you, should you find they deserve it.
My official advice for all of you is to refuse the management position. I realize that with management comes more money and more influence/power, but I've seen FAR too many good geeks, engineers, techies, etc. go to management to die. They cease being involved in the actual work of their department and progress more and more deeply into politics, paperwork, and meetings. Every one of them has moved gradually away from being a geek with a management position and more and more toward just being a manager who used to be a geek.
And this attitude is why software products SUCK!!!
When the people who care about the technical aspects refuse involvement in management, they cede control of those technical aspects to people who don't care.
Yes. It really is that simple, Dilbert.
Apparently the boys in class embarrassed her and told her girls couldn't wear shoes like that. The shoes have since languished in her closet, she no longer watches the show, and has abandoned the playing cards.I have tried all sorts of things to get her to wear them to school - boys be damned. But the stigma was too much for her to take, and so the shoes sit unused, unloved and unwanted.
The message was clear - there are certain things that are okay for boys to do, but not okay for girls. By the time she is a woman, she will have had that message reinforced thousands of times in subtle and not-so-subtle ways - through interactions with others, messages in the media, and misinterpretation of 'scientific' studies."
This is exactly why Summers is, and should well be, under the gun!!
The problems isn't just that Summers said some patently stupid things... but that Summers had was saying some patently stupid things THAT HAD BEEN SUBSTANTIVELY REFUTED EARLIER IN THE DAY. AT THE VERY CONFERENCE HE WAS ADDRESSING!!! It's in the article.... What a bonehead! DUH!
It's very hard for smart people to be condescended to, especially on the topic of whether or not they deserve that condescension.
Suppose, just for a moment that Microsoft, not Apple, is the odd company. We all like to think that phenomenal success is our American Birthright. But how common, in business, is it truly? I'm not given to believing in "natural monopolies" so I'm less forgiving of MicroSoft that the Ashcroft Justice Dept.
Building a business, and doing it on your terms, is a crushingly hard thing to do. Apple has done this.
Microsoft has not so much built a business as slashed their way through the competition and many laws: being a monopoly -that is to say, flouting capitalism, the free market and the legal system- is a relatively easy thing to do if you are greedy, rapacious and possess little scruples.
So the question isn't "What rational decisions should Apple have made to be like MicroSoft?" That just gives MicroSoft a pass on their criminal behaviour (crimes proven in a court of law and never disputed) because it assumes that MicroSoft did not commit crimes and deal underhandedly to get where it is today.
For Apple to be as successful (sic) as MicroSoft they would have had to fight as dirty and be as ruthless as MicroSoft. They would have had to commit the same crimes.
While MicroSoft was busy perfecting corporate weapons and tactics, Apple was busy perfecting engineering. Apple deserves to be successful on those terms. They are.
I have never seen someone get so seriously bent over such flawed logic.
There are several things to consider:
While complexity may provide an opening for flaws, it does not atutomically mean the code is flawed if it is complex. People who care that there code is used ( Apple Engineers) can surmount the problems that complexity poses.
MacOS X is complex because it DOES MORE. Samba,NFS, CUPS, X11, SSH, shells... and is INFINITELY more configurable.
XP et all is complex because it does marketing and because it attempts to deliberately obscure configurability and portability of code. These are essentially arbitrary complexities that are in direct conflict with good code practices.
Microsoft, with their market share and cold hard cash, couldn't convince people that tablets were a "good idea" but some minute outfit, using an OS that's has the most arcane GUI of any of the major OSs is going to succeed ?
I don't think so.
Microsoft, with their market hubris and cold hard crashingly mediocre version of a third rate software bug couldn't cram their warped version of a 'good idea' down anybodys throat but some minute outfit, utilizing the value and leverage of open source is going to succeed in allowing people to do what they want how they want it?
I think so.
But seriously... I hope they're talking about the "next release" as in "the version that will go onto the tablet when it ships." A Tablet Pc is just an expensive doodle pad without the handwriting recognition.
.DOC or something, it's such a
pain to hunch over the keyboard squinting at the screen.
A smaller screen isn't an option, but a too-big screen
really gets cramped with the generic seating on a commuter rail car. Given all this and the fact that I'm a six footer, there's a very narrow window of comfort that encompasses readability, resolution, comfort and elbow mobility on my commute.
Actually, not. I commute by train one hour in the AM and another in the PM. I have a laptop. But sometimes, if I just want to read a PDF or a
I would love a hybrid tablet/PC that I can use to read PDF's on the train. I would go completely paperless then. A pen for circling/highlighting/underlining would be good as well. Something that can be held and viewed, more or less, like a book would be a huge benefit.
For writing I prefer use of a keyboard but strictly for reading a tablet, with or without handwriting recognition, would be great. Not to mention that, with a tablet I wouldn't have to shut down and pack up between getting off the train and onto the short subway ride to work.
WTF is any IT staff letting a civilian admin his own box in this situation?
In our environment of Windows, Mac, and linux, the only boxes connected are COMPANY BOXES under COMPANY ADMINSTRATION.
Amen! I hear you brother!
Why, in my environment of Pens, Pencils and Paper, the only implements writing are COMPANY IMPLEMENTS under COMPANY ADMINISTRATION writing COMPANY APPROVED fascism.
I'll trade you three weeks of meta-moderation for 5 mod points for fascism
In all honesty, if your company PC suffers like this, your IT department is to blame. [anecdotal evidence warning:] I've been using Win2k for over a year now at work, and I do a large amount of *dangerous* work (editing several large files, running 30+ applications simultaneously, writing I/O programs, allocating GBs of memory, etc) and have yet to have my box become unstable or crash.
I think there is some truth to having IT to blame, mostly because, in my experience, IT depts were either understaffed/underfunded or were overstaffed/overfunded but decentralized and distributed across several management "fiefdoms" (for lack of a better word... I think you know what I mean) and were often tugged back and forth to no productive end. In my past corporate life, the IT departments I've met up with only met with you once your machine exhibited problems.
But I wonder... I do some weekly preventive maintenance (disk defragging, short-cut rewiring, disk-cleanup and simple cold-shutdowns) for a few of the several hundred machines I oversee. I've noticed, overall, far less problems on the machines with a weekly diet of TLC than in the others. I even have a few PCs that I've intentionally left running, with multiple users, for as long as possible (though not too long lately, as M$ offers a patch every other week or so, that requires reboot). These machines are often the ones that show the most problems.
Could it be that your *dangerous* work (Cue the bond theme!) keeps the disk and RAM in a fairly steady cycle of churn and burn? Sort of an ongoing defragmentation and garbage-collection? This is, as you may well know, not something joe-random-user knows to do.
Just because it works great on day one doesn't mean it'll still be great on day 100. That's the main reason our IT dept (and I'd guess most IT depts) has been pushing for a single os. It is not because of ignorance, but because of a drive towards simplification.
Look, there's planning simply and there's planning for simplicity. They are NOT the same.
The simplicity that you want is on the desktop, not on the admin's desk. "IT Depts" are service organizations They don't have, nor deserve, the luxury of dictating to the end user what tool is best for which job. It simply cannot work. It will, can, and should bring down the enterprise to strangle the productivity in that manner.
If you want simple, you've chosen the wrong career path.
I am the IT dept at a research lab at a university. I can't tell a tenured professor that he can't use this machine, or that a given OS won't connect to that server. I have to make it work and I do. I have FreeBSD, Linux, Solaris and Windows servers all co-existing nicely (thank you SAMBA) with FreeBSD, Linux, Solaris, Windows and Mac desktops. I'm trying to get funding for an Xserver or four as well. Once I have time... I'll get that old Symbolics machine that's been gathering dust in the corner in the mix as well... Why? Because that's what the researchers need.
ISP = Internet Service Provider. Providing a website with content on the Internet is a service.
We've always associated ISP with Internet Access Provider, but is that really accurate? How is it defined withing the law?
Look, it's easy; Did Lamo pay this guy. McCullagh for internet access? Or for an internet service of any type? McCullagh provides a service to you and me. Not to Lamo. So the FBI is WAY out of bounds asking for an ISP on information on services provided to a third party.
If you want to believe that Linux is technically better than Windows, fine. I happen to agree on that point. If you think that Microsoft is the evil empire, that's OK; you can form your own opinions. If you can't seperate the two ideas in your mind, then there's a problem, and you probably ought to reexamine your conclusions (or at least your mode of evangelism.)
Linux is superior to Windows. The anger and the hostility does not stem from that fact, but from the fact that Windows is an imposed inferiority.
Sometimes it's difficult to be both polite and honest at the same time. Paul Krugman writes about this in todays NYTimes OP/ED pages regarding anger at the Bush Administration... The lessons to be learned there are the lessons to be learned here. For example, the statement;
"The ultimate result is that some innovations that would truly benefit consumers never occur for the sole reason that they do not coincide with Microsoft's self-interest."
That's a pretty impolitic statement. It's also an accurate description of the situation and part of federal law. The author is US Federal Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson and it's part of the findings of fact in the anti-trust trial (don't have a url handy for it, google is your buddy)
Oftentimes it's difficult to answer the honesty without getting stuck on the sheer nastiness of the response. In fact, MicroSoft used what they percieved as nastiness to paint Judge Penfield-Jackson as unfair and biased and thus were able to overturn some portions of his ruling on appeal.
However, nasty doesn't have to mean untrue. Hatred can sometimes be grounded in reality. I, personally, have a hatred of all things mediocre... to the point, often, of outright hostility. When that mediocrity is forced upon me you're right; I will both argue that Linux is superior and MicroSoft is evil. I might even use some 'bad' words to do so. Deal with it.
I agree with the general sentiments expressed by the author. I think, however, that the piece was very poorly written. Posting it to slashdot directly, I daresay, would have resulted in downward mods aplenty.
The crux of Mr. Grannemans two points, that social engineering and bad software design are more at fault for worm propagation than anything else, can be articulated better in just this way: M$ takes the wrong things seriously. Linux, *BSD systems and MacOS X do not. To wit, M$ has chosen feature-rich clickability over robustness and configurability. Linux, MacOS X and the *BSDs are all about configuration and robustness first.
MicroSofts first mistake is to assume that every user is a novice (of the twenty or thirty so XP and or W2K installs I've done this calendar year, each has that annoying, nay infuriating pop-up..."take a tour of XP" and/or "learn how to keep your computer current with Automatic Updates". That was semi-informative the first time. Annoying the second and very quickly -and continuously- infuriating after that) As such they start with a baseline configuration that is very generic. The second mistake is in assuming that everyone will want a 'wizard' to do the 'advanced' configuration neccessary once they realize the generic baseline isn't cutting it for them. 'Wizards' are just middleware written to avoid having the user come into direct contact with a config file or the registry. I'm a master sysadmin. I've seen config files. They don't scare me. Nor does the registry
The real, and most important difference between Windows and almost all other OSes is configurability. Consider this:
I can take a Linux, BSD or MacOSX box and, within an hour, tweak the config it into an unrecognizable shape and still remain with the use of the thing. It will be a unique, workable, computer, running the same software, but with different parameters and purposes as other unix boxen. It will serve the purpose for which I built it, and none other, unless I say so.
I can take a windows box and tweak the config all the livelong day... and at the end of the day I'll have a windows machine that remains very close to most other windows boxes in the entire world. That machine will continue to try to open my attachments for me, run 'wizards' to do my config work for me, and generally get in my way trying to add more 'gee-whiz' features I neither want nor need.
Then, when I've 'patched' the thing, I'll find all the unwanted services I just turned off, back on!
Why is configurability important? Because it leads to diversity. Diversity is the first and best defense against viruses, worms, plaques and pestilence. Diversity - mutability- is what has allowed the human race to survive the many scourges visited upon us... until M$ that is... =-)
If MS can be held liable for defects, then so can all software producers. Speaking as one, I don't like the sound of that.
You want the option to deliberately put defects in your code? Speaking as one, I don't like the sound of that. And if any software is put into either medical systems or military technology, fuck yeah, I want a warranty. And I want some one to be held liable when the missiles fire accidently, or the cat scan scrambles your brain.
the "open" in open source software is an effective warranty for me. If I find a defect, I can fix it, or pay someelse to fix it. That's the best guarantee you can get. 'Warranty' doesn't mean 'some-one you can sue when things go wrong', it means 'a way to fix it quickly and properly'.
Regardless, in this instance M$ isn't being held liable for defects. M$ is being held liable for monopolistic practices which should render the EULA null and void as a coerced document.
We refer to it as "the source of all Truth and Knowledge." (I am not making this up.)
I.N.T.E.R.N.E.T ==
Indispensably
Neccessary
Trove of
Enlightenment,
Research,
Nudity,
Encyclopedias and
Tangents
The article heading is rather misleading. It's not like 5% of all Linux servers converted to Windows Server 2003, or 5% of all servers in the world suddenly run Windows Server 2003. No, of all new Windows Server 2003 installations (which still isn't that many), five percent used to run Linux. It is definitely not time to "think about jumping ship" yet...
That's exactly correct. It's HORRIBLY misleading. If you look at the netcraft page and the stats they list... the top two Win03 install bases (by "active site") are web hosting companies and there combined totals are greater than all the other listed "active sites" combined.... This by a wide margin.
This tells me that two web hosting companies installed the majority of the new Win03 servers.It's entirely possible that the decision to go with Nx10^3 Win03 servers was made by two people... Management people most likely. Regardless, the poll treats the sample population as equivalent, with equivalent purchasing power, knowledge and technical acumen. This appears to be a poor assumption to make.
Also, Netcraft seems to think the total number of servers is constant and that Linux and Windows each do an equivalent amount of work, with same efficiency: in my experience, Windows does less with more... meaning you have to have M # of Win03 servers to service the same content as N Linux servers (where M is gt N)
This is badly skewed data and the assumptions that follow are skewed even farther.
No... wait...
Is it lying to Peter in order to rob Paul?
Or is it paying off Rob, in order to lie to Peter and sue Paul?
Wait! I got it! Rob lies to Paul who sues Peter who's also been lied to by Sue who's robbing Peter of his source code which was inspired by different source code initially written by Paul and debug'd by Rob when Sue was dating Pauls older brother Don Knuth.
Meanwhile, Don Knuths older brother, Don Corleone, was busy making Peter an offer he could not refuse. Unfortunately, Peter, Paul, Rob and Sue all died in a hail of bullets as Don Corleone went to war with Darl McBride, head of the Tattaglia family.
There's a moral in there somewhere...
Windows appeals to users who have only a polite interest in the internals of an operating system, are utterly pragmatic, capitalistic, comfortable with systems and services that are imperfect but widely available, generally useful and relatively undemanding.
I personally, know of no one who finds windows 'appealing'. They use it because they have to; they are locked into it. Only recently has DARPA and the NSF allowed grant proposals and other official documents to be submitted in anything other than MS word. Most financial entities live and die by the spreadsheet. Guess which spreadsheet they use? Nearly every IT/IS incarnation I've known or have been would NEVER recommend Windows on its own merits. They recommend Windows because there is no choice . So 'appeal' has nothing to do with the issue at hand.
Knowing little and caring less about the politics and philosophy of free software and open source, they will never read or compile from source, and form a generalist not specialist market, a mass consumer market, in which only a mono culture can thrive.
I don't have any numbers, but I'd venture a guess that well over 90% of (non-home PC) Windows users have a corporate entity or some [person | dept | org] who helps them maintain their machines. I've bought one computer in my entire life (purchased in college). The other 15 or so that I've used have been purchased by various corporations for whom I've toiled. Local professionals, when heeded, can do a lot to defeat a monoculture. So the 'mass consumer market' == monoculture doesn't really hold water; there are experts who will tell you what the best OS is suited to what appeals to you. It only remains to listen to them. Hell, Michael Milken sold junk bonds on a less authoritative reputation...