Wired magazine had an interesting article about outsourcing I read on a flight a while back from a IT training course. The article is titled "The new face of the Silicon Age" and it addresses what some analysts say is needed to overcome outsourcing from the U.S.
Their approach seems to be along the lines of the workers in the U.S. being the designers with the the outsourced workers building off the designs. This isn't always a good approach for obvious reasons, but the overall tone suggests that there is a push for more of a creative aspect for US workers and less detail and end product development being done here.
Being in the IT industry myself, I find this a bit disturbing. Most engineers employed in IT focus on architecture of designs, but then the detailed work and support of their designs becomes the real task. Once you pull together an idea, making it happen and supporting it is where the real work comes in. Is it a good idea to focus solely on the first step. Once you loose touch of the detail and support aspects, it's only a matter of time before you loose all of it. After all it's very conceded for engineers in the US to try and think they are the only ones who can create great things as the wired article mentioned seems to imply.
Even after the Novell take over of the Linux Terminal Server Project, I believe that is still available. That will provide the most useful information that I have found for building a kiosk base system. I have personally been involved in creating a diskless kiosk that is widely used in a particular environment and know that you will have to either invest a lot of time to perfect it, or have someone else do it for you. I haven't looked at the LTSP in a while, but if they don't have what you need, they probably have a link to it.
There were some others developing clients like that before such as the Neoware systems. I had an opportunity to demo one of those. I wasn't impressed with the way the PXE boot worked, but otherwise it was ok. IBM has developed a few as well. They used to offer a kiosk like image with their Netvista 2200 products.
You should definately watch out for two things: compression types, and flash disks. Depending on the number of clients, you could face issues with using flash drives. Compression is a wonderful thing and when done properly on an image (such as knoppix) it will run just fine. One model I tested years ago tried to use gzip for the compression on the filesystem. It ran like a slug trying to cross the road with salt on his back. Knoppix is also not a bad idea. It would make a good start at an image. Just lock down certain keys in your Xdefaults file or using xmodmap (re-assign to nonworking keys essentially) and add in a front script to mozilla that forces a java based lock down of the browser when started. With that and a few small tweaks you could create a kiosk type system.
I believe Katie Jone's stated on her website that she wanted to "move my content back up where it belongs..." and also that "didn't want my professional and personal reputation damaged by it..." which goatse would more than likely hurt than help. Interesting idea to get rid of the Katie.com book readers, but the intent is that her personal site will still be a respectable site for her, her family and friends.
I seems to me that the book could at least change the name to "Katie Dot Com" or something that at least slightly obfuscates the spelling so it is not a direct match to Katie Jone's site. Still we will have to see what the courts decide. At least the domain "katiedotcom.com" is still available.
That trick is used a bit and there is nothing at all wrong with it. I did the same thing with Satellite TV and Cable TV. My Satellite provider would send you a check for 200 bucks if you stayed with them a year, so I did. Then after I called and confirmed my check was in the mail for the offer, I canceled my service. I immediately called my cable company for the dish buy out special, went with a sweet cable package and they paid me $300 bucks to drag off my dish.
I am afraid that the fate of those iPods is like the fate of my dish. Many companies will end up destroying them afterwards. They would crush the satellite dishes once they had them. It would be a shame to see an iPod graveyard...
There have been other organizations that have done lawsuits on vague patents like this. One of the ones that I have heard a lot about and looked into is the patents involving bar codes and Lemelson's vague patents. If you google for lemelson and lawsuit, you will find lots of information on this. These guys are following the same example.
Companies were told to pay up or risk being sued if they used bar codes. The price kept going up as they went to bigger companies every time. Finally some companies stood up against the vague patents and beat it in court. Those guys are pro's at patent law and went around telling people to pay up or get sued. It looks as if there are more playing the same old trick.
A friend of mine told me about a series of Star Trek that just released a pilot episode and is being looked at. It seems to be a continuation of the original series and will use amatuers as the crew and everything.
Even though I share the same name as one of the actors who played in Trek, I'm not much of a follower. Maybe some others on Slashdot who are in the know could validate this?
What people fail to realize is that there are some flaws with WEP that make it easy enough to decipher. If you simply don't want someone to see what is in your data packets floating over the airwaves, setup a VPN connection to a wired station from your mobile devices.
You should also consider turning on MAC table filters to prevent unwanted cards on your network. This isn't fool proof because of MAC address spoofing, but its a start.
Once WPA and some other other improvements being talked about come out, things might improve a bit, but that really is the game. People that want data find ways to get it and that includes cracking codes. *Notes other article about Lorenz on/.*
Come on folks, look at the bigger picture. Look at the two projects they are going to support, MySQL, and JBoss.
Now look at their competitors products (IBM) Websphere and DB2 products. The reasons have to be more than just jumping on the bandwagon with open source. IBM has two products that are similar to the exact two projects HP chose to help.
All is fair in business, but HP isn't going to throw money at projects just to claim they are on the open source bandwagon. I believe the direct intent is to improve MySQL and JBoss to go head to head with IBM on this one.
"A separate study by Internet service provider EarthLink found more than 29 million spyware-related files on the 1 million computers the company tested."
Earthlink uses those types of data mineing files in their total access software. When I run spybot and Ad-ware, it constantly finds the files tied in with earthlink for advertising.
Not to mention AIM now has pop up advertising and things. I am glad that I don't have to use my windows machine for anything more than audio processing for the most part. I couldn't imagine what it would be like if I used it to browse the web regularly...
We know Japanese work long hours. We also know they don't work nearly as hard as Americans.
Now that is funny. People assume that Americans work the hardest and are the strongest in various areas. What the NY Times article is pointing out should be a wake up call for most.
Things have changed. It really suprises me how much they have changed. One of the richest people I knew personally was a billionaire, literally. He was my Great Grandfather who was also President Trumans right hand man. In an interview he once responded to the question of how he obtained his wealth as: "The key is to work harder than everyone else and you will succeed." Up until the year 2000, I would have agreed with that statement.
There are two falicies to his logic though. There is the first falicy which is opportunity must be present for that to work, and secondly that you have a clear view of how much everyone else is doing so you can do better. What this article points out is that we have ignored the work other countries do.
Your comment on how Americans work harder was the case in some generations. In the youngest and up-coming generation, I do not believe that is the case. Look at the mentality and work force that is coming up. Where is the emphasis on higher education, in particular graduate studies?
Part of the problem I believe comes from the mentality that the youngest generation was raised with. They are the product of a highy successful, rich and full economy that is now crumbling. Many of them have the "World owes me" attitude. What they fail to realize is that noone owe them anything and being lazy will not pay off.
So to your statement, even though some people work hard, the average person in the work force in the US does their 40 hours and goes home. They don't put in long hours for free. I routinely have to put in 60 hour weeks and longer if emergencies arise. I also have to tell myself that it is ok and that I shouldn't make a big deal of the fact I am salaried and will NOT get compensated for those hours.
In other countries, they don't have to tell themselves that. The compensation for innovation, hardwork, and effort is viewed differently in other cultures.
A friend of mine is that I went to college with before I dropped out of school is still looking for a starting IT job. Why would someone who finished their 4 year Comp Science degree from an accredited university be looking for a job? He has the skills to do the job, but I know from experience that his social skills are rather lacking. These days it takes not only the knowledge, but it takes being bold and outgoing as well. The best he has done is working for the number 1 retailer as a cashier. I left school after two years and with my background landed a job at a Fortune 50 retailer.
Starting salary is negotiable. Part of getting what you want is the attitude you have. You can't just go into an interview and let them have 100% of the control with things. You have to be assertive and confident. If they start talking figures to you, or ask you how much you want, there is an appropriate answer. "I am negotiable, send me an offer and we will discuss it." Larger companies will make you an offer and if you don't like the offer, counter offer. If it's extremely low, then your chances of getting a decent amount out of them is slim.
I have worked in smaller startup companies before. The job security and pay is usually less. If you are interested in a larger company, they may start you out paying less than some nitch startups, but the experience can be extremely valuable. I have heard many times at my company that a resume didn't stand out as much because the person has never had any experience with a larger corporation.
One other thing to keep in mind is that you should always be upfront and honest when dealing with companies. I have sat through other peoples interviews with my team and some of the stories I have are rather entertaining. I still don't see how someone could associate IPC coding with sending database information from a VAX/VMS system, but I digress... Just make sure that you tell then the truth when they ask questions. If they ask you "Do you know how to use IPC coding?", then unless you can tell them about shared memory and messaging queues, or at least what IPC stands for, then say "I am not sure." You will find larger companies will more likely ask you some in-depth technical questions while interviewing. These days, I am a little weary of companies that don't.
Technically it isn't the language that is written in C, it is the interpreter/compilers that are written in C. There are also some similarities with the languages, but that is like saying Japanese is Chinese because they share some common characters in the language. Most compilers that I have used or know about are written in C, but you also have to look at who is writting them. I don't think most Java programmers would have a copy of the dragon compilers book (Alfred V. Aho's "Compilers - Principles, techniques and tools") or would have the kind of background to write a compiler.
After all, langauages like C, C#, C++, Fortan, COBOL and the lot get translated into machine byte code of some type and on their native compiled environments. The interpreters and compilers that do the translation are beyond the scope and are more complex than what most "applications programmer" could handle.
I am not implying as a person they couldn't handle it, but lets face it folks, there is a reason why so many college students start out with a concetration on Computer Science and wind up with a degree in Information Technology. After all, I found languages like assembler easy while others struggled, but then again I looked at the straight forward way of looking at it. In the end of things with assembler, if you want it to do something, you have to think of the smallest and most detailed steps you would take to get there.
One good analogy of Java, C, and Assembler:
Look at it as if you were going to get the newspaper off the porch...
Java: paper p; p.grabNthePaper()
C: walktodoor(); opendoor(); grabpaper(); closedoor(); walkback();
Assembler: mov leftfoot, forward; int motorfunction; move rightfoot, forward;.... int brain;
aixguru1 - "Ogg like AIX, AIX Gooooood. Have you had your IBM brainwashing today?"
I know, but then what would the fun be in telling people private and confidential information. So far I haven't seen the exact answer posted anywhere, but I do find the lengths that some people speculate to very entertaining.
One thing to note is that most larger companies will not disclose such information. It is in the best interests of many companies to keep a closed "black box" idea when it comes to what the folks on the end see.
If you do find a deep interest in what is being used at any retail shop, the hardware vendors for most devices that have a company name on them have web sites and technical information. It makes it really handy if you want to add a thermal receipt printer and cash drawer to your lemonade stand:-P
-AIXguru, Forget to deallocate something? No worry, its often fun to see what is in limits.h...Doh!
-One of the original layout architects and engineers of the terminal and register projects for them
Maybe they will sue Fortune.com, their name is always at the top of the lists... Not to mention for the money they charge for the lists now, Im sure their profit has jumped.
The issue that you will have is based on cost. Most large corporations (like the fortune 100 company I work for) have a mentality that open source is free. The code is free, the software licensing is free, but is there a cost?
Most people don't understand why they (being large corporations) call things open source instead of by the name of Linux or ___BSD. What it comes down to is what they are considering. They define many projects that use "free" or "open" software as open source in an implied type of meaning relating to support cost in most cases.
What most people fail to realize is that with a commercial "closed source" product, the company that sold it to you is expected to support that product. If it has problems and the wizbang features they market to you break, then you go back to them and tell them to fix it. After all, you paid them for it and it should work. One other thing to consider is that many software companies have a very strict QA testing environment. This doesn't mean the software is better, but rather that the company that purchased the product has someone to point a finger at when it breaks and someone who will be more obligated to correcting the issue.
With open software, it is quite different. Most of you know that bug fixes are done mostly on spare time of coders helping with projects. There is no solid support of software like you have with commercial software. You may consider mailing lists and bug tracking pages to be support, but thats not quite the same as being able to pick up a phone, call the developer and say "Fix this!". While many developers in the open source community have a sense to help out, many don't. So you are not garaunteed support from them. The other thing to consider is with such a large environment, who does the end support? Most large corporations pay for end support through their vendors they bought the software and products from. With Linux, what companies can provide that?
There are options like getting with RedHat or some others offering "Enterprise" solutions, but if the goal is not to pay for software, then you will pay dearly for support. Then again, it's my experience working with RS/6000 systems that my company pays for the OS/Systems and for support both, so who knows. Just keep in mind that support is a major fact.
Socializing? Hmm, lets break this down shall we...
"41 percent of users in the United States are online an average of 10 hours or more per week..."
Ok, so there are 168 hours in a week. The typical geek seems to spend 10 hours a day sleeping, or 70 hours a week. If you spend 3 hours a for meals (1 for breakfast, lunch and dinner)thats 21 hours. The average work week for a full time employee in the computer industry is typically 50+ hours (we'll go with 50). Most folks have to drive on average 30 minutes a day minimum to work as well. That makes another 3.5 hours a week.
So far folks, we are left with 23.5 hours. Let's pretent that most of us actually bath daily and spend around 45 minutes on personal cleanlyness per day. That means 5.25 hours is spent with grooming. Now, lets estimate that you spend another 4 hours a week doing things like laundry and grocery shopping and various other life activities.
Now we are left with 13.25 hours total. I space out a minimum of 15 minutes outside of work. Most people do. So lets just round down to 13 hours.
So, no we take out the 10 hours for the internet and we are left with 3 hours to socialize.
3 hours!
Barely enough time to meet some friends for a movie. Not enough time to drive to any reasonable location to hang out. Enough time to hurt your hearing in a loud dance club. It is definately not enough time to spend with your lover (if ya have one)!
So by my estimation this socializing must take place at work and while you are stuffing your face during meals!
I would be interested in seeing exactly how they got their numbers.
At least this confirms my suspicions about whether our WebSense server at work knows how much time I spend on/.
On the upside, at least I don't have to see those horrible X10 spycam ads.
the user base for Linux is inherently more systems-savvy and internet-knowledgable
One thing you failed to mention is that many of the distributions are being released for users who are not "systems-savvy". Grab a camera, ask a newbie how to configure iptables/ipchains to secure some of their ports and have a kodak moment with that odd expression. Regardless of how savvy users are, there is a risk with most OS's. OpenBSD makes a point of trying to reduce that risk from an out of box install with their coding methodology. Un*x's in general have a more secure platform from an install because of the efforts engineers put into securing things. However, things with the free Un*x OS's are changing daily. Linux has a higher risk, in my opinion, of potential problems due to the vast number of programs and features being added constantly. Every new program added could have potential security holes. It is nice to see some developers making that a focus when they code, but that still does not reduce the risk.
There could easily be a worm or virus created that does damage to systems and there have been worms released with those effects. Does anyone at all recall the "Ramen" internet worm which entered systems through ftp if I'm recalling correctly. The problem is issues with the code. A skilled programmer could look for a place to overrun the buffer on various server daemons and potentially create the same havoc.
Keeping up to date, watching security advisories, and installing fixes as soon as holes are found is the one way to reduce the risk of these problems. Another thing that is important is to reduce the number of things that run as root or have root access. Run daemons as "nobody" instead of root. Educating yourself about security problems and their actual causes is important.
I hate to seem like I am putting a message in for places to take classes, but there are a number of places to get security courses from.
Educate yourselves to the real concerns and problems with security and join in the efforts to keep these attacks from being common place in the Un*x world.
All inkjet printers seem to have the same problems with the price of brand name cardtridges. That is also why there are so many companies making refillables that can "solve" the issue. The problem is the cost of toner cartridges in laser printers. I know roughly how much they go for, and it is expensive. My company has literally thousands of the Optra T series, and folks, it is a good printer for the money. Even with the expense of toner, it is still just as good or better than pricing on comparable HP printers. The lexmark will run you about $3000 for the decked out Optra T, the comparable HP will be around $10,000. Forget about the disposable printer argument and look at the real picture here. The cartridges from Lexmark are about 1/3 more expensive than the remanufactured ones. However, the quality of remanufactured cartridges is not supposed to be as good as the Lexmark cartridges. I have seen both and it does seem that the Lexmark ones are a little better. The whole point is that if you want to buy a office printer and not a home printer, do your research and try a few different ones before making the selection. Otherwise, buy a cheap on sale printer when you need a refill.
speaking of which, I need to find cheap cartridges for my HP G48xi...
Slashdot Mirror
Wired magazine had an interesting article about outsourcing I read on a flight a while back from a IT training course. The article is titled "The new face of the Silicon Age" and it addresses what some analysts say is needed to overcome outsourcing from the U.S.
Their approach seems to be along the lines of the workers in the U.S. being the designers with the the outsourced workers building off the designs. This isn't always a good approach for obvious reasons, but the overall tone suggests that there is a push for more of a creative aspect for US workers and less detail and end product development being done here.
Being in the IT industry myself, I find this a bit disturbing. Most engineers employed in IT focus on architecture of designs, but then the detailed work and support of their designs becomes the real task. Once you pull together an idea, making it happen and supporting it is where the real work comes in. Is it a good idea to focus solely on the first step. Once you loose touch of the detail and support aspects, it's only a matter of time before you loose all of it. After all it's very conceded for engineers in the US to try and think they are the only ones who can create great things as the wired article mentioned seems to imply.
Even after the Novell take over of the Linux Terminal Server Project, I believe that is still available. That will provide the most useful information that I have found for building a kiosk base system. I have personally been involved in creating a diskless kiosk that is widely used in a particular environment and know that you will have to either invest a lot of time to perfect it, or have someone else do it for you. I haven't looked at the LTSP in a while, but if they don't have what you need, they probably have a link to it.
There were some others developing clients like that before such as the Neoware systems. I had an opportunity to demo one of those. I wasn't impressed with the way the PXE boot worked, but otherwise it was ok. IBM has developed a few as well. They used to offer a kiosk like image with their Netvista 2200 products.
You should definately watch out for two things: compression types, and flash disks. Depending on the number of clients, you could face issues with using flash drives. Compression is a wonderful thing and when done properly on an image (such as knoppix) it will run just fine. One model I tested years ago tried to use gzip for the compression on the filesystem. It ran like a slug trying to cross the road with salt on his back. Knoppix is also not a bad idea. It would make a good start at an image. Just lock down certain keys in your Xdefaults file or using xmodmap (re-assign to nonworking keys essentially) and add in a front script to mozilla that forces a java based lock down of the browser when started. With that and a few small tweaks you could create a kiosk type system.
I believe Katie Jone's stated on her website that she wanted to "move my content back up where it belongs..." and also that "didn't want my professional and personal reputation damaged by it..." which goatse would more than likely hurt than help. Interesting idea to get rid of the Katie.com book readers, but the intent is that her personal site will still be a respectable site for her, her family and friends.
I seems to me that the book could at least change the name to "Katie Dot Com" or something that at least slightly obfuscates the spelling so it is not a direct match to Katie Jone's site. Still we will have to see what the courts decide. At least the domain "katiedotcom.com" is still available.
That trick is used a bit and there is nothing at all wrong with it. I did the same thing with Satellite TV and Cable TV. My Satellite provider would send you a check for 200 bucks if you stayed with them a year, so I did. Then after I called and confirmed my check was in the mail for the offer, I canceled my service. I immediately called my cable company for the dish buy out special, went with a sweet cable package and they paid me $300 bucks to drag off my dish.
I am afraid that the fate of those iPods is like the fate of my dish. Many companies will end up destroying them afterwards. They would crush the satellite dishes once they had them. It would be a shame to see an iPod graveyard...
There have been other organizations that have done lawsuits on vague patents like this. One of the ones that I have heard a lot about and looked into is the patents involving bar codes and Lemelson's vague patents. If you google for lemelson and lawsuit, you will find lots of information on this. These guys are following the same example.
Companies were told to pay up or risk being sued if they used bar codes. The price kept going up as they went to bigger companies every time. Finally some companies stood up against the vague patents and beat it in court. Those guys are pro's at patent law and went around telling people to pay up or get sued. It looks as if there are more playing the same old trick.
A friend of mine told me about a series of Star Trek that just released a pilot episode and is being looked at. It seems to be a continuation of the original series and will use amatuers as the crew and everything.
The one I am referring to is the Star Trek - New Voyages site.
Even though I share the same name as one of the actors who played in Trek, I'm not much of a follower. Maybe some others on Slashdot who are in the know could validate this?
Here is a good link to a study on WEP.
/.*
(In)Security of the WEP algorithm
What people fail to realize is that there are some flaws with WEP that make it easy enough to decipher. If you simply don't want someone to see what is in your data packets floating over the airwaves, setup a VPN connection to a wired station from your mobile devices.
You should also consider turning on MAC table filters to prevent unwanted cards on your network. This isn't fool proof because of MAC address spoofing, but its a start.
Once WPA and some other other improvements being talked about come out, things might improve a bit, but that really is the game. People that want data find ways to get it and that includes cracking codes. *Notes other article about Lorenz on
Come on folks, look at the bigger picture. Look at the two projects they are going to support, MySQL, and JBoss.
Now look at their competitors products (IBM) Websphere and DB2 products. The reasons have to be more than just jumping on the bandwagon with open source. IBM has two products that are similar to the exact two projects HP chose to help.
All is fair in business, but HP isn't going to throw money at projects just to claim they are on the open source bandwagon. I believe the direct intent is to improve MySQL and JBoss to go head to head with IBM on this one.
I can denial of service attack wire with my leatherman. :P *snip snip* denied.
"A separate study by Internet service provider EarthLink found more than 29 million spyware-related files on the 1 million computers the company tested."
Earthlink uses those types of data mineing files in their total access software. When I run spybot and Ad-ware, it constantly finds the files tied in with earthlink for advertising.
Not to mention AIM now has pop up advertising and things. I am glad that I don't have to use my windows machine for anything more than audio processing for the most part. I couldn't imagine what it would be like if I used it to browse the web regularly...
We know Japanese work long hours. We also know they don't work nearly as hard as Americans.
Now that is funny. People assume that Americans work the hardest and are the strongest in various areas. What the NY Times article is pointing out should be a wake up call for most.
Things have changed. It really suprises me how much they have changed. One of the richest people I knew personally was a billionaire, literally. He was my Great Grandfather who was also President Trumans right hand man. In an interview he once responded to the question of how he obtained his wealth as: "The key is to work harder than everyone else and you will succeed." Up until the year 2000, I would have agreed with that statement.
There are two falicies to his logic though. There is the first falicy which is opportunity must be present for that to work, and secondly that you have a clear view of how much everyone else is doing so you can do better. What this article points out is that we have ignored the work other countries do.
Your comment on how Americans work harder was the case in some generations. In the youngest and up-coming generation, I do not believe that is the case. Look at the mentality and work force that is coming up. Where is the emphasis on higher education, in particular graduate studies?
Part of the problem I believe comes from the mentality that the youngest generation was raised with. They are the product of a highy successful, rich and full economy that is now crumbling. Many of them have the "World owes me" attitude. What they fail to realize is that noone owe them anything and being lazy will not pay off.
So to your statement, even though some people work hard, the average person in the work force in the US does their 40 hours and goes home. They don't put in long hours for free. I routinely have to put in 60 hour weeks and longer if emergencies arise. I also have to tell myself that it is ok and that I shouldn't make a big deal of the fact I am salaried and will NOT get compensated for those hours.
In other countries, they don't have to tell themselves that. The compensation for innovation, hardwork, and effort is viewed differently in other cultures.
A friend of mine is that I went to college with before I dropped out of school is still looking for a starting IT job. Why would someone who finished their 4 year Comp Science degree from an accredited university be looking for a job? He has the skills to do the job, but I know from experience that his social skills are rather lacking. These days it takes not only the knowledge, but it takes being bold and outgoing as well. The best he has done is working for the number 1 retailer as a cashier. I left school after two years and with my background landed a job at a Fortune 50 retailer.
Starting salary is negotiable. Part of getting what you want is the attitude you have. You can't just go into an interview and let them have 100% of the control with things. You have to be assertive and confident. If they start talking figures to you, or ask you how much you want, there is an appropriate answer. "I am negotiable, send me an offer and we will discuss it." Larger companies will make you an offer and if you don't like the offer, counter offer. If it's extremely low, then your chances of getting a decent amount out of them is slim.
I have worked in smaller startup companies before. The job security and pay is usually less. If you are interested in a larger company, they may start you out paying less than some nitch startups, but the experience can be extremely valuable. I have heard many times at my company that a resume didn't stand out as much because the person has never had any experience with a larger corporation.
One other thing to keep in mind is that you should always be upfront and honest when dealing with companies. I have sat through other peoples interviews with my team and some of the stories I have are rather entertaining. I still don't see how someone could associate IPC coding with sending database information from a VAX/VMS system, but I digress... Just make sure that you tell then the truth when they ask questions. If they ask you "Do you know how to use IPC coding?", then unless you can tell them about shared memory and messaging queues, or at least what IPC stands for, then say "I am not sure." You will find larger companies will more likely ask you some in-depth technical questions while interviewing. These days, I am a little weary of companies that don't.
Technically it isn't the language that is written in C, it is the interpreter/compilers that are written in C. There are also some similarities with the languages, but that is like saying Japanese is Chinese because they share some common characters in the language. Most compilers that I have used or know about are written in C, but you also have to look at who is writting them. I don't think most Java programmers would have a copy of the dragon compilers book (Alfred V. Aho's "Compilers - Principles, techniques and tools") or would have the kind of background to write a compiler.
.... int brain;
After all, langauages like C, C#, C++, Fortan, COBOL and the lot get translated into machine byte code of some type and on their native compiled environments. The interpreters and compilers that do the translation are beyond the scope and are more complex than what most "applications programmer" could handle.
I am not implying as a person they couldn't handle it, but lets face it folks, there is a reason why so many college students start out with a concetration on Computer Science and wind up with a degree in Information Technology. After all, I found languages like assembler easy while others struggled, but then again I looked at the straight forward way of looking at it. In the end of things with assembler, if you want it to do something, you have to think of the smallest and most detailed steps you would take to get there.
One good analogy of Java, C, and Assembler:
Look at it as if you were going to get the newspaper off the porch...
Java: paper p; p.grabNthePaper()
C: walktodoor(); opendoor(); grabpaper(); closedoor(); walkback();
Assembler: mov leftfoot, forward; int motorfunction; move rightfoot, forward;
aixguru1 - "Ogg like AIX, AIX Gooooood. Have you had your IBM brainwashing today?"
I know, but then what would the fun be in telling people private and confidential information. So far I haven't seen the exact answer posted anywhere, but I do find the lengths that some people speculate to very entertaining.
:-P
One thing to note is that most larger companies will not disclose such information. It is in the best interests of many companies to keep a closed "black box" idea when it comes to what the folks on the end see.
If you do find a deep interest in what is being used at any retail shop, the hardware vendors for most devices that have a company name on them have web sites and technical information. It makes it really handy if you want to add a thermal receipt printer and cash drawer to your lemonade stand
-AIXguru, Forget to deallocate something? No worry, its often fun to see what is in limits.h...Doh!
-One of the original layout architects and engineers of the terminal and register projects for them
Maybe they will sue Fortune.com, their name is always at the top of the lists... Not to mention for the money they charge for the lists now, Im sure their profit has jumped.
The issue that you will have is based on cost. Most large corporations (like the fortune 100 company I work for) have a mentality that open source is free. The code is free, the software licensing is free, but is there a cost?
Most people don't understand why they (being large corporations) call things open source instead of by the name of Linux or ___BSD. What it comes down to is what they are considering. They define many projects that use "free" or "open" software as open source in an implied type of meaning relating to support cost in most cases.
What most people fail to realize is that with a commercial "closed source" product, the company that sold it to you is expected to support that product. If it has problems and the wizbang features they market to you break, then you go back to them and tell them to fix it. After all, you paid them for it and it should work. One other thing to consider is that many software companies have a very strict QA testing environment. This doesn't mean the software is better, but rather that the company that purchased the product has someone to point a finger at when it breaks and someone who will be more obligated to correcting the issue.
With open software, it is quite different. Most of you know that bug fixes are done mostly on spare time of coders helping with projects. There is no solid support of software like you have with commercial software. You may consider mailing lists and bug tracking pages to be support, but thats not quite the same as being able to pick up a phone, call the developer and say "Fix this!". While many developers in the open source community have a sense to help out, many don't. So you are not garaunteed support from them. The other thing to consider is with such a large environment, who does the end support? Most large corporations pay for end support through their vendors they bought the software and products from. With Linux, what companies can provide that?
There are options like getting with RedHat or some others offering "Enterprise" solutions, but if the goal is not to pay for software, then you will pay dearly for support. Then again, it's my experience working with RS/6000 systems that my company pays for the OS/Systems and for support both, so who knows. Just keep in mind that support is a major fact.
Socializing? Hmm, lets break this down shall we... "41 percent of users in the United States are online an average of 10 hours or more per week..." Ok, so there are 168 hours in a week. The typical geek seems to spend 10 hours a day sleeping, or 70 hours a week. If you spend 3 hours a for meals (1 for breakfast, lunch and dinner)thats 21 hours. The average work week for a full time employee in the computer industry is typically 50+ hours (we'll go with 50). Most folks have to drive on average 30 minutes a day minimum to work as well. That makes another 3.5 hours a week. So far folks, we are left with 23.5 hours. Let's pretent that most of us actually bath daily and spend around 45 minutes on personal cleanlyness per day. That means 5.25 hours is spent with grooming. Now, lets estimate that you spend another 4 hours a week doing things like laundry and grocery shopping and various other life activities. Now we are left with 13.25 hours total. I space out a minimum of 15 minutes outside of work. Most people do. So lets just round down to 13 hours. So, no we take out the 10 hours for the internet and we are left with 3 hours to socialize. 3 hours! Barely enough time to meet some friends for a movie. Not enough time to drive to any reasonable location to hang out. Enough time to hurt your hearing in a loud dance club. It is definately not enough time to spend with your lover (if ya have one)! So by my estimation this socializing must take place at work and while you are stuffing your face during meals! I would be interested in seeing exactly how they got their numbers.
At least this confirms my suspicions about whether our WebSense server at work knows how much time I spend on /.
On the upside, at least I don't have to see those horrible X10 spycam ads.
One thing you failed to mention is that many of the distributions are being released for users who are not "systems-savvy". Grab a camera, ask a newbie how to configure iptables/ipchains to secure some of their ports and have a kodak moment with that odd expression. Regardless of how savvy users are, there is a risk with most OS's. OpenBSD makes a point of trying to reduce that risk from an out of box install with their coding methodology. Un*x's in general have a more secure platform from an install because of the efforts engineers put into securing things. However, things with the free Un*x OS's are changing daily. Linux has a higher risk, in my opinion, of potential problems due to the vast number of programs and features being added constantly. Every new program added could have potential security holes. It is nice to see some developers making that a focus when they code, but that still does not reduce the risk. There could easily be a worm or virus created that does damage to systems and there have been worms released with those effects. Does anyone at all recall the "Ramen" internet worm which entered systems through ftp if I'm recalling correctly. The problem is issues with the code. A skilled programmer could look for a place to overrun the buffer on various server daemons and potentially create the same havoc. Keeping up to date, watching security advisories, and installing fixes as soon as holes are found is the one way to reduce the risk of these problems. Another thing that is important is to reduce the number of things that run as root or have root access. Run daemons as "nobody" instead of root. Educating yourself about security problems and their actual causes is important. I hate to seem like I am putting a message in for places to take classes, but there are a number of places to get security courses from.
Sans.org comes to mind first.Educate yourselves to the real concerns and problems with security and join in the efforts to keep these attacks from being common place in the Un*x world.
All inkjet printers seem to have the same problems with the price of brand name cardtridges. That is also why there are so many companies making refillables that can "solve" the issue. The problem is the cost of toner cartridges in laser printers. I know roughly how much they go for, and it is expensive. My company has literally thousands of the Optra T series, and folks, it is a good printer for the money. Even with the expense of toner, it is still just as good or better than pricing on comparable HP printers. The lexmark will run you about $3000 for the decked out Optra T, the comparable HP will be around $10,000. Forget about the disposable printer argument and look at the real picture here. The cartridges from Lexmark are about 1/3 more expensive than the remanufactured ones. However, the quality of remanufactured cartridges is not supposed to be as good as the Lexmark cartridges. I have seen both and it does seem that the Lexmark ones are a little better. The whole point is that if you want to buy a office printer and not a home printer, do your research and try a few different ones before making the selection. Otherwise, buy a cheap on sale printer when you need a refill. speaking of which, I need to find cheap cartridges for my HP G48xi...