I am not arguing that point... but the fact is that if you want an iPod and legal music on it, then you have to use iTunes. It's more of a necessary evil than a good product I think, and people just buy what's cute and popular. And I give it to Apple... the iPod is a great piece of hardware. I just won't buy one because I dislike iTunes:)
$60 a year, unlimited downloads to your PlaysForSure player. Sure, they aren't as pretty as the iPods nor are they are easy to use, but they play music in a random loop with good sound quality.
While iTunes is great, $.99 a song is NOT great especially considering I can pick up a CD for cheaper than that is -- packaging and all. And you know... some people like the album art in REAL LIFE, along with the lyrics so you can sing along horribly (as is the case with me).
So if Google comes along with something better than THAT... i'd be suprised.
That's a moot arguement for me... I give Linux credit where it's due.. my entire site is PHP based and you're damn straight I wouldn't trust it on Windows:)
If you run Exchange, you should use Goodlink. Blackberry can only pray to be as stable, easy, and awesome as Goodlink is under an Exchange environment.
I admin both servers now (because people are hesitant to change), but I have to say from both a user and administrative point of view, Goodlink beats the PANTS off of Blackberry.
My biggest love from Goodlink... the lack of a "Reconcile Now" option. How lame is that?
I was being more specific to the fact that you say your Windows machines crap out... not to the point that you don't get data in a way you want it. That's the job of a developer to get the raw data in a format you can use. The server will work, regardless.
For the record, I'm not a developer anyway -- I'm a sysadmin and if I can stay away from coding, I will although I do have to do my WSH scripting once in a while for login scripts and the like.
Tell me exactly HOW your Windows servers are 'piles of doodoo' as you so eloquently put it. My machines get a LOT of usage (19,000 users that span every state and a few continents), and they all sit and hum along just fine.
If you don't know how to administer or set up the machine, don't blame the software. Blame your stupidity or lack of willingness to learn. I have not had any real big issues with any version of MS's server products. I have more problems with XP machines and that too, is user error and sometimes bad drivers/software.
This is entertaining, and very reminiscent of the class I attended for Red Hat.
Let me put it to you this way... WHAT do you find difficult to do in Windows, what is NOT simple to do, etc. Give me some specific examples, and I will show you how it is all done.
If you cannot provide any examples, I will file you into the 'blathering Linux fanboi moron' club that so many Slashdotters have already seemed to have signed up for.
If not, I'm not interested. I love Nintendo and the games they make, but if they can't adopt a given STANDARD for security reasons... I have no reason to buy their products.
I am looking forward to Revolution though... and this coming from a PURELY PC gamer. I don't own any consoles.
I'll give them credit where it's due... I think XP is a great piece of software, and *knock on wood*, I haven't had any real problems with it. I think the worst of Microsoft's reputation comes from the Grannies and Grandpas who don't know how to use a PC properly -- and their problem is really twofold -- they have the largest operating system in the world, and they have also got the biggest percentage of neophytes who use it. It's really just breeding ground for virii, spyware, and the like. For a reasonably seasoned computer professional, Windows XP works flawlessly.
I will however, complain on a number of points. First, I had a friend who was a developer for the new version of SQL Server. I say *was*, because he quit. There is a *lot* of bureaucracy in Microsoft, and my friend hated it. Every time work was done, there was a meeting on the 'milestone' or whatever... and people would take turns ratting each other out to say that "So and so didn't do this" or whatever -- it was an extremely competitive, hostile environment. He now works for Yahoo, where he says the attitude is much more lax and people are encouraged to take it easy and work together. I think this attitude is also why Google has amongst the happiest employees and most production coming from its offices in the shortest amount of time. The layers of bureaucracy aren't as thick as they are at Microsoft, because Management and Employees aren't so clearly defined as they are in MS. There's a definite separation of powers there, and it causes a lot of friction and causes a lot less to get done.
As I mentioned yes, I've drank the Kool Aid. I think however, I can still keep an open mind. I recently attended a Red Hat systems administration class. I think I was the only "windows only" user there -- most of the people were Unix admins of some sort. I managed throughout to keep my mouth shut, because some of the distinct hatred of Microsoft was so reminiscent of Ballmer throwing chairs. I felt out of place at a very snobby party, because every few moments the instructor was there critisizing Microsoft and its products and I always was tempted to ask -- "So what does Open Source have to offer that can compete with Microsoft's products?" This is true in a lot of areas -- Exchange, BizTalk,.NET (Developer tools are laughable in Open Source), etc. I'm not saying any of those products are even close to perfect... but they are currently the best. The instructor was convinced that Exchange can't support how many emails that companies need yet, I just came off a build of Exchange that supports 19,000 users across thousands of geographic sites, all managed from a single location. Is it sheer hatred, or is it totally just idiocy on the part of those guys? I'm not trying to stereotype... I'm trying to understand. I would say 90% of the problems that the Unix/Linux guys laughed about with Microsoft, I could have fixed easily because it was an error on THEIR part, not Microsoft's.
I know I've said enough already to get modded troll -- supporting Microsoft -- the horror! But look folks, I'm a Windows administrator with great admiration for Linux and Open Source. I run Ubuntu at home, my web site is served off of Red Hat Enterprise 4, and Firefox is the default browser on all my machines, Windows or not. But I know where Linux has strong points, and I know where it has weak points. After taking the class, and passing the test... I can honestly say that in any network *I* set up, I'd never use Linux as a domain controller. I'd use it for web serving, databasing, maybe a handful of other things. But it's not that Microsoft's solution is necessarily the best in itself.. it is the best in CONJUNCTION with other products. Those products, not suprisingly, are also Microsoft products. So I can create my Windows domain, set up users, set up a file server, set up shadow copies, and then all administrative tasks become idiot proof. My users can restore prior copies of files automatically that they delete or simply screw up.
I admit up front, I have a name that is foreign. You wouldn't be able to put your finger on it, but it's Middle Eastern in origin. Point of fact, is that my parents are Pakistani, and that's where my name comes from.
I was fortunate enough to land a job last year thru a friend of a friend -- and it's worked out great. I am well respected, well treated, reasonably well paid (but we'd all like some more, wouldn't we?), and people know the quality of my work not based on my skin color (which by the way, is brown) but the delivery of my work.
After I got hired for this position, I still had the automated emails coming back to me from the CareerBuilders, HotJobs, Monster etc.. So for my own experiment I changed the name on my resume to read William Johannsen (or something to that effect.. very "white") and left everythign else identical and changed the email to something else so I wouldn't spam up my inbox.
It's amazing how many more emails I recieved. At first, I thought it may have been a fluke, so I sent to jobs I prior applied to under my real name and got denied or got no response. I got responses from them as well. Granted, not everybody sent a response and I don't want to give the illusion that everybody is racist or whatever.... but seeing is believing. If I changed my name to John Smith or whatever tomorrow, I believe opportunities would be far greater than if I stuck with my real name.
Is this a 'scientific' experiment? Not in the slightest... it was to satisfy my curiousity and I did it for only a month because I grew bored of doing it knowing that I wouldn't accept any of the jobs, even though some of them were decent. It just didnt make sense since I had already started to build a niche where I was.
I should note, that on the bottom on my resume with my real name, I'd put US CITIZEN on it, because my name tends probably to associate more with people who need H1 Visas or something that come from India or wherever... and I'm sure this is a distraction to a lot of employers who are not willing to sponsor somebody.
Either way... those are the depressing results of my small non-scientific experiment. You can take away from it what you will, but under my own view, I really do think chances improve if you have a white name.. I'm sure a white face only helps further but obviously I can't find any information to the contrary on that.
Though I don't see XBox being the centre of that phenomena, nor will it lead the pack. If anything, the future will only encourage users into purchasing a PC for use in gaming -- not an XBox. Granted, the XBox is an impressive piece of hardware, but when you start playing World of Warcraft and realize why the keyboard and mouse are great -- then you will realize the flawed idea of a controller and a virtual world that will bring you only so far, but not all the way with regard to the online gaming experience.
And in a sense, the comment made about escaping reality is true. However, my escape from reality includes kicking the shit out of people online which in real life, I would only hope to do. So unfortunately his theory of playing games to escape holds little water. If I want to escape and be alone... I'll masturbate.
For linking to ANY article written by that idiot Dvorak. If Slashdot picks it up, his article gets steam and then other sites will make assumptions and false alerts based on shoddy reporting and opinions by the one and only, Dvorak.
The browser would suck due to security holes related to Active X.
Microsoft has succeeded in bringing down a good browser and turning it into a piece of garbage because the bugs in Active X aren't fixed, and they are instead just putting a new pretty face on it. Oh wait.. isn't that what they are doing with IE7?
I am being sarcastic, but what's the point of buying Opera when there's no Active X support? I mean... that's the whole premise of Internet Explorer, being able to download and install patches for your OS and things like that. While they might be able to buy Opera for a song, they would spend millions making it compliant for their use -- and that's idiotic when they already have a codebase they can work off of (IE6) and improve.
There's few positions that if you are hiring a programmer, system admin, network security, CCNE, etc... that the ODDS are that you'll find a MALE with more experience and better qualified than a woman to do the job.
And in the end, as an employer, you want the best person to do the job. Granted there are circumstances in which you can go with somebody less qualified -- especially when you aren't willing to pay market value. And that unfortunately, is where women get into the IT industry.
I'm not going to say women are less competent than men -- in fact I know a handful myself that work harder and are smarter than their male counterparts in IT. However, they are very few and far between. So if you put a job out, and get 300 applicants, the odds are that only 5-10 of them will be women to respond. And from that 5-10, do you think that 290-295 men won't have better credentials and are better suited for the job?
Sorry, but that's just the facts of life. If women want to make it in IT, they have to push their gender to be empowered enough to move into the territory held so strongly by men.
I think the downfall of Linux is going to be the lack of proper GROUPWARE software. There's 'opengroupware' but it's nothing worth writing home about. There might be a few stragglers here and there, but by in large, nothing competes with Exchange other than Notes.
I for one am looking forward to seeing a true competitor to Exchange.
Hehe, it's only if a company is actually buying the license agreements year after year. In financial institutions it rarely happens. They will use the software and hardware until it's dead and buried by everybody else, because it still works and change makes a company susceptible to not being able to trade, make a loan, etc... that's HUGE amounts of money in a day it can't afford to lose.
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when their operating system is as secure as Linux, but works like a Mac. Easy folks, easy easy easy.
/. disagree.
Simplicity is at the core of Google.. Linux is a bit complex for your 'average' joe -- regardless of how much the zealots on
When I'd stop people from talking badly about a slutty girl in hopes that I would later get in her pants.
:)
Maybe Bill is cozying up to Google to get some 'nookie'?
I am not arguing that point... but the fact is that if you want an iPod and legal music on it, then you have to use iTunes. It's more of a necessary evil than a good product I think, and people just buy what's cute and popular. And I give it to Apple... the iPod is a great piece of hardware. I just won't buy one because I dislike iTunes :)
$60 a year, unlimited downloads to your PlaysForSure player. Sure, they aren't as pretty as the iPods nor are they are easy to use, but they play music in a random loop with good sound quality.
While iTunes is great, $.99 a song is NOT great especially considering I can pick up a CD for cheaper than that is -- packaging and all. And you know... some people like the album art in REAL LIFE, along with the lyrics so you can sing along horribly (as is the case with me).
So if Google comes along with something better than THAT... i'd be suprised.
But in the case of PHP, I'd use Linux anyway :)
:)
That's a moot arguement for me... I give Linux credit where it's due.. my entire site is PHP based and you're damn straight I wouldn't trust it on Windows
If you run Exchange, you should use Goodlink. Blackberry can only pray to be as stable, easy, and awesome as Goodlink is under an Exchange environment.
I admin both servers now (because people are hesitant to change), but I have to say from both a user and administrative point of view, Goodlink beats the PANTS off of Blackberry.
My biggest love from Goodlink... the lack of a "Reconcile Now" option. How lame is that?
Log analysis of what, exactly?
I was being more specific to the fact that you say your Windows machines crap out... not to the point that you don't get data in a way you want it. That's the job of a developer to get the raw data in a format you can use. The server will work, regardless.
For the record, I'm not a developer anyway -- I'm a sysadmin and if I can stay away from coding, I will although I do have to do my WSH scripting once in a while for login scripts and the like.
Tell me exactly HOW your Windows servers are 'piles of doodoo' as you so eloquently put it. My machines get a LOT of usage (19,000 users that span every state and a few continents), and they all sit and hum along just fine.
If you don't know how to administer or set up the machine, don't blame the software. Blame your stupidity or lack of willingness to learn. I have not had any real big issues with any version of MS's server products. I have more problems with XP machines and that too, is user error and sometimes bad drivers/software.
This is entertaining, and very reminiscent of the class I attended for Red Hat.
Let me put it to you this way... WHAT do you find difficult to do in Windows, what is NOT simple to do, etc. Give me some specific examples, and I will show you how it is all done.
If you cannot provide any examples, I will file you into the 'blathering Linux fanboi moron' club that so many Slashdotters have already seemed to have signed up for.
Looking at Slashdot's image of Bill.... I am thinking he's more Borg now :)
You just gave me the reason to buy the DS :)
Either way, I still don't like to have to spend an addition $30 when it's something Nintendo could have (and should have) fixed a while ago.
My point exactly.
If not, I'm not interested. I love Nintendo and the games they make, but if they can't adopt a given STANDARD for security reasons... I have no reason to buy their products.
I am looking forward to Revolution though... and this coming from a PURELY PC gamer. I don't own any consoles.
Actually, they gave me a copy of RHEL 4 with the class. For $2500, I'm glad they did too :)
And it isn't too bad.
.NET (Developer tools are laughable in Open Source), etc. I'm not saying any of those products are even close to perfect... but they are currently the best. The instructor was convinced that Exchange can't support how many emails that companies need yet, I just came off a build of Exchange that supports 19,000 users across thousands of geographic sites, all managed from a single location. Is it sheer hatred, or is it totally just idiocy on the part of those guys? I'm not trying to stereotype... I'm trying to understand. I would say 90% of the problems that the Unix/Linux guys laughed about with Microsoft, I could have fixed easily because it was an error on THEIR part, not Microsoft's.
I'll give them credit where it's due... I think XP is a great piece of software, and *knock on wood*, I haven't had any real problems with it. I think the worst of Microsoft's reputation comes from the Grannies and Grandpas who don't know how to use a PC properly -- and their problem is really twofold -- they have the largest operating system in the world, and they have also got the biggest percentage of neophytes who use it. It's really just breeding ground for virii, spyware, and the like. For a reasonably seasoned computer professional, Windows XP works flawlessly.
I will however, complain on a number of points. First, I had a friend who was a developer for the new version of SQL Server. I say *was*, because he quit. There is a *lot* of bureaucracy in Microsoft, and my friend hated it. Every time work was done, there was a meeting on the 'milestone' or whatever... and people would take turns ratting each other out to say that "So and so didn't do this" or whatever -- it was an extremely competitive, hostile environment. He now works for Yahoo, where he says the attitude is much more lax and people are encouraged to take it easy and work together. I think this attitude is also why Google has amongst the happiest employees and most production coming from its offices in the shortest amount of time. The layers of bureaucracy aren't as thick as they are at Microsoft, because Management and Employees aren't so clearly defined as they are in MS. There's a definite separation of powers there, and it causes a lot of friction and causes a lot less to get done.
As I mentioned yes, I've drank the Kool Aid. I think however, I can still keep an open mind. I recently attended a Red Hat systems administration class. I think I was the only "windows only" user there -- most of the people were Unix admins of some sort. I managed throughout to keep my mouth shut, because some of the distinct hatred of Microsoft was so reminiscent of Ballmer throwing chairs. I felt out of place at a very snobby party, because every few moments the instructor was there critisizing Microsoft and its products and I always was tempted to ask -- "So what does Open Source have to offer that can compete with Microsoft's products?" This is true in a lot of areas -- Exchange, BizTalk,
I know I've said enough already to get modded troll -- supporting Microsoft -- the horror! But look folks, I'm a Windows administrator with great admiration for Linux and Open Source. I run Ubuntu at home, my web site is served off of Red Hat Enterprise 4, and Firefox is the default browser on all my machines, Windows or not. But I know where Linux has strong points, and I know where it has weak points. After taking the class, and passing the test... I can honestly say that in any network *I* set up, I'd never use Linux as a domain controller. I'd use it for web serving, databasing, maybe a handful of other things. But it's not that Microsoft's solution is necessarily the best in itself.. it is the best in CONJUNCTION with other products. Those products, not suprisingly, are also Microsoft products. So I can create my Windows domain, set up users, set up a file server, set up shadow copies, and then all administrative tasks become idiot proof. My users can restore prior copies of files automatically that they delete or simply screw up.
I admit up front, I have a name that is foreign. You wouldn't be able to put your finger on it, but it's Middle Eastern in origin. Point of fact, is that my parents are Pakistani, and that's where my name comes from.
I was fortunate enough to land a job last year thru a friend of a friend -- and it's worked out great. I am well respected, well treated, reasonably well paid (but we'd all like some more, wouldn't we?), and people know the quality of my work not based on my skin color (which by the way, is brown) but the delivery of my work.
After I got hired for this position, I still had the automated emails coming back to me from the CareerBuilders, HotJobs, Monster etc.. So for my own experiment I changed the name on my resume to read William Johannsen (or something to that effect.. very "white") and left everythign else identical and changed the email to something else so I wouldn't spam up my inbox.
It's amazing how many more emails I recieved. At first, I thought it may have been a fluke, so I sent to jobs I prior applied to under my real name and got denied or got no response. I got responses from them as well. Granted, not everybody sent a response and I don't want to give the illusion that everybody is racist or whatever.... but seeing is believing. If I changed my name to John Smith or whatever tomorrow, I believe opportunities would be far greater than if I stuck with my real name.
Is this a 'scientific' experiment? Not in the slightest... it was to satisfy my curiousity and I did it for only a month because I grew bored of doing it knowing that I wouldn't accept any of the jobs, even though some of them were decent. It just didnt make sense since I had already started to build a niche where I was.
I should note, that on the bottom on my resume with my real name, I'd put US CITIZEN on it, because my name tends probably to associate more with people who need H1 Visas or something that come from India or wherever... and I'm sure this is a distraction to a lot of employers who are not willing to sponsor somebody.
Either way... those are the depressing results of my small non-scientific experiment. You can take away from it what you will, but under my own view, I really do think chances improve if you have a white name.. I'm sure a white face only helps further but obviously I can't find any information to the contrary on that.
That the Intel processor will be the limitation of that system :)
I really don't know what else to do other than laugh. It's so funny it's pathetic.
Though I don't see XBox being the centre of that phenomena, nor will it lead the pack. If anything, the future will only encourage users into purchasing a PC for use in gaming -- not an XBox. Granted, the XBox is an impressive piece of hardware, but when you start playing World of Warcraft and realize why the keyboard and mouse are great -- then you will realize the flawed idea of a controller and a virtual world that will bring you only so far, but not all the way with regard to the online gaming experience.
And in a sense, the comment made about escaping reality is true. However, my escape from reality includes kicking the shit out of people online which in real life, I would only hope to do. So unfortunately his theory of playing games to escape holds little water. If I want to escape and be alone... I'll masturbate.
For linking to ANY article written by that idiot Dvorak. If Slashdot picks it up, his article gets steam and then other sites will make assumptions and false alerts based on shoddy reporting and opinions by the one and only, Dvorak.
God this really boggles the mind...
Microsoft would buy Opera.
Microsoft would implement Active X into Opera.
The browser would suck due to security holes related to Active X.
Microsoft has succeeded in bringing down a good browser and turning it into a piece of garbage because the bugs in Active X aren't fixed, and they are instead just putting a new pretty face on it. Oh wait.. isn't that what they are doing with IE7?
I am being sarcastic, but what's the point of buying Opera when there's no Active X support? I mean... that's the whole premise of Internet Explorer, being able to download and install patches for your OS and things like that. While they might be able to buy Opera for a song, they would spend millions making it compliant for their use -- and that's idiotic when they already have a codebase they can work off of (IE6) and improve.
Sorry, Dvorak really has to lay off the crack.
There's few positions that if you are hiring a programmer, system admin, network security, CCNE, etc... that the ODDS are that you'll find a MALE with more experience and better qualified than a woman to do the job.
And in the end, as an employer, you want the best person to do the job. Granted there are circumstances in which you can go with somebody less qualified -- especially when you aren't willing to pay market value. And that unfortunately, is where women get into the IT industry.
I'm not going to say women are less competent than men -- in fact I know a handful myself that work harder and are smarter than their male counterparts in IT. However, they are very few and far between. So if you put a job out, and get 300 applicants, the odds are that only 5-10 of them will be women to respond. And from that 5-10, do you think that 290-295 men won't have better credentials and are better suited for the job?
Sorry, but that's just the facts of life. If women want to make it in IT, they have to push their gender to be empowered enough to move into the territory held so strongly by men.
I think the downfall of Linux is going to be the lack of proper GROUPWARE software. There's 'opengroupware' but it's nothing worth writing home about. There might be a few stragglers here and there, but by in large, nothing competes with Exchange other than Notes.
I for one am looking forward to seeing a true competitor to Exchange.
I won't argue that point... I am a Mac lover though, strangely enough I don't own one. All i have is Windows PCs in my house, and at work.
:)
I'm just admiring from afar until I get some bucks saved up to buy an iBook or PowerBook
Hehe, it's only if a company is actually buying the license agreements year after year. In financial institutions it rarely happens. They will use the software and hardware until it's dead and buried by everybody else, because it still works and change makes a company susceptible to not being able to trade, make a loan, etc... that's HUGE amounts of money in a day it can't afford to lose.