I struggled over wether to put that link as my sig. I found that hosting co. from another slashdotter's post (similar sig) and I was truely grateful for it. It was exactly what I wanted for my personal site. If I really wanted to spam, I'd have a link in my sig to some site full of pop-up crap.
The only thing I'm sorry about is the fact that my post here wasn't nearly as funny as I had thought. I'm going to stop posting things when it's past my bed-time....it's never funny the next morning.
I didn't read TFA but I remember when the story broke, there were some entries in a database that said they did exist. Apparently someone had generated a few bar-code stickers that were suppose to be put on disks, but they just ended up in someone's desk or in the trash...never made it onto actual disks. So, YES, somebody screwed up, but I don't know if it was the people who actually lost their jobs.
I've never heard of a vendor that isn't flexible when it comes to development and test environment licenses. I work in the financial sector and every system (EVERY SINGLE ONE) has at least a development environment and a pre-prod/UAT/Test environment. For more critical applications that go through a lot of regular change (i.e. website) there's actually SEVEN environments it goes through, the last being production.
We use an enterprise scheduling system called AutoSys which is suppose to be the industry standard, but it doesn't impress me...and I think it's super-expensive. Good luck.
-Steve
For the most part I agree with you. I think Linux WILL make headway in the server arena over the next several years. I know for a fact that there is not a single linux server in my bank, but were looking into it. However the main jist of the article was linux on the desktop. I think it will be quite a while before we see that.
All banks use MS Windows servers... ALL OF THEM. They still do account processing on mainframe though...that won't change for a long time.
I do believe that Linux will start to bite into the MS market but it will be a while. It takes a LONG time for a major product to migrate to a different OS. Most of our vendors migrated away from Unix (particularly SUN...we've had nothing but problems with their hardware...) because that's what their customers are asking for. Having fewer types of server OS's in a company lowers costs.
Not sure who your wife works for... I work for one of the US top 5 banks. First of all Mainframes are a whole different story. Yes, most of what's run is usually bought and then modified. But for Client-Server systems, it's mostly vendor. There's a LOT more to a bank than processing accounts. In fact that's a relativly small part of the IT budget.
... and the last 4 programs that I've written are in.NET. 2 of which were desktop apps and 2 of which were web apps.
We use all the latest technology, XML, ODBC, etc. We still have many Unix based servers.
But the point of the article, and my post, is about linux on the desktop and how difficult that could be to implement (in a large company). I was specifically talking about how most vendor products used in my bank (or any large bank) don't include desktop components that run on Linux. It's different when IBM comes out and says "Were moving to linux!" since they are a technology company. They have the knowledge and resources to make that shift. A bank has NO interest in the progress of technology. They want to use off-the-shelf technology to meet their business needs. Most large non-technology businesses are like that.
One thing I forgot to mention... I work with many different systems in the bank. I can think of 4 systems, from different vendors, that all ran on Unix as of 5 years ago. Now, they all run on Windows Servers.
We rely HEAVILY on vendor software...and I'm not talking about office and that crap. I'm talking about MANY different systems, almost all of which have some kind of desktop component. Guess which OS all these desktop components are made for?
Sure, all the Linux Gurus can point to software that does the same thing...the only problem is big banks don't like writing/customizing/modifying/maintaining software. They're not in the software business. They want a vendor to do that and for most Linux desktop apps, that's not an option. They MUST have a contract with a well established vendor that can fix an application when it stops working. I wish it wasn't that way....hey I'm a programmer....but I can't blame them either.
Solder DOES increase conductivity and you can solder wire to a speaker but you have to be VERY careful. I never solder wire to a speaker for two reasons....
1. Speakers can blow. If you need to swap a speaker out, using quick connects works a lot better. I use to run a sound company and sometimes we'd have to swap speakers out in the middle of a gig.
2. Soldering irons are hot! The voice coil of a speaker can easily be damaged (or it's life-time shortened) due to the heat. Especially high frequency drivers...never solder dome tweeters!
There are definitely different grades of copper....that is, there are different amounts of impurities that they mix in. However, when it comes to hooking up speakers, it just doesn't make a huge difference.
Where cables DO make a difference is when you're hooking up line-level signals. i.e. the analog output of a CD player to your amp. The shielding of the cables is what makes the difference. And if the signal is coming from a turntable or microphone, it's REALLY important since those signals are boosted in the amp so much more. Even still, you're not going to notice much of a difference between RCA cables you buy at WalMart vs Circuit City. When it comes to hooking up digital outputs (DVD) to your Dolby Digital amp, it doesn't make a difference at all as long as you have a coax cable (with RCA ends) meant for digital use. For this, just get the WalMart version.
The only time cables can make a difference is if they're gold plated which only really helps if EVERYTHING (plugs and jacks) are gold plated. Ask anyone who works in a recording studio and they say gold plating on everything can lower your total noise floor by 2db, which is significant for studios... probably wouldn't notice it in a house.
I use to run a pro-sound company (we ran big sound systems for bands and DJs). Every now-and-then I'd get to a gig and find out I was missing a speaker cable or not have a long enough speaker cable to get to the speakers they owner wanted outside on the deck,etc.
Whenever that happened I just ran to the nearest Lowe's or WalMart and bought two 16 gauge extension cords, chop off the ends and put Neutrik speaker connectors on it. Worked great and got a 100ft speaker cable for 8 dollars. You actually don't need more than 16 guage unless you're pushing serious wattage (>150 RMS). Of course for any install job I would use 14 and 12 guage.
It's an interesting notion over all.... a disc orbiting in one direction with magnets orbiting in the opposite direction.
Obviously the scale of the thing presents the biggest challenge but it seems that would generate a LOT of volt-amps.
Well, except for the sponsored links, when you do a MSN search on Linux, it no longer comes back with the FUD MS page talking about total cost-of-ownership of Linux vs MS as one of the first links.
It doesn't even have to be that complicated... typically the URL in the email is "correct" but the underlying link is to another site....most lusers never look at the address in the status bar. http://www.ebay.com/
This is why/. puts the domain in brackets after the link.
Just because they didn't go on your war for more oil doesn't make the worthless.
That's because they were already getting oil from Iraq in the highly corupt oil-for-food program. I'm not trying to flame-bait here...I wish the Iraq war didn't happen. I actually like France as a nation, I just think Jauc Chirac(sp?) is an asshole.
It looks like a lot of the 'zine deals with building and hacking. I wonder how long before they get sued under DMCA for showing how to reverse engineer something. I also wonder if they'll avoid certain subjects just to avoid a suit....that'd suck.
For certain types of calls (commercial accounts, securities accounts) the SEC requires calls to be recorded (they may or may not necessarily be monitored.) I'm a programmer ink in a bank call center. Also... all other reps have an "emergency" button on their phone they can press to record the conversation in case a caller starts threating to come down and start shooting people.
I had always heard that Jupiter would have to be 6x as massive for a fusion reaction to trigger. Event then it would be a very cold star. Our Sun is actually larger than average... essentially our system could have been an "average" binary system, but for whatever reason our Sun grabbed most of the material (99%) and Jupiter most of the rest (something like 0.75%) with the rest of the plants taking the rest (0.25%).
Slashdot Mirror
YBox
I struggled over wether to put that link as my sig. I found that hosting co. from another slashdotter's post (similar sig) and I was truely grateful for it. It was exactly what I wanted for my personal site. If I really wanted to spam, I'd have a link in my sig to some site full of pop-up crap.
The only thing I'm sorry about is the fact that my post here wasn't nearly as funny as I had thought. I'm going to stop posting things when it's past my bed-time....it's never funny the next morning.
it's just my Beta... Look for my release candidate post next month. Final release date hasn't been determined yet.
I didn't read TFA but I remember when the story broke, there were some entries in a database that said they did exist. Apparently someone had generated a few bar-code stickers that were suppose to be put on disks, but they just ended up in someone's desk or in the trash...never made it onto actual disks. So, YES, somebody screwed up, but I don't know if it was the people who actually lost their jobs.
I've never heard of a vendor that isn't flexible when it comes to development and test environment licenses. I work in the financial sector and every system (EVERY SINGLE ONE) has at least a development environment and a pre-prod/UAT/Test environment. For more critical applications that go through a lot of regular change (i.e. website) there's actually SEVEN environments it goes through, the last being production.
We use an enterprise scheduling system called AutoSys which is suppose to be the industry standard, but it doesn't impress me...and I think it's super-expensive. Good luck. -Steve
This is a test.
For the most part I agree with you. I think Linux WILL make headway in the server arena over the next several years. I know for a fact that there is not a single linux server in my bank, but were looking into it. However the main jist of the article was linux on the desktop. I think it will be quite a while before we see that.
All banks use MS Windows servers... ALL OF THEM. They still do account processing on mainframe though...that won't change for a long time.
I do believe that Linux will start to bite into the MS market but it will be a while. It takes a LONG time for a major product to migrate to a different OS. Most of our vendors migrated away from Unix (particularly SUN...we've had nothing but problems with their hardware...) because that's what their customers are asking for. Having fewer types of server OS's in a company lowers costs.
Not sure who your wife works for... I work for one of the US top 5 banks. First of all Mainframes are a whole different story. Yes, most of what's run is usually bought and then modified. But for Client-Server systems, it's mostly vendor. There's a LOT more to a bank than processing accounts. In fact that's a relativly small part of the IT budget.
.NET. 2 of which were desktop apps and 2 of which were web apps.
... and the last 4 programs that I've written are in
We use all the latest technology, XML, ODBC, etc. We still have many Unix based servers.
But the point of the article, and my post, is about linux on the desktop and how difficult that could be to implement (in a large company). I was specifically talking about how most vendor products used in my bank (or any large bank) don't include desktop components that run on Linux. It's different when IBM comes out and says "Were moving to linux!" since they are a technology company. They have the knowledge and resources to make that shift. A bank has NO interest in the progress of technology. They want to use off-the-shelf technology to meet their business needs. Most large non-technology businesses are like that.
Sorry to respond to my own post....
One thing I forgot to mention... I work with many different systems in the bank. I can think of 4 systems, from different vendors, that all ran on Unix as of 5 years ago. Now, they all run on Windows Servers.
We rely HEAVILY on vendor software...and I'm not talking about office and that crap. I'm talking about MANY different systems, almost all of which have some kind of desktop component. Guess which OS all these desktop components are made for?
Sure, all the Linux Gurus can point to software that does the same thing...the only problem is big banks don't like writing/customizing/modifying/maintaining software. They're not in the software business. They want a vendor to do that and for most Linux desktop apps, that's not an option. They MUST have a contract with a well established vendor that can fix an application when it stops working. I wish it wasn't that way....hey I'm a programmer....but I can't blame them either.
Solder DOES increase conductivity and you can solder wire to a speaker but you have to be VERY careful. I never solder wire to a speaker for two reasons....
1. Speakers can blow. If you need to swap a speaker out, using quick connects works a lot better. I use to run a sound company and sometimes we'd have to swap speakers out in the middle of a gig.
2. Soldering irons are hot! The voice coil of a speaker can easily be damaged (or it's life-time shortened) due to the heat. Especially high frequency drivers...never solder dome tweeters!
There are definitely different grades of copper....that is, there are different amounts of impurities that they mix in. However, when it comes to hooking up speakers, it just doesn't make a huge difference.
Where cables DO make a difference is when you're hooking up line-level signals. i.e. the analog output of a CD player to your amp. The shielding of the cables is what makes the difference. And if the signal is coming from a turntable or microphone, it's REALLY important since those signals are boosted in the amp so much more. Even still, you're not going to notice much of a difference between RCA cables you buy at WalMart vs Circuit City. When it comes to hooking up digital outputs (DVD) to your Dolby Digital amp, it doesn't make a difference at all as long as you have a coax cable (with RCA ends) meant for digital use. For this, just get the WalMart version.
The only time cables can make a difference is if they're gold plated which only really helps if EVERYTHING (plugs and jacks) are gold plated. Ask anyone who works in a recording studio and they say gold plating on everything can lower your total noise floor by 2db, which is significant for studios... probably wouldn't notice it in a house.
I use to run a pro-sound company (we ran big sound systems for bands and DJs). Every now-and-then I'd get to a gig and find out I was missing a speaker cable or not have a long enough speaker cable to get to the speakers they owner wanted outside on the deck,etc.
Whenever that happened I just ran to the nearest Lowe's or WalMart and bought two 16 gauge extension cords, chop off the ends and put Neutrik speaker connectors on it. Worked great and got a 100ft speaker cable for 8 dollars. You actually don't need more than 16 guage unless you're pushing serious wattage (>150 RMS).
Of course for any install job I would use 14 and 12 guage.
It's an interesting notion over all.... a disc orbiting in one direction with magnets orbiting in the opposite direction. Obviously the scale of the thing presents the biggest challenge but it seems that would generate a LOT of volt-amps.
Well, except for the sponsored links, when you do a MSN search on Linux, it no longer comes back with the FUD MS page talking about total cost-of-ownership of Linux vs MS as one of the first links.
The constitution also doesn't say "separation of church and state" .... but I wish it did.
Tell that to Rosa Parks.
It doesn't even have to be that complicated... typically the URL in the email is "correct" but the underlying link is to another site....most lusers never look at the address in the status bar. /. puts the domain in brackets after the link.
http://www.ebay.com/
This is why
You get the idea. Not to mention that nobody will shop at a site that requires a secureID card number to be entered.
It looks like a lot of the 'zine deals with building and hacking. I wonder how long before they get sued under DMCA for showing how to reverse engineer something. I also wonder if they'll avoid certain subjects just to avoid a suit....that'd suck.
For certain types of calls (commercial accounts, securities accounts) the SEC requires calls to be recorded (they may or may not necessarily be monitored.) I'm a programmer ink in a bank call center.
Also... all other reps have an "emergency" button on their phone they can press to record the conversation in case a caller starts threating to come down and start shooting people.
I had always heard that Jupiter would have to be 6x as massive for a fusion reaction to trigger. Event then it would be a very cold star. Our Sun is actually larger than average... essentially our system could have been an "average" binary system, but for whatever reason our Sun grabbed most of the material (99%) and Jupiter most of the rest (something like 0.75%) with the rest of the plants taking the rest (0.25%).