Re:commodity IT is no longer a strategic advantage
on
Why I.T. Matters
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· Score: 2, Insightful
What is commodity IT? what part of IT is a commodity? a web site? end user support of whatever your product is? internal support? fast network connection? 99.999% uptime? Desktop Computers?
IT is a commodity only until you take a look at the individual peices of your IT infrastructure and look at them more closely, instead of from an abstract point of view.
Commodity: In the original and simplified sense, commodities were things of value, of uniform quality, that were produced in large quantities by many different producers; the items from each different producer are considered equivalent.
The only thing in my list that might be construed into a commodity is a desktop computer. But that is reaching. A Mac offers somethings that Windows doesn't, which in turn offers something that UNIX doesn't offer, which in turn offers something that Mac's don't offer. It's like rocks-paper-scissors, in a way. Except that if you don't analyze your needs you'll be screwed. Either by over spending or underestimating your needs. If computers were a commodity, you could buy any one and they would all do the same thing, with the same effectiveness
(like wheat, i can buy a bushel of wheat from any vendor and the wheat will do the same thing even if i were to buy it from someone else. computers? not so much)
Re:Imagine a cat with a piece of buttered toast...
on
Why I.T. Matters
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· Score: 1
oh my delicous buttery cat! how i love to lick your greasy fur!
<homer>Mmmm, buttery cat toast..</homer>
Re:You are missing the point
on
Why I.T. Matters
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· Score: 4, Insightful
But IT does have a strategic value to UPS and FedEx, two companies whose product is not at all IT related. So they try to get ahead by leveraging IT... scanning codes on packages, automatically updating databases, end users querying those databases.
"Java Warez: Turning 0-day warez into 7-day warez before it even finishes loading"
sorry, mandatory Java bashing. Parent AC has a good point. I want to try it out first. If there is too much lag in response time when I type, I get really frustrated. A lot of IDE's i've tried have some lag. For instance, Netbeans IDE also written in Java.
If the wordprocessor has the same lag, i'd throw it away in a heartbeat.
you are right for the most part. Not necessarily contradictory, but if you give the trolls (adti) anything, they'll feed off it for weeks. he could have proof read it a little more to tighten it up, or had someone else. I'm not trying to discredit him. this possible contradiction just caught my attention.
Context and interfaces are everything; unless it has been packaged into a library specifically intended to move, moving software between projects is more like an organ transplant, with utmost care needed to resect vessels and nerves. The kind of massive theft you are implying is not just contingently rare, it is necessarily rare because it is next to impossible.
Then 5 paragraphs down,
That a piece of code came from a proprietary vendor is no guarantee that it originated there. Proprietary outfits lift code from elsewhere all the time.
Sort of contradictory, no? To paraphrase, First he says it's very hard to lift code from elsewhere. Then he says, But some people do it all the time.
However, her life can be spared by a miracle cure, which costs fifty billion dollars.
but why does it cost 50 billion dollars in the first place? is it to pay for the 40 researchers and 10 doctors a billion dollars each for their time and labor? is it because someone, say some electronics megacorp who is developing a new radiation therapy, wants to make profit from her situation? maybe the things that add up to $50B are superficially overvalued.
What if by curing her, some new development is realised, which is used to cure millions of other people at a fraction of the cost? You might not know, because you didn't try. My point is that there are paths in life that you cannot see unless you start walking down them. Little Suzie might have developed an immunity to cancerous cell mutations as a side effect of the surgury that can be analysed and made into a cure. Or she might have been inspired to go into medicine and develop such a procedure in the lab.
i agree that its tough decide in favor of curing 1 person instead of curing 1000. But what is really causing the price difference that leads to to make that decision?
lol. +5 funny because it's redundant. c'mon mods! you can do it! i want a +5 funny with some mod points going to redundant or +5 redundant with some mod points going to funny.
just because something is "not incorrect" doesn't mean you should do it. boxen be damned. it's lame. i wish i had a "use all your karma on this post". boxen needs to be extinguished from use, just like virii.
If you don't think financial harm is human harm, give me all your money. It won't hurt a bit, right?
a bit of perspective please. it wouldn't be the end of the world. obvious scenario: give me all your money or i'll shoot you. what do you do? you can only do one or the other. no other options. easy choice.
how can you not take something seriously that puts a monetary value on a persons life? joking or not, the idea that someone can attach a monetary value to someones life is apalling.
loss of productivity in an office for a day while computers are patched is not damage. just like the mp3 filetrading scene is not damage to the RIAA. damage is what occurs before mass graves are filled. damage is being shot in the head three times from behind while walking down a crowded public street.
The uncommon event that a virus effects a critical system is partially the fault of the maganerial staff in selecting the wrong software or selecting the wrong administration staff. i know, i know... it's like saying "it's the victims fault that they were assulted" which is typically bad. but in this case, it's the managerial and administrations duty and responsibility to maintain a critical system. That's why they get paid.
ok, if you are thinking about executing a person for writing a piece of malicious software (that didn't even cause any human harm), you need to step away from the computer, turn off the power, get out of your office and walk through the woods for a while.
and if you come back and tell me "financial harm is human harm" i say go back and walk through the woods some more. maybe read a book while you are out there... something that doesn't mention computers. Something by Emerson.
i havn't done the calculations because i'm lazy. but say they are using 5 decks. that's a lot of cards to keep track of. if you only keep track of one value of cards, say 6's, or aces, how much do your odds increase by knowing there is only one 6 left or one ace? is it enough to bump up your winning to more than half of the time?
i once tried counting face cards played. it's very easy to get distracted, especially when you have friends with you.
Slashdot Mirror
IT is a commodity only until you take a look at the individual peices of your IT infrastructure and look at them more closely, instead of from an abstract point of view.
The only thing in my list that might be construed into a commodity is a desktop computer. But that is reaching. A Mac offers somethings that Windows doesn't, which in turn offers something that UNIX doesn't offer, which in turn offers something that Mac's don't offer. It's like rocks-paper-scissors, in a way. Except that if you don't analyze your needs you'll be screwed. Either by over spending or underestimating your needs. If computers were a commodity, you could buy any one and they would all do the same thing, with the same effectiveness
(like wheat, i can buy a bushel of wheat from any vendor and the wheat will do the same thing even if i were to buy it from someone else. computers? not so much)
oh my delicous buttery cat! how i love to lick your greasy fur!
<homer>Mmmm, buttery cat toast..</homer>
But IT does have a strategic value to UPS and FedEx, two companies whose product is not at all IT related. So they try to get ahead by leveraging IT... scanning codes on packages, automatically updating databases, end users querying those databases.
java warez! ahaha.
"Java Warez: Turning 0-day warez into 7-day warez before it even finishes loading"
sorry, mandatory Java bashing. Parent AC has a good point. I want to try it out first. If there is too much lag in response time when I type, I get really frustrated. A lot of IDE's i've tried have some lag. For instance, Netbeans IDE also written in Java.
If the wordprocessor has the same lag, i'd throw it away in a heartbeat.
9) All your base ...
10) vi? Sorry, I think you mean Emacs.
you are right for the most part. Not necessarily contradictory, but if you give the trolls (adti) anything, they'll feed off it for weeks. he could have proof read it a little more to tighten it up, or had someone else. I'm not trying to discredit him. this possible contradiction just caught my attention.
yes. thanks for completeness.
You make the flawed assumption that OSS developers are not professionals in their "day jobs"
He says,
Context and interfaces are everything; unless it has been packaged into a library specifically intended to move, moving software between projects is more like an organ transplant, with utmost care needed to resect vessels and nerves. The kind of massive theft you are implying is not just contingently rare, it is necessarily rare because it is next to impossible.
Then 5 paragraphs down,
That a piece of code came from a proprietary vendor is no guarantee that it originated there. Proprietary outfits lift code from elsewhere all the time.
Sort of contradictory, no? To paraphrase, First he says it's very hard to lift code from elsewhere. Then he says, But some people do it all the time.
However, her life can be spared by a miracle cure, which costs fifty billion dollars.
but why does it cost 50 billion dollars in the first place? is it to pay for the 40 researchers and 10 doctors a billion dollars each for their time and labor? is it because someone, say some electronics megacorp who is developing a new radiation therapy, wants to make profit from her situation? maybe the things that add up to $50B are superficially overvalued.
What if by curing her, some new development is realised, which is used to cure millions of other people at a fraction of the cost? You might not know, because you didn't try. My point is that there are paths in life that you cannot see unless you start walking down them. Little Suzie might have developed an immunity to cancerous cell mutations as a side effect of the surgury that can be analysed and made into a cure. Or she might have been inspired to go into medicine and develop such a procedure in the lab.
i agree that its tough decide in favor of curing 1 person instead of curing 1000. But what is really causing the price difference that leads to to make that decision?
fine, how's calling you an "old pedantic bastard" instead?
lol. +5 funny because it's redundant. c'mon mods! you can do it! i want a +5 funny with some mod points going to redundant or +5 redundant with some mod points going to funny.
It will always be easier to destroy than create. I see no coolness in destruction.
ahh young grasshopper... except for when you are asked to destroy that which you created.
just because something is "not incorrect" doesn't mean you should do it. boxen be damned. it's lame. i wish i had a "use all your karma on this post". boxen needs to be extinguished from use, just like virii.
So was Da Vinci's life worth more or less than 10 million? What about Einstein's life? How much more? 1 million more? 100 million more?
what about that 8 year old who was killed? what was his unproven life worth? 2 million? 5 million? nothing?
Human life does indeed have some finite value
does it really? i disagree. I think the idea that human life does have a finite value is the basis for a lot of the worlds problems.
If you don't think financial harm is human harm, give me all your money. It won't hurt a bit, right?
a bit of perspective please. it wouldn't be the end of the world. obvious scenario: give me all your money or i'll shoot you. what do you do? you can only do one or the other. no other options. easy choice.
how can you not take something seriously that puts a monetary value on a persons life? joking or not, the idea that someone can attach a monetary value to someones life is apalling.
loss of productivity in an office for a day while computers are patched is not damage. just like the mp3 filetrading scene is not damage to the RIAA. damage is what occurs before mass graves are filled. damage is being shot in the head three times from behind while walking down a crowded public street.
The uncommon event that a virus effects a critical system is partially the fault of the maganerial staff in selecting the wrong software or selecting the wrong administration staff. i know, i know... it's like saying "it's the victims fault that they were assulted" which is typically bad. but in this case, it's the managerial and administrations duty and responsibility to maintain a critical system. That's why they get paid.
ok, if you are thinking about executing a person for writing a piece of malicious software (that didn't even cause any human harm), you need to step away from the computer, turn off the power, get out of your office and walk through the woods for a while.
and if you come back and tell me "financial harm is human harm" i say go back and walk through the woods some more. maybe read a book while you are out there... something that doesn't mention computers. Something by Emerson.
speaking blackjack...
i havn't done the calculations because i'm lazy. but say they are using 5 decks. that's a lot of cards to keep track of. if you only keep track of one value of cards, say 6's, or aces, how much do your odds increase by knowing there is only one 6 left or one ace? is it enough to bump up your winning to more than half of the time?
i once tried counting face cards played. it's very easy to get distracted, especially when you have friends with you.
that, and the question being obviously not a good idea makes me wonder why this is even an acceptable story.
if you want to spend your time rending frames of animations, check out the Internet Movie Project
i think i've heard that someone stepped up to the RIAA after being threetened, and the RIAA dropped the lawsuit.
maybe this is wishfull thinking, but i thought i've read it somewhere.
No it's not. But Mars is. EU will follow suit in a matter of months.
FALAFEL:
Federal Assistance for Limiting the use of Acronyms For Evil Legislation.
How can something without pointers be hardcore? It's li
Aborted.
Yeah, well 250 Million isn't even 1% of the DoD's budget for 2004.
Budget smudget! I want brownies and cupcakes. What's the DoE budget and why are all the PTA boards organizing bakesales?
"If you think education is expensive, try ignorance"