I sympathise. I've felt exaclty the same way about co-worker parents in the past. It can be very frustrating.
However, I see it as an overhead of modern western society. Nowadays both parents have to work to maintain a reasonable standard of living for their kids. This was very rare for my parent's generation, but now it's the norm.
It means we all have to be a bit more flexible with each other these days.
And you can't really say "It was their decision to have kids." If nobody made that decision, we wouldn't get far as a species.
Indeed. I often have a couple of non-smokers join me for a stroll when I go out for a cig. I have a 10 minute break every 90 minutes or so, but I usually skip the lunch break and eat at my desk.
Also, I find I still get a lot of work done on smoke breaks. My job is generally involves fixing operational problems that require some thinkin', and I couldn't count how many times I've come up with the "That's it!!!" solution while sitting outside having a quiet smoke.
I'm sure they would get a very large discount if they were buying licenses for 100,000+ machines.
(Actually, being Google, they might even get it for close-to-zero. I see google.com with a "Powered by SQLServer" graphic.)
Regardless, the money they didn't give to Microsoft (or whoever!), they spent on R&D devloping their own solution. Now they have their own cluster product they'll probably try to market sometime in the future. Good on 'em.
My point is; most companies don't have the geek resources, or the desire, to do the same as Google have.
Anyone else notice that queries to google now need to be appended with "-ebay -this -that" and not just simple keywords to restrict junk results?
Depending on what I'm searching for, I'll often use "-com", which usually yields some interesting results. The top link will generally be a.edu or.org domain.
Of course you still get results from domains like.co.uk and.co.nz, but they are much lesser in number, and usually further down the list.
Restoring from old backup tapes is not a problem as long as you keep the hardware and software available, or make sure you migrate your data when you upgrade your backup system. Admittedly that's easier said than done, but I don't see that it would be too different whether your backup data is on disk or tape.
How many hard drives have you kept running for 7 years? How about a bigger company that might need to keep tens of thousands of drives running for 7 years, and pay to power and maintain them, just in case the data needs to be restored?
I could restore right now, in literally 10 seconds.... Show me a tape system which will do that!
Well perhaps not 10 seconds, but 25 seconds. A high end tape library can mount a tape in 11 seconds, the fastest tape drives can load and locate in 11 seconds, and then actually read the data off the tape, at up to 60 MB/sec ultimately.
Obviously this is the high end stuff that costs big bucks.
I'm not saying there's not a place for disk in backup, but in high volume shops, tape is really still the best option for long term data storage.
Telstra Bigpond in Australia is like AOL in the States. It's where all the people who know nothing about the net, but need to get it for their kids, end up connecting. They have a massive advertising budget, and most people already use Telstra for the phone, so it's easy to bundle internet, phone and cable TV. I don't know if British Telecom do the ISP thing, but maybe it would be a similar thing there if they did.
So Bigpond is seen to have a higher proportion of these users who are more likely to be infested with malware/trojans/virii and not even know or care.
I dunno whether that makes the story slashdot-worthy or not, but hey, that's what I got from it.
The thing with Notes is that, I believe, it still competes reasonably well with Exchange, when you look at the number of end users, because a lot of *very* large customers use it.
No I never watch ads any more. I reflexively reach for the remote and start channel surfing as soon as an ad comes on. I've just gotta work on that 2 minute timer in my head so I know when to switch back.
Friends: Didn't they also very reluctantly show it because Channel 7 also had the ealier episodes?
Yes, something like that did happen before Friends originally started screening here. I can't remember the details.
But I do remember that Nine held back the final season so long, advertising it non-stop for what seemed like a year, that by the time the last episode actually screened here, just about everyone still interested had already seen it or heard the storyline.
The article is from the BBC, so it's obviously English. These things are problem called Mobile Homes in the UK, as they are where I live. The term Motor Home doesn't really exist in the vocabulary.
A very close friend of mine fell for this. I couldn't believe it. He's reasonably intelligent (usually), has a good well-paid job with a big multinational, (in their finance division!!).
He didn't believe ME when I said "It's a scam" as soon as he mentioned Nigeria. After spending a few days emailing him some stories about the scam, he eventually started to doubt his new Nigerian friend after I sent him to the FBI site about the scam.
SMS or "txting" is exteremely popular with school kids here in Australia. It amazes me watching how fast they can type out messages with their thumbs. I guess growing up on Nintendo/Sony game controllers helps.
But the popularity of SMS is not because it's cheap. It once was, compared to mobile-mobile voice calls, but not anymore. To send an SMS costs about 25 cents. A one minute phone call can cost less than 15 cents.
Fred txts Barney : Hi - what you up to?
Barney txts Fred : Going to the pub, wanna come?
Fred txts Barney : Sure, what time?
Barney txts Fred : 8:00
Fred txts Barney : See you there.
At 25c per txt, that's $1.25 (shared between both parties). The same conversation could have been completed in a 15c mobile-mobile voice call.
IANA (I am not American), but backdating an invoice a couple of days so it counts towards last quarter's revenue is hardly comparable to murder (for example).
But those kinds of activities certainly caused a few problems for Enron/Worldcom/CA/Redhat...
In today's world of business legislation like Sarbanes/Oxley, Harvard did the right thing.
I can't find a reference, but I've heard that HP make more money out of printer cartidges than they do out of IT hardware and software combined.
Then there's their medical equipment.
When you buy an actual newspaper, most, if not all of the revenue goes to the vendor, such as the newsagent you bought it from.
The publishers make their money out of advertising.
At least that's the way it works here in Australia. I noticed in the USA you buy a lot of your newspapers from machines, so perhaps there it is different.
Slashdot Mirror
I sympathise. I've felt exaclty the same way about co-worker parents in the past. It can be very frustrating.
However, I see it as an overhead of modern western society. Nowadays both parents have to work to maintain a reasonable standard of living for their kids. This was very rare for my parent's generation, but now it's the norm.
It means we all have to be a bit more flexible with each other these days.
And you can't really say "It was their decision to have kids." If nobody made that decision, we wouldn't get far as a species.
Indeed. I often have a couple of non-smokers join me for a stroll when I go out for a cig. I have a 10 minute break every 90 minutes or so, but I usually skip the lunch break and eat at my desk.
Also, I find I still get a lot of work done on smoke breaks. My job is generally involves fixing operational problems that require some thinkin', and I couldn't count how many times I've come up with the "That's it!!!" solution while sitting outside having a quiet smoke.
I'm sure they would get a very large discount if they were buying licenses for 100,000+ machines.
(Actually, being Google, they might even get it for close-to-zero. I see google.com with a "Powered by SQLServer" graphic.)
Regardless, the money they didn't give to Microsoft (or whoever!), they spent on R&D devloping their own solution. Now they have their own cluster product they'll probably try to market sometime in the future. Good on 'em.
My point is; most companies don't have the geek resources, or the desire, to do the same as Google have.
Of course you still get results from domains like
Now we also know why spending too much time under "normal" fluoro's gives us a headache.
Restoring from old backup tapes is not a problem as long as you keep the hardware and software available, or make sure you migrate your data when you upgrade your backup system. Admittedly that's easier said than done, but I don't see that it would be too different whether your backup data is on disk or tape.
How many hard drives have you kept running for 7 years? How about a bigger company that might need to keep tens of thousands of drives running for 7 years, and pay to power and maintain them, just in case the data needs to be restored?
A tape in a vault can work out a lot cheaper.
I could restore right now, in literally 10 seconds.... Show me a tape system which will do that!
Well perhaps not 10 seconds, but 25 seconds. A high end tape library can mount a tape in 11 seconds, the fastest tape drives can load and locate in 11 seconds, and then actually read the data off the tape, at up to 60 MB/sec ultimately.
Obviously this is the high end stuff that costs big bucks.
I'm not saying there's not a place for disk in backup, but in high volume shops, tape is really still the best option for long term data storage.
Telstra Bigpond in Australia is like AOL in the States. It's where all the people who know nothing about the net, but need to get it for their kids, end up connecting. They have a massive advertising budget, and most people already use Telstra for the phone, so it's easy to bundle internet, phone and cable TV. I don't know if British Telecom do the ISP thing, but maybe it would be a similar thing there if they did.
So Bigpond is seen to have a higher proportion of these users who are more likely to be infested with malware/trojans/virii and not even know or care.
I dunno whether that makes the story slashdot-worthy or not, but hey, that's what I got from it.
Microsoft only know of the word "service" if it precedes the word "pack".
Ah, insightful and funny.
The thing with Notes is that, I believe, it still competes reasonably well with Exchange, when you look at the number of end users, because a lot of *very* large customers use it.
One of the biggest users is IBM themselves.
Luckily I live alone :)
I do actually restrain myself from this practice when I have company.
No I never watch ads any more. I reflexively reach for the remote and start channel surfing as soon as an ad comes on. I've just gotta work on that 2 minute timer in my head so I know when to switch back.
Friends: Didn't they also very reluctantly show it because Channel 7 also had the ealier episodes?
Yes, something like that did happen before Friends originally started screening here. I can't remember the details.
But I do remember that Nine held back the final season so long, advertising it non-stop for what seemed like a year, that by the time the last episode actually screened here, just about everyone still interested had already seen it or heard the storyline.
The article is from the BBC, so it's obviously English. These things are problem called Mobile Homes in the UK, as they are where I live. The term Motor Home doesn't really exist in the vocabulary.
A very close friend of mine fell for this. I couldn't believe it. He's reasonably intelligent (usually), has a good well-paid job with a big multinational, (in their finance division!!).
He didn't believe ME when I said "It's a scam" as soon as he mentioned Nigeria. After spending a few days emailing him some stories about the scam, he eventually started to doubt his new Nigerian friend after I sent him to the FBI site about the scam.
Greed is an amazing thing.
Lucas has a monopoly on Star Wars?
Hmm, maybe in the same way that Nintendo have a monopoly on Mario Bros, or McDonalds have a monopoly on Big Macs.
SMS or "txting" is exteremely popular with school kids here in Australia. It amazes me watching how fast they can type out messages with their thumbs. I guess growing up on Nintendo/Sony game controllers helps.
But the popularity of SMS is not because it's cheap. It once was, compared to mobile-mobile voice calls, but not anymore. To send an SMS costs about 25 cents. A one minute phone call can cost less than 15 cents.
Fred txts Barney : Hi - what you up to?
Barney txts Fred : Going to the pub, wanna come?
Fred txts Barney : Sure, what time?
Barney txts Fred : 8:00
Fred txts Barney : See you there.
At 25c per txt, that's $1.25 (shared between both parties). The same conversation could have been completed in a 15c mobile-mobile voice call.
The telcos here like SMS.
IANA (I am not American), but backdating an invoice a couple of days so it counts towards last quarter's revenue is hardly comparable to murder (for example).
But those kinds of activities certainly caused a few problems for Enron/Worldcom/CA/Redhat...
In today's world of business legislation like Sarbanes/Oxley, Harvard did the right thing.
You're obviously new here.
The real world, that is.
Sounds like a good recurring revenue stream to me.
They are also enemy combatants.
...allegedly
Where I live, Australia, it's often cheaper to order stuff like this from abroad. I buy a lot of my DVD's from Canada now.
I can't find a reference, but I've heard that HP make more money out of printer cartidges than they do out of IT hardware and software combined. Then there's their medical equipment.
When you buy an actual newspaper, most, if not all of the revenue goes to the vendor, such as the newsagent you bought it from.
The publishers make their money out of advertising.
At least that's the way it works here in Australia. I noticed in the USA you buy a lot of your newspapers from machines, so perhaps there it is different.
I pay my ISP for a network connection, not content filtering.