I have been hearing from MS evangelists for ever that the next version of Windows won't need to be reboot for any reason. Remember: "It's the best version to date!"
Which is a euphemism for: "We didn't screw it up as bad as the last version!"
I'm not saying that OSS is better than MS when it comes to accessibility, but its funny that MS's refusal to support OpenDocument can turn into "Open Source hates people with disabilities". MS was all egger to support multiple file types when they were vying for market share, but now that they have it the number of supported file types that Office can handle has greatly dwindled.
Sorry, this isn't an attempted flame. It's just that SAP doesn't really have that devout of a fan base. I haven't talked to any user or developer that preaches how great their product is. I do hear from execs or SAP certified engineers about how much money can be made with it. But every first proposal for a deployment is wildly over optimistic, and bears very little resemblance to what actually gets put in place. However that doesn't stop people from using those over optimistic proposals as models for how SAP works. In short, they are big on hype.
Recent developments in Kansas have paved the way for the largest increase of "Science" class offerings to our next generation of young Americans. Take "CZO140: A field study of the behavior of Unicorns" for example. Students will learn how to make Unicorn calls, analyze a maidens purity through Unicorn reactions and extract faerie dust from Unicorn droppings. For years "Rational Science" has frowned upon the link between faerie dust and Unicorn dung, likening it to a futile study of plain old horse shit. But now that science is not limited to natural explanations of phenomena jobs in academia are readily available to anyone with a wild imagination and a fragile grasp on reality!
This is getting rediculous. I converted both my in-laws and my parents over to Ubuntu. It prints, it works with their digital cameras, it surfs the web, and it's got an office suite. Once a year I come around and patch stuff if needed. Since I live 600 miles away I was planning on using SSH or just telling them to create a new user if they ever hosed anything up to the point where everything stops working (like XP, 98, 95 etc...). That hasn't happened. Not only that but now I have a serious computer that I can use when I visit. Don't let fear stop you from removing the training wheels!
Sometimes it appears that most corporate code is based on Intelligent Design. Developers that don't know how to do it the right way just string it together based on hunches and assumptions. If it compiles then it's God's will!
I started as a Microsoft centric developer and IT engineer in 92. Got my MCSD in 95 and was pretty happy living in that world. Frequent reboots didn't bother me that much and I usually had to reinstall Windows every year or so in order to get that new box performance back. Didn't really bother me, I had nothing else to compare the experience to. In 2001 I started a small business partnership with 3 other people. My job was to manage all things technical, with a paltry budget. We started with Win2K, SQL Server, Visual Studio and IIS. But I didn't have the cash to spring for Exchange. We started looking at free/low cost email solutions, they all suck for Windows. Then I started looking at Sendmail, bought the bat book and a Red Hat 7.2 book that came with 7.2 on a CD. We installed it on a Pentium Pro box, the only spare that was available. It took a while to configure but I found a script from some guy in Ireland that asked the simple questions and generated a config file. Then our Active Directory DNS went down, so I added BIND to the Pentium Pro. Then FTP on IIS went down, enter ftpd. After a while it seemed that half of our business was running on this one Pentium Pro box while the other 5 Windows servers were pretty much idle most of the time. That was when I decided to reclaim most of them and just like that we were a mostly Linux shop.
The hardest part of learning Linux for me was that a problem usually only required fixing it once. In Windows problems tend to be easy to fix, but they require constant care. Which made it easier to remember how to fix something in Windows because I had to do it everyday on several boxes. In Linux it was "I fixed that once but I forgot what I did."
Maybe I am a bit out of the loop but the lion's share of M$ revenue comes from Windows & Office. An operating system and a collection of applications, that are direct dirivitives of the same software you would likely buy over 10 years ago. Sure both are a bit more polished than the same version from a decade ago but I would not call that innovative. Nothing else springs to mind when thinking of what M$ is known for. They just buy or steal other people's ideas and rebrand them.
In all fairness I haven't seen the third one. Even if I knew where to download an internet copy I probably wouldn't bother. It's playing at a local theatre here in Portland for $3, if I go I can even enjoy large quantities of some of the world's best beer because we have theater pubs here. That still is not enough motivation to get me in the door. The problem is that even though Star Wars may have some of the best special effects, it can't make up for the fact that its just bad SciFi.
If your grandson/child is downloading music illegally you can be sued and loose everything! Download this free program that will protect you! Let's see, rights to scan every file and delete anything it chooses? It's almost too easy.
Its too bad that software can't kill dumb users, it leaves the internet without a Darwinian escape pod.
It appears that we cannot 'own' music, since that would mean we can do what we want with it. So my question is: If we are renting it, how long is the rent good for? I mean if I bought thousands of dollars of cassette tapes and records from the 80's to today, and if those media failed through no fault of my own. Can I write the record companies for newer copies of those albums? Not that I would want it all back, most of it was crap. But if I rent a movie from the video store and the tape or DVD is bad they usually give me an extension of the rental and another copy. Why does this not work for music?
I have a Unix Service disc that someone gave me at a conference, but I only use Windows to play video games. The thought of Windows interacting with my *nix machines is too scary for me to even think about opening that package. Can I get Windows viruses from touching the disk? Its in an airtight plastic baggie right now.
I know for a fact that 1 Windows TOC report from a client site I worked for was based on $15/seat copies of XP. They got a huge site discount on Office and other stuff too. So if MS is willing to take a loss the TOC can beat Linux.
Really the only way they beat it was because they factored in the cost of retraining all IT staff, and other stuff.
First off relying on extensions to identify a file format is stupid, but that's MS's way of doing it. I personally favor the MagicNumber *nix way of doing it (not perfect but a hell of a lot more reliable). Secondly analyzing files you think serve a certain purpose because you think they belong to a certain application and therefore are configured a certain way is stupid and a huge waste of time. I work for an electronic discovery firm. I do this kind of stuff for a living. You don't hunt through terrabytes of data looking for internet explorer history files, you rely on software that can analyze all files on a system and identify what you are looking for. I imagine law enforcement agencies using the file-browser and notepad would have a bit of a problem doing damn near anything right, and so they bitch.
Thats right, patent yellow bricks and when someone makes a virtual Wizard of Oz you will reap the profits! I'm gonna sell rights to my bricks at $10 each. At 4 bricks per sq/ft a path 10 feet wide will cost $211,200 per mile! So if I can just figure out the distance from the Emerald City to the Land of the East...
Outside of articles targeted at the geek community that may be one of the best written pieces about an OSS project. It clearly describes both the pros and cons of using OSS. However, I find it amazing that the word 'Open Source' appears nowhere in the article!
Yes, I am being facetious. It's embarrassing to admit that my company has developed code to determine when a Windows box is suffering from degraded performance. It then shuts down all apps and reboots the machine automatically. Then it tries to restart the applications it was running on reboot (not always successful). We use this in a large Windows based processing center, before using this code we would realize that after 3-5 days of processing a Windows box would be at 10-20% of its "fresh" speed.
I have a theory for why this happens, MS either uses a wind-up or small hamster like creature to power their software. Over time the wind-up runs down or the hamster needs replacing. This function is achieved through a reboot.
It is amazing, I work in a mostly MS centric shop and we have the term 'Technical Limitation'. It is used when our own code mates up with a proprietary chunk that we don't control. So if we are indexing some client data and the search fails to find content due to a bug in the proprietary software, we say it hit a 'Technical Limitation'. Then sales types chime in and talk about what that limitation is (they are usually about 25% right, 75% BS). Our clients are never happy about this but realize they have no options. A lot of the engineers are weary about OSS because then we don't have a 'Technical Limitation' parachute. Personally I don't like working hours and days only to hit these walls. It usually means I have to resort to some really stupid hack to bypass the problem rather than just fixing it.
I was just reminiscing about that pain in your hand from using a hole punch to double side a bunch of five and a quarters. Doesn't quite work with DVDs.
Agreed, my question is: Where has *nix been lacking in the command line department? I bet their first attempt at this won't make me remove Cygwin, unless it actually MAKES me remove Cygwin.
There may be no active plans to unseat MS but I doubt they are going to be eager to run out and buy all new licenses of Windows. It appears that 2000 has recieved its last patch (according to an earlier article) so how long before running 2000 becomes too much of a liability? At some point they will look at the cost of moving all 2000 systems to Longhorn, and compare the cost of moving the same systems to Suse. Perhaps this isn't the last nail in the coffin for MS in HHS but it still doesn't bode well for MS.
Slashdot Mirror
I have been hearing from MS evangelists for ever that the next version of Windows won't need to be reboot for any reason. Remember: "It's the best version to date!" Which is a euphemism for: "We didn't screw it up as bad as the last version!"
I'm not saying that OSS is better than MS when it comes to accessibility, but its funny that MS's refusal to support OpenDocument can turn into "Open Source hates people with disabilities". MS was all egger to support multiple file types when they were vying for market share, but now that they have it the number of supported file types that Office can handle has greatly dwindled.
Who needs a reason?
Sorry, this isn't an attempted flame. It's just that SAP doesn't really have that devout of a fan base. I haven't talked to any user or developer that preaches how great their product is. I do hear from execs or SAP certified engineers about how much money can be made with it. But every first proposal for a deployment is wildly over optimistic, and bears very little resemblance to what actually gets put in place. However that doesn't stop people from using those over optimistic proposals as models for how SAP works. In short, they are big on hype.
Recent developments in Kansas have paved the way for the largest increase of "Science" class offerings to our next generation of young Americans. Take "CZO140: A field study of the behavior of Unicorns" for example. Students will learn how to make Unicorn calls, analyze a maidens purity through Unicorn reactions and extract faerie dust from Unicorn droppings. For years "Rational Science" has frowned upon the link between faerie dust and Unicorn dung, likening it to a futile study of plain old horse shit. But now that science is not limited to natural explanations of phenomena jobs in academia are readily available to anyone with a wild imagination and a fragile grasp on reality!
All the things you've come to expect from Unix, without the platform portability!
This is getting rediculous. I converted both my in-laws and my parents over to Ubuntu. It prints, it works with their digital cameras, it surfs the web, and it's got an office suite. Once a year I come around and patch stuff if needed. Since I live 600 miles away I was planning on using SSH or just telling them to create a new user if they ever hosed anything up to the point where everything stops working (like XP, 98, 95 etc...). That hasn't happened. Not only that but now I have a serious computer that I can use when I visit. Don't let fear stop you from removing the training wheels!
Sometimes it appears that most corporate code is based on Intelligent Design. Developers that don't know how to do it the right way just string it together based on hunches and assumptions. If it compiles then it's God's will!
I started as a Microsoft centric developer and IT engineer in 92. Got my MCSD in 95 and was pretty happy living in that world. Frequent reboots didn't bother me that much and I usually had to reinstall Windows every year or so in order to get that new box performance back. Didn't really bother me, I had nothing else to compare the experience to. In 2001 I started a small business partnership with 3 other people. My job was to manage all things technical, with a paltry budget. We started with Win2K, SQL Server, Visual Studio and IIS. But I didn't have the cash to spring for Exchange. We started looking at free/low cost email solutions, they all suck for Windows. Then I started looking at Sendmail, bought the bat book and a Red Hat 7.2 book that came with 7.2 on a CD. We installed it on a Pentium Pro box, the only spare that was available. It took a while to configure but I found a script from some guy in Ireland that asked the simple questions and generated a config file. Then our Active Directory DNS went down, so I added BIND to the Pentium Pro. Then FTP on IIS went down, enter ftpd. After a while it seemed that half of our business was running on this one Pentium Pro box while the other 5 Windows servers were pretty much idle most of the time. That was when I decided to reclaim most of them and just like that we were a mostly Linux shop.
The hardest part of learning Linux for me was that a problem usually only required fixing it once. In Windows problems tend to be easy to fix, but they require constant care. Which made it easier to remember how to fix something in Windows because I had to do it everyday on several boxes. In Linux it was "I fixed that once but I forgot what I did."
Maybe I am a bit out of the loop but the lion's share of M$ revenue comes from Windows & Office. An operating system and a collection of applications, that are direct dirivitives of the same software you would likely buy over 10 years ago. Sure both are a bit more polished than the same version from a decade ago but I would not call that innovative. Nothing else springs to mind when thinking of what M$ is known for. They just buy or steal other people's ideas and rebrand them.
In all fairness I haven't seen the third one. Even if I knew where to download an internet copy I probably wouldn't bother. It's playing at a local theatre here in Portland for $3, if I go I can even enjoy large quantities of some of the world's best beer because we have theater pubs here. That still is not enough motivation to get me in the door. The problem is that even though Star Wars may have some of the best special effects, it can't make up for the fact that its just bad SciFi.
If your grandson/child is downloading music illegally you can be sued and loose everything! Download this free program that will protect you! Let's see, rights to scan every file and delete anything it chooses? It's almost too easy.
Its too bad that software can't kill dumb users, it leaves the internet without a Darwinian escape pod.
It appears that we cannot 'own' music, since that would mean we can do what we want with it. So my question is: If we are renting it, how long is the rent good for? I mean if I bought thousands of dollars of cassette tapes and records from the 80's to today, and if those media failed through no fault of my own. Can I write the record companies for newer copies of those albums? Not that I would want it all back, most of it was crap. But if I rent a movie from the video store and the tape or DVD is bad they usually give me an extension of the rental and another copy. Why does this not work for music?
I have a Unix Service disc that someone gave me at a conference, but I only use Windows to play video games. The thought of Windows interacting with my *nix machines is too scary for me to even think about opening that package. Can I get Windows viruses from touching the disk? Its in an airtight plastic baggie right now.
I know for a fact that 1 Windows TOC report from a client site I worked for was based on $15/seat copies of XP. They got a huge site discount on Office and other stuff too. So if MS is willing to take a loss the TOC can beat Linux.
Really the only way they beat it was because they factored in the cost of retraining all IT staff, and other stuff.
First off relying on extensions to identify a file format is stupid, but that's MS's way of doing it. I personally favor the MagicNumber *nix way of doing it (not perfect but a hell of a lot more reliable). Secondly analyzing files you think serve a certain purpose because you think they belong to a certain application and therefore are configured a certain way is stupid and a huge waste of time. I work for an electronic discovery firm. I do this kind of stuff for a living. You don't hunt through terrabytes of data looking for internet explorer history files, you rely on software that can analyze all files on a system and identify what you are looking for. I imagine law enforcement agencies using the file-browser and notepad would have a bit of a problem doing damn near anything right, and so they bitch.
Thats right, patent yellow bricks and when someone makes a virtual Wizard of Oz you will reap the profits! I'm gonna sell rights to my bricks at $10 each. At 4 bricks per sq/ft a path 10 feet wide will cost $211,200 per mile! So if I can just figure out the distance from the Emerald City to the Land of the East...
So when machines turn psychotic and start exterminating humans can we sue Nintendo for inventing this concept?
Not just this patent, but all the other BS patents that are floating out there just make me want to move to some remote island so I can code in peace.
Outside of articles targeted at the geek community that may be one of the best written pieces about an OSS project. It clearly describes both the pros and cons of using OSS. However, I find it amazing that the word 'Open Source' appears nowhere in the article!
Yes, I am being facetious. It's embarrassing to admit that my company has developed code to determine when a Windows box is suffering from degraded performance. It then shuts down all apps and reboots the machine automatically. Then it tries to restart the applications it was running on reboot (not always successful). We use this in a large Windows based processing center, before using this code we would realize that after 3-5 days of processing a Windows box would be at 10-20% of its "fresh" speed.
I have a theory for why this happens, MS either uses a wind-up or small hamster like creature to power their software. Over time the wind-up runs down or the hamster needs replacing. This function is achieved through a reboot.
It is amazing, I work in a mostly MS centric shop and we have the term 'Technical Limitation'. It is used when our own code mates up with a proprietary chunk that we don't control. So if we are indexing some client data and the search fails to find content due to a bug in the proprietary software, we say it hit a 'Technical Limitation'. Then sales types chime in and talk about what that limitation is (they are usually about 25% right, 75% BS). Our clients are never happy about this but realize they have no options. A lot of the engineers are weary about OSS because then we don't have a 'Technical Limitation' parachute. Personally I don't like working hours and days only to hit these walls. It usually means I have to resort to some really stupid hack to bypass the problem rather than just fixing it.
I was just reminiscing about that pain in your hand from using a hole punch to double side a bunch of five and a quarters. Doesn't quite work with DVDs.
Agreed, my question is: Where has *nix been lacking in the command line department? I bet their first attempt at this won't make me remove Cygwin, unless it actually MAKES me remove Cygwin.
There may be no active plans to unseat MS but I doubt they are going to be eager to run out and buy all new licenses of Windows. It appears that 2000 has recieved its last patch (according to an earlier article) so how long before running 2000 becomes too much of a liability? At some point they will look at the cost of moving all 2000 systems to Longhorn, and compare the cost of moving the same systems to Suse. Perhaps this isn't the last nail in the coffin for MS in HHS but it still doesn't bode well for MS.