MS has a lock on the perception that businesses need their productivity software. But while some may actually need MS Office most can use something else.
I disagree; there is a lot of lock-in when you consider how different the interfaces between different applications are, and how much effort it would take to switch an entire organization from one to the other (most individual employees are not choosing which software they use). Also, there always seem to be slight and annoying differences in the way a word document opens in open office vs. how it opens in word.
Sorry about the babble, I've been getting used to writing that way. I agree that it's a business process revolution rather than a technical one, but I disagree that timescale is the whole story. I think the real meat on this one is in the economies of scale that can be enjoyed by the cloud services provider. This is also more of a hosted application situation than a flexible scaling situation, but the flexible scaling is important as it translates into significantly greater efficiency on the part of the provider. It reduces the need to purchase hardware and maintain data-centers as well as the need for workers to maintain those systems; and it should translate into a significantly lower cost per user than more traditional approaches (for all of these reasons and also obviously the scale benefits enjoyed by the provider which are very significant).
that's actually a really good point. this is the first application of this system, and if they are able to prove it to be secure and reliable (possibly even more secure and reliable than many internally provisioned government datacenter resources) they will make a metric shit-ton of money. Think of all the other states that would also use the product once it has been vetted extensively through an application, not to mention the federal government itself. This is a huge test of faith, and if they pass, they will get a lot more customers.
They still have quite a good lock on business productivity software (i.e. office). Nobody else even comes close to them on that. Google will probably continue to eat away at it for a long time but it does not look like it will tip away from Microsoft's favor in the near future. Don't forget, Microsoft has a ton of cash and they are probably not sitting on their hands waiting for Google to decapitate their cash cow.
I'm not from the LA IT department but I will say that I think the real feelings of the people making the decisions in the large organizations (business types, not necessarily IT types) are making those decisions based on cost analysis. Hosted/cloud services meet their needs and shift expenses from capital expenditures to operating expenditures (which is really important, smaller regular cost can be substantially better than large upfront cost from a financial perspective, even if the regular operating cost will add up to more than the capital expense given enough time). Not to mention it probably permits significant reductions in IT staffing, which is also very expensive. In the end, if it meets the requirements and it's cheaper it makes sense to do it. Certainly there is a cost associated with diminished reliability, but that's just another variable in the equation in determining which is more financially sound. For most slashdotters this is probably not good news as the story of cloud computing is about increasing productivity while maintaining or reducing IT expenditures over time, not growing them.
applications running on a third party's server being maintained by a third party's employees. This is the first application of their new GovCloud, but I'm sure it wont be the last, and there is virtually no doubt that the resources that they had to create for this project can be utilized in supporting other similar applications. That means that unlike the service that may have been previously provided by the internal resources of the state costs to the provider are actually going to decrease over time on a per user basis as they add more customers and spread the cost of their workforce and equipment out over more clients. It's massively more efficient from a costs perspective which is what really matters here.
You're missing something more important here; it allows companies to shift costs from capital equipment to operating expenses which is HUGE from a business standpoint. Not to mention that it ultimately reduces the number of people needed to maintain these systems which is also very significant for large organizations. Reducing the costs involved is far more important than shifting the blame ever is; the people who make these kinds of decisions likely don't give a crap whose job it is to keep it up and running so long as it meets their needs and has a net positive impact on the bottom line.
"Cloud Computing" differs from "information superhighway," "cyber" and "web 2.0" in that it's not just a buzzword but an actual strategy shift in software development which is not only creating "marketing babble" but also directing an increasingly large share of global IT expenditures. This is a real fundamental shift away from traditional notions of the "Platform" away from operating system APIs and proprietary client/server applications to ubiquitous web/standards based applications and commoditized scalable third party provided infrastructure. Capital expenses are shifting to operating expenses, and whenever this much money changes focus you have to keep your head on straight and your eyes open.
I think what they mean it in the sense that it's a direct application of statute, not a matter of debate, just clarification and determining if the law as written applies. (AFAIK)
Right. I just read over the whole decision, and other than the details of the specific implementation, the overall logic of the random/unpredictable nature of the playlist is what makes it non-interactive. In the LAUNCH service in question, users rated songs individually as well, and were also able to skip them as you are in Pandora. I think this stencils pretty directly onto the other service, right? users are unable to choose the specific song in either case, only preferences.
Agreed. It's clearly illegal. The Sherman Antitrust act specifically prohibits
"[e]very contract, combination in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce."
The test of this, derrived in a 1918 court case in Chicago, is along the lines of:
"Every agreement concerning trade, every regulation of trade, restrains. To bind, to restrain, is of their very essence. The true test of legality is whether the restraint imposed is such as merely regulates and perhaps thereby promotes competition or whether it is such as may suppress or even destroy competition."
All material from wikipedia article on US antitrust laws found here: wikipedia.org
I feel as though many home broadband connections and business connections are really at the mercy of these shenanigans because there are no SLAs or anything like that, everything is "best effort" delivery. The ISP is promising to try to bring you network connectivity, but they are not promising much beyond that.
I've also been a little afraid of where net neutrality could go. I agree with it 100% in principal, but if congress says that the ISPs cannot essentially shape or prioritize traffic without the approval of the federal government (lets not kid ourselves, that's what it would really end up doing) we could just end up giving the lobbyists even more power over what kinds of content get to our doorsteps. I think the expansion in power behind something like a properly functioning net neutrality law would open the door to the federal government direct restricting the use of things like P2P networks.
Really? I have been finding it a lot easier to find.30-06 than.308; I've heard that part of the issue is that the military still uses a lot of.308 (M14s are still issued for certain things) which diverts a lot of production output from civilian use in the US. Then again, ammo is just getting absurdly expensive in the US as of late.
I hear the Greek made.308 surplus is some of the better stuff on the market these days; of course still ending up with plenty of L/C and the like as well. What have you been finding?
ahh, but the real question is, why make such a device low cost? If things like steadicams cost $800 to several $k, such a device could be a very profitable thing indeed. that's the pain with price, it often has little to do with cost.
Well, as you said, many shots are done with tripods and it made sense in the context of the film. Scenes where people were being interviewed, or things were happening indoors, the camera was fixed (as far as I remember it was) and conditions where a cameraman was following in the field the camera was unsteady. I think in this case one of the things that made the film really "pop" for me was the "real" feel of it through this documentary lens. As one writeup I read of the film pointed out, the CGI and scenes were so good that during the early scenes set in D-9 it was the humans who seemed out of place rather than the animated aliens.
Can't we all at least agree that while this movie may have had its weak points, it also had some very strong ones, and all things considered it is in fact a decent sci-fi film in a year that seems likely to produce a few of those; which, last time I checked, is the exception? From my perspective the past few years have been on average a baron wasteland of terrible purely "Hollywood" style sci-fi films not worth half of what I had to pay to go see them in theaters.
I'm not an expert in this, but I feel like the answer has to be no; right? Even with parity information, just one drive from an array when the minimum array size is 3 couldn't contain enough information to reconstruct the other 2/3rds of the array, at least not in its entirety; right? Maybe it's possible to recover bits and pieces, but recovering random blocks of data is likely far from a surefire way to make money from the endeavor, unless the drive is just packed full of credit card numbers or something which seems unlikely
I mean, practically speaking, lots of text data in a database, even a large database, is going to be contained into a relatively small amount of "space" on the array, an even smaller amount of space on an individual disk of the array, so it's always possible but it would still be winning the proverbial data recovery lottery, would it not? If you consider something larger which may be of value, such as some kind of... i dunno, top secret gigantic data set, then the chances are probably better.
I think, "probably not" in a broad sense, but if you had enough time, and felt like spending it mining for gold, you could just hit pay-dirt somewhere in there.
Interesting, this is in support of the guy who advocated putting a bunch of drives in an oven at 250C for an hour or so as a method of destruction; of what has been suggested so far, this just may be the easiest, most reliable, most practical effectively "safe" method.
Slashdot Mirror
MS has a lock on the perception that businesses need their productivity software. But while some may actually need MS Office most can use something else.
I disagree; there is a lot of lock-in when you consider how different the interfaces between different applications are, and how much effort it would take to switch an entire organization from one to the other (most individual employees are not choosing which software they use). Also, there always seem to be slight and annoying differences in the way a word document opens in open office vs. how it opens in word.
Sorry about the babble, I've been getting used to writing that way. I agree that it's a business process revolution rather than a technical one, but I disagree that timescale is the whole story. I think the real meat on this one is in the economies of scale that can be enjoyed by the cloud services provider. This is also more of a hosted application situation than a flexible scaling situation, but the flexible scaling is important as it translates into significantly greater efficiency on the part of the provider. It reduces the need to purchase hardware and maintain data-centers as well as the need for workers to maintain those systems; and it should translate into a significantly lower cost per user than more traditional approaches (for all of these reasons and also obviously the scale benefits enjoyed by the provider which are very significant).
that's actually a really good point. this is the first application of this system, and if they are able to prove it to be secure and reliable (possibly even more secure and reliable than many internally provisioned government datacenter resources) they will make a metric shit-ton of money. Think of all the other states that would also use the product once it has been vetted extensively through an application, not to mention the federal government itself. This is a huge test of faith, and if they pass, they will get a lot more customers.
not to mention purchase that hardware and replace that hardware regularly as it becomes obsolete or insufficient
They still have quite a good lock on business productivity software (i.e. office). Nobody else even comes close to them on that. Google will probably continue to eat away at it for a long time but it does not look like it will tip away from Microsoft's favor in the near future. Don't forget, Microsoft has a ton of cash and they are probably not sitting on their hands waiting for Google to decapitate their cash cow.
I'm not from the LA IT department but I will say that I think the real feelings of the people making the decisions in the large organizations (business types, not necessarily IT types) are making those decisions based on cost analysis. Hosted/cloud services meet their needs and shift expenses from capital expenditures to operating expenditures (which is really important, smaller regular cost can be substantially better than large upfront cost from a financial perspective, even if the regular operating cost will add up to more than the capital expense given enough time). Not to mention it probably permits significant reductions in IT staffing, which is also very expensive. In the end, if it meets the requirements and it's cheaper it makes sense to do it. Certainly there is a cost associated with diminished reliability, but that's just another variable in the equation in determining which is more financially sound. For most slashdotters this is probably not good news as the story of cloud computing is about increasing productivity while maintaining or reducing IT expenditures over time, not growing them.
applications running on a third party's server being maintained by a third party's employees. This is the first application of their new GovCloud, but I'm sure it wont be the last, and there is virtually no doubt that the resources that they had to create for this project can be utilized in supporting other similar applications. That means that unlike the service that may have been previously provided by the internal resources of the state costs to the provider are actually going to decrease over time on a per user basis as they add more customers and spread the cost of their workforce and equipment out over more clients. It's massively more efficient from a costs perspective which is what really matters here.
You're missing something more important here; it allows companies to shift costs from capital equipment to operating expenses which is HUGE from a business standpoint. Not to mention that it ultimately reduces the number of people needed to maintain these systems which is also very significant for large organizations. Reducing the costs involved is far more important than shifting the blame ever is; the people who make these kinds of decisions likely don't give a crap whose job it is to keep it up and running so long as it meets their needs and has a net positive impact on the bottom line.
"Cloud Computing" differs from "information superhighway," "cyber" and "web 2.0" in that it's not just a buzzword but an actual strategy shift in software development which is not only creating "marketing babble" but also directing an increasingly large share of global IT expenditures. This is a real fundamental shift away from traditional notions of the "Platform" away from operating system APIs and proprietary client/server applications to ubiquitous web/standards based applications and commoditized scalable third party provided infrastructure. Capital expenses are shifting to operating expenses, and whenever this much money changes focus you have to keep your head on straight and your eyes open.
I think what they mean it in the sense that it's a direct application of statute, not a matter of debate, just clarification and determining if the law as written applies. (AFAIK)
Right. I just read over the whole decision, and other than the details of the specific implementation, the overall logic of the random/unpredictable nature of the playlist is what makes it non-interactive. In the LAUNCH service in question, users rated songs individually as well, and were also able to skip them as you are in Pandora. I think this stencils pretty directly onto the other service, right? users are unable to choose the specific song in either case, only preferences.
Does this mean that Pandora does not have to pay per performance interactive service royalty rates anymore? Isn't this huge for Pandora type services?
"[e]very contract, combination in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce."
The test of this, derrived in a 1918 court case in Chicago, is along the lines of:
"Every agreement concerning trade, every regulation of trade, restrains. To bind, to restrain, is of their very essence. The true test of legality is whether the restraint imposed is such as merely regulates and perhaps thereby promotes competition or whether it is such as may suppress or even destroy competition."
All material from wikipedia article on US antitrust laws found here: wikipedia.org
Quick! We've got to try to render this planet as depleted and undesirable as possible as swiftly as we can...
I feel as though many home broadband connections and business connections are really at the mercy of these shenanigans because there are no SLAs or anything like that, everything is "best effort" delivery. The ISP is promising to try to bring you network connectivity, but they are not promising much beyond that.
I've also been a little afraid of where net neutrality could go. I agree with it 100% in principal, but if congress says that the ISPs cannot essentially shape or prioritize traffic without the approval of the federal government (lets not kid ourselves, that's what it would really end up doing) we could just end up giving the lobbyists even more power over what kinds of content get to our doorsteps. I think the expansion in power behind something like a properly functioning net neutrality law would open the door to the federal government direct restricting the use of things like P2P networks.
yes, I saw that and tried posting a correction reply but accidentally replied to the parent rather than my own post.
Really? I have been finding it a lot easier to find .30-06 than .308; I've heard that part of the issue is that the military still uses a lot of .308 (M14s are still issued for certain things) which diverts a lot of production output from civilian use in the US. Then again, ammo is just getting absurdly expensive in the US as of late.
I hear the Greek made .308 surplus is some of the better stuff on the market these days; of course still ending up with plenty of L/C and the like as well. What have you been finding?
ahh, but the real question is, why make such a device low cost? If things like steadicams cost $800 to several $k, such a device could be a very profitable thing indeed. that's the pain with price, it often has little to do with cost.
Well, as you said, many shots are done with tripods and it made sense in the context of the film. Scenes where people were being interviewed, or things were happening indoors, the camera was fixed (as far as I remember it was) and conditions where a cameraman was following in the field the camera was unsteady. I think in this case one of the things that made the film really "pop" for me was the "real" feel of it through this documentary lens. As one writeup I read of the film pointed out, the CGI and scenes were so good that during the early scenes set in D-9 it was the humans who seemed out of place rather than the animated aliens.
Do yourself a favor, forget netflix; see this one in theaters.
Shaky is always a bit tough to endure, but I felt as though the "documentary" style that the film was shot in kind of gave it some of its character.
buns! that was the same bug cropping up again. 1954 for the .308; thanks for the correction.
Can't we all at least agree that while this movie may have had its weak points, it also had some very strong ones, and all things considered it is in fact a decent sci-fi film in a year that seems likely to produce a few of those; which, last time I checked, is the exception? From my perspective the past few years have been on average a baron wasteland of terrible purely "Hollywood" style sci-fi films not worth half of what I had to pay to go see them in theaters.
I'm not an expert in this, but I feel like the answer has to be no; right? Even with parity information, just one drive from an array when the minimum array size is 3 couldn't contain enough information to reconstruct the other 2/3rds of the array, at least not in its entirety; right? Maybe it's possible to recover bits and pieces, but recovering random blocks of data is likely far from a surefire way to make money from the endeavor, unless the drive is just packed full of credit card numbers or something which seems unlikely
I mean, practically speaking, lots of text data in a database, even a large database, is going to be contained into a relatively small amount of "space" on the array, an even smaller amount of space on an individual disk of the array, so it's always possible but it would still be winning the proverbial data recovery lottery, would it not? If you consider something larger which may be of value, such as some kind of... i dunno, top secret gigantic data set, then the chances are probably better.
I think, "probably not" in a broad sense, but if you had enough time, and felt like spending it mining for gold, you could just hit pay-dirt somewhere in there.
Interesting, this is in support of the guy who advocated putting a bunch of drives in an oven at 250C for an hour or so as a method of destruction; of what has been suggested so far, this just may be the easiest, most reliable, most practical effectively "safe" method.