Vendor lock-in will not necessarily preclude enterprise customers from going with a single supplier for hardware and OS. HP-UX, AIX and Solaris have plenty of folks locked in to HP, IBM and SUN gear. Vendor lock-in WILL slow adoption of "Apple's UNIX" in the server arena. This is because large organizations ARE locked in with Dell, IBM, etc. Regardless of size, IT groups simply don't throw out existing hardware. Instead, they run the same gear until it either falls apart or becomes so painful to maintain that new spend becomes financially attractive. If an organization has a technology refresh plan, the refresh is from the existing vendor.
Will revenue GROWTH for Apple UNIX be better than Linux and Windows? It better be considering Apple's server market share. Will Linux or Windows get "buried"? Not in four years. Maybe not in 10. Heck, it will probably be 10 years before I get a new desktop.
I received a note from my credit card company that I would need to upgrade to Quicken 2005. The great thing about the letter was that it included the fact that I would be receiving a copy of Quicken 2005 for FREE.
And I did.
That said, I think it's time for the large retail banks and credit card companies to view Quicken for what it is -- an extension of THEIR networks and a cost saving one at that (electronic statements versus paper, online remittance versus checks, etc.)
Maybe then I will only see advertising in Quicken 20XX from my bank rather than all of the marketers that Intuit has signed up.
Who pays for after-hours work? In the shops I've been in, contract workers get 40 hours and that's it. Salaried employees (the bulk of the human capital in these support groups) handled the "overtime".
Hopefully, we will all take cayenne8's advice and go contract. As long as the risk-averse in our midst cling to that regular paycheck, the boss will send cayenne8 home and keep the exempt suckers working on the problem.
Exactly. Furthermore, please take the time to consider your purpose in that $5 per hour (plus tuition) job you landed at the U:
1. Graduate
If graduating is not your purpose, then ignore the rest of this reply. If it is your purpose then it might help to remember that as a student worker / graduate assistant you rank at the bottom of academia. If you are a Ph.D. candidate, the bottom is slightly above where you live.
More importantly, it sounds like that managing these servers is more of a support activity with the research being the primary goal (and possibly the source of funding for your position). Of course your prof, after years of banging his head against the editorial boards of the major journals in his field, may have decided that the IT infractructure supporting his research is much more interesting that the research itself. It sounds like this is the case since most of the productive researchers I've run into could care less about the technology as long as it works.
Either way, it can be really easy for very smart people like you (You did get into Minn.) to miss the forest for the trees as well as forget that you are just the help. In the end, you might consider keeping your own systems up to date however you want and following the preferences of your prof when it comes to his systems. That way, you will be the prof in no time flat and can have some GA updating your boxes from source regardless of how -they- would like to do it.
Slashdot Mirror
Vendor lock-in will not necessarily preclude enterprise customers from going with a single supplier for hardware and OS. HP-UX, AIX and Solaris have plenty of folks locked in to HP, IBM and SUN gear. Vendor lock-in WILL slow adoption of "Apple's UNIX" in the server arena. This is because large organizations ARE locked in with Dell, IBM, etc. Regardless of size, IT groups simply don't throw out existing hardware. Instead, they run the same gear until it either falls apart or becomes so painful to maintain that new spend becomes financially attractive. If an organization has a technology refresh plan, the refresh is from the existing vendor. Will revenue GROWTH for Apple UNIX be better than Linux and Windows? It better be considering Apple's server market share. Will Linux or Windows get "buried"? Not in four years. Maybe not in 10. Heck, it will probably be 10 years before I get a new desktop.
I received a note from my credit card company that I would need to upgrade to Quicken 2005. The great thing about the letter was that it included the fact that I would be receiving a copy of Quicken 2005 for FREE. And I did. That said, I think it's time for the large retail banks and credit card companies to view Quicken for what it is -- an extension of THEIR networks and a cost saving one at that (electronic statements versus paper, online remittance versus checks, etc.) Maybe then I will only see advertising in Quicken 20XX from my bank rather than all of the marketers that Intuit has signed up.
Who pays for after-hours work? In the shops I've been in, contract workers get 40 hours and that's it. Salaried employees (the bulk of the human capital in these support groups) handled the "overtime".
Hopefully, we will all take cayenne8's advice and go contract. As long as the risk-averse in our midst cling to that regular paycheck, the boss will send cayenne8 home and keep the exempt suckers working on the problem.
Exactly. Furthermore, please take the time to consider your purpose in that $5 per hour (plus tuition) job you landed at the U:
1. Graduate
If graduating is not your purpose, then ignore the rest of this reply. If it is your purpose then it might help to remember that as a student worker / graduate assistant you rank at the bottom of academia. If you are a Ph.D. candidate, the bottom is slightly above where you live.
More importantly, it sounds like that managing these servers is more of a support activity with the research being the primary goal (and possibly the source of funding for your position). Of course your prof, after years of banging his head against the editorial boards of the major journals in his field, may have decided that the IT infractructure supporting his research is much more interesting that the research itself. It sounds like this is the case since most of the productive researchers I've run into could care less about the technology as long as it works.
Either way, it can be really easy for very smart people like you (You did get into Minn.) to miss the forest for the trees as well as forget that you are just the help. In the end, you might consider keeping your own systems up to date however you want and following the preferences of your prof when it comes to his systems. That way, you will be the prof in no time flat and can have some GA updating your boxes from source regardless of how -they- would like to do it.