I'm just feeding a troll at this point, but right in the article and in the press release from Apple to which the article linked Steve Jobs is quoted as saying "We can sit by and watch competitors steal our patented inventions, or we can do something about it. We’ve decided to do something about it."
In what world do you live in where that sentence doesn't mean Apple didn't invent multitouch? That's specifically what the patent infringement case is about.
I'm going to suggest that if you want to provide advice for reading comprehension that you should actually read what the article is saying first.
Really? You need a citation for this? Have you been sitting up a rock? Apple claiming it invented multitouch is hardly anything new and certainly not surprising.
As for Microsoft and the iMac ridiculous reply you had I won't bother as that is just laziness on your part if it isn't blatently obvious how Apple is buying up what they want rather than developing it in-house. Do you think Microsoft did any different in the 90s? Even the Simpsons made fun of that when Bill Gates bought Homer's Internet business.
Feel free to blind yourself to the whims of Apple. I learned my lesson the hard way with Microsoft, I feel no need to relearn it with Apple.
Huh? What is complex about Android? Especially comparing it to IOS4? The random apps would presumably be disabled as I imagine the military would do the provisioning. There are companies that already make ruggedized phones and putting Android on them is a snap so you're talking about very little modification that needs to be done and then you gain full smart phone capabilities like remote controls, signals analysis in the field, or really anything you can imagine.
I just don't see Apple being that agile, they would have to retune their production to make said phone while other companies already have the facilities. I don't think it could even be profitable for them unless they way the hell overcharge but that wouldn't be too unusual for the military. Mil-spec stuff is crazy expensive. I buy a bit of it for all the electronics I travel with including entire servers. We aren't military but we land, and can provide services to thousands in a matter of days or less if logistics are well planned out.
Actually I didn't say that Apple invented the touch-screen tablet. That was an invention entirely your own.
Apple claimed to the be the first computer to run without a floppy disk drive. This was entirely incorrect as there were plenty of disk-less machines that booted via PXE.
They claimed that they invented multi-touch which they then went an patented except that they didn't invent it and in fact purchased it in true 90's era Microsoft style.
Apple in many ways is behaving like Microsoft in the 1990s. They buy what they want, then take all the credit. It worked for Microsoft, it'll work for Apple.
The Archos 9 is the same thickness as the iPad so I'm not sure how it could be considered big and bulky in comparison.
After playing with one I can say that Win7 runs fine on it. The Archos also had a ton of addon components like the DVR dock which was pretty slick. It was also fully functional unlike the iPad's walled garden. I saw that as great but others like the garden so there's room for both. Of course now Archos has Android tablets which perform much faster. Those again came out before the iPad albeit not by very much. They have been easy to buy from the onset.
We're looking at portable ways to get a lot of information to our buyers who are buying cars. The more details we can give them on demand and with as little fuss as possible the better. The iPad is still pretty clunky given a lot of the development limitations. That's changing pretty fast these days but it's still a real hurdle while the Android tablets are easy and straight forward. Our programmer took less than a day to make his first working useful app.
Except for the Archos tablet which was on the market for a whole year prior to the ipad complete with multi-touch. They had older similar form factor tablets that were slightly less capble too. Archos failed to market it properly however as most people didn't even know it was on the market until they were looking for ipads and found it. It's better in every way save for battery life which will require an arm based tablet to compete with since the Archos was built on the Atom.
It's pretty typical for Apple to claim a first while not actually having been first. They get a pass because they made it pretty. That is what Apple does and they are quite good at it. I don't know why more companies don't put such efforts into the UI.
I like it, these are the discussions that I think would be the most helpful for the country. We tried something big and unprecedented but haven't had a real debate as to the successes and failures of it. Without evaluating how are we supposed to adjust and optimize? Like all those green jobs, that money went to projects which were then executed by companies from China. Like the giant wind farm in Texas? Billions of dollars of the very money you speak of went to China instead of American companies so they new jobs also went to China. Sure there were a few new jobs in Texas because of it but not nearly as many as would have been produced if an American operated company got the bid.
It's hard to make all the adjustments you propose which are probably sensible, it's impossible make them all at once. That's is my largest complaint about the current administration but I also understand that the public wants results and they want them fast no matter how unreasonable it is to expect them so soon. Many people think 30 years of screwing with our economy can be cleaned up in two years of Obama's presidency. It's funny because those same people are the ones saying the dems think he is the messiah and yet they attribute anything short of super powers as utter failure.
Spending money to get out of debt is seriously risky but if your plan is to do it until the Bush tax cuts expire then there is some reasoning evident there as many companies will float bad times with credit and make it up during the better times.
While I agree with your assessment of the situation I'm not sure I agree that it's best for the country to have it's government squabbling all the time. They often remind me of children the way they behave and that's people in both parties, I could say that one is louder and more obnoxious than the other but that's really just my point of view. What you advocate is the status quo though and that is where the real estate bubble and really any bubble forms. The 90's was the dot com bubble and as you may or may not know, bubbles are bad for economic stability. Many of the banking regulations that existed before Bush and Clinton were formed after the great depression which was the result of a bubble bursting as they always do. Both Bush and Clinton eased regulations when they should have been shoring them up. Uncontrolled growth is rarely, if ever, a good thing.
I like the idea that since we are stuck with two parties that one controls one house while the other controls the other but given the stupid things that I've seen republicans vote no against or use the filibuster on, the idea frankly scares me. Maybe they wouldn't have to resort to such childish tactics if they had power in one of the houses. I prefer to think that power is earned though through responsible behavior.
I like the idea of unseating incumbents as it would show that political figures actually are accountable for their actions. I don't see the will to do this, I hear a lot of people say it but the primaries showed that they were a vocal minority. I don't think things have changed enough since then for people to change their minds and vote our incumbents.
I don't think you understand the difference in expenses. Living in a city can mean that a tiny house or apartment will cost you triple or even more. You make it sound like people live to work when the reality is the other way around. I chose to live in the city, but I pay dearly for it. My parents live 30 minutes south and their house costs 1/3rd mine and is five times the size. That is quite a difference especially since there is nothing that says my neighbourhood will stay affluent while theirs won't develop like mine did 20 years earlier.
Add on to the fact that such people are not considered poor by any means. The poor live in trailers at best, have one TV from the 70s or 80s and are lucky if they even get their own bed.
That quality of life is still long strides ahead their poor brothers and sisters in countries like India although I do give India a lot of credit for using a lot of the new money to actually improve the quality of life for a large portion of the country rather than hording it like is being seen in American business right now.
Nobody is forced to work at McDonalds or any take job that pays minimum wage or any job period. Labor laws exist to prevent the wealthy from exploiting the desperate. At least that is why they were created, you can argue their current status as a political issue to get voters though.
The other side of the coin however is that they can afford a computer and Internet access already so they probably have other income in which case you can argue it's not exploitive.
What tactical advantage has been gained from the release by Wikileaks? I've heard this said again and again and have seen zero evidence to support it. Please tell me how this helps anybody fight against us? It helps inform the public and has many oversight implications but I haven't seen anything that would change any tactical realities.
I want to understand your approach to arguments because you don't make any sense. You're asking parent to argue why you should broaden your admittedly narrow mind in regards to political discourse.
You don't actually want a reply because free thinking doesn't fly with you as you so arrogantly dismiss the political spectrum as "not necessary in a practical sense." The ability to evaluate what other countries have done well and how they have fallen short was a huge strength of the founding fathers and has apparently been lost on a great many in this country. It is a sad day when narrow minded-ness is accepted and even encouraged by our media.
Just because it's done in Europe isn't an argument alone but there are a great many examples of centralized health-care for instance that haven't bankrupted countries. Hell, a friend of mind got mugged in Barcelona, she was even a foreigner and they took care of her injuries and helped her in a number of ways from assisting her to the embassy since her passport was stolen. Just an example, there are failures in the Spanish system too but arguably they relate directly to funding but it means that health-care won't bankrupt people. Many call this socialist but in reality it is quite centrist, it only appears socialist due to the narrow range inflicted on the political spectrum in the U.S.
It's funny how police can be publicly funded as a function of the greater good but health-care funding is socialist. One saves lives everyday, the other is being fought ferociously but would have the same or even greater impact on our quality of life.
Course going to war means we can't afford it now, but taxes are gonna go up so that should help ease the pain a bit.
Really? Cause new movies are starting to require HDCP which as you probably know you can't do with component video. HDMI with a TV that supports HDCP is required even though the current bluray player works just fine with your current movie collection.
Actually, we were discussing industry best practices which the laws are supposed to be based on. The industry is lax and thus the laws shouldn't be based on the industry. Get it?
Out of curiosity, where are you getting your information? You mean the last time there was a spill in the Gulf?
The oil spill off the Australian coast in August last year would seem to counter your claim entirely. Their procedures were lax and probably are still lax because those procedures are expensive. I'm not sure why people are so quick to dismiss the Gulf spill as a series of calamitous events when there is a ton of evidence to the contrary. Maybe people just want cheap gas too much and are willing to ignore all evidence so they don't have to face any consequences.
The sad reality is that oil is spilled everyday, Shell spills every year as much oil as the Exxon Valdez disaster in Alaska. Of course they spill it in Nigeria so no one cares.
Going into a lower gear while still pressing the accelerator would result in the car going even faster in most cases. What you describe is a good reaction when your brakes don't work but doesn't really apply when it's the accelerator malfunctioning.
Way to totally discount existing infrastructure and training. While your points about licensing are valid I think you have a hard sell to many people that Windows 2008 is inferior especially in the Mail and database world. SQL 2005/2008 are solid products and Exchange is as yet unmatched in features. People do take risks with the proprietary format and if it were a completely new setup I would definitely say it's worth it but when you have existing applications a few hundred thousand dollars in licensing is a small price to pay to maintain the status quo.
In the company I work for you're seeing a slow migration to Linux on the backend and new projects on the desktop are based on Linux but nobody wants to retrain the whole company to achieve the same functionality just to save on licensing costs. Lost productivity will quickly outpace the licensing costs. If Windows didn't work the majority of time people would have ditched it already. By moving individual servers and services to Linux we are gaining the necessary skills to maintain it while being transparent to the end-user. It makes it a real easy sell to the execs when you say we're already running Linux in that environment so we just need more hardware.
Five years ago we had one Linux box running Oracle, now half the servers are running Linux in some form. Our IPTV setup is 100% Linux based utilitizing nettops as settop boxes. Citrix virtual desktops are starting to get rolled out making Linux clients a breeze as they just use a Citrix receiver on their Linux box to pull up their virtual desktop which undergoes a snapshot process regularly. Slow and gradual is the only real way to do it and that means you continue paying Microsoft even though you hate to. There are times when they are a great option though. I don't have anymore troubles with my Windows servers than I do with my Linux servers. The main difference is the setup process. Linux boxen take longer to setup and make work how you want but once you're there basically it's just update maintenance. With Windows it's up and running in 20 minutes with slightly more maintenance required but most of it is automated so I don't really even notice it.
I missed something, when was the patent case ruled to be wrong? Last I heard it was still ongoing...
Given what I've seen about WAFL and what I've read about ZFS it doesn't seem like there is anything bogus about the claim unless you think software patents should be thrown out in general.
As someone who manages 6 filers myself I can assure you that it is pretty accurate. I've yet to encounter any storage provider that is easier to setup and configure. HP and EMC have nothing on the ease of use found in NetApp. They've definitely taken some missteps along the way, VFM was terrible, so terrible they stopped selling it.
Out of curiosity what do you find so difficult about working with NetApp hardware?
What feature does NetApp lack? If you're going to call it crap at least present some reasons, those of us that have used Hitachi, HP, and EMC storage in our SANs don't see NetApp as crap at all.
Your claim about VMS is highly suspect as well as even modern OpenVMS lacks many of the features found in a typical NetApp SAN.
Come now, we don't want to talk to people! I've had similar experiences asking in Phoenix, Vegas, Burlington, Palm Beach, and really anywhere I go that has escalators. It works because people aren't on them all the time. On a city sidewalk I don't think it would work as people often just stand around on sidewalks not necessarily going anywhere. Then there are all the liabilities and you know lawsuits would ensue when people fall because they are stupid. Course I'm not sure I would stand upright very well when I drunk at 3am but I imagine the people movers would only be on during high traffic times like they are in airports and malls. Saves maintenance that way afterall.
Now compare that with the number of special needs kids and higher insurance costs for schools.
Now compare state to state, I grew up in Vermont so I'll put it against say North Carolina which is still better than Arizona. With such a disparate range of spending I don't see how you can make your statement with a straight face. Even in VT they've been cutting spending removing sports and music and paying teachers less which meant forcing out older teachers to make room for cheaper younger teachers.
Hell, here in Arizona the problem is probably the worst as they've cut lots of teaching positions. They are even cutting Kindergarten.The cuts don't end there.
The problem is that public schools are driven by local interest groups some of which have been corrupted by a number of methods such as religious bias in Texas to budgetary bias almost everywhere. Since schools have been given more and more students without associated increases in funding you end up with schools cutting back on everything.
Beyond all that is the lack of parental responsibility. There seems to be two major poles here, the helicopter parents that hover over their kids all the time suing whenever Johnny doesn't get straight As because of course it's the teacher's fault that he got a question wrong. Then there are the growing number of people that don't care and just plop their kids in front of the TV. Without parents to reinforce and augment lessons in school you can't expect kids to grow up well rounded by themselves.
A tough-minded population still exists and they even attend public schools, they were just fortunate enough to have adult influences to guide them properly. Where I work today it's rare to find people will to take responsibility for anything. As a result, disproportionate amounts of the work are done by the people willing to take the risk. That means I just pulled 28 straight days of 18 hour work days, sometimes even more. Last night was the first time in almost a month I got more than 5 hours of sleep. Now I'm not going to roll over and let that happen again but people needed to step up to get it done and I was one of a handful of people that met the challenge. We're not special, we just have a strong work ethic and aren't afraid to take responsibility for our actions even when they aren't perfect.
Public schools vary greatly from region to region as far as quality and I think that reflects regions where parents are actively involved. Just like there are good public schools in inner cities there are good public schools in rural America. When parents take the time to parent their kids they can accomplish a lot.
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I'm just feeding a troll at this point, but right in the article and in the press release from Apple to which the article linked Steve Jobs is quoted as saying "We can sit by and watch competitors steal our patented inventions, or we can do something about it. We’ve decided to do something about it."
In what world do you live in where that sentence doesn't mean Apple didn't invent multitouch? That's specifically what the patent infringement case is about.
I'm going to suggest that if you want to provide advice for reading comprehension that you should actually read what the article is saying first.
Really? You need a citation for this? Have you been sitting up a rock? Apple claiming it invented multitouch is hardly anything new and certainly not surprising.
As for Microsoft and the iMac ridiculous reply you had I won't bother as that is just laziness on your part if it isn't blatently obvious how Apple is buying up what they want rather than developing it in-house. Do you think Microsoft did any different in the 90s? Even the Simpsons made fun of that when Bill Gates bought Homer's Internet business.
Feel free to blind yourself to the whims of Apple. I learned my lesson the hard way with Microsoft, I feel no need to relearn it with Apple.
Huh? What is complex about Android? Especially comparing it to IOS4? The random apps would presumably be disabled as I imagine the military would do the provisioning. There are companies that already make ruggedized phones and putting Android on them is a snap so you're talking about very little modification that needs to be done and then you gain full smart phone capabilities like remote controls, signals analysis in the field, or really anything you can imagine.
I just don't see Apple being that agile, they would have to retune their production to make said phone while other companies already have the facilities. I don't think it could even be profitable for them unless they way the hell overcharge but that wouldn't be too unusual for the military. Mil-spec stuff is crazy expensive. I buy a bit of it for all the electronics I travel with including entire servers. We aren't military but we land, and can provide services to thousands in a matter of days or less if logistics are well planned out.
Actually I didn't say that Apple invented the touch-screen tablet. That was an invention entirely your own.
Apple claimed to the be the first computer to run without a floppy disk drive. This was entirely incorrect as there were plenty of disk-less machines that booted via PXE.
They claimed that they invented multi-touch which they then went an patented except that they didn't invent it and in fact purchased it in true 90's era Microsoft style.
Apple in many ways is behaving like Microsoft in the 1990s. They buy what they want, then take all the credit. It worked for Microsoft, it'll work for Apple.
The Archos 9 is the same thickness as the iPad so I'm not sure how it could be considered big and bulky in comparison.
After playing with one I can say that Win7 runs fine on it. The Archos also had a ton of addon components like the DVR dock which was pretty slick. It was also fully functional unlike the iPad's walled garden. I saw that as great but others like the garden so there's room for both. Of course now Archos has Android tablets which perform much faster. Those again came out before the iPad albeit not by very much. They have been easy to buy from the onset.
We're looking at portable ways to get a lot of information to our buyers who are buying cars. The more details we can give them on demand and with as little fuss as possible the better. The iPad is still pretty clunky given a lot of the development limitations. That's changing pretty fast these days but it's still a real hurdle while the Android tablets are easy and straight forward. Our programmer took less than a day to make his first working useful app.
Except for the Archos tablet which was on the market for a whole year prior to the ipad complete with multi-touch. They had older similar form factor tablets that were slightly less capble too. Archos failed to market it properly however as most people didn't even know it was on the market until they were looking for ipads and found it. It's better in every way save for battery life which will require an arm based tablet to compete with since the Archos was built on the Atom.
It's pretty typical for Apple to claim a first while not actually having been first. They get a pass because they made it pretty. That is what Apple does and they are quite good at it. I don't know why more companies don't put such efforts into the UI.
I like it, these are the discussions that I think would be the most helpful for the country. We tried something big and unprecedented but haven't had a real debate as to the successes and failures of it. Without evaluating how are we supposed to adjust and optimize? Like all those green jobs, that money went to projects which were then executed by companies from China. Like the giant wind farm in Texas? Billions of dollars of the very money you speak of went to China instead of American companies so they new jobs also went to China. Sure there were a few new jobs in Texas because of it but not nearly as many as would have been produced if an American operated company got the bid.
It's hard to make all the adjustments you propose which are probably sensible, it's impossible make them all at once. That's is my largest complaint about the current administration but I also understand that the public wants results and they want them fast no matter how unreasonable it is to expect them so soon. Many people think 30 years of screwing with our economy can be cleaned up in two years of Obama's presidency. It's funny because those same people are the ones saying the dems think he is the messiah and yet they attribute anything short of super powers as utter failure.
Spending money to get out of debt is seriously risky but if your plan is to do it until the Bush tax cuts expire then there is some reasoning evident there as many companies will float bad times with credit and make it up during the better times.
This is Slashdot, of course!
While I agree with your assessment of the situation I'm not sure I agree that it's best for the country to have it's government squabbling all the time. They often remind me of children the way they behave and that's people in both parties, I could say that one is louder and more obnoxious than the other but that's really just my point of view. What you advocate is the status quo though and that is where the real estate bubble and really any bubble forms. The 90's was the dot com bubble and as you may or may not know, bubbles are bad for economic stability. Many of the banking regulations that existed before Bush and Clinton were formed after the great depression which was the result of a bubble bursting as they always do. Both Bush and Clinton eased regulations when they should have been shoring them up. Uncontrolled growth is rarely, if ever, a good thing.
I like the idea that since we are stuck with two parties that one controls one house while the other controls the other but given the stupid things that I've seen republicans vote no against or use the filibuster on, the idea frankly scares me. Maybe they wouldn't have to resort to such childish tactics if they had power in one of the houses. I prefer to think that power is earned though through responsible behavior.
I like the idea of unseating incumbents as it would show that political figures actually are accountable for their actions. I don't see the will to do this, I hear a lot of people say it but the primaries showed that they were a vocal minority. I don't think things have changed enough since then for people to change their minds and vote our incumbents.
I don't think you understand the difference in expenses. Living in a city can mean that a tiny house or apartment will cost you triple or even more. You make it sound like people live to work when the reality is the other way around. I chose to live in the city, but I pay dearly for it. My parents live 30 minutes south and their house costs 1/3rd mine and is five times the size. That is quite a difference especially since there is nothing that says my neighbourhood will stay affluent while theirs won't develop like mine did 20 years earlier.
Add on to the fact that such people are not considered poor by any means. The poor live in trailers at best, have one TV from the 70s or 80s and are lucky if they even get their own bed.
That quality of life is still long strides ahead their poor brothers and sisters in countries like India although I do give India a lot of credit for using a lot of the new money to actually improve the quality of life for a large portion of the country rather than hording it like is being seen in American business right now.
Nobody is forced to work at McDonalds or any take job that pays minimum wage or any job period. Labor laws exist to prevent the wealthy from exploiting the desperate. At least that is why they were created, you can argue their current status as a political issue to get voters though.
The other side of the coin however is that they can afford a computer and Internet access already so they probably have other income in which case you can argue it's not exploitive.
What tactical advantage has been gained from the release by Wikileaks? I've heard this said again and again and have seen zero evidence to support it. Please tell me how this helps anybody fight against us? It helps inform the public and has many oversight implications but I haven't seen anything that would change any tactical realities.
I want to understand your approach to arguments because you don't make any sense. You're asking parent to argue why you should broaden your admittedly narrow mind in regards to political discourse.
You don't actually want a reply because free thinking doesn't fly with you as you so arrogantly dismiss the political spectrum as "not necessary in a practical sense." The ability to evaluate what other countries have done well and how they have fallen short was a huge strength of the founding fathers and has apparently been lost on a great many in this country. It is a sad day when narrow minded-ness is accepted and even encouraged by our media.
Just because it's done in Europe isn't an argument alone but there are a great many examples of centralized health-care for instance that haven't bankrupted countries. Hell, a friend of mind got mugged in Barcelona, she was even a foreigner and they took care of her injuries and helped her in a number of ways from assisting her to the embassy since her passport was stolen. Just an example, there are failures in the Spanish system too but arguably they relate directly to funding but it means that health-care won't bankrupt people. Many call this socialist but in reality it is quite centrist, it only appears socialist due to the narrow range inflicted on the political spectrum in the U.S.
It's funny how police can be publicly funded as a function of the greater good but health-care funding is socialist. One saves lives everyday, the other is being fought ferociously but would have the same or even greater impact on our quality of life.
Course going to war means we can't afford it now, but taxes are gonna go up so that should help ease the pain a bit.
Really? Cause new movies are starting to require HDCP which as you probably know you can't do with component video. HDMI with a TV that supports HDCP is required even though the current bluray player works just fine with your current movie collection.
Actually, we were discussing industry best practices which the laws are supposed to be based on. The industry is lax and thus the laws shouldn't be based on the industry. Get it?
Out of curiosity, where are you getting your information? You mean the last time there was a spill in the Gulf?
The oil spill off the Australian coast in August last year would seem to counter your claim entirely. Their procedures were lax and probably are still lax because those procedures are expensive. I'm not sure why people are so quick to dismiss the Gulf spill as a series of calamitous events when there is a ton of evidence to the contrary. Maybe people just want cheap gas too much and are willing to ignore all evidence so they don't have to face any consequences.
The sad reality is that oil is spilled everyday, Shell spills every year as much oil as the Exxon Valdez disaster in Alaska. Of course they spill it in Nigeria so no one cares.
Going into a lower gear while still pressing the accelerator would result in the car going even faster in most cases. What you describe is a good reaction when your brakes don't work but doesn't really apply when it's the accelerator malfunctioning.
Way to totally discount existing infrastructure and training. While your points about licensing are valid I think you have a hard sell to many people that Windows 2008 is inferior especially in the Mail and database world. SQL 2005/2008 are solid products and Exchange is as yet unmatched in features. People do take risks with the proprietary format and if it were a completely new setup I would definitely say it's worth it but when you have existing applications a few hundred thousand dollars in licensing is a small price to pay to maintain the status quo.
In the company I work for you're seeing a slow migration to Linux on the backend and new projects on the desktop are based on Linux but nobody wants to retrain the whole company to achieve the same functionality just to save on licensing costs. Lost productivity will quickly outpace the licensing costs. If Windows didn't work the majority of time people would have ditched it already. By moving individual servers and services to Linux we are gaining the necessary skills to maintain it while being transparent to the end-user. It makes it a real easy sell to the execs when you say we're already running Linux in that environment so we just need more hardware.
Five years ago we had one Linux box running Oracle, now half the servers are running Linux in some form. Our IPTV setup is 100% Linux based utilitizing nettops as settop boxes. Citrix virtual desktops are starting to get rolled out making Linux clients a breeze as they just use a Citrix receiver on their Linux box to pull up their virtual desktop which undergoes a snapshot process regularly. Slow and gradual is the only real way to do it and that means you continue paying Microsoft even though you hate to. There are times when they are a great option though. I don't have anymore troubles with my Windows servers than I do with my Linux servers. The main difference is the setup process. Linux boxen take longer to setup and make work how you want but once you're there basically it's just update maintenance. With Windows it's up and running in 20 minutes with slightly more maintenance required but most of it is automated so I don't really even notice it.
I missed something, when was the patent case ruled to be wrong? Last I heard it was still ongoing...
Given what I've seen about WAFL and what I've read about ZFS it doesn't seem like there is anything bogus about the claim unless you think software patents should be thrown out in general.
As someone who manages 6 filers myself I can assure you that it is pretty accurate. I've yet to encounter any storage provider that is easier to setup and configure. HP and EMC have nothing on the ease of use found in NetApp. They've definitely taken some missteps along the way, VFM was terrible, so terrible they stopped selling it.
Out of curiosity what do you find so difficult about working with NetApp hardware?
What feature does NetApp lack? If you're going to call it crap at least present some reasons, those of us that have used Hitachi, HP, and EMC storage in our SANs don't see NetApp as crap at all.
Your claim about VMS is highly suspect as well as even modern OpenVMS lacks many of the features found in a typical NetApp SAN.
Come now, we don't want to talk to people! I've had similar experiences asking in Phoenix, Vegas, Burlington, Palm Beach, and really anywhere I go that has escalators. It works because people aren't on them all the time. On a city sidewalk I don't think it would work as people often just stand around on sidewalks not necessarily going anywhere. Then there are all the liabilities and you know lawsuits would ensue when people fall because they are stupid. Course I'm not sure I would stand upright very well when I drunk at 3am but I imagine the people movers would only be on during high traffic times like they are in airports and malls. Saves maintenance that way afterall.
Hope those tapes were encrypted! I know mine are
Now compare that with the number of special needs kids and higher insurance costs for schools.
Now compare state to state, I grew up in Vermont so I'll put it against say North Carolina which is still better than Arizona. With such a disparate range of spending I don't see how you can make your statement with a straight face. Even in VT they've been cutting spending removing sports and music and paying teachers less which meant forcing out older teachers to make room for cheaper younger teachers.
Hell, here in Arizona the problem is probably the worst as they've cut lots of teaching positions. They are even cutting Kindergarten. The cuts don't end there.
The problem is that public schools are driven by local interest groups some of which have been corrupted by a number of methods such as religious bias in Texas to budgetary bias almost everywhere. Since schools have been given more and more students without associated increases in funding you end up with schools cutting back on everything.
Beyond all that is the lack of parental responsibility. There seems to be two major poles here, the helicopter parents that hover over their kids all the time suing whenever Johnny doesn't get straight As because of course it's the teacher's fault that he got a question wrong. Then there are the growing number of people that don't care and just plop their kids in front of the TV. Without parents to reinforce and augment lessons in school you can't expect kids to grow up well rounded by themselves.
A tough-minded population still exists and they even attend public schools, they were just fortunate enough to have adult influences to guide them properly. Where I work today it's rare to find people will to take responsibility for anything. As a result, disproportionate amounts of the work are done by the people willing to take the risk. That means I just pulled 28 straight days of 18 hour work days, sometimes even more. Last night was the first time in almost a month I got more than 5 hours of sleep. Now I'm not going to roll over and let that happen again but people needed to step up to get it done and I was one of a handful of people that met the challenge. We're not special, we just have a strong work ethic and aren't afraid to take responsibility for our actions even when they aren't perfect.
Public schools vary greatly from region to region as far as quality and I think that reflects regions where parents are actively involved. Just like there are good public schools in inner cities there are good public schools in rural America. When parents take the time to parent their kids they can accomplish a lot.