Many of the people who loudly oppose WalMart as a big monopoly, are proponents of a former powerful monopoly. One that in the past wielded as much or more power than WalMart. I am, of course, referring to the Unions of retail clerks, food handlers, etc. who are being badly beaten every time WalMart opens a new store that sells groceries, produce, and meat.
They're just pissed because someone else is eating their cookies now.
most IT departments are horribly lacking in local and physical security because it is annoying to the admin-god-noob
See, there's the key point. There are a lot of good security practices that are a total pain in the ass for the staff that has to work around and with them. But if IT folks 'cop an attitude' and get arrogant and act like it's THEIR information that they're in charge of, it's gonna get rolled out. Hope the arrogant IT folks can deal with it, cuz there are plenty more where they came from.
That isn't a privacy concern. That's a security concern. Maybe standard desktop hardware isn't secure enough.
Maybe the only consoles at which critical passwords are entered should be in the server room. There are rackmount keyboard trays that can slide right out when server access is required. The IT staff can stand when doing this work and/or a tall hard stool can be provided.
All the old BOFH stuff is ancient folklore. It's all PUBLISHED at this point and management has had somebody review it.
QT is dual licensed. If a company wants to produce a commercial app, they need to purchase a QT developer's license and the product will NOT be GPL'd. Some would say it would be MORE constrained that it would under the GPL. Others would say less.
I compiled Mozilla to Xlib last week. None of the cut and paste features I am accustomed to worked. And I run Mozilla on NetBSD and display it in eXceed on W2K.
I just googled on 'ATX Standard' and it came back with 2,310,000 hits.
It is an industry standard. Some companies are horrible offenders of the standard. Dell, for instance, use the same motherboard power connector as the ATX standard, but with completely different wiring such that if you plug a standard ATX power supply into a Dell motherboard smoke emerges.
Most other companies comply with the defacto-standard that ATX represents, however. Right now my main NetBSD system is running on an old Gateway PIII motherboard in a standard ATX case (because Gateway cases from that era are big massive turds in many regards.) Many people who avoid proprietary designs get an ATX case that they like and run generations of hardware through it.
I guess I'm lucky that I'm not you, then, because I have a bunch of monitors here and it would be really crowded if I felt compelled to connect them all to one box. I go the opposite direction, btw. I use a 4 way KVM switch and am looking for a good deal on an 8-way.
Indeed, there are many other brands of computer hardware that thumb their nose at what has become the hardware standard.
There are even 'emerging standards' newer than ATX.
We should credit Apple for 'giving it up' in some regards. They sell machines with a PCI bus now, and got rid of their awful non-standard floppy drive eventually. And their current OS, while it still supports some pretty baroque filesystem features, at least isn't as forked up as the old one. (for those who will say 'the forked filesystem is superior- Windows NT also sports a multi-forked filesystem, in fact one that isn't locked down as a single particular (peculiar?) implementation).
The word 'great' peppered throughout marketspeak, in fact, tossing in a few other adjectives as well, is nearly an Apple trademark.
I got a lot of 'educational value' out of the computer lab in my High School in the 70's. We used the ASR-33 teletypes and acoustic coupler modems to dial into a timesharing service running on HP minicomputers. I learned to program and had my first real interaction with computers in that lab.
When they give you that fancy $300-500 phone for less than one hundred dollars they have to lock you into the contract to pay for the equipment.
The lock-in is worse than that.
I have exactly one cell phone and it's one that I bought at an auction for $1. It's not a really old model, but it's older. It's only power source is a cigarette plug since it's designed to use in a car. I plugged it in and, yes, it works. When I tried to use it to call out I got a recorded message about not being a subscriber.
The lock-in is that a cell phone is worthless without a subscription to a cellphone service. Even mine, at $1 is overpriced to the regular consumer.
In what sense is Apple hardware proprietary? Or overpriced for that matter. Specific examples, please.
I've already got a really nice case that I'm not using now that the Pentium II motherboard in it is obsolete. It has an excellent power supply and lots of bays for the drives I like having in my computer.
So where do I buy an ATX motherboard to run Apple's software on? Not only are they completely proprietary and closed, they don't even participate as players in the market segments that many of us choose to buy our hardware through.
great tools are well worth paying for.
I think the Apple fascisto-marketing newspeak where words like 'great' are peppered into the dialogue began with Guy Kawasaki. Or was it earlier than that?
What's to keep Dell from "pulling an Apple" and investing their own cash into a Unix-based operating system and otherwise innovative products?
What "Unix" based company is poised to take over Dell, the way NeXT took over at Apple? (And thank god they did. The Apple system programmers were apparently too entralled with themselves to do anything but continue to slap new layers of paint on the dead horse that MacOS was.)
Yes, and the fact that Apple designed the chips in their systems is what keeps them cruddy consumer machines, as compared to what IBM does with the POWER architecture in their systems.
Apple has just piggybacked on hardware vendors for the entire life of the company, all the way back to them choosing the 6502 because it was cheap and available.
The 'fourth estate' as a noble concept is just so much contrived nonsense.
The concept of an 'ethical journalist' is something spun up out of all the hero worship of Woodward and Bernstein in the post-Watergate era. There has been a LONG history of the free press that long antedates that era, in which crusty old journalists were the norm, an era in which J-school was a twit thing, and good reporters came up through the ranks, often starting as copy boys.
Older Americans know that if you flunk out of Calculus, you transfer to the English department. If you're thrown out of the English department, you transfer to J-School.
Don't think I am disrespecting 'journalists.' They deserve as much respect as any blogger out there. More respect that some bloggers out there, even.
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Many of the people who loudly oppose WalMart as a big monopoly, are proponents of a former powerful monopoly. One that in the past wielded as much or more power than WalMart. I am, of course, referring to the Unions of retail clerks, food handlers, etc. who are being badly beaten every time WalMart opens a new store that sells groceries, produce, and meat.
They're just pissed because someone else is eating their cookies now.
Yes,and the fact that they exist means that certain machines shouldn't be logged into from a cubicle workstation.
Better get some comfortable sneakers, IT folk.
most IT departments are horribly lacking in local and physical security because it is annoying to the admin-god-noob
See, there's the key point. There are a lot of good security practices that are a total pain in the ass for the staff that has to work around and with them. But if IT folks 'cop an attitude' and get arrogant and act like it's THEIR information that they're in charge of, it's gonna get rolled out. Hope the arrogant IT folks can deal with it, cuz there are plenty more where they came from.
IT has been largely commodified. Get used to it.
Fired and the job outsourced. You think they should trust all that critical infrastructure to someone who engages in petty power-play retorts?
Sorry. The BOFH stuff is so 20th century. . . Now could you please fix that toner problem in the LJ4 up in Finance??
That isn't a privacy concern. That's a security concern. Maybe standard desktop hardware isn't secure enough.
Maybe the only consoles at which critical passwords are entered should be in the server room. There are rackmount keyboard trays that can slide right out when server access is required. The IT staff can stand when doing this work and/or a tall hard stool can be provided.
All the old BOFH stuff is ancient folklore. It's all PUBLISHED at this point and management has had somebody review it.
The jig is up.
And thus the big question becomes: Why Did Novell buy SuSE? Just to run it into the ground?
QT is dual licensed. If a company wants to produce a commercial app, they need to purchase a QT developer's license and the product will NOT be GPL'd. Some would say it would be MORE constrained that it would under the GPL. Others would say less.
Yes, but when I put together a Slackware box, I usually run FVWM.
To do otherwise would just seem weird. Although with OpenMotif MWM becomes an option as well.
I compiled Mozilla to Xlib last week. None of the cut and paste features I am accustomed to worked. And I run Mozilla on NetBSD and display it in eXceed on W2K.
I just googled on 'ATX Standard' and it came back with 2,310,000 hits.
It is an industry standard. Some companies are horrible offenders of the standard. Dell, for instance, use the same motherboard power connector as the ATX standard, but with completely different wiring such that if you plug a standard ATX power supply into a Dell motherboard smoke emerges.
Most other companies comply with the defacto-standard that ATX represents, however. Right now my main NetBSD system is running on an old Gateway PIII motherboard in a standard ATX case (because Gateway cases from that era are big massive turds in many regards.) Many people who avoid proprietary designs get an ATX case that they like and run generations of hardware through it.
I guess I'm lucky that I'm not you, then, because I have a bunch of monitors here and it would be really crowded if I felt compelled to connect them all to one box. I go the opposite direction, btw. I use a 4 way KVM switch and am looking for a good deal on an 8-way.
Or the private-media companies will hire thugs to come hammer your network, and where possible, machines connected to it, into dust.
Indeed, there are many other brands of computer hardware that thumb their nose at what has become the hardware standard.
There are even 'emerging standards' newer than ATX.
We should credit Apple for 'giving it up' in some regards. They sell machines with a PCI bus now, and got rid of their awful non-standard floppy drive eventually. And their current OS, while it still supports some pretty baroque filesystem features, at least isn't as forked up as the old one. (for those who will say 'the forked filesystem is superior- Windows NT also sports a multi-forked filesystem, in fact one that isn't locked down as a single particular (peculiar?) implementation).
The word 'great' peppered throughout marketspeak, in fact, tossing in a few other adjectives as well, is nearly an Apple trademark.
I got a lot of 'educational value' out of the computer lab in my High School in the 70's. We used the ASR-33 teletypes and acoustic coupler modems to dial into a timesharing service running on HP minicomputers. I learned to program and had my first real interaction with computers in that lab.
When they give you that fancy $300-500 phone for less than one hundred dollars they have to lock you into the contract to pay for the equipment.
The lock-in is worse than that.
I have exactly one cell phone and it's one that I bought at an auction for $1. It's not a really old model, but it's older. It's only power source is a cigarette plug since it's designed to use in a car. I plugged it in and, yes, it works. When I tried to use it to call out I got a recorded message about not being a subscriber.
The lock-in is that a cell phone is worthless without a subscription to a cellphone service. Even mine, at $1 is overpriced to the regular consumer.
If you weren't really that interested, why are you reading the article and comments? Seems like there is at least some interest on your part.
I am as interested in this topic as I am in running Windows 3.1 under bochs.
I have Windows 3.1 installed on an 'image' hard drive on one of my NetBSD boxes over there in the next room.
'suicidally stupid'
'insanely great'
Seems kinda like the same kind of empty sloganeering to me.
The more I use my Dell Latitude in the office, the more I appreciate how much my iBook is worth every penny I spent on it. YMMV, obviously.
Well, let your company's IT monkeys have at it on the iBook and I am sure they can foul it up as bad as your work machine.
In what sense is Apple hardware proprietary? Or overpriced for that matter. Specific examples, please.
I've already got a really nice case that I'm not using now that the Pentium II motherboard in it is obsolete. It has an excellent power supply and lots of bays for the drives I like having in my computer.
So where do I buy an ATX motherboard to run Apple's software on? Not only are they completely proprietary and closed, they don't even participate as players in the market segments that many of us choose to buy our hardware through.
great tools are well worth paying for.
I think the Apple fascisto-marketing newspeak where words like 'great' are peppered into the dialogue began with Guy Kawasaki. Or was it earlier than that?
What's to keep Dell from "pulling an Apple" and investing their own cash into a Unix-based operating system and otherwise innovative products?
What "Unix" based company is poised to take over Dell, the way NeXT took over at Apple? (And thank god they did. The Apple system programmers were apparently too entralled with themselves to do anything but continue to slap new layers of paint on the dead horse that MacOS was.)
Yes, and the fact that Apple designed the chips in their systems is what keeps them cruddy consumer machines, as compared to what IBM does with the POWER architecture in their systems.
Apple has just piggybacked on hardware vendors for the entire life of the company, all the way back to them choosing the 6502 because it was cheap and available.
Upgrade to a '486.
*rimshot*
Actually, I am more interested in running it on my MicroVAX 3100.
(which it will run on)
Mac OS X is not like a Pontiac Aztec, most folks actually want Mac OS X.
Both probably have about the same market share. I'm not sure why you think people want Mac OS X.
A certain segment of the techie community like OS X, and a certain segment of the computer-as-fashion community as well.
Most of the rest of us really aren't that interested. It'd be fun to run in emulation but by the same token it's fun to run Windows 3.1 on bochs.
The 'fourth estate' as a noble concept is just so much contrived nonsense.
The concept of an 'ethical journalist' is something spun up out of all the hero worship of Woodward and Bernstein in the post-Watergate era. There has been a LONG history of the free press that long antedates that era, in which crusty old journalists were the norm, an era in which J-school was a twit thing, and good reporters came up through the ranks, often starting as copy boys.
Older Americans know that if you flunk out of Calculus, you transfer to the English department. If you're thrown out of the English department, you transfer to J-School.
Don't think I am disrespecting 'journalists.' They deserve as much respect as any blogger out there. More respect that some bloggers out there, even.