Harder to find things...
on
RIP, SunSolve
·
· Score: 1
Reading about the underlying changes (terms and conditions) is a bit scary. Forget how annoying the new Oracle support site is - that's just your basic sub-par Flash interface that keeps the executives happy. Spend a little time investigating the Soylent Green underneath, and you'll find that things are rapidly becoming a ton more restrictive than they ever were with Sun.
Before, when working with Sun, a support contract entitled you to access to SunSolve and the majority of the information and updates. Sure, they started limiting access to end-of-life product updates like Solaris 8, but at least that's something you can plan for. They also had a limited subset of free materials which you could access (parts information), but you needed to have a support contract for other items (blown-up images, click-through links). Reasonable.
Now, with Oracle, if it's anything like the database support end of things, you get what you pay for. It looks like if you pay nothing, you get nothing: zero, zip, zilch. Without a valid support identifier or active contract number, the account you create won't even allow you to go to the front page of the support site. Wow!
Sun had a brand, a well-known brand, which Oracle is rapidly dismantling, and in doing so irritating a huge group of loyal customers. If the techie sentiments on this board are any indication, Oracle is going to have a really hard time keeping folks in the fold.
I realize there are benefits to using the Oracle database, but at what cost? Hopefully, enough people will choose open-source (free as in freedom and beer) database solutions to drive down the initial cost and maintenance costs of proprietary databases such as Oracle. Why use Oracle if you can use MySQL? And if you say "well, it doesn't do XYZ," you have to ask yourself "why not?" If enough companies and governments left Oracle to use an open-source option, there's no reason why the community couldn't create every single plug-in and specialized application that Oracle has - faster, cheaper, better and for sure better supported. A community of people coding because they love something is going to be far more robust and secure in the long run than a mercenary army dedicated exclusively to the almighty dollar. Just look at Microsoft versus Linux or BSD.
Does that mean that once a "Level 1" computer has been released and becomes obsolete, there will never be a "Level 1" again? Or will there be "Level 1, 2004 standard" or something?
Does that mean that after a few years, we'll have "Level 42" computers? I know the standards won't last that long, but it would be funny if they did.
Finally, we (the technical people) will still be asked, on a daily basis, "so, which Level computer should I get?" and we'll either have to answer with the Level number, or the actual technical specs. We'll STILL have to know what each Level means.... Personally, it just sounds like obfuscation, abstraction; something that Micro$oft can charge big-time support fees for.
I often find myself asking these customers/relatives/friends: "Well, what do you want to DO with this hypothetical computer? Do you want a warranty? What operating system do you want? How much do you want to pay?" because divulging a string of specs up-front is usually not the most useful or helpful thing to do with someone who wants to know The Answer, not necessarily the methodology behind it.
...and the main goody that you can extract from all of this is that P2P is a genie out of the bottle.
Regardless of "who's on top" or "who's bigger than whom," the fact that there are multiple, competing and viable peer-to-peer sharing platforms, should give most open-minded people a good, winning feeling. Fair use is a great thing, and some folks resent paying for four or five different forms (records, eight-track, cassette tapes, CDs, Music DVDs, digital MP3s) of the same exact song, piece of software or movie; simply because the old medium type was retired, or because the old media reached the end of its short useful lifespan. Wouldn't it be nice to buy a song, and have the right to listen to that song...forever?
Yet, I digress. The media companies have, for too long now, held the consumers and the actual artists responsible for the art-form in question, hostage. The artists aren't losing the vast majority of their profits on P2P...it's the large corporations that take the lion's share of the end product that ends up with losses. I say turn all media digital, and have us pay for only the individual songs, videos, or whatever piece of work you actually like, and get rid of the rest of the album filler...and associated over-head cost. I'll bet people would like that a lot...and I think that P2P integrated with a useable, small cash payment system, is going to really hurt the greedy media companies, while helping bring more of the end profit directly to the artists responsible.
I've been using the 2.63 version of Spamassassin for a few months now, and it's surprising how well it works, especially when you use the "spam/ham" folder saving feedback system. I've noticed a lot fewer miscategorizations, which gives me a better feeling about using the app site-wide (I'm just using it for three users right now). I'm really excited about the potential for a major release like this having significant and noticable improvements in key features like heuristics and integration. The logic improvements will help end-users feel better about setting things up a certain way, then forgetting about it. Integration (it's great that it's under the Apache S.F. umbrella now) means that more people will get behind supporting it, which follows with increased feature richness, improved algorythms and rapid filter development. In the end, though, myself and my users just love seeing the spam marked out in an increasingly accurate way...so it becomes second-nature to just rapidly press the delete key without much thought....
So, back when the books first came out, I read them all in paperback, individually. I'm sure I've been through at least three "complete" (to varying degrees) versions of the "Trilogy" in hardcover (one of them was even leather bound!). I played the Infocom game on various platforms and emulators, watched the BBC TV show recorded on VHS and Betamax, and recently picked up a copy of the DVD set at the library. There are at least two versions of the radio show that I know of, and both of those I've listened to completely.
On my nightstand is a recently purchased, clearanced hardcover copy of the Trilogy that I haven't been able to get myself back into, though. It just seems like it's from a completely different era. Probably the reason why some people are really into the Trash 80's music, can't get enough of the culture, even though that decade is long gone...while others say "yeah, cute...let's move on."
So you see, I can see this from both sides of the fence. I think HHGTTG is a classic, written by a phenominal author, and I'm very interested to see how they're going to update things...fashion, computers, scenery. I realize that an audio program leaves more to the imagination, but I'm certain that radio SFX have advanced significantly since even the more current edition of the audio program. My fear is that there may not be as much of an audience for this as there once was....
Not only younger, but you'll notice, he goes from a gray pin-striped suit (almost like a butler) to a more managerial, executive, corporate-friendly guy.
He didn't say "sell at fair market value," he said "get...into the hands of." Seems to me he's saying that he'd make them untouchable...unpurchasable by those large groups that would pay so much more for the land then go on to rape it of its natural resources with not a single reason to care for the destruction of the environment (habitat for animals, plants, ourselves) and the extinction of said living creatures. A seller can put restrictions on the use of any real estate, and the government can take away the land and give it to these groups for a song, contingent upon preservation. It's something that could happen, but then again, I'm not sure what the ramifications of effectively taking someone's corporately "owned" property and giving it to someone else would be.
In looking through Carrie Ann-Moss's bio, it seems that we might be better off with Majel Barrett-Roddenberry as our mothership voice; more recognizable! "Self destruct sequence in ten minutes!"
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Reading about the underlying changes (terms and conditions) is a bit scary. Forget how annoying the new Oracle support site is - that's just your basic sub-par Flash interface that keeps the executives happy. Spend a little time investigating the Soylent Green underneath, and you'll find that things are rapidly becoming a ton more restrictive than they ever were with Sun.
Before, when working with Sun, a support contract entitled you to access to SunSolve and the majority of the information and updates. Sure, they started limiting access to end-of-life product updates like Solaris 8, but at least that's something you can plan for. They also had a limited subset of free materials which you could access (parts information), but you needed to have a support contract for other items (blown-up images, click-through links). Reasonable.
Now, with Oracle, if it's anything like the database support end of things, you get what you pay for. It looks like if you pay nothing, you get nothing: zero, zip, zilch. Without a valid support identifier or active contract number, the account you create won't even allow you to go to the front page of the support site. Wow!
Sun had a brand, a well-known brand, which Oracle is rapidly dismantling, and in doing so irritating a huge group of loyal customers. If the techie sentiments on this board are any indication, Oracle is going to have a really hard time keeping folks in the fold.
I realize there are benefits to using the Oracle database, but at what cost? Hopefully, enough people will choose open-source (free as in freedom and beer) database solutions to drive down the initial cost and maintenance costs of proprietary databases such as Oracle. Why use Oracle if you can use MySQL? And if you say "well, it doesn't do XYZ," you have to ask yourself "why not?" If enough companies and governments left Oracle to use an open-source option, there's no reason why the community couldn't create every single plug-in and specialized application that Oracle has - faster, cheaper, better and for sure better supported. A community of people coding because they love something is going to be far more robust and secure in the long run than a mercenary army dedicated exclusively to the almighty dollar. Just look at Microsoft versus Linux or BSD.
It's only a matter of time....
Does that mean that after a few years, we'll have "Level 42" computers? I know the standards won't last that long, but it would be funny if they did.
Finally, we (the technical people) will still be asked, on a daily basis, "so, which Level computer should I get?" and we'll either have to answer with the Level number, or the actual technical specs. We'll STILL have to know what each Level means.... Personally, it just sounds like obfuscation, abstraction; something that Micro$oft can charge big-time support fees for.
I often find myself asking these customers/relatives/friends: "Well, what do you want to DO with this hypothetical computer? Do you want a warranty? What operating system do you want? How much do you want to pay?" because divulging a string of specs up-front is usually not the most useful or helpful thing to do with someone who wants to know The Answer, not necessarily the methodology behind it.
Regardless of "who's on top" or "who's bigger than whom," the fact that there are multiple, competing and viable peer-to-peer sharing platforms, should give most open-minded people a good, winning feeling. Fair use is a great thing, and some folks resent paying for four or five different forms (records, eight-track, cassette tapes, CDs, Music DVDs, digital MP3s) of the same exact song, piece of software or movie; simply because the old medium type was retired, or because the old media reached the end of its short useful lifespan. Wouldn't it be nice to buy a song, and have the right to listen to that song...forever?
Yet, I digress. The media companies have, for too long now, held the consumers and the actual artists responsible for the art-form in question, hostage. The artists aren't losing the vast majority of their profits on P2P...it's the large corporations that take the lion's share of the end product that ends up with losses. I say turn all media digital, and have us pay for only the individual songs, videos, or whatever piece of work you actually like, and get rid of the rest of the album filler...and associated over-head cost. I'll bet people would like that a lot...and I think that P2P integrated with a useable, small cash payment system, is going to really hurt the greedy media companies, while helping bring more of the end profit directly to the artists responsible.
I've been using the 2.63 version of Spamassassin for a few months now, and it's surprising how well it works, especially when you use the "spam/ham" folder saving feedback system. I've noticed a lot fewer miscategorizations, which gives me a better feeling about using the app site-wide (I'm just using it for three users right now). I'm really excited about the potential for a major release like this having significant and noticable improvements in key features like heuristics and integration. The logic improvements will help end-users feel better about setting things up a certain way, then forgetting about it. Integration (it's great that it's under the Apache S.F. umbrella now) means that more people will get behind supporting it, which follows with increased feature richness, improved algorythms and rapid filter development. In the end, though, myself and my users just love seeing the spam marked out in an increasingly accurate way...so it becomes second-nature to just rapidly press the delete key without much thought....
So, back when the books first came out, I read them all in paperback, individually. I'm sure I've been through at least three "complete" (to varying degrees) versions of the "Trilogy" in hardcover (one of them was even leather bound!). I played the Infocom game on various platforms and emulators, watched the BBC TV show recorded on VHS and Betamax, and recently picked up a copy of the DVD set at the library. There are at least two versions of the radio show that I know of, and both of those I've listened to completely. On my nightstand is a recently purchased, clearanced hardcover copy of the Trilogy that I haven't been able to get myself back into, though. It just seems like it's from a completely different era. Probably the reason why some people are really into the Trash 80's music, can't get enough of the culture, even though that decade is long gone...while others say "yeah, cute...let's move on." So you see, I can see this from both sides of the fence. I think HHGTTG is a classic, written by a phenominal author, and I'm very interested to see how they're going to update things...fashion, computers, scenery. I realize that an audio program leaves more to the imagination, but I'm certain that radio SFX have advanced significantly since even the more current edition of the audio program. My fear is that there may not be as much of an audience for this as there once was....
Not only younger, but you'll notice, he goes from a gray pin-striped suit (almost like a butler) to a more managerial, executive, corporate-friendly guy.
He didn't say "sell at fair market value," he said "get...into the hands of." Seems to me he's saying that he'd make them untouchable...unpurchasable by those large groups that would pay so much more for the land then go on to rape it of its natural resources with not a single reason to care for the destruction of the environment (habitat for animals, plants, ourselves) and the extinction of said living creatures. A seller can put restrictions on the use of any real estate, and the government can take away the land and give it to these groups for a song, contingent upon preservation. It's something that could happen, but then again, I'm not sure what the ramifications of effectively taking someone's corporately "owned" property and giving it to someone else would be.
In looking through Carrie Ann-Moss's bio, it seems that we might be better off with Majel Barrett-Roddenberry as our mothership voice; more recognizable! "Self destruct sequence in ten minutes!"