Whatever you do, don't push the FM-2000 button. That's one expensive systems test.
Our new datacenter back in 2002 had a scramble button that didn't have a cover, and it got bumped by janitors a couple times. Luckily this DC didn't have the FM-2000. We had sprinklers, and an AC condensor right above our EMC Symmetra. Wasn't nice coming in on a hot July Monday morning and finding the DC floor covered in water.
Upgradable to what? Most PCs these days you can upgrade one of two things. Memory, and Disk. And you can do both of those on the Mac Mini.
I have PCs 3 years old and want to upgrade. Guess what, this one has AGP, so to get a new graphics card, I need a new mobo. Well I can't find 533mhz mobos compatible with my Pentium D, and my DDR 533, so I've got to upgrade those too.
And odds are that the AS/400 just gets its job done (maybe not so much Notes).
Plus AS/400 apps can be extended by things like DataDirect Shadow and Progress DataXtend SI that they are no longer just islands in a giant ocean.
Disclaimer, I work for Progress, which makes both of those products. To be impartial, I know we're not the only game in town (Tibco, IBM w/ Websphere).
I am one of those guys who would happily put myself out of a job if I could, by making everything better instead of the constant break-fix I have to deal with.
That's an excellent point, Cederic. As a photographer, I often want to rename a batch of images to have the project name as part of the file name. There's no way I can select a whole boatload of files, and only change a small section of the filename on each.
With the command line, that's easy (assuming a certain level of familiarity with the tools).
Command lines and GUIs still have much to learn from one another.
I'm sorry, no. Maybe when you're talking about single machine administration, sure. But when I have to do the same thing to twenty-five or 1000 machines, you better make sure your interface is scriptable.
Until WMI came out with Windows 2000, that just wasn't possible in the Windows world, but has been in the Unix world since the invention of telnet (~1983).
Lets assume for a minute that you are a customer of Oracle, say Bank of America.
Now BoA's Oracle database crashes and burns - millions of customer records lost, $100M in lost revenue and customers by the time they get the database back and working again.
You think BoA's vendor agreements are worth $100M from Oracle? Never Happen. Not in this lifetime.
So why not spend the money on a PostgreSQL cluster (if you can, many times Oracle is the right tool for the job) and save yourself the trouble - because you're never going to be able to sue your vendor for damages and lost revenue. But buying closed source simply because you think it'll protect your business or that you have a path of recourse? Worst reason of all to do it.
What is this strange obsession with using 'fudge' to replace 'fuck'? Just say FUCK for frying out loud and stop being a pansy. You know what you meant, we know what you meant, so just say it. Quit tiptoeing around like you're trying eight years old trying to swear in front of your parents and not get caught.
They have limited markets, and so any comparable open source software is going to take AGES to catch up - but rest assured, they will. Finite Element Analysis and 3D modeling are just evolutions of things we do today, but we're only 10% of the way there.
Things like OSes, Office Suites, Web Servers - things that EVERYONE can use - those things are rapidly approaching if not exceeding parity in quality and functionality.
7 people? That's a lot more than a small project - full time that could be the entire team behind SugarCRM.
And if it's a project that's mostly done but needs a few upgrades or improvements here or there, nothing saying you couldn't get some college interns at $30K a year to do it.
Right, who honestly purchases myBackyardCMS with competitors like Xoops, Drupal, Mambo and Joomla in the marketplace? Hell, even Confluence is better choice than most usually.
Aborting a fetus rather than having a baby you can't properly care for, is responsible behavior. (Of course using contraception and not getting pregnant in the first place is even more responsible.) </quote>
Except contraception fails. I know of at least one mother who's in that state simply because the Pill didn't work.
I love it. I could see it coming true too. A society that professes to claim to value the life of the baby over the mother (the so-called Anti-abortionists) forcing a mother to get an abortion for a child she wants simply because it might be "defective."
In the 1st world, it's rare for someone to out and out DIE of hunger, yet there are plenty of people who can't afford food. Health-care should be the same way, no one should die because they don't get preventative treatment.
I'm not necessarily arguing for heroic measures should my heart lung and spleen all fail at once, but dammit, someone should need their foot amputated and dead kidneys because they were too poor to afford their insulin. (does diabetes kill kidneys? I have no idea).
Cost to print eBook: $0 Cost to distribute 1MB ebook to consumer via 3G: $.10
Cost to print average pulp paperback and ship it to end-user: $1-3.
Retail cost of eBook: $9.99 Retail cost of Pulp Paperback: $9.99
Which is cheaper? Which is more profitable for the publisher?
To say that eBooks aren't increasing profits is having your head in the sand. The problem is that the publisher is going to eat all those increased profits, and the authors won't see a penny of it. It's why you're going to see more and more authors switch away from big publishing companies. The blogosphere and Facebook/Twitter/Myspace scare the shit out of them.
My dad and I used to compete playing Elite on the C64 when I was a kid. For him, he thought it was a good math/money/trading game to educate me, with a bit of space combat thrown in. Me, I just like zooming around blowing shit up.
Slashdot Mirror
Whatever you do, don't push the FM-2000 button. That's one expensive systems test.
Our new datacenter back in 2002 had a scramble button that didn't have a cover, and it got bumped by janitors a couple times. Luckily this DC didn't have the FM-2000. We had sprinklers, and an AC condensor right above our EMC Symmetra. Wasn't nice coming in on a hot July Monday morning and finding the DC floor covered in water.
And has proven to be far more stable than the myspace plugin (which I stopped using).
Just goes to show the attitude to polish both sites seem to have. Myspace not so much...
I'd use Google webchat if it didn't have that damn "off the record" feature.
So I stick to pidgin. With AIM/gchat (predominantly) with a smattering of Yahoo, MSN, Facebook, Skype and Myspace chat thrown in.
It's WAY past time everyone implemented a jabber gateway and federated the IM landscape.
The site is /.! The imposter site ./ was /.ed out of existence aeons ago.
Upgradable to what? Most PCs these days you can upgrade one of two things. Memory, and Disk. And you can do both of those on the Mac Mini.
I have PCs 3 years old and want to upgrade. Guess what, this one has AGP, so to get a new graphics card, I need a new mobo. Well I can't find 533mhz mobos compatible with my Pentium D, and my DDR 533, so I've got to upgrade those too.
And odds are that the AS/400 just gets its job done (maybe not so much Notes).
Plus AS/400 apps can be extended by things like DataDirect Shadow and Progress DataXtend SI that they are no longer just islands in a giant ocean.
Disclaimer, I work for Progress, which makes both of those products. To be impartial, I know we're not the only game in town (Tibco, IBM w/ Websphere).
I am one of those guys who would happily put myself out of a job if I could, by making everything better instead of the constant break-fix I have to deal with.
Looking for like-minded individuals.
That's an excellent point, Cederic. As a photographer, I often want to rename a batch of images to have the project name as part of the file name. There's no way I can select a whole boatload of files, and only change a small section of the filename on each.
With the command line, that's easy (assuming a certain level of familiarity with the tools).
Command lines and GUIs still have much to learn from one another.
I'm sorry, no. Maybe when you're talking about single machine administration, sure. But when I have to do the same thing to twenty-five or 1000 machines, you better make sure your interface is scriptable.
Until WMI came out with Windows 2000, that just wasn't possible in the Windows world, but has been in the Unix world since the invention of telnet (~1983).
Here's where I was going my last job: Citrix.
Not for desktop agnosticism, but for supportability. Easier to maintain complex line-of-business apps on 1-5 servers than on 30-100 desktops.
Lets assume for a minute that you are a customer of Oracle, say Bank of America.
Now BoA's Oracle database crashes and burns - millions of customer records lost, $100M in lost revenue and customers by the time they get the database back and working again.
You think BoA's vendor agreements are worth $100M from Oracle? Never Happen. Not in this lifetime.
So why not spend the money on a PostgreSQL cluster (if you can, many times Oracle is the right tool for the job) and save yourself the trouble - because you're never going to be able to sue your vendor for damages and lost revenue. But buying closed source simply because you think it'll protect your business or that you have a path of recourse? Worst reason of all to do it.
What is this strange obsession with using 'fudge' to replace 'fuck'? Just say FUCK for frying out loud and stop being a pansy. You know what you meant, we know what you meant, so just say it. Quit tiptoeing around like you're trying eight years old trying to swear in front of your parents and not get caught.
Pro/Engineer is. AutoCAD is. Final Cut Pro is.
They have limited markets, and so any comparable open source software is going to take AGES to catch up - but rest assured, they will. Finite Element Analysis and 3D modeling are just evolutions of things we do today, but we're only 10% of the way there.
Things like OSes, Office Suites, Web Servers - things that EVERYONE can use - those things are rapidly approaching if not exceeding parity in quality and functionality.
7 people? That's a lot more than a small project - full time that could be the entire team behind SugarCRM.
And if it's a project that's mostly done but needs a few upgrades or improvements here or there, nothing saying you couldn't get some college interns at $30K a year to do it.
Right, who honestly purchases myBackyardCMS with competitors like Xoops, Drupal, Mambo and Joomla in the marketplace? Hell, even Confluence is better choice than most usually.
Right on the heels of the collapse of the computing industry in 2000/2001. Totally makes sense.
Imagine what Hitler would have done with a tool like this...
No, the Universe, like all great programs it has spawned, is written in Cobol, and so shall end when the last Cobol programmer dies.
Don't buy your computers in Tiajuana or from the grungy back room of some porno shop.
Aborting a fetus rather than having a baby you can't properly care for, is responsible behavior. (Of course using contraception and not getting pregnant in the first place is even more responsible.)
</quote>
Except contraception fails. I know of at least one mother who's in that state simply because the Pill didn't work.
I love it. I could see it coming true too. A society that professes to claim to value the life of the baby over the mother (the so-called Anti-abortionists) forcing a mother to get an abortion for a child she wants simply because it might be "defective."
I love this country </sarcasm>.
Let me phrase this a different way.
In the 1st world, it's rare for someone to out and out DIE of hunger, yet there are plenty of people who can't afford food. Health-care should be the same way, no one should die because they don't get preventative treatment.
I'm not necessarily arguing for heroic measures should my heart lung and spleen all fail at once, but dammit, someone should need their foot amputated and dead kidneys because they were too poor to afford their insulin. (does diabetes kill kidneys? I have no idea).
Thank you for saying succinctly what I know, but can't manage to prove/communicate.
Okay, let me get this straight.
Cost to print eBook: $0
Cost to distribute 1MB ebook to consumer via 3G: $.10
Cost to print average pulp paperback and ship it to end-user: $1-3.
Retail cost of eBook: $9.99
Retail cost of Pulp Paperback: $9.99
Which is cheaper? Which is more profitable for the publisher?
To say that eBooks aren't increasing profits is having your head in the sand. The problem is that the publisher is going to eat all those increased profits, and the authors won't see a penny of it. It's why you're going to see more and more authors switch away from big publishing companies. The blogosphere and Facebook/Twitter/Myspace scare the shit out of them.
My dad and I used to compete playing Elite on the C64 when I was a kid. For him, he thought it was a good math/money/trading game to educate me, with a bit of space combat thrown in. Me, I just like zooming around blowing shit up.