I can understand the need for centralized network management. I myself maintain networks full of NT boxes. Although it isn't as simple as it should be, it's come a long way. Correct configuration goes a long way in this regard (I manage a farm of a few dozen NT boxes from a few thousand miles away, and havent had a problem).
Centralized management is very nice for large deployments (I realize a few dozen boxes isn't that big of a deal), but it depends on the setting. If you have hundreds of users who aren't doing much more than glorified data entry, I'm sure the mainframe/terminal concept works well. But in the production enviorments I've worked within, it's simply not possible. Granted, most of the environments I've been involved with have been mainly development enviornments, but even the users who weren't directly related to development could not get by with a jacked up terminal.
The point I'm trying to make here is that as technology continues it's drive into the mainstream, users will become more savvy and will demand more from their computing environments.
Do you honestly think that a company that decides to save money by reducing IS costs will be better off than a company that empowers it's employees by putting a PC on every desk?
Obviously, it would depend on the employees, if you have people with ability, who can use the resources of a PC (as opposed to using only the applications the network provides), it's well worth the additional cost in my opinion.
The companies that win are the ones who hire the best people they can, and give them as much flexibility as possible to do their job. And the mainframe/terminal paradigm is by and far unflexible from a user's perspective. Although flexibility does sometimes come at the cost of sysadmin sanity.:)
I mentioned this a few stories back, in the StarOffice discussion. Sun is not flexible enough to compete in the PC market, so what do they do? Try and manipulate the market to fit their business model. It's the network computer concept that they keep trying and failing with.
Sun needs to realize that people like their PCs. Whether you run Linux, Windows, MacOS, BEOS, whatever. We moved away from the mainframe/terminal paradigm for a reason.
This drives Sun crazy, since it threatens their extremely high margin server business (talk about price bloat). Where do you think Sun gets all these millions to buy StarOffice and give it away free? Or put so much development money behind Java?
Sun is robbing people for their servers. And they'll continue to do it as long as they can.
They most likely are, since it has been years since I've even touched an x86 box that wasn't running an intel CPU (with the exception of this silly old cyrix BSD box I'm playing with currently).
But, it's a genetic thing, did you know a rat can eat some rotten food and avoid that particular type of food for the remainder of their lives? It's a survival instinct. And in this case I guess my first impression left a lasting impression.
With their current record I'd probably consider giving them another try, never in a production machine to start though.
What I'd like to know is what ever happened to those polymer memory cubes I heard about many years ago.
Supposedly some type of 3 dimensional storage that withstood shocks well, had nearly the access time of RAM (for the time, around 150ms I believe), and was non-volatile. It was also said to be extremely cheap to produce and targetted as a replacement for RAM as well as disk based storage.
Personally, I think I'd wait quite some time before going with a non-intel x86 architecture. Probably due to the fact that I've been burned by so called "compatible" chips in the past. But competition is a good thing, and it will surely make intel deflate their heavily inflated margins at for higher end chips (they're already feeling the pressue at the lower end, and the frequent intel price cuts are evidence of this).
Perhaps after AMD proves themselves a bit more, others like myself will give them some consideration. They're definately on the right track.
Absolutely a win situation for the consumer, no matter how you look at it.
Before you can understand the purchase of StarOffice, you need to understand Sun's motives behind the purchase.
Sun, like any corporation, is simply trying to make money, and if you look at Sun's core business, you'll understand why it purchased StarOffice in the first place.
Sun doesn't plan to make any money directly from StarOffice (otherwise is surely wouldn't give it away for free). Sun builds servers and workstations, neither of which is an ideal platform for productivity applications.
This is simply another rehash of Sun trying the network computer idea again. If you think that StarOffice will remain an application for any OS for long, you must also believe Sun likes to throw money away.
Sun will (attempt to) turn it into a network application that runs on a server (Hey! Sun makes those!) and runs on java clients (Java, that has something to do with Sun as well, eh?).
What really sickens me about Sun is how they try to remake the market to fit their business model, even if it means moving backward. You can bash MS all you want, but Wintel made computing affordable, and it was eventually embraced by the general public. Thats been done, and whether or not you want to give any credit to MS/Intel for it is your own business. But think about what Sun has done. You enjoy you linux box? If Sun had their way, you wouldn't be using it. You'd be using some inferior network client that runs nothing but java, connected to Sun super-servers.
Any corporation is going to try and make money any way they can, they have a legal responsibility to. But Sun's inflexibility and pure greed have really done nothing for the market.
If they had the flexibility to change with the market, maybe they'd make some less expensive workstations to compete with Wintel boxes. have they? No, they'd rather throw millions at things like StarOffice and Java in order to protect their high-margin, ridiculously over-priced server business.
The sooner Sun dies or wakes up, the better anyone who is happy the mainframe/terminal days are over will be.
If you like your PC, don't support Sun, cause if they ever get the chance, kiss your PC goodbye.
When an object's attribute becomes a collection of attributes (several addresses instead of one), any class using this attribute (using customer.SetAddress()/GetAddress()) will have to cope with the fact that it's a collection now, and that at least a choice has to be made as to which of these attributes is meant to be read or set.
A real world solution for this particular problem (Customer.Get/Set Address) is simple. You'd simply change the Customer object's Address to be a collection, with the first address as the default. This would in effect allow all the dependant objects to chug along as usual, not knowing that anything has changed. In the meantime, you can update specific dependant objects to enumerate the collection and use the additional information as needed.
This can also be done in a plain procedural (flat) language in mostly the same way by creating a new set of functions to enumerate the addresses and using the main function as a wrapper to select the default address from said enumeration.
IMHO, the OO approach is far cleaner and more maintainable.
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I can understand the need for centralized network management. I myself maintain networks full of NT boxes. Although it isn't as simple as it should be, it's come a long way. Correct configuration goes a long way in this regard (I manage a farm of a few dozen NT boxes from a few thousand miles away, and havent had a problem).
:)
Centralized management is very nice for large deployments (I realize a few dozen boxes isn't that big of a deal), but it depends on the setting. If you have hundreds of users who aren't doing much more than glorified data entry, I'm sure the mainframe/terminal concept works well. But in the production enviorments I've worked within, it's simply not possible. Granted, most of the environments I've been involved with have been mainly development enviornments, but even the users who weren't directly related to development could not get by with a jacked up terminal.
The point I'm trying to make here is that as technology continues it's drive into the mainstream, users will become more savvy and will demand more from their computing environments.
Do you honestly think that a company that decides to save money by reducing IS costs will be better off than a company that empowers it's employees by putting a PC on every desk?
Obviously, it would depend on the employees, if you have people with ability, who can use the resources of a PC (as opposed to using only the applications the network provides), it's well worth the additional cost in my opinion.
The companies that win are the ones who hire the best people they can, and give them as much flexibility as possible to do their job. And the mainframe/terminal paradigm is by and far unflexible from a user's perspective. Although flexibility does sometimes come at the cost of sysadmin sanity.
I mentioned this a few stories back, in the StarOffice discussion. Sun is not flexible enough to compete in the PC market, so what do they do? Try and manipulate the market to fit their business model. It's the network computer concept that they keep trying and failing with.
Sun needs to realize that people like their PCs. Whether you run Linux, Windows, MacOS, BEOS, whatever. We moved away from the mainframe/terminal paradigm for a reason.
This drives Sun crazy, since it threatens their extremely high margin server business (talk about price bloat). Where do you think Sun gets all these millions to buy StarOffice and give it away free? Or put so much development money behind Java?
Sun is robbing people for their servers. And they'll continue to do it as long as they can.
They most likely are, since it has been years since I've even touched an x86 box that wasn't running an intel CPU (with the exception of this silly old cyrix BSD box I'm playing with currently).
But, it's a genetic thing, did you know a rat can eat some rotten food and avoid that particular type of food for the remainder of their lives? It's a survival instinct. And in this case I guess my first impression left a lasting impression.
With their current record I'd probably consider giving them another try, never in a production machine to start though.
What I'd like to know is what ever happened to those polymer memory cubes I heard about many years ago.
Supposedly some type of 3 dimensional storage that withstood shocks well, had nearly the access time of RAM (for the time, around 150ms I believe), and was non-volatile. It was also said to be extremely cheap to produce and targetted as a replacement for RAM as well as disk based storage.
And then, I never heard another word about it.
Personally, I think I'd wait quite some time before going with a non-intel x86 architecture. Probably due to the fact that I've been burned by so called "compatible" chips in the past. But competition is a good thing, and it will surely make intel deflate their heavily inflated margins at for higher end chips (they're already feeling the pressue at the lower end, and the frequent intel price cuts are evidence of this).
Perhaps after AMD proves themselves a bit more, others like myself will give them some consideration. They're definately on the right track.
Absolutely a win situation for the consumer, no matter how you look at it.
Before you can understand the purchase of StarOffice, you need to understand Sun's motives behind the purchase.
Sun, like any corporation, is simply trying to make money, and if you look at Sun's core business, you'll understand why it purchased StarOffice in the first place.
Sun doesn't plan to make any money directly from StarOffice (otherwise is surely wouldn't give it away for free). Sun builds servers and workstations, neither of which is an ideal platform for productivity applications.
This is simply another rehash of Sun trying the network computer idea again. If you think that StarOffice will remain an application for any OS for long, you must also believe Sun likes to throw money away.
Sun will (attempt to) turn it into a network application that runs on a server (Hey! Sun makes those!) and runs on java clients (Java, that has something to do with Sun as well, eh?).
What really sickens me about Sun is how they try to remake the market to fit their business model, even if it means moving backward. You can bash MS all you want, but Wintel made computing affordable, and it was eventually embraced by the general public. Thats been done, and whether or not you want to give any credit to MS/Intel for it is your own business. But think about what Sun has done. You enjoy you linux box? If Sun had their way, you wouldn't be using it. You'd be using some inferior network client that runs nothing but java, connected to Sun super-servers.
Any corporation is going to try and make money any way they can, they have a legal responsibility to. But Sun's inflexibility and pure greed have really done nothing for the market.
If they had the flexibility to change with the market, maybe they'd make some less expensive workstations to compete with Wintel boxes. have they? No, they'd rather throw millions at things like StarOffice and Java in order to protect their high-margin, ridiculously over-priced server business.
The sooner Sun dies or wakes up, the better anyone who is happy the mainframe/terminal days are over will be.
If you like your PC, don't support Sun, cause if they ever get the chance, kiss your PC goodbye.
When an object's attribute becomes a collection of attributes (several addresses instead of one), any class using this attribute (using customer.SetAddress()/GetAddress()) will have to cope with the fact that it's a collection now, and that at least a choice has to be made as to which of these attributes is meant to be read or set.
A real world solution for this particular problem (Customer.Get/Set Address) is simple. You'd simply change the Customer object's Address to be a collection, with the first address as the default. This would in effect allow all the dependant objects to chug along as usual, not knowing that anything has changed. In the meantime, you can update specific dependant objects to enumerate the collection and use the additional information as needed.
This can also be done in a plain procedural (flat) language in mostly the same way by creating a new set of functions to enumerate the addresses and using the main function as a wrapper to select the default address from said enumeration.
IMHO, the OO approach is far cleaner and more maintainable.