FAS is the market leader in the SMB area for this type of stand alone application. Options including modules for Government & Non-profit accounting (Fund accounting), as well as integration to your GL, depreciation, etc. I have never used it in a live system, but have as a demo. If I remember correctly, pricing is about $3k + implementation. I would definately take a look at it (and other, competing solutions).
I know that that's an evil term around here -- but this seems like a perfect opportunity.
Your department isn't set up to service home computers with all the complexities, upgrades differing hardware & software environments, etc. Call some local Mom & Pop organizations, tell them what you want (try to recover, clean & reinstall, helpdesk, etc), and let them deal with the hassle. You might need to give them some internal software, etc to install, but that's what NDA's are for. This also prevents you from being the bad guy when you wipe out your bosses data.
There are also some national/international venders that provide helpdesk services for resellers -- you might want to talk to some of them as a front line even if you retain the actual hands on work.
When we speak of Novell, we speak of Novell -- which counts one of two enterprise class (ie supported) linux distributions as one of its many assets.
It also has a huge customer base, multi-os deployment tools, best of breed identity management / directory solutions, and still one of the widest deployed server OS's in the world.
Novell includes Suse, but brings much more to the table. Novell would be an interesting acquisition to Oracle even WITHOUT the OS. Zenworks and eDirectory alone probably have as much or more value to Oracle as Suse.
Intel's lead is mostly a manufactoring one -- 65nm process. AMD still uses 90nm. Not to discount Intel's advantage, but AMD doesn't need a new core design to continue their dominance -- merely a new manufactoring facility (which is hard, but not as hard as the design).
when you are using a shared bandwidth. In the days of hubs w/o switches, it was appreciably more effecient. However, in today's world of a switch on every port, it just doesn't matter. An interesting example of its use would have been for wireless networking -- but people were already used to 802.11.
That's a nice fiction -- but the real world doesn't care that its in a "trust fund" or not. The S&L reinsurce was in a trust fund, as was FEMA, as is the near bankrupt PBGC. The reality is that if the goverment is obligated regardless of trust fund antics.
Fact is that bond buyers care about two facts: profit -- total government reciepts - total government expenditures; and net worth (Total Assets - Total Liabilities).
Not if they use spreadsheets & numeric keypad
on
Office Delayed, Too
·
· Score: 1
OO is broken as a serious replacement for Excel -- and its for a stupid reason.
Since VisiCalc (the very first spreadsheet), the + or - key on the numeric keypad initated a formula field. This has been a bug report since 1.0, and its still not fixed.
Anyone who does any serious work with spreadsheets (not as a database lite, but actual accounting / forcasting), blows OO off about 10sec after installation. It is useless to all of us financial types that have 10-key keypads in memory, vs. having to do some weird hand calistenics to hit Shift-+ (= sign).
were taught in classrooms with NeXT pizza boxes on every student's desk, with a copy of Mathematica.
By the time I finished that first year, I knew the material so well that I can still do multi-variable regressions, transforms & D.E., model an E&M problem, and solve for algorithms -- this after I tranfered schools, changed majors, and haven't used most of it in 15 years.
Computer's are not easy to integrate into classrooms, and I think there is a valid argument for keeping them out of many hummanity classrooms. But anyone who thinks they can't add massively to an understanding of physics, mathematics, chemistry, etc. just hasn't seen them used correctly.
The problem with anything other than a 4 digit pin, is that you have no idea if it will work when you try to use it.
There are still some machines in the US, and many, many more in other countries that only accept 4 numeric characters. In some cases its your only option -- there are no other ATM's.
this is a claim merely for having bought the CD's in question -- it IS NOT COMPENSATION for damages that may have result from your network or computer. See http://www.eff.org/IP/DRM/Sony-BMG/settlement_faq. php for full information on the settlement.
exert...
Why does EFF think the settlement is a good deal for purchasers of the Sony BMG CDs?
EFF agreed to the settlement because we believe it provides a good compensation package for the group of people who purchased the CDs but did not experience any hardware damage as a result. This means purchasers whose claim is primarily based on their purchase of the CDs and experiencing the hassle of having to patch or uninstall their systems, or in the case of MediaMax 3, having had files installed prior to giving you a chance to agree.
EFF's goals for purchasers of the CDs were to :
Stop production of any more CDs by Sony BMG with the bad DRM on them.
Get people non-DRM'd/non-EULA'd versions of their music.
Get this relief to people quickly, rather than after years of legal wrangling. This is in part why some of things in the settlement, like uninstallers, were available before the settlement itself was announced.
Get people some free music, or in the case of those who were at risk from the XCP rootkit, a choice of some money for their trouble.
Ensure that people get notice. Sony BMG has agreed to use the banner functionality on some of its CDs to give individual notice to purchasers at the time they put the CD into their computers, as well as put notices on many artists websites and purchasing adwords giving notice more broadly. We're still working with Sony about what these will look like, but EFF believes that taking extra steps to give people notice of the need to patch their systems, and of the settlement, is important.
Ensure independent security testing and pre-launch EULA review of any future DRM, with a report to the lawyers involved in the case of at least the security testing.
Agree to a quick process for response by Sony BMG, involving independent security reviewers and enforced by the court, in the event of any future discovery of a security flaw in their DRM.
There's much more in the settlement than that, of course, but for the purchasers these were EFF's core goals and the settlement meets them all. That's why we think the settlement is a good deal and we endorse it.
I hope the publicity doesn't curtial legitimate uses.
For instance, more than a few doctor's offices use caller ID spoofing to have call centers call patients to confirm / remind appointments.
These calls are legitmate, authorized in writing by patients, and spoofing is an integral part of doing the service. Patients tend to answer West Main Clinic (who is responsible for hiring the contractor), rather than ABC Call Services. Also, calling ABC Call Services to reschedule is usless as they can't make/change appointments.
I've been doing some troubleshooting on my comcast connection. I wrote a python script to ping comcast.net and google.com 10 times every 5 minues, since I was having a lot of intermittent problems.
It seems that every 6 hours or so (like clockwork), my average ping times go to 600+ (from under 100), and my avg. dropped packets go to 10%+. I'm not convinced this is comcast shaping vonage -- but rather that they generally suck.
Unfortunately, my only other option is Bellsouth -- which does sell business class DSL here w/o a telephone subscription. I don't think in 6 months they will be any better given their recent comments.
Rose Hulman Inst. of Tech, which is down the street from ISU, has been on the forefront of computer based instruction -- recieving millions from NIH over the years for developing math and science curriculum based classroom instruction. Considering the fact that these schools already share a lot of resources -- libraries, internet fiber, etc, this is not a surprising developement.
RHIT has requried laptops since 1995 -- and had computers (NeXT boxes/pizza boxes) on probably half of all classroom desks since 1991. The amount of learning in the computer enabled clasrooms blows away anything that can be done in a traditional pen and pencil classroom.
That being said, you have to have the professors, infrastructure, and desire to do it. IMHO ISU is better positioned to pursue this than most public universities. I wish them luck as I think this will serve student's well in the long term.
For some reason the Calc people don't seem to get it -- after countless bug reports and 100's of messages.
OO Calc is useless to anyone who rely's on the numeric keypad.
Since Visicalc, operands on the numeric keypad (+-*/) have initiated a formula field. It doesn't in Calc. This means a large number of the decision makers (CFO's, accountants, etc) who use Excel cannot convert to OO without changing the way they have worked for more than 20 years.
Redhat market cap is 4.7B, Novell is 3.75B. I see a lot more synergy with those and expanding apple into the enterprise than I do with buying Disney. Corporate push podcasts built on SLES has interesting possibilities.
TiVO at 0.5B, XM Radio at 5B or Sirius @ 7B could make sense if they want to expand their media offerings.
Any of the above make some sort of sense. I'm sure their are dozen's of others I've left out; however, Disney isn't one of them.
In theory -- precedent for district courts doesn't exist except as it applies to the case at hand.
In reality, it can make a difference. A well reasoned, well thought out district court case which is on point will carry weight with other districts. For instance, the facts and legal ruling in Arkansas v. Jones has been cited and used 100's of times -- including by the Supreme Court, although it was never actually appealed. Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District carries a similar type of weight.
Although other judges are not bound by the decision, they often choose to affirm them through incorporation into their own rulings.
That being said, in this case it is unlikely to have significant precedent -- since I imagine Google will appeal.
While I can't speak to this specific case -- there are plenty of situations where it makes sense to have highly personal information on a laptop. I am most familiar with healthcare.
Physicians often need to have access to patient data while oncall. Traditionally, they drove to their office and looked up a chart physically. With EMR and take-home ability on thier laptop, they have instant access -- including places like ER's, hospitals, and nursing homes where they often won't have internet access to their office servers.
Locally nursing homes have very little technology -- maybe 1-2 computers in the entire area, and that for accounting purposes. A physician can do rounds with his EMR system, fax his orders to the nursing home later, and have full records for a patient when at his office. Since a large amount of nursing care is performed over the phone, this makes for better information.
In short, just because you can't imagine a situation where private data needs to be outside of a server room, doesn't mean they exist. Get out of your office and on the front lines of your business.
I may have been a bit over the top in my earlier post.
I was merely trying to emphasize the fact that research such as this -- and its findings, may very well lead to understandings of human disease that would have been heretical 30 years ago./.'ers were laughing at research which over time may have a profound impact eventually on our understanding and treatment of mental illness. Today, its not there (obviously), but the links are intriguing to say the least
BTW -- I mentioned haldol because that's what was used in the research/experiments mentioned in the article. Most of the reason it has fallen out of use is related to its horrendous side effect profile and other disadvantages, not its efficacy (although those two are linked as well to some extent).
There is now at least more than a casual link between Toxoplasm and Schizophrenia.
Stop to think about that for a second.
This has profound implications far beyond the childish and disappointing messages listed above.
Haldol and an antimicrobial have the same effect on Toxoplasm infected human tissue. Even the implcations in this are staggering -- regardless of whether this pans out or not. Million's of people worldwide could be saved a tortous life, higher suicide rates, due to a pathogenic cause (and cure) of a mental illness. Don't dismiss that mother's with this are more likely to have kids that develop schizophrenia.
An australian recently won the Nobel Prize in Medicine for discovering that a bacteria was responsible for the majority of stomach ulcers. What used to be a life long and potential dangerous disease is now cured with weeklong course of antibiotics.
This facinating discovery deserves more respect than it has gotten on slashdot.
Don't point out the obvious:)
There are some rare cases that virtualization makes sense -- running multiple network servers where any one server doesn't have much demand, and you want them isolated from each other for security concerns.
Virtualization is also useful in development environments where you can have an XP, Linux, SunOS, and 2000 running concurrently.
That being said, I dont see virtualization as being the great advance in computing technology that everyone thinks it is. Its a cool toy, with a few important niche applications, but as you observed it often makes more sense to have 2 machines than 1 machine with 2 VM's.
There is no real reason other than convienance to even add it in the first place. Yes, having a day based on the earth rotation makes sense. Even the minute/second/hour timeframe makes sense (froma an circumnavigational standpoint).
But to be honest, this just seems over the top. Who cares if "earth time" is off by 1 sec / yr from "atomic time". They are both relatively arbitrary units anyway as long as our sense of day/night doesn't get screwed up.
See my above post as well. 99.5% is unacceptably bad performance in a production environment for a small business, much less a mid-size or larger consern.
I'm not saying that wintel can't be the answer (with clustering, etc), but 99.5% uptime is evidence of an inferior solution.
Slashdot Mirror
Or perhaps check for the exitance of $JAVAHOME.
FAS Website
Your department isn't set up to service home computers with all the complexities, upgrades differing hardware & software environments, etc. Call some local Mom & Pop organizations, tell them what you want (try to recover, clean & reinstall, helpdesk, etc), and let them deal with the hassle. You might need to give them some internal software, etc to install, but that's what NDA's are for. This also prevents you from being the bad guy when you wipe out your bosses data.
There are also some national/international venders that provide helpdesk services for resellers -- you might want to talk to some of them as a front line even if you retain the actual hands on work.
When we speak of Novell, we speak of Novell -- which counts one of two enterprise class (ie supported) linux distributions as one of its many assets.
It also has a huge customer base, multi-os deployment tools, best of breed identity management / directory solutions, and still one of the widest deployed server OS's in the world.
Novell includes Suse, but brings much more to the table. Novell would be an interesting acquisition to Oracle even WITHOUT the OS. Zenworks and eDirectory alone probably have as much or more value to Oracle as Suse.
Intel's lead is mostly a manufactoring one -- 65nm process. AMD still uses 90nm. Not to discount Intel's advantage, but AMD doesn't need a new core design to continue their dominance -- merely a new manufactoring facility (which is hard, but not as hard as the design).
when you are using a shared bandwidth. In the days of hubs w/o switches, it was appreciably more effecient. However, in today's world of a switch on every port, it just doesn't matter. An interesting example of its use would have been for wireless networking -- but people were already used to 802.11.
That's a nice fiction -- but the real world doesn't care that its in a "trust fund" or not. The S&L reinsurce was in a trust fund, as was FEMA, as is the near bankrupt PBGC. The reality is that if the goverment is obligated regardless of trust fund antics. Fact is that bond buyers care about two facts: profit -- total government reciepts - total government expenditures; and net worth (Total Assets - Total Liabilities).
OO is broken as a serious replacement for Excel -- and its for a stupid reason. Since VisiCalc (the very first spreadsheet), the + or - key on the numeric keypad initated a formula field. This has been a bug report since 1.0, and its still not fixed. Anyone who does any serious work with spreadsheets (not as a database lite, but actual accounting / forcasting), blows OO off about 10sec after installation. It is useless to all of us financial types that have 10-key keypads in memory, vs. having to do some weird hand calistenics to hit Shift-+ (= sign).
Much of the commentary above revolved around computer's in the classroom generally -- including math and science classrooms.
were taught in classrooms with NeXT pizza boxes on every student's desk, with a copy of Mathematica. By the time I finished that first year, I knew the material so well that I can still do multi-variable regressions, transforms & D.E., model an E&M problem, and solve for algorithms -- this after I tranfered schools, changed majors, and haven't used most of it in 15 years. Computer's are not easy to integrate into classrooms, and I think there is a valid argument for keeping them out of many hummanity classrooms. But anyone who thinks they can't add massively to an understanding of physics, mathematics, chemistry, etc. just hasn't seen them used correctly.
The problem with anything other than a 4 digit pin, is that you have no idea if it will work when you try to use it. There are still some machines in the US, and many, many more in other countries that only accept 4 numeric characters. In some cases its your only option -- there are no other ATM's.
exert...
Why does EFF think the settlement is a good deal for purchasers of the Sony BMG CDs?
EFF agreed to the settlement because we believe it provides a good compensation package for the group of people who purchased the CDs but did not experience any hardware damage as a result. This means purchasers whose claim is primarily based on their purchase of the CDs and experiencing the hassle of having to patch or uninstall their systems, or in the case of MediaMax 3, having had files installed prior to giving you a chance to agree.
EFF's goals for purchasers of the CDs were to :
There's much more in the settlement than that, of course, but for the purchasers these were EFF's core goals and the settlement meets them all. That's why we think the settlement is a good deal and we endorse it.
There are still major functional features that Calc doesn't have which were implemented in VisiCalc -- that's 26 years behind in my calender.
I hope the publicity doesn't curtial legitimate uses.
For instance, more than a few doctor's offices use caller ID spoofing to have call centers call patients to confirm / remind appointments.
These calls are legitmate, authorized in writing by patients, and spoofing is an integral part of doing the service. Patients tend to answer West Main Clinic (who is responsible for hiring the contractor), rather than ABC Call Services. Also, calling ABC Call Services to reschedule is usless as they can't make/change appointments.
I've been doing some troubleshooting on my comcast connection. I wrote a python script to ping comcast.net and google.com 10 times every 5 minues, since I was having a lot of intermittent problems.
It seems that every 6 hours or so (like clockwork), my average ping times go to 600+ (from under 100), and my avg. dropped packets go to 10%+. I'm not convinced this is comcast shaping vonage -- but rather that they generally suck.
Unfortunately, my only other option is Bellsouth -- which does sell business class DSL here w/o a telephone subscription. I don't think in 6 months they will be any better given their recent comments.
Any suggestions?
RHIT has requried laptops since 1995 -- and had computers (NeXT boxes/pizza boxes) on probably half of all classroom desks since 1991. The amount of learning in the computer enabled clasrooms blows away anything that can be done in a traditional pen and pencil classroom.
That being said, you have to have the professors, infrastructure, and desire to do it. IMHO ISU is better positioned to pursue this than most public universities. I wish them luck as I think this will serve student's well in the long term.
For some reason the Calc people don't seem to get it -- after countless bug reports and 100's of messages. OO Calc is useless to anyone who rely's on the numeric keypad. Since Visicalc, operands on the numeric keypad (+-*/) have initiated a formula field. It doesn't in Calc. This means a large number of the decision makers (CFO's, accountants, etc) who use Excel cannot convert to OO without changing the way they have worked for more than 20 years.
Redhat market cap is 4.7B, Novell is 3.75B. I see a lot more synergy with those and expanding apple into the enterprise than I do with buying Disney. Corporate push podcasts built on SLES has interesting possibilities. TiVO at 0.5B, XM Radio at 5B or Sirius @ 7B could make sense if they want to expand their media offerings. Any of the above make some sort of sense. I'm sure their are dozen's of others I've left out; however, Disney isn't one of them.
In theory -- precedent for district courts doesn't exist except as it applies to the case at hand.
In reality, it can make a difference. A well reasoned, well thought out district court case which is on point will carry weight with other districts. For instance, the facts and legal ruling in Arkansas v. Jones has been cited and used 100's of times -- including by the Supreme Court, although it was never actually appealed. Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District carries a similar type of weight.
Although other judges are not bound by the decision, they often choose to affirm them through incorporation into their own rulings.
That being said, in this case it is unlikely to have significant precedent -- since I imagine Google will appeal.
In short, just because you can't imagine a situation where private data needs to be outside of a server room, doesn't mean they exist. Get out of your office and on the front lines of your business.
I was merely trying to emphasize the fact that research such as this -- and its findings, may very well lead to understandings of human disease that would have been heretical 30 years ago. /.'ers were laughing at research which over time may have a profound impact eventually on our understanding and treatment of mental illness. Today, its not there (obviously), but the links are intriguing to say the least
BTW -- I mentioned haldol because that's what was used in the research/experiments mentioned in the article. Most of the reason it has fallen out of use is related to its horrendous side effect profile and other disadvantages, not its efficacy (although those two are linked as well to some extent).
Stop to think about that for a second.
This has profound implications far beyond the childish and disappointing messages listed above.
Haldol and an antimicrobial have the same effect on Toxoplasm infected human tissue. Even the implcations in this are staggering -- regardless of whether this pans out or not. Million's of people worldwide could be saved a tortous life, higher suicide rates, due to a pathogenic cause (and cure) of a mental illness. Don't dismiss that mother's with this are more likely to have kids that develop schizophrenia.
An australian recently won the Nobel Prize in Medicine for discovering that a bacteria was responsible for the majority of stomach ulcers. What used to be a life long and potential dangerous disease is now cured with weeklong course of antibiotics.
This facinating discovery deserves more respect than it has gotten on slashdot.
Don't point out the obvious :)
There are some rare cases that virtualization makes sense -- running multiple network servers where any one server doesn't have much demand, and you want them isolated from each other for security concerns.
Virtualization is also useful in development environments where you can have an XP, Linux, SunOS, and 2000 running concurrently.
That being said, I dont see virtualization as being the great advance in computing technology that everyone thinks it is. Its a cool toy, with a few important niche applications, but as you observed it often makes more sense to have 2 machines than 1 machine with 2 VM's.
There is no real reason other than convienance to even add it in the first place. Yes, having a day based on the earth rotation makes sense. Even the minute/second /hour timeframe makes sense (froma an circumnavigational standpoint).
But to be honest, this just seems over the top. Who cares if "earth time" is off by 1 sec / yr from "atomic time". They are both relatively arbitrary units anyway as long as our sense of day/night doesn't get screwed up.
See my above post as well. 99.5% is unacceptably bad performance in a production environment for a small business, much less a mid-size or larger consern. I'm not saying that wintel can't be the answer (with clustering, etc), but 99.5% uptime is evidence of an inferior solution.