Call the musicians stupid all you want, but when a label is dangling the carrot, what leverage do they really have? Can they really say "this contract isn't fair and we'd like this this and this changed"? No. You know why? Cuz the label will say "take it or leave it". And that musician will go on to remain obscure and poor.
Like I said in another post, if they have the "get rich and famous" goal, then signing with a big label is one of the few ways of achieving it.
But I _DON'T_ want to hear them whine and complain about how they're getting fucked by the label when shit doesn't go well for them.
It's not up to the label to provide a fair contract to benefit the musician. They are in the BUSINESS of MAKING MONEY. If you want to do a deal with them, and you are the huge underdog with no leverage, then you are going to have to settle for what they offer, and have no basis whatsoever to bitch and complain about it.
This over-inflated sense of self-entitlement is really annoying.
Want leverage? Then be GOOD at what you do, and shop around to multiple labels. Get them to fight to get you. It worked for Trent Reznor and Creed, to name but a few.
If you're a mediocre band from a mediocre place, and only one label is interested in you, then that speaks volumes.
Or, if you ARE good, and jump on the first offer to come your way, then you ARE STUPID.
Once again, it is the music BUSINESS, with all the facets of "normal" business, including negotiating contracts.
Nettwerk, for the most part, is amazing. I've only seen one band that had problems, and as far as I'm concerned, it was because their egos got the better of them.
All in all, they have excellent people working there, and I respect Terry McBride a lot for his values and work ethic. (he's the founder and CEO).
I have no problem with people signing this stuff, my pet peeve is hearing them bitch about it later. Unfortunately, they're old enough to sign the contract, so they have to abide by the rules of it. Kind of like a credit card... I know a LOT of guys who are "legally" alllowed to have a credit card, but who immeidately get in over their head and screw themselves. Same thing with cel phones, etc.
At least your friend is going in with his eyes open, knowing what he wants out of it, and seems to be willing to take the changes.
but the point is, you can't put *all* of the blame on the artist just because they signed a "bad" deal.
Well, if they sign it, then I don't want to hear them bitching about it. Or other people bitching about it. It was their decision, and they have to live with it.
As to the situation with a relative monopoly for the signing of new musicians, It's because new bands jump to sign any deal that the system continues to perpetuate itself.
There are other options to getting your music out there, rather than signing to a big label.
I guess it comes down to what they want to accomplish with their music... if they're looking to "make it big", or enter the mainstream, then I have no pity for them. They're in the position they're in because they are greedy (maybe a little strong). Maybe it's better to say that they're buying into the existing marketplace and all the crap that that entails.
There are other bands that do fairly well for themselves, without signing to a big label.
I think it comes down to realistic expectations, and the need for a lot of musicians to get some. Do you want to make a living at your music, or do you want to be rich and famous?
Sure, we all have dreams, and you have every right to fight tooth and nail to achieve them, but I think too many people don't realize that sometime your dreams come with a "dark side", or strings attached. That's just life.
That being said, do I think that the big labels have waaayyy to much control over the market? Definitely! How to fix that? I don't know. It's not going to be simple, as marketing/exposure requires CASH. That is not likely to change any time soon.
Mind you, I ignore the market, for the most part, as it has 99% crap in it anyway. The big problem is the mindless mass of consumers that flock to the market and believe the crap that is force-fed them via marketing, etc. As long as the mindless massess continue to buy crappy products, then this is the situation we'll be in.
I perefer to stick with the "non-mainstream" undercurrents that have low-profile, high-quality music, and continue to support them as much as I can by buying their products and attending their shows.
" I know more then one artists getting fucked this way."
Yeah, cuz they had a gun pointed to their head when they signed those contracts, right?
I worked in the music business for years (head of tech for Nettwerk, home of Sarah McLachlan, Lilith Fair, Bare Naked Ladies, Avril Lavigne, to name a few, as well as Virgin, EMI, Sony), and have seen my fair share of artists come in to see the A&R guys.
It amazes me how stupid some of the new artists are; they totally fail to prepare themselves for entering into any agreements with the labels, and then blame anyone but themselves later on when the light bulb clicks on and they realize that the contracts, written by the labels, are in the label's favour.
Maybe they're just too stupid to know they're stupid, but that's still no excuse. Even the most least expensive entertainment lawyer should be able to describe the situation outlined by the paperwork.
Sure, some of the "smart" guys I've known (who were some of the best musicians I've EVER heard), walked away from the userous loans/contracts, but there were always 100 willing idiots waiting in line to take their place.
Even the most simplistic moron of an "artist" should find themselves someone to handle their business/legal affairs, because that makes up 90% of the music BUSINESS.
A bad contract or two may be just the wake-up call that some musicians need to get a little grounded in reality. (Don't even get me started on the "I'm an artist, so I refuse to deal with boring things like business/contracts" crap).
Mind you, most of the "artists/musicians" I know think that they're just the cat's ass, and will be making millions in no time, so this little "loan" won't be that bad; it'll get paid back in no time, and then it's on to the fame and fortune.
They need a serious dose of reality (and a smack in the head). Just watch 10 minutes of American Idol to see how freakin obliviious 99% of the entrants are to their complete lack of talent.
END RANT
PS: I've been a musician all my life; played the violin since I was 5, was offered a scholarship to Tanglewood, and have played lead guitar in Van Halen / SRV cover bands and other paying gigs for years, so it's not like I'm against musicians... I am one. I'm just against STUPID musicians that whine and complain.
That will change shortly. Take a look at the intense lobbying from all of the major casinos to have the regulations modified, and their existing on-line sites that they are deploying and developing.
I have some clients in gambling and horse racing. and from what I've seen, especially based on the successful lobbying that is ongoing (look to the increase of slot machine usage as an example), it will only be a matter of time.
Actually, for the large sites I've dealt with, it's the CPU that'll kill them first. I've seen sites with more than 150,000 bots hitting them with small, valid URL requests, and while their bandwidth took a huge hit, their web/app server front end (40x4CPU boxes for each), became CPU strained under the load, while the DB cluster was slowly becoming CPU and IO constrained.
True, bandwidth will become a huge issue, but that's usually due to the slow response times from the web/app tier(s), causing "old" connections to not be cleared out as quickly as they should be.
Obviously, other situations might be different, but I've seen 4 different companies go through this, and that's how it played out for each.
I've worked with a number of gambling and high-profile sites that have been approached by these on-line extortionists, and they are very real threats.
One company ignored the threats, and had in excess of 150,000 machines hammering their sites (MILLIONS of simultaneous connections) as a result, all for lack of paying the US $50,000 ransom and not planning/preparing for the onslaught.
It is NOT trivial to stop a DDOS from over 150,000 machines. Anyone who thinks it is just a matter of "connection tracking and throttling" has had no real-world experience with this stuff on large sites.
It takes specialty hardware, with specialty software/algorithms, and a SHIT LOAD of bandwidth to weather such a storm.
One of these company's employed a relatively new device last year created by an Israli company, and it was VERY successful in repelling a HUGE attack during last year's Superbowl. It resulted in a LOT of bandwidth being used, but no degredation of service to their users.
(It was actually quite funny watching the emails from the extortionists change from "WE OWN YOU" to "uhmmm... how about $25k?" to "OK, $5k and we'll leave you alone", as they turned on their attack and saw that it had no effect on the site!)
The hardware was so good at doing it's job, Microsoft bought all of the remaining available stock, worldwide, and Cisco purchased the company. (Can't remember the name of the company off hand).
I also find that too many clients/customers of co-lo's just don't do their homework or due dilligence when it comes to selecting their co-lo provider.
Needless to say, I'd be very interested to see the SLA's that the clients had, and what exactly Internap provides by way of uptime. Maybe they just blew the rest of the year's allowable downtime.
Maybe, but sometimes shit just happens, regardless of design.
I find this Risk site to be very interesting reading, especially when it talks about some failure issues and scenarios.
My favourite was about Squirrel that took down the Nasdaq. (I've also heard squirrels/mice/rats etc called "self propelled short circuits", but that's another story)
Now, I've been involved in systems architecture design, planning, and management for years, and I think that a lot of people drastically underestimate just how fscking complex and dificult proper planning, execution, testing, maintenance, and administration of these systems can be... especially when faced with budgetary restrictions.
The cost of a system rises almost exponentially as you approach 100% uptime... even 99.999 is freaking expensive to implement and manage. Never mind the complexity and administrative requirements.
Who knows... maybe dealing with the PR issues of this outtage is still orders of magnitude cheaper in the long run than putting in the systems required to achieve the uptime.
At the end of the day, what are the business impacts of this outtage? For that matter, they seem to have received more exposure than if they were operating normally.
A lot of people are aware of the fact that sometimes things break, and we're not landing planes in the fog here. The fact that shit broke and they're bringing it back in an informed and somewhat timely manner may HELP them, in that some people may get a stronger sense of "these guys can deal with problems that hit them".
I hear you... it seems that the hardest part lately has been finding null modem cables, as they're increasingly becoming hard to find in your local Radio Shack or other store.
Whenever I go to a client site, I've got my "on-site pack" that has all the various cables and connectors I need... null modem or not, RJ45, RS232, etc., as well as a configurable break-out box for any "special" hardware that has it's own special way of dealing with serial connections.
The only thing you have to do is keep them close, as the other on-site staff tend to look at them longingly, and I've caught more than one try to "borrow" something from me. Bastards!
I agree. You can pick up an old (outdated but functional) Portmaster for as little as $30 (with 25 serial connections), or you can go with something newer like a Cyclades, etc.
These things are also especially handy as they can deal with certain hardware reboot issues (Sun break issues, etc.).
You can also connect these to a dedicated phone line / modem for out-of-band access.
In short, if I'm doing remote management, this setup is always a requirement, otherwise, if it's local, then the client will supply the necessary crash-cart or connectivity devices.
But, let me get this straight... Apple allows people to have special access to their product, albeit with some restrictions and conditions (NDA), and the person has admitted to breaking those conditions.
What, exactly, do you think Apple should do about it? "Gee, shucks, that's OK, go ahead, even though you're breaking our agreement, we won't mind".
Man... whatever happened to people TAKING RESPONSIBILITY FOR THEIR ACTIONS? Let's face it, some actions have repercussions, as in this case.
If some idiot breaking his NDA, and the company taking reasonable and appropriate legal action as a result, is reason enough for you to make a decision about that company, then best of luck to you.
And, I find it very interesting that you seem to think that suing someone will result in poorer software. These guys aren't SCO... they actually HAVE software developers and engineers on staff... many more than they have lawyers.
On another note, I find it pretty funny to read all the crap that is flung at so-called "Apple fan Boys". I am one, I guess, because I really like their stuff. Personally, I think people that speak out against them really don't have any experience with them. One of my developers says "they're too stupid to know they're stupid". Maybe there's some truth to that.
Mind you, it's not an all-or-nothing scenario... it's about using the right tool for the right job.
I have 3 software companies, and we ALL (except Jake) use OSX as our development platform. We develop Java/Oracle web apps, as well as some stand-alone Java apps, and with the exception of that one person, we all prefer the OSX environment (so he uses Suse). I would not want anything else as a workstation, period, end of subject.
Mind you, he spends most of our developer meetings trying to get his wireless network access working instead of actually participating in the meetings, as we all just "resume" our PowerBooks and they "just work", but that's another story.:P
Do we go production on OSX for our web apps? No. We use Solaris or Linux for our production deployments, as they're much more suited to being production servers.
Is it "proprietary" hardware? Sure, maybe. Are we locked in? Not in the least. At any time we could change our development environment to any other platform we want, in a matter of minutes. (thanks to the joys of CVS, Ant, and some 100% Java tools). We actually do all of our automated builds/testing on Linux.
That's just us, though, and at the end of the day, I could care less how you view Apple or their products. I just feel a little sad that some people are so blinded and/or short sighted on some subjects.
I got my wings when I was 16, and my Dad, a bush pilot in the Canadian Arctic for years, told me the old but true saying: "There are old pilots, and bold pilots, but no old, bold pilots".
He's had the unfortunate experience of attending many funerals for his colleagues, the vast majority of which died as a result of poor judgement.
Well, I know that for Oracle this CAN be the case, but not necessarily.
By using a series of grants, you can put your data objects and stored procedures in one schema (user), and grant execute/etc to another schema. You can also disallow the "connect" priv to the data schema, and force remote apps to connect using "proxy" users that have execute on only the procedures that they require. This also means that the connecting users don't have the procs in their schema, so they can't mod them. You can also dissallow the connecting schemas from having any tables/procs, so that it can only use the "remote" procedures from the other schema(s).
This is part of how I restrict access to various parts of the system to various apps filling different roles. For instance, our DMZ/Web front end accesses a very restrictive set of procs, while our more internal systems access others, etc.
Also, we're alerted whenever anyone directly connects to the data schema, etc.
I like to daydream of Firefly's pilot episode, with Darl as being the big, mouthy guy that starts to spout off the typical "I'll hunt you down to the end of the earth" speach, and then he gets shoved into the running engine. It totally caught me by surprise and made me laugh out loud.
They are very well made, and the backpack has tons of space and smart layout/design for laptops, water bottles, ipods/MP3 players, and gym clothes. And the Cocoon is fantastic for protecting my iPod.
Reminds me of a software project I worked on where the main PL/SQL developer spelt password as "passsword" for all of the security stuff.
Man, that was a pain in the ass to work on later on! Not only to remember how it was spelt for that project, but I caught myself spelling it that way on other projects. I'm still scarred.
Slashdot Mirror
Call the musicians stupid all you want, but when a label is dangling the carrot, what leverage do they really have? Can they really say "this contract isn't fair and we'd like this this and this changed"? No. You know why? Cuz the label will say "take it or leave it". And that musician will go on to remain obscure and poor.
Like I said in another post, if they have the "get rich and famous" goal, then signing with a big label is one of the few ways of achieving it.
But I _DON'T_ want to hear them whine and complain about how they're getting fucked by the label when shit doesn't go well for them.
It's not up to the label to provide a fair contract to benefit the musician. They are in the BUSINESS of MAKING MONEY. If you want to do a deal with them, and you are the huge underdog with no leverage, then you are going to have to settle for what they offer, and have no basis whatsoever to bitch and complain about it.
This over-inflated sense of self-entitlement is really annoying.
Want leverage? Then be GOOD at what you do, and shop around to multiple labels. Get them to fight to get you. It worked for Trent Reznor and Creed, to name but a few.
If you're a mediocre band from a mediocre place, and only one label is interested in you, then that speaks volumes.
Or, if you ARE good, and jump on the first offer to come your way, then you ARE STUPID.
Once again, it is the music BUSINESS, with all the facets of "normal" business, including negotiating contracts.
Nettwerk, for the most part, is amazing. I've only seen one band that had problems, and as far as I'm concerned, it was because their egos got the better of them.
All in all, they have excellent people working there, and I respect Terry McBride a lot for his values and work ethic. (he's the founder and CEO).
I have no problem with people signing this stuff, my pet peeve is hearing them bitch about it later. Unfortunately, they're old enough to sign the contract, so they have to abide by the rules of it. Kind of like a credit card... I know a LOT of guys who are "legally" alllowed to have a credit card, but who immeidately get in over their head and screw themselves. Same thing with cel phones, etc.
At least your friend is going in with his eyes open, knowing what he wants out of it, and seems to be willing to take the changes.
(Best of luck to him, by the way!)
but the point is, you can't put *all* of the blame on the artist just because they signed a "bad" deal.
;)
Well, if they sign it, then I don't want to hear them bitching about it. Or other people bitching about it. It was their decision, and they have to live with it.
As to the situation with a relative monopoly for the signing of new musicians, It's because new bands jump to sign any deal that the system continues to perpetuate itself.
There are other options to getting your music out there, rather than signing to a big label.
I guess it comes down to what they want to accomplish with their music... if they're looking to "make it big", or enter the mainstream, then I have no pity for them. They're in the position they're in because they are greedy (maybe a little strong). Maybe it's better to say that they're buying into the existing marketplace and all the crap that that entails.
There are other bands that do fairly well for themselves, without signing to a big label.
I think it comes down to realistic expectations, and the need for a lot of musicians to get some. Do you want to make a living at your music, or do you want to be rich and famous?
Sure, we all have dreams, and you have every right to fight tooth and nail to achieve them, but I think too many people don't realize that sometime your dreams come with a "dark side", or strings attached. That's just life.
That being said, do I think that the big labels have waaayyy to much control over the market? Definitely! How to fix that? I don't know. It's not going to be simple, as marketing/exposure requires CASH. That is not likely to change any time soon.
Mind you, I ignore the market, for the most part, as it has 99% crap in it anyway. The big problem is the mindless mass of consumers that flock to the market and believe the crap that is force-fed them via marketing, etc. As long as the mindless massess continue to buy crappy products, then this is the situation we'll be in.
I perefer to stick with the "non-mainstream" undercurrents that have low-profile, high-quality music, and continue to support them as much as I can by buying their products and attending their shows.
Oh, this post was all over the post as well.
Yeah, I can see your point.
Actually, I might remember a couple artists that would fit this description!
Hopefully, if they're that stupid, then they're not whining and complaining about being screwed, as their too oblivious to reality.
" I know more then one artists getting fucked this way."
Yeah, cuz they had a gun pointed to their head when they signed those contracts, right?
I worked in the music business for years (head of tech for Nettwerk, home of Sarah McLachlan, Lilith Fair, Bare Naked Ladies, Avril Lavigne, to name a few, as well as Virgin, EMI, Sony), and have seen my fair share of artists come in to see the A&R guys.
It amazes me how stupid some of the new artists are; they totally fail to prepare themselves for entering into any agreements with the labels, and then blame anyone but themselves later on when the light bulb clicks on and they realize that the contracts, written by the labels, are in the label's favour.
Maybe they're just too stupid to know they're stupid, but that's still no excuse. Even the most least expensive entertainment lawyer should be able to describe the situation outlined by the paperwork.
Sure, some of the "smart" guys I've known (who were some of the best musicians I've EVER heard), walked away from the userous loans/contracts, but there were always 100 willing idiots waiting in line to take their place.
Even the most simplistic moron of an "artist" should find themselves someone to handle their business/legal affairs, because that makes up 90% of the music BUSINESS.
A bad contract or two may be just the wake-up call that some musicians need to get a little grounded in reality. (Don't even get me started on the "I'm an artist, so I refuse to deal with boring things like business/contracts" crap).
Mind you, most of the "artists/musicians" I know think that they're just the cat's ass, and will be making millions in no time, so this little "loan" won't be that bad; it'll get paid back in no time, and then it's on to the fame and fortune.
They need a serious dose of reality (and a smack in the head). Just watch 10 minutes of American Idol to see how freakin obliviious 99% of the entrants are to their complete lack of talent.
END RANT
PS: I've been a musician all my life; played the violin since I was 5, was offered a scholarship to Tanglewood, and have played lead guitar in Van Halen / SRV cover bands and other paying gigs for years, so it's not like I'm against musicians... I am one. I'm just against STUPID musicians that whine and complain.
REALLY END RANT
Just found a quick link about it here.
Actually, I just dug through some old emails, and the company's name is Riverhead.
The parent IS NOT a troll... I've worked with 4 large companies that have been faced with this, and it is NOT a bunch of "script kiddies".
These appeared to be highly sophisticated groups (from a technical perspective), with access to 150,000+ bots.
The extortionists in each case appeared to be Russian.
That will change shortly. Take a look at the intense lobbying from all of the major casinos to have the regulations modified, and their existing on-line sites that they are deploying and developing.
I have some clients in gambling and horse racing. and from what I've seen, especially based on the successful lobbying that is ongoing (look to the increase of slot machine usage as an example), it will only be a matter of time.
But hey, I could be wrong.
Actually, for the large sites I've dealt with, it's the CPU that'll kill them first. I've seen sites with more than 150,000 bots hitting them with small, valid URL requests, and while their bandwidth took a huge hit, their web/app server front end (40x4CPU boxes for each), became CPU strained under the load, while the DB cluster was slowly becoming CPU and IO constrained.
True, bandwidth will become a huge issue, but that's usually due to the slow response times from the web/app tier(s), causing "old" connections to not be cleared out as quickly as they should be.
Obviously, other situations might be different, but I've seen 4 different companies go through this, and that's how it played out for each.
Uhh, no, it's not.
I've worked with a number of gambling and high-profile sites that have been approached by these on-line extortionists, and they are very real threats.
One company ignored the threats, and had in excess of 150,000 machines hammering their sites (MILLIONS of simultaneous connections) as a result, all for lack of paying the US $50,000 ransom and not planning/preparing for the onslaught.
It is NOT trivial to stop a DDOS from over 150,000 machines. Anyone who thinks it is just a matter of "connection tracking and throttling" has had no real-world experience with this stuff on large sites.
It takes specialty hardware, with specialty software/algorithms, and a SHIT LOAD of bandwidth to weather such a storm.
One of these company's employed a relatively new device last year created by an Israli company, and it was VERY successful in repelling a HUGE attack during last year's Superbowl. It resulted in a LOT of bandwidth being used, but no degredation of service to their users.
(It was actually quite funny watching the emails from the extortionists change from "WE OWN YOU" to "uhmmm... how about $25k?" to "OK, $5k and we'll leave you alone", as they turned on their attack and saw that it had no effect on the site!)
The hardware was so good at doing it's job, Microsoft bought all of the remaining available stock, worldwide, and Cisco purchased the company. (Can't remember the name of the company off hand).
For sure...
I also find that too many clients/customers of co-lo's just don't do their homework or due dilligence when it comes to selecting their co-lo provider.
Needless to say, I'd be very interested to see the SLA's that the clients had, and what exactly Internap provides by way of uptime. Maybe they just blew the rest of the year's allowable downtime.
Maybe, but sometimes shit just happens, regardless of design.
I find this Risk site to be very interesting reading, especially when it talks about some failure issues and scenarios.
My favourite was about Squirrel that took down the Nasdaq. (I've also heard squirrels/mice/rats etc called "self propelled short circuits", but that's another story)
Now, I've been involved in systems architecture design, planning, and management for years, and I think that a lot of people drastically underestimate just how fscking complex and dificult proper planning, execution, testing, maintenance, and administration of these systems can be... especially when faced with budgetary restrictions.
The cost of a system rises almost exponentially as you approach 100% uptime... even 99.999 is freaking expensive to implement and manage. Never mind the complexity and administrative requirements.
Who knows... maybe dealing with the PR issues of this outtage is still orders of magnitude cheaper in the long run than putting in the systems required to achieve the uptime.
At the end of the day, what are the business impacts of this outtage? For that matter, they seem to have received more exposure than if they were operating normally.
A lot of people are aware of the fact that sometimes things break, and we're not landing planes in the fog here. The fact that shit broke and they're bringing it back in an informed and somewhat timely manner may HELP them, in that some people may get a stronger sense of "these guys can deal with problems that hit them".
I hear you... it seems that the hardest part lately has been finding null modem cables, as they're increasingly becoming hard to find in your local Radio Shack or other store.
Whenever I go to a client site, I've got my "on-site pack" that has all the various cables and connectors I need... null modem or not, RJ45, RS232, etc., as well as a configurable break-out box for any "special" hardware that has it's own special way of dealing with serial connections.
The only thing you have to do is keep them close, as the other on-site staff tend to look at them longingly, and I've caught more than one try to "borrow" something from me. Bastards!
I agree. You can pick up an old (outdated but functional) Portmaster for as little as $30 (with 25 serial connections), or you can go with something newer like a Cyclades, etc.
These things are also especially handy as they can deal with certain hardware reboot issues (Sun break issues, etc.).
You can also connect these to a dedicated phone line / modem for out-of-band access.
In short, if I'm doing remote management, this setup is always a requirement, otherwise, if it's local, then the client will supply the necessary crash-cart or connectivity devices.
E M P :)
And that is your choice.
:P
But, let me get this straight... Apple allows people to have special access to their product, albeit with some restrictions and conditions (NDA), and the person has admitted to breaking those conditions.
What, exactly, do you think Apple should do about it? "Gee, shucks, that's OK, go ahead, even though you're breaking our agreement, we won't mind".
Man... whatever happened to people TAKING RESPONSIBILITY FOR THEIR ACTIONS? Let's face it, some actions have repercussions, as in this case.
If some idiot breaking his NDA, and the company taking reasonable and appropriate legal action as a result, is reason enough for you to make a decision about that company, then best of luck to you.
And, I find it very interesting that you seem to think that suing someone will result in poorer software. These guys aren't SCO... they actually HAVE software developers and engineers on staff... many more than they have lawyers.
On another note, I find it pretty funny to read all the crap that is flung at so-called "Apple fan Boys". I am one, I guess, because I really like their stuff. Personally, I think people that speak out against them really don't have any experience with them. One of my developers says "they're too stupid to know they're stupid". Maybe there's some truth to that.
Mind you, it's not an all-or-nothing scenario... it's about using the right tool for the right job.
I have 3 software companies, and we ALL (except Jake) use OSX as our development platform. We develop Java/Oracle web apps, as well as some stand-alone Java apps, and with the exception of that one person, we all prefer the OSX environment (so he uses Suse). I would not want anything else as a workstation, period, end of subject.
Mind you, he spends most of our developer meetings trying to get his wireless network access working instead of actually participating in the meetings, as we all just "resume" our PowerBooks and they "just work", but that's another story.
Do we go production on OSX for our web apps? No. We use Solaris or Linux for our production deployments, as they're much more suited to being production servers.
Is it "proprietary" hardware? Sure, maybe. Are we locked in? Not in the least. At any time we could change our development environment to any other platform we want, in a matter of minutes. (thanks to the joys of CVS, Ant, and some 100% Java tools). We actually do all of our automated builds/testing on Linux.
That's just us, though, and at the end of the day, I could care less how you view Apple or their products. I just feel a little sad that some people are so blinded and/or short sighted on some subjects.
Very, very true,
I got my wings when I was 16, and my Dad, a bush pilot in the Canadian Arctic for years, told me the old but true saying: "There are old pilots, and bold pilots, but no old, bold pilots".
He's had the unfortunate experience of attending many funerals for his colleagues, the vast majority of which died as a result of poor judgement.
Well, I know that for Oracle this CAN be the case, but not necessarily.
By using a series of grants, you can put your data objects and stored procedures in one schema (user), and grant execute/etc to another schema. You can also disallow the "connect" priv to the data schema, and force remote apps to connect using "proxy" users that have execute on only the procedures that they require. This also means that the connecting users don't have the procs in their schema, so they can't mod them. You can also dissallow the connecting schemas from having any tables/procs, so that it can only use the "remote" procedures from the other schema(s).
This is part of how I restrict access to various parts of the system to various apps filling different roles. For instance, our DMZ/Web front end accesses a very restrictive set of procs, while our more internal systems access others, etc.
Also, we're alerted whenever anyone directly connects to the data schema, etc.
Is that Italian Spam?
I do not see the problem... my minky has a leesonce to send that spim.
(bad attempt at an Inspector Cluseau impersenation)
The old saws still apply:
;)
The old saws seem to be a little rusty.
I like to daydream of Firefly's pilot episode, with Darl as being the big, mouthy guy that starts to spout off the typical "I'll hunt you down to the end of the earth" speach, and then he gets shoved into the running engine. It totally caught me by surprise and made me laugh out loud.
Mmmm... Darl.... running turbine..... mmmmmm......
I bought the STM Sports Backpack and the STM iPod Cocoon about 3 months ago, and have been VERY happy with both.
They are very well made, and the backpack has tons of space and smart layout/design for laptops, water bottles, ipods/MP3 players, and gym clothes. And the Cocoon is fantastic for protecting my iPod.
Yeah, the nutcases generally skip the entire military thing and go straight to Secretary of Defense.
sloppppy
:P
Reminds me of a software project I worked on where the main PL/SQL developer spelt password as "passsword" for all of the security stuff.
Man, that was a pain in the ass to work on later on! Not only to remember how it was spelt for that project, but I caught myself spelling it that way on other projects. I'm still scarred.
(Yes, Thor, I mean you!!!)