> [...] not liking something because the proles get to have it too is one of the worst features of human nature
I agree. At the office the management decided to give more vacation time to the tech guys, and many analysts complained that they now had the same vacation time as the "tech guys". At first I thought this was a joke... but no, that kind of people actually exists and apparently they are so self-righteous that they even manage to get their pathetic complaints in my Slashdot rss feed.
I am a big company with a monopolistic agenda and a marketing-driven corporate culture.
(Actually it's a trick question. You cannot possibly know if this is Microsoft or Apple, unless you know in which category you are playing: "Evil" or "Cool").
In 1990, the Mohawk people (native Americans) blocked the Mercier Bridge in Montreal to protest against the expansion of a golf course on an alleged sacred land. The blockade lasted for *the whole summer*.
The Mercier Bridge is a major access point to the southwest of Montreal island, over 75000 cars are using this bridge daily. Of course all the people usually driving on this bridge got stuck in huge traffic jams, but this situation also created gridlocks on the other bridges and highways in the Montreal area. For months.
At first the cops tried to remove the Mohawk, but they had weapons and killed one cop (caporal Marcel Lemay). So the cops pulled back and the army was brought in. This was a highly political situation; the army was not allowed to use force and merely stood guard.
> To compare two companies looking only such facts as "well Microsoft and Google pay 15-20% more" loses site of what a career is about.
I did not compare companies, I compared *salaries* at those companies. Big difference. The discussion is about salaries and perks, not about careers or innovation.
My point is: with the amount of money the company is now making, there is no justification for lower salaries at Apple; they should be on par with the salaries at Microsoft or Google.
As for Walmart vs Apple: it's a different context, but in both companies the top dogs are making the big bucks, while the working people are underpaid.
> Perhaps Apple is guilty of hiring people who care more about what they do than how much they make doing it.
Following your logic, I guess *Walmart* is guilty of the same sin.
It's always amazing to see how some people see any discussion involving Apple as a black & white thing; this makes the discussion very difficult, because as soon as you raise an issue, they see you as The Ennemy. I noticed the same behavior with members of the Scientology Church, and with battered spouses.
A psychiatrist could confirm this, but to me this sounds a lot like some kind of Stockholm syndrom.
> I've got karma to lose, but when the EU take a couple of months to review the buyout of Sun by Oracle to assess the impact on competition, it's evil protectionism
Exactly how long did the EU take to review the acquisition of Business Objects by SAP two years ago? Of course there was no problem, after all SAP is a German company and Business Objects was French.
As for the Sun/Oracle thing, if you want my opinion, it did not help that a German product, MySQL (which already suffered a tragic takeover by evil Americans), will probably end up on a permanent backburner at Oracle's HQ.
Good money, plenty of perks... this is not the Apple way.
A few years ago the company was on the brink of disaster and made huge salary cuts. Now they are making sh*tloads of money, thanks to the iPod and iPhone, but the salaries are still low. Last year, Techcrunch published data pulled from Glassdoor.com, showing that Apple engineers are paid 15-20% less than their counterparts at Google, Microsoft and Yahoo.
Some food for thought: who made more money at Microsoft? Steve Ballmer or Bill Gates? and who made more money at Apple? Steve Jobs or Steve Wozniak? Engineers always have been a commodities for Apple.
> Forcing the use of IE in particular for that application, as in corporate networks, is like mandating to use belt only in very slow cars.
Many companies use Internet Explorer because they want the tight integration with other Microsoft products (like Sharepoint or Office). It takes very little effort to setup a Sharepoint intranet, where people can post Excel documents and generate KPIs and dashboards and whatever the business needs to move forward. Other big software companies also have that kind of stuff, like IBM Lotus Notes or Novell Groupwise. But just like Microsoft, it's a lock-in process. Setting up that kind of environment with other software, like those open-source PHP CMS, will require a lot of work, and quite possibly, more skilled staff and a training program for users.
Also many companies use Internet Explorer because it's already built-in and it would cost more to support more than one browser. Internet Explorer is already paid for, and usually people can get things done with it, so it's a hard sale to bring in Firefox or another browser.
> Firewalls are pretty good to avoid things from outside getting in by themselves. But once you put an agent there that opens the door to things from outside (probably the most used vector right now) it turns the firewall meaningless.
Any decent firewall can have rules for both inbound and outbound traffic. Also, decent firewalls usually have DPI or other smart technologies that can really raise flags when something goes wrong.
> [...] forcing to have an agent there that is vulnerable even to bad breath (usually the enforced version is an old one, wont be very surprised if a good percent of those inside the firewall browsers are IE6) sounds almost criminal.
In my experience, companies that have a policy about the allowed version of Internet Explorer usually have a very efficient change management strategy and suffer very little downtime because of software problems. I have a Fortune 500 client that started rolling out Windows XP last year only; they have no downtime at all and the business is doing great. It's not cool or edgy to work in such an environment (even Flash is not supported), but they are not in the cool or edgy business.
> Also, everyone's a consumer, be it a business or home user. When it really comes down to it, there's no clear marketting dilleniation between the two, maybe demographics, but both companies have to cover ALL of those, so it's kind of a moot point
This sentence is a complete joke. Actually, as a whole, this is one of the worst posts I've read in a long time.
This is really scored 5: Insightful?? If people keep giving points to clueless comments like this one, I'll have to find a new way to filter out crap.
> The worst by FAR is Metalink - that ultra-fragile, uber-bloated, flash-based abortion. Quite obviously conceived in the 8th circle of hell. > Metalink is the only web site Chuck Norris cannot navigate.
In Montreal the system is similar, however you don't have to leave a paper receipt on your dashboard, because the parking people use a wireless device telling them which parking spots are paid for and which are not. It works.
There is a weakness: after you've paid and walked away, if someone enters a small amount of money for your parking spot, it will reset your time, so you can get a ticket even if you paid for more time. But at least with the purchase receipt you can contest the ticket.
> Global warming is very real, and has been measured all over the planet; look up some of the studies that have been done on the polar ice caps.
Apparently Alan Carlin, a 38-year veteran with the EPA, disagree with you. But wait, maybe he did not witness your Melbourne summers, you should definitely send him a memo so he could rectify his report!
> The only people who want to believe that global warming isn't occurring are the capitalist fanatic
This logic reminds me of a quote from the Art professor Luther in the movie Glory Daze: "It is poetry that will save the world, not commerce"
> These people need to be silenced. We need to move past the debate stage, and into the stage where we start taking concrete action to rectify the problem.
Hey, you could take this statement and make a book about it. But first make sure you don't get sued for stealing Intellectual Property from "Mein Kampf".
> I think that person was put in place by the Bush Administration and is a loyal Republican.
Yeah, a mole placed 38 years ago in the EPA so he could be activated in the future to foil Democrats plans.
> Most credible scientists agree that global warming is real.
And your source on this is what? Al Gore's movie? Maybe you just forgot to put in another statistic made up by Michael Moore so your baseless statement would at least look like a fact.
"Some people say" is the bullshit signature for Fox News. "Most credible scientists agree" is the bullshit signature of the Church of Al Gore (the one supporting his PowerPoint movie and conveniently not discussing his not-so-green lifestyle).
There is so much FUD on both sides that right now it's just impossible to know what is actually going on. I dream of the day people will stop being so dogmatic about the environment so the actual problems can be addressed.
> But even better than that - actually just a basic expectation - would be for them to fix the software in the first place.
What if the bug is coming from a third-party software (in this case, the Oracle driver)?
My point is: this is not a fair example of a stupid workaround. The OP could have picked a better one, like this one:
*** Messages that start with the word "begin" are received as blank attachments in Outlook 2000. *** Workaround: Use a different word such as "start" or "commence." http://support.microsoft.com/kb/260822
"WARNING:This information is preliminary and has not been confirmed or tested by Microsoft. Use only with discretion. Some or all of the information in this article has been taken from unconfirmed customer reports."
Worst part is that I'm pretty sure that if there was a "known solution" in the "community" that was not published by Microsoft you would complain as well. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
For a whole summer I've been coding in the "server room": a caged area on the mezzanine of a warehouse. The factory was in a big production ramp-up, and all day long people were removing big machines from wooden crates, using pneumatic guns (same as in the tire shops). Also to add to my discomfort, the speaker for the paging system was just above my head, so all day I was hearing: "Glenn line 1, Glenn line 1. Urgent" or "the winner for the half & half is Teresa in accounting". Hot, humid, dirty, noisy, for a very low salary.
Believe it or not, there are days where I sit in my quiet office with top of the line hardware, cool projects and great salary, and I miss that nightmare. There was something *real* about that place that I find lacking in the corporate world.
> Britain wasn't invaded by Germany either. But without US intervention, it might have been. Who knows where they'd have stopped?
Not US alone. Commonwealth countries (Australia, Canada, etc) did a pretty solid work.
The real question is: if the Germans had not attacked USSR, who knows what would have happened... With all the troops on the Western front, Germany would have been much more powerful.
> If ANY language is going to be our "second language", it should be some Native American dialect.
Let's make a deal. Start paying tax on goods and services (since you don't have employment revenue anyway) and we will discuss your claims. Stop running guns and smuggling cigarettes, and we will discuss your claims. Stop taking people hostage by blocking bridges over phony local feuds that are actually money extortion operations, and we will discuss your claims. Stop ditching snowmobiles and pickup trucks in the wild when they are out of gas because you can get another vehicule free of charge (paid by MY tax dollars), and we will discuss your claims. Stop "losing" your dental implants on Friday night so you can spend the weekend in Quebec city free of charge (paid by MY tax dollars) while you wait to get a new free implant (paid by MY tax dollars) on Monday morning. Stop having those nightmarish statistics of 90%+ victims of incest and martial violence in some of your reservations and we will discuss your claims.
Apparently you are not aware that Quebec is located in Canada, which is in North America, and was never invaded by Germany. Actually, the Canadian army, including many famous French-speaking Quebec regiments, was a crucial part of the D-Day operation. If at some point you get out of your basement and travel in Europe, you will see many sites dedicated to heroic Canadian soldiers who died fighting the Germans.
Being under the impression that Americans alone freed France shows a lack of basic knowledge of history. Russian troops were very central in this operation, and were actually a key factor in the Allied victory.
This being said, what is very, very sad, is that by saying *us* you take credit for something you personally never were part of, and feel "entitled" by the actions of, maybe, your grandfather. My guess is that your only fight for freedom so far has been to post illiterate comments on discussion forums and eat "freedom fries".
One last point: maybe the Americans did help to liberate France, however you seem to forget that France was an important player in the American Revolutionary War. Next time you come across a street or a city called Lafayette, instead of just thinking about your next fix of fast food, ask yourself where this name is coming from.
Now get a good history book, or wikipedia if you are too lazy to walk to the library, and read about things before you comment them.
With 1000 users if you want SQL Server you need to purchase a processor license: 5k$/CPU for Standard Edition, 25k$/CPU for Enterprise. (You only license physical CPU, not cores or hyperthreading). Add the Windows license (6k$). And you have no hardware yet.
The "good news" is that with failover clustering (which is all you need cause 1000 users does not require load-balancing), Microsoft requires licenses only for the active node. And the failover node can be cheaper hardware, as it will run only under abnormal situations and can offer a lesser performance (management is usually ok with that).
If you go with Linux + Postgres or MySQL, you pay no licenses. Those products are a bit less user-friendly, but they give you more control over your setup. Use database clustering and/or replication, and use either one of the many free load-balancing software or pay for a very good one (like Zeus).
Based on my experience, I would say: for a small intranet, use Microsoft (Windows, SQL Server, Sharepoint) because you can leverage on MS-Office and powerful groupware tools (project management, BI, reporting) and actually provide value to your end-users. But for a large intranet or for public-facing sites, where you don't control the end-users platform, use Linux, it's worth the learning curve.
For a long time I was reluctant to sign-in to LinkedIn and last year I decided to try it. And I really like it, because it is not time-consuming while being very useful.
I like LinkedIn because it provides me with a way to stay in touch with former coworkers and other business contacts without having to send the keep-alive "wazzup" email every once in a while. Also I don't have to let people know when I change jobs; it's all in my profile, and those interested will get the info. For me LinkedIn is also a great database of skilled people, which I peruse whenever there is a position to fill at my job.
To have a valuable database, I have a rule: I do not accept invitations from people I would not vouch for, and I never send invitations unless someone is outstanding. Some of my LinkedIn contacts have thousands of contacts. I have less than fifty.
As for Facebook or Myspace, I am not interested. I don't feel the need to get in touch with people I lost contact with, and I don't want them to contact me either. If I lose contact with someone, there is a reason. Lack of interest, nothing to discuss, nothing to share... Also I don't have enough time to spend with my actual friends -- why would I want "virtual friends"?
> I'm not saying that Android and Windows Mobile don't have their place on the market, but they will always serve commodity phones whereas the iPhone will remain the Ferrari of wireless just as the Mac is the Ferrari of computers.
This kind of statement is a perfect exemple of misplaced contempt and arrogance that so many Apple zealots are displaying.
Mac is the Ferrari of computers? Then how come Apple had to ditch everything that was inside their pretty shiny boxes and replace it with "commodity" hardware (Intel) and software (BSD)? Maybe for the same reason their engineers are still underpaid while the company is now profitable.
You like overpriced commodity hardware hosting restricted, proprietary software? Be my guest and go spend your money at Apple Store (on a day where they can process credit cards). But don't try to hitch your decaying wagon to Ferrari's history of excellence.
I completely agree. The OP has a bias and this is wrong. And as far as experience goes, sometimes no experience is better than misfit experience.
If you have an intermediate web developer position to fill, who would you favor?
1) A young guy whose first experience is a 3-month contract renewed 3 times in a start-up, and who is now looking for his first permanent job 2) An experienced programmer who spent the last 20 years writing JCL scripts, got downsized, followed a web development course and just finished a 6-month gig with a NGO
The second guy has more work experience, but is it relevant experience? Just because you sit in a server room does not mean your job is high-tech. Does it mean the guy is a dolt? You can't tell. Maybe he is very zen, a real genius, takes the best position available, and happily deliver the exact quality of code he is expected to without worrying about his future.
There is really no way to tell unless the resume has mistakes or unless you can talk with those candidates. But having a bias is wrong.
Slashdot Mirror
> [...] not liking something because the proles get to have it too is one of the worst features of human nature
I agree. At the office the management decided to give more vacation time to the tech guys, and many analysts complained that they now had the same vacation time as the "tech guys". At first I thought this was a joke... but no, that kind of people actually exists and apparently they are so self-righteous that they even manage to get their pathetic complaints in my Slashdot rss feed.
I am a big company with a monopolistic agenda and a marketing-driven corporate culture.
(Actually it's a trick question. You cannot possibly know if this is Microsoft or Apple, unless you know in which category you are playing: "Evil" or "Cool").
...Darl McBride? I think he is someone who had an effect on the open source industry.
In 1990, the Mohawk people (native Americans) blocked the Mercier Bridge in Montreal to protest against the expansion of a golf course on an alleged sacred land. The blockade lasted for *the whole summer*.
The Mercier Bridge is a major access point to the southwest of Montreal island, over 75000 cars are using this bridge daily. Of course all the people usually driving on this bridge got stuck in huge traffic jams, but this situation also created gridlocks on the other bridges and highways in the Montreal area. For months.
At first the cops tried to remove the Mohawk, but they had weapons and killed one cop (caporal Marcel Lemay). So the cops pulled back and the army was brought in. This was a highly political situation; the army was not allowed to use force and merely stood guard.
A crazy summer.
> To compare two companies looking only such facts as "well Microsoft and Google pay 15-20% more" loses site of what a career is about.
I did not compare companies, I compared *salaries* at those companies. Big difference. The discussion is about salaries and perks, not about careers or innovation.
My point is: with the amount of money the company is now making, there is no justification for lower salaries at Apple; they should be on par with the salaries at Microsoft or Google.
As for Walmart vs Apple: it's a different context, but in both companies the top dogs are making the big bucks, while the working people are underpaid.
> Perhaps Apple is guilty of hiring people who care more about what they do than how much they make doing it.
Following your logic, I guess *Walmart* is guilty of the same sin.
It's always amazing to see how some people see any discussion involving Apple as a black & white thing; this makes the discussion very difficult, because as soon as you raise an issue, they see you as The Ennemy. I noticed the same behavior with members of the Scientology Church, and with battered spouses.
A psychiatrist could confirm this, but to me this sounds a lot like some kind of Stockholm syndrom.
> I've got karma to lose, but when the EU take a couple of months to review the buyout of Sun by Oracle to assess the impact on competition, it's evil protectionism
Exactly how long did the EU take to review the acquisition of Business Objects by SAP two years ago? Of course there was no problem, after all SAP is a German company and Business Objects was French.
As for the Sun/Oracle thing, if you want my opinion, it did not help that a German product, MySQL (which already suffered a tragic takeover by evil Americans), will probably end up on a permanent backburner at Oracle's HQ.
Good money, plenty of perks... this is not the Apple way.
A few years ago the company was on the brink of disaster and made huge salary cuts. Now they are making sh*tloads of money, thanks to the iPod and iPhone, but the salaries are still low. Last year, Techcrunch published data pulled from Glassdoor.com, showing that Apple engineers are paid 15-20% less than their counterparts at Google, Microsoft and Yahoo.
Some food for thought: who made more money at Microsoft? Steve Ballmer or Bill Gates? and who made more money at Apple? Steve Jobs or Steve Wozniak? Engineers always have been a commodities for Apple.
> Forcing the use of IE in particular for that application, as in corporate networks, is like mandating to use belt only in very slow cars.
Many companies use Internet Explorer because they want the tight integration with other Microsoft products (like Sharepoint or Office). It takes very little effort to setup a Sharepoint intranet, where people can post Excel documents and generate KPIs and dashboards and whatever the business needs to move forward. Other big software companies also have that kind of stuff, like IBM Lotus Notes or Novell Groupwise. But just like Microsoft, it's a lock-in process. Setting up that kind of environment with other software, like those open-source PHP CMS, will require a lot of work, and quite possibly, more skilled staff and a training program for users.
Also many companies use Internet Explorer because it's already built-in and it would cost more to support more than one browser. Internet Explorer is already paid for, and usually people can get things done with it, so it's a hard sale to bring in Firefox or another browser.
> Firewalls are pretty good to avoid things from outside getting in by themselves. But once you put an agent there that opens the door to things from outside (probably the most used vector right now) it turns the firewall meaningless.
Any decent firewall can have rules for both inbound and outbound traffic. Also, decent firewalls usually have DPI or other smart technologies that can really raise flags when something goes wrong.
> [...] forcing to have an agent there that is vulnerable even to bad breath (usually the enforced version is an old one, wont be very surprised if a good percent of those inside the firewall browsers are IE6) sounds almost criminal.
In my experience, companies that have a policy about the allowed version of Internet Explorer usually have a very efficient change management strategy and suffer very little downtime because of software problems. I have a Fortune 500 client that started rolling out Windows XP last year only; they have no downtime at all and the business is doing great. It's not cool or edgy to work in such an environment (even Flash is not supported), but they are not in the cool or edgy business.
> Also, everyone's a consumer, be it a business or home user. When it really comes down to it, there's no clear marketting dilleniation between the two, maybe demographics, but both companies have to cover ALL of those, so it's kind of a moot point
This sentence is a complete joke. Actually, as a whole, this is one of the worst posts I've read in a long time.
This is really scored 5: Insightful?? If people keep giving points to clueless comments like this one, I'll have to find a new way to filter out crap.
> The worst by FAR is Metalink - that ultra-fragile, uber-bloated, flash-based abortion. Quite obviously conceived in the 8th circle of hell.
> Metalink is the only web site Chuck Norris cannot navigate.
Don't forget the SAP portal. It's pure evil.
In Montreal the system is similar, however you don't have to leave a paper receipt on your dashboard, because the parking people use a wireless device telling them which parking spots are paid for and which are not. It works.
There is a weakness: after you've paid and walked away, if someone enters a small amount of money for your parking spot, it will reset your time, so you can get a ticket even if you paid for more time. But at least with the purchase receipt you can contest the ticket.
> Global warming is very real, and has been measured all over the planet; look up some of the studies that have been done on the polar ice caps.
Apparently Alan Carlin, a 38-year veteran with the EPA, disagree with you. But wait, maybe he did not witness your Melbourne summers, you should definitely send him a memo so he could rectify his report!
> The only people who want to believe that global warming isn't occurring are the capitalist fanatic
This logic reminds me of a quote from the Art professor Luther in the movie Glory Daze: "It is poetry that will save the world, not commerce"
> These people need to be silenced. We need to move past the debate stage, and into the stage where we start taking concrete action to rectify the problem.
Hey, you could take this statement and make a book about it. But first make sure you don't get sued for stealing Intellectual Property from "Mein Kampf".
> I think that person was put in place by the Bush Administration and is a loyal Republican.
Yeah, a mole placed 38 years ago in the EPA so he could be activated in the future to foil Democrats plans.
> Most credible scientists agree that global warming is real.
And your source on this is what? Al Gore's movie? Maybe you just forgot to put in another statistic made up by Michael Moore so your baseless statement would at least look like a fact.
"Some people say" is the bullshit signature for Fox News. "Most credible scientists agree" is the bullshit signature of the Church of Al Gore (the one supporting his PowerPoint movie and conveniently not discussing his not-so-green lifestyle).
There is so much FUD on both sides that right now it's just impossible to know what is actually going on. I dream of the day people will stop being so dogmatic about the environment so the actual problems can be addressed.
> But even better than that - actually just a basic expectation - would be for them to fix the software in the first place.
What if the bug is coming from a third-party software (in this case, the Oracle driver)?
My point is: this is not a fair example of a stupid workaround. The OP could have picked a better one, like this one:
*** Messages that start with the word "begin" are received as blank attachments in Outlook 2000. ***
Workaround: Use a different word such as "start" or "commence."
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/260822
Did you read the article on Microsoft website?
"WARNING:This information is preliminary and has not been confirmed or tested by Microsoft. Use only with discretion. Some or all of the information in this article has been taken from unconfirmed customer reports."
Worst part is that I'm pretty sure that if there was a "known solution" in the "community" that was not published by Microsoft you would complain as well. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
For a whole summer I've been coding in the "server room": a caged area on the mezzanine of a warehouse. The factory was in a big production ramp-up, and all day long people were removing big machines from wooden crates, using pneumatic guns (same as in the tire shops). Also to add to my discomfort, the speaker for the paging system was just above my head, so all day I was hearing: "Glenn line 1, Glenn line 1. Urgent" or "the winner for the half & half is Teresa in accounting". Hot, humid, dirty, noisy, for a very low salary.
Believe it or not, there are days where I sit in my quiet office with top of the line hardware, cool projects and great salary, and I miss that nightmare. There was something *real* about that place that I find lacking in the corporate world.
> Britain wasn't invaded by Germany either. But without US intervention, it might have been. Who knows where they'd have stopped?
Not US alone. Commonwealth countries (Australia, Canada, etc) did a pretty solid work.
The real question is: if the Germans had not attacked USSR, who knows what would have happened... With all the troops on the Western front, Germany would have been much more powerful.
> If ANY language is going to be our "second language", it should be some Native American dialect.
Let's make a deal. Start paying tax on goods and services (since you don't have employment revenue anyway) and we will discuss your claims. Stop running guns and smuggling cigarettes, and we will discuss your claims. Stop taking people hostage by blocking bridges over phony local feuds that are actually money extortion operations, and we will discuss your claims. Stop ditching snowmobiles and pickup trucks in the wild when they are out of gas because you can get another vehicule free of charge (paid by MY tax dollars), and we will discuss your claims. Stop "losing" your dental implants on Friday night so you can spend the weekend in Quebec city free of charge (paid by MY tax dollars) while you wait to get a new free implant (paid by MY tax dollars) on Monday morning. Stop having those nightmarish statistics of 90%+ victims of incest and martial violence in some of your reservations and we will discuss your claims.
Apparently you are not aware that Quebec is located in Canada, which is in North America, and was never invaded by Germany. Actually, the Canadian army, including many famous French-speaking Quebec regiments, was a crucial part of the D-Day operation. If at some point you get out of your basement and travel in Europe, you will see many sites dedicated to heroic Canadian soldiers who died fighting the Germans.
Being under the impression that Americans alone freed France shows a lack of basic knowledge of history. Russian troops were very central in this operation, and were actually a key factor in the Allied victory.
This being said, what is very, very sad, is that by saying *us* you take credit for something you personally never were part of, and feel "entitled" by the actions of, maybe, your grandfather. My guess is that your only fight for freedom so far has been to post illiterate comments on discussion forums and eat "freedom fries".
One last point: maybe the Americans did help to liberate France, however you seem to forget that France was an important player in the American Revolutionary War. Next time you come across a street or a city called Lafayette, instead of just thinking about your next fix of fast food, ask yourself where this name is coming from.
Now get a good history book, or wikipedia if you are too lazy to walk to the library, and read about things before you comment them.
With 1000 users if you want SQL Server you need to purchase a processor license: 5k$/CPU for Standard Edition, 25k$/CPU for Enterprise. (You only license physical CPU, not cores or hyperthreading). Add the Windows license (6k$). And you have no hardware yet.
The "good news" is that with failover clustering (which is all you need cause 1000 users does not require load-balancing), Microsoft requires licenses only for the active node. And the failover node can be cheaper hardware, as it will run only under abnormal situations and can offer a lesser performance (management is usually ok with that).
If you go with Linux + Postgres or MySQL, you pay no licenses. Those products are a bit less user-friendly, but they give you more control over your setup. Use database clustering and/or replication, and use either one of the many free load-balancing software or pay for a very good one (like Zeus).
Based on my experience, I would say: for a small intranet, use Microsoft (Windows, SQL Server, Sharepoint) because you can leverage on MS-Office and powerful groupware tools (project management, BI, reporting) and actually provide value to your end-users. But for a large intranet or for public-facing sites, where you don't control the end-users platform, use Linux, it's worth the learning curve.
For a long time I was reluctant to sign-in to LinkedIn and last year I decided to try it. And I really like it, because it is not time-consuming while being very useful.
I like LinkedIn because it provides me with a way to stay in touch with former coworkers and other business contacts without having to send the keep-alive "wazzup" email every once in a while. Also I don't have to let people know when I change jobs; it's all in my profile, and those interested will get the info. For me LinkedIn is also a great database of skilled people, which I peruse whenever there is a position to fill at my job.
To have a valuable database, I have a rule: I do not accept invitations from people I would not vouch for, and I never send invitations unless someone is outstanding. Some of my LinkedIn contacts have thousands of contacts. I have less than fifty.
As for Facebook or Myspace, I am not interested. I don't feel the need to get in touch with people I lost contact with, and I don't want them to contact me either. If I lose contact with someone, there is a reason. Lack of interest, nothing to discuss, nothing to share... Also I don't have enough time to spend with my actual friends -- why would I want "virtual friends"?
> I'm not saying that Android and Windows Mobile don't have their place on the market, but they will always serve commodity phones whereas the iPhone will remain the Ferrari of wireless just as the Mac is the Ferrari of computers.
This kind of statement is a perfect exemple of misplaced contempt and arrogance that so many Apple zealots are displaying.
Mac is the Ferrari of computers? Then how come Apple had to ditch everything that was inside their pretty shiny boxes and replace it with "commodity" hardware (Intel) and software (BSD)? Maybe for the same reason their engineers are still underpaid while the company is now profitable.
You like overpriced commodity hardware hosting restricted, proprietary software? Be my guest and go spend your money at Apple Store (on a day where they can process credit cards). But don't try to hitch your decaying wagon to Ferrari's history of excellence.
GI*Joe characters are great names for servers. One can even group machines: web servers have Cobra names, while database servers have GI*Joe names.
Sometimes the less known GI*Joe names are the best: Chuckles, Blowtorch, Torpedo, Tollbooth... Hours of fun!
I completely agree. The OP has a bias and this is wrong. And as far as experience goes, sometimes no experience is better than misfit experience.
If you have an intermediate web developer position to fill, who would you favor?
1) A young guy whose first experience is a 3-month contract renewed 3 times in a start-up, and who is now looking for his first permanent job
2) An experienced programmer who spent the last 20 years writing JCL scripts, got downsized, followed a web development course and just finished a 6-month gig with a NGO
The second guy has more work experience, but is it relevant experience? Just because you sit in a server room does not mean your job is high-tech. Does it mean the guy is a dolt? You can't tell. Maybe he is very zen, a real genius, takes the best position available, and happily deliver the exact quality of code he is expected to without worrying about his future.
There is really no way to tell unless the resume has mistakes or unless you can talk with those candidates. But having a bias is wrong.