I have to say that while I've not worked with ND, Novell eDirectory (formerly NDS) is a technically brilliant tour de force. It's a really amazing package; multimaster replication; multimaster schema changes; extremely efficient over slow links, unbelieveably secure (and has some really sophisicated extensible authentication systems), works on every platform under the sun, the APIs & developer tools are extremely mature, scales like crazy and runs super-fast, and like the previous poster said, it's CHEAP.
Anything else, to me, is a weak imitation--but I guess as long as your directory speaks LDAP all is well. Unless it's Active Directory--which is really just a set of "nested" domains with automated trust relationships. And that part makes it a huge pain in the ass to maintain. (The trick to this is to throw an AD domain into eDirectory and have eDirectory manage the whole thing - it is so flexible it can manage _other directories._)
NDS has always "just worked" - move, rename & merge tasks are super-easy. How does ND handle all of this?
most of these will be sick days or personal days, which are already budgeted for - how will this be "lost productivity" if the person was going to eventually take a day off anyhow?
(granted, most companies probably bank on the idea that you'll never use up your vacation days because you're too fricking busy)
Microsoft doesn't have a good track record for producing quality _official_ versions (and yes, I fix MS networks for a living) - why should we trust their betas? It's a way for them to "try" more ideas on the unsuspecting public, increase revenue, and decrease the amount of support needed for their software (since they don't have to support it at all?)
wtf? software quality, industry-wide, seems to get worse daily - this is not exactly going to help.
maybe it's because I've suffered through years of these silly april fools postings, but come on already - we get it - it's april fools - these things really aren't very funny anymore; they're just plain dumb.
can we get back to real items only of interest to hard core geeks (and NOBODY else?)
They are apparently feeling the squeeze of Apple. This is good; the monopoly finally has something to compete with.
These screenshots actually look useful *and* beautiful - there's definitely been a serious effort to make things more consistent from place to place (instead of a holdover from Windows 3.1). All good news.
This is a huge win for TiVo - egg on Hughes' face, maybe?
(the reason I say this: We've been using the DirecTivo for a few months. It's not nearly as good as TiVo's own offering (dog slow, for one thing!) - and lags behind TiVo's own Home Media Options & TiVoToGo features--Hughes refuses to add these features, because they're going to introduce their own proprietary DVR "sometime this summer" that will "have all of this and more." It pisses me off, because the true TiVo boxes are outstanding--and Hughes is watering down TiVo's brand! I had expected TiVo to fade into obscurity, but this means Comcast recognizes that it's better to license this technology from a company who has already poured their heart & soul into developing it rather than trying to do it themselves...)
So if you're debating between DirecTV and Comcast cable, go with Comcast.:)
I think they have _much_ larger plans - and dropping "beta" from these services implies that they'll have to support them (despite the fact that they're free), which is probably something they're not interested in at the moment... because of some unknown variable X where X = "big secret giant earth-shattering plan"
Umm- this is a temporary distribution problem (and possibly intentional) - this doesn't compare to the likes of the Lisa, the Cube, Pink/Taligent, Copland, etc. I bet Apple makes mistakes daily, and there have probably been dozens of these such "blunders" in the past. Why is this one special?
(I am surprised to not see the Cube on the list, by the way; though I think they continue to reap the benefits of the technology they developed for the Cube in the iMac & Mac Mini)
One answer to this is to pull the rug out from under everyone else, and create a STANDARD, OPEN-SOURCE DVR that has the interface you want. Something that's actually easy to use and implement. That would shake up the market a bit.
But the subscription service is where (I think) TiVo really shines - and there'd be no way to duplicate the quality of that database for free.
The rep assured me they were *not* going to stop supporting DirecTiVos as long as they're out in the field - but don't look forward to Home Media Option, Folders or TiVoToGo.
She did say there's a software update coming out soon that improves performance. But that sounds like it's about it.
If you want the advanced features, you'll have to go with the new DVR.
I think *we* see the benefits of TiVo - but with the market becoming as saturated as it is, Joe User (who does not sleep/eat/breathe this stuff) can't tell the difference and will take 1) things that are offered free by other providers, or 2) cheapest over best. Commoditization...
I was at CES. DirecTV is dropping TiVo for their own new custom-built upcoming DVRs. From what I understand DirecTV currently provides some life support for TiVo in the form of a rather inexpensive licensing/subscription fee for each user--but that will go away.
The interface is incredible; the remote is the best I've ever used for anything; the programming guide is extremely good... but anyone and their Mom can hack together a DVR at this point (not that it'll be as good as TiVo).
Nice. These types of things at these pricepoints are the types of things that can change the world - every kid & teenager could end up with one, using their Mom & Dad's hand-me-down Keyboard/Video/Mouse.
I guess I wasn't really talking about Symantec's consumer products - they suck. In fact, many large IT players make crappy consumer lines because they know they can extract tons of cash out of unwitting customers. It makes me sick.
Symantec is just as guilty as, say, HP, who makes a decent business desktop line and still makes a rocking PC server line. Symantec's home stuff (i.e. SystemWorks, which I've abandoned for about five years now) blows.
If anyone in the support industry has been watching Veritas lately, you'd know that while they offer some nice feature-rich products, said products generally don't always install out of the box and *work* properly. This has been a problem with niche OSes (i.e. Netware) for a few years and the problem is starting to creep into the Windows products (i.e. Backup Exec 9.x) as well. In fact, it reminds me of Computer Associates...
Symantec Products, regardless of what you think of them, generally work out of the box without much hassle. They are not perfect, but they're pretty feature-complete and work quite well. We use Symantec AntiVirus Corp. Edition a LOT in the field because it works and has a decent management interface--McAfee doesn't work as well, CA's eTrust doesn't have good management tools... etc. It's the _least bad_ of the products on offer (Trend Micro is pretty good too, but I still like the centralized Symantec AV Console--it's quite clean)
There aren't a lot of great feature-complete backup offerings out there (the archival storage industry has always lagged behind IMO - look at how expensive good-quality tape drives still are) thus Veritas *almost* has a monopoly on the market, especially for SMBs. As they've gotten bigger over the past few years (once they spun off from Seagate Software) the quality of their product has (I think) dropped dramatically.
I still like Symantec overall- they do a decent job considering the size of the company. They've still got some neat products. Their antivirus division is industry-leading. I can't say that about every huge software company out there... most generally start crumbling under their own weight.
So I'm optimistic...
(is it just my imagination, or can Backup Exec trace its lineage to Norton Backup?
Consider the fact that systems, despite standardization & centralization, seem to continue getting more *complex*. It's the exponentially incresing complexity curve that drives IT staffing. Stuff breaks more often. Upgrades happen more often. Patches are needed more often.
Who's going to maintain the systems that maintain the systems?
Yes, IT people will need to perform at a higher level - not just "fix my printer" but "improve our business process."
(hmm, I could write a book on this if I had time.:)
Slashdot Mirror
"So why couldn't the average geek do the same?"
umm, because he's a FICTIONAL character in unlikely FICTIONAL situations?
(just being a realist.)
I have to say that while I've not worked with ND, Novell eDirectory (formerly NDS) is a technically brilliant tour de force. It's a really amazing package; multimaster replication; multimaster schema changes; extremely efficient over slow links, unbelieveably secure (and has some really sophisicated extensible authentication systems), works on every platform under the sun, the APIs & developer tools are extremely mature, scales like crazy and runs super-fast, and like the previous poster said, it's CHEAP.
Anything else, to me, is a weak imitation--but I guess as long as your directory speaks LDAP all is well. Unless it's Active Directory--which is really just a set of "nested" domains with automated trust relationships. And that part makes it a huge pain in the ass to maintain. (The trick to this is to throw an AD domain into eDirectory and have eDirectory manage the whole thing - it is so flexible it can manage _other directories._)
NDS has always "just worked" - move, rename & merge tasks are super-easy. How does ND handle all of this?
All of the above.
Lumping Paris Hilton and George Bush together like that insults her intelligence.
no.
Jealous?
Then go start your own show.
most of these will be sick days or personal days, which are already budgeted for - how will this be "lost productivity" if the person was going to eventually take a day off anyhow?
(granted, most companies probably bank on the idea that you'll never use up your vacation days because you're too fricking busy)
Microsoft doesn't have a good track record for producing quality _official_ versions (and yes, I fix MS networks for a living) - why should we trust their betas? It's a way for them to "try" more ideas on the unsuspecting public, increase revenue, and decrease the amount of support needed for their software (since they don't have to support it at all?)
wtf? software quality, industry-wide, seems to get worse daily - this is not exactly going to help.
I do in fact remember a day (maybe in 1997?) where slashdot covered geeky stuff that was completely insignificant to the population at large...
now it's just mostly dups & dumpb April Fools jokes.
maybe it's because I've suffered through years of these silly april fools postings, but come on already - we get it - it's april fools - these things really aren't very funny anymore; they're just plain dumb.
can we get back to real items only of interest to hard core geeks (and NOBODY else?)
I've been trying to figure out how they will market OS XI when they finally get there - "it's so good, it goes to XI!" might work.
They are apparently feeling the squeeze of Apple. This is good; the monopoly finally has something to compete with.
These screenshots actually look useful *and* beautiful - there's definitely been a serious effort to make things more consistent from place to place (instead of a holdover from Windows 3.1). All good news.
I want to be able to do it "officially" - last time I checked I understood there are problems adding it to a series2 DirecTiVo...
:)
unless you can point me in the right direction.
This is a huge win for TiVo - egg on Hughes' face, maybe?
:)
(the reason I say this: We've been using the DirecTivo for a few months. It's not nearly as good as TiVo's own offering (dog slow, for one thing!) - and lags behind TiVo's own Home Media Options & TiVoToGo features--Hughes refuses to add these features, because they're going to introduce their own proprietary DVR "sometime this summer" that will "have all of this and more." It pisses me off, because the true TiVo boxes are outstanding--and Hughes is watering down TiVo's brand! I had expected TiVo to fade into obscurity, but this means Comcast recognizes that it's better to license this technology from a company who has already poured their heart & soul into developing it rather than trying to do it themselves...)
So if you're debating between DirecTV and Comcast cable, go with Comcast.
I think they have _much_ larger plans -
and dropping "beta" from these services implies that they'll have to support them (despite the fact that they're free), which is probably something they're not interested in at the moment... because of some unknown variable X where X = "big secret giant earth-shattering plan"
....google's services don't consistently suck across the board.
Umm- this is a temporary distribution problem (and possibly intentional) - this doesn't compare to the likes of the Lisa, the Cube, Pink/Taligent, Copland, etc. I bet Apple makes mistakes daily, and there have probably been dozens of these such "blunders" in the past. Why is this one special?
(I am surprised to not see the Cube on the list, by the way; though I think they continue to reap the benefits of the technology they developed for the Cube in the iMac & Mac Mini)
it's that damn theme song.
and I should add -
One answer to this is to pull the rug out from under everyone else, and create a STANDARD, OPEN-SOURCE DVR that has the interface you want. Something that's actually easy to use and implement. That would shake up the market a bit.
But the subscription service is where (I think) TiVo really shines - and there'd be no way to duplicate the quality of that database for free.
The rep assured me they were *not* going to stop supporting DirecTiVos as long as they're out in the field - but don't look forward to Home Media Option, Folders or TiVoToGo.
She did say there's a software update coming out soon that improves performance. But that sounds like it's about it.
If you want the advanced features, you'll have to go with the new DVR.
I think *we* see the benefits of TiVo - but with the market becoming as saturated as it is, Joe User (who does not sleep/eat/breathe this stuff) can't tell the difference and will take 1) things that are offered free by other providers, or 2) cheapest over best. Commoditization...
I was at CES. DirecTV is dropping TiVo for their own new custom-built upcoming DVRs. From what I understand DirecTV currently provides some life support for TiVo in the form of a rather inexpensive licensing/subscription fee for each user--but that will go away.
The interface is incredible; the remote is the best I've ever used for anything; the programming guide is extremely good... but anyone and their Mom can hack together a DVR at this point (not that it'll be as good as TiVo).
Nice. These types of things at these pricepoints are the types of things that can change the world - every kid & teenager could end up with one, using their Mom & Dad's hand-me-down Keyboard/Video/Mouse.
I guess I wasn't really talking about Symantec's consumer products - they suck. In fact, many large IT players make crappy consumer lines because they know they can extract tons of cash out of unwitting customers. It makes me sick.
Symantec is just as guilty as, say, HP, who makes a decent business desktop line and still makes a rocking PC server line. Symantec's home stuff (i.e. SystemWorks, which I've abandoned for about five years now) blows.
I think this may improve Veritas. :)
If anyone in the support industry has been watching Veritas lately, you'd know that while they offer some nice feature-rich products, said products generally don't always install out of the box and *work* properly. This has been a problem with niche OSes (i.e. Netware) for a few years and the problem is starting to creep into the Windows products (i.e. Backup Exec 9.x) as well. In fact, it reminds me of Computer Associates...
Symantec Products, regardless of what you think of them, generally work out of the box without much hassle. They are not perfect, but they're pretty feature-complete and work quite well. We use Symantec AntiVirus Corp. Edition a LOT in the field because it works and has a decent management interface--McAfee doesn't work as well, CA's eTrust doesn't have good management tools... etc. It's the _least bad_ of the products on offer (Trend Micro is pretty good too, but I still like the centralized Symantec AV Console--it's quite clean)
There aren't a lot of great feature-complete backup offerings out there (the archival storage industry has always lagged behind IMO - look at how expensive good-quality tape drives still are) thus Veritas *almost* has a monopoly on the market, especially for SMBs. As they've gotten bigger over the past few years (once they spun off from Seagate Software) the quality of their product has (I think) dropped dramatically.
I still like Symantec overall- they do a decent job considering the size of the company. They've still got some neat products. Their antivirus division is industry-leading. I can't say that about every huge software company out there... most generally start crumbling under their own weight.
So I'm optimistic...
(is it just my imagination, or can Backup Exec trace its lineage to Norton Backup?
is it:
Norton Backup -> Norton Backup Exec -> Seagate Software Backup Exec -> Veritas Backup Exec -> Symantec Backup Exec?
I could be dreaming)
As much as I like Gartner, this seems optimistic.
:)
Consider the fact that systems, despite standardization & centralization, seem to continue getting more *complex*. It's the exponentially incresing complexity curve that drives IT staffing. Stuff breaks more often. Upgrades happen more often. Patches are needed more often.
Who's going to maintain the systems that maintain the systems?
Yes, IT people will need to perform at a higher level - not just "fix my printer" but "improve our business process."
(hmm, I could write a book on this if I had time.