Agreed. True, those that create the cure out of this data will profit immensely from it for a while. But that profit does get spread out in salaries to the researchers, who spend those dollars at Starbucks and Thinkgeek on caffeine supplies. Thinkgeek can then keep supplying caffeine to Slashdot readers at a low cost.
Even when translated to geek terms, that has to be worth something.
True, even good coverage doesn't cover everything. A coworker of mine had a son born with some genetic defect, whose name I don't recall. He was only expected to live 4 years, but somehow lived 7. We have great insurance (BCBS) with 100% coverage on most procedures and drugs, and the bills exceeded the lifetime coverage by over $1 million in just those 7 years. I'm sure my coworker credit's toast, but that doesn't mean he's irresponsible. If TFA is accurate, he may have trouble finding a job elsewhere if he ever chooses. Any employer that looks at a credit score isn't going to ask about it in the interview, and they'll be the ones missing out. Lenders do the same thing nowadays; they used to allow you to explain the medical bills in the office but now they show you the door if your FICO score is under 720. It's all about the numbers now, not the person.
And even the argument that Mr. Smith didn't buy insurance is flawed; coverage for me and my wife is $500/month, half subsidized by my employer. Cheaper plans don't cover small expenses that can pull the average family into a pit of debt. Between premiums and drug expenses, you're looking at $200/mo or more if you're healthy; who can afford that when they make $8/hr?
For the larger expenses, it's easy to see how a lack of good insurance can ruin a person. I work in the medical billing industry and see $100,000 - $1 million claims (that's per single-problem or single-event) coming in all the time. This crap is getting way too expensive to maintain, and the gov't is going to HAVE to step in soon. When it does, there will be a wakeup call all the way from the patient to the doctors to the lawyers that file malpractice suits. The medical and legal environment is out of control, and the spiral has to end before even the rich can't afford treatment.
Perhaps, but a one-off or two-off project that requires a million hours of CPU time in 6 months can be outsourced to someone who has the equipment easier and cheaper than setting up your own hardware. Setting up enough servers or even desktop-class workstations could take a big chunk of those 6 months. And it'll probably cost more than the Amazon service, in hardware and manpower.
I say this from experience - my employer specializes in an industry-specific data validation process, and has spent 20 years writing and perfecting a few million lines of code that are repeated over and over within this process. One client came to us and wanted to run this process against an unprecedented amount of data, and it came out to 2000 CPU-years of processing time, with a 1 year deadline. The physical space, network and power requirements for 500 quad-processor servers would overwhelm our facilities, not to mention our network staff, so I'd at least consider outsourcing the hardware at this scale. Alas, we're decidedly a Windows shop and this isn't an option for us yet... Mono may change that.
Most businesses would not "run from" this cluster on a daily basis, but use it for a specific task-oriented purpose like research, math, graphical rendering, etc. Something they do once or twice, or for that client that wants, "What you do best, just 10,000 times bigger."
I've tried the VM solution in my line of work. I've found: It's great for developers testing how an application works on an OS, but is not 100% accurate. It doesn't tell you how well the OS works. The OS is slower because hardware is emulated. At least one version of Windows Vista Beta won't install on Microsoft Virtual PC but will on VMWare Server. Applications that use old APIs may not work the same in a VM (i.e. those that access hardware/bios more directly) Other solutions may be better depending on your needs.
Everything below has pros/cons. The choices are:
Citrix - Load is on the Citrix server, which can get expensive. Depends on what the users do all day.
Maintaining/Administering Citrix takes the same amount of training as an OS;
this is a complex system and should be treated as such. Citrix admins aren't cheap.
VM - Load is distributed among PCs.
Replacing an image is easy.
Gigabit to the desktop is great, but Gigabit to 100 desktops = max 100 Gigabit demand at the image server.
Compatibility risk
Speed is probably half native if 3D and audio features are disabled.
Disk image software like Norton Ghost - Don't rely on a single image. Violates the Ghost license and subtle differences between PCs (even same model) will cause random problems when Windows finds one chipset is different. Ghost is meant for one image per PC, backup purposes only. See last suggestion.
Lock down Windows to prevent PEBKAC problems - Great in theory, but not all apps work with restricted security. Use just one and you're back to the drawing board.
For 100 machines, create a Sysprep of Windows with apps, and load it onto 110 removable (key-locked tray) hard disks. Install 100 in the PCs, keep 10 for swapping out when the screwup fairy visits. I think the restore time is minutes.
Alternate to above: Image each PC's boot/apps partition using something like Ghost or Diskpart. Save all the images on a server with a 1TB drive, each file named for its PC. If the screwup fairy visits, reload the disk from the correct image. Important user data should always be stored on network server anyway.
And you don't want to see what happens when Windows gets its swap file corrupted. Twice I've seen the effects of a single-bit memory error firsthand. First at home, random symptoms and crashes for 6 months until even my backups had been recycled and I lost a whole lot of files. Memtest86 was the only memory tester that caught it. Then at work, where billing information was sent out with a random character's ASCII value added by 8. M's where there should have been E's looked like human error until it got into the program code.
We could just call Xzibit and have him Pimp their Ride.
I want a shuttle that hops, man!
After a clean landing, the Air Force could have a band play "Low Rider" as it taxis down the runway.
Would fuzzy dice be overkill?
"God I hate Microsoft licensing. You're right, you can use Web edition of Windows Server. "
And that, ladies and gents, is why Linux wins the licensing battle. Microsoft and Business Objects (Crystal Decisions) have some of the most screwed up, confusing licensing models I've seen. It takes serious analysis and reading through legal agreements (EULAs) for hours just to compare editions of one software product. Then you get MS/CDW sales involved and somebody always rounds up "just in case", hence perpetuating a myth that you have to spend $25k per server.
There are reasons to spend that much, but not always and rarely for a small business website with just a few hits now and then. But if your small business is running several thousand database transactions per minute as part of a service... you'll benefit from higher-end software like the $25k+ Enterprise editions for clustering. Of course, you're probably spending six figures on the hardware by then.
Linux is probably easier to license, although I don't know for sure because I'm deep in the Windows world (developer, DBA, admin, etc). Still, to run an application on Linux with enterprise-class performance, you'll need people. More of them or with better training, and usually more expensive. Even if Linux were to come out in an apple-to-apple benchmark with 50% better performance, Windows might still be cheaper to maintain. It all depends on the application.
Central America is cheaper than the USA in some areas and more expensive in others. I lived in Guatemala for several years and have family still living there after 20. The average employee gets under $5/day. That buys them beans, tortillas, and somehow they have land to grow a lot of their own food and raise chickens. Beef is a serious luxury item, mostly imported. Many of them live over an hour's drive from the capital city; a bus ticket into town for work is only 10 cents, and they riot every time it goes up. They don't rent apartments because apartments go for $200+/month. I lived in one, 400sf concrete with bars on the windows at $250/month. Real estate prices in the cities are now close to similar size cities in the USA. The secret was out decades ago, and we've driven up prices with demand.
Now, the "rich American investors" category that my family falls into... we had higher demands, and as a result had to pay $5 for a box of Honey Nut Cheerios. When I lived there, fresh milk was unheard of. Parmalat (UHT pasteurized, shelf life of about a year) was a dollar or two per quart. Import taxes, shipping and convenience fees quickly raise the cost of the American way of life to over $100/day. If you expect to live on $5 or $10 a day, you'll be making your own Frappuccinos. Ten years ago a Big Mac was just under US$2.00 and minimum wage was US$2.50/day. I think the gap has narrowed some since then but not enough.
I've lived in the USA on $10 per day by staying with family in the rural South, eating 29 cent/pound turkey and growing a lot of veggies. I later almost bought a 3200sf house for $36k. So my point of all this is really that cheap living is possible anywhere, but any location also has expensive living.
I'm still of the opinion that every American can use the good eye-opening that comes with trying to live on under $10/day. It makes one appreciate things a whole lot more. Plus, it limits you to locally grown food, sights and and daily life. So give it your best shot, but be ready for the unexpected.
I think you're confusing 'right' and 'responsibility' here.
Microsoft spends billions creating software. Microsoft wants to get a return on their investment. Therefore, Microsoft has a right to get paid for someone taking/consuming/using what they produce.
What you describe is the consumer's lack of rights; MS is not obligated to support software nor obligated to sell or give it to any one person. However, if the consumer is using a copy of Windows, MS has the right to get paid according to the licensing agreement.
If I create software which is to be licensed at $50 per copy or $500 per developer per year, I fully intend to enforce that so I can pay my bills. The method of enforcement depends partially on how much flak I am able and willing to handle from my customers. If MS wants a kill switch, fine, but they damn well better tell me they have one. If my MS system dies in production because WGA couldn't call momma, I'll be porting everything to Linux within an hour. That is MY right.
[but as of today, I'm gonna make a deal with myself to always pull off before talking on the phone, or if I can't, just let voicemail pick it up, even if it's an irrate client, make 'em wait.]... and you probably saved a life with that decision. Hopefully you'll never have the evidence to prove it.
I was hit in my car by a 16 year old girl driving while talking on her cell phone. As is so common, she was calling home to tell her parents she was leaving work. She didn't even notice she'd hit me while turning out of the parking lot. Had I not driven defensively and seen the approaching truck as a threat, my wife would probably have been injured. 1 second of reaction time was just enough to make 1 foot of clearance so the door was only dented not caved in.
I hated people who talk while driving before, and I do moreso now. Put down the cell phone. Don't even look at the screen when it rings. Pull over and check, then call them back. Doing otherwise simply isn't worth the risk. There is an absolute epidemic of the talking driver, and I support federal legislation to ban distracted driving in a fairly broad definition. Eating and applying makeup also qualify. Bottom line is, if the driver can't avoid a collision in 3 seconds, they should change their habits. It takes at least 2 to put down the cell phone and grip the controls; two seconds that should have been spent braking.
For the average Joe, true. And at $50k, that's not for the desktop. But extended to a scaled-down version, this tech could save me time and make the entire disk subsystem more efficient.
I'm a Windows web/database developer by day, and when I have 4 different.Net projects, 3 Visual Foxpro and a Foxpro 2.6 project open at once like I did today, even a gig of RAM gets eaten up. Windows loves to use that swapfile even if you've got a gig free, so that disk was working overtime as I switched between them. I learned to make 2 partitions per disk: fast access in a small outer partition and larger/lower demand files like MP3/AVI/MPG on a larger partition on the smaller cylinders. OS on disk0 part0, VFP data on disk0 part1, swap and SQL data disk1 part0, finally backups and rarely used files disk1 part1. As a result, my machine is faster than my coworkers who just use the vanilla setup they're given. [Side note, if you work at a corporation you can request your next PC/disk upgrade come with a partition scheme you choose. If you ask nicely and they have time, they'll often accomodate you.]
For an enterprise, especially app/database servers, this tech may help smaller shops. My company has experienced network admins so they know how to tune a system if we tell them what it'll be doing. For the daily-accessed files this could go even further. Some of our clients have their 50GB SQL databases on a 9-disk RAID5 and wonder why it's slow. Data, logs, backups, and applications all on one volume - they don't have the experience to separate the files by access pattern. If it's technically feasible, a driver that says MDF and LDF files should be on separate spindles, BAK on another, etc. could double or triple performance on some of these systems. Of course, trained staff is better but sometimes budgets intervene.
Oddly enough I was just doing that same math. Not everyone would be a millionare, as others have posted. But still, $30 billion from Buffet and $30 billion from Gates/MS = $60 billion or about $200 per person in the USA.
Perhaps the best part of this is that the IRS has to be sweating, as you know someone was counting on a nice fat $10 billion check from Buffet's estate in however many years.
Another part is while the average Joe won't see a dime, some starving kid or person otherwise helped by one of these charities will probably live longer and make a massive contribution to society in 50 years. Charity has that effect; give someone a gift and tell them they can pay you back by helping someone else. The contagious change in attitude is worth far more than $60 billion.
I've had Vonage for over a year, and am happy with service as far as quality and reliability go. Outsourcing their customer service to another country didn't win points, nor did the 45 minutes on hold... using my 25 cent per minute cell phone... when the router died. I was frustrated when they refused to allow me to use a router I'd bought on eBay from a former Vonage user ("We have to have his permission; please ask him to call Customer Service and authorize the transfer"), but spent another $50 on new hardware and am happy again. My cablemodem goes out about 4 hours a year, but I have a cell phone for backup. I gave BellSouth the boot and have saved $60/month x 15 months = $900. That more than covers the small stuff I've had to deal with.
Now, this IPO thing... the financial statements show it is only going to restore their debt position to near zero, not get them any profit. They're over $400 million in debt and intend to keep spending like a teenager with a first credit card. Maybe Vonage's management has some magical way to make a profit, but I don't see it. That's an awful lot of effort to tread water. Is this the way IPOs are going now? "Invest in our company, we have $400 million in debt and fierce competition, and by the way our CEO is leaving too" doesn't sound like a gold mine to me. What worries me most is when a company continues to go deeper in debt they usually shut down... without warning. I'm sure others share the same fear, and that in itself hurts the IPO, sales, retention, etc.
I'm staying with Vonage until I seriously doubt their viability.
For me, I've found two things that help: A MS Natural Keyboard, and Tai Chi. A few years ago I found it painful to type. I bought a Natural Keyboard and have never since had pain at the office.
As a programmer and hardcore geek for 17 years I don't have a lot of upper-body strength. Pushups are sometimes painful to my wrists. The Tai Chi involves just enough effort to get the wrists and arms moving and loosen things up. It also helps with the stress; some days I can't just say, "It's 5pm, I'm out of here."
Slashdot Mirror
Agreed. True, those that create the cure out of this data will profit immensely from it for a while. But that profit does get spread out in salaries to the researchers, who spend those dollars at Starbucks and Thinkgeek on caffeine supplies. Thinkgeek can then keep supplying caffeine to Slashdot readers at a low cost.
Even when translated to geek terms, that has to be worth something.
True, even good coverage doesn't cover everything. A coworker of mine had a son born with some genetic defect, whose name I don't recall. He was only expected to live 4 years, but somehow lived 7. We have great insurance (BCBS) with 100% coverage on most procedures and drugs, and the bills exceeded the lifetime coverage by over $1 million in just those 7 years. I'm sure my coworker credit's toast, but that doesn't mean he's irresponsible. If TFA is accurate, he may have trouble finding a job elsewhere if he ever chooses. Any employer that looks at a credit score isn't going to ask about it in the interview, and they'll be the ones missing out. Lenders do the same thing nowadays; they used to allow you to explain the medical bills in the office but now they show you the door if your FICO score is under 720. It's all about the numbers now, not the person.
And even the argument that Mr. Smith didn't buy insurance is flawed; coverage for me and my wife is $500/month, half subsidized by my employer. Cheaper plans don't cover small expenses that can pull the average family into a pit of debt. Between premiums and drug expenses, you're looking at $200/mo or more if you're healthy; who can afford that when they make $8/hr?
For the larger expenses, it's easy to see how a lack of good insurance can ruin a person. I work in the medical billing industry and see $100,000 - $1 million claims (that's per single-problem or single-event) coming in all the time. This crap is getting way too expensive to maintain, and the gov't is going to HAVE to step in soon. When it does, there will be a wakeup call all the way from the patient to the doctors to the lawyers that file malpractice suits. The medical and legal environment is out of control, and the spiral has to end before even the rich can't afford treatment.
Perhaps, but a one-off or two-off project that requires a million hours of CPU time in 6 months can be outsourced to someone who has the equipment easier and cheaper than setting up your own hardware. Setting up enough servers or even desktop-class workstations could take a big chunk of those 6 months. And it'll probably cost more than the Amazon service, in hardware and manpower.
I say this from experience - my employer specializes in an industry-specific data validation process, and has spent 20 years writing and perfecting a few million lines of code that are repeated over and over within this process. One client came to us and wanted to run this process against an unprecedented amount of data, and it came out to 2000 CPU-years of processing time, with a 1 year deadline. The physical space, network and power requirements for 500 quad-processor servers would overwhelm our facilities, not to mention our network staff, so I'd at least consider outsourcing the hardware at this scale. Alas, we're decidedly a Windows shop and this isn't an option for us yet... Mono may change that.
Most businesses would not "run from" this cluster on a daily basis, but use it for a specific task-oriented purpose like research, math, graphical rendering, etc. Something they do once or twice, or for that client that wants, "What you do best, just 10,000 times bigger."
I've tried the VM solution in my line of work. I've found:
It's great for developers testing how an application works on an OS, but is not 100% accurate.
It doesn't tell you how well the OS works.
The OS is slower because hardware is emulated.
At least one version of Windows Vista Beta won't install on Microsoft Virtual PC but will on VMWare Server.
Applications that use old APIs may not work the same in a VM (i.e. those that access hardware/bios more directly)
Other solutions may be better depending on your needs.
Everything below has pros/cons. The choices are:
Citrix - Load is on the Citrix server, which can get expensive. Depends on what the users do all day.
Maintaining/Administering Citrix takes the same amount of training as an OS;
this is a complex system and should be treated as such. Citrix admins aren't cheap.
VM - Load is distributed among PCs.
Replacing an image is easy.
Gigabit to the desktop is great, but Gigabit to 100 desktops = max 100 Gigabit demand at the image server.
Compatibility risk
Speed is probably half native if 3D and audio features are disabled.
Disk image software like Norton Ghost - Don't rely on a single image. Violates the Ghost license and subtle differences between PCs (even same model) will cause random problems when Windows finds one chipset is different. Ghost is meant for one image per PC, backup purposes only. See last suggestion.
Lock down Windows to prevent PEBKAC problems - Great in theory, but not all apps work with restricted security. Use just one and you're back to the drawing board.
For 100 machines, create a Sysprep of Windows with apps, and load it onto 110 removable (key-locked tray) hard disks. Install 100 in the PCs, keep 10 for swapping out when the screwup fairy visits. I think the restore time is minutes.
Alternate to above: Image each PC's boot/apps partition using something like Ghost or Diskpart. Save all the images on a server with a 1TB drive, each file named for its PC. If the screwup fairy visits, reload the disk from the correct image. Important user data should always be stored on network server anyway.
And you don't want to see what happens when Windows gets its swap file corrupted. Twice I've seen the effects of a single-bit memory error firsthand. First at home, random symptoms and crashes for 6 months until even my backups had been recycled and I lost a whole lot of files. Memtest86 was the only memory tester that caught it. Then at work, where billing information was sent out with a random character's ASCII value added by 8. M's where there should have been E's looked like human error until it got into the program code.
And data rates in Star Trek Collections per second. Oh, sorry, that's a Slashdot measurement.
We could just call Xzibit and have him Pimp their Ride.
I want a shuttle that hops , man!
After a clean landing, the Air Force could have a band play "Low Rider" as it taxis down the runway.
Would fuzzy dice be overkill?
Wow, until tonight the post about the 250GB Star Trek Collection was the geekiest post I'd ever seen.
Maybe physics isn't for me after all...
"God I hate Microsoft licensing. You're right, you can use Web edition of Windows Server. "
And that, ladies and gents, is why Linux wins the licensing battle. Microsoft and Business Objects (Crystal Decisions) have some of the most screwed up, confusing licensing models I've seen. It takes serious analysis and reading through legal agreements (EULAs) for hours just to compare editions of one software product. Then you get MS/CDW sales involved and somebody always rounds up "just in case", hence perpetuating a myth that you have to spend $25k per server.
There are reasons to spend that much, but not always and rarely for a small business website with just a few hits now and then. But if your small business is running several thousand database transactions per minute as part of a service... you'll benefit from higher-end software like the $25k+ Enterprise editions for clustering. Of course, you're probably spending six figures on the hardware by then.
Linux is probably easier to license, although I don't know for sure because I'm deep in the Windows world (developer, DBA, admin, etc). Still, to run an application on Linux with enterprise-class performance, you'll need people. More of them or with better training, and usually more expensive. Even if Linux were to come out in an apple-to-apple benchmark with 50% better performance, Windows might still be cheaper to maintain. It all depends on the application.
1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_CongressLo C ( ~20TB ) ... 80 STCs ... 1.2LoC
... priceless.
1 Thumper @ 24TB
Being named Slashdot's biggest geek for knowing how many bytes are in a Star Trek Collection
Central America is cheaper than the USA in some areas and more expensive in others. I lived in Guatemala for several years and have family still living there after 20. The average employee gets under $5/day. That buys them beans, tortillas, and somehow they have land to grow a lot of their own food and raise chickens. Beef is a serious luxury item, mostly imported. Many of them live over an hour's drive from the capital city; a bus ticket into town for work is only 10 cents, and they riot every time it goes up. They don't rent apartments because apartments go for $200+/month. I lived in one, 400sf concrete with bars on the windows at $250/month. Real estate prices in the cities are now close to similar size cities in the USA. The secret was out decades ago, and we've driven up prices with demand.
Now, the "rich American investors" category that my family falls into... we had higher demands, and as a result had to pay $5 for a box of Honey Nut Cheerios. When I lived there, fresh milk was unheard of. Parmalat (UHT pasteurized, shelf life of about a year) was a dollar or two per quart. Import taxes, shipping and convenience fees quickly raise the cost of the American way of life to over $100/day. If you expect to live on $5 or $10 a day, you'll be making your own Frappuccinos. Ten years ago a Big Mac was just under US$2.00 and minimum wage was US$2.50/day. I think the gap has narrowed some since then but not enough.
I've lived in the USA on $10 per day by staying with family in the rural South, eating 29 cent/pound turkey and growing a lot of veggies. I later almost bought a 3200sf house for $36k. So my point of all this is really that cheap living is possible anywhere, but any location also has expensive living.
I'm still of the opinion that every American can use the good eye-opening that comes with trying to live on under $10/day. It makes one appreciate things a whole lot more. Plus, it limits you to locally grown food, sights and and daily life. So give it your best shot, but be ready for the unexpected.
They already have them on construction sites. I hear the steel-toe boot is an effective communication device.
That was just Kim Jong Il's temper tantrum when he realized Americans were watching their own successful launch instead of his bottle rockets.
Now that's-a spicy meat-a-ball!
I think you're confusing 'right' and 'responsibility' here.
Microsoft spends billions creating software.
Microsoft wants to get a return on their investment.
Therefore, Microsoft has a right to get paid for someone taking/consuming/using what they produce.
What you describe is the consumer's lack of rights; MS is not obligated to support software nor obligated to sell or give it to any one person. However, if the consumer is using a copy of Windows, MS has the right to get paid according to the licensing agreement.
If I create software which is to be licensed at $50 per copy or $500 per developer per year, I fully intend to enforce that so I can pay my bills. The method of enforcement depends partially on how much flak I am able and willing to handle from my customers. If MS wants a kill switch, fine, but they damn well better tell me they have one. If my MS system dies in production because WGA couldn't call momma, I'll be porting everything to Linux within an hour. That is MY right.
[but as of today, I'm gonna make a deal with myself to always pull off before talking on the phone, or if I can't, just let voicemail pick it up, even if it's an irrate client, make 'em wait.] ... and you probably saved a life with that decision. Hopefully you'll never have the evidence to prove it.
I was hit in my car by a 16 year old girl driving while talking on her cell phone. As is so common, she was calling home to tell her parents she was leaving work. She didn't even notice she'd hit me while turning out of the parking lot. Had I not driven defensively and seen the approaching truck as a threat, my wife would probably have been injured. 1 second of reaction time was just enough to make 1 foot of clearance so the door was only dented not caved in.
I hated people who talk while driving before, and I do moreso now. Put down the cell phone. Don't even look at the screen when it rings. Pull over and check, then call them back. Doing otherwise simply isn't worth the risk. There is an absolute epidemic of the talking driver, and I support federal legislation to ban distracted driving in a fairly broad definition. Eating and applying makeup also qualify. Bottom line is, if the driver can't avoid a collision in 3 seconds, they should change their habits. It takes at least 2 to put down the cell phone and grip the controls; two seconds that should have been spent braking.
For the average Joe, true. And at $50k, that's not for the desktop. But extended to a scaled-down version, this tech could save me time and make the entire disk subsystem more efficient.
.Net projects, 3 Visual Foxpro and a Foxpro 2.6 project open at once like I did today, even a gig of RAM gets eaten up. Windows loves to use that swapfile even if you've got a gig free, so that disk was working overtime as I switched between them. I learned to make 2 partitions per disk: fast access in a small outer partition and larger/lower demand files like MP3/AVI/MPG on a larger partition on the smaller cylinders. OS on disk0 part0, VFP data on disk0 part1, swap and SQL data disk1 part0, finally backups and rarely used files disk1 part1. As a result, my machine is faster than my coworkers who just use the vanilla setup they're given. [Side note, if you work at a corporation you can request your next PC/disk upgrade come with a partition scheme you choose. If you ask nicely and they have time, they'll often accomodate you.]
I'm a Windows web/database developer by day, and when I have 4 different
For an enterprise, especially app/database servers, this tech may help smaller shops. My company has experienced network admins so they know how to tune a system if we tell them what it'll be doing. For the daily-accessed files this could go even further. Some of our clients have their 50GB SQL databases on a 9-disk RAID5 and wonder why it's slow. Data, logs, backups, and applications all on one volume - they don't have the experience to separate the files by access pattern. If it's technically feasible, a driver that says MDF and LDF files should be on separate spindles, BAK on another, etc. could double or triple performance on some of these systems. Of course, trained staff is better but sometimes budgets intervene.
Not anymore :)
Oddly enough I was just doing that same math. Not everyone would be a millionare, as others have posted. But still, $30 billion from Buffet and $30 billion from Gates/MS = $60 billion or about $200 per person in the USA.
Perhaps the best part of this is that the IRS has to be sweating, as you know someone was counting on a nice fat $10 billion check from Buffet's estate in however many years.
Another part is while the average Joe won't see a dime, some starving kid or person otherwise helped by one of these charities will probably live longer and make a massive contribution to society in 50 years. Charity has that effect; give someone a gift and tell them they can pay you back by helping someone else. The contagious change in attitude is worth far more than $60 billion.
I've had Vonage for over a year, and am happy with service as far as quality and reliability go. Outsourcing their customer service to another country didn't win points, nor did the 45 minutes on hold... using my 25 cent per minute cell phone... when the router died. I was frustrated when they refused to allow me to use a router I'd bought on eBay from a former Vonage user ("We have to have his permission; please ask him to call Customer Service and authorize the transfer"), but spent another $50 on new hardware and am happy again. My cablemodem goes out about 4 hours a year, but I have a cell phone for backup. I gave BellSouth the boot and have saved $60/month x 15 months = $900. That more than covers the small stuff I've had to deal with.
Now, this IPO thing... the financial statements show it is only going to restore their debt position to near zero, not get them any profit. They're over $400 million in debt and intend to keep spending like a teenager with a first credit card. Maybe Vonage's management has some magical way to make a profit, but I don't see it. That's an awful lot of effort to tread water. Is this the way IPOs are going now? "Invest in our company, we have $400 million in debt and fierce competition, and by the way our CEO is leaving too" doesn't sound like a gold mine to me. What worries me most is when a company continues to go deeper in debt they usually shut down... without warning. I'm sure others share the same fear, and that in itself hurts the IPO, sales, retention, etc.
I'm staying with Vonage until I seriously doubt their viability.
Hey, they wanted a new means of propulsion...
Gives new meaning to 'moonshine.'
Because then nobody would have good karma.
What goes around comes a-whoa! look at my hand!-round...
Code Bloat
Don't worry though, some tweaker's gonna OC his pump to 2000psi and shoot the clog to France, like in the Liquid Plumr commercial.
For me, I've found two things that help: A MS Natural Keyboard, and Tai Chi. A few years ago I found it painful to type. I bought a Natural Keyboard and have never since had pain at the office.
As a programmer and hardcore geek for 17 years I don't have a lot of upper-body strength. Pushups are sometimes painful to my wrists. The Tai Chi involves just enough effort to get the wrists and arms moving and loosen things up. It also helps with the stress; some days I can't just say, "It's 5pm, I'm out of here."