Pick the best tool for the job. While I'm not a big Microsoft fan -- and I'm even less of an Exchange fan -- you don't pick a server platform because it's your pet O/S; you pick a server platform because it's what you need to get the job done. If you need to run an Exchange server, then build a Windows server (or more likely, several Windows servers) and run Exchange.
From the client side, I use a Linux desktop to connect to an Exchange server for e-mail at work, and it works just fine because it supports standard SMTP and IMAPS. I greatly preferred the Postfix server we used to use (because my organization owned it and therefore I had access to it, unlike the Exchange server that our new corporate overlords mandated), but in truth, I don't really have any major complaints from a user perspective.
While I am a huge fan of FOSS (as in beer and as in libre), I am not opposed to paying a reasonable price for software, if it solves a problem I need solved. I bought my very first Slackware disks back in the day, because I (correctly) believed I would receive value for the money I paid.
Having said that -- and yes, I understand that you were trying to be funny -- I think that a more accurate statement would be that while Exchange might be the right tool for businesses with the resources to pay the Microsoft extortion^wlicensing fees for Exchange, there are a lot of small/home offices and individual users who cannot afford and/or who do not have the technical skill to administer Exchange.
My personal choice would be to build a public-facing web server and run WebDAV, but that wouldn't work for someone like my wife, who is an absolute wizard with Word, Publisher and Excel but would be completely lost at the CLI on a Linux server.
Vision and (as much as I hate to say it) marketing are indeed valuable parts of developing a product. Do you think Bill Gates wrote all of the code that made Microsoft what it is? Maybe in the DOS days, but I seriously doubt that he contributed a significant portion of the 29+ million lines of code in Windows 2000...or even a significant portion of the 4-5 million lines of code in WinNT3.1. No, Gates was the guy with the vision and the connections. How about Steve Jobs? From what I understood, Woz did the heavy lifting back in the day, but Jobs provided the drive, the vision and the marketing that made Apple a household name.
Like it or not, this is why most of us reading/. will most likely remain obscure: we can do the heavy lifting, and we may even have the vision, but marketing and advertising are essential if you ever want to have anyone outside of your mom and dad know what you developed in your spare time in the basement.
Go look at the Department of Agriculture's (?!?!?) web site -- specifically look for "Rural Broadband Grants". GPP may have been talking about other funding, but a telco that I have been involved in built a very large rural broadband network under USDA's broadband grants. Also, look on your phone bill next month. You will see a charge on there that says something about "USF". That's the "Universal Service Fund", basically a subsidy for telcos in sparsely populated areas (anywhere the telcos can convince the Feds that they won't make enough money to support the service they provide without government handouts).
Actually, if you filter out most of the hyperbole and bitterness in his post, you will find he does hit on a number of uncomfortable truths. As a part-time youth pastor, I don't share GPP's cynicism towards faith, but I agree that religion can, has been, and probably always will be abused by the corrupt for their own gain. The bigger problem, IMHO, is that our politicians are in the pockets of special interest groups. Democracy in the USA was a grand experiment, but as wise as the Founding Fathers were, I don't think they expected that "We the People" would ever grow so complacent as to let our government become as powerful as it did. Whether you vote Democratic or Republican doesn't matter -- once someone is elected to a national office (I would claim that the same is true even at state and municipal levels, for that matter), they belong to the money-holders that put them there. We've been sold up the river.
Obama isn't looking out for your best interests, and neither was Bush nor McCain nor anyone else who had a snowball's chance of getting elected.
The only question left now is, "how do we get our government back?"
No fan, at least not in my Mini-9. Or if there is a fan, it's really, really quiet and I can't find the exhaust port (couldn't find anything on Dell's website to confirm/deny this, though).
FWIW, I was approaching the issue from the point of view of a consumer. A quick and dirty search on Dell's web site (an admittedly small sample size, so don't take these numbers as gospel truth) shows netbooks to be between 25% and 50% cheaper than low-end laptops (Dell Mini-10s start at $279 and go up to $349; Inspiron laptops start at $379 go over and go to $549, http://www.dell.com/home/laptops). So, if the difference between a netbook's failure rate and a laptop's failure rate is only 1%, the netbooks are significantly cheaper than a laptop, and either a laptop or a netbook will meet my needs, I'll probably accept the very slightly greater failure rate of a netbook for the enhanced portability and lower cost of a netbook.
A lot of netbooks use flash drives rather than hard drives, though, so I don't think that's going to be the cause in many -- if not all -- of these cases. I've got a Dell Mini-9 that, AFAIK, has no moving parts internally (well, technically, the keys on the keyboard and the mouse buttons move, but that's about it).
If that was true, then it only means gas prices didn't go high enough.
However, from what I saw, increased gas prices did affect people's driving habits. Wasn't that part of the reason GM gave for their financial problems? People weren't buying big trucks and SUV's any more because gas prices were so high, but GM had configured their plants to mostly build trucks. My response to higher gas prices was keep driving (I might have even driven more) and keep driving the same way I always have -- just do it on a motorcycle instead of my pickup truck:)
Should we also ban cars because kids sometimes get run over? Not to mention that, if we decide that something the authors of the Constitution thought was important actually seems to be a Really Bad Idea, then we need to change the Constitution -- not simply ignore it because we don't like it. That path leads to lawlessness and anarchy.
"He who would sacrifice his liberty for a little, temporary security deserves neither liberty nor safety." --some dude named "Franklin"
If I'm not doing anything illegal, then I don't have to worry about being arrested.
I can't believe people are still posting that on/. Here goes, one more time: that argument is pure, bovine scatology. What happens when your political leanings become, shall we say, "unpopular" with whatever administration happens to be in power. Can't happen in the U.S., you say? Read your history books -- particularly the section about "witch hunts" in the 1950's. Simply being accused of being a communist was enough to get you drummed out of whatever business you happened to be employed in.
Why would someone be AGAINST security cameras being pointed at their property, when other people pay hefty sums to set them up for security?
Ummm...maybe because the cameras that they pay hefty sums of money to have set up are under their control, and therefore, they don't need to worry about what the video feed is being used for (assuming they did their homework and made sure the cameras were actually secure, etc.)? Suppose your wife didn't get the shades all the way closed at night -- do you want some fat, sweaty perv getting off to the video feed of your wife every night? How about your minor daughter? Suppose the camera operator is hurting for cash, you're upper middle class and the operator starts selling records of your coming and goings to some second-rate thug who wants to burglarize your home? I'm sure there are more possibilities, but that's just off the top of my head.
That is one interpretation of the 2nd Amendment, and since it supports the (corrupt) politicians' agenda (pacify the masses while hoarding as much wealth and power as possible), it is the currently supported interpretation. Needless to say, it is not the interpretation I believe the Founding Fathers had in mind when they wrote the Bill of Rights. Allow me to explain.
Yes, the 2nd Amendment does, in fact, state that a "well regulated militia" is the justification for this Amendment, but keep in mind that this was a radical concept when it was written. As well as stating the right they wanted to grant, they also included their justification for granting this right to the people. They then state that this militia is "necessary to the security of a free State." Consider for a moment what environment this amendment was written in: the framers of the Constitution were essentially planning treason against the Crown. Without the right to own firearms, there would have been no Revolutionary War because the only people that could possibly have fought would have been the British Army....makes for a very short Revolution, don't you think? To them, it was essential that free men have the right to keep and own weapons so that the people could replace the government when/if it became corrupt or oppressive, just like they did. Unfortunately, after 200 years, we have decided this only means that it is necessary to have a military force to protect the nation from foreign invaders, which is, of course, exactly what our politicians want.
The text of the 2nd Amendment continues, "...the right of the people to keep and bear Arms..." Not "the Army" nor even "the Militia", but the people. This is about as clear as it can get: this right is explicitly granted to the people of the United States of America. Seems to me if Washington and Jefferson and Franklin, etc., had intended this only to apply to militia members, they would have said, "...the right of the MILITIA to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."
What part of "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed" is so difficult for people to understand?!?!?!
So artists are the only ones to get a government enforced and mandated estate?
No. Anyone engaging in any kind of creative work, from musicians to authors to painters to film makers, are given copyright protection. If you happen to be more technical than artsy, you still have hope in the form of patents. Furthermore, once you get out of minimum-wage employment, most 9-5 jobs have some kind of retirement plan with payouts to your estate after your death, as well. It may not be as good a payout as Bono or Brittney Spears will get, but...well, they are part of the minority that rolled the dice and won.
Also, this is a bit of a misnomer, since most of these "artists" copyrights are not making money for their children, they are making money (for all eternity) for large corporations that had nothing to do with creating music in the first place.
Not entirely. The corporations are essentially a marketing vehicle for artists who have more ability to sing/play an instrument/create a film/whatever than to sell themselves directly. If you take away the whole **AA lawsuits over P2P networks, I don't really see the difference between labels and venture capitalists investing in bright, young technology entrepreneurs who got a great idea, but didn't have the resources on their own to reach the market.
Does Arkham House (for example) really deserve to have the rights (and thus get a cut) of most of H.P. Lovecrafts works? Why...do [they]...deserve such an eternal money maker?
Invest in publishing Lovecraft's works, perhaps? Lovecraft wrote waaaay back before the dawn of the Internet. In his era, he would have had a hard time reaching the audience he has reached with a publisher to market his works.
Ultimately, no one forces any artist to go to a label or publishing house with their content. They do it because, despite/.'s bias against the **AA's (and I admit, their tactics are rather deplorable), the labels and publishers are still providing value to the artists. And the public continues to purchase content from the labels and publishers because they are still receiving value as well. As long as that holds true, the labels and publishers will continue to exist.
Too young? We're talking 35 years. Unless he was writing as an infant, you're looking at a minimum age of ~50 if he died after the copyright expires.
Ever hear of Silverchair? They were only 15 when they recorded their debut album, which would make them 40 when copyright expires. Because my stomach isn't that strong, I won't even mention Hansen or Chris Cross (oops...I just did!):D
Still, you're probably right...35 years is a lot of time to gather a nest egg.
I've seen a couple of comments along the lines of, "This is an ugly hack, but I don't know of a better way to do this." IMHO, it's usually a developer who knows that there's got to be a better way of doing something, but is running into a constraint of the language. Of course, I typically work in Perl, so it's somewhat to be expected:)
2) the more you add comment lines, the less lines of code you can see on your screen. When you start scrolling continously, the speed of code production reduces significantly.
I run into this frequently with typical *Nix.conf files (not code, but you get the idea). The solution, I found, was simple:
egrep -v "^(#|[\ ]*$)" ${heavily_commented_file}
Software development typically isn't engineering. It's usually a business of maximizing productive features versus minimizing cost and time. Rarely is the answer to further investigate working code.
You have a point, and I agree with you to some degree.
However, 1) just because we are not members of some type of professional society does not mean that we IT workers should hold ourselves to a lower standard than the professions you listed; and 2) to some extent, we do have professional "societies" that many of us belong to -- although admittedly, not quite as formal or as strict as the professions you referenced. How many IT workers hold certifications -- and have those certifications as prerequisites of their jobs? In many cases, prospective IT workers may never get past the HR department without a piece of paper that says MCSE, CCNA, CCIE, etc. Many of those certifications state that if you use ${certificationOrganization}'s software in violation of it's EULA, you will lose your certification...which can make reemployment elsewhere rather difficult.
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Pick the best tool for the job. While I'm not a big Microsoft fan -- and I'm even less of an Exchange fan -- you don't pick a server platform because it's your pet O/S; you pick a server platform because it's what you need to get the job done. If you need to run an Exchange server, then build a Windows server (or more likely, several Windows servers) and run Exchange.
From the client side, I use a Linux desktop to connect to an Exchange server for e-mail at work, and it works just fine because it supports standard SMTP and IMAPS. I greatly preferred the Postfix server we used to use (because my organization owned it and therefore I had access to it, unlike the Exchange server that our new corporate overlords mandated), but in truth, I don't really have any major complaints from a user perspective.
While I am a huge fan of FOSS (as in beer and as in libre), I am not opposed to paying a reasonable price for software, if it solves a problem I need solved. I bought my very first Slackware disks back in the day, because I (correctly) believed I would receive value for the money I paid.
Having said that -- and yes, I understand that you were trying to be funny -- I think that a more accurate statement would be that while Exchange might be the right tool for businesses with the resources to pay the Microsoft extortion^wlicensing fees for Exchange, there are a lot of small/home offices and individual users who cannot afford and/or who do not have the technical skill to administer Exchange.
My personal choice would be to build a public-facing web server and run WebDAV, but that wouldn't work for someone like my wife, who is an absolute wizard with Word, Publisher and Excel but would be completely lost at the CLI on a Linux server.
Vision and (as much as I hate to say it) marketing are indeed valuable parts of developing a product. Do you think Bill Gates wrote all of the code that made Microsoft what it is? Maybe in the DOS days, but I seriously doubt that he contributed a significant portion of the 29+ million lines of code in Windows 2000...or even a significant portion of the 4-5 million lines of code in WinNT3.1. No, Gates was the guy with the vision and the connections. How about Steve Jobs? From what I understood, Woz did the heavy lifting back in the day, but Jobs provided the drive, the vision and the marketing that made Apple a household name.
/. will most likely remain obscure: we can do the heavy lifting, and we may even have the vision, but marketing and advertising are essential if you ever want to have anyone outside of your mom and dad know what you developed in your spare time in the basement.
Like it or not, this is why most of us reading
please explain what Obama has actually done differently than Bush
Here you go.
Wow...you said that with a straight face, too!
Go look at the Department of Agriculture's (?!?!?) web site -- specifically look for "Rural Broadband Grants". GPP may have been talking about other funding, but a telco that I have been involved in built a very large rural broadband network under USDA's broadband grants. Also, look on your phone bill next month. You will see a charge on there that says something about "USF". That's the "Universal Service Fund", basically a subsidy for telcos in sparsely populated areas (anywhere the telcos can convince the Feds that they won't make enough money to support the service they provide without government handouts).
Actually, if you filter out most of the hyperbole and bitterness in his post, you will find he does hit on a number of uncomfortable truths. As a part-time youth pastor, I don't share GPP's cynicism towards faith, but I agree that religion can, has been, and probably always will be abused by the corrupt for their own gain. The bigger problem, IMHO, is that our politicians are in the pockets of special interest groups. Democracy in the USA was a grand experiment, but as wise as the Founding Fathers were, I don't think they expected that "We the People" would ever grow so complacent as to let our government become as powerful as it did. Whether you vote Democratic or Republican doesn't matter -- once someone is elected to a national office (I would claim that the same is true even at state and municipal levels, for that matter), they belong to the money-holders that put them there. We've been sold up the river.
Obama isn't looking out for your best interests, and neither was Bush nor McCain nor anyone else who had a snowball's chance of getting elected.
The only question left now is, "how do we get our government back?"
No fan, at least not in my Mini-9. Or if there is a fan, it's really, really quiet and I can't find the exhaust port (couldn't find anything on Dell's website to confirm/deny this, though).
I don't quite get it, though.
Here you go.
:)
Sorry -- couldn't resist
Good point.
FWIW, I was approaching the issue from the point of view of a consumer. A quick and dirty search on Dell's web site (an admittedly small sample size, so don't take these numbers as gospel truth) shows netbooks to be between 25% and 50% cheaper than low-end laptops (Dell Mini-10s start at $279 and go up to $349; Inspiron laptops start at $379 go over and go to $549, http://www.dell.com/home/laptops). So, if the difference between a netbook's failure rate and a laptop's failure rate is only 1%, the netbooks are significantly cheaper than a laptop, and either a laptop or a netbook will meet my needs, I'll probably accept the very slightly greater failure rate of a netbook for the enhanced portability and lower cost of a netbook.
A lot of netbooks use flash drives rather than hard drives, though, so I don't think that's going to be the cause in many -- if not all -- of these cases. I've got a Dell Mini-9 that, AFAIK, has no moving parts internally (well, technically, the keys on the keyboard and the mouse buttons move, but that's about it).
Despite the sensationalist headline (this is /., after all), I thought a 1% failure rate between laptops and netbooks was pretty trivial.
If that was true, then it only means gas prices didn't go high enough.
:)
However, from what I saw, increased gas prices did affect people's driving habits. Wasn't that part of the reason GM gave for their financial problems? People weren't buying big trucks and SUV's any more because gas prices were so high, but GM had configured their plants to mostly build trucks. My response to higher gas prices was keep driving (I might have even driven more) and keep driving the same way I always have -- just do it on a motorcycle instead of my pickup truck
Should we also ban cars because kids sometimes get run over? Not to mention that, if we decide that something the authors of the Constitution thought was important actually seems to be a Really Bad Idea, then we need to change the Constitution -- not simply ignore it because we don't like it. That path leads to lawlessness and anarchy.
If I'm not doing anything illegal, then I don't have to worry about being arrested.
I can't believe people are still posting that on /. Here goes, one more time: that argument is pure, bovine scatology. What happens when your political leanings become, shall we say, "unpopular" with whatever administration happens to be in power. Can't happen in the U.S., you say? Read your history books -- particularly the section about "witch hunts" in the 1950's. Simply being accused of being a communist was enough to get you drummed out of whatever business you happened to be employed in.
Why would someone be AGAINST security cameras being pointed at their property, when other people pay hefty sums to set them up for security?
Ummm...maybe because the cameras that they pay hefty sums of money to have set up are under their control, and therefore, they don't need to worry about what the video feed is being used for (assuming they did their homework and made sure the cameras were actually secure, etc.)? Suppose your wife didn't get the shades all the way closed at night -- do you want some fat, sweaty perv getting off to the video feed of your wife every night? How about your minor daughter? Suppose the camera operator is hurting for cash, you're upper middle class and the operator starts selling records of your coming and goings to some second-rate thug who wants to burglarize your home? I'm sure there are more possibilities, but that's just off the top of my head.
That is one interpretation of the 2nd Amendment, and since it supports the (corrupt) politicians' agenda (pacify the masses while hoarding as much wealth and power as possible), it is the currently supported interpretation. Needless to say, it is not the interpretation I believe the Founding Fathers had in mind when they wrote the Bill of Rights. Allow me to explain.
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
Yes, the 2nd Amendment does, in fact, state that a "well regulated militia" is the justification for this Amendment, but keep in mind that this was a radical concept when it was written. As well as stating the right they wanted to grant, they also included their justification for granting this right to the people. They then state that this militia is "necessary to the security of a free State." Consider for a moment what environment this amendment was written in: the framers of the Constitution were essentially planning treason against the Crown. Without the right to own firearms, there would have been no Revolutionary War because the only people that could possibly have fought would have been the British Army....makes for a very short Revolution, don't you think? To them, it was essential that free men have the right to keep and own weapons so that the people could replace the government when/if it became corrupt or oppressive, just like they did. Unfortunately, after 200 years, we have decided this only means that it is necessary to have a military force to protect the nation from foreign invaders, which is, of course, exactly what our politicians want.
The text of the 2nd Amendment continues, "...the right of the people to keep and bear Arms..." Not "the Army" nor even "the Militia", but the people. This is about as clear as it can get: this right is explicitly granted to the people of the United States of America. Seems to me if Washington and Jefferson and Franklin, etc., had intended this only to apply to militia members, they would have said, "...the right of the MILITIA to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."
What part of "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed" is so difficult for people to understand?!?!?!
Awww, crap. Should have had my coffee before posting on /. this a.m. </facepalm>
So artists are the only ones to get a government enforced and mandated estate?
No. Anyone engaging in any kind of creative work, from musicians to authors to painters to film makers, are given copyright protection. If you happen to be more technical than artsy, you still have hope in the form of patents. Furthermore, once you get out of minimum-wage employment, most 9-5 jobs have some kind of retirement plan with payouts to your estate after your death, as well. It may not be as good a payout as Bono or Brittney Spears will get, but...well, they are part of the minority that rolled the dice and won.
Also, this is a bit of a misnomer, since most of these "artists" copyrights are not making money for their children, they are making money (for all eternity) for large corporations that had nothing to do with creating music in the first place.
Not entirely. The corporations are essentially a marketing vehicle for artists who have more ability to sing/play an instrument/create a film/whatever than to sell themselves directly. If you take away the whole **AA lawsuits over P2P networks, I don't really see the difference between labels and venture capitalists investing in bright, young technology entrepreneurs who got a great idea, but didn't have the resources on their own to reach the market.
Does Arkham House (for example) really deserve to have the rights (and thus get a cut) of most of H.P. Lovecrafts works? Why...do [they]...deserve such an eternal money maker?
Invest in publishing Lovecraft's works, perhaps? Lovecraft wrote waaaay back before the dawn of the Internet. In his era, he would have had a hard time reaching the audience he has reached with a publisher to market his works.
/.'s bias against the **AA's (and I admit, their tactics are rather deplorable), the labels and publishers are still providing value to the artists. And the public continues to purchase content from the labels and publishers because they are still receiving value as well. As long as that holds true, the labels and publishers will continue to exist.
Ultimately, no one forces any artist to go to a label or publishing house with their content. They do it because, despite
Too young? We're talking 35 years. Unless he was writing as an infant, you're looking at a minimum age of ~50 if he died after the copyright expires.
Ever hear of Silverchair? They were only 15 when they recorded their debut album, which would make them 40 when copyright expires. Because my stomach isn't that strong, I won't even mention Hansen or Chris Cross (oops...I just did!) :D
Still, you're probably right...35 years is a lot of time to gather a nest egg.
I've seen a couple of comments along the lines of, "This is an ugly hack, but I don't know of a better way to do this." IMHO, it's usually a developer who knows that there's got to be a better way of doing something, but is running into a constraint of the language. Of course, I typically work in Perl, so it's somewhat to be expected :)
2) the more you add comment lines, the less lines of code you can see on your screen. When you start scrolling continously, the speed of code production reduces significantly.
I run into this frequently with typical *Nix .conf files (not code, but you get the idea). The solution, I found, was simple:
egrep -v "^(#|[\ ]*$)" ${heavily_commented_file}
Software development typically isn't engineering. It's usually a business of maximizing productive features versus minimizing cost and time. Rarely is the answer to further investigate working code.
Oh....that explains Windows, then :D
Okay, I'll bite. What happened to "c)"?
You have a point, and I agree with you to some degree.
However, 1) just because we are not members of some type of professional society does not mean that we IT workers should hold ourselves to a lower standard than the professions you listed; and 2) to some extent, we do have professional "societies" that many of us belong to -- although admittedly, not quite as formal or as strict as the professions you referenced. How many IT workers hold certifications -- and have those certifications as prerequisites of their jobs? In many cases, prospective IT workers may never get past the HR department without a piece of paper that says MCSE, CCNA, CCIE, etc. Many of those certifications state that if you use ${certificationOrganization}'s software in violation of it's EULA, you will lose your certification...which can make reemployment elsewhere rather difficult.
Because push technologies have an inherent problem with abuse (can you say "spam"?).