I had a co-worker come up to me a few days ago asking me to fix her old home Gateway. Apparently, it had a virus or two on it and she lost the system disks - this effectively ruled out the "backup, wipe, reload" method of proper virus removal. So, I showed her my laptop, which runs Ubuntu. Her first question:
"Can I install Microsoft Office on it?"
Well, no... okay, yeah, you can run parts of it under WINE, but it's not the same. I pointed out that it came with OpenOffice, though, and showed her that it could open MS docs. She looked at it and said, "But, if I buy my own office suite, like Microsoft Office, can I install it on there?" Well, sure, but it would have to be Linux-compatible, and you're probably not going to find one to purchase at Best Buy. "Oh." Then came the next question, which dang near blew my mind...
"Can I install Kodak EasyShare on it?"
Uh... what? "All of my photos are in there." Okay, no prob - we copy them off and import them into F-Spot. She skeptically replied, "I don't know... I just want a computer I can install Office and Kodak EasyShare on."
Moral of the story: If you switched them from Windows to !Windows, yeah, they'll notice. Just having a different logo blows many people's minds. I suspect it's kind of an uncanny valley effect, or possibly just rote memorization of actions with no real understanding of what's going on or why they're doing it - just that if they repeat the same sequence of actions over and over again, they'll receive a pellet. It's really disturbing.
My network overlords require IE6, but it's worse than you think. We have a ton of custom web apps that were designed explicitly around IE6's wonky behavior. They don't work right under Firefox or even IE7. Consequently, until those apps are rewritten (yeah right), we're stuck with IE6 and Windows XP until the end of time.
Re:Why only one database language?
on
SQL in a Nutshell
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· Score: 1
So YOU'RE the one to blame for using UNION queries in Access! I should've known!
I'm getting ready to try out CiviCRM for a small non-profit - it definitely looks promising and the price is certainly right. That said, it's a smaller non-profit and our national office uses Raiser's Edge, so we'll see what happens.
Yes, I agree - it's all been downhill since Babbage created that infernal machine that performed calculations instead of requiring humans to exercise critical, logical thought and calculate the sums themselves.
In all seriousness, brainless distractions have been around as long as there have been brains. Seriously, have you ever seen square dancing?
I've looked at this before. Let's run through the numbers:
Exchange 2007 pricing boils down to $699/server for Standard with $67/CAL, which gives you five storage groups and five databases per Mailbox server role. In my experience, one database on a reasonably well equipped server can handle 100 mailboxes without any serious effort; it would take each user pulling in a 500 MB mailbox before you run into the artificial 50 GB database limit, which is easily circumvented with a well-documented registry change. Obviously, this being Microsoft, you get an "Outlook connector" for free, as well as mobile support. With a single tweak to the registry, a single server should be able to handle hundreds of large mailboxes.
Looking at Zimbra's feature matrix, meanwhile, the only version that comes with the Outlook connector is the Professional Edition, which "starts" at $28/user/year.
Let's do the math.
Assume that, whether you get Exchange or Zimbra, you'll be able to run it for about three years before you have to upgrade to the latest and greatest version. This is probably a bit fast for most corporations, but it'll give us an idea of what we can do. Assuming this is the case, we're looking at an equation that resembles:
699+67x = 3(28x)
Solving for x, we find that, for x > 42, Exchange is actually cheaper if we amortize the up-front licensing costs for Exchange over a three year period. This gets even worse for Zimbra if we push it farther than that. Now, that said, this is only true if we ignore Windows 2008 licensing, which does push things into Zimbra's favor, provided we're installing Zimbra on a free-as-in-beer OS of some sort. On the other hand, we didn't even include Zimbra mobile pricing, which isn't even included with Zimbra Professional.
In short, if you install Zimbra on a free-as-in-beer system, yes, it will come in slightly cheaper than Exchange. If you don't, though, Exchange pricing is actually comparably affordable.
That's nice. There's just one problem: Exchange isn't just e-mail. Now, let's say for a sec that you have your standard-issue MCSE-aspirant staring at a bunch of Windows XP or Vista boxes and they need to get e-mail, calendaring, and webmail. Better yet, they've been told that it needs to work with existing in-house logins. On Windows, this is fairly simple, albeit expensive - take one Windows 200(3/8) server, install some version of Exchange (2003 would probably be simpler for this purpose, but you can muddle through 2007 if you're patient), and you're done. Assuming you made your new server a member of the domain, the installation process for Exchange should take care of whatever schema changes that might be necessary. Even with Exchange 2007, which seems to have been explicitly designed to prevent setting up a single-server Exchange setup, you'll probably have something that works internally in a couple of hours and will send e-mail to the outside world by the end of the day. Exchange 2003 is almost point-and-click. Exchange 2010... I don't know yet. I downloaded the beta, though, so I'll hopefully find out by the end of the week.:-)
Meanwhile, following your example... okay, we need to integrate with Active Directory, so that means setting up Samba, pam, winbind, and Kerberos. If you're lucky, you have Likewise installed and can work it in that way. Then, we can get Postfix installed... but that's just e-mail. Okay, now we need calendaring... erm... iCal? Wait, we also need webmail, so that means setting up Apache (Exchange sets up IIS automatically) and then getting whatever e-mail/calendaring solution you have talking to it... right. Of course, there is Zimbra and its ilk, but it really doesn't take long for the subscriptions to cost more than Exchange in the long run.
Now, just so I'm not misunderstood, do I think that doing things the "long way" will work out better in the long run? Sure, probably. If you're setting up e-mail for a few thousand people or so, you're going to need to spend some time planning it and, if you happen to have the experience and knowledge to pull off a custom solution, more power to you. On the other hand, if you're taking care of e-mail for a few hundred people, Exchange really isn't half bad, especially if you really don't have the time (or the resources) to sit down and try every conceivable e-mail/calendaring/web access solution. Like most things Microsoft, it's not great, but it's "good enough".
Last but not least, Exchange 2007 did a fine job of pooching that. I know I took a much more serious look at other groupware systems after dealing with that beast. Exchange 2003 was quirky and a little unreliable, but at least it installed cleanly and didn't have a bunch of silly "roles". For single server environments, Exchange 2007 was a HUGE step backwards. Mind you, I'm sure the clear subdivision of roles made life easier in multi-server environments, but if FOSS can come up with a similarly priced and slightly easier to administer alternative (getting close!), they'll eat MS alive.
Yep - I second this. I have an Openfire/Spark setup here at work integrating with a Windows 2003 AD environment. Straight-up SSO doesn't work, meaning the person has to enter their password, but it does notice when people change passwords and it does match AD passwords perfectly. Sure, it's mildly inconvenient, but not catastrophically so.
Yep, you could accomplish that in one afternoon. Alternatively, you could spend five minutes doing this:
- Add Windows Server to the domain.
- Done.
Obviously, things get a little more interesting if you're setting up stuff like DFS or if you plan on making the server a domain controller, but even then you're not wasting half the day setting up ONE file server.
Look, I like Linux. I really do. I use it on my laptop - it's great. I have a web server at work that runs OpenSuSE, which is also great. However, it comes down to using the right tool for the job and, when your choice is between one tool that gets the job done reliably in under 15 minutes and another tool that MIGHT get the job done right in an afternoon (what, you don't work mornings?) and will almost certainly require some tuning for the next week after that, well, I'd rather just go with the tool that gets it done right the first time and faster to boot.
I'm normally not a free market interventionist, but the problem with your approach is that it's not just rural customers that suffer - poorer urban areas would also suffer. Just ask anyone living in a "food desert". Of course, there's a reason such conditions exist - high crime and low neighborhood incomes are not conducive towards any sort of a profit margin. Consequently, where the free market provides any solution, it's inherently limited and expensive to make up for the associated costs and limited customer base. Unfortunately, little of this helps the poor stop being poor, which just makes a bad problem that much worse
That said, our current setup is the worst of both worlds. We have government sanctioned utility monopolies (or oligopolies) without any of the benefits that such an arrangement might provide. The result is a worst of both worlds scenario where they can cherry-pick which neighborhoods they want to provide access to, which neighborhoods they'll roll out future access to, and set higher prices with lower service to boot. Considering the relative infancy of broadband technology (consider where home-based telephone and Internet service was in, say, 1900), I'm fine with letting companies compete and sorting out universal access later, but they need to actually compete. Otherwise, if we're going to let them enjoy legally limited competition, we need to start demanding a few concessions in return.
Does your dick look good in a turtleneck? Does your dick always provide "one more thing" right at the end? Can your dick keep a conference room of people enthralled for hours at a time? Is your dick anal retentive?
Slashdot Mirror
This post is only tangentially on-topic...
I had a co-worker come up to me a few days ago asking me to fix her old home Gateway. Apparently, it had a virus or two on it and she lost the system disks - this effectively ruled out the "backup, wipe, reload" method of proper virus removal. So, I showed her my laptop, which runs Ubuntu. Her first question:
"Can I install Microsoft Office on it?"
Well, no... okay, yeah, you can run parts of it under WINE, but it's not the same. I pointed out that it came with OpenOffice, though, and showed her that it could open MS docs. She looked at it and said, "But, if I buy my own office suite, like Microsoft Office, can I install it on there?" Well, sure, but it would have to be Linux-compatible, and you're probably not going to find one to purchase at Best Buy. "Oh." Then came the next question, which dang near blew my mind...
"Can I install Kodak EasyShare on it?"
Uh... what? "All of my photos are in there." Okay, no prob - we copy them off and import them into F-Spot. She skeptically replied, "I don't know... I just want a computer I can install Office and Kodak EasyShare on."
Moral of the story: If you switched them from Windows to !Windows, yeah, they'll notice. Just having a different logo blows many people's minds. I suspect it's kind of an uncanny valley effect, or possibly just rote memorization of actions with no real understanding of what's going on or why they're doing it - just that if they repeat the same sequence of actions over and over again, they'll receive a pellet. It's really disturbing.
My network overlords require IE6, but it's worse than you think. We have a ton of custom web apps that were designed explicitly around IE6's wonky behavior. They don't work right under Firefox or even IE7. Consequently, until those apps are rewritten (yeah right), we're stuck with IE6 and Windows XP until the end of time.
So YOU'RE the one to blame for using UNION queries in Access! I should've known!
I'm getting ready to try out CiviCRM for a small non-profit - it definitely looks promising and the price is certainly right. That said, it's a smaller non-profit and our national office uses Raiser's Edge, so we'll see what happens.
Now introducing Soylent Clear! Same great taste - less people!
Yes, I agree - it's all been downhill since Babbage created that infernal machine that performed calculations instead of requiring humans to exercise critical, logical thought and calculate the sums themselves.
In all seriousness, brainless distractions have been around as long as there have been brains. Seriously, have you ever seen square dancing?
I've looked at this before. Let's run through the numbers:
Exchange 2007 pricing boils down to $699/server for Standard with $67/CAL, which gives you five storage groups and five databases per Mailbox server role. In my experience, one database on a reasonably well equipped server can handle 100 mailboxes without any serious effort; it would take each user pulling in a 500 MB mailbox before you run into the artificial 50 GB database limit, which is easily circumvented with a well-documented registry change. Obviously, this being Microsoft, you get an "Outlook connector" for free, as well as mobile support. With a single tweak to the registry, a single server should be able to handle hundreds of large mailboxes.
Looking at Zimbra's feature matrix, meanwhile, the only version that comes with the Outlook connector is the Professional Edition, which "starts" at $28/user/year.
Let's do the math.
Assume that, whether you get Exchange or Zimbra, you'll be able to run it for about three years before you have to upgrade to the latest and greatest version. This is probably a bit fast for most corporations, but it'll give us an idea of what we can do. Assuming this is the case, we're looking at an equation that resembles:
699+67x = 3(28x)
Solving for x, we find that, for x > 42, Exchange is actually cheaper if we amortize the up-front licensing costs for Exchange over a three year period. This gets even worse for Zimbra if we push it farther than that. Now, that said, this is only true if we ignore Windows 2008 licensing, which does push things into Zimbra's favor, provided we're installing Zimbra on a free-as-in-beer OS of some sort. On the other hand, we didn't even include Zimbra mobile pricing, which isn't even included with Zimbra Professional.
In short, if you install Zimbra on a free-as-in-beer system, yes, it will come in slightly cheaper than Exchange. If you don't, though, Exchange pricing is actually comparably affordable.
That's nice. There's just one problem: Exchange isn't just e-mail. Now, let's say for a sec that you have your standard-issue MCSE-aspirant staring at a bunch of Windows XP or Vista boxes and they need to get e-mail, calendaring, and webmail. Better yet, they've been told that it needs to work with existing in-house logins. On Windows, this is fairly simple, albeit expensive - take one Windows 200(3/8) server, install some version of Exchange (2003 would probably be simpler for this purpose, but you can muddle through 2007 if you're patient), and you're done. Assuming you made your new server a member of the domain, the installation process for Exchange should take care of whatever schema changes that might be necessary. Even with Exchange 2007, which seems to have been explicitly designed to prevent setting up a single-server Exchange setup, you'll probably have something that works internally in a couple of hours and will send e-mail to the outside world by the end of the day. Exchange 2003 is almost point-and-click. Exchange 2010... I don't know yet. I downloaded the beta, though, so I'll hopefully find out by the end of the week. :-)
Meanwhile, following your example... okay, we need to integrate with Active Directory, so that means setting up Samba, pam, winbind, and Kerberos. If you're lucky, you have Likewise installed and can work it in that way. Then, we can get Postfix installed... but that's just e-mail. Okay, now we need calendaring... erm... iCal? Wait, we also need webmail, so that means setting up Apache (Exchange sets up IIS automatically) and then getting whatever e-mail/calendaring solution you have talking to it... right. Of course, there is Zimbra and its ilk, but it really doesn't take long for the subscriptions to cost more than Exchange in the long run.
Now, just so I'm not misunderstood, do I think that doing things the "long way" will work out better in the long run? Sure, probably. If you're setting up e-mail for a few thousand people or so, you're going to need to spend some time planning it and, if you happen to have the experience and knowledge to pull off a custom solution, more power to you. On the other hand, if you're taking care of e-mail for a few hundred people, Exchange really isn't half bad, especially if you really don't have the time (or the resources) to sit down and try every conceivable e-mail/calendaring/web access solution. Like most things Microsoft, it's not great, but it's "good enough".
Last but not least, Exchange 2007 did a fine job of pooching that. I know I took a much more serious look at other groupware systems after dealing with that beast. Exchange 2003 was quirky and a little unreliable, but at least it installed cleanly and didn't have a bunch of silly "roles". For single server environments, Exchange 2007 was a HUGE step backwards. Mind you, I'm sure the clear subdivision of roles made life easier in multi-server environments, but if FOSS can come up with a similarly priced and slightly easier to administer alternative (getting close!), they'll eat MS alive.
Yep - I second this. I have an Openfire/Spark setup here at work integrating with a Windows 2003 AD environment. Straight-up SSO doesn't work, meaning the person has to enter their password, but it does notice when people change passwords and it does match AD passwords perfectly. Sure, it's mildly inconvenient, but not catastrophically so.
It's funny, but is it going to get them off their tractors?
Oh no... this clears the way for "Pimp my Boson", doesn't it?
We're goin' to give dis Higgs some RIMMZ!
In Soviet Russia, you fly over head of joke!
Of course they're full of shit. Where do you think the ammonium nitrate came from?
I thought he was a genius?
Yep, you could accomplish that in one afternoon. Alternatively, you could spend five minutes doing this:
- Add Windows Server to the domain.
- Done.
Obviously, things get a little more interesting if you're setting up stuff like DFS or if you plan on making the server a domain controller, but even then you're not wasting half the day setting up ONE file server.
Look, I like Linux. I really do. I use it on my laptop - it's great. I have a web server at work that runs OpenSuSE, which is also great. However, it comes down to using the right tool for the job and, when your choice is between one tool that gets the job done reliably in under 15 minutes and another tool that MIGHT get the job done right in an afternoon (what, you don't work mornings?) and will almost certainly require some tuning for the next week after that, well, I'd rather just go with the tool that gets it done right the first time and faster to boot.
I'm normally not a free market interventionist, but the problem with your approach is that it's not just rural customers that suffer - poorer urban areas would also suffer. Just ask anyone living in a "food desert". Of course, there's a reason such conditions exist - high crime and low neighborhood incomes are not conducive towards any sort of a profit margin. Consequently, where the free market provides any solution, it's inherently limited and expensive to make up for the associated costs and limited customer base. Unfortunately, little of this helps the poor stop being poor, which just makes a bad problem that much worse
That said, our current setup is the worst of both worlds. We have government sanctioned utility monopolies (or oligopolies) without any of the benefits that such an arrangement might provide. The result is a worst of both worlds scenario where they can cherry-pick which neighborhoods they want to provide access to, which neighborhoods they'll roll out future access to, and set higher prices with lower service to boot. Considering the relative infancy of broadband technology (consider where home-based telephone and Internet service was in, say, 1900), I'm fine with letting companies compete and sorting out universal access later, but they need to actually compete. Otherwise, if we're going to let them enjoy legally limited competition, we need to start demanding a few concessions in return.
It might be TOO close, actually. I personally almost got an uncanny valley effect from that.
Real enlightenment is in GNU/Vista. Of course, it's nowhere near as brilliant as GNU/Me, but what do you do?
Seeing as Microsoft is involved, wouldn't it be MigooppleSoft 3.1 Ultimate Edition for Networking?
Does your dick look good in a turtleneck? Does your dick always provide "one more thing" right at the end? Can your dick keep a conference room of people enthralled for hours at a time? Is your dick anal retentive?
If so, I would like to meet your dick.
Ironically, the Chevette was a rebadged Opel.
Probably around the same time it became a series of islands, so, what, late Cretaceous?
Did we just get autokoaned? Or, if you prefer, autokowned?
Yes. It's called "Internet Explorer". It's all super GUI, with a delicious creamy filling!
Or, you could do the Double Troll. That's where you just freak out and start trolling all over the place, even trolling other trolls.