Never Underestimate the power of Geeks ...who feel like they've been getting shafted with crappy tools, high prices, unresponsive and ignorant help desks.
You can bet they'll develop an application without mufflers that will scare children and dogs.
To me, this sounds like a perfect opportunity for your firm to hire a bright and energetic CS student as an intern to write CRM software for your firm.
An intern is less expensive than someone with a degree and if you take a little time to look you can get someone who is very qualified.
Especially if part of the job is "develop and release a GPL'd CRM-lite package that can sit atop any SQL engine".
That's the kind of project that could help your student intern make a name for himself as well as make a product that is useful to your business.
[I'm not an expert in this application area, but I've heard of POS applications in Linux, but not full CRM suites, unless they're hiding in disguise on freshmeat under aliases like "auto parts store manager", "medical clinic manager" etc.]
I wish it would be possible to have full-text search across all webpages I ever visited.
Maybe a graphical representation of correlated bookmarks or histories, too!
One way to connect bookmarks is the obvious: if pages are linked to one another directly. That might be some use.
But also, cross-correlation of key words in pages, like these two pages have "python" and "gnome" appearing a lot. Or, "Bugzilla".
I don't have time to organize my bookmarks, but frequently they're in natural related clumps that come out of 3 or 4 Google attempts, but saving only those hits I think are worth saving. Some of those might be 3 or 4 hits away from an initial Google screen, too.
A nice graphical portrayal of my islands of interest (unrelated - truetype fonts, cryptanalysis, HDTV recording, recipes), with perhaps some automatic Googling to show "new items" with those keywords.
Anyone that takes 10 seconds to think about how IT journalism works can figure out the reason for "Expected Looming Skills Shortage Threatens $YOUR_HAPPINESS"
As a journalist, you want to interview the CIO's - the decision makers - to find out what they're going to buy in the future, what their biggest concerns are, etc.
You're less likely to interview the system administrators "on the ground" that really know what's going on.
The CIO's see that their highly-skilled people are overworked. They have limited budgets. They can pay people only so much. They want a future supply of the highest possible quality people for the lowest possible price they can pay. Simple. Easy. It's what drives them, along with the fear that the next virus or worm will compromise the crown jewels of the precious customer databases and the their latest presentation to the CEO about forming a Strategic Vision for IT-Empowered Passionate Agile Business with a Process Management Team of Stakeholders.
My thought, too, was that some "bugs" are not evident by looking solely at the OS codebase.
That is, some bugs only manifest themselves through interaction between, say, a fuzzy incomplete API that the OS exposes to poorly written applications, or applications expecting to see the practical API from 9 years ago.
From my limited experience, it seems that those kinds of bugs are common.
I would expect Linux to have fewer of those kinds of bugs for a couple of reasons:
The exposed API, while it surely has evolved, has not built up so large a legacy of dependent applications and users that want old API behavior as has Windows. The growth curve has been so phenomenal that a small fraction of current Linux users will grumble that their old libc 5 based applications are breaking. Microsoft ramped up to OS saturation about 15 years ago, so they do have lots of users of DOS and Win3.1 developed applications that will grumble about breaks with backward compatibility.
Linux programmers won't silently tolerate incomplete API's with weird behavior where 3rd party Windows application developers must accept and learn "whatever Win32 does now". And, with a large installed base, Microsoft's OS developers have to cut bait at some finite stage of development with bugs still inevitably remaining. Linux developers always get to hide behind 3 formidable defenses:
you get what you pay for and how much did you pay me again?
it's still under active development, always and forever, no matter how good Linux happens to be we'll never claim it's done and good for running life support systems
if you don't like it, you're welcome to muck around with the source code all you want for your own purposes.
Microsoft has a business incentive to gain new application markets by leaving the exposed APIs for competing applicaiton developers in some disarray or changing them to something New and Better and Different for the future while deprecating support for legacy APIs for old OS versions that don't bring in fresh licensing revenue.
Once you have your visualization cluster, decided on the CPU, the interconnect, the OS, etc., you might ask what kind of application you can run on it.
Get off your butt and change the settings by twirling that clicky, rotating knob on the front of the moving picture device.
That's what younger siblings are good for - getting up and changing channels for you.
Especially when our channel changer came off and you had to grab some chewed-up looking plastic tongue with the needle nosed pliers to actually change the channel.
I've always thought that having a network connection was akin to driving on the public roadways. They don't let just any 6 year old climb into a 2-ton automobile and start accelerating onto the freeway. Doubly so for commercial drivers of 18-wheelers with gasoline tankers. The more potential damage that can be done, the more the certification that is required.
IMHO, network access should likewise be restricted to those who prove they are willing to learn something about security and to continue to behave responsibly. Doubly so, the faster the network connection.
Fighting bureaucracy is like punching a marshmallow. All you'll do is wear yourself out.
Systems of people are self-motivating however. I'd suggest giving them a scant budget based on cheaper alternatives (like zero euros for software licenses for OS, office software after, say, 2 years) Then, if they really want what they perceive as advantages of MS software, they can take it out of their own hides (no new office furniture, turn down the thermostats, re-use toilet paper, etc.).
Oh, and a few mandates to require that public offices provide the public with information in free, standard open public formats.
If the responsible decision-makers still believe that MS software provides cheap and standard methods for churning through the public's business, then let them prove it by living it.
I can't believe that enterprises and governments are willing to store critical archival documents in Microsoft Office format
In my experience, those are the clueless organizations that haven't scaled up properly. What worked fine for a few people in a department all running the same version of Word in 1992 for a total of 2 years doesn't work for hundreds of people in a company running different versions of Word over the past 10 years. Only now, after about a decade, is it beginning to dawn on them that different versions of Word on different versions of Word documents is an issue.
The ones that have done their homework have already bit the bullet and try to use something like SGML for official documents, although I'm sure there's an active business in providing crutches to move from Word to SGML.
So if I'm willing to post my public key and verify every 6 months that I'm the same live email responder at the other end, then what assurance do I have that encrypted email sent to me isn't spam?
Since the MTA's can't read my mail for spamminess if it is encrypted, the spam filter responsibility will be for my local email client with a set of my cached private key so it can decrypt and trash those herbal viagara offers.
If we are able to detect and monitor energy waves that are emitted from our brains merely by thinking about things, how much more difficult is it to believe that there are people who are physically tuned to be able to "pick up" those brain waves?
Just wait until the electrodes attached to the skull are not just sensors, but are powered transmitters used to induce right thinking!
I'm already thinking I need to take out a loan at Ditech to buy some more products that will surely ease my anxieties about my projected sexual desirability!
None of what I want to do "pisses" on their license.
I know, I sympathize, I agree.
DirecTV's Content Providers (Newscorp) are extremely concerned about what you could do, or what others could do. Namely, rebroadcast their content for free to other people that aren't paying for that content.
Of course, you and I as customers want some reasonable functionality for our DVR's and I'm going to whatever lengths I need in order to get that functionality, DMCA be damned. But no, I'm not about to rebroadcast their content to the world, as much as I think they're greedy and paranoid and trying to assert more control over my viewing practices than is proper, because I don't think my proper digital rights should include sharing that content with umpteen million "friends".
I've used IMAP capable clients to talk to Exchange servers.
I don't use Thunderbird because I find that evolution with its connector provides almost a complete Outlook replacement.
While I haven't used it personally, people have used the old Netscape IMAP mail connection to talk to Exchange servers in a limited fashion (just IMAP, no calendars, etc.) And, before I got some of the connector stuff working, I used the IMAP option within Evolution to talk to the Exchange server.
But Evolution can give you mail+calendars with those MSexChange servers, so that's what I tend to use.
Maybe someday an open source Exchange replacement like Brutus will be sufficiently compatible with Exchange's behavior to be a viable drop-in replacement for small and medium businesses.
However, if you're quite certain about the dollar's future strength then you might want to take out some futures contracts and sell off some of those soon-to-be-worthless euroes and yen.
East Asian central bankers with some US$1.5e12 and holders of petrodollars would love it if you were right about the dollar regaining its value in the future.
OTOH, it might just be that the U.S. has been borrowing so much (US$33e12 total debt) that dollars are everywhere.
Waiting for the dollar to recover seems akin to waiting for the pound sterling to recover to $4.86 several decades ago. Maybe there are still people out there waiting for the dollar to recover from its drop in the early 1970s, too.
Not me. From where I stand, I see fiscal profligacy of the worse kind in my United States over the past several years. Domestically, I see price inflation, but no wage inflation, with higher interest rates needed to get our foreign creditors to buy treasury bills denominated in a devaluing currency.
I'm curious where the right-wing pundits will try to place the blame for the impending economic crunch now that those evil "Tax 'n Spend Liberals" have been chased completely out of all 3 branches of government. "Immigrants" have always been a favorite scapegoat...
You probably have some quaint out-moded idea that "the media" is a sacred institution with a responsibility to dig out facts and report them to the public, so they may become more well-informed about making choices in a democratic society.
Being market-driven, the media has found such pursuits less profitable than reporting sensational results about Scott Peterson and Michael Jackson instead of boring, expensive
-to-research, needlessly-upsetting-to-advertisers stories about the causes of global warming.
As long as the machine is kept up and warm, it is a hot spot and moisture will tend to migrate away and condense where it is cooler. Dewpoint in the winter is likely to be pretty low, even in the garage or basement.
Like others have said, make sure your hard drive keeps warm. For other parts, make sure they stay about the same temperature. The CPU or mobo temperature monitor built in to a lot of PC's might help the system cry wolf if it gets too hot or too cold.
[Me, I still live in the legal gray world where I believe I have a right to time, space and device shift content I lawfully receive from DirecTV and believe all technical means to achieve those ends ought to be legal. Simulatneously, I don't believe I have a right to grab their signal for free with a hacked card, nor should I download movies or music content for which I haven't already paid the copyright owner. So, to the extent that hacker technology helps me, I support it, even if it puts me askew the DMCA.]
A good idea, although you have to stop and dismount your bike to do it unless you're really skilled.
My solution is simply to tow a large junk car behind my bicycle to trip those induction sensors. It provides me with better exercise going up hills and an exciting downhill riding experience as well.
U.S. Depeartment Of We're Not Going To Tell You Anything You Didn't Already Know
Sure enough.
But it's kind of like the stupid legal boilerplate language you find in consumer product manuals - you know the kind - don't use this hair dryer in the shower, etc.
It seems stupid and it is stupid, in the sense that most knowledgeable sysadmins know what to do and what not to do. Whether they can enforce their view upon a user base of upper management downloading spyware and given an onerous workload that prevents them from testing all the patches with all the applications is another matter. But it's a matter that can be helped by this weighty list!
A document like this is black and white. Paraphrasing from the document
"If you didn't do A, B and C like we said in here, then don't come crying to me."
And, if you're an overworked sysadmin, then you can plonk down this in front of IT-clueless upper management and say Your Corp needs to
Have security policies in line with these.
Sysadmins need time and resources to come into compliance with recommmendations listed herein.
or else you can't be responsible for the consequences.
Slashdot Mirror
I thought that Trolltech's license was either "GPL on FOSS platforms" or, if you want to release your QT-based app unders Windows you had to pay?
Or was that only for closed source apps, allowing GPL'd released QT-based apps on Windows?
Never Underestimate the power of Geeks
You can bet they'll develop an application without mufflers that will scare children and dogs.
Seriously, Im shocked at how many college age females have had gay sexual experiences, it seems to be becoming the norm.
So that is what these girls are telling you?
Dude, I don't know how to break this to you gently, but....
Might look around at NIST.
A few years ago I saw a nice presentation from one of the NIST people about getting the best Java performance for scientific computational tasks.
To me, this sounds like a perfect opportunity for your firm to hire a bright and energetic CS student as an intern to write CRM software for your firm.
An intern is less expensive than someone with a degree and if you take a little time to look you can get someone who is very qualified.
Especially if part of the job is "develop and release a GPL'd CRM-lite package that can sit atop any SQL engine".
That's the kind of project that could help your student intern make a name for himself as well as make a product that is useful to your business.
[I'm not an expert in this application area, but I've heard of POS applications in Linux, but not full CRM suites, unless they're hiding in disguise on freshmeat under aliases like "auto parts store manager", "medical clinic manager" etc.]
I wish it would be possible to have full-text search across all webpages I ever visited.
Maybe a graphical representation of correlated bookmarks or histories, too!
One way to connect bookmarks is the obvious: if pages are linked to one another directly. That might be some use.
But also, cross-correlation of key words in pages, like these two pages have "python" and "gnome" appearing a lot. Or, "Bugzilla".
I don't have time to organize my bookmarks, but frequently they're in natural related clumps that come out of 3 or 4 Google attempts, but saving only those hits I think are worth saving. Some of those might be 3 or 4 hits away from an initial Google screen, too.
A nice graphical portrayal of my islands of interest (unrelated - truetype fonts, cryptanalysis, HDTV recording, recipes), with perhaps some automatic Googling to show "new items" with those keywords.
Anyone that takes 10 seconds to think about how IT journalism works can figure out the reason for "Expected Looming Skills Shortage Threatens $YOUR_HAPPINESS"
As a journalist, you want to interview the CIO's - the decision makers - to find out what they're going to buy in the future, what their biggest concerns are, etc.
You're less likely to interview the system administrators "on the ground" that really know what's going on.
The CIO's see that their highly-skilled people are overworked. They have limited budgets. They can pay people only so much. They want a future supply of the highest possible quality people for the lowest possible price they can pay. Simple. Easy. It's what drives them, along with the fear that the next virus or worm will compromise the crown jewels of the precious customer databases and the their latest presentation to the CEO about forming a Strategic Vision for IT-Empowered Passionate Agile Business with a Process Management Team of Stakeholders.
Quite.
My thought, too, was that some "bugs" are not evident by looking solely at the OS codebase.
That is, some bugs only manifest themselves through interaction between, say, a fuzzy incomplete API that the OS exposes to poorly written applications, or applications expecting to see the practical API from 9 years ago.
From my limited experience, it seems that those kinds of bugs are common.
I would expect Linux to have fewer of those kinds of bugs for a couple of reasons:
Once you have your visualization cluster, decided on the CPU, the interconnect, the OS, etc., you might ask what kind of application you can run on it.
Get off your butt and change the settings by twirling that clicky, rotating knob on the front of the moving picture device.
That's what younger siblings are good for - getting up and changing channels for you.
Especially when our channel changer came off and you had to grab some chewed-up looking plastic tongue with the needle nosed pliers to actually change the channel.
I've always thought that having a network connection was akin to driving on the public roadways. They don't let just any 6 year old climb into a 2-ton automobile and start accelerating onto the freeway. Doubly so for commercial drivers of 18-wheelers with gasoline tankers. The more potential damage that can be done, the more the certification that is required.
IMHO, network access should likewise be restricted to those who prove they are willing to learn something about security and to continue to behave responsibly. Doubly so, the faster the network connection.
</soapbox>How can you ever fight bureaucrats?
Fighting bureaucracy is like punching a marshmallow. All you'll do is wear yourself out.
Systems of people are self-motivating however. I'd suggest giving them a scant budget based on cheaper alternatives (like zero euros for software licenses for OS, office software after, say, 2 years) Then, if they really want what they perceive as advantages of MS software, they can take it out of their own hides (no new office furniture, turn down the thermostats, re-use toilet paper, etc.).
Oh, and a few mandates to require that public offices provide the public with information in free, standard open public formats.
If the responsible decision-makers still believe that MS software provides cheap and standard methods for churning through the public's business, then let them prove it by living it.
I can't believe that enterprises and governments are willing to store critical archival documents in Microsoft Office format
In my experience, those are the clueless organizations that haven't scaled up properly. What worked fine for a few people in a department all running the same version of Word in 1992 for a total of 2 years doesn't work for hundreds of people in a company running different versions of Word over the past 10 years. Only now, after about a decade, is it beginning to dawn on them that different versions of Word on different versions of Word documents is an issue.
The ones that have done their homework have already bit the bullet and try to use something like SGML for official documents, although I'm sure there's an active business in providing crutches to move from Word to SGML.
So if I'm willing to post my public key and verify every 6 months that I'm the same live email responder at the other end, then what assurance do I have that encrypted email sent to me isn't spam?
Since the MTA's can't read my mail for spamminess if it is encrypted, the spam filter responsibility will be for my local email client with a set of my cached private key so it can decrypt and trash those herbal viagara offers.
If we are able to detect and monitor energy waves that are emitted from our brains merely by thinking about things, how much more difficult is it to believe that there are people who are physically tuned to be able to "pick up" those brain waves?
Just wait until the electrodes attached to the skull are not just sensors, but are powered transmitters used to induce right thinking!
I'm already thinking I need to take out a loan at Ditech to buy some more products that will surely ease my anxieties about my projected sexual desirability!
None of what I want to do "pisses" on their license.
I know, I sympathize, I agree.
DirecTV's Content Providers (Newscorp) are extremely concerned about what you could do, or what others could do. Namely, rebroadcast their content for free to other people that aren't paying for that content.
Of course, you and I as customers want some reasonable functionality for our DVR's and I'm going to whatever lengths I need in order to get that functionality, DMCA be damned. But no, I'm not about to rebroadcast their content to the world, as much as I think they're greedy and paranoid and trying to assert more control over my viewing practices than is proper, because I don't think my proper digital rights should include sharing that content with umpteen million "friends".
I've used IMAP capable clients to talk to Exchange servers.
I don't use Thunderbird because I find that evolution with its connector provides almost a complete Outlook replacement.
While I haven't used it personally, people have used the old Netscape IMAP mail connection to talk to Exchange servers in a limited fashion (just IMAP, no calendars, etc.) And, before I got some of the connector stuff working, I used the IMAP option within Evolution to talk to the Exchange server.
But Evolution can give you mail+calendars with those MSexChange servers, so that's what I tend to use.
Maybe someday an open source Exchange replacement like Brutus will be sufficiently compatible with Exchange's behavior to be a viable drop-in replacement for small and medium businesses.
The dollar is falling; it will rise again.
I'm betting it won't rise much.
However, if you're quite certain about the dollar's future strength then you might want to take out some futures contracts and sell off some of those soon-to-be-worthless euroes and yen.
East Asian central bankers with some US$1.5e12 and holders of petrodollars would love it if you were right about the dollar regaining its value in the future.
OTOH, it might just be that the U.S. has been borrowing so much (US$33e12 total debt) that dollars are everywhere.
Waiting for the dollar to recover seems akin to waiting for the pound sterling to recover to $4.86 several decades ago. Maybe there are still people out there waiting for the dollar to recover from its drop in the early 1970s, too.
Not me. From where I stand, I see fiscal profligacy of the worse kind in my United States over the past several years. Domestically, I see price inflation, but no wage inflation, with higher interest rates needed to get our foreign creditors to buy treasury bills denominated in a devaluing currency.
I'm curious where the right-wing pundits will try to place the blame for the impending economic crunch now that those evil "Tax 'n Spend Liberals" have been chased completely out of all 3 branches of government. "Immigrants" have always been a favorite scapegoat...
Those that don't understand how they work don't know what kinds of bullshit they have to put up with and what kinds can be fixed.
Speak with experts in the medical, legal and financial professions and you'll find that their experience with the general public is the same.
Much of the public is like that little lamb that gets a buzz cut in the Pixar short before The Incredibles.
Personally, I blame the media for being lazy.
You probably have some quaint out-moded idea that "the media" is a sacred institution with a responsibility to dig out facts and report them to the public, so they may become more well-informed about making choices in a democratic society.
Being market-driven, the media has found such pursuits less profitable than reporting sensational results about Scott Peterson and Michael Jackson instead of boring, expensive -to-research, needlessly-upsetting-to-advertisers stories about the causes of global warming.
If you haven't done anything, you've got nothing to fear.
And fear-driven law-abiding citizens will swallow this hook, line and sinker without worrying like the rest of us paranoid kooks.
That is, until the government changes the definition of anything in the above warning...
I'd be more concerned about moisture.
I wouldn't.
As long as the machine is kept up and warm, it is a hot spot and moisture will tend to migrate away and condense where it is cooler. Dewpoint in the winter is likely to be pretty low, even in the garage or basement.
Like others have said, make sure your hard drive keeps warm. For other parts, make sure they stay about the same temperature. The CPU or mobo temperature monitor built in to a lot of PC's might help the system cry wolf if it gets too hot or too cold.
DirecTV's more interesting tactics were technical.
[Me, I still live in the legal gray world where I believe I have a right to time, space and device shift content I lawfully receive from DirecTV and believe all technical means to achieve those ends ought to be legal. Simulatneously, I don't believe I have a right to grab their signal for free with a hacked card, nor should I download movies or music content for which I haven't already paid the copyright owner. So, to the extent that hacker technology helps me, I support it, even if it puts me askew the DMCA.]
A good idea, although you have to stop and dismount your bike to do it unless you're really skilled.
My solution is simply to tow a large junk car behind my bicycle to trip those induction sensors. It provides me with better exercise going up hills and an exciting downhill riding experience as well.
U.S. Depeartment Of We're Not Going To Tell You Anything You Didn't Already Know
Sure enough.
But it's kind of like the stupid legal boilerplate language you find in consumer product manuals - you know the kind - don't use this hair dryer in the shower, etc.
It seems stupid and it is stupid, in the sense that most knowledgeable sysadmins know what to do and what not to do. Whether they can enforce their view upon a user base of upper management downloading spyware and given an onerous workload that prevents them from testing all the patches with all the applications is another matter. But it's a matter that can be helped by this weighty list!
A document like this is black and white. Paraphrasing from the document
And, if you're an overworked sysadmin, then you can plonk down this in front of IT-clueless upper management and say Your Corp needs to
- Have security policies in line with these.
- Sysadmins need time and resources to come into compliance with recommmendations listed herein.
or else you can't be responsible for the consequences.