The networks were taking the feed right off the directional mike, while Dean's famous whooping hardly made a dent in the ambient noise of the cheering supporters.
Once again, like 98% of voting Americans, I'll simply be reduced in November to choosing the lesser of two evils.
Dean's direct, logical approach was refreshing. [I recall where his support numbers grew larger in sampled populations as the degree of education increased. His support among PhDs was high.]
Logic didn't win, though. Nor can real people win that make public mistakes once in a while.
No, the only ones that can win the presidency are properly handled actors in collaboration with large money donors and the right adverising talent.
American politics is pure product selling, complete with the deception, innuendo and emotional button pushing that works so well for any other product.
No, it couldn't. Governmental and corporate users of Free Software would never allow that to happen.
Yes, it could.
Government and corporate IT departments are interested in every computer being secure.
They own the machines and want to insure the integrity of the software running on those machines, even if the machines are running Mac OS X or Linux instead of Windows.
Ironically, user control is slipping away as Linux becomes more popular. As Linux becomes more and more popular on the desktop, expect more and more desktop Linux users in large institutions like government and big corporations not to have root on their boxes. That's certainly the case here at MyCorp on my Linux desktop. Data and network security mean they don't want just anyone hooking up to the network; there's manuals to read, policy documents to sign, meetings to attend for root/Administrator.
Governments and corporations want control of their machines, too.
A number of years ago after pop started to retire to the bedroom in his smoking jacket with a couple of bunnies one third his age, his daughter Christi started running the Playboy empire.
They use Excel, Access, Word, Powerpoint and Internet Explorer all day, curse "the hackers" responsible for their computer's failings and pay MS like they pay their utility bills, for another essential facility.
They regard Windows as a standard.
At MyCorp, the training rooms are full of Windows boxes. But the hardcore technical people use Mac laptops that give them applications "that just work", full UNIX, and compatibility with the beancounters that send them MS file formats. Lately, various directors and VP's have been getting Mac laptops, too.
It'll be interesting to see how far down the corporate hierarchy Macs migrate: the managers acquire some cachet by mimicking the choice of IT professionals, but if their secretaries and training rooms start to fill up with Macs the exclusivity will have worn off. OTOH, aspiring middle-level managers will want to keep up with the big cheeses...
Frequently I'll need access to scientific works from decades ago that are out of print and the library doesn't have a copy.
Other readers are correct; current dpi and lighting makes PDF's less desirable. That may change in another 10-15 years.
But what I'd really like is to be able to have books printed out at larger magnification on oversize pages, with room for handwritten notes in the margins.
If people did care, or cared to even know about these things, then they wouldn't let these companies get away with it.
Yes, but as the main point goes, companies will operate in whichever ways are possible to maximize shareholder value.
Operating within the law and behaving ethically can be evaluated within the same framework as any other business decision, however.
What that can mean is that if unethical behavior will provide greater return on the one hand and public knowledge of ethical behavior will cause a decrease of return, then the logical choice is simply to keep knowledge of unethical behavior from the public, government or anyone else in a position to cause harm to shareholder value.
Increased disclosure requirements, independent auditing, increased public education to help people evaluate the true cost of those externalities that some businesses rely upon, are all good steps in the right direction.
Capitalism is insufficient to create respect for the law or promote ethical behavior. Democracy can help move that direction if people get tired of getting shafted by unethical behavior and enough people know about what is going on.
I'd gladly offer to become the IT whipping boy on Slashdot and the server room water coolers for only a tenth as much money as Microsoft gets.
I'd smile everytime some says I was evil incarnate and collected more money from them.
Microsoft gets dissed, big time.
Microsoft ignores it.
Microsoft tells people what their new license will cost; like it or lump it.
Microsoft collects money from the people dissing them
Microsoft resembles the government.
Always Self-Insure If You Can Afford To
on
Cyber Risk Insurance?
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
...is that, if it is possible for you to do so, it is always cheaper to insure yourself.
Large corporations do this all the time.
The only time you need to contract out for insurance for whatever is if you can't afford to absorb the loss and don't mind paying a premium for someone else to do it.
My advice?
Look again at the list of what they insure against.
Create a plan to assess and mitigate each of those risks yourself. Take some time to research things, perhaps even call in an expert consultant for a couple of days.
At the end of the day you'll have saved yourself a bunch of money and be more secure than you were before.
[Besides, I would expect the insurance company itself to come in and "insure" that best practices were being followed so as to decrease the likelihood that they'd ever have to pay out on a claim. Kind of like the provisions in life insurance policies where you need a physical exam, promise not to go hang-gliding or sky-diving, etc. before they actually issue you a policy.]
Back in the 1980's when they were first coming out.
The new standard IBM PC with MS-DOS was a low price solution compared to the alternative of mainframe applications.
Now, however, as hardward costs have continued to plummet, the market really wants the established technology to fade into an open standard with insignificant cost.
The IT decision makers are asking themselves the hard questions like:
If Ethernet and TCP/IP are open standards that have no cost and are essential to my business' operation, why then is it that Windows, a standard, and essential to my business' operation, has a cost associated with it?
Rewrapping Windows with added new features to justify charging for it can only go so far. It's actually come a long way for MS, but arguably their "innovation in the OS" theme has been pushing the bounds of the credible for a while.
If major governments can be convinced these are "terroristic threats" we might actually get some police action against these annoying criminals.
OTOH, with millions of spam-related "terrorist threats", they will dilute the focus of the authorities assigned to investigate the real thing.
This is almost as bad as the dilution in the term "terrorist", which gets applied overly broadly by government officials trying to garner support for ventures and programs that would not otherwise have any such deep and broad support.
It's like omnibus legislation, but in the lexicon.
Maybe this will work: 9/11 - herbal viagara - 9/11 - herbal viagara....
Have we got an associative image yet that will help me sell herbal viagara, or are you just getting subconsciously anxious about terrorist blowing up your private parts?
As regulated monopolies, they're quick to point out any of the restrictions under which they must operate and want to insure that any newcomers to the market be equally or more burdened.
Roads are publicly owned and maintained; why not public information corridors, too?
Unless RadioAid wasn't paying it's bills, it's hard to see where ClearChannel has much case. Does the National Arbitration Forum publish its decisions and provide a synopsis of what the thinking was that led to their decision?
IIRC, in the past, companies and political campaigns typically had the forethought to buyout in advance domains that were critical of them $MY_BRANDsucks.com.
It would seem to me that avenues for criticism are vital to preserve, that suppression of any speech outlet short of provable slander or libel should be viewed as quite dangerous to the public interest.
But I'm confused - didn't RadioAid have to agree in advance to use the National Arbitration Forum? Or was such a matter of "an offer they couldn't refuse" in the face of overwhelming legal onslaught from Clear Channel?
[I know Clear Channel sucks and don't dispute it, but I'd like to know exactly what the mechanisms are in our society that help them to stifle dissent. Knowledge is our only hope of acting correctly to change things for the better.]
Gov, people dont want to have their documents open correctly 95% of the time. they want 100%. so its gonna stay MS as a defecto, er.. I mean de facto, standard
It's true - government IT managers want to minimize hassles of support as well as costs. So if MS promises to work well with itself, as big as it is, then they'll pay good money in the hope of getting less hassle.
Really, though, even MS products are not 100% "open some file format correctly".
OO.o doesn't have to open 100% of the files correctly; it just has to open approximately the same number of old files about as correctly.
If OO.o is at 95%, but Word is at 99.4%, then, well OO.o has a ways to go, but it's a doable journey.
OO.o deployments will gain in places other than government and large corporate IT departments where costs is more a of consideration. Schools, developing countries, SOHO.
They're not a publically funded organization; they're free to do as they see fit with their content.
Of course, any of their content that they derive completely autonomously should be theirs.
The New York Times may not be publicly funded per se, as in receiving tax revenue.
But neither would they exist without the public arena to obtain news and to sell newspapers.
If they're sending reporters out into the world to collect information, which they do, then it could be argued that such information is owned to some degree, too, by the world and not just the New York Times.
As an individual inventor or producer of copyrightable materials it boost my ego more if I think of my invention as solely my own creation and the world be damned if it doesn't give me my due, whatever my demands might be, no matter the value of my invention to the world.
But if I'm honest with myself, then I will admit that I couldn't have gotten as far as I have without the rest of the world. Where did I learn Maxwell's Equations, calculus, C programming? They weren't wholly and completely synthesized in my brain alone.
Yes, perhaps it's my right to withhold my great derivative work from the world. But it reflects poorly on the moral character of the world if the only individuals it creates are those who fervently try to leverage every possible benefit from it, everyone else be damned.
As it stands now, copyrights expire after (lately) 75 years, patents after 17. So there already exists a forceable extraction of this perceived right.
Would the world be better off with those terms of IP protection longer?
I contend the world as a whole would be better off if those terms were shorter than what they are now. Let people keep trademarks for 75 years; let patents and copyrights expire after only 5 or 10.
While ultra-aggressive copyright protections make our society more like a police state and, IMHO, a worse thing, there's always a point I like to bring up.
If we accord extraordinary protections, means of investigation for owners of copyrighted material, then I would like to insist that:
aggregate information about me, such as Name and SSN, DNA checksum, whatever, also be copyrighted;
that I own the copyright to this information about me and am the sole authority for its distribution and use;
and that I am entitled to all the same extraordinary powers of investigation and enforcement that owners of other copyrighted material wish to obtain under these laws.
The Times attracts 9 million unique visitors a month, while only about 1 million read the daily paper.
I find the extensive dead-tree version convenient and end up reading more from it than the on-line version that's free.
But, not having a lot of time during the week, I end up buying the print version maybe every 3 days, and quickly scanning the on-line headlines on the off-print days.
The Times really ought to open up its archive and let everyone, including Lexis-Nexis, have free access.
Many years ago at a university library they had an entire special catalog devoted to indexing old NY Times articles that one could read from microfiche. Without the individual paying, either.
There is still a fundamental chasm between archived high-quality material (especially true for scientific journals) and what is freely available and searchable on the web.
Think about how useful it would be for the general public to have access to old, high-quality archives like the NY Times and other scientific periodicals; the pursuit of science and other research would be considerably advanced over where it is today. Then there is the reality: copyright protections and the hope by the copyright owners for a few dollars more by charging for access (that only the very wealthy or institutions can afford) still persists.
It's almost enough that I think the government ought to exercise eminent domain (link to counterpoint about possible abuse of eminent domain - just as they do for land when a freeway needs to go through Aunt Tilly's backyard) and provide some reasonable compensation to the current copyright owners and to appropriate sufficiently old works and make them available publicly.
In fact, we're specifically prohibited from even suggesting to users that they use an alternative browser because it'd be a bigger support hassle for the desktop support group.
Several points.
First, you are wise to standardize on a browser to help reduce support costs, supporting IE+Mozilla/Firefox will cost more than supporting IE, on the surface. But wait - there's more!
While it costs more for support techs to be trained in both browsers, what if the Mozilla/Firefox users put in fewer trouble ticket calls for support?
It might just be that the cost of supporting IE+Mozilla/Firefox could be less than supporting IE!
Which then leads naturally one to consider whether moving all users to Mozilla/Firefox might lead to even greater savings.
Especially if you consider long term savings from internal web site developers creating content that is more W3C standard and less specific to IE version du jour on Windows OS du jour, things which will surely change.
OK, so don't suggest to users they use a different browser. Instead, do what you're supposed to do: evaluate Mozilla/Firefox in your testbed development department and see for yourself, before you even consider deploying it, whether it makes sense from a business perspective. And ask yourself what the true overall costs are of IE in terms of spyware, adware, security lapses if proprietary information about your business were to leak out, and how much downtime and loss of productivity users have to endure if they have to turn off Javascript, etc.
Then, when you know the answers for your business, do a roll-out and tell people not to use anything but Mozilla/Firefox!
BTW, in my environment it turned out that Mozilla/Firefox supported a lot more web applications than most people expected. Sites would say they needed IE, but it turned out that Moz worked fine. In fact, one of the few web applications that broke under Moz/Firefox was one that relied upon a broken old DOM model for Javascript that origined back in the old Netscrape 3 days.
You remember, the nice directory service they brought out for Windows years ahead of Active Directory? MS simply vaporware pre-announced that AD would be coming and that spelt the death knell for NDS because anyone with a lot of Windows boxes wanted to make sure they had a "compatible solution" and the only way to guarantee that was to source from a sole supplier that already had them by the short hairs.
Meanwhile, enterprise Linux could use some improvements in convenient, secure, scalable directory services. People testing prototype desktop Linux solutions want to move beyond the/etc/passwd and local home directory stage of life.
As it stands, people managing Linux LANs limp along using NIS, maybe some cobbled together pieces of LDAP with PAM and kerberos.
There's room for an enterprise level solution that could better support Linux LANs in corporate environments that would also play well with Windows boxes needing services.
The NDS code base could be combined with Samba and other open source technologies to provide just that.
A lot of software is quite useful, but written in scripting languages like Python or VB and is thrown away and forgotten once it's accomplished its task.
Other software embodies important fundamental operations, such an FFT or LU factorization. You'll still find a lot of useful scientific and mathematical software in the SLATEC library that was developed two decades ago that will compile using g77 on any Linux box.
The bottom line is that there is a need for all kinds of software ranging from the throwaway script to the eternal algorithm: they're all useful.
Slashdot Mirror
The networks were taking the feed right off the directional mike, while Dean's famous whooping hardly made a dent in the ambient noise of the cheering supporters.
Once again, like 98% of voting Americans, I'll simply be reduced in November to choosing the lesser of two evils.
Dean's direct, logical approach was refreshing. [I recall where his support numbers grew larger in sampled populations as the degree of education increased. His support among PhDs was high.]
Logic didn't win, though. Nor can real people win that make public mistakes once in a while.
No, the only ones that can win the presidency are properly handled actors in collaboration with large money donors and the right adverising talent.
American politics is pure product selling, complete with the deception, innuendo and emotional button pushing that works so well for any other product.
I've long thought web browsers could use better interactive vector graphics, fancier widgets, etc.
Does PHP-GTK provide this only on the server side?
Does any of the functionality overlap with what could be provided using SVG, JavaScript and XForms (or even XUL)?
No, it couldn't. Governmental and corporate users of Free Software would never allow that to happen.
Yes, it could.
Government and corporate IT departments are interested in every computer being secure.
They own the machines and want to insure the integrity of the software running on those machines, even if the machines are running Mac OS X or Linux instead of Windows.
Ironically, user control is slipping away as Linux becomes more popular. As Linux becomes more and more popular on the desktop, expect more and more desktop Linux users in large institutions like government and big corporations not to have root on their boxes. That's certainly the case here at MyCorp on my Linux desktop. Data and network security mean they don't want just anyone hooking up to the network; there's manuals to read, policy documents to sign, meetings to attend for root/Administrator.
Governments and corporations want control of their machines, too.
Even "production" kernels can have problems. Remember the VM changes around 2.4.10?
New productions kernels deserve every developer's full attention until they're really really ready.
A number of years ago after pop started to retire to the bedroom in his smoking jacket with a couple of bunnies one third his age, his daughter Christi started running the Playboy empire.
...by people in charge of budget.
They use Excel, Access, Word, Powerpoint and Internet Explorer all day, curse "the hackers" responsible for their computer's failings and pay MS like they pay their utility bills, for another essential facility.
They regard Windows as a standard.
At MyCorp, the training rooms are full of Windows boxes. But the hardcore technical people use Mac laptops that give them applications "that just work", full UNIX, and compatibility with the beancounters that send them MS file formats. Lately, various directors and VP's have been getting Mac laptops, too.
It'll be interesting to see how far down the corporate hierarchy Macs migrate: the managers acquire some cachet by mimicking the choice of IT professionals, but if their secretaries and training rooms start to fill up with Macs the exclusivity will have worn off. OTOH, aspiring middle-level managers will want to keep up with the big cheeses...
I really like this idea.
Frequently I'll need access to scientific works from decades ago that are out of print and the library doesn't have a copy.
Other readers are correct; current dpi and lighting makes PDF's less desirable. That may change in another 10-15 years.
But what I'd really like is to be able to have books printed out at larger magnification on oversize pages, with room for handwritten notes in the margins.
If people did care, or cared to even know about these things, then they wouldn't let these companies get away with it.
Yes, but as the main point goes, companies will operate in whichever ways are possible to maximize shareholder value.
Operating within the law and behaving ethically can be evaluated within the same framework as any other business decision, however.
What that can mean is that if unethical behavior will provide greater return on the one hand and public knowledge of ethical behavior will cause a decrease of return, then the logical choice is simply to keep knowledge of unethical behavior from the public, government or anyone else in a position to cause harm to shareholder value.
Increased disclosure requirements, independent auditing, increased public education to help people evaluate the true cost of those externalities that some businesses rely upon, are all good steps in the right direction.
Capitalism is insufficient to create respect for the law or promote ethical behavior. Democracy can help move that direction if people get tired of getting shafted by unethical behavior and enough people know about what is going on.
It's to meet the daily bash-Microsoft quota.
I'd gladly offer to become the IT whipping boy on Slashdot and the server room water coolers for only a tenth as much money as Microsoft gets.
I'd smile everytime some says I was evil incarnate and collected more money from them.
...is that, if it is possible for you to do so, it is always cheaper to insure yourself.
Large corporations do this all the time.
The only time you need to contract out for insurance for whatever is if you can't afford to absorb the loss and don't mind paying a premium for someone else to do it.
My advice?
Look again at the list of what they insure against.
Create a plan to assess and mitigate each of those risks yourself. Take some time to research things, perhaps even call in an expert consultant for a couple of days.
At the end of the day you'll have saved yourself a bunch of money and be more secure than you were before.
[Besides, I would expect the insurance company itself to come in and "insure" that best practices were being followed so as to decrease the likelihood that they'd ever have to pay out on a claim. Kind of like the provisions in life insurance policies where you need a physical exam, promise not to go hang-gliding or sky-diving, etc. before they actually issue you a policy.]
Was Microsoft *ever* the low price solution?
Yes, they were.
Back in the 1980's when they were first coming out.
The new standard IBM PC with MS-DOS was a low price solution compared to the alternative of mainframe applications.
Now, however, as hardward costs have continued to plummet, the market really wants the established technology to fade into an open standard with insignificant cost.
The IT decision makers are asking themselves the hard questions like:
Rewrapping Windows with added new features to justify charging for it can only go so far. It's actually come a long way for MS, but arguably their "innovation in the OS" theme has been pushing the bounds of the credible for a while.If major governments can be convinced these are "terroristic threats" we might actually get some police action against these annoying criminals.
OTOH, with millions of spam-related "terrorist threats", they will dilute the focus of the authorities assigned to investigate the real thing.
This is almost as bad as the dilution in the term "terrorist", which gets applied overly broadly by government officials trying to garner support for ventures and programs that would not otherwise have any such deep and broad support.
It's like omnibus legislation, but in the lexicon.
Maybe this will work: 9/11 - herbal viagara - 9/11 - herbal viagara ....
Have we got an associative image yet that will help me sell herbal viagara, or are you just getting subconsciously anxious about terrorist blowing up your private parts?
Given the local telephone monopolies.
As regulated monopolies, they're quick to point out any of the restrictions under which they must operate and want to insure that any newcomers to the market be equally or more burdened.
Roads are publicly owned and maintained; why not public information corridors, too?
Unless RadioAid wasn't paying it's bills, it's hard to see where ClearChannel has much case. Does the National Arbitration Forum publish its decisions and provide a synopsis of what the thinking was that led to their decision?
IIRC, in the past, companies and political campaigns typically had the forethought to buyout in advance domains that were critical of them $MY_BRANDsucks.com.
So, are other domains available, such as
It would seem to me that avenues for criticism are vital to preserve, that suppression of any speech outlet short of provable slander or libel should be viewed as quite dangerous to the public interest.
But I'm confused - didn't RadioAid have to agree in advance to use the National Arbitration Forum? Or was such a matter of "an offer they couldn't refuse" in the face of overwhelming legal onslaught from Clear Channel?
[I know Clear Channel sucks and don't dispute it, but I'd like to know exactly what the mechanisms are in our society that help them to stifle dissent. Knowledge is our only hope of acting correctly to change things for the better.]
Gov, people dont want to have their documents open correctly 95% of the time. they want 100%. so its gonna stay MS as a defecto, er.. I mean de facto, standard
It's true - government IT managers want to minimize hassles of support as well as costs. So if MS promises to work well with itself, as big as it is, then they'll pay good money in the hope of getting less hassle.
Really, though, even MS products are not 100% "open some file format correctly".
OO.o doesn't have to open 100% of the files correctly; it just has to open approximately the same number of old files about as correctly.
If OO.o is at 95%, but Word is at 99.4%, then, well OO.o has a ways to go, but it's a doable journey.
OO.o deployments will gain in places other than government and large corporate IT departments where costs is more a of consideration. Schools, developing countries, SOHO.
Claims are very difficult to make, and impossible to proove. However putting a time limit on a claim is easy. 2.8.0 will be released in 05 or 06
Oops.
Don't you mean that "2.8.0 will be released in the future, when it's ready, later than originally expected?
They're not a publically funded organization; they're free to do as they see fit with their content.
Of course, any of their content that they derive completely autonomously should be theirs.
The New York Times may not be publicly funded per se, as in receiving tax revenue.
But neither would they exist without the public arena to obtain news and to sell newspapers.
If they're sending reporters out into the world to collect information, which they do, then it could be argued that such information is owned to some degree, too, by the world and not just the New York Times.
As an individual inventor or producer of copyrightable materials it boost my ego more if I think of my invention as solely my own creation and the world be damned if it doesn't give me my due, whatever my demands might be, no matter the value of my invention to the world.
But if I'm honest with myself, then I will admit that I couldn't have gotten as far as I have without the rest of the world. Where did I learn Maxwell's Equations, calculus, C programming? They weren't wholly and completely synthesized in my brain alone.
Yes, perhaps it's my right to withhold my great derivative work from the world. But it reflects poorly on the moral character of the world if the only individuals it creates are those who fervently try to leverage every possible benefit from it, everyone else be damned.
As it stands now, copyrights expire after (lately) 75 years, patents after 17. So there already exists a forceable extraction of this perceived right.
Would the world be better off with those terms of IP protection longer?
I contend the world as a whole would be better off if those terms were shorter than what they are now. Let people keep trademarks for 75 years; let patents and copyrights expire after only 5 or 10.
While ultra-aggressive copyright protections make our society more like a police state and, IMHO, a worse thing, there's always a point I like to bring up.
If we accord extraordinary protections, means of investigation for owners of copyrighted material, then I would like to insist that:
- aggregate information about me, such as Name and SSN, DNA checksum, whatever, also be copyrighted;
- that I own the copyright to this information about me and am the sole authority for its distribution and use;
- and that I am entitled to all the same extraordinary powers of investigation and enforcement that owners of other copyrighted material wish to obtain under these laws.
That is all.The Times attracts 9 million unique visitors a month, while only about 1 million read the daily paper.
I find the extensive dead-tree version convenient and end up reading more from it than the on-line version that's free.
But, not having a lot of time during the week, I end up buying the print version maybe every 3 days, and quickly scanning the on-line headlines on the off-print days.
The Times really ought to open up its archive and let everyone, including Lexis-Nexis, have free access.
Many years ago at a university library they had an entire special catalog devoted to indexing old NY Times articles that one could read from microfiche. Without the individual paying, either.
There is still a fundamental chasm between archived high-quality material (especially true for scientific journals) and what is freely available and searchable on the web.
Think about how useful it would be for the general public to have access to old, high-quality archives like the NY Times and other scientific periodicals; the pursuit of science and other research would be considerably advanced over where it is today. Then there is the reality: copyright protections and the hope by the copyright owners for a few dollars more by charging for access (that only the very wealthy or institutions can afford) still persists.
It's almost enough that I think the government ought to exercise eminent domain (link to counterpoint about possible abuse of eminent domain - just as they do for land when a freeway needs to go through Aunt Tilly's backyard) and provide some reasonable compensation to the current copyright owners and to appropriate sufficiently old works and make them available publicly.
In fact, we're specifically prohibited from even suggesting to users that they use an alternative browser because it'd be a bigger support hassle for the desktop support group.
Several points.
First, you are wise to standardize on a browser to help reduce support costs, supporting IE+Mozilla/Firefox will cost more than supporting IE, on the surface. But wait - there's more!
While it costs more for support techs to be trained in both browsers, what if the Mozilla/Firefox users put in fewer trouble ticket calls for support?
It might just be that the cost of supporting IE+Mozilla/Firefox could be less than supporting IE!
Which then leads naturally one to consider whether moving all users to Mozilla/Firefox might lead to even greater savings.
Especially if you consider long term savings from internal web site developers creating content that is more W3C standard and less specific to IE version du jour on Windows OS du jour, things which will surely change.
OK, so don't suggest to users they use a different browser. Instead, do what you're supposed to do: evaluate Mozilla/Firefox in your testbed development department and see for yourself, before you even consider deploying it, whether it makes sense from a business perspective. And ask yourself what the true overall costs are of IE in terms of spyware, adware, security lapses if proprietary information about your business were to leak out, and how much downtime and loss of productivity users have to endure if they have to turn off Javascript, etc.
Then, when you know the answers for your business, do a roll-out and tell people not to use anything but Mozilla/Firefox!
BTW, in my environment it turned out that Mozilla/Firefox supported a lot more web applications than most people expected. Sites would say they needed IE, but it turned out that Moz worked fine. In fact, one of the few web applications that broke under Moz/Firefox was one that relied upon a broken old DOM model for Javascript that origined back in the old Netscrape 3 days.
NDS.
You remember, the nice directory service they brought out for Windows years ahead of Active Directory? MS simply vaporware pre-announced that AD would be coming and that spelt the death knell for NDS because anyone with a lot of Windows boxes wanted to make sure they had a "compatible solution" and the only way to guarantee that was to source from a sole supplier that already had them by the short hairs.
Meanwhile, enterprise Linux could use some improvements in convenient, secure, scalable directory services. People testing prototype desktop Linux solutions want to move beyond the /etc/passwd and local home directory stage of life.
As it stands, people managing Linux LANs limp along using NIS, maybe some cobbled together pieces of LDAP with PAM and kerberos.
There's room for an enterprise level solution that could better support Linux LANs in corporate environments that would also play well with Windows boxes needing services.
The NDS code base could be combined with Samba and other open source technologies to provide just that.
A lot of software is quite useful, but written in scripting languages like Python or VB and is thrown away and forgotten once it's accomplished its task.
Other software embodies important fundamental operations, such an FFT or LU factorization. You'll still find a lot of useful scientific and mathematical software in the SLATEC library that was developed two decades ago that will compile using g77 on any Linux box.
The bottom line is that there is a need for all kinds of software ranging from the throwaway script to the eternal algorithm: they're all useful.
A number of years ago I saw a show where Hawking had mad a different bet with Kip Thorne concering the nature of black holes.
IIRC, the loser had to buy the winner a copy of Penthouse.
I am African Prince.
Give me money.
I've heard of these scams. They have, like, a number that categorizes them.
The number is "4".
So I've always been interested in cars with great fuel economy and great power or great torque.
Being too lazy to crunch out the figures, I was wondering if anyone else had?
Other possible derived figures of merit come to mind, too, such as:
- Decibels@65mph*PurchaseCost,
- ShoulderRoom/Cost,
- TopSpeed/YearlyInsuranceCost,
etc. that people might find useful in planning a new car purchase.Definitely, a web site with plots showing the different car models on an xy graph of X=MPG, Y=HP would be most interesting.