Posts by Random_Walk 80 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Apr 2010
None of it is about locking up the brats.
Even if the sentence was only just a light spanking from their mothers, the 'civil disobedience' in question will only spur the government(s), led by a massively ignorant population(s), to require, as a fellow poster put it, a Licensed Internet.
Good luck being civilly disobedient on that framework.
Bit of a diff or two there... mostly in that the US/North American smartphone market was led (once) by RIM, with WinMo and Palm close behind. Symbian was pretty low on the scale there anyway. It was when the iPhone and Android sets began selling globally that Nokia began to feel the pain. In the North American market, it's WinMo/Microsoft and Palm that got the sharp drop.
Also, if you think about it, by the time the "Burning Platform" comment came out, Nokia had something like 2-3 years in which to come up with *something* to answer the competition with... and they came out with nothing of any real note.
I was kind of wondering that too... especially if/when the SAN where the datastores live ever goes titsup.
Now if he was talking about VTLs, I could understand... but anyone who relies on (SAN-defined) snapshots or RAID for their backup (*snort*) should be frogmarched to the tape library and educated on its use.
Currently, @work we're about 85% virtualized (not counting the ESX/i boxes themselves obviously), and so far, no major problems.
The VM sprawl often doesn't happen (IMHO and experience) because workloads have to be spread out, but more often than not because vendors, other departments, and even other sections within IT always want "Yet Another VM", but treat them as semi-disposable (or worse, forget they already have a near-dozen that they never/rarely use, or in the most incompetent of cases, try to use VMs as some sort of clunky unofficial code versioning system... urgh).
...Miss? Mine's the one with a backup copy of the vCenter DB in it.
Speaking of which, I wonder if they have a size limit... I have more than a few users who store a rather obscenely large (as in, two-digit gigabyte sized) mailboxes (esp. the fscking marketing critters). Since the PHBs here won't even think of implementing mail retention, it'd be nice to supplement the usual eternal backup times with something that I can simply swap users over to.
I saw their little video, so I went to the site and had a test for myself.
Turns out that Chrome 7 on my Ubuntu 10.10 box (HP Elitebook 8440p, i5 CPU, 4GB RAM, and --get this-- only a gimpy Intel graphics chip) did a LOT better than whatever they were testing as "Chrome 7 beta" in the video. Managed the little HTML5 boat race in 17.8 seconds or thereabouts.
So either they gimped the Chrome install on their demo box, or that particular build of Windows 7 can't run Chrome for shit. I'm heavily inclined to believe that they ginned the results.
When it comes to servers, the only reason I even bother to leave a GUI on the damned thing is to keep my DBA happy (so he can run his Oracle bits). Otherwise, all you see at my server consoles is a friggin' bash prompt.
KDE or Gnome... for frig sakes. Are you an MCSE or something?
Linux won't cost near as much (esp. for hardware) than buying a Sun or AIX box would run you.
OTOH, FreeBSD is my personal favorite for those bits that you positively, absolutely must secure (like external-facing DNS servers, as a start). Scared the hell out of the boss when I put 'em in, but 18 months on and (unlike the previous Windows (!?) ones), these have been humming along w/o a single successful crack attempt.
Sorry, but I only vaguely (as a kid) recall Peter Criss being any good, and hadn't bothered with KISS since he left. Why would I bother now?
Then again, I'm thinking that this whole hate-the-P2P kick may just be an ill-advised marketing move. Well that, or Mssr. Simmons is casting about for reasons why his albums aren't selling worth a damn, and settled on P2P being the answer (as opposed to the fact that his music is a trip through 1970's gimmick-laden schlock that no one wants - at least not outside of the balding Camaro-driving demographic).
May be wrong about this, but aren't they still semi-owned by EMC? You know, as in Oracle would either have to buy EMC, or buy out EMC before getting their mitts on VMWare... that would up the pricetag by a helluva a lot, you know?
(IIRC VMWare are still owned by EMC as a semi-independent division).
...at least for those of us with real common names. :)
Having come from a somewhat lengthy online background, I find it amusing that, to date, it's kind of hard to find me in and amongst my similarly-named fellow citizens.
I know, because there have been a few rather frustrated-yet-impotent folks online who have tried (and failed with some rather amusing results) with more than the usual passion.
-the coat? Yeah - mine's the one that looks too much like everyone else's. :)
SCO had a lot of problems:
* an incompetent legal team (going after IBM's own Nazgul? WTF were they thinking?)
* no money to speak of (in the tech field, and in spite of Microsoft's $149m cash injection)
* shaky legal grounds (turns out they never owned the copyright)
* they weren't really suing over IP issues - the board at SCO just wanted to kite their stock one last time before it face-planted for good.
Oracle has none of these problems, and it is run by a calculating bastard with an ego the size of Canada (that, and Oracle has a bank account big enough to actually -buy- Canada).
That is what should scare the unholy shit out of any company doing business in the tech field (at least in the US, and in the EU before long if things continue like they appear to be).
It's most likely that Oracle is only in it for the money... not seeing Oracle wanting to enter the search or online advert biz.
OTOH, maybe Google has a couple of database-tech-friendly bits locked up that Oracle could put to good use in its own products (be it Oracle the product, or perhaps MySQL)?
BTW, to the mods - where's the demonized Larry Ellison icon? If any living soul ever deserved one...
The biggest reasons for the whole subsidy/tariff plan is two-fold:
- renewables (of any type) reduces dependence on imported energy sources (oil, coal, whatever)
- most renewables cost a LOT when first introduced into a market.
The second part (at least insofar as solar) is changing rapidly. Thanks to a glut of PV panels on the market, solar is costing manufacturers around ~$1.50 USD / Wp (on average). It used to cost $5 USD per watt, and in the early 1980's, the figures reached horrendous heights. By end-of-year, PV* production should cost around $0.75 - $1.45 USD / Wp, depending on quality (the lower end being thin-film, the upper mono/polycrystal silicon - you get what you pay for, though).
* For everyone else: PV = Photovoltaic :)
Now note that these costs are rapidly approaching the cost of oil-produced energy, and IIRC is below the cost of wind-generation, which is also dropping. As economies of scale kick in, things get even cheaper. Currently, there are but a handful of facilities capable of producing at least 500MW worth of panels per year - a couple in the EU, one in the Western Hemisphere (come Q3 - and that corp is German-owned), and I think one or two in Asia. In the next five years, I suspect that the total number of factories at this level of output will double, perhaps triple (though the majority will likely be in Asia).
At that point, PV solar should be cheap enough to install that tariffs (the official term for "subsidy" in most countries) will be largely unnecessary in most nations (depending on energy costs, etc).
Now for some irony. The Spanish PV guys are whining, but even now, Germany is beginning to drop theirs. Now for the funny part - the big German solar manufacturers: Q-Cells and SolarWorld AG stand out -- they are #2 and #3 in the world, respectively -- really aren't seeing problems with Merkel cutting back the solar tariff in their own stomping grounds (now mind you, the German PV market is pretty saturated, but still...)
Long story short - the big boys aren't seeing too much problem with the state of tariffs. Sure, they'd love to see them - it only boosts sales. OTOH, they've figured it into their projections and can survive regardless, given the momentum that PV solar has gained, and is continuing to gain.
Not sure about wind - I don't hang around that segment ( I do however hang around the Solar bits of the renewables industry... far too much, methinks :) ).
Seriously - you expressed a hope that every software house alive (including, I suspect, the former On2) does their level best to satisfy, if only for their own fiscal preservation.
Unless you're looking for some sort of iron-clad guarantee that On2 paid its danegeld to MPEG-LA, or that they're holding various execs' children as ransom, there's no way to answer your implied question to anyone's satisfaction.
The reason MPEG-LA is cozy is that they've got buy-in from (nearly) all the big players, and have a litigation war chest the size of Siberia... and nothing else.
I'm very sure that Apple and Microsoft (well, at least Apple) have or will have VP8 add-ons at the ready - all it would take is one automatic download later (or Safari/IE8 coughing up a pop-up asking if you'd like the plugin, then reaching out to their respective motherships, or even Google, to get it).
"Most non-techies will be happy with that to be honest."
And that, right there, is why the thing is selling like hotcakes. Even after/as competitors arrive, the iPad will likely dominate for quite awhile. This is due to the fact that, so far, the competitors cost just as much, if not more, for the same base specifications (proc., screen size, rez., etc).
Have a gander at this: http://www.kitsapsun.com/news/2010/jun/02/us-top-selling-vehicles-in-may/
The Ford F-150 is the top selling consumer vehicle in the US, followed by another pickup truck - the Chevy Silverado. Together, they total ~84k vehicles sold in May 2010.
That said, the other 8 models in that list together have sold roughly ~200k vehicles during the same time period.
If the analogy held, then PC's would end up getting out-sold by at least 2:1 :)
"...coding not for Windoze but for OSX ChromeOS and Linux."
So, which distro? Which patch level(s)? Which browser?
Some of it can be guessed at (esp. in OSX), but stop and think about this for a moment... popping a *nix box isn't as simple, nor is it as straightforward.
As for the marketshare claptrap, will someone kindly explain why MacOS 9,8,7, etc had a rather decent pile of viruses floating about for them, but OSX blackhats are forced to rely on trojans and extremely stupid users to get their wares installed?
( g'wan, say the same for Windows, but read this first: http://news.cnet.com/8301-27080_3-20006478-245.html )
As for this bit:
"the security risk to ANY OS is directly proportional to market share (ubiquity). "
If that were true, then 5-10% of all malware out right now should be OSX-related... instead the number is (roughly) 0.001% (give or take a decimal place).
--
Now - all that said... the truth lies somewhere in-between. Yes there are market-share factors, but anyone who claims it to be the end-all be-all is a fool. Likewise for anyone who claims that any OS is infallible.
I've preferred NetApp over EMC, but only because of the lower up-front costs. OTOH, NetApp can nickle+dime you to death over licensed add-on features if you let them, and tend to push some things as more important than they are (e.g. SnapManager - it's a great 2nd-line backup, but certainly no substitute for separate VLT's or tape).
You do realize that there's a real big diff between individuals (or groups thereof) such as your typical fundie Muslim type, and an entire government (let alone one subject to laws and democracy)... right?
Nobody said it was "OK" - just that it is, like it or lump it. Much like I don't go to Compton, California calling every black man I meet a n*gger, I don't go around drawing poor-taste parodies of a long-dead gent who is deeply revered by over a billion Muslims.
C'mon man... think about this for a moment here.
Most folks leaning leftward (US definition, mind) have had it soft until late. All this time, they've been poking fun at (or insulting, you pick) religions whose practitioners are relatively peaceful, the most reactionary of which will yell back, maybe boycott a museum or somesuch, but not much more.
They simply aren't used to the idea of parodying a religion whose more reactionary practitioners tend to react quite violently about being insulted (or worse, having their prophets insulted).
Doesn't excuse the threats and violence, mind you, but seriously - if you're going to launch insults, be prepared for the fists. Run around in any urban center, directly address various individuals with racial epithets, and eventually one of them are going to beat the unholy shite right out of you. This is basically how (rightly or wrongly) many Muslims will see parody cartoons of Mohammed.
Err, yep - a prediction involving transistors isn't going to quite work on batteries, now is it?
I get what you're driving at, though - you can't quite double mAh per cubic millimetre every 18 months. That said, battery tech does improve, albeit on a longer time scale. Also as electronics get more minaturised, it leaves more room for battery (assuming that the freed-up space doesn't get shunted off into more electronics for new features, etc).
Paris, because packing more into her per cubic mm would make for an interesting experiment, eh?
There are after all other "tablets" (loose definition of the word, I know) out there, most of which run Windows - but most of them can get fairly expensive in a hurry, and a goodly chunk of those look/smell/taste like laptops. Windows has pretty much had this segment to themselves for a decade now, with very little success - nearly none of which outside of the business sector.
As far as that whole market segment goes, until/unless someone comes out with a tablet that has a similar form factor and (most importantly) price-points, the iPad will continue to sell like crazy. As it stands right now, it's the cheapest "tablet" (loose definition again) out there.
"Adobe delicately defending themselves"
They're not IMO defending themselves, they're desperately trying to get Joe Public to demand that Flash go onto the iPhone/iPad/whatever... in spite of not even having a working RTM product to do that. Hell, their first reaction to Apple was from their chief fanboy - to wit: "go screw yourselves". Come to think of it, that seems to have been Adobe's reaction and attitude towards Apple since 1998...
You know? If Adobe had gotten in the ball in 2006 and produced an efficient mobile version of Flash that worked well on the emerging smartphone market, they wouldn't have had anything to worry about. Instead, they disbanded their mobile unit in 2007, and only last year or so hastily began to lash something together (about when they realized that -oh shit!- the mobile web market really is taking off...)
Long story short, Adobe brought this one on themselves.
IMHO (and nothing more) Adobe is the web version of surviving dinosaurs about 2 hours post-asteroid... They know something really big is about to happen, that they're in for something that will likely kill most of them off in a few years, but they're ill-prepared to do much of anything about it except roar.
Apple closes its family jewels (its UI, etc), but leaves its core (Darwin) open. Adobe does much the same thing (though only opening some of their core standards, and even then not fully, as witnessed by the performance of gnash vs. Flash).
Pox on both their houses. Now pass the popcorn, please. :)
"It runs on other mobile phones fine"
...which ones? I've only heard about the Android, and that was a public beta that flopped horribly.
I am seriously curious as to which production phones/OSes it currently runs on.
Also, to be fair, Flash performance on Windows (desktop) is far better than it is on OSX (desktop), where it tends to run quite horrid by comparison.
I think that someone in Redmond accidentally drank hydraulic fluid at the last company beer bash, TBH.
Seriously - I would rather masturbate with a cheese grater than try and emulate Facebook activities in a work environment (I'm the one who has to support all that shit at the back-end, and I find SharePoint to be an over-priced resource hogging headache, so maybe I'm biased here).
The only employees I can see offhand who would even want that would be the ass-kissers, the employees more interested in doing politics than work, that one creepy exec who really doesn't do much during the day beyond surfing dodgy sites in his office, and the terminally brain-dead.
Besides, if the proxy logs are accurate, employees with web access are too busy surfing the real Facebook all day long (yes, I'd love to block it. No, I don't want to have to deal with managerial fallout if I did do it. Best I'm able to do w/o getting lynched is to block anything coming out of Zynga and its ilk).
re:"It's obvious that you and the other freetards on here don't want to run M$ products, so why the fuck do you even care?"
Perhaps you're not familiar with enterprise environments. It's like this: If I have a mix of Windows and *nix users, and I'm the IT director, why do I have to pay for seats that I know won't be used?
I mean, if companies are realizing that they're having to shovel out money when they don't have to, what will they choose? I'm thinking that they'll ditch the Office cloud thingy instead of telling their DBA and engineering staff to ditch their Linux boxen...
Windows and Office likely ain't paying the bills like it used to, and both are losing market share badly... not only to competition, but more importantly to their own legacy products (after all, the existing stuff works just fine, works even better on new hardware, and why the frig do I need to shell out over $200/seat for new CALs again?)
Microsoft isn't dumb... they've been looking for new markets to pump money out of for years. Problem is, most of them aren't really paying off.
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