I mean, câ(TM)mon NYT, this isnâ(TM)t even âoeresearchâ - itâ(TM)s opinions based on hypotheticals and doesnâ(TM)t even answer the actual question (the answer is âoenoâ, by the way).
Whilst it's a noble thing to want to go open source and take it all on yourself, you can save yourself a major headache by going SaaS instead. I originally setup a XenServer running VMs for Endian Firewall for routing, Zimbra for groupware and Asterisk / Trixbox for the phones. It was, to say the least, a pain in the ass to support, and there's no place to hide when you're the sole admin for a system you setup yourself.
About 8 months ago I got sick of the distraction it was causing from my main role, and now we're running Google Apps for Organisations, a hardware router and a Sipgate Business account for fully hosted VoIP. We use Cisco SPA-921 SIP phones, which are about £55 (roughly $90), and the whole setup causes zero headaches. Our old setup appealed to us on principle (we're all software engineers!) but that was all it was - in the end, it cost us time and thus money.
It helps that we've got a great, rock-solid broadband net connection (check out Fluidata if you're in the UK and looking for good business connections!), but the combination of virtually zero critical equipment on-site and hosted services is such a good economical decision.
Yes, I know I'm preaching to an OSS-biased community here - OSS stacks can be great, and we probably will end up going with some combination of in-house and SaaS in the future, but only when we have dedicated people to run it. In the meantime, get the technology out of the way so you can concentrate on whatever it is your business does!
They reckon it'll be 7 days - I can live with that!
The Pebble was my first thought too - I've ordered one myself for the same reasons as the OP. Hackable, supports push notifications, customs apps, looks good etc. Plus it gives me a push to properly get back into C programming
Some extra info popped up online just a few days ago - a SCADA consultant posted this a few days ago. It's slightly terrifying, though someone with more SCADA experience than me would have to verify its accuracy:
For those who do not know, 747's are big flying Unix hosts. At the time, the engine management system on this particular airline was Solaris based. The patching was well behind and they used telnet as SSH broke the menus and the budget did not extend to fixing this. The engineers could actually access the engine management system of a 747 in route. If issues are noted, they can re-tune the engine in air.
The issue here is that all that separated the engine control systems and the open network was NAT based filters. There were (and as far as I know this is true today), no extrusion controls. They filter incoming traffic, but all outgoing traffic is allowed. For those who engage in Pen Testing and know what a shoveled shell is... I need not say more.
From the Wikipedia article:
"Granger's credentials were questioned by his own mother, a campaigner for the preservation of local health services in her area, who expressed her amazement at his appointment, criticising the whole scheme as 'a gross waste of money'".
If there wasn't so much evidence, Wikipedia's editors would likely delete that article for being so implausible. If I weren't a UK tax-payer, it'd almost be funny...
Well, if you want to write an OS, a critical real-time system, or a high-performance scientific data analysis suite, then no,
The strength isn't really in the idea of the CLR or whatever - that's an implementation detail. It's the huge framework of ready-made classes that accelerate development. Sure, there are plenty of PHP frameworks and so on, but with
As I suggested in the subject line, it's a matter of tools for the job. I regularly do C#, Obj-C, C, JavaScript, Perl and the odd bit of PHP and Java, and C#'s my favourite for headache-free development. It's not perfect for *every* job, but for the ones where it works, it works very well indeed.
I am quite startled that this made it to the front page of
It's a choice - that's market economics for you. The models exist, and thrive, because demand is there, or at least there are enough people who are willing to sacrifice conventional ownership to play the game or use the software.
Welcome to the modern world: you don't like the product, don't buy it! Buy something else, something which does suit your needs. Or, if that doesn't exist, build it yourself, or help start an OSS project to do it instead. And, if all of that is impractical or impossible to finance, then you've probably found the reason why no-one else is doing it that way.
Of course, there is market momentum, the incumbent's advantage, monopolistic misbehaving etc, but that's what regulators are for (when they're left to do their job properly). However, "the cloud", downloadable content and subscription-based RPGs exist because there's a gap in the market. Think you can do better? Fill it yourself!
Rant over...
...if Stallman is worried about it, it's probably worth using. Chicken Little indeed. One supposes that there might come a day when RMS realises that nobody gives a flying fuck.
As Bruce Schneier is fond of saying, security is a trade-off. Software and information licensing is a trade-off, too, and cloud users are clearly happy with that trade-off. Having worked in web technologies for some time, I've had many "but someone else will have our data!" conversations; people are not stupid, and if they choose to keep their data elsewhere, it's because they consider it worth the up-sides. Duh.
It's the combination of these two points which makes it so noxious. We (as consumers) have been encouraged to treat broadband providers as another passive utility company, as fundamental to modern life as electricity and gas. Now they're trying to have it both ways, and suggest that at the same time, they're an active participant in content consumption and should be compensated at both ends.
So, which is it? Passive utility, to be taken for granted and paid monthly without a thought, or active content platform due recognition but with responsibility for quality of service? Something tells me that either way, consumers will not be the winners here.
I previously worked for about 8 years for a medium-sized marketing and design agency, as the lead web developer. On almost every project that passed across my desk, I seemed to be the only one spotting spelling errors, grammatical mistakes and punctuation problems before copy went to the web and to print. This was in a company of 30-ish young, university educated professionals in London.
When the programmers are copy-editing your marketing material, that should be a sign you've got literacy problems!
The weird thing was that when I sent the copy back, corrected, everyone told me I was being anal - apparently not bothered about bad copy to billboards and magazines nationwide.
I agree with a commenter above, though - I think coding does encourage attention to detail when a stray semicolon becomes important.
...but the Planetarium closed down a few years ago. It was turned into a "celebrity cinema" bit of Madame Tussauds, showing showbiz movies. Philistines.
However, the Greenwich Observatory has their own, new planetarium - it's brand new, and right by the Greenwich Meridian:
In the sciences, we are now uniquely priviledged to sit side by side with the giants on whose shoulders we stand. -- Gerald Holton
