* Posts by peter

16 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Jun 2008

Laptop Hunters snare Microsoft on Linux

peter
Flame

@AC vs "ignore"

> 1) Return on investment for large companies (i.e. retraining _every_ worker on the new

> systems) that and support.

response A) vista & office 2007 are both significantly different to XP and office 2003, and will have similar training requirements

response B) large companies usually don't train their users on productivity tools like this anyway

>2) Companies, and home users for that matter, want to able to ring up and ask a question as

>to why something doesn't work (and of course they want an easy solution) and expect either

>an immediate answer or one within a week, not some crap forum were your post could take >weeks before someone even reads it.

response A) commercial support is available for linux, openoffice, etc

repsonse B) most home users ask their knowledgeable friend/child/colleague anyway

>3) They want their apps(esp. Games for home users) that they have paid for to run on it

>(before anyone points out 'but WINE will work" nobody wants to have to pay for additional

>hardware to run an app at the same speed that they were before)

response A) "games" is the *only* reason why anyone would really want a particular platform - everything else has a feasible & often cheaper and/or more effective alternative

response B) for really *good* games, go to your console, where you don't have to fiddle about with device drivers & video settings to get the optimum result

> 4) they don't give a toss about 'you can edit the source code'

response A) plenty of corporations find that they care about having access to source code when their favourite mission-critical application is arbitrarily EOL'd by the vendor, bought out & killed by a competitor, or need to work out how to efficiently integrate one application with others & can't work out why it's not working.

response B) but they might care about "you can read the data file"

Massive Sun cuts planned as IBM focuses on software trio

peter
Black Helicopters

and now JAVA is tanking

what a difference a day makes: thanks to NYtimes speculation of the possibly non-existant deal falling through, Sun's stock price just dropped almost 2 bucks on opening.

so was any of it real?

so long as they sack pony boy (as in chuck him out without a golden parachute) i'll be happy

Court rules airline secret security list is stupid

peter

@Ross Fleming

1st & business class normally get nice big glass bottles of wine laying about the place: not much effort to turn that into a weapon :P

Abba star slates 'lazy, stingy' Pirate Bay fans

peter

it's about the ART, right ?

...at least, that's what they all say in interviews.

i don't recall any actors, directors or musicians waxing lyrical about how much they love the filthy lucre part of their industries...

Apple shares MacBook break-in tips

peter
Boffin

not just apple

the first time i tried to open my old sony vaio laptop to swap hard drives the magic smoke got out & it needed a $2000 trip to the repair centre for a new motherboard (for no apparent reason).

when i finally succeeded in (non-destructively) opening another vaio of a similar model, there were definitely more than 8 screws - probably more like 14 or 15 of vastly different lengths.

so, erm, "big deal". buy the mac laptop that's better suited to your purposes & stop whining.

Don’t let Microsoft timescales dictate your Windows migration

peter
Stop

step off the desktop upgrade spiral completely

- deploy applications to web

- use w3c & similar open standards

- avoid proprietary solutions

- access corporate systems from practically any device

Apple should start taking enterprise servers seriously

peter
Thumb Down

no sales

apple hasn't been able to sell into business in the past, and are unlikely to be taken any more seriously now. they'd also have to create an entirely new support service in order to cope with enterprise customers.

what's the point? given Sun's decline there's no obvious benefit to me to apple distracting itself with enterprise systems.

Kiwis deploy nut-crush powered jumbo

peter

deserts != terra nullius

although jatropha *could* grow in arid parts of australia, it's almost certain that someone will complain about affecting the "delicate ecosystems"* with their many rare and endangered creatures (most of which look like mice) and plants (most of which look like grass)

i can't see this idea getting off the ground (haha), unfortunately; even if there was no barrier to filling up otherwise unsustainable australian farmland (those lost to drought, salinity, etc) with jatropha, the sheer scale of the energy requirements for jet travel make this only a tiny part of a solution - we need a denser energy source.

--

* apparently all ecosystems are "delicate" when anyone wants to do anything with them

What the heck is an IT Architect anyway?

peter

treat with suspiscion

i initially trained as a "real" (built environment) architect, but like many who start down that path didn't continue in that industry, as i actually wanted to earn a living wage before i turned 40 :P

there are definitely parallel roles in built architecture and IT architecture (of all kinds): you have to understand requirements, design a solution, document the details, draw up a plan of deployment, oversee the development, and arbitrate variances that crop up during the build process.

the problem in the IT world is exactly the problem that the british Architects Act tries to resolve - lots of people are calling themselves (or are labelled by employers & trainers) "architect" when they are not qualified to be so named - so we end up treating the title with suspicion. for example, in one organisation i know, the business analysts decided they didn't want to be "BA's" anymore & so started calling themselves "solution architects", even though they never actually produced a solution or any architecture... they just thought it sounded cooler :P

having said that, it doesn't mean that there aren't people in the IT industry who are worthy of the title (or at least worthy of the role the title implies), just as there were plenty of worthy built-environment architects before the various institutes of architects appeared on the scene (i think Inigo Jones got on quite well, for example)

for now i just call myself "consultant" - that's a weaselly enough word, but it's also bland enough to avoid being *too* pretentious...

25 years of Macintosh - the Apple Computer report card

peter

succession?

So the biggest challenge facing apple is how to survive the end of the Jobs era? Futurama-style head jars notwithstanding, there's going to come a time when even his Steveness will have to hand over the CEO badge.

So who's going to succeed Jobs and keep the magic going (without going off the rails)? And will Steve be able to transfer ownership gently or will it have to be pried from his cold dead hands?

IBM smells Sun red ink

peter
Go

@AC

but of course, opensolaris on power6 would be very cool, no ?

if IBM ported & supported an opensolaris implementation, they'd probably have a lot of people starting to line up to buy

Harvey Keitel to experience Life on Mars

peter
Coat

oh god

actually..... no, i'll just get my coat

Underage US gamers buying GTA: IV

peter
Paris Hilton

"all video games are for children"

surely all video games are childish things for children?

just like all cartoons must be for children :P

. . . frankly anyone under these misapprehensions should be forced to watch all of the Urotsukidōji (legend of the overfiend) movies in continuous rotation until they understand that the delivery mechanism does not predicate the content!

paris has a better idea of content than a lot of parents...

Aussies: Eat roos, save the planet

peter

Coat of Arms meal

@Steve: we threw a 'coat of arms' barbie on Australia Day a few years ago: roo & emu steaks with mustard cream sauce - yummy

it's amazing how many aussies *don't* eat kanagaroo - mostly people don't know how to cook it, leading to the "tough" or "gamey" labels. my guess is that they'd have the same problem cooking venison

Sun picks away at NetApp's patent claims

peter

re: solaris bloat

solaris appliance:

# uname -a

SunOS portal 5.11 snv_74 i86pc i386 i86pc

# prtconf |head -2

System Configuration: Sun Microsystems i86pc

Memory size: 447 Megabytes

# df -kh /

Filesystem size used avail capacity Mounted on

/dev/dsk/c0d0s0 1.6G 592M 1007M 38% /

... so solaris works fine with less than 500MB RAM & an install of less than 600MB.

hint: simply by not installing StarOffice, you save about 800MB :P

OpenSolaris still has some Linux copying to do

peter

@Chavdar - sxce => zfs root

Chavdar wrote:

> - ZFS is not a developer tool, of course. It's just an excellent filesystem. OpenSolaris is the first wich actually installs itself in a ZFS root. SXCR still can't do this as of B90.

yes it can, you just have to do a text-based install rather than GUI.

$ uname -a

SunOS crucible 5.11 snv_90 i86pc i386 i86pc

$ zfs list

NAME USED AVAIL REFER MOUNTPOINT

rpool 7.35G 7.54G 36K /rpool

rpool/ROOT 5.35G 7.54G 18K legacy

rpool/ROOT/snv_90 5.35G 7.54G 5.18G / <-----

rpool/ROOT/snv_90/var 166M 7.54G 166M /var

as for ThinkPad T61 wireless problems: works fine for me, make sure you have the iwk driver (shock horror! just like in linux, not all the drivers are bundled!) http://opensolaris.org/os/community/laptop/wireless/iwk/