What does it matter if Amazon has 100 or 1000 more IT personal than you?

The more I hear about cloud, the more I realize that everyone isn't talking about the same thing and truly doesn't understand it. Are you hosting your applications in someone else's datacenter and still maintaining them yourself? Are you paying someone else to support them? Or are you using hosted applications such as Salesforce.com?

The bottleneck in most part isn't the IT resources, its the failure of management to let their resources do the job properly. So in alot of cases it doesn't matter if you maintain your own server room or in the cloud. If your management won't allow downtime for security patches, or what not, then it doesn't really matter where your applications are. Unless your used hosted applications and have no control.

Cloud has nothing to do with who can do it better, but management taking a layer of risk off their own shoulders and making someone else liable. Speaking as someone who supports applications hosted in the "cloud".

I don't mean to sound insulting, I just don't understand why people have that much storage at home for tv shows/movies? Maybe its just me but I rarely watch something more than once.. There are only a few select movies that I have watched more than once.. Star Wars, LOTR, just to name a couple. So to have that much space holding on to things i'll never watch again, I just don't get it.

On top of that, i've run custom setups and I just got tired of maintaining it. Now with Netflix, US Netflix, Shomi and my PVR I have a long list of content I have to watch. I have been eligible for a new PVR for quite awhile now but I can't seem to clear the backlog.

That depends are you getting the information you need?

Are your business analysts/architects even able to answer questions such as, how many net new users, concurrent users, able to summarize the typical workload? Back in the day and i'm only in my early 40's, this stuff used to be well defined. We used to have large documents which go down to the level of expected network load. So its either as you said, its too difficult given the diversity of the systems or they just don't know how to do their jobs anymore. I honestly think its about a 20/80 split. Yes the environments are more difficult to manage, but BA's/architects haven't adapted or frankly just don't care.

BA's can't give me any information which would help me forsee or estimate how much load a project/change is going to have on the environment. So when i'm asked if we need new hardware, I just usually tell them to make sure they plan a proper load test and be prepared to spend money.

In my company, its my job to make sure lights on runs well and highlight any issues related to capacity. For new projects, then its part of the project team which I may or may not be a part of.

Storage, for us, seems to be the largest constraint, with memory and cpu coming in behind. Since we can't get much information, we just make sure we have all our servers hooked up to a large san so we can quickly provision more space.

So that can only be doing by teaching programming???

I can code in quite a few languages.. how on earth is that going to help me learn how to properly use software for irrigation systems?

Your wife doesn't need to code, thats what the hospital has Business Analysts and an IT department for. The only reason your writing these scripts for her is that it would be too painful/time consuming for her to get this done through the proper channels.

Her time is better spent doing "doctor" stuff, not sitting behind a computer coding. (Unless it was her hobby of course..)

Most jobs don't require any coding skills.. I work in a company of 300 people... We have 6 programmers in amongst 30 IT staff. There are probably another 5-6 people who write a little bit of code here and there as part of their job.. The other 15 or so have absolutely no need. Company wide, the other 270, no need. I've worked for huge IT companies as well, and while the ratio may change, the clear majority were not required to be able to code in any shape or form. So why do we have all these articles about pushing kids to code? Why do people think this will benefit them in any way long term?

There seems to be some confusion that teaching someone to code, will teach them how to use computers.

One based off of RedHats and one based off Kernel.org. The RHEL kernel has alot more code it in, naturally.

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/server-storage/linux/technologies/uekr2-features-1897094.html

Some features:
PV Huge Pages
dtrace
ocsf2
btfrs
ksplice..

From what I have seen on Oracle systems OEL is better for largest systems with heavy workloads.

If your running Oracle, IMHO it makes sense to run a tuned kernel. If you've already invested in the Oracle stack, then it makes sense to me to run Oracle Linux as well. Why have unnecessary bloat in there? Sure you could always compile and tune it yourself. Any improvements are sent back to kernel.org.

Do you expect them to say open source has a lower TCO? They are bidding/positioning themselves for contracts. If you were a real estate agent on a client interview and asked about a competitor, would you give them a glowing review? I doubt it.

There are many factors which contribute to TCO and the code itself is just one piece.

Security, both OpenSource and Oracle have fallen short in this area. In some cases Oracle has left security bugs sitting for a very long time. Sometimes until called on it publicly. However, with open source your relying on the code maintainers to put in a fix quick. Alot of times they do but that depends on the software and how actively supported it is. Sure, you can modify the code yourself but that affects TCO.

We have both Oracle and open source software in house. Based on our experiences i'm not sure that the open source software has a lower TCO than its more commercial alternative. The upfront costs to open source are cheaper but the long term support costs were higher. Before I get flamed, i'm talking about a particular open source product. Since i'm posting from work i'll leave specifics out of it. But the point is, just because its open source doesn't always mean overall TCO is lower. You have to do the analysis on a product by product basis and factor in both upfront and long term costs.

A week or two??? How many enterprise systems have you installed? I've been on a couple of these implementations and it just takes a team of people many months of work. The larger the company the longer it takes. One install, for a customer with less than 300 employees took 8 months. Its not as simple as you make it out to be.

change for the sake of change. Let me say up front that i've worked in IT for over 15 years. Mostly as a DBA but I did network admin, hardware, development and OS.

I keep hearing how the next version will do X, save Y amount of time and Z money. Won't require as many people to maintain it, etc. Yet it never seems to be the case. Vendors keep us on a continuous upgrade cycle because bug fixes aren't back ported or to get the latest security patches, etc. Managers, architects seem to focus more on resume building than a stable environment.

I can't get any commitment for maintaining production but if i'm an hour late on a project task i'll have an army standing in my cubicle harassing me. I constantly hear developers wanting to go back to the basics because the new piece of software that's supposed to make their life easier isn't as stable.

Yes, I love to play with the latest and greatest features but i'm not sure if from the companies perspective if its always worth the money. I have to say working in IT support can be a very frustrating and stressful job.

We have the Wii, Wii U, Xbox 360, PS3, DS XL, DSi, PSP. Old gamer dad, 13 year old daughter who games infrequently.. Mostly the Kinect/Dancing games. 11 year old gamer son.

The Xbox gets used the most, PS3 gets used for netflix (because of the tv its hooked into) and blurays. DSXL haven't seen that one picked up in awhile.. DSi, very rarely. PSP barely used since it was bought, except for some good titles like God of War.

The Wii U has some cool features. The tablet works much better than I thought it would. Some of the games are pretty fun to play, especially the party games where the tablet has a different view. As group play, its probably been the most fun of any console. However, it gets old quick. I think its been a couple of weeks since the Wii U has been on.

I think the Wii was under powered, especially for first person shooters. I think the Wii U has enough power now so that the console can "keep up" and they can focus on game play. Quite honestly, I think the graphics on the Xbox PS3 are fine. The processors are fast enough to provide smoothly play. I'm really not sure what these new systems can do other than make the games prettier. They certainly aren't going to fix the horrible spawning issues in CoD. The maps only seem to have gotten smaller.. No decent MMORPG multiplayer seamless worlds that require extra horsepower, etc.

IMHO Nintendo should have waited and released around the same time, or shortly before with a beefier system for the same price its offering now. There are plenty of one console households around. Your not going to get them to switch until they see what all the systems offer. If at that point the Wii U is slightly less powerful but cheaper, then you may have people switch over to it. If its popular, then common titles like CoD will probably be developed based on the least powerful system, so won't matter if the other consoles are better.

If the new consoles that come out aren't that much more powerful than the Wii U and the Wii U has most of the games, then I won't buy another console. If the next generation of games can't be played on the Wii U, then I'll be buying an Xbox or PS4, not both this time. I think its a gamble for Nintendo because as we have see with the Wii, casual gamers don't buy alot of games. If the Wii U can't play the next gen games then I think its long term success is dismal.

Granted, I don't have the details on the licenses but how exactly is MS losing money? 95% of PC's shipped still have a version of windows on it. Vista was considered a dismal failure and it still brought in a ton of money. Unless new PC's are being shipped with Linux or Mac OS then i'm not sure how MS is not making money?

I went to a resort in Cayo Coco last year. The resort was nice and modern. Took a day trip into Ciego de Avila and it was a different story. The center of the city looks fine but you go a few blocks out of the way and it goes downhill pretty fast. In general everything looked pretty run down, especially on the drive in.

I didn't see as many 1950's cars as I thought I would. I saw plenty of small motor bikes, horses, bikes, etc. Saw newer cars at the resort but don't recall seeing many in the city. I'm sure it would have stood out.

In general it appeared that the vast majority of people lived in or close to poverty. That was reinforced by the many talks we had with Hotel staff and our tour guides. But who knows,they could have been playing us for tips. ;) They generally seem to be a very happy bunch of people tho.

Personally I love playing FPS games on a console. While I may not be as accurate as on a PC I find it much more relaxing to play.

I've played my share of FPS games on PC's. From Doom, Quake, America's Army and countless others.

It just comes down to personal preference. The only games I have found that really work better on a PC are RTS games. However, after playing C&C on the xbox, once you got the shortcuts memorized it wasn't too bad at all.