Repairing those patches on your lawn can be a fun and rewarding experience. Putting patches on trousers can be a trend setting - or breaking -experience. Some may enjoy the process of patching up their networking to get the best out of their network hardware and infrastructure, but few people I know enjoy patching their computers.
Why do we hate it so?
Well for one, patching can cause more problems than it solves. Untested patches cause faults, and having incompatible patches on different machines can cause interoperability and stability issues. Even just applying patches effectively is problematic. Failing to commit a patch can be just as bad when a virus or problem hits.
One of the biggest problems for the current crop of gadgets, as outlined in The Digital Camera Fights for Survival, is that to keep people buying the gadgets, you have to continue giving people reasons to do so.
For example, I've been using my mobile phone for four years - why didn't I upgrade? Because I couldn't see a reason to do so. Even now, the only reason I upgraded was because my original phone was going wrong. Hardly a compelling reason for everybody. The same is true of Digital Cameras. My old one was 3 years old before I replaced it recently, and I can't see me changing it any time soon.
One of the biggest problems for the current crop of gadgets, as outlined in The Digital Camera Fights for Survival, is that to keep people buying the gadgets, you have to continue giving people reasons to do so.
For example, I've been using my mobile phone for four years - why didn't I upgrade? Because I couldn't see a reason to do so. Even now, the only reason I upgraded was because my original phone was going wrong. Hardly a compelling reason for everybody. The same is true of Digital Cameras. My old one was 3 years old before I replaced it recently, and I can't see me changing it any time soon.
I've got three machines on my desk right now, not one of them is from what you would call a traditional supplier of PC equipment, and yet each one is capable of running an amazing range of operating systems, including those from major competitors.
Case in point, two of the machines are from Apple (a Mac Book Pro and an iMac). They are capable of running OS X, Windows, Solaris and Linux.
Also on the desk is a Sun Ultra 20M2 that I have on test at the moment (see Ultra 20M2 Arrived). That runs Solaris, Windows and Linux.
I've got three machines on my desk right now, not one of them is from what you would call a traditional supplier of PC equipment, and yet each one is capable of running an amazing range of operating systems, including those from major competitors.
Case in point, two of the machines are from Apple (a Mac Book Pro and an iMac). They are capable of running OS X, Windows, Solaris and Linux.
Also on the desk is a Sun Ultra 20M2 that I have on test at the moment (see Ultra 20M2 Arrived). That runs Solaris, Windows and Linux.
I’m really only just getting used to the Sun Studio 11 environment after years of using gcc, so quick guides to the Sun Studio 11 command line environment are a great way to get familiar.
There are some gems here I wasn’t aware of, like xscapture for capturing user interface design from a running Motif/Xt application; anaylyzer for a GUI performance monitor and dmake, for distributed building.
I think I need to spend some time going through each tool on this list and finding out how best to use it.
The headline is that while 38% or respondents said they would try virtualization within a year, the reality is that less than half of those would actually go ahead and do so.
The article also goes on to point out virtualization, even taking into consideration the current hardware virtualization options in CPUs from Intel and AMD, and software-based solutions like VMware, it is currently more of a buzzword and less an active principle and that it'll take some time before it becomes more popular and mainstream.
The headline is that while 38% or respondents said they would try virtualization within a year, the reality is that less than half of those would actually go ahead and do so.
The article also goes on to point out virtualization, even taking into consideration the current hardware virtualization options in CPUs from Intel and AMD, and software-based solutions like VMware, it is currently more of a buzzword and less an active principle and that it'll take some time before it becomes more popular and mainstream.