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Novell Cancels BrainShare Conference
A.B. VerHausen writes "While OSCON and SCALE organizers ramp up plans for their events, Novell shuts down BrainShare after 20 years, citing travel costs and budget tightening as main concerns. 'Instead of the traditional in-person conference, Novell plans to offer online classes and virtual conferences to make education and training available to more people at a lower per-head cost to companies,' says the news story on OStatic.com."
I think the real story here is people are still using Novell. They must be found and stopped! Oh god, the nightmares of NetBEUI and IPX/SPX... they haunt me.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
I heard they cancelled the show because of complaints from Zaphod Beeblebrox.
Are their any official virtual conferences where every one uses collaborative technologies to hold a conference with out flying all over the world? It might cut down on "hallway chatter" but social services like Twitter might make up for that.
Think Deeply.
At first I read "Novell causes brain cancer." I need more sleep.
People still use Netware?
Disclaimer: I spent a year (91-92) working for Novell in Utah.
That said, IPX was in many ways both more forward-looking and easier to administrate than IP networks:
Instead of statically allocated local addresses or DHCP servers, IPX use the 48-bit MAC address as the only local identifier.
IPX and IP both use 32-bit external addresses, but the IPX 32-bit address is simply the address of the network, with no addressing mask to split it into net/host parts. This meant that clients could be plugged in anywhere and just worked, without any DHCP servers, and since each Netware server was allocated its own internal 32-bit network address, it was trivial to install multiple network cards for load balancing and/or redundancy:
If a single link went down, all traffic would automatically be rerouted to the other interface, while having a single unique server address.
This same mechanism was a key part of Software Fault Tolerant (SFT) NetWare, which used a mirrored (over a separate fast/high-bandwidth link) link to replicate all inputs between two servers: This allowed Drew Major (the chief architect) to keep the two servers in lockstep, and handle pretty much any kind of single disaster (up to and including smashing a server with a 100-ton press) without a single client drop.
As a programmer I really liked the way IPX used Async Event Blocks (AEBs) to control all send/receive operations, with optional application callbacks at interrupt time.
At one point (around 1988?) this allowed me to write an IPX-based print server under Dos, which managed to fit a dual-buffered print receiver, interrupt-driven serial and parallel port printer interfacing plus all the housekeeping needed for a TSR, inside about 1600 bytes.
This allowed 2x512 bytes as print buffers, 256 bytes as the local stack and about 300+ bytes for all the remaining code and data.
Terje
"almost all programming can be viewed as an exercise in caching"
I see Novell daily. Many of the customers we have ( I work in tech support) use Novell servers for their database machines and they are actually very reliable. seems like they just chug away for much longer than a windows server running the same systems. I agree that it is a beast when something breaks on a Novell server and there just dont seem to be many experts on them anymore. (I am so not one, even though I do know some basics). all in all Novell did many things right.
At Networld in 1990 (I think it was) I recall some MS person talking about how Lan Man 2.0 was going to blow Netware out of the water speed-wise. Drew Major calmly responded "Maybe if you ever release it, we'll see."
Ah, those were the days.
"The ferrets, they're every where I tell you!"
...the whole sharing brains thing was just too messy. Everyone always went home all sticky.
Eew.
Novell pulling out of an expensive conference? Only one explanation - Ron Hovsepian must be about to perish!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
One more crippling bombshell crushed the already beleaguered Travel industry when Novell cofirmed they were going to move to cancel Brainshare conferences and use online resources. Ntecraft confirms that oil is at already at umprecedented low levels collapsing in complete disarray, as more people use online networking instead of hotels. You don't need to be a Kreskin to see where this headed. We're all going to have internet implants rather than using airplanes. Let's look at the numbers...
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
...the whole sharing brains thing was just too messy. Everyone always went home all sticky.
The real problem was all the zombie processes.
Mmmmmmm... Braaaaiiiiinnnsss......
-Taylor
(err... I mean Taaaaaaaayyyyyyloooorrrrr)
Worldwide Military budgets: $2100 billion. Worldwide Space Exploration budgets: $38 billion. Really, world? Really?
The zombie lord and his minions have been finally put to death by a small faction of Novell employees loyal to the human race. Our brains are safe for another day.
Novell is not alone in shutting down their annual event, NetApp has also canceled their annual conference. Jet a grip - the economy just plain sucks.
Yes, well, scale your "very roughly" up to every office in your org and add a bunch of proprietary apps and you've got Enterprise-class trouble.
One office at a time, with one person doing it is blissfully simple. Have a great holiday.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
About 50% of our apps are written in-house, and yeah, they certainly have caused the most trouble, but nothing that testing and tinkering didn't fix. Like I said, though, the last office that I did went over great. I prepped scripts to do pretty much everything, perpared the entire domain, users, OUs, policies and all, did it in one weekend and literally by that Wednesday everyone was back to normal productivity levels. The "very roughly" part happened in the very beginning, when myself and the previous admin knew nothing about AD and just kinda winged the HQ conversion without planning or testing anything. That was a nightmare, I'll certainly give you that. I will have a nice holiday, you too.
I agree that the parent was making some snide half-assed remarks towards Novell / SuSE Linux, but in those remarks were some half-assed truths.
We're migrating off of the last of our Netware boxes, some of them have over four years of uptime so we're not exactly rushing to swap them out. Many of these boxes are being replaced with their new SUSE Linux-based counterparts that offer the same Netware file and directory services that we had before. So far the experience has been terrible. Large file servers that never crashed on Netware now go down weekly. Directory services simply stop answering LDAP queries with no explanation. Sometimes we can restart the service without rebooting, but usually a poorly implemented kernel module blows out and takes the whole system down with it.
We aren't suffering from problems with Linux, instead we suffer from Novell rushing ported Netware services out the door to make their SUSE offerings look like a complete and competent replacement for Netware. They're not there yet, so I find some truth to the parent's troll that "it's all half-assedly based on Suse Linux now," because in many ways it is.
I went to eat some animal crackers and the box said, "Do not eat if seal is broken." I opened the box and sure enough..
I support Windows servers, Novell(netware and suse OES 2.1) servers, sun, and SAP...I have far more problems with Windows than any other. I would give up all my windows servers to have less work.. Personallyk, I believe many people who run windown have the wool pulled to tightly over their eyes...really thing about it...Windows is very unstable, far more vulenerable and just plain sucks.
Novell rocks. What most people (admins) fail to understand is Novell is a Networking company. Their products are for a Networking Infrastructure, where on the other hand Microsoft is an Application company, not a networking company (obvious by recent hacks). After all MS taped Novell 650 million for their IP...where on the other hand Novell paid MS 50 million for their IP...Whos' is worth more...the truth is in the numbers. GET IT ...MICROSOFT is not a Networking Company, they are an application company... HELLO, That's why they suck at networking. Ask the IMF, World Bank, CITI Bank and the Pentagon where their recent hacks came from. The recent "urgent" patches were to repair hacks to the above businesses. The World Bank packed up their Windows Servers and sent them to MS to fix, CITI Bank had their password Server hacked....after MS assured them it was secure....hahahah that was stupid..
Computer conventions are on the way out. Comdex, E3, and Macworld are dead or dying; now Novell. The SF Convention Bureau says that two Cisco conventions and one from NetApp have been canceled for 2009.
Doctor conventions are up, though.
If you ever need to have more than 48 bits to address unique items on interest, on a single network segment, then you'll have a problem.
2^48 is a pretty big number though. It is big enough that every human being on the planet can have about 60.000 addresses, on every single possible IPX network segment.
IPX won't run out before you do need that many single-segment addresses, and IPv6 is doing much of the same as IPX, by (at least by default) having the 48-bit MAC as the least significant part of the 128-bit address.
Terje
"almost all programming can be viewed as an exercise in caching"
As I was getting ready for work, I remembered a problem. Management of the network did get worse with the transistion to SuSE in the realm of DNS / DHCP. On Linux, DNS / DHCP management is practically a stone-age operation. On NetWare it was far better, with a Windows app that did syntax checking, and the data was stored in eDirectory (which means auto-replication and redundancy). So my portrayal that the migration is completely rosey is flawed. Wanted to fess up that there IS some pain involved, and that it's not all 100% UPgrade.
"The most sensible request of government we make is not, "Do something!" But "Quit it!"