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911 Calls Linux
911 Calls Linux - For Reliable Service
In January 1998 I began testing linux for our 911 Center here in St. George Utah. We are the 911 Center for the South west corner of Utah. In November of 1998 Testing was complete with great success. I implemented Linux as the workstation for our 911 Center using RedHat 5.2 and AfterStep as the windows manager. These workstations get worked on 24 hrs a day seven days a week and run several apps on screen.
Some of the apps that we run our Eterm to connect to the main HP Server, X3270 for our State computer connection, WordPerfect for different reports the dispatchers create, and some custom apps I have written in C.
Our WordPerfect was given to us Mike Cowpland CEO of Corel. The WordPerfect 8 has worked perfectly. Thanks Mike.
Our uptime has been over 200 DAYS. This doesn't even come close to the reboot once a day with the Microsoft OS. I could give several horror stories of when the dispatcher is in the middle of a hot call, then had to reboot.
Linux has done so well, that I have unplugged the reset buttons and disabled the power switch. This was done to prevent finger glitch when they have to restart the NT box our radios work from (I just wish Motorola would switch over), that sits next to the linux box. Linux is the main console that the 911 Dispatcher works from, and has held up better than any I have ever seen. Linux has been doing great in the server end, but I have heard it's not very good at the client end. NOT TRUE. My installation time for the first pc was 45 minutes for full install with apps. By the time I got to the last set it was 30 minutes for full install. As a client it has worked great.
The only shutdowns have been from one power supply failure, and a kernel update for each. The workstations are still running great.
Officer Sherman Stebbins
St. George Police Department
e-mail policesa@infowest.com
Let me add my support to the mix as well. I use what ever OS I need to do for a job, sometimes its because one OS is superior to another for one application, sometimes its because we are designing a product that we will want others to be able to implement without having to hire geeks, even if it isn't the most stable platform.
Its kinda funny as I've got one application leak on my mac that I haven't been able to trace in the coding...my boss keeps telling me that this is the reason I should switch over to NT even though it takes approximately a month and a half before it starts to bomb out.
Now most people's NT boxes don't stay up that long, though my image servers (we archive several terrebytes of student data) haven't been rebooted in about 6 months...and the last was due to a hard disc failure on the primary drive.
My linux boxes stay in a corner where no one messes with them (though I haven't figured how to get my damn MB to allow booting without a keyboard attached...need to upgrade the BIOS if I ever take any down and see if this takes care of that). They have unpresidented uptime, but I'm, the only one that knows how to use them.
When picking a machine, ya have to ask whats it going to be used for and whos going to use them. A moron can administer a Mac and a Moron with a MCSE can administer an NT box (hmmm...was that redundant...I don't doubt there are MCSE's that know what time it is, but I haven't met one). You're gonna be hard pressed to find a geek that will be able to administer a linux box past installing Apache and maybe a few other services. If you find someone who knows whats going on, ye not going to have the problems with any OS that seems to do the job.
clif (damn, I'm rambling today)
no text. But if you read anyway, i just don't see why they used linux instead of freebsd.
look at crack.linuxppc.org
linux can't handle out of memory as well as freebsd.
(and whoever says linux is more stable then freebsd needs to do some research)
-bugg
I personally have come to strongly dislike Windows and disagree with some of the stuff in here, but this message is obviously informative and deserves more than a rating of 0.
Smells like bigotry on the moderator's part.
While I agree that NT is good for somethings, I do seem to recall a story about hotmail trying to switch to NT and failing. Now running on Sun. In my personal experience, our live servers are NT, running Commerce server 3.0, SQL 7 and IIS. I personally don't administer them, but our uptime is about 2 days between reboots. We've been on the phone for days at a time with Microsoft, and things have got better, we use to have to reboot nightly. (actually had it set up automatically) for what we are paying, that kind of quality is unacceptable.
It's the 21st Century Do you know what your government is doing
As is "This "NT needs to be rebooted everyday" is pure FUD and Bullshit." The article said Windows OS, not NT. "Our uptime has been over 200 DAYS. This doesn't even come close to the reboot once a day with the Microsoft OS." NT was mentioned as their radio OS and as still being used. Article struck a nerve did it?
All 911 call centers are autonomous networks doofus!
Looking at the actual error message, exception 0E is a failure to retrieve swapped/paged memory from disk. The failure, it says, occurs in the VXD VMM (virtual memory windows driver) at the OS-level. I suppose it could have been a poorly written application that triggered the message, but in my experience when Windows has to bump out to text mode to give me an error message (indicating to me that the problem is above the application level, so much to the point that Windows doesn't trust the stability of the GDI to render a friendly error message graphically), a reboot/lockup is not too far behind.
When will the world come to realize that there isn't always someone to blame for things going wrong... almost any event is affected by a thousand tiny things in the outside world, unless it is an extremely controlled test environment (and even then I'm sure there are external variables). I know thats a scary thought to most people, but life is like that.
-- 'knowledge is power. power corrupts. study hard, be evil.'
I can't speak for WordPerfect (I use StarOffice), but AfterStep has never crashed on me.
Linux is more stable and reliable than Windows, plain and simple. If you've worked much with both platforms, you should know that.
Thad
The Bolachek Journals
Here in 'Merica, a fee for 911 service is added to each subscriber's phone bill. I believe each state's public utilities commission figures the rates. Also, I assume that its only added in areas covered by 911 service. If there's one thing about Slashdot, someone will correct me if I'm wrong! :)
Actually, for us, British Columbia is in the Pacific Southwest.
:)
:)
Of course, there's really not a whole lot much more North I guess.
Greg
Vancouver, BC
Not even! I lived there for a few years, the "Utah mormons" act very superior to everyone - even non-Utah mormons. I know several people who were from out of state and the "Utah mormons" looked down their noses at them. Utah has the highest per capita incident of: Prozac prescriptions, mothers working out of the home, and I think that Salt Lake City had one of the highest rates of rape in the nation last year.
Back on track, glad to see another mission critical app moved to a stable OS.
I doubt what you say because of the diversity of opinion. To put it mildly I have never heard of anyone even talk about quake at all except the people who were taking CS classes at my local high school when I was there. And no one (even the people who cared about linux) discusses the philosophical ramifications of OSS and linux.
The death of one man is a tragedy; the death of a million is a statistic --Joseph Stalin
You still don't get it.
To the average end user, there is no OS They
use their computer to do one or two things, say
Word Processing or Browsing. Your mom doesn't know the difference between a device driver, an OS, or an application. Maybe not even the difference between software and hardware.
If WordPerfect or Netscape on Linux crash often,
it's just as bad as if the OS crashes.
Sure, it doesn't take down the OS and require a reboot like Windows95, but they still lose their work!
Imagine you compose a super long message in Slashdot's compose window and Netscape crashes. You'll be super pissed, just as pissed as if the OS needed a reboot.
I have an NT box that has an uptime of atleast 6 months. I haven't rebooted it since February. Explorer rarely if ever crashes on me.
Let's consider a reductio ad absurdum to prove my argument: What if every Linux user application crashed after running for 1 minute.
The OS could have an uptime of 30 years, but the system would still be unusable.
Application stability is critical. Sure, unstable apps can't take down the OS (they don't on NT either, only bad device drivers do) but that doesn't make a damn bit of difference to the end user.
KDE is stable, but not "rock solid" GNOME stability is a fantasy. XFree86 has a habit of tanking on some chipsets or sucking up mega amounts of memory over a long period of time.
WordPerfect and Netscape are both very risky programs on Linux., etc
Linux zealots like to champion the stability of Linux vs NT at the OS level (I dispute that NT crashes as much as claimed. Given my heavily used NT4sp5 box that's been up non-stop since february) But the sorry state of many Linux apps is, ahem, overlooked.
(oh yes, please bring up the 4 or 5 only known stable apps, like sendmail, bind, apache, emacs, and perl. some list there.)
It's true that NT is the most stable version on Windows...I am forced to user it at work and I rarely have to hit the reset button...buuut... By the end of the day this thing just moves like frozen mud...I can't imaginge what it would be like after a couple days...Also...sometimes I get a rasman error that forces me to reboot if I want to use outlook...so yeah..NT doesn't crash much..but it's hardly what I would call "robust". Course this is just my experience..
Meanwhile my Lnux box at home has been up for about 3 months with no noticable performance degradation. The Linux box is doing a lot more than my NT box is doing too. (Web server..development work etc vs word processing )It's funny, I never even think about bringing it down..
I do have to add that I just love it when MS stormtroopers say that if your NT box is setup properly and administered properly then you will not have any problems...sheesh...give me a break. Maybe that's why some people have a hard time believing anything a Pro-microsoft person says.. they are always blaming any problem that anyone has on cheap hardware..bad sysadmin..improper setup...etc... I thought one of the benefits of NT was supposed to be how "easy" it to setup vs Linux..sheesh...
Without third party add ons? What *use* is a server that can only software programs from a single company? What is a company to do if they need UPS monitoring, Multiserver backup, Accounting/Accounts Payable or other catagories of software that Microsoft has not entered yet?
As for TerraServer:
a) IBMs Patent Server (DB2) is bigger
b) It was not the bastion of stability or reliability for a while. (Click on Utah, get the middle of the Atlantic)
I've got dozens of NT boxes that I've never needed to press the reset switch on. So does my experience negate this story?
Well, you didn't need to press the reset button, you could have set the power switch to off, and then back to on. You just used the reset button because it was easier.
=P
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
Even if we accept your premise that a properly configured stock NT system, "without odd third party addons", is as stable as any other system, you still miss a key point. In the real world we have to deal with "3rd party software or odd hardware," and if they cause the system to crash then NT IS FLAWED.
To give you a somewhat silly analogy, let me introduce to NewT. NewT has has his driver's license revoked because he's in an accident on a weekly basis.
NewT claims that it isn't his fault, that he has never been in an accident when driving on closed roads where he's the only driver. He's never had an accident even when a handful of carefully selected drivers shared the roads with him.
"BUT IT'S NOT HIS FAULT THAT OTHER DRIVERS KEEP CAUSING HIM TO HAVE ACCIDENTS."
None of us would hesitate to yank NewT's license, because NewT's *must* be able to share the road with others.
Likewise claims that NT is as stable as other OSes "provided it is properly configured and is not running third-party software or contains additional hardware" leaves us underwhelmed. Even if we accept the implicit argument that Microsoft should be the only software vendor in the world, even MS applications have been known to cause NT to crash. And the idea that we should all be happy with a limited selection of video cards and network cards *only* is too silly to even bother responding to.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
Caldera, Stampede, and TurboLinux are all products of Utah, just to name three. To say that the Linux community in Utah is small just indicates that you're not part of it.
Reminds me of May this year in Las Vegas, during Interop Week. As you may know, the casinos have these huge colour displays pushing their dubious attractions - one of them was displaying the Windows Login screensaver - i.e. it had crashed, presumably auto-rebooted (which is possible in NT), and got stuck at the login prompt.
Unfortunately I didn't have a camera with me...
Actually, some of us like to call it "Utaho" -- saves time. (Hmm. Give the northern half of Idaho to whoever will take it, give Boise to Oregon, combine the rest with the top 2/3 of Utah, and divvy up the southern third of Utah with Arizona, Nevada, and Colorado. Rename the new, merged piece "Utaho". Better congressional representation, too.)
You obviously don't know what you're talking about. I've been using FreeBSD and Linux for almost two years now, and the only apps that have crashed on me have been Enlightenment, Gnome, and sometimes Netscape. Nothing else ever has. I've used Afterstep and Windowmaker for windowmanagers and both are rock solid, even when I have over 50 windows open, and the CPU is groaning at a 4+ job level and 100% CPU usage.
So what if Gnome crashes once in a while? I've never had KDE crash on me. So since you have a choice (I realize that concept is foriegn to the AC who posted this nonesense) choose the app that's solid, rather than the eye candy one.
That's a lot of crap. It's obvious you never use Linux, if you do, why be an Anonymous Coward? I use Wordperfect for Linux regularly, I have ever since it was released in Jan/Feb and it has never core dumped on me. It has all the great features Word doesn't have, like Shadowcursor, which allows you to drop a cursor anywhere in the page at any time, or Smartmenus, which change the menubars to fit your context in the document (outline, graphic object, etc.) Get a clue before you start spouting.
Dude. You're right. I've seen it before too.
Mabie it's a Microsoft plant, attempting to spread random FUD.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
Seems you MS droid nonnycowards are having trouble finding any weak spots in this one, eh "Daniel"? Notice that you are ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE more suspect than the easily verified particulars of this story. Where'd you train, in Scientology? They're the only ones who structure their FUD ops in such sophomorically obvious ways. Have a bluescreen-of-the-day, and be sure to call a 911 running NT next time you're in trouble.
FuppedDuck
St. George is not the 'stix'...the area consists of at least 100,000 people...
Yeah, the only difference is that when you get a segmentation fault in *nix, all that happens is that the app terminates. In Windows, you sometimes get the blue screen of death, which almost always means you need to reboot the system.
Hey, where did my comment go, I told the truth. I even praised the use of Linux. Why did you moderate it out of existence?
This is the sort of story which should get more publicity. The PHB's don't belive us geeks when we say Linux is good, they might listen to this sort of story from the trenches.
I don't know why some people become so zealous. Maybe I'm just too passive. ;P
What I advocate is to use what's best for the situation at hand. I have both NT 4 and Slackware 4 (2.2.6) running in my home. The NT box is my primary workstation whereas the Slackware box is an ADSL router.
(If you must know, it hasn't bluescreen on me unless I was mucking with the registry or hardware.)
The router is a lowly 486/66 w/20MB RAM and has 400MB harddrive space and is hums along quite nicely. The only complaint I have is that for the box to recognize the second ISA NIC, I had to compile the hex address directly into the kernel. -.- Sure, you say buy better hardware so that passing the address isn't necessary, but Linux is supposed to run great on old hardware. =P Lets just say that compiling on a 486 is just, um, slow. ^_^
So after about a weekend of compiling, configuring, reading how-tos, etc., my router is up and running happily.
Now, if I had NT as the router, then install would have taken less time, but I would have to spend a little more for the hardware. But, it wouldn't have taken the whole weekend, nor would I have to compile the hex address into the kernel (as if I could if I wanted to. =P).
Moral of the story? Time is money saved or money could save you time. YMMV though, so use what's best for the job.
FeiYen
I though it was No Thanks :)
Seems like the linux using community in Utah is pretty small (since I do live in Utah) nice to see that someone here has a clue.
The death of one man is a tragedy; the death of a million is a statistic --Joseph Stalin
I'm going to take the opportunity here to congratulate you on your success. I feel much safer knowing that someone in the public safety area has done their research and taken the time to make the 911 service more reliable and cost-effective. I hope that other cities will take a serious look at their options now. Do you know whether other cities in Utah are considering a change?
The first post I read in response to the IPv4 article indicated it was a piece of garbage. Compare this against Ms. Jane reporter who has some "informant" tell her about something she doesn't understand which she subsequently posts as fact. I prefer the peer-review method much better. Don't believe everything FNORD you read in the paper.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Maybe that 911 center could send this to linuxtoday, or some other media outlets.
I can't wait for the AC FUD spreaders, though.
George
Sure seems like it would be much safer.
the string '911' anywhere in a phone number will contact your local emergency phone center.
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Geeks abound. I'm glad there's some on the force. I am hoping for 100% cluefullness percentage in those that police us in the future.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
A lot of nuclear reactors use OLD computers and OLD software. Some, so old that the companies no longer exist. Why? Because it's reliable and robust. If it weren't, the computer would be a pool of melted plastic, metal and silicon by now. Few, if any, nuclear power plants gamble on upgrading to more modern computers. They don't need the extra power, and they certainly don't want the extra bugs. What works works, and they'll generally leave it alone.
The same is true of a lot of mission-critical organisations. I remember when I was on a tour of Fylingdales, Yorkshire, and being appaled at the archaic equiptment they were using. Right out of the stone-age! But it worked, and that mattered more to them than all the fancy gimics that were on the market.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Yay for you...just another example of how Linux can benefit essentially everyone. Not sure of the status out there, but out here in muggy Va, most of the rescue squads are volunteer, and I'm in the process of trying to convince them that not only is Linux better because of the cost (an important issue for volunteer squads), but also because of its reliability. I will be sure to include your article with the report that I submit to them.
Are you trying to imply that NT crashes as a security precaution?
You gotta stop hanging around those marketing people.
I think Slashdot does pretty well considering the number of users that hit it.
Certainly better than some of these MS sites with N machines
running ASP that still can't serve up a page in a reasonable amount of time.
Idaho.. Utah... same thing.
Trust me you do not want to wast your time in a state the likes of utah. The church and state are not seperate, people have this little idea that they are all #1 in the world and to hell with everybody else. Most people have never seen the outside of this area of the country much less the rest of the world. Lowest wage rates, spending on pupils, even lower that Alabama and Mississippi.
The death of one man is a tragedy; the death of a million is a statistic --Joseph Stalin
I still think a lot of PHB's buy M$ products with some weird logic, like "wow, they're making billions and we want to be like them" or something.
Chuck
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
The article says nothing about GNOME. Just Afterstep.
Yes, GNOME would be a *really* bad idea in such an environment. Every time I use GNOME it locks up at some point or another. It makes me feel like I'm walking on eggshells.
Afterstep, OTOH, I've never had trouble with. I used it for a long time without any trouble whatsoever right up until I started using WindowMaker, then KDE (I'm now waiting for KDE's performance under WindowMaker to improve, It's slow on my machine...).
If you're running GNOME under Afterstep and it locks up, it's probably GNOME.
Plus, if X locks up, and you're using kdm/xdm, it'll come right up again in record time.
In this case, I was wondering, is it just me? Or does this read like a hoax written by a 13 year old?
On a broader note, how does "new journalism" validate the things it reports on? I've been bothered by this for quite some time. I mean, what's to prevent me from writing some story, taking out a hotmail account called "Busch@hotmail.com" and writing in about how I'm the plant manager for Busch Beer and we've just switched all our floor-control boxes over to Linux?
Just wondering....and I think it's something that will have to be addressed as the Slashdot-esqe news source fights for credibility.
Werd.
Ah reckon this makes you the Linux-usin'est Slashdot-readin'est deputy in the, uh... damn my knowledge of us geography... mid west?
You must have been working for BYU, or some other institution closely related to the church. Normal business around here isn't overly LDS at all. Your 'prayer meeting' thing actually sounds a little exaggerated. Would you mind telling us exactly WHERE you were working, and WHEN? People around here are alot more normal than I've seen in the other ends of the country.
And as far as the wages thing goes - take a look at the cost of living! Utah's cost of living is pretty sane. I know people willing to take a 30% pay cut just to move to Utah, and they live in better houses in safer areas. You may complain about the $$$, but there are some things you can't trade for money - like quality of life, and not having to worry about your car being stolen or vandalized every day.
I'm also trying to figure that out.
Well, I'm not a Microsoft plant, and I'd like to speak up and say that the NT servers at my company crash just about as frequently as the Linux servers; almost never. We really step on the servers too.. SQL, mail, WWW, tons of other stuff, and NT holds it's own. Granted, it's a lot harder to get NT to that level of stability, but it can be done. Different OSes for different uses; if Linux does something better, we use Linux. If NT does it better, we use NT.
I'd love to know why the hell we allow organizations to do this without _severe_ penalties. Ya know, that limited liability thing regarding corporations should _only_ apply to debt, it should not apply to criminal charges. How bout holding CEO's and other execs personally accountable (and not financially... dont give them something else they can just buy their way out of.. how bout some mandatory jail time?) for tactics like this? If this isn't illegal (even though its borderline fraud and misrepresentation) then it should be. When a company is small it's great and it's consumer-oriented, but whenever they get big, everything just goes to hell.
"Sure, unstable apps can't take down the OS (they don't on NT either, only bad device drivers do) ..."
This is definitely wrong.
I always browse with many windows open.
All browsers I tried under NT4 crash far too often for my comfort. The worst by far is IE4, which crashed every time in less than 15 minutes, and gave me the BOSD several times. Netscape and Opera are far more stable.
I never had any trouble with the browser integrated with KDE, although I do not yet have much experience with it.
One of these days, I'm going to go to law school... Until then...
I know in some cases it is impossible to waive a right to sue for a class of possible events. 'Agreeing' to a EULA doesn't necessarily waive your right to sue under all circumstances. However, the admission/admonition that all computer software is designed to fail under unforeseen circumstances (actual use, when it comes to '95) is a pretty good protection. That is - if you were trying to use Windows to prevent damage, and it failed, MS is not liable for that damage because they told you that Windows doesn't work. If you were using Windows, and because of MS's negligence or malice, Windows leaps from the computer and strangles your girlfriend, I'd call a lawyer. Unless they've updated the EULA to specifically mention Windows' tendencies to murder people. Something like that.
-=Best Viewed Using [INLINE]=-
Another myth of the modern world. Because there is a propreitor - i.e. Microsoft, you can sue.
Untrue. How many people actually read the Microsoft licence?
Take a look at microsoft's copyright page, or read the licence that came with your shiny NT or windows software if you have any questions.
http://www.microsoft.com/misc/cpyright.htm
If Microsoft could be sued everytime there was a loss of data, profits, or what not, do you think they would still be in business?
Officer: 911, what's your emergency. .. shit. :)
Caller : Some psycho is shooting at my house!
Officer: Please calm down sir, what is your location?
Caller : My address is 14802 SE 10th ST..on the corner of 148th!
Officer: Oh
Caller : What?
Officer: Uh, do you know anything about computers?
Caller : WHAT?!
Officer: hold on..
[bang! bang!]
Caller : Can't you send someone down here?!
Officer: Well I was about to, but my application stopped responding.
[bang!]
Caller : Well do something!
Officer: What should I do? I don't know anything about computers!
Caller : Did you try hitting control-alt-delete?
Officer: What's that?
Caller : Hold down control and alt, then press the delete key.
Officer: This window came up that says "Close Program"
Caller : Okay, click on the program in the list that matches the one that's crashed.
[bang!]
Caller : Shit! my Sun!
Officer: How do i find that out?
Caller : Huh?
Officer: The name of the program?
Caller : You don't know the name of the program?
...continue ad nauseum
I don't know what planet you're coming from, but here on Earth, your statements are pretty absurd. I have been using Linux _and_ WinNT on daily basis for the last 3 1/2 years. WindowMaker is up and running on the Linux machine 24/7 with StarOffice being used (rather than WordPerfect). On the average, the NT machine (or an application running on such machine) crashes to the point of reboot or data loss at least _3 times_ more than the Linux machine. And I know I'm not the only person with experiences like this, so it looks like maybe your house hasnt been built on Earth yet, eh?
Perl - $Just @when->$you ${thought} s/yn/tax/ &couldn\'t %get $worse;
Um... actually there was very little in my post that was factual. My intention here was to mock the bigots whose minds are so closed that they must persist in spreading these kinds of ideas about Utah and Mormons. They are about 90% rhetoric and 10% fact.
The default telnet on NT crashes often. Period. While it is possible to go out and pay for a telnet client? Why? When the one on Linux does not crash and is free.
Exactly.
Time to reboot NT: 3-5 Minutes, time to log back in: 30 seconds.
Hum.. NT Box here, explo(d)er has crashed 3 times today (it is only noon!) KDE on the box next to me has been up... lets see, oh 28 days... With Seti@home client, Netscape, Xosview, xterm(s),and gimp all running for about that time too.
Word... Access... Excel all go haywire when exploder crashes... What about Linux? Memory protection, remember that?
NT Crashes more, for me. Exploder (like the name says) explodes. KDE has not for me since 0.9. I cannot talk for GNOME, but in terms of desktop stability, NT just does not have it... So where is the line drawn? is explorer a port of the operating system, or a tool? if it crashes, and causes a BSOD, is it an application that failed, or the OS? Microsoft is innovating (read stuffing) so much stuff (read crap) into their OS, that one thing can take the entire thing down. Applications will crash, but if they take down the OS also, then there is a Real problem.
If you weld your bed to the wall and floor, and it breaks, it will take the floor and wall down with it. That is why it is good to separate things out.
Good Luck to the St. George, Utah PD.
1.3L, 3 moving parts, 280 HP, no Turbos, wanna Race? RotaryNe
Note the date on that link - July 09, 1999. After that date it was decided not to use Linux at all.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I've administered quite a few Windows NT/98/95 machines also. One NT Server doing nothing but running IIS with about 1 and a half million hits a month has never lasted longer than a week. Running Service Pack 4, quite highly tuned. It hasn't ever given BSOD's, or Kernel Panics, but after about a week of running it just gets really buggy, to the point that IIS can barely even run anymore, and the memory usage will be hitting the roof. I also have an NT machine running SQL Server, and doing some fileserving, also quite highly tuned. Using the only remote administration software that half way works on the SMP machine, it gets totally locked at totally different intervals at times, to the point that the OS is completely wacked, including all the services etc. I also know quite a few other people running NT as their servers all having to reboot weekly, or even more often. Under any type of semi heavy use their boxes just crash all the time. A LOT of them have switched over to linux just so they don't have to reboot their server everyday, and they are now quite happy... Including my Mother!
So you can make all of the unfounded FUD based "Comments" that you want, but the truth still remains. NT is a bloated buggy "Server OS" While Linux just chugs away. There are a few areas in Linux that needs improving, like some of the SCSI card drivers are still a bit buggy, and some SMP stuff could be worked on a bit (Though Linux does SMP MUCH better than NT). As always any piece of art has areas that were untouched by the artist given restraints on time, etc. but the great thing about Linux is that it's a piece of art not yet completed. Better yet it probably will never be perfected continually giving it's benefactors the chance to mold it, and form it into a wonderful, elegant, beauty of an OS. In conclusion, you should become more familiar with a subject matter before you make inadequate, fuzzy, and incomplete statements about it. Go to school, learn how to comprehend (and maybe even learn how to study!), envelope yourself in the topics you are so quick to take up and then come up with your own opinion that you can actually back up. One based on fact... And remember that something being lovingly made by thousands of devoted people happy to work on it, will generally be much better than anything a commercial money-grubbing monopolistic corporation can spring out of it's hat!
Quandary in the Making
Yes, and NT's place is _definitely_not_ high availability, mission critical, heavily loaded systems. Linux has not yet been proven in this field, but it shows a great deal more promise than NT. If you want a proven system for these purposes, you should be looking for a UNIX or VMS system.
While I do think this thread shouldn't have been moderated Offtopic, I don't agree with you on everything else. Did you ever think there might actually be some people who, GASP!, prefer MS products over the competition? I like Windows more than Linux. And no amount of begging or whining or FUDing will change that. I do not work for MS, but I do try to bring some balance to /. It seems as though a lot of people bash MS because they are MS. If MS makes a product I don't like, or does something stupid or mean, sure I'll bash them, but that doesn't mean they always make bad products. But I"m getting offtopid here. As for spreading FUD against Linux and the such, do you ever see the FUD spread against Windows on /.? Lemme tell you, there's a whole bunch. As for MS people posting on Slashdot and moderating pro-MS up and pro-Linux down, the same exact thing happens with Linux people. They'll moderate anti-MS stuff up just because it's anti MS, and moderate pro-Linux stuff up just because it's pro-Linux. And these people could be considered Linux employees, since some of them work on the code, or work at Red Hat, or do something that involves Linux, which would give them a reason to moderate pro-Linux comments up. And just so you know, I am not a MS employee, I'm just a person who actually a lot of Microsoft's products.
I've been using Linux alot longer than you.
It is a big deal if GNOME or Netscape crashes, especially Netscape. And if GTK has bugs, your application will tank.
You wouldn't appreciate it if Netscape crashed while you were composing your reply, would you?
Dumbass, I've been admining Unix since 1985, and have had Linux, BSDI, and FreeBSD on my desktop since they first came out, so I think I know what the fuck I'm talking about.
However, while I know alot about Unix, you don't seem to know alot about NT/Word. SmartMenus?
Typical knowitall kiddie who thinks 2 years on Unix is a long time.
You do realize that OLE under Office replaces your menus anytime you click on an embedded object? Moreover, you can totally customize which menus are shown, move them around, detach them, etc.
What part don't you understand? The fact that users use APPLICATIONS and never use the operating system directly? Usage of the kernel is indirect, its stability is required, but only part of the equation.
If Netscape or WordPerfect crashes or has a memory leak, it is a critical problem.
Scenario: 911 emergency call. Launch WordPerfect, start taking down info.
Victim: yes, there are two robbers in my house, their description is
Operator: Ok, we'll have police there in a sec, hold on.
Operator: Yes, we need to send a police car to
Operator: Victim, can you please give me all that info again while I relaunch Word?
You guys seem to think this isn't a big problem. Hell, I can reboot Windows98 faster than you can relaunch X/Enlightement/WordPerfect.
Face it: Linux desktop applications suck and are unstable. Linux is not ready for the desktop. I use Linux on the server all the time, but I would never burden my Mac/Windows users which such unfriendly unstable incomplete desktop applications.
True things are good.
False things are bad.
All things are true in some sense, false in some sense meaningless in some sense, true and false in some sense, true and meaningless in some sense, false and meaningless in some sense, and true and false and meaningless in some sense. A public service clarification by the Sri Syadasti School of Spiritual Wisdom, Wilmette. The teachines of the Sri Syadasti School of Spiritual Wisdom are true in some sense, false in some sense meaningless in some sense, true and false in some sense, true and meaningless in some sense, false and meaningless in some sense, and true and false and meaningless in some sense. Patamunzo Lingananda School of Higher Spiritual Wisdom, Skokie.
When I was able to do my own spam-armoring, you got a chance to email me. Now you can only hope I see your reply.
And a funny one, at that...
I'm working in a fire/medical dispatch NT environment. It's very easy to say "port everything," but it's not practical. Too many systems are working together on the same OS for it to be stable with a completely different box in the mix. In this case, it's ProQA (medical aid), the radio systems, the phone systems, TriTech VisiCAD, the old CAD system as a backup, along with normal workstation duties like logging, 4th dimension, etc. The system runs stable, and data transfer between apps and systems runs smoothly.
What people seem to be forgetting, also, is that the people operating the systems are not trained rats. They are completely capable of handling every incident without the aid of any computers at all. therefore, if a computer crashes, dispatch doesn't come to a screeching halt. Until a compltely stable, robust SUITE of applications is delveloped natively for linux, it will not be a practical solution for many aapplications. I'd love to see Linux be a player in this arena, but it needs to earn its reputation from experience, not solely from the enthusiastic cheerleading of the linux community.
Huh ? :-)
Sounds like an MS-AC who won't face facts
It seems to be something of a problem to some people, They just love to bash everybody who doesn't share their point of view, and when faced with facts, they just blow up !
A.Grandt
Or Slashdot could hire a few more people and actually spend 2 minutes validating each story. The story summaries are often grossly wrong, giving me the impression that the submitter and/or poster didn't bother spending a few minutes to actually read the story being linked to. Not minor details being wrong either - major things.
There's also a bit too much bias, whether on purpose or not. For example, when Amiga announced its new OS would be a Linux/BeOS hybrid, slashdot reported it'd run Linux, while not mentioning BeOS at all. It turns out BeOS is the only OS that was correct in that statement (Linux is not being used), so the slashdot story was 100% wrong, compared to the 50% wrong of the story it linked to.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I wouldnt consider myself an MS stormtrooper. It is more finding a stable configuration, and then not mucking with it.
And to your saying people are always blaming problems on bad sysadmin...setup..etc... I have noticed that it is the same with all OS's. I will say, that for me, (IMHO) NT is easier for the novice to setup. I can now put a Slackware box up with KDM and KDE configured in about 1hr. and most of that setup time is configuring the packages I want. It takes the same setup time for NT as well... My experience is that if you know either OS, you can get a very stable machine out if it.
I also hate the MS memory and resource management and would love to use Linux as my desktop, but I do not have a MS compatible office suite and cant afford to buy one and wont for work. My office is a MS workshop, but for security analysis and networking issues, I boot to Linux.
IANAL, but I have many family members who are... You usually can't waive the right to sue for criminal negligence or malice. (At least that's the way it is up here in the Great White North) However, most software failures likely won't fall under the legal definition of negligence or malice.
My Mom, (we'll, change this to my Dad, as my Mom is not a computer user at all) does not know the difference between OS, Hardware, software, whatever, However, he does know that Windows (NT) crashes... That is bad. He also knows that when his Netscape Messenger (in Linux) crashes, he starts it back up. it works fine. The same in NT? No. Many a time after an application crashes in NT, shotty memory de-allocation makes the program un-runnable without a reboot. It is simply a design flaw in the OS. Bad memory handling.
True, true, but if an application takes the OS down, corrupts the file system, and destroys ALL the work, not just one file, then the OS failed the job. And we are not comparing Linux to 95, we are comparing it to NT. 9X to Linux would be like comparing a 91 Ford Escort to a 99 Mazda RX-7.
It seems obvious that you had a bad crash of an application or two with Linux. Thus, your claim that all the OS and applications are crap is not valid. Have you spent any time on Linux in recent months/years? I have. My "Swear at the screen" factor has gone down by 10 fold. Then, back on an NT box for a project. same old fist shaking... waiting for things to finish up and get done, so I can do something else... applications crashing, unable to come back up without a reboot. Linux's memory handling and multitasking is superior, i can do many things at the same time. No stupid hour glasses in my way, and no OS Crashes that take away everything I was working on. If an application dies, I just start it back up without the worry of it not working properly. Ok, then lets look at the case of the operating system crashing ever minute, or even every 3 hours (about average around here). What then? wait 3-5 (more like 5-10) minutes for the OS to come back up. Loss in productivity. If a user application were to die every minute, there would be a need for a new application. This is exacly why Linux is gaining popularity. NT Crashes, a solution was needed, Linux/UNIX is it (and has been, people just were swoon by MS Marketing, they are getting over it now.)
Besides, the developers of the apps would be under pressure to write better code. The open source community could pitch in, and send in bug fixes. If this were a commercial product, it would simply not exist. No developer in their right mind would release it, even for NT.
Now agian, let us consider the windows case: An unstable shell so tightly integrated with the kernel that a simple web browser crash can cause a BSOD. The industry accepts this as the norm, and begin to live with it. If KDE crashes... um.. I don't know! I have never had it crash... It would probably leave the other applications alone, with out and "chrome" around them. You could either logout, and back in again, or just restart the WM. Please provide some examples. I don't think you can. You know what this is called? FUD. Pure and Simple. This Trio3d runs faster under XF86 than NT. Word is even more of a risk. Why do you hear of Word viri? Internet Explorer? Please! a crash a minute kludge built upon a program from 1991 (Mosaic). While the same can be said about Netscape, this is not the case with Mozilla (NS5). Do you think the Utah police would want the Melissa virus to send porn sites to everybody in their address book? Why do you not hear about such things happening to Linux boxen/users? Because MS is the one that takes short cuts in code, more concerned with presentation than functionality, security or stability. I could give more examples from the past 10 years, but that would be getting too off topic. Um.. Non-stop? meaning no reboots? with Service Pack 5? Funny, I though SP5 came out in May. I have a 2.0.35 box that hasn't been rebooted since June 1998. While it is true you need to reboot it install a new kernel, that's just about it.
Ok, here is my FUD Buster short list:
- Star Office
- Gimp
- Pine
- Vi
- Elm
- Povray
- xv
- gv
Now lets talk about some of the NT Server products: Exchange. When congress got flooded with 100,000 emails, the exchange servers died, mail was lost. IIS? Take a look at the 2000 beta crack sight. MS claims all that down time was due to "analysis." Spin Doctors. File and print services? ZDnet's Benchmark shows samba is faster at NT's own game.Now, if the services Linux provides are that rock solid, why is it so hard for you to beleive the user applications are not too? Or at the least, more so than NT's. it is just an accepted fact the NT needs a swift kick and more administration than UNIX boxen. The same goes for Desktop boxen too. Applications will get better in stability, all around.
1.3L, 3 moving parts, 280 HP, no Turbos, wanna Race? RotaryNe
I haven't except when trying to patch the official kernel by hand with the 0.90 RAID patches (which Linus and Alan unfortunately rejected from 2.2.12 even though they were in 2.2.12-final). Fortunately you kinda have to know what you are doing in order to even get in that situation. Most people who don't know didly about programming should stick to the distribution released kernels...
Look at this.
By the way, you have access to all the source code, so there no reason that a decent company could not fix any problems themselves. Hahahah... assuming every company has programmers in-house. Hahahahaha
And MS thought poor quality doesn't kill. If only we could teach the public what mission critical really means.
With all this talk of independent journalism I can see Slashdotting reaching a new level. Every time a story gets posted some poor smuck will have his local exchange crashed by thousands of callers making sure that Taco, et al. got their facts right.
:D !!
All while watching their poor server being vaporised
The Linux community in Utah is anything but small . Did it occur to you before you made your post that Caldera is based in Utah Valley? You must be living in some kind of I hate Utah frame of mind, because you've missed the boat completely. We've got some very active LUGS (had Eric Raymond speak at the UofU and BYU a few months ago), and every company I've worked for since 1994 was interested in Linux. If you haven't been able to see that, then maybe it's time you stop hating Utah, and open your eyes to the Linux community here. You're definitely not going to find a more involved LINUX community in more than 70% of the rest of the U.S.A. But if Utah can't satisfy your Linux needs, then maybe you should go move next door to Linus himself. Of course, I bet you'd still complain.
In fact, I believe you are confusing the Amiga with the iToaster, perhaps understandable given the relative ratios of hype to shipping product in both cases.
Just to further rub your nose in it, the original Slashdot article to which you referred, http://slashdot.org/articles/99/06/24/1342228.shtm l was, in fact, entirely accurate, given the information available at the time of writing. Yes, the headline is "Is the iToaster a Linux Box? Will there be Source?", which someone having an extended fantasy of Slashdot bias could construe into a misleading statement; but the first sentence of the article reads: Allright so several people have noted that the iToaster from Microworkz runs a "BeOS/Linux Hybrid". The article then goes into some depth to investigate this claim.
Perhaps the next time you feel the need to make outrageous claims, you'll take a moment to check your facts first.
fish and pipes
> Um, this was about Linux. How did you happen to read it? I mean, heck, you even read and replied to comments on it.
I was reading it for the 911 part of the story. To clarify my statement: I stop reading anything about linux that contais "linux is the best thing to ever exist and MS just blows period."
I'm not boycotting, just filtering...
Heh, was this the MGM Grand? I was driving by last October and noticed the BSOD on one of their big displays outside. Too funny...
Say hello to zMac.
Uhm, why didn't you just modify
-- Keith Moore
This sig is the express property of someone.
While I agree that 911 should have 100% reliability, I have to disagree with your use of "unusual stresses" in refernce to what 911 would put an OS through. For the most part 911 just keeps track of calls and puts people on hold until someone is ready, then transfers that person to an available operator. Calls are logged but that's nothing. So perhaps I'm missing something amazingly stressful on an OS, but I doubt 911 would even come close to the stress levels reached by say Yahoo! or cdrom.com.
It's great that 911 is recognizing something other than Win* as a viable solution, but lets not make something out of this that it's not. Neat, yes. Amazing new way of stress testing OSes, no.
Most likely cause of switch: Some techie talked them into it after a particularly frusting day of the computers being down. Possibly not even Windows related (but knowing windows, it probably was).
DWRM
http://www.freebsd.org
Naturally, of course, these Mail, File and Web (dynamic?) servers are all running on the same NT machine, right? Or are they high-demand services running on more than one machine? This isn't a flame -- I'm not suggesting that your NT system(s) aren't doing some hard work, I just wish we had some references. This applies to all the other systems, too -- my linux system has been really stable, and it's running mail, file and web services, but it ain't got no serious load on it, so I think the stability of my system is irrelevant here.
How much does NT cost these days? I really don't know, which is why I'm asking. But I imagine it's enough where I should expect the default configuration (read: OUT OF THE BOX) to be stable. No OS tweaking. This isn't a flame either, because I'm not suggesting that it is impossible for NT to be stable -- OK I am flaming Microsoft a little for setting up their flagship product as if stability were an option. The really big thing is that a $2 copy of Linux is [more] stable out of the little paper sleeve.
It just seems like there are many, many more examples of a poorly configured program on NT bringing down the whole system. I'm sure there are others, but the only application I can think of that has caused any kind of collateral damage for me has been Netscape occassionally locking up XFree86. I hear NT has made great improvements and is much more able to slap down misbehaving apps, but I can't understand why Microsoft has taken so long to address such a fundamental stability and security issue. This isn't an "innovative" new concept. Unixen and VMS and other OSes have been abruptly killing badly-written programs since before WindowsNT was first announced.
JADBP
NT will *never* freeze due to software. It's *always* a hardware problem if it's a freeze.
Really? What court refused to uphold a shrink wrap license? on the other hand, what court actually upheld a shrink wrap license? AFAIK, that's never been court-tested...
James
The second part comes when they say "third-party applications must be what's doing it". This is interesting, and saddening. Apparently the status quo now accepts the "fact" that applications should be able to bring down an operating system. Truly depressing in this day and age. (It's also interesting to note that one of the biggest offenders -- Internet Information Server -- is a Microsoft product, and isn't even third party!)
I don't hate Microsoft because they're big or successful. I hate them because they make such horrible operating systems (to paraphrase Linus Torvalds.)
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Roblimo,
:-)
To prevent this kind of sowing of doubt, may I suggest each story have a small link next to it entitled "verification" or something similar, that would take the curious or doubtful to a web page summarizing the verification process in much the same way you just did? For links to other news sites this probably isn't necessary, though it might still be a nice touch to have the same kind of link, pointing to that new site's journalistic "standards" page (if they have one).
Clearly this kind of stunning success for Linux is rubbing some folks the wrong way -- wonder why.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Is that Midwest? Northwest? West? Southwest? MiddleEast?
They refer to themselves as Dixie, so maybe they are South...
Maybe it's part of that Kinki region where they have that university that grows fingers on the back of mice.
Don't you hate it when you underestimate your opposition? Great post, Fastolfe.
Once you pull the pin, Mr. Grenade is no longer your friend.
I don't buy a word of what you say! I, too, work in a environment where NT is mandatory for some things.
But we are managing to integrate Linux into the mix with stuff like Samba, VNC or Xservers (Exceed, or similar), internet protocols and stuff like wrapper scripts. We integrate applications across platforms and distribute data and control transparently.
Yours is one of the most *dangerous* posts I have seen on Slashdot in a long time. The absurd, damaging opinion I often hear regarding system management is that you're better off with one system/vendor/whatever for *everything*. 'From top to bottom', 'from soup to nuts'.
This is poison, this is damnation, this is oblivion. This is the way to end up with only one vendor left, with no alternatives, and very little incentive for them to really perform.
*Try* to integrate alternatives. Try *hard*. Many of us have done it, as this article should show. And if we can keep up the trend, everyone who comes after will benefit.
-- Mike Greaves
As a mormon (with a couple of solid hackers working for me), I think this is a little overstated. I try to be a good boss, I support people for what they do, and treat people like adults. This is just anecdotal, but it is pretty true of all the IT type folks I know in the church (and there are a lot us around). -pate pate@gnu.org
Half of the states in the union allow marriage between first cousins. Wisconsin allows it. Oh, that explains the cheeseheads. Never mind. Besides, the no alcohol/partying nature of the average Utahn allows for a clear head for extended hacking sessions, which gave us, er, WordPerfect.
The original computer game...pong..was developed by a U of U student, not to mention the companies and software that everyone else has talked about. Oh yeah, and what about WINAMP which I am sure most of us use - University of Utah. Interesting.
> when was the last time you had a kernel panic in Linux
:-)
Well, not a kernel panic, but daily (or more) spontaneous reboots for no obvious reason.
At least, not obvious until I looked at little closer at the machine (under my desk) and noticed the power cord not fully inserted, so that it would power glitch when I'd bump my leg against it. (Yes, it would re-boot when I booted it
-- Alastair
A hardware guy I worked with made the comment:
"Any computer with a reset button is a failure in design."
Sparc: No reset button
Palm Pilot: Hidden reset button
Mac: Kinda-hidden reset button
PC: Big blinking neon button
I wouldn't blame just Microsoft for it though. Maybe 95%. The other 5% comes from how retarded the whole architecture is.
"Though it may take a thousand years, we shall be FREE."
You could find whole roased coffee beans in Utah in the 80s if not before.
Utah also had a microbrewery in the early '80s, before sam adams "launched the microbrew revolution" (what a load of shit!). It was in Park City though, which some people say is "in Utah, but not of it."
Utah is pretty conservative, but it isn't quite as provincial as many expect, at least not in Salt Lake City.
Okay, for those of you who've read this already, this is my semi-regular rant on Windows, installing apps, and shared libraries. If you've read it already, skip it.
>Yes, you need to reboot much more when
>installing or changing software than Linux, but
>you can always say no and stop and restart the
>service. (Same basic prinicple on Linux)
No. These are very different issues. When it comes to shared libraries, Windows has dropped the ball. Shared libraries mean that some other application (perhaps even the OS) may use them and have them locked. When you are asked to reboot, it is because some shared libraries couldnot be copied because they were locked. These shared libraries will not get copied until you reboot. More concerning, however, is the uninstall. If the uninstall can't delete something (say X.DLL), it marks it for deletion at next reboot, and asks if you want to reboot. If you say no, and go install something else in the meantime, which happens to try to install X.DLL, things will be happy until you reboot, when X.DLL is deleted (as the uninstaller told it to do).
Linux deals with updating shared libraries, partially as a result of naming conventions, and partially as a result of filesystem capabilities.
In Windows, if a program is using a particular shared library, you cannot remove that library file from the filesystem. It is locked. Under Linux, what is locked are the inodes. It is irrelevant whether or not the file has a filename linked to it. When I use the unlink() system call (there's a reason there's no delete_file() sys call), we unlink the file name from the inodes storing the file, preventing more apps from opening it. Only when the file's usage count drops to 0 is it removed from the fs. This means that I can create a new file, with the same name as the one I just unlinked, without affecting the performance of any applications using the original file. I can replace shared libraries without having to stop the application using the shared library.
Further, most Linux applications don't install new shared libraries when they install themselves. It would be seen as very poor practice for some little app to install a new version of glibc as part of its own installation. Yet, we accept this as normal in the NT world.
Even better, Linux allows multiple versions of a library to coexist on a system, using version numbers. Under Windows, you can't even get Microsoft's own ODBC 3.51 to coexist with ODBC 4.0.
Note, how can you have a NT box since January and have it service packed to version 5??? I'd really like to know how you service pack NT without reboots through service pack 4 and 5.... only a M$ employee trolling would say such nonsence... I've notice M$ employees can never pass up pushing the lastest service pack in recommendation of having these unbelievable uptimes on an NT box.
GO HOME AND STAY IN WASHINGTON.
I've found when this happens that you can pull up taskman and find the application still in the process list. Kill it, restart the app, and keep working. (Note - I've only had this behaviour with Netscape under NT.)
The XFree86 server for the S3 VirgeDX (3.3.2 to current) exhibits a nasty memory leak on one of my systems. It starts with around 6 MB RAM usage, and grows quickly from there. I've had it make it up to ~18 MB before i killed it, and I'd only been using it for around an hour. Now, i don't say this is XFree86's fault, it may be some of the hand-compiled libraries on this particular machine (I've only tried it on one). My solution? I sold the S3 Virge card to a windows user. ;) It makes a nice card for a standard business system under NT.
If they have to reboot their NT workstations every day, or every month even, I sure don't want them running my 911 call center! This "NT needs to be rebooted everyday" is pure FUD and Bullshit.
Why not contact the companies that do the Windoesn't only versions, get them to sign over exclusive distribution rights to you for a Linux version. I think the company's stupidity about the potential of Linux could work in your favor. Now, after you do this and make your killings, I expect a cut.
Since you are obviously an NT advocate, and this is slashdot, I'm not going to spare the rod since I assume you know what you are in for here.
/.'s stability related to the linux kernel?
/. is unstable, don't blame Linux, blame Rob ;P
.dll.. hint hint).
How is
90% of the time, when I have problems connecting to slashdot, it's either the ad banner garbage, or the network itself is bad, or there is an actual problem with Slashdot's software.
Which brings me to your second point. Doing anything even remotely similar to slashdot on an NT system is basically impossible. It simply doesn't have the flexibility.
If
Finally that bit about 2.2 tells me what I already know: you are full of it, and are clearly striving to give us the appearance that you know what you are talking about. 2.0.30+ was (and arguablly still is) probably more stable than most 2.2.x releases so far. The fact that 2.2.x itself is far more stable than any MS OS (any version, throughout all of MS's history) by orders of magnitude should tell you something.
You clearly have the whole thing backwards anyway. Bleeding edge kernels always have two things in common: extra features, at cost of stability. The OSS model NEVER suggests you regularly update mission critical installations. However, things like slashdot, and my home machine, are hardly critical; I re-install kernels as they come out, anyway. I imagine Rob is constantly twiddling with slashdot itself, and not just a "development" mirror machine.
Which brings me to the question of what long uptimes mean. A long uptime means to ME that a) the system is stable and doesn't crash and b) I dont have to reboot it everytime i change something unrelated to having to reboot (like installing a
Your comment about security makes absolutely no sense, assuming the admin knows what he's doing.
How, exactly, is uptime related to the system's security? I must have missed something. Are you telling me that because NT crashes 3 times a week its secure? Does a long uptime indicate that the admin is too lazy to apply patches, or that the OS vendor hasn't supplied patches? Is the latter because the OS doesn't need patches, or because the vendor doesn't even bother to develop and then release timely patches?
I can only conclude that you are hinting that the admins of boxes with long uptimes are idiots who refuse to update. I agree. They are idiots, but don't forget that to them, having a box that stays up for more than 3 days is a miracle, thanks to MS training everybody that rebooting fixes everything.
Assuming the problem is big enough to warrant it, they can outsource and fix whatever bugs are ailing them if need be.
What do they do with Microsoft?
Sign over their souls to Bill Gates? I'm sure Bill Gates doesn't care about the little fish in the sea. With Linux, if you don't like one vendor, you go to another.
I don't think it was very neighborly of them to exclude me from my friend's birthday parties. These were people we were otherwise on friendly terms with.
For the most part, as individuals, I don't really think that the Mormon's are worse or better than anyone else, but growing up non-mormon in Utah, I have certain issues with them and their politics.
Umm, you're incorrect. If it was the windows equivilent of a segmentation fault, you'd just see the "Program has executed an illegal instruction" dialog box with a close button. The blue screen means that something at the OS-level is hosed.
Ummm, no, you're incorrect.... if you look, it says to hit any key to terminate the application. And with my experience with shitty apps which crash my NT box, it usually does just terminate the app and return me to Windows.
And as for it being the OS hosed, not quite... the OS detected the application going outside it's memory boundries so the OS is telling you there's a problem. As far as the application is concerned, everything's hunky-dory...
Dontcha hate it when *nix folk try to explain Windows problems/error messages?
Heh... wouldn't make the slightest difference. I know -- I worked for Motorola (Comm Sector, Field Service, the very group that installs the dispatch consoles) for seven years. I left because the amount of "NIH (Not Invented Here) Syndrome" and political bull*hit, frequently at the expense of customer or end user, reached levels that I just couldn't take any more (and they didn't treat their techies any better!) Motorola is so entrenched with Micro$platt that I don't think anything short of Redmond sinking into the bowels of the earth would make them wake up and smell the open-source code...
I can't count on Montreal 911, esp after 2000. How may people have patched NT up to SP5 for full y2k compliance? And how many have found that it makes the system even more unstable?
I wouldn't want to be Montreal's 911 insurance company!
ttyl
Farrell
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
Not that it matters.... dick-head
I've never had to do a complete reinstall of Linux. Let's not talk about how many I've done on Windows (9x mostly, but NT as well).
I HAVE had to "reboot and fix whatever was broken" after messing up libc once. There've been a few times when fsck needed a little hand-holding (though with the right options, even that could have been bypassed). This is not NEARLY as severe as fixing tougher Windows problems, which tend not to require just a reboot but a full OS reinstall as well (and some, it has to be a clean reinstall -- which means wiping out the apps!)
Some background: I'm surrounded by Linux boxes (my responsibility) and NT boxes (NOT mine...) as I write this, so I see a bunch of stuff happen to both...
OK, this is true. Both systems lock up once in awhile. This is known. To say either is perfect would be silly. The thing with Linux is that you can say "oh yeah, I'm a tard for not installing that patch even when I read about this on BUGTRAQ the other day..." and so on.
The point is that you KNOW that something is hosed and have a way to fix it. With NT, it's "just another crash", and you have to just mentally push it aside until a hot fix or service pack rolls along that takes care of it for you.
All software sucks. Some just sucks less.
======
"Cyberspace scared me so bad I downloaded in my pants." --- Buddy Jellison
Sacred cows make the best burgers.
Windows NT has no recovery mechanism from such situations, and given that a 911 service is bound to be extremely busy 100% of the time, the workload is inevitably going to bring up more bugs than any domestic, or even routine office, use.
Don't slag off people who put machines through unusual stresses as guilty of FUD. Think, first, about the fact that these ARE unusual stresses! If it takes an extreme environment to cause a particular bug to surface, why aren't you praising the coder for writing that well??!! Why spend all your time critisising the finder?
You don't know everything, no matter how much you might believe you do. Obscure and unusual bugs happen all the time in computing, especially under highly extreme situations and workloads. Can you tell me that you've checked the configuration they are using, under the stresses they are putting that box, to see if it will crash? No? Oh, there's a surprise. You'd rather hide behind the AC stamp than face the fact that bugs exist, whether it's in Linux or NT.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Hehehe...If this is not a strong signal...well, what are you expecting for? Start supporting Linux you idiots!
There's something about Linux being used in a situation like this where it can actaully really help people (or at least help people to help people) that makes me fell really good. Yay Linux!
"And when Linux does crash, it crashes horribly"
so we're countering supposed FUD with more FUD?
Maybe linux crashes for YOU, the clueless uninformed user feeling the need to hide behind the AC name. Your comments confirm this.
Linux doesnt "crash horribly." At worst case, if you've done something stupid like corrupt the libc, or really screw upsomething else as extreme, you *MAY* have to reinstall. Particularly if you dont have enough of a clue to boot into single user mode or off a rescue disk/cd and fix your screwup. The *ONLY TIME* in the 4 years i've been actively using linux (and by that I mean at least 60% of my time on the computer is booted in linux) is when I've fiddled around with SVGAlib and the buggy thing locks linux up completely. But even in cases like that, its not the kernel or any other critical part of the os that locks up, its just a buggy application that needs to run with root permissions.
And No, NT rebooting every day is not a FUD. I've done contract work in places like Sprint PCS where the oncall person has to reboot certain NT servers on a regular basis, and they have more NT and UNIX machines than you have houses in your neighborhood. The fact is, NT is pure garbage and the fact that people's lives are depending on this Microsoft Trash(tm) makes my skin crawl. I'd love to be suffering from a heart attack and hear the person on the other end of the call say "you'll have to wait 15 more minutes sir, we're waiting for this Windows NT machine to reboot."
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
...and usually, on the rare occasion when Linux _seems_ to freeze up (esp. X), I can just walk down the hall to my co-worker's computer, ssh to my box, and kill -9 the offending process. The only thing that ever _really_ stops you in Linux is a kernel panic. Just today I watched a process with a memory leak eat up 900 megs of my 1000 MB swap partition -- and as soon as I killed it the free memory went right back up to 1000M. It seems to me that when stuff leaks memory in NT (especially on a kernel level) you can kiss that memory goodbye... Christopher Twigg cdtwigg@u.washington.edu (can't remember his password)
I've heard this line more times than I can count. "A properly tuned Windows NT configuration..." Every time I hear it, I always respond by asking -- "Well then why the Hell don't they ship them that way?" Do they have people at Microsoft that are paid to make sure that NT is "improperly tuned" before it leaves the factory floor? Maybe they're custom-improperly-tuning each copy for the individual customer. Where is this mythical "properly tuned NT box" and where on Earth do I hire the guy that tuned it? It's not like the MCSE program gives you any idea of how to go about this...
Just imagine a World w/out Linux...
." ......" .. crap."
Possilbe scenario on a NT or 95/98 network for 911.. (god forbid they should use TAPI..)
officer-"Hello 991."
person-"help me please... i can hear someone in my house..."
officer-"hold on... ok i have your location
person-"PLEASE hurry i can heAr them coming!!!"
Officer-"oh *hit.. blue screen crash.. Just hold on a sec ok?"
person-"AHHHHW!HH!Hhaawaw!H!HH!
officer-"hello? hello?
hehe
"Y'all come back Y'a Hear!?!?"
"Y'all come back Y'a Hear!?!?"
Xian
How many service packs are out now? 6! and there is still the masquerading trusted hosts security problem. Win98/IE5/ActiveX problem. Outlook is crap, Office97 has alot of bugs. Office2000 wasn't supposed to have bugs, but does. Give me a break. I used to hate wordperfect but now I like it more and more.
Linux has sooooo much to offer for nothing. NOTHING!!!!! NO MONEY. FREE. Just download it off the ftp site. Linux has bugs but they are fixed quickly or there is a quick work around. For what it does and what it can do, you can't beat it with crapy NT that cost $200 dollars and then $1000 for 10 users or whatever the rediculous price is for adding users. All you do is load Linux, configure Apache, configure Sendmail/procmail, then a quick look at smb.conf, load sshd - done. Finished. No service packs, no hotfixes, no piece of junk Exchange/IIs servers to patch holes in.
I wish I could use Linux for everything and throw my NT books/disks/cdroms in a big fire pit and say good bye. You NT guys can say all you want about its a good OS once you tweak it blah, blah, blah. You do all the tweaking and patching you want. I will load Linux and I will see you on the golf course maybe sometime that day.......or not.
I think this is an interesting extension to the
Free Software philosophy that has driven our cause. That free software not only enriches our lives but also saves them is indeed something to be proud of -- and has shown me, for one, that
Free Software can mean much more than I had previously imagined.
This is very true, but I think no software company at all can take this risk alone. This is exactly what insurances are for. A software company which garantees to take the risk of their "important stuff"-controlling product will have an insurance themselves.
I see two possibilities here:
1. The company which implements their product with linux gets this assurance. This is actually more secure then implementing with win nt or other
closed source products. The insurance company could hire some experts to evaluate the risk.
2. Insurance companies which can specialize in insuring open source products.
Oh thats GREAT!!!! ROFLMAO!!
--fatboy
I can just see some poor soul calling 911 while they were still running Windows:
Caller: "Help, I'm being murdered!!!"
Dispatcher: "I'm sorry. Your call has triggered an illegal operation. Please call back after the computer has been rebooted."
Caller: "Could you *please* call tech support? This guy's stabbing me in the chest over here!"
Dispatcher: (click)
I'm an NT lover, which I suppose makes me immediate flamebait. NT and and UN*Xes both have their advantages, but that's not the point of my post.
/. is not a shining example of the "reliability" of Linux, which doesn't mean it's incapable. As far as I'm concerned, Linux was *worse* than NT until Kernel 2.2 -- until then, the NT systems we hammered stayed up longer than the Linux systems. Even then, the OSS model suggests that the software is regularly updated when an important addition is made. Could it *possibly* be that long uptimes are security holes, not statistics to be proud of?
/. -- they just might have a chance to stay up for a while.
If anyone believes that Linux works 24/7/365, they obviously haven't visited Slashdot in the past month or so...
I do hope for the sake of the citizens in St. George that they don't run Apache, SSI, plus thousands and thousands of Perl scripts and cron jobs like
Be kind to your machine, and it will be kind to you.
Who takes responsibility when it doesn't work? Or, actually, who recieves the blame? Like he said, Motorolla and MS take the blame for the NT box that they have to connect too, but they don't take responsibility. The sad truth is, that most supervisors and managers out there, especially in life-and-death related feilds, are much more concerned more with _liability_ than _reliability_. Can't really blame them, because this is a world where everyone grew up with Microsoft applications and the inevitablity of bugs and errors and system reboots. It's hard for them to accept software that works correctly. It's really hard not to have anyone to blame when things might go wrong. ;)
This is a world where Murphy's Law and Linux are the only things not effected by Murphy's Law.
I'm going to assume that, even though the article is about something happening in Utah, the person to whose comment you just replied was not likely talking about Utah alone. (I'm hoping you actually realized this, as opposed to the implications of your post).
Either way, I also realize that this comment of mine isn't very important, but I just wanted to say two things, one of which I've already said. The other of which is:
Congratulations, Job Well Done!!
Insert mind here.
And this is what you can do with OS/2: http://www2.software.ibm.com/casestudies/swcs.nsf/ swgsearch?SearchView&Query=os/2
Okay, yes, if the client goes down, no problem. But on a proper linux setup, that client never will go down, ever, and you know this.
:-)
Honestly. There are Linux web servers out there with uptimes of YEARS. These are production servers.
Yes, the possiblity exists that one of the client boxes may fail. You simply switch over to another box. Heck, the most they appear to be using these for is as dumb-terminals to the HP for their main 911 software, then some other apps, such as Wordperfect and so forth. Nothing seriously difficult about switching to the next cubical's computer...
argh.. plus, the fact is that using pre-tested software, known stable kernels, and a proper network setup, you can't take the suckers down. I personally have a very simple pentium 100 system i use for IP-masqurading, web server, file server, ftp server, samba services, and a bunch of automated scripts to do things i don't want to do manually, and it has an uptime of 340 days now. It even controls the lights in my house and makes me coffee in the morning (just added that 2 weeks ago, X10.
I don't believe the tales from M$ or from the linux-gurus. I believe the evidence of my eyes. I know my system will work because it has worked so well in the past. Proof through experience is the only proof worth having.
---
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
NOTE: this is NOT flamebait. It's an honest-to-goodness question
First let me say that I think it's great that Linux is getting this good exposure. My question is this: Why does everyone say it's a great article when somebody writes about NT's downtime, and how Linux is better than NT. However, if someone writes something positive about NT (or BSD, or anything that's NOT Linux), it's instantly labelled as "FUD" or "flamebait".
I think Linux is great and all, but it's not perfect (yet), we need to be fair in advocating it.
Juiced? Or Not?
I don't see this story as validating Linux,
more as damning NT. Other Unices would probably
have performed just as well.
Much the same can be said of most of these Linux
vs. NT stories, btw. It's just that for Linuxers,
Unix = Linus. There's nothing else.
--
FUD! FUD! FUD! You are so full of it! WinNT NEVER EVER gives this screen! When NT has an error it gives a Dr.Watson report and then shuts the app down. This screen in a Win9x screen only and once you see this screen, the system is unstable. Now the question is, why can NT and Unix all shut down an app without becoming unstable and Win9x can not? I think we all know the answer...
Presumably, most of the people here have had to deal with NT (I certainly have), and they know what's good, stable and flexible, and what's not. That is not bias; it's experience.
Certainly, Astroturfers will want to paint it as bias, but it's no more biased than reporting the baseball scores. What is, is.
I know from personal experience that I can set up a Linux box, and apart from occasional updates, leave it be. I have never been able to do that with an NT box for more than a couple months at a time, and NT machines have this nasty habit of suddenly becoming flaky for no apparent reason, depending on load and the particular software/services you're running. And service packs are a crapshoot (remember NT4 SP2?).
So, it's a great article because it is confirming the experience of most of the people here who have actually used both Linux and NT to any significant extent.
--
Interested in XFMail? New XFMail home page
Very funny, but a bit innacurate. No Microsoft service would give anyone the option of skipping the ads, whether the option works or not. I mean, what are the lives of innocent women and children, when compared to selling MS software? From an MS marketdroid POV?
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
Linux - To Protect and Serve
Debian developed here
I'm a web administrator in St. George, UT and run a number of Linux web servers so I am somewhat familiar with the reliabilty of Linux. I would like to think that I know what's going on in the local computer industry here since it's so small, but this story blew me away! To see this kind of support for Linux in my community is just wonderful. Go SGPD! You guys rock.
He says he set up Linux and it just runs. NT doesn't.
So maybe he's a moron (I reserve judgement). But if he is, that says that it's easier (for a moron) to set up a stable Linux system than it is for a moron to set up a stable NT system.
'Nuff said. Go back to spending your Wagged money and leave us alone.
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
A short history lesson:
The city of Orem wanted a word processing application. They went to a Brigham Young University professor and contracted him to write one for them. This professor, Bashton (or maybe it Ashton, I always confuse the two) asked one of his students (the other guy, Ashton, if my memory serves me correctly) to help him out on this project. Upon completion, they asked the city of Orem what they would like to do with the source. Being clueless about such things, they told Ashton and Bashton they could keep it.
It turned out that other people wanted to ditch their typewriters and Satellite Software Inc. was born. Later, the name was changed to WordPerfect Corporation. I'm sure you are familiar with the rest of the story. Just thought I'd stroll down memory lane.
Free Mac Mini. Yes, I'm
Okay, I'll admit it. When I was beta-testing a driver for the Computone Intelliport II I had a kernel panic.
But I've never had a kernel panic with the stock Linux kernel on supported hardware, and I've had some sites out in the field since 1996. (Not running continuously, they were upgraded from Red Hat 3.0.3 to Red Hat 4.2 in that time frame, but there were no kernel panics).
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
in most states at least. If this was not written by a real officer, that person would be in deep trouble. I doubt no one is stupid enough to impersonate a police officer on a public forum such as /. Then again....
I'm sure most of the linux geeks are beer guzzling, liquor drinking, party animals who couldn't dare to live in such a restrictive state.
:)
:)
On the other hand, 8 wives must be damn fun!
*beep*
Are you sure you want to speak with an operator?
*BEEEP!*
This operation could not be completed because an error of type -4019 occurred. Please standby, transferring you to the next available operator. Your expected wait time is: 493 minutes. Please have your MS-PIN and Certificate of..
*BEEP!* *BEEEEEEEEP!* *BEEEEEEEP!!*
... and thank you for using MS911!
*click*
NO CARRIER
--
In virtually every thread that mentions Linux, these astroturfers whine about the "unfairness" (ha!) of criticizing Microsoft's shoddy software, and spread maximum FUD against Linux and other Free Software.
Most of the comments are posted by 3 or 4 people, who post voluminously.
Also, some of these agents are moderating pro-M$ posts up, and pro-Linux posts down. That is obviously what happened in this case.
Do not trust the pro-MS shills; they are paid agents. Microsoft has been caught at this game before.
Yes, the EULA absolves MS of all liability, says you can't sue them even if it crashes ten times a day and erases all your mission critical data regularly, etc.
But: you can say "man, that's Microsoft's problem, I've reported it to them and they say they'll fix it but I can't do anything about it until they do." Then you can go along with sitting on your bun drawing your paycheck for clicking a mouse.
Whereas with Linux, you have the source, so even if you say "Man, that's Red Hat's problem, I've reported it to them" etc., sooner or later someone is bound to say "Hold it! You have the source! Why don't YOU fix the problem?" Thus requiring you to actually do work.
I run EST Inc.'s network on Linux because I like solving problems, but if I were a lazy guy more intent on my paycheck than on solving problems, I'd certainly rather run NT. With NT I can just shrug my shoulders and say "That's Microsoft's problem." With Linux, people expect me to fix the problem.
But, alas, I appear to be unusual in my desire to fix problems. Most people seem to prefer to "leave it to Mickeysoft".
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
ADI is the only other manufacturer of APCO units in the world. AFAIK, the base stations/call control system have always been running linux. I first saw them around 3 years ago so I can positively date our use of it at least that far back. When I walked in an saw this, I was _extremely_ impressed at the time as I was pretty much assumed I was the only one in the company that knew about it them (To be fair, we'd just purchased that part of the company a couple of months previously as part of a bankruptcy of a company called Stanilite - makers of all those little green "Exit" emergency lighting signs!).
Life is complete only for brief intervals in between toys or projects -- John Dalton
Microsoft developers (i.e., actual programmers within Microsoft) are quick to tell me "if NT is unstable, it's because you didn't configure it right." They claim that their own heavily-used development machines have been up and running for months.
What, it takes being an actual Microsoft engineer to configure NT?
meanwhile, I can throw Linux on any old junk PC in the office and it just works. Same PC that NT blue-screens on regularly.
Pfui.
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
So 911 service isn't well funded out there.
I'm sure this guy would love to have redundant power supplies, hot swap RAID, etc. in his workstations, but a $12,000 workstation is the same price as a 911 dispatcher in Utah (well, actually, 911 dispatchers in Utah probably make less than that, but $12K was what they made in my rural community in Louisiana). If it's a choice between talking to a dispatcher, and getting a busy signal because they don't have enough dispatchers because they had to fire one to buy a redundant computer, well, I'll choose a dispatcher all the time.
That's the kind of hard decisions that governments must make all the time, and why it's a mystery that Linux hasn't taken hold in a big way in the government market.
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
I've been giving this a lot of thought lately - when critical systems fail, and these systems are running software developed under open-source-type systems, who is responsible?
one could make an argument that the responsibility falls squarely on the shoulders of the individual or group of individuals who chose to use the software package. after all, noone is forcing this 911 center to use linux, and more importantly, if they think that there is a potential for disaster, well, they have all the source, and they are not only welcomed, but encouraged to improve the software so that it is less likely to fail.
I don't see any reason why we should hold software developers responsible for faulty software. that's not to say that they shouldnt feel a need to create robust software; it's just that it is the choice of the user what systems to use.
Has anybody ever succesfully sued Microsoft?
As far as I can tell, the answer is "No."
But you can certainly BLAME Microsoft if their software quits working. Saves having to actually do some work and FIX what's broken, which is what you'd have to do if it was Linux (either by fixing the source code yourself, or hiring a consultant to fix it for you).
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
Just a note.... Utah is located in the North West. They are in the Northern Rocky Mountains. Utah would be considered the Pacific Northwest I believe.
Man, I've counted at least two people from the Microsoft anti-Linux hit squad here today (just looking at their posting styles).
Anyhow: At Enhanced Software Technologies Inc. (the BRU guys), we run our infrastructure on Linux. Period. (Except for a legacy SCO box used for some old stuff, sigh, but that's going away soon). Sales, marketing, financials, every desktop is a Linux box.
WordPerfect 7 doesn't crash. KDE doesn't crash. (We used to use Afterstep, but KDE is easier for the clueless marketing types to use). The only thing that DOES crash is Netscape (a giant bug masquerading as a browser), but that's a nuisance, rather than a loss of mission critical data.
In short, anybody who says Linux is not stable in a workstation environment is smoking some mighty fine Redmond herb. We have too many examples to the contrary, ranging from Garden Grove CA onwards.
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
Now here's a police officer that uses his training to choose the better path: Linux. As he proved, it served it's purpose when it was most needed, when someone needed desperate help.
:)
Now if I was the one on the phone getting directions on how to revive or possibly save the family member/friends life I would not want directions on the dispatchers screen to suddenly be replaced by a blue screen. I don't think a GPF would do me any good then.
Just think of the many people relying on Windows to aid many citizens in everyday tasks. For example, I found this picture quite amusing until I actually thought about it. How would I feel if I had to scramble around the airport at the last minute figuring out if my flight was delayed or not because of an error in the messaging system. Not that funny anymore.
Overall I think that Officer should be awarded something.. I don't know what, but maybe a gold penguin or something at the 1st Annual Linux Awards when they eventually are sponsored
Congrats to Officer Linux and the Sgt.,
Matthew
______________________________________
sortakinda.ca | canadian paraphrasing.
Ok, I did make a FUD statement with crashing horribly. But how come no one gets mad about the FUD people spread about MS? Anyway, my whole point was that at least Windows could pick itself up and recover with ease. The first time it crashed a program locked up, and I didn't know how to kill it. I couldn't really do anything, so I figured I'd just reboot, like I do in Windows, because I'm a Linux newbie. Big mistake, one it rebooted, it gave me some error about not unmounting file systems or something. I have no idea how to fix things in Linux, so I figured it would be easier to reinstall. The second time it crashed, everything locked up. And no, it wasn't some corrupted glibc, I don't even attempt to mess with that stuff. So the only thing I could do was reboot, which gave me that error. So again, I just figured I'd reinstall since it would be easier. But remember, my whole point is that Windows can recover from a reboot, Linux has trouble. And yes, I am hiding behind an AC because I know that actually bashing Linux would get me rivers of flame (first post was already marked trollbait) so it's sort of protection.
Somehow the story seems to be a little "fishy". Maybe it's too cocky for someone who has to do all this kind of work... I guess proof of its relaybility can be easily made. Appologise to the man if it's really true, but he should try to be more convincing. Cheers, Daniel.
This is why people in Utah are so stupid and there are
no computers. Plus, Utah's schools are the worst on the planet because you're not supposed to learn. You're supposed to do only what your Leaders
tell you, because only that is right and nothing else.
There is a TON of computer software companies based in Utah.
WordPerfect WAS..
Novell
Obviously you don't know what you are talking about.
all that mother theresa shit is just fine, but i provide a real service to my community. i provide jobs for the jobless women, many of whom are mothers. i also provide a quality service to my clients. many of these are hard working bankers and businessmen. they are the backbone of our society. now, they don't have time to dilly dally around and have scheduling problems. thats where linux helps me. it keeps track of which whore is where, in what part of town in real time with my gps receiver each whore is required to have at all times. it keeps track of which whore is on her period, which has aids, which are into what kink for what price, and so on and so on. often these business gentlemen will decide they want a whore at the last minute for a big weekend party. and they know who to call. all they know is that my shit is dependable and it works. i know that its largely because of linux. thank you linux.
This will look very good for Linux doubters everywhere. Tid-bits of info like this are golden when trying to convince your boss or supervisor to switch to something more powerful (linux, *BSD, etc). It also tells the people up top that Linux is no joke, and it's here to stay.
----------
Have FreeBSD questions?
----------
Have FreeBSD questions?
http://balambiris.ne.mediaone.net
dont forget all those chinese prison camps that keep their guards rotation schedule on linux, or those lovely folks building nuclear weapons in third world countries who couldnt have done it without good ol' linux. i wouldnt dare to say that the USA has ever done anything wrong with linux. the USA is always right, and even when its wrong it had good intentions so it doesnt matter if it killed a few people here and there.
slashdot posts all sorts of shit without checking it out, you know it, i know it. go fuck yourself you goddam piece of trash.
thats great and all, im sure that they dont give the 911 people enough money as they would like to do their job right, but as far as im concerned the life and death critical tasks should under no circumstances whatsoever be anywhere dependent on a personal computer. at least they need some kind of system designed with airplane control system like redundancy, and with a REAL realtime hardware/software system. like he said, 'power supply failure'. on a properly designed life system computer that wouldnt be a problem. they prolly dont have the money though.
I just wanted to say Good Job to the officer personally.. Good Job Officer Stebbins.
When posting comments it really should say the above article then you write your comment below it just for people who's memory is totally shot at a young age (a.k.a me).
Matthew
______________________________________
sortakinda.ca | canadian paraphrasing.
you know, if you dont have the will to go into a ghetto when some little kid gets shot up by gangsters accidentally, then it doesnt fucking matter what operating system you have. linux is not going to solve that kinda problem, and frankly its a hell of alot more important problem to solve. any dumbfuck can figure out 'oh this computer doesnt work lets switch to another one'. and ive got bad news for you, any dumbfuck can run linux with enough patience.
I've started a collection. (Hey, even Alan Cox allowed me to use his Heathrow Airport picture!)
- -------
Check it out
-----------------------------------------------
"For I am a Bear of Very Little Brain, and long words
Truly true news reports always have something no other news reports do: Reliable sources. This story came with a name, a town, and a company. Make a phonecall to Utah 411 for the police in St. George, and talk to this supposed officer. He should be able to provide evidence and procedure to document his claim. If there's no Officer blah in St. George Utah, you can assume it's a fraudulent article. My $.02. -Chris Kaminski
I had a box running AfterStep nonstop for over 6 months on kernel, umm, 2.0.36 I think. Then I replaced the box. KDE on 2.2.9 seems to be doing fine too.
I suspect WP would die somewhat more often than that.
I KNOW that M$ Word would never survive a week, probably not a day, maybe not an hour.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
I can't wait for the AC FUD spreaders, though.
Let's take care of the big ones ahead of time.
1) There's no real technical support.
Well, there's companies out there with support package options for linux - and there's all us online people. By the way, you have access to all the source code, so there no reason that a decent company could not fix any problems themselves.
2)There's no applications/it's not windows.
Most ISV's out there run mosting internal/custom packages making this question moot. Just port it - you will be soon anyway. If you are just dieing for your (insert windows program here), then run it in a VM with vmware. If you can't replace your desktops, then you can at least replace your NT server I bet.
3)There's no good games/graphics/sound support.
There will be soon if you help us finish it. We need a friend that would help us pay for the DVD licenses too.
*Microsoft* was unable to solve the problem. Their ultimate answer (after having a ticket open for six months) was that FoxPro is not designed for this kind of use!
No FUD. No bullshit. Just the facts. Microsoft software sucks.
I have *never* seen a UNIX or Linux box behave similarly.
--
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-Alan
The hour of noon has passed. Let us go and get some Kentucky Fried Chicken.
That makes it very difficult to accomplish anything. I have a co-worker who runs NT, SP4 and won't even dare installing a new printer driver because he finally got his system stable enough to use. So, instead of using our beautiful, new color laser printer, he uses an old NEC laser.
I have to use NT at work and it is not perfect. I do; however, accomplish quite a lot. Sometimes in spite of the OS, but usually, NT is irrelevant to my productivity.
That being said, I use Mandrake at home. Can't let Bill get his fingers on my data.
Free Mac Mini. Yes, I'm
This is the website of the St. George Police Dept. And indeed, the person exists, so I would say that it is more likely to be true...
You're talking about the state that brought us Novell, Word Perfect, Caldera, the television, the first man-made industrial diamond, and the Cold Fusion hoax. The MS vs. Caldera antitrust case was also filed initially in Utah. Granted, there isn't a HUGE Linux scene (aside from the companies I mentioned), but then again, we don't have all that many people :)
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
"About the minor stability issues in NT, all of them are caused by faulty drivers and/or poorly written ones."
Pork is not a verb
Well, since the EULA specifically says that MS _doesn't_ support NT being used in life-or-death situations, I doubt they could sue them for this. Actually, the MS EULA is so full of legaleze, that once you really boil it all down, MS is responsible for absolutely NOTHING!
If only "common" sense was actually that common...
NeTrek was also developed (mostly) in Utah.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
Everybody's religion looks screwey from the outside. That of the Mormons has the advantage that it convinces essentially all of them to really BE good to their neighbors - especially non-Mormons - and to keep their religious squabbles within the various factions of their church.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Sure, Linux will give much less downtime than the NT boxes, but neither will provide the necessary *guaranteed* uptimes from a single box. What happens if someone kicks the power cable out? I'd expect some sort of hot swap failover cluster for an application like this, whatever the OS. Running on a single box is just running on borrowed time.
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
I called the St. George Police Department through its published non-emergency phone number, verified Officer Stebbins' identity, and chatted with him personally (by phone) before posting the story. Note the emphasis on using a *published* phone number for initial contact. It is as easy to spoof a phone number as an e-mail address; all you have to do is claim you're giving out a "private line."
Without proper verification, this story would not have run. Period.
Robin "roblimo" Miller
roblimo@slashdot.org
If I recall correctly, a tort lawsuit must show that a party behaved negligently or maliciously, that damage occurred, and that the damage would not have occurred without the negligence or malice on the part of the party.
I don't know that publishing source code could ever be considered, of itself, negligent. Even distributing binaries, as long as people have to look for them - they are not attractive nuisances, I hope. So if the devteam doesn't behave maliciously, it seems to me they are free from blame.
Marketing, on the othey hand, is more vulnerable - I don't imagine Red Hat's lawyers would let them stamp "As used by St. George, Utah 911 dispatchers," all over the box. That implies that it is suitable for emergency use, shifting some of the blame for such use, in my eyes, to marketing.
The people who make the decision to use it, absent some sort of marketing coersion, seem to be the people responsible for it failing them.
One hole I can see in this - what if they go to a computer supplier, and the supplier decides to install Linux for them? (Funny how this argument seems more likely to apply to Windows, though.)
As I recall, no civil case has yet been successfully brought against an OS manufacturer because their OS wasn't stable enough?
-=Best Viewed Using [INLINE]=-
Linux may not be on everyone's machine, but we do have some active Linux users group. Check them out...
http://www.sllug.org
The Salt Lake Linux Users Group
http://www.plug.org
The Provo Linux Users Group
-Derek
I think you have to distinguish between accidents and negligence. You also have to concentrate on validation beforehand, not blame afterwards.
I don't think anyone in the software field would suggest that it is possible to fully test complex software. Sometimes it won't fail until it's actually under load and an unusual set of conditions applies.
Note that the officer showed diligence and tested the switch to Linux before making it. If that hadn't been done, someone might have a reason to claim negligence if damaged by an ensuing problem. I assume the operators received training in the new system before the switchover as well. You don't want someone trying to figure out how to exit from vi for the first time in the middle of an emergency call.
There is probably an unfair burden on the 911 departments, in that whatever they choose, someone is likely to get upset and sue if a problem occurs. If there isn't an approvals process for qualifying critical software like 911 support, I'd suggest it might be wise, just to relieve the departments of the possible liability. Being reliable should of course rank extremely high in any rational selection process.
So focus on where people just didn't do their job, or maliciously installed a backdoor or easter-egg, not where they made honest mistakes. Many developers don't really consider their programs in the light of life critical use, I'm quite sure Microsoft doesn't. Software should be validated for suitability before use in life critical situations. It's an unfair burden to expect software developers to forsee all contexts their software may be used in.
Jim
No no, see, the PHB wants to be able to tell his boss that its "Someone elses problem". Actual liability is somewhat of a farse in a life or death situation unless you have software specifically written for that purpose. Which, in this case, they didn't before, and they don't now.
Good Fast Cheap. Pick any two.
Late night hacking sessions must suck, 'cause there isn't a coffee bean to be found anywhere in that state.
"There's nary an animal alive who can outrun a greased Scotsman !"
For all the international/national oriented people out there St. George is the stix and not really a large city. Most of the population of Utah is concentrated in the northern segment almost exclusively.
The death of one man is a tragedy; the death of a million is a statistic --Joseph Stalin
I went to the Association of Public Safety Communications Officials (APCO) exposition in Minniapolis, MN a few weeks ago. This is the show for the folks who make the radios, dispatch equipement, mobile computers, etc. for the police and fire departments nationwide.
I was dismayed at the number of dispatch systems, mobile computers, and radio setups that used Windows NT (or worse yet, 95/98) as the core. I saw about 3 vendors selling Unix (Solaris) solutions, and if there was a Linux box there (other than my laptop) I didn't see it.
The reason is a matter of demand: Most shops want stuff that works under Windows, and anything else does not compute. This is due to ignorance.
The solution is the same for this as anywhere else: ask for Linux/Unix versions of the code. If the radio programming software only runs under Windows, ask the radio manufacturer to port the code to Linux. If the test equipment only speaks to Windows, ask the manufacturer to port to Linux. If the dispatch software runs under Windows, ask for a port. If the mobile data unit runs Windows, ask if it will run Linux.
If enough shops ask for Linux support, it will be granted.
#include
The views expressed in this post are my own, not my employers. I am employed by a company that makes test equipment for police radios. Personally, I'd love to have customers asking for Linux support! It'd show the marketing people I know what I'm talking about!
(B.T.W. the APCO homepage is http://www.apcointl.org)
www.eFax.com are spammers
The problem with anecdotal evidence is just that, it's not a valid statistical representation. I've got dozens of NT boxes that I've never needed to press the reset switch on. So does my experience negate this story?
A better question is "why is this news"? One person uses Linux and is happy with it. So what? This article is clearly written by someone who has "found religion" and is just taking pot shots at Microsoft. Somehow I doubt he'll let us know when Linux fails him. He's also trying to trace off his position for credibility, which is distaceful.
ps. Does anyone have any other examples of this kind of "mission critical" usage of Linux? And I'm not talking about a web server that has to be up 24/7.
Who is the mental midget who allowed a critical 911 program/operation to be performed on Windows computers in the first place? Don't put NT or anything else where it doesn't belong. Use the right tool for the job. Don't blame the hammer if it can't drive a screw.
See the replies to a similar post above -- the
story was verifyed via a phone call to a *published* number prior to posting by slashdot and several readers also called directly to confirm.
I seem to remember something in the Windows NT license to cover their ass in this kind of event. It goes something like this....
You can not use Windows NT to control insert important stuff that will blow up and kill people if the software stops functioning here and Microsoft will not be liable if you do.
... As Linux moves into more and more areas(especially custom built situations), this should be given at least some thought.
No doubt Linux is great - the most flexible OS i've ever used. But - the only concern I can see is the way most distributions come - preinstalled with everything from apache to telnet.
In an environment especially with 911 dispatching, security is an essence. No one can deny the threat of exploits, especially where one could use an exploited linux box to get to a dispatch server.
My only concern is that while Linux has the potential to take over the software OS market, I don't think that a 911 dispatch workstation would need much more than the power of linux - not a bunch of daemons waiting to be possibly exploited.
However, in this case, it looks like whoever is running the show has a good head on his shoulders.
Polygamy is not really large in mainstream utah unlike marrying one's cousins in parts of the south. However I would think that a great deal of the people here could easily qualify as Rednecks.
The death of one man is a tragedy; the death of a million is a statistic --Joseph Stalin
You guys are making such big deal out of someone using Linux as a desktop to TELNET (3270) into an HP box, and to write reports on Word Perfect?
It's not like Linux is hooked up to the PBX and is routing calls or controling tapes. It's not doing anything important that a NT box running CRT couldn't do.
Moreover, what's even more important than OS stability is application stability.
It's all well and good that Linux doesn't crash, but if AfterStep, GNOME, or X crashes while they are taking a report, it would be JUST AS BAD!
I'm sick of the arguments for Linux stability when Linux apps themselves are so poor when it comes to stability. Say what you want about Word, but it won't crash nearly as much as WordPerfect on Linux. And NT's windowing system won't crash nearly as much as GNOME or AfterStep.
You forget that the real tool is the application, not the operating system. It's nice to have a great foundation, but if you bedroom floor falls into the basement on a daily basis, your house should still be condemned.
growing up as a non-mormon in southern Utah, I can say that most of this is not true. While there is a very high involvement of the church in Utah, it is mostly friendly, I was invited to all the youth events and never really pressured in to going to church, which is more than I can say for the Baptists when I lived in southern Missouri. As for the school system, most of Utah (with the possibly exception of SLC, which is 70% non-mormon) has a very excellent school system, I graduated in '93, and I was using CAI stations in the electronics classes as well as having the oportunity to take college level chemistry, english, physics, CAD, history classes. (by actually going to the local college)
It's the 21st Century Do you know what your government is doing
Ever hear the news story about the Fl*rida laywer who sued her husband for not winning the bread? You're not missing much by being unmarried.
Please, if you want to insult someone's intelligence, use correct grammar! Thank You.
Regarding the airport picture. People seem to be touting it as an example of Windows instability. Sorry, but it's not. It shows a case where an application has attempted to touch memory it hasn't allocated and thus the app was shut down. This is the Unix equivalent of a segmentation fault. Windows didn't die here, some poorly written app (probably custom to the airport) did.
California?
The death of one man is a tragedy; the death of a million is a statistic --Joseph Stalin
Making up phony responses doesn't help the credibilty of the Linux community.
I'm NOT an officer - but rather someone
who has been around dispatchers a bit
in my capacity as a volunteer for the
cities' RACES group. (Amateur radio type.)
I was involved with my own city (Milpitas, CA)
while they were building their new Emergency
Operations Center (EOC) some years ago. The
city contracted to a company to develop a
custom CAD system (Computer Aided Dispatch)
to run on a unix server (Sequent...) and
used X terminals (NCD) as the workstation
for the dispatchers.
I won't go on about how the custom CAD
system never REALLY got implemented
correctly - that is a different story.
But I WILL say that all of the issues
the officer mentions in his story
sound REAL familiar from a few years
back. The system Milpitas installed
was reliable - it just didn't have the
functionality they needed.
Further - the entire CITY of Garden
Grove is using Linux for it's server,
email, etc. I don't recall if the
police dept is using Linux for it's
CAD operation, but do know that some
of the police computing function is
performed by linux from reading recent
articles. So that makes TWO such
stories.
My two cents worth anyway.
Steve
Have you compiled your kernel today??
Okay, a quick phone call should clear this up, and I'll even look up the phone number on the Web!
(20 min. of grappling with search engines and refusing cookies later...)
Okay, I have the phone number. Let's place the call.
(Quick conversation with a pleasant and courteous law-enforcement professional later)
(I mention this as I have had few encounters with pleasant, courteous law-enforcement officials)
Okay, I have spoken with Officer Stebbins directly and he verifies the story (while seeming vastly amused by the idea). Welcome to the new journalism!
Of course, either
a) he bought half the WWW to place a false phone number to mislead me (highly unlikely)
or
b) I'm in on it (admittedly a lot more likely)
but I believe it, and one of the editors can quickly reproduce my small efforts at verification, should it be deemed necessary.
Thanx once again to Officer Stebbins and the St. George, Utah PD for letting me bug them while they're working.
No Longer a Menace to Society.
Alexandria Morrigan born 2/22/01 l. 20.5in wt. 7 lbs. 5 oz.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=99/08/27/16412 23&threshold=0&commentsort=0 &mode=thread&pid=8#72
Tell a man that there are 400 Billion stars and he'll believe you
Unfortunately, I've seen something else happen up here..
The Fire Department in a nearby city (St. Albert) uses software called "Crysis" for their 911 dispatching, which until recently, ran on QNX.. well, it seems in their infinite wisdom(?), Crysis has decided to switch over to Windows 98!
Hmm, now does this give anyone else here chills? I mean, think about if this happened in YOUR town... would you trust your emergency services?
I'm just glad that I don't live there.
I can't go anywhere without seeing someone who looks like they were taken out of a 14th century walled castle town.
The death of one man is a tragedy; the death of a million is a statistic --Joseph Stalin
vyesue said:
one could make an argument that the responsibility falls squarely on the shoulders of the individual or group of individuals who chose to use the software package.
This could be a negative thing if you are the person responsible for purchasing your OS's. Not that it's right...but really there are a lot of things I've seen that affect IT purchasing decisions that are not technology related. Such as:
The Blame Factor: When your mission critical NT machines crash you can point the finger at MS right away...Everyone knows that NT crashes. "No one ever got fired for buying [Microsoft]"
The Wine and Dine Factor: Why pick up free software when you can get vendors to buy you dinner and drinks for buying stuff through them? It's not your money you're spending anyway...but you reap the benefits. Kickbacks may be illegal but I've seen vendors send VP's and their families on vacation to the Olympics and the Superbowl "just to say thanks for buying our product."
The Hip Factor: Actually, this is one thing that Linux has going for it in the category of wrong reasons to buy stuff. People like to buy cool stuff and brag to their peers about it. Even the big guys.
I'm sure I've left some things out, but those are the things that immediately come to mind.
numb
It would still be prudent to periodically reboot individual clients maybe once a month.
Since when did they come out with a Dunkin Doughnuts distro of linux? Wow, it just amazes me that a cop would even approach this subject.
Linux.
I think that would be a great slogan.
-- these are only opinions and they might not be mine.
omg! hahaha Thats so cool I put it in my sigfile.
Rather interesting but can it use robots? I would like to play it on my machine without a net connection? Can this be done?
The death of one man is a tragedy; the death of a million is a statistic --Joseph Stalin
>However, if someone writes something positive
/. NT stands for NiceTry...
>about NT, it's instantly labelled as "FUD" or
>"flamebait".
Understand this: Nothing is absolute.
There is no right and wrong, only popular opinion.
On
-- To dream a dream is grand, but to live it is divine. -- Leto ][
I live in Ewtahh, and have lived here for 30 years. Its not like that at all. Every saturday I throw a party and we all play Q3 and discuss Linux and OSS before we head out to Bricks (a club). How do you mean restrictive? We have a Department of Parks & Rec(liqour store), that keeps our bellies filled quite nice.
> Like he said, Motorolla and MS take the
> blame for the NT box that they have to
> connect too, but they don't take
> responsibility. The sad truth is, that
> most supervisors and managers out there,
> especially in life-and-death related
> feilds, are much more concerned more with
> _liability_ than _reliability_.
Read the M$ doze-NT license. It absolves M$ of _ALL_ liability. Basically, using NT it is explicit agreement to hold M$ completely blameless for anything bad that happens.
Sorry, but your liability problems aren't any better off with NT than they are with Linux.
Hmm. You may be right about the Linux bit - I don't know because it's never crashed on me.
:-)))
Still, I have to disagree over the windows bit. We've moved away from Windows in our office after having lost data too many times for it to be even 'liveable-with'. We're now completely linux - from desktop to server
No crashes yet, either!
Physicists get Hadrons!
I think the Mormons represent an intersting factor in the future of linux.
As a group, they are socialist at the core. The west was won not by gun toting loaners, but by communities of settlers, many of them mormon, who had the social cohesion needed to create the irrigation projects needed to establish an agricultural community in the arid west. Their choice of the beehive as the state symbol of Utah is founded on this spirit.
At the same time, they have long been motivated by the profit margin. If it weren't for their profitable business selling provisions and supplies to california goldrushers which developed a year or two after their own arrival in the Salt Lake valley, they would never have been able to fund the founding of new communities throughout the west.
Where does this tie in to the future of Linux? Two ways. First, I think that the communitarian aspects of Open Source software intersect nicely with some Mormon social ideals.
This is reinforced strongly by Mormon business practices, and interaction with the enterprises of Elder Ray Noorda, formerly of Novell and the major backer behind Caldera. Linux helps Novell, by weekening their old enemy, Microsoft and also strengthens Caldera. Ultimately, both of these things are good for the mormon business community and as such, have the potential to influence purchasing decisious inside and outside the state of Utah.
Of course, this dynamic isn't infailable, it wasn't enough to sustain something on the scale of Word Perfect of Novell, but it could play a role in boosting Linux further.
You don't need to reboot Linux systems to keep them fresh. I have many systems with 6-8 month uptimes. There is no degredation of performance.