if you don't get that virtualizing your servers imposes a bit of overhead, then you're probably not paying attention...
In fairness, a 43% performance hit is a bit more than "a bit". It's cutting performance nearly in half.
I agree with your overall sentiment (a virtualized system is going to be slower than the same system running on real metal, by definition) but 43% is certainly a higher figure than I would have expected.
Registration is not a complicated product, so the only way vendors can compete is price. The natural result is a service like GoDaddy which charges a few bucks for a single registration, and provides a corresponding level of service.
GoDaddy is not a monopoly. Nobody is forced to register through them. If you don't like the level of service you get from GoDaddy, go somewhere else. If there's a demand for higher levels of service (with correspondingly higher fees), someone will provide it.
If it were up to me, we'd go back to one having one registrar that charges $35/year for every second-level domain. No, better yet, raise it to $100 a year. Allow the registrar a reasonable profit, and put the rest of the money into something useful: research, or bridging the digital divide. Shazam! No more domain squatting. It's not longer profitable.
Except that we had domain squatters back when there was only one registrar (Network Solutions), and they charged $70 per domain. If a good domain can earn you $1000 (either through adsense, or by re-selling it), the difference between $10 and $70 in registration fees is trivial. Jacking up domain fees isn't going to stop domain squatting.
And that single registrar has every incentive to provide good service: if they don't, they lose their cash cow.
How do they "lose" it, exactly? Who takes it away from them? And if they do lose it, who gets it? Is someone supposed to set up a registrar company that isn't allowed to sell domains, on the off chance that the one company that IS allowed to sell domains loses its franchise?
I can't imagine how anybody could think that having a single monopoly vendor would result in better levels of customer service. Back when the domain system was "pay Network Solutions whatever they ask for", we didn't exactly live in a Golden Age of customer service either. If anything, opening the system up has made it possible for vendors who do care about customer service to exist. If they don't, maybe there just isn't a demand for them.
I use Eclipse, and I don't even have any idea what this article is about. What is MyEclipse? What is a GA release? What does it have to do with Vi? What is Eclipse WTP? Why should I care if it's "fully I18n enabled"? Could you please explain anything about what you're talking about?
Windows has home directories. In fact, My Documents is a subdirectory of it.
I know that, but I was trying to keep it simple. Windows users don't use the "home directory" terminology, and most of them have no idea about the Documents and Settings folder. My Documents they know because it has a big icon on the desktop, but very few know where that folder actually lives in the filesystem. (And why should they, if they never use it?
You know how Windows has "My Documents", right? And that's the default place for downloaded files to go?
The analogous concept in Linux is the "home directory". It's called that because each user account on the system has one, and that user has complete power to do whatever they want there, unlike most of the system which requires admin privileges to make changes.
The home directories, logically enough, are all stored in the/home branch of the filesystem. So if your user account name was "cpnabend", your home directory is probably/home/cpnabend
The home directory is where the system is going to store lots of stuff -- configuration files for applications, downloaded files, you can even install applications in there (if you're the only user who needs them). In this way the "home directory" concept is more expansive than the "My Documents" concept, which is only for document files (your configs are in the Registry, your apps are in Program Files). It's also why the home directory is more useful than My Documents -- if you regularly backup your home directory, you will have nearly everything you need to bring your Linux box back from the dead in case of emergency.
Even if you have the best web-app in the universe, it still can't accept drag&drop files from the desktop, nor can it safely open multiple windows, nor can it interact with any other application on the system (i.e. by using AppleScript on Mac for example), nor can it use any OS widget other than the most basic few...
None of which most general users care about. Drag 'n drop? I've dealt with very smart people who were completely amazed when I grabbed some cells from Excel and dragged them into Word.
Web apps do provide a more limited set of interactions than desktop apps do, but in a whole lot of cases that limited set is all you need -- anything richer just sails over the average user's head.
TFA leaves out the one bit of information I'd actually be interested in: how AMD's chips stack up against Intel's, power consumption-wise.
The article talks about how much more efficient the Core 2s are compared to the Pentium D, which I don't doubt. But you can get Athlon X2s these days that only draw 35 watts, compared to (IIRC) 65 watts for a Core 2 Duo. Maybe someone out there who knows more than I do about this stuff can explain why that wouldn't make the Athlon the "greener" chip?
There's an excellent documentary on the evolution vs. intelligent design wars called "Flock of Dodos" that covers this very issue -- there's actually a scene with a bunch of leading evolutionary scientists sitting around a poker table, lamenting that they have to avoid using the word "evolution" in their NSF grant proposals if they want to keep their grants. If you haven't seen it, and you're interested in this issue, you should definitely track down a screening in your area.
(Full disclosure: I know the guy who made the movie and am a big fan of his work teaching communications skills to scientists. If you want a second opinion on the movie, here's a New York Times article about it.)
Barak Obama: Very clean and professional. Links to the Obama campaign's accounts on a few social networking sites. First overall in seeming to encourage supporter action/participation. Supporter area has its own social networking features. Best campaign web site by far.
Apparently not good enough to teach you how to spell the guy's name right, though.
You are correct, there are dual-core Athlon 64 FX's. My mistake. I blame AMD's web site, which doesn't make this immediately clear on the product pages.
Athlon 64 FX is their high-end single-core offering, available for Socket AM2, Socket 939, Socket 940, and Socket F (server) motherboards.
Athlon 64 is their mid-range single-core offering, available for Socket AM2, Socket 939, and Socket 754 motherboards.
Sempron is their low-end ("value") single-core offering, available for Socket AM2 and Socket 754 motherboards.
So, to answer your questions: Athlon FX's are not dual core (dual core chips will be labeled Athlon 64 X2), no matter what socket they use. Intel does have four-core offerings, and they do call them Core 2 Quads. The Core 2 Extreme is not necessarily a four-core chip; there are Core 2 Extreme Duo and Core 2 Extreme Quad flavors.
Of course, many here on Slashdot could probably set up their own OpenID server that has a unique identifier for each site, but how many do you think {are going to/are able to} do that -- especially among AOL users?
So set up your own OpenID server, and offer it free to AOL users who aren't savvy enough to do it themselves. Explain to them why they should trust you more than they trust AOL. If they want to they could use your server just as easily as they use AOL's.
OpenID makes identity portable, which is a Good Thing as it means identity vendors will have to compete on the basis of trust rather than what they do now -- compete on the basis of exclusive access to their walled gardens.
The story is even bigger than the summary makes it out to be. It's not just AOL users who have an OpenID -- anyone who uses AOL Instant Messenger is included, too, as is anyone who uses AOL's "Journals" blogging platform. Both these services are free, and AIM especially is used by a far wider and more technical group of users than the term "AOL users" would suggest. (You/.ers who use AIM via Gaim, for example? You've got OpenIDs now.)
Your knee is jerking. You're reacting to the centralized authentication systems like MS Passport that we've seen in the past, which would indeed make it easier to track people. OpenID is fundamentally different in that there is no one centralized identity provider. You can use AOL as your OpenID provider, or another provider, or even set up your own OpenID server on your own hardware and use that if you can't find one you can trust -- hard to think of a scenario that would be more tracking-proof than that. Read more about OpenID, it's not what you think it is.
For instance, could I write a plugin for either desktop that would make my windows "wobble" when moving them around? Or explode in a shower of sparks when closed?
That's correct; unlike proprietary systems, Linux has no mechanism to protect you from your own bad taste.
all those grandmothers, aunts, uncles, significant others, friends, etc which we have spent time convincing to use some other browser ("It works with almost everything, PLEASE use it instead of Internet Explorer") hit walmart.com and get a big "I DO NOT WORK WITH THIS SILLY LITTLE BROWSER."
Not really. Walmart.com works fine in alternate browsers. It's the Wal-Mart downloadable video service which is IE only. And since every other downloadable video service out there is IE only too (except iTunes, which is iTunes-only), this is not a particularly shocking development. And since the overall audience for online pay video-on-demand is pretty small, the odds of your grandma having a problem due to this are pretty minimal.
This country is not yet ready for a black prez, particularly the one whose father is from a predominantly Muslim country... Sadly, in order to win presidency in this country one needs to be a white, Christian-god-fearing male.
Sigh... Mark Twain was right, a lie really does get around the world before the truth can get its boots on.
Barack Obama is a Christian. He belongs to Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ. When asked about his faith, he has said that he has "a personal relationship with Jesus Christ", which, while he doesn't describe himself as born-again or evangelical, is a standard way that evangelical Christians describe their faith. In other words, he is definitely a "Christian god-fearing male".
As to his father being a Muslim. His birth father was an atheist goatherder who left the family when Obama was two years old. His stepfather, who raised him through adulthood, was a non-practicing Muslim, and his father and mother educated him in secular schools, not whacko Muslim Madrassas as some of his political opponents have been claiming.
So let's stop worrying about Obama being some kind of Muslim Manchurian Candidate, k? Because it's really far from the truth.
It's news that a small group of committed individuals moves faster than Department of Defense procurement? Continental drift moves faster than Department of Defense procurement.
It can take decades for a new weapons system to go from concept to prototype to deployment. Look how long systems like the F-22 fighter were in the procurement pipe. The DoD procurement process is so lengthy that by the time the system is deployed, the threat it was designed to counter has often disappeared.
Ah, but by default Ubuntu/Kubuntu/Xubuntu et al do not ship with anything but Free software. If you want things like Flash, media codecs, etc. you have to figure out how to set them up yourself, or use a helper script like EasyUbuntu.
This is, IMHO, the biggest weakness in the Ubuntu/Canonical strategy -- they have two desires ("a distro for Linux newbies" and "a 100% Free-as-in-Freedom distro") that in many ways are diametrically opposed. (And I say this as a happy Kubuntu user.)
I firmly believe in updating server software only when you need to. If you don't need new features, and things are working, why change anything? If you update anything you will undoubtedly need to update configuration files. You will need to fix things that break in the upgrade process.
(Emphasis mine)
This kind of thinking made sense in 1995, when your servers were only hooked up to the office LAN. But now it's 2007 and they are hooked into a global network, on which millions of nefarious people are working hard every day to find new ways to crack systems.
This makes the "if it works, don't update it" line of thinking not just misguided but actively dangerous, because it means that you're not keeping up with security fixes that are issued to close avenues of attack that were never envisioned when the product first shipped. (Unless those fixes are included in the author's definition of "new features", that is. But I kind of doubt that.)
In short: "get it stable and leave it alone" is 20th century thinking. It's out of date for any system that touches the public Internet.
(Note that this is not an endorsement of the "update everything" philosophy as described in TFA. You should still know what you're updating, why you're updating it, and how things will change after the update. But "no updates" is just as silly as "update everything", IMHO.)
Slashdot Mirror
In fairness, a 43% performance hit is a bit more than "a bit". It's cutting performance nearly in half.
I agree with your overall sentiment (a virtualized system is going to be slower than the same system running on real metal, by definition) but 43% is certainly a higher figure than I would have expected.
Oooooooooookay...
This is insightful?
GoDaddy is not a monopoly. Nobody is forced to register through them. If you don't like the level of service you get from GoDaddy, go somewhere else. If there's a demand for higher levels of service (with correspondingly higher fees), someone will provide it.
Except that we had domain squatters back when there was only one registrar (Network Solutions), and they charged $70 per domain. If a good domain can earn you $1000 (either through adsense, or by re-selling it), the difference between $10 and $70 in registration fees is trivial. Jacking up domain fees isn't going to stop domain squatting.
How do they "lose" it, exactly? Who takes it away from them? And if they do lose it, who gets it? Is someone supposed to set up a registrar company that isn't allowed to sell domains, on the off chance that the one company that IS allowed to sell domains loses its franchise?
I can't imagine how anybody could think that having a single monopoly vendor would result in better levels of customer service. Back when the domain system was "pay Network Solutions whatever they ask for", we didn't exactly live in a Golden Age of customer service either. If anything, opening the system up has made it possible for vendors who do care about customer service to exist. If they don't, maybe there just isn't a demand for them.
You must be new here!
I know that, but I was trying to keep it simple. Windows users don't use the "home directory" terminology, and most of them have no idea about the Documents and Settings folder. My Documents they know because it has a big icon on the desktop, but very few know where that folder actually lives in the filesystem. (And why should they, if they never use it?
OK, I'll try.
/home branch of the filesystem. So if your user account name was "cpnabend", your home directory is probably /home/cpnabend
You know how Windows has "My Documents", right? And that's the default place for downloaded files to go?
The analogous concept in Linux is the "home directory". It's called that because each user account on the system has one, and that user has complete power to do whatever they want there, unlike most of the system which requires admin privileges to make changes.
The home directories, logically enough, are all stored in the
The home directory is where the system is going to store lots of stuff -- configuration files for applications, downloaded files, you can even install applications in there (if you're the only user who needs them). In this way the "home directory" concept is more expansive than the "My Documents" concept, which is only for document files (your configs are in the Registry, your apps are in Program Files). It's also why the home directory is more useful than My Documents -- if you regularly backup your home directory, you will have nearly everything you need to bring your Linux box back from the dead in case of emergency.
None of which most general users care about. Drag 'n drop? I've dealt with very smart people who were completely amazed when I grabbed some cells from Excel and dragged them into Word.
Web apps do provide a more limited set of interactions than desktop apps do, but in a whole lot of cases that limited set is all you need -- anything richer just sails over the average user's head.
TFA leaves out the one bit of information I'd actually be interested in: how AMD's chips stack up against Intel's, power consumption-wise. The article talks about how much more efficient the Core 2s are compared to the Pentium D, which I don't doubt. But you can get Athlon X2s these days that only draw 35 watts, compared to (IIRC) 65 watts for a Core 2 Duo. Maybe someone out there who knows more than I do about this stuff can explain why that wouldn't make the Athlon the "greener" chip?
There's an excellent documentary on the evolution vs. intelligent design wars called "Flock of Dodos" that covers this very issue -- there's actually a scene with a bunch of leading evolutionary scientists sitting around a poker table, lamenting that they have to avoid using the word "evolution" in their NSF grant proposals if they want to keep their grants. If you haven't seen it, and you're interested in this issue, you should definitely track down a screening in your area.
(Full disclosure: I know the guy who made the movie and am a big fan of his work teaching communications skills to scientists. If you want a second opinion on the movie, here's a New York Times article about it.)
Apparently not good enough to teach you how to spell the guy's name right, though.
Hint: It's Barack, not "Barak".
You are correct, there are dual-core Athlon 64 FX's. My mistake. I blame AMD's web site, which doesn't make this immediately clear on the product pages.
- Athlon 64 X2 is their dual-core offering, available for Socket AM2 and Socket 939 motherboards.
- Athlon 64 FX is their high-end single-core offering, available for Socket AM2, Socket 939, Socket 940, and Socket F (server) motherboards.
- Athlon 64 is their mid-range single-core offering, available for Socket AM2, Socket 939, and Socket 754 motherboards.
- Sempron is their low-end ("value") single-core offering, available for Socket AM2 and Socket 754 motherboards.
So, to answer your questions: Athlon FX's are not dual core (dual core chips will be labeled Athlon 64 X2), no matter what socket they use. Intel does have four-core offerings, and they do call them Core 2 Quads. The Core 2 Extreme is not necessarily a four-core chip; there are Core 2 Extreme Duo and Core 2 Extreme Quad flavors.So set up your own OpenID server, and offer it free to AOL users who aren't savvy enough to do it themselves. Explain to them why they should trust you more than they trust AOL. If they want to they could use your server just as easily as they use AOL's.
OpenID makes identity portable, which is a Good Thing as it means identity vendors will have to compete on the basis of trust rather than what they do now -- compete on the basis of exclusive access to their walled gardens.
The story is even bigger than the summary makes it out to be. It's not just AOL users who have an OpenID -- anyone who uses AOL Instant Messenger is included, too, as is anyone who uses AOL's "Journals" blogging platform. Both these services are free, and AIM especially is used by a far wider and more technical group of users than the term "AOL users" would suggest. (You /.ers who use AIM via Gaim, for example? You've got OpenIDs now.)
Your knee is jerking. You're reacting to the centralized authentication systems like MS Passport that we've seen in the past, which would indeed make it easier to track people. OpenID is fundamentally different in that there is no one centralized identity provider. You can use AOL as your OpenID provider, or another provider, or even set up your own OpenID server on your own hardware and use that if you can't find one you can trust -- hard to think of a scenario that would be more tracking-proof than that. Read more about OpenID, it's not what you think it is.
That's correct; unlike proprietary systems, Linux has no mechanism to protect you from your own bad taste.
There's no need to miss Sam and Max, they've already returned...
Not really. Walmart.com works fine in alternate browsers. It's the Wal-Mart downloadable video service which is IE only. And since every other downloadable video service out there is IE only too (except iTunes, which is iTunes-only), this is not a particularly shocking development. And since the overall audience for online pay video-on-demand is pretty small, the odds of your grandma having a problem due to this are pretty minimal.
Sigh... Mark Twain was right, a lie really does get around the world before the truth can get its boots on.
Barack Obama is a Christian. He belongs to Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ. When asked about his faith, he has said that he has "a personal relationship with Jesus Christ", which, while he doesn't describe himself as born-again or evangelical, is a standard way that evangelical Christians describe their faith. In other words, he is definitely a "Christian god-fearing male".
As to his father being a Muslim. His birth father was an atheist goatherder who left the family when Obama was two years old. His stepfather, who raised him through adulthood, was a non-practicing Muslim, and his father and mother educated him in secular schools, not whacko Muslim Madrassas as some of his political opponents have been claiming.
So let's stop worrying about Obama being some kind of Muslim Manchurian Candidate, k? Because it's really far from the truth.
It's news that a small group of committed individuals moves faster than Department of Defense procurement? Continental drift moves faster than Department of Defense procurement.
It can take decades for a new weapons system to go from concept to prototype to deployment. Look how long systems like the F-22 fighter were in the procurement pipe. The DoD procurement process is so lengthy that by the time the system is deployed, the threat it was designed to counter has often disappeared.
Ah, but by default Ubuntu/Kubuntu/Xubuntu et al do not ship with anything but Free software. If you want things like Flash, media codecs, etc. you have to figure out how to set them up yourself, or use a helper script like EasyUbuntu.
This is, IMHO, the biggest weakness in the Ubuntu/Canonical strategy -- they have two desires ("a distro for Linux newbies" and "a 100% Free-as-in-Freedom distro") that in many ways are diametrically opposed. (And I say this as a happy Kubuntu user.)
It is if you take it in the sense I meant, which is that to be human is to be flawed.
In other words, a flawless being would not be human -- it would be a god, or a reasonable facsimile thereof.
People are, by definition, flawed. Any security system that is predicated on this changing sometime soon is broken.
As the old saying goes, "The secret to success is sincerity. Once you can fake that, you've got it made." ;-)
From TFA:
(Emphasis mine)
This kind of thinking made sense in 1995, when your servers were only hooked up to the office LAN. But now it's 2007 and they are hooked into a global network, on which millions of nefarious people are working hard every day to find new ways to crack systems.
This makes the "if it works, don't update it" line of thinking not just misguided but actively dangerous, because it means that you're not keeping up with security fixes that are issued to close avenues of attack that were never envisioned when the product first shipped. (Unless those fixes are included in the author's definition of "new features", that is. But I kind of doubt that.)
In short: "get it stable and leave it alone" is 20th century thinking. It's out of date for any system that touches the public Internet.
(Note that this is not an endorsement of the "update everything" philosophy as described in TFA. You should still know what you're updating, why you're updating it, and how things will change after the update. But "no updates" is just as silly as "update everything", IMHO.)