Too many cases of admins running wild in recent history.
No, I would never ever do anything to jeopardize the decades of work I've performed to further the career I've invested so much sweat and tears into, let alone do something like this which might land me in legal trouble or even jail. It's not worth it. I've been termed before and it's a very simple thing: if you're termed, you suck it up, you get your resume ready and you find another job. Notice I didn't say "look for another job", either, because it's not about the search, it's about the results. Feed the mouths that need feeding and all that.
When your company terminates domain admins, it doesn't require all other domain admins to change passwords, VPN access credentials etc immediately? Wow. That's a head scratcher.
In my experience, yes, but I haven't run into any issues where the older IOS version is necessary to use an older app. Theoretically I guess you could have issues with deprecated features. So you could restore from an old backup or install an old IOS version in that case.
I've also got some experience with pulled apps -- I installed 2 apps which were later pulled from the App Store (StoneLoops of Jurassica, a game which apparently is like/based on Luxor; and VLC) and although they are no longer available there, they have been through many IOS updates... StoneLoops is from my iPod Touch 2 which is a very very long time. It's currently on my iPad running the latest IOS version (which means I not only retained the file, I also was able to install it on a different device). VLC is on my iPhone which is also running the latest IOS version. None of my stuff is jailbroken.
So let me get this straight -- people spend more than $400 for a video card so they can play some game -- enough people for there to be an entire market built around this -- and you don't understand how people would pay $400 for a motherboard (or get it free with your Mac) or $50 for a cable?
Have you ever heard of HDMI, and have you priced those cables at your local retailer? Don't bring Monoprice into this, I'm talking National chains you probably have locally: Wal-Mart, Target, Sears, etc. Even ignoring the worst of the offenders (Best Buy), you will probably pay more than $50 for an HDMI cable locally.
Ignoring the video editing crowd and their needs (simultaneous video streams tend to eat bandwidth) even folks like me who frequently work with VM's and large file backups would pay this for faster speeds. Historically, other cables for the "fastest" connection at the time were in the $50 price range... SCSI... Firewire 400... Firewire 800... what's different about this?
USB may have existed on PC's at that time, but there was little or nothing which used it. I remember buying (and still own) converters for serial-to-USB, parallel-to-USB etc for my Windows devices so they would work with my first iMac. PC's were still very much in the USB dark age at that time, and obtaining a device that worked without issues was difficult. Not impossible, but wow was USB a wasted port on PC's in those days. Even a Logitech QuickCam I bought around that time was parallel, not USB. Zip drives were still parallel or SCSI. Freaking Laplink cables were parallel or serial -- not USB.
Is it really that big a deal that Apple had a functional, working, production-ready USB first? Are you guys really measuring e-peens over this?
Carbon's a 32-bit API for backward compatibility that's been deprecated for awhile (since at least 2007 when Leopard appeared). This wasn't Apple changing things midstream, they were pretty clear to everyone what the future was for Carbon and Cocoa. The problem was Adobe didn't make any changes, and delayed so long that when Apple finally made the changes it caught Adobe with their pants down. Users were caught in the turmoil which was a shame and reflected poorly on Adobe.
TL;DR: Adobe knew about this before 2007 but didn't make changes. GP's aunt was inconvenienced needlessly because of this. She wasn't the only one.
If you're not already on at least Snow Leopard, either you're not the type of person who stays current (obviously) or your machine can't be upgraded that far (for instance PPC machines). I don't think the number of Mac users still on pre-Snow Leopard OSX is large and of those users, I don't think they care much that they can't run Mountain Lion.
To be totally fair, can you usually upgrade Windows from a version 2 releases prior? And if you can, is it recommended? Generally no, and no. Try installing Windows 7 on an XP machine and you will probably find your hardware is insufficient. There's been a lot of things happen in 10 years. On the other hand, when I upgraded Tiger to Snow Leopard I didn't even have to reinstall Parallels -- all my apps and documents and saved keychain passwords and network setups and preferences and even the stuff on my desktop stayed the same. That doesn't happen in Windows upgrades... when it's supported you end up having to reinstall a lot of stuff.
So this isn't an Apple issue -- if anything it's pretty nice that you can upgrade your Apple machine that much that easily. I'd rather have that than 10-year support of an OS with no major enhancements, but that's just me. I can understand how corporations like that feature.
Twist? You seem to imply I'm doing something sneaky with the math or I have some nefarious goal or something.
First of all, I upgrade every 3-5 years. If you want to use the same machine for years and this is some budget argument -- fine, use the same machine for 10+ years if that works for you. More power to you. I don't think that's the average user scenario; most people either upgrade every few years or you buy a new machine.
So you either pay $100-200 per Windows version to stay current, with a new version every few years OR $150 or so to do all the upgrades individually and stay current with Apple. If you (like me) upgraded OSX only every other version -- I went from Tiger to Snow Leopard, and if I went to Mountain Lion, that's like $55 total -- that's the cheap route. AND the $20 is for *all* your machines, whereas with Windows you have to pay to upgrade each one. How can you be pissed at Apple about that? I would much rather have incremental upgrades regularly than have large changes anyway... easier for me to deal with.
A new Air is like $1000 start. The 13" MBP is like $1100 start. If you need to hit a lower price target, try refurbs / overstock at places like the Apple site or MacMall (they have a lot of non-Apple refurbs too). Apple's got a refurb 11" MacBook Air (fairly low-end model) for $790.
One thing that may or may not make a difference to you is the cost of OSX upgrades vs Windows upgrades, assuming you keep a machine that long. The Mountain Lion upgrade will be $20 for an unlimited number of PC's. I think Windows is around $100-200 per machine. Upgrade once or twice and it makes a big difference.
Read up on Carbon and Cocoa as it applies to Adobe. Long story short, Adobe is to blame because they chose not to go with the new programming model even after 10+ years of warnings that the old model was deprecated. CS 6 is the newest version and provides a large number of benefits. But place the blame where it belongs -- on Adobe for their refusal to get with the program.
Apple doesn't make hard drives. How many machines from 1999 are still running for you? As for the battery, totally Apple's fault. Replaced under warranty. Hibernation? Apple's fault too, because it's an issue for which I see a lot of Google results. But other than the hibernation everything works fine. There is no xyz. The battery was a proactive replacement shipped to me next-day air from Apple at no charge.
The HP's failed out of warranty and it was going to be more expensive to fix than they were worth so we sent them to recycling. It would have been cheaper to buy an Apple laptop than to go through setup twice.
The cost to our organization of having a laptop fail -- especially one used by executives, sales, regional ops or MIS -- isn't just inconvenience. It's the cost of delaying a sales call. The cost of reinstalling and patching all the software then shipping it to arrive wherever the employee is that week. The cost of an embarrassed executive traveling without easy access to historical email or documents. The time spent on this instead of other tasks that can benefit the business more. For a home user this isn't a big deal, but for larger orgs this is important. It's not just a holder for documents, it's the method our people use to communicate, organize and act on their tasks.
Let's also not forget the embarrassment of proactively replacing an employee's equipment and having that replacement fail shortly afterward. Looks like we are doing something wrong, but we are getting too many new laptops whose hardware components fail before their time. Originally we blamed the users but we've seen too many things fail... an entire HP Evo model whose network cards failed after deployment (out of warranty, required sending dozens of external network cards to the field)... sooo many hinge problems... more than a dozen video card or LCD problems in 2 years etc. These are not cheap laptops either. PC's are commodity machines built as cheaply as possible. If you want high quality there just aren't that many options available anymore and for us -- an HP shop -- we have found no solution.
Ok so you don't have a Core Duo in your MacBook so you can't upgrade to the new OS. You bought it with Tiger, then had supported upgrades to Leopard, Snow Leopard and Lion. That's 3 OS versions to upgrade which is pretty good IMHO. Obviously you're disappointed, just like the people who had PPC-based Macs were pissed at one point too.
So try out that Windows PC. You will have to change some of your preconceptions though. You're going to love upgrades there! Like, for instance, upgrades usually require you to reinstall software (and in a lot of cases there simply is no software upgrade path). You should purchase an antivirus subscription (I like Trend because it's effective, cheap and unobtrusive). You need to backup your stuff (I like Acronis) because there isn't any Time Machine-equivalent available. Many things are similar but just different enough that you will spend much time cursing the software, the OS, and the lack of QA in general.
Do it, really, it's important. And if you haven't launched your new Windows machine off a balcony in the first month or so, I will be surprised.
I'm replacing my 2007 MacBook Pro this year, not because it's slow or doesn't do what I need, but because our lifecycle is 3-5 years for laptops and the cost of it breaking unexpectedly is higher than the cost of proactive replacement. In the meantime, every other member of my MIS team has been through 2 HP business-class laptops because of various components failing. The one developer with an HP desktop was ok other than upgrading the hard drive and video card.
I know one experience doesn't matter much, but keep in mind I only recently got rid of my 1999 iMac DV SE because there wasn't any software available for it anymore and it was very slow compared to modern systems. It had a failed hard drive somewhere along the way that I replaced but other than upgrading its memory it still worked fine. My eMac from the early 2000's also still works fine but it also has no updates so I will probably get rid of it too. We have recently purchased a MacBook Air for our VP of MIS because he's also had very good experiences with Apple products.
Is everything perfect? No, I had to have my first MBPS battery replaced under warranty and that was inconvenient. Since I removed the optical drive and replaced it with a second internal drive it no longer hibernates. But I use it every weekday for 10 hours or more each day, and it comes home with me nightly and is used every weekend as well. I can't complain much.
Many thanks. I get around some of the issues by developing / compiling on Windows 2003 server before deploying on newer versions of Windows. I did do the scroll whel fix, IIRC this was a problem that first appeared when migrating from Windows Server 2000 to 2003. Registry access is limited in our apps and I haven't run into this problem yet, but that's good to know. One of our deployment platforms is Terminal Server so we already use user-writable folders (using environ for user-specific temp folder for instance). And very good point about 32-bit ODBC. I think I ran into issues with that also in 2003.
All in all it sounds better than I expected. I was hoping that there wasn't something big I had missed in testing. Thanks again.
Since this isn't a problem for VM's, because the host OS takes care of it, why not have a Windows hypervisor which gets upgraded instead? Since we've moved to virtualization of our servers, we just move the VM to a faster server and allocate more resources to speed it up. The guest doesn't know or care that it's running on Nehalems and nothing on the guest needs to be rewritten to take advantage of the different memory optimizations for that target. You could then concentrate on upgrades from a feature perspective rather than the constantly changing "but I've got new hardware" perspective.
The overhead with virtualization on ESXi, RHEL KVM and even Parallels is minimal and is usually more than offset by migrating the VMs to more powerful hardware for all but the most challenging and resource-intensive tasks.
Can you give me some examples please? Just because the things I've tested work doesn't mean everything will and we're well on our way to migrating to Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7 on the desktop. Any insight could save me frustration. Thanks.
GDI calls to grab screenshots? 2003 AD integration? API calls to retrieve printers? SQL Server and MySQL support? They work fine. Even the ComponentOne COM controls, various user-defined controls (including one which uses a PictureBox to simulate an animated GIF), Crystal Reports runtime COM controls, integration with.NET DLLs, all of them work fine for me.
What have you found that doesn't work? I'm genuinely curious.
Maybe I'm missing something... but if it's taking you 36 to 48 hours to transcode a single video, and assuming you can justify dedicating a system to that purpose for such an extended time, wouldn't the power savings you'd get by purchasing a much faster system be worthwhile? I'm guessing that the power draw for a process which takes so long to complete is substantial, and that you aren't intending to transcode only a couple of videos.
According to TFA, there was no notification to the customers, the people renting space on the server:
On April 18, 2012, a Riseup server located in MF/PL's [May First/People Link] colocation cabinet and managed by ECN, a progressive provider in Italy, was seized by the FBI. MF/PL found out about the seizure when Riseup reported that there was no response from the server. Technologists visited the server location and found that the machine had been removed.
That makes me wonder exactly what procedures were not followed. You can't just go around removing servers at will.
Part of my job is interviewing people to find out what they're doing, determine inefficiencies, and provide suggestions for change where those changes would be beneficial. Whatever custom programming is required is accomplished by myself or my team. In this case I'd have to know more, but my gut feeling is that this process could be improved. Process review is an opportunity for improvement.
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Too many cases of admins running wild in recent history.
No, I would never ever do anything to jeopardize the decades of work I've performed to further the career I've invested so much sweat and tears into, let alone do something like this which might land me in legal trouble or even jail. It's not worth it. I've been termed before and it's a very simple thing: if you're termed, you suck it up, you get your resume ready and you find another job. Notice I didn't say "look for another job", either, because it's not about the search, it's about the results. Feed the mouths that need feeding and all that.
When your company terminates domain admins, it doesn't require all other domain admins to change passwords, VPN access credentials etc immediately? Wow. That's a head scratcher.
In my experience, yes, but I haven't run into any issues where the older IOS version is necessary to use an older app. Theoretically I guess you could have issues with deprecated features. So you could restore from an old backup or install an old IOS version in that case.
I've also got some experience with pulled apps -- I installed 2 apps which were later pulled from the App Store (StoneLoops of Jurassica, a game which apparently is like/based on Luxor; and VLC) and although they are no longer available there, they have been through many IOS updates... StoneLoops is from my iPod Touch 2 which is a very very long time. It's currently on my iPad running the latest IOS version (which means I not only retained the file, I also was able to install it on a different device). VLC is on my iPhone which is also running the latest IOS version. None of my stuff is jailbroken.
So let me get this straight -- people spend more than $400 for a video card so they can play some game -- enough people for there to be an entire market built around this -- and you don't understand how people would pay $400 for a motherboard (or get it free with your Mac) or $50 for a cable?
Have you ever heard of HDMI, and have you priced those cables at your local retailer? Don't bring Monoprice into this, I'm talking National chains you probably have locally: Wal-Mart, Target, Sears, etc. Even ignoring the worst of the offenders (Best Buy), you will probably pay more than $50 for an HDMI cable locally.
Ignoring the video editing crowd and their needs (simultaneous video streams tend to eat bandwidth) even folks like me who frequently work with VM's and large file backups would pay this for faster speeds. Historically, other cables for the "fastest" connection at the time were in the $50 price range... SCSI... Firewire 400... Firewire 800... what's different about this?
USB may have existed on PC's at that time, but there was little or nothing which used it. I remember buying (and still own) converters for serial-to-USB, parallel-to-USB etc for my Windows devices so they would work with my first iMac. PC's were still very much in the USB dark age at that time, and obtaining a device that worked without issues was difficult. Not impossible, but wow was USB a wasted port on PC's in those days. Even a Logitech QuickCam I bought around that time was parallel, not USB. Zip drives were still parallel or SCSI. Freaking Laplink cables were parallel or serial -- not USB.
Is it really that big a deal that Apple had a functional, working, production-ready USB first? Are you guys really measuring e-peens over this?
18. Unless you want one end flapping in the breeze... Or unless it's arranged in a circle... not enough info to tell which applies.
Carbon's a 32-bit API for backward compatibility that's been deprecated for awhile (since at least 2007 when Leopard appeared). This wasn't Apple changing things midstream, they were pretty clear to everyone what the future was for Carbon and Cocoa. The problem was Adobe didn't make any changes, and delayed so long that when Apple finally made the changes it caught Adobe with their pants down. Users were caught in the turmoil which was a shame and reflected poorly on Adobe.
TL;DR: Adobe knew about this before 2007 but didn't make changes. GP's aunt was inconvenienced needlessly because of this. She wasn't the only one.
If you're not already on at least Snow Leopard, either you're not the type of person who stays current (obviously) or your machine can't be upgraded that far (for instance PPC machines). I don't think the number of Mac users still on pre-Snow Leopard OSX is large and of those users, I don't think they care much that they can't run Mountain Lion.
To be totally fair, can you usually upgrade Windows from a version 2 releases prior? And if you can, is it recommended? Generally no, and no. Try installing Windows 7 on an XP machine and you will probably find your hardware is insufficient. There's been a lot of things happen in 10 years. On the other hand, when I upgraded Tiger to Snow Leopard I didn't even have to reinstall Parallels -- all my apps and documents and saved keychain passwords and network setups and preferences and even the stuff on my desktop stayed the same. That doesn't happen in Windows upgrades... when it's supported you end up having to reinstall a lot of stuff.
So this isn't an Apple issue -- if anything it's pretty nice that you can upgrade your Apple machine that much that easily. I'd rather have that than 10-year support of an OS with no major enhancements, but that's just me. I can understand how corporations like that feature.
Twist? You seem to imply I'm doing something sneaky with the math or I have some nefarious goal or something.
First of all, I upgrade every 3-5 years. If you want to use the same machine for years and this is some budget argument -- fine, use the same machine for 10+ years if that works for you. More power to you. I don't think that's the average user scenario; most people either upgrade every few years or you buy a new machine.
So you either pay $100-200 per Windows version to stay current, with a new version every few years OR $150 or so to do all the upgrades individually and stay current with Apple. If you (like me) upgraded OSX only every other version -- I went from Tiger to Snow Leopard, and if I went to Mountain Lion, that's like $55 total -- that's the cheap route. AND the $20 is for *all* your machines, whereas with Windows you have to pay to upgrade each one. How can you be pissed at Apple about that? I would much rather have incremental upgrades regularly than have large changes anyway... easier for me to deal with.
A new Air is like $1000 start. The 13" MBP is like $1100 start. If you need to hit a lower price target, try refurbs / overstock at places like the Apple site or MacMall (they have a lot of non-Apple refurbs too). Apple's got a refurb 11" MacBook Air (fairly low-end model) for $790.
One thing that may or may not make a difference to you is the cost of OSX upgrades vs Windows upgrades, assuming you keep a machine that long. The Mountain Lion upgrade will be $20 for an unlimited number of PC's. I think Windows is around $100-200 per machine. Upgrade once or twice and it makes a big difference.
Read up on Carbon and Cocoa as it applies to Adobe. Long story short, Adobe is to blame because they chose not to go with the new programming model even after 10+ years of warnings that the old model was deprecated. CS 6 is the newest version and provides a large number of benefits. But place the blame where it belongs -- on Adobe for their refusal to get with the program.
Apple doesn't make hard drives. How many machines from 1999 are still running for you? As for the battery, totally Apple's fault. Replaced under warranty. Hibernation? Apple's fault too, because it's an issue for which I see a lot of Google results. But other than the hibernation everything works fine. There is no xyz. The battery was a proactive replacement shipped to me next-day air from Apple at no charge.
The HP's failed out of warranty and it was going to be more expensive to fix than they were worth so we sent them to recycling. It would have been cheaper to buy an Apple laptop than to go through setup twice.
The cost to our organization of having a laptop fail -- especially one used by executives, sales, regional ops or MIS -- isn't just inconvenience. It's the cost of delaying a sales call. The cost of reinstalling and patching all the software then shipping it to arrive wherever the employee is that week. The cost of an embarrassed executive traveling without easy access to historical email or documents. The time spent on this instead of other tasks that can benefit the business more. For a home user this isn't a big deal, but for larger orgs this is important. It's not just a holder for documents, it's the method our people use to communicate, organize and act on their tasks.
Let's also not forget the embarrassment of proactively replacing an employee's equipment and having that replacement fail shortly afterward. Looks like we are doing something wrong, but we are getting too many new laptops whose hardware components fail before their time. Originally we blamed the users but we've seen too many things fail... an entire HP Evo model whose network cards failed after deployment (out of warranty, required sending dozens of external network cards to the field)... sooo many hinge problems... more than a dozen video card or LCD problems in 2 years etc. These are not cheap laptops either. PC's are commodity machines built as cheaply as possible. If you want high quality there just aren't that many options available anymore and for us -- an HP shop -- we have found no solution.
Ok so you don't have a Core Duo in your MacBook so you can't upgrade to the new OS. You bought it with Tiger, then had supported upgrades to Leopard, Snow Leopard and Lion. That's 3 OS versions to upgrade which is pretty good IMHO. Obviously you're disappointed, just like the people who had PPC-based Macs were pissed at one point too.
So try out that Windows PC. You will have to change some of your preconceptions though. You're going to love upgrades there! Like, for instance, upgrades usually require you to reinstall software (and in a lot of cases there simply is no software upgrade path). You should purchase an antivirus subscription (I like Trend because it's effective, cheap and unobtrusive). You need to backup your stuff (I like Acronis) because there isn't any Time Machine-equivalent available. Many things are similar but just different enough that you will spend much time cursing the software, the OS, and the lack of QA in general.
Do it, really, it's important. And if you haven't launched your new Windows machine off a balcony in the first month or so, I will be surprised.
I'm replacing my 2007 MacBook Pro this year, not because it's slow or doesn't do what I need, but because our lifecycle is 3-5 years for laptops and the cost of it breaking unexpectedly is higher than the cost of proactive replacement. In the meantime, every other member of my MIS team has been through 2 HP business-class laptops because of various components failing. The one developer with an HP desktop was ok other than upgrading the hard drive and video card.
I know one experience doesn't matter much, but keep in mind I only recently got rid of my 1999 iMac DV SE because there wasn't any software available for it anymore and it was very slow compared to modern systems. It had a failed hard drive somewhere along the way that I replaced but other than upgrading its memory it still worked fine. My eMac from the early 2000's also still works fine but it also has no updates so I will probably get rid of it too. We have recently purchased a MacBook Air for our VP of MIS because he's also had very good experiences with Apple products.
Is everything perfect? No, I had to have my first MBPS battery replaced under warranty and that was inconvenient. Since I removed the optical drive and replaced it with a second internal drive it no longer hibernates. But I use it every weekday for 10 hours or more each day, and it comes home with me nightly and is used every weekend as well. I can't complain much.
Many thanks. I get around some of the issues by developing / compiling on Windows 2003 server before deploying on newer versions of Windows. I did do the scroll whel fix, IIRC this was a problem that first appeared when migrating from Windows Server 2000 to 2003. Registry access is limited in our apps and I haven't run into this problem yet, but that's good to know. One of our deployment platforms is Terminal Server so we already use user-writable folders (using environ for user-specific temp folder for instance). And very good point about 32-bit ODBC. I think I ran into issues with that also in 2003.
All in all it sounds better than I expected. I was hoping that there wasn't something big I had missed in testing. Thanks again.
Since this isn't a problem for VM's, because the host OS takes care of it, why not have a Windows hypervisor which gets upgraded instead? Since we've moved to virtualization of our servers, we just move the VM to a faster server and allocate more resources to speed it up. The guest doesn't know or care that it's running on Nehalems and nothing on the guest needs to be rewritten to take advantage of the different memory optimizations for that target. You could then concentrate on upgrades from a feature perspective rather than the constantly changing "but I've got new hardware" perspective.
The overhead with virtualization on ESXi, RHEL KVM and even Parallels is minimal and is usually more than offset by migrating the VMs to more powerful hardware for all but the most challenging and resource-intensive tasks.
Can you give me some examples please? Just because the things I've tested work doesn't mean everything will and we're well on our way to migrating to Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7 on the desktop. Any insight could save me frustration. Thanks.
GDI calls to grab screenshots? 2003 AD integration? API calls to retrieve printers? SQL Server and MySQL support? They work fine. Even the ComponentOne COM controls, various user-defined controls (including one which uses a PictureBox to simulate an animated GIF), Crystal Reports runtime COM controls, integration with .NET DLLs, all of them work fine for me.
What have you found that doesn't work? I'm genuinely curious.
I wish. Haven't seen that option since the days of Street Atlas with the DeLorme GPS package connected to a laptop...
They come with a set of Monster Cables...
Maybe I'm missing something... but if it's taking you 36 to 48 hours to transcode a single video, and assuming you can justify dedicating a system to that purpose for such an extended time, wouldn't the power savings you'd get by purchasing a much faster system be worthwhile? I'm guessing that the power draw for a process which takes so long to complete is substantial, and that you aren't intending to transcode only a couple of videos.
One source of comparative CPU benchmarks is here http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_lookup.php?cpu=AMD+Athlon+II+X2+245
Be easy on him. He's an ex-football player...
On April 18, 2012, a Riseup server located in MF/PL's [May First/People Link] colocation cabinet and managed by ECN, a progressive provider in Italy, was seized by the FBI. MF/PL found out about the seizure when Riseup reported that there was no response from the server. Technologists visited the server location and found that the machine had been removed.
That makes me wonder exactly what procedures were not followed. You can't just go around removing servers at will.
Part of my job is interviewing people to find out what they're doing, determine inefficiencies, and provide suggestions for change where those changes would be beneficial. Whatever custom programming is required is accomplished by myself or my team. In this case I'd have to know more, but my gut feeling is that this process could be improved. Process review is an opportunity for improvement.