We use a system that requires MS SQL on the laptops (yes its a bad system, I didn't write the program.) Anyhow needed to add a new machine and I phoned up our supplier and we were quoted £4,500 for a single licence. So ok, multiply this by 10 and you could be saving £45,000 per year.
This is just one example of where MySQL can kick the ass of MS SQL.
Ok so I don't write the programs, but my god thats a saving and a half, even if you need to rework a percentage of the code, the cost saving is still massive.
We had one of the BSA goons turn up and tried to sell us "software compliance services" with vailed threats that bad things happen to those who don't take up their offer.
My boss who stands for no sh!t literally threw him out the building.
I hate them as much as the next person but it hasn't hastened the move to Linux.
I'm sorry but if the business I was in was exceptionally borderline legal and I had been caught and prosecuted before, I would stop doing business in that business, period. He KNEW he faced a chance of having a major conviction but carried on anyway. Only reasons could be greed or stupidity.
To make him look even more stupid, this guy is a multi millionaire. It's not like he couldn't retire and just live a nice life investing his money and living off the interest.
Having actually used one, I can say, it rocks. Ok so I wouldn't like to use it as a main machine (not what it was designed for) but if you are an avid note taker, or like to have internet on the run it is all you could want. It is *exceptionally* light, even compared to the JVC mini note range that I look after every day.
Also, its pretty much instant on. So your not hanging round for things to happen. It's ideal to check mail, a few letters whilst in the wifi coffee shop. Its an ideal meeting toy I suppose.
Also a massive advantage of this for linux is that a) A linux company is getting paid to put an OS on hardware and secondly, the hardware and software fit well together, they were designed too.
As for the interface, hell its good. It's simple and quick. What more could you need. If you want more advanced options, turn on the advanced options, its not hard.
The really mad thing? It's not linux peeps buying it, its average shoppers and gadget freaks. Its providing an inroad to the masses that standard linux cannot because of the variety of hardware it must work on.
Put another way, in the uk, you cannot buy one for love nor money at the moment, and probably not until mid April will there be sufficient stocks.
This is the guy that took linux and tried to force his closed source click n run crap into Ubuntu. Basically, if you are someone who can help Mr Roberts, he's your best mate.
Being an IT bod, people ask you about their home computers, and why has Sky BB email suddenly stopped with some bizare msgs.
I told him, if you haven't changed anything and its been going on for a day or two give em a ring. So he did. Got through all the usual stuff. Only on the fourth call did they inform him he needed to change his settings. The guy didn't elaborate, but I wasn't that interesting.
I have a friend who works for the bacon as a "data engineer" or whatever they are called. Amongst other things we spoke about was the weak link in the chain, AKA human stupidity.
Most of the time the keys are second guessable because they use words/phrases that are around them" So the police conduct a review of the person, in minute detail and come up with a list of potential keys that they can run against the encryption.
you where playing a MMORPG (or whatever its called, doing a team activity) and the think just shuts down. Next time it resumes, the game will have moved on, so your save position is basically invalid.
Ok, so they robbed $50,000 of routers and servers.
Where are they going to fence them. The average geek has no need of 16 core Xeons, no matter what game they play. If they were dells, (IF) they are going to have TAG #s and it wouldn't be hard to see Dell doing a trace on em, ie very hot property.
Thirdly, no legit business, at least any I have worked in, would touch (some) state of the art servers at half price, no support, from a questionble source with no history. Same goes for all the cisco kit. Bet they end up abroad.
For example, you harbor thoughts of harm towards someone. You know in your own mind you would never do it. Does the computer know that. Would it report it? If so to whom. Could you incrimate yourself by your thoughts?
Suppose your a terrorist sympathiser, having done no bad stuff yourself, just understanding why they did it, you bet your ass the FBI would be knocking.
Ok this isn't exactly what we are saying, but this is the thin end of the wedge. Feature creap. You are telling me MS will not slip in a reporting feature in exchange for an easy ride from the DOJ?
We finally bought a custom php/mysql app (Bespoke @ $6K, cheapest package with support we ever bought)
I asked what distro they wanted, suggesting Ubuntu 6.06 server LTS (I use it on desktop therefore more comfortable with it, as I used to be windows only)
I had to get a basic server with ssh ready.
I was told (in a round about way) DONT... EVER..., use Centos, or Debian stable. Just dont whatever you do use Ubuntu on a public facing IP. These people arent amatuers either, they develop PHP/MySQL/Linux solutions for a living. Left me wondering about the viability of it as a server.
Seriously, it seems to me that this "loophole" just isn't.
Vista Bitlocker on the other hand, is not worth the disk space it consumes.
I have it on good authority from someone in the know (as in, it is in his job description) that cracking Bitlocker is easy. There is actually a course on "opening" bitlocked volumes, if you move in the right circles (think police forensics)
For my money I'd rather just use a good open source package.
You may jest, but we run Netware 6 / 6.5 and ill tell you what, its a whole world easier that the BS MS servers gives you. The netware boxes just sit there and hum away. With Novell we don't have "patch Tuesday", we don't have script kiddies trying to crack it, we dont have to spend significant time doing repairs on it. Our uptime on Netware is easily 99.99 on a month to month basis, wheres as the windows servers are still up there, but noticably less uptime.
I have always been a "fringe" supporter of mac. Ie the early years when they created a computer in a workshop on a breadboard, and hacked their own os. It was all about power to the people. No one gave a flying toss about "IP" or the licence under which the code was released. It was just cool. They WANTED to empower people, and have fun along the way. Compare this to what Jobs and co do now. They are motivated by greed, money, and secret contracts. They are becoming more "mainstream" every day in the way in which they really really dont give a toss about the old hacker ethic under which they were founded. Shesh and I was gonna buy a Macbook!
I had to write a small program to create some special text files a few weeks ago. It was easy to write it in 20 mins, compiled and runs on any dos based machine. Means I could just run the exe anywhere on any system and it would just work. No special runtimes or funky dll files. It just did the job i asked.
From a little light reading on the subject ( I like all things nuclear ) wouldn't the pilots have suspected something was up when it took longer to get airbourne and the plane handling characteristics had changed a lot, considering they only have 6 conventional weapons onboard as opposed to some very heavy assed nuclear based one.
Thing is, it's not the "proper" drug companies that are doing it. *IF* it was indeed viagra, it would probabily be a generic back street marketed version.
As for "herbal" viagra, well there such a wide definition, it could literally be anything, and anything from anywhere.
Also a lot of the spam for porn sites is actually known about by the companies who own the porn sites. Plausable deniability.
I have a site, that is reliant on revenue generated from visitors. Thing is, done right, they will return, and embrace the ads. How ? Well you have to give them a good reason to do it. IE if you tell them they can save £10 on the latest gadget X (and the audience is already highly targetted) and that is why we get a good click through over over 3% with a plain text link! Obviously they must be able to save the £10, but I thought that was kinda obvious already.
We backup about 40 laptops a night (Just My Documents, anything else, tough, you know you should keep important stuff in My Documents)
We use Asigra Televaulting http://www.asigra.com/ A lot of larger VARs sell this and it is quite a good product, all data encrypted, you can specificy maximum number of generations etc etc. Users can even do their own restores (if you allow them to) Ok it isn't cheap but its good and we have users who have in excess of 25 GB of data to backup, and after the initial backup, can easily be done over a DSL line. Completely transparent to the users.
In the past I have taken advantages of misprices, getting a couple of Dimension desktops with good specs (for then) for really really low prices. For about £100 I picked up a Dimension P4 HT 3GHz/1GB/120GB SATA for about $150). I knew I was in a legal grey area. If I got it great, if I didn't well nothing lost.
The trick with Dell is to get the order confirmation. Once you have that, Dell wont argue at all.
But to start a class action suit because you tried to take advantage of a mistake is not really good sportsmanship, in my opinion, just getting greedy.
By the way, if you are in the uk, and want to know of the "whoopsie" deals, check out Moneysaving Expert Forums The dell deals are almost always on here within 10 minutes of going live.
I am a fairly recent convert to linux, thanks to Ubuntu.
We have our monthly LUG meet and once you get to know everyone it really is just a get together for a few beers and to talk about developments in general as well as chit chat. Occasionally there may be someone needs help with an issue but its the exception rather than the rule.
It may as well be called the linux social because thats what it is. Try it and I bet you don't see a gentoo install disk, but lots of beer and beardies, as well as a whole range of different people. Some just normal users, some who have super geek status, such as PHDs in arcane parts of computing theory and everything inbetween, but there is plenty of common ground and plenty of general jokes and chit chat.
The difference is Van guy prolly doesnt declare his income, or have any taxes to pay (we all know this happens on ebay) or more importantly doesnt have a prime retail location to rent, heat and staff.
I can see your point though. Our margin is large. Its the illusion of quality that does it.
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We use a system that requires MS SQL on the laptops (yes its a bad system, I didn't write the program.) Anyhow needed to add a new machine and I phoned up our supplier and we were quoted £4,500 for a single licence. So ok, multiply this by 10 and you could be saving £45,000 per year.
This is just one example of where MySQL can kick the ass of MS SQL.
Ok so I don't write the programs, but my god thats a saving and a half, even if you need to rework a percentage of the code, the cost saving is still massive.
We had one of the BSA goons turn up and tried to sell us "software compliance services" with vailed threats that bad things happen to those who don't take up their offer.
My boss who stands for no sh!t literally threw him out the building.
I hate them as much as the next person but it hasn't hastened the move to Linux.
I'm sorry but if the business I was in was exceptionally borderline legal and I had been caught and prosecuted before, I would stop doing business in that business, period. He KNEW he faced a chance of having a major conviction but carried on anyway. Only reasons could be greed or stupidity.
To make him look even more stupid, this guy is a multi millionaire. It's not like he couldn't retire and just live a nice life investing his money and living off the interest.
Having actually used one, I can say, it rocks. Ok so I wouldn't like to use it as a main machine (not what it was designed for) but if you are an avid note taker, or like to have internet on the run it is all you could want. It is *exceptionally* light, even compared to the JVC mini note range that I look after every day.
Also, its pretty much instant on. So your not hanging round for things to happen. It's ideal to check mail, a few letters whilst in the wifi coffee shop. Its an ideal meeting toy I suppose.
Also a massive advantage of this for linux is that a) A linux company is getting paid to put an OS on hardware and secondly, the hardware and software fit well together, they were designed too.
As for the interface, hell its good. It's simple and quick. What more could you need. If you want more advanced options, turn on the advanced options, its not hard.
The really mad thing? It's not linux peeps buying it, its average shoppers and gadget freaks. Its providing an inroad to the masses that standard linux cannot because of the variety of hardware it must work on.
Put another way, in the uk, you cannot buy one for love nor money at the moment, and probably not until mid April will there be sufficient stocks.
This is the guy that took linux and tried to force his closed source click n run crap into Ubuntu. Basically, if you are someone who can help Mr Roberts, he's your best mate.
Being an IT bod, people ask you about their home computers, and why has Sky BB email suddenly stopped with some bizare msgs.
I told him, if you haven't changed anything and its been going on for a day or two give em a ring. So he did. Got through all the usual stuff. Only on the fourth call did they inform him he needed to change his settings. The guy didn't elaborate, but I wasn't that interesting.
What a mess.
I have a friend who works for the bacon as a "data engineer" or whatever they are called. Amongst other things we spoke about was the weak link in the chain, AKA human stupidity.
Most of the time the keys are second guessable because they use words/phrases that are around them" So the police conduct a review of the person, in minute detail and come up with a list of potential keys that they can run against the encryption.
This girl must have done it right!
you where playing a MMORPG (or whatever its called, doing a team activity) and the think just shuts down. Next time it resumes, the game will have moved on, so your save position is basically invalid.
Ok, so they robbed $50,000 of routers and servers.
Where are they going to fence them. The average geek has no need of 16 core Xeons, no matter what game they play. If they were dells, (IF) they are going to have TAG #s and it wouldn't be hard to see Dell doing a trace on em, ie very hot property.
Thirdly, no legit business, at least any I have worked in, would touch (some) state of the art servers at half price, no support, from a questionble source with no history. Same goes for all the cisco kit. Bet they end up abroad.
For example, you harbor thoughts of harm towards someone. You know in your own mind you would never do it. Does the computer know that. Would it report it? If so to whom. Could you incrimate yourself by your thoughts?
Suppose your a terrorist sympathiser, having done no bad stuff yourself, just understanding why they did it, you bet your ass the FBI would be knocking.
Ok this isn't exactly what we are saying, but this is the thin end of the wedge. Feature creap. You are telling me MS will not slip in a reporting feature in exchange for an easy ride from the DOJ?
We finally bought a custom php/mysql app (Bespoke @ $6K, cheapest package with support we ever bought)
I asked what distro they wanted, suggesting Ubuntu 6.06 server LTS (I use it on desktop therefore more comfortable with it, as I used to be windows only)
I had to get a basic server with ssh ready.
I was told (in a round about way) DONT... EVER..., use Centos, or Debian stable. Just dont whatever you do use Ubuntu on a public facing IP. These people arent amatuers either, they develop PHP/MySQL/Linux solutions for a living. Left me wondering about the viability of it as a server.
Seriously, it seems to me that this "loophole" just isn't.
Vista Bitlocker on the other hand, is not worth the disk space it consumes.
I have it on good authority from someone in the know (as in, it is in his job description) that cracking Bitlocker is easy. There is actually a course on "opening" bitlocked volumes, if you move in the right circles (think police forensics)
For my money I'd rather just use a good open source package.
You may jest, but we run Netware 6 / 6.5 and ill tell you what, its a whole world easier that the BS MS servers gives you. The netware boxes just sit there and hum away. With Novell we don't have "patch Tuesday", we don't have script kiddies trying to crack it, we dont have to spend significant time doing repairs on it. Our uptime on Netware is easily 99.99 on a month to month basis, wheres as the windows servers are still up there, but noticably less uptime.
A singular server for a site that big (and I assume cash positive) is a bit silly. Although I guess it could be other stuff too.
I have always been a "fringe" supporter of mac. Ie the early years when they created a computer in a workshop on a breadboard, and hacked their own os. It was all about power to the people. No one gave a flying toss about "IP" or the licence under which the code was released. It was just cool. They WANTED to empower people, and have fun along the way. Compare this to what Jobs and co do now. They are motivated by greed, money, and secret contracts. They are becoming more "mainstream" every day in the way in which they really really dont give a toss about the old hacker ethic under which they were founded. Shesh and I was gonna buy a Macbook!
Its a pity we can't see what these paracites earn. I bet they earn more than us sysadmins :( Why hide what this scum thinks its worth.
I had to write a small program to create some special text files a few weeks ago. It was easy to write it in 20 mins, compiled and runs on any dos based machine. Means I could just run the exe anywhere on any system and it would just work. No special runtimes or funky dll files. It just did the job i asked.
Rock on pascal!
From a little light reading on the subject ( I like all things nuclear ) wouldn't the pilots have suspected something was up when it took longer to get airbourne and the plane handling characteristics had changed a lot, considering they only have 6 conventional weapons onboard as opposed to some very heavy assed nuclear based one.
Thing is, it's not the "proper" drug companies that are doing it. *IF* it was indeed viagra, it would probabily be a generic back street marketed version.
As for "herbal" viagra, well there such a wide definition, it could literally be anything, and anything from anywhere.
Also a lot of the spam for porn sites is actually known about by the companies who own the porn sites. Plausable deniability.
I have a site, that is reliant on revenue generated from visitors. Thing is, done right, they will return, and embrace the ads. How ? Well you have to give them a good reason to do it. IE if you tell them they can save £10 on the latest gadget X (and the audience is already highly targetted) and that is why we get a good click through over over 3% with a plain text link! Obviously they must be able to save the £10, but I thought that was kinda obvious already.
We backup about 40 laptops a night (Just My Documents, anything else, tough, you know you should keep important stuff in My Documents)
We use Asigra Televaulting http://www.asigra.com/ A lot of larger VARs sell this and it is quite a good product, all data encrypted, you can specificy maximum number of generations etc etc. Users can even do their own restores (if you allow them to) Ok it isn't cheap but its good and we have users who have in excess of 25 GB of data to backup, and after the initial backup, can easily be done over a DSL line. Completely transparent to the users.
Take a look, its good stuff.
Sad thing is, those hundreds of thousands spent on a defence. Can you imagine if they had put all that cash into linux. Vista would be a non issue.
In the past I have taken advantages of misprices, getting a couple of Dimension desktops with good specs (for then) for really really low prices. For about £100 I picked up a Dimension P4 HT 3GHz/1GB/120GB SATA for about $150). I knew I was in a legal grey area. If I got it great, if I didn't well nothing lost.
The trick with Dell is to get the order confirmation. Once you have that, Dell wont argue at all.
But to start a class action suit because you tried to take advantage of a mistake is not really good sportsmanship, in my opinion, just getting greedy.
By the way, if you are in the uk, and want to know of the "whoopsie" deals, check out Moneysaving Expert Forums The dell deals are almost always on here within 10 minutes of going live.
I am a fairly recent convert to linux, thanks to Ubuntu.
We have our monthly LUG meet and once you get to know everyone it really is just a get together for a few beers and to talk about developments in general as well as chit chat. Occasionally there may be someone needs help with an issue but its the exception rather than the rule.
It may as well be called the linux social because thats what it is. Try it and I bet you don't see a gentoo install disk, but lots of beer and beardies, as well as a whole range of different people. Some just normal users, some who have super geek status, such as PHDs in arcane parts of computing theory and everything inbetween, but there is plenty of common ground and plenty of general jokes and chit chat.
The difference is Van guy prolly doesnt declare his income, or have any taxes to pay (we all know this happens on ebay) or more importantly doesnt have a prime retail location to rent, heat and staff.
I can see your point though. Our margin is large. Its the illusion of quality that does it.