> But 'AMD Cheaper' is NOT a myth. You can't say 'X isn't true because > in Y area it isn't true.'
Clearly, I meant it is a myth within the server space, and possibly in the corporate workstation market as well. I can't even get 1U AMD servers from a certain "whitebox builder" at a cheaper price than intel machines, as they claim that they have to pay more money to get a motherboard that won't melt.
However, this isn't to say that it isn't a myth in the desktop market too. Whitebox has problems. A truely unique, untested configuration has many possible problems and unexpected side effects. White-box systems are NOT on par with OEMs in terms of quality, they simply aren't. Will you get Doom and Half-life to run? Sure, but would you trust your company's well-being to components from various manufacturers pieced together in a truely unique configuration? Or, perhaps, would you prefer to trust a tested and researched configuration used by thousands of customers?
I'll take it one step back, however, would you trust your marriage on a whitebox computer? My wife is tired of whitebox and is very unhappy when it fails, because computers do fail occassionally, and more often, my experiences have been that whitebox fails more frequently than OEM. Do I hear echos of "untested" and "unique"? YES! Often many problems arise from an overloaded the PSU, cheap PSU, cheap ram, cheap motherboard. I believe that if you want to build a system that is as rock-solid as an OEM, you really do need to pay OEM prices, and I don't mean store-front costs, I mean their R&D costs. A quality OEM won't just sell you the first thing that boots, they actually test machines and will swap out parts that don't work right. Do you do that, or do you just say, "crap, the USB controller doesn't work! I'll have to add an external card!"
> You can't base your entire analysis of cost on how they price > their computers.
Certainly if my manufacturers of choice are big OEM shops, then yes, I can base my analysis how they price their computers! Mom and Pop shops aren't where the majority of US consumers shop at, and in my experience, those shops tend to overcharge customers anyway.
There isn't any logic to the statment: "I'm buying an AMD system from HP at $1000 more than I'd pay to Dell for an Intel system, but it is an AMD.. so I must be saving money. Although I have only 1/3 of the warranty, I'm sure I won't need that with AMD."
The host you mentioned doesn't provide the user with root access to their VPS. Plus, at that price point they're clearly chroot solutions.
Other hostslike these provide Xen VPS hosting which gives full root access and more hardware resources. They can reboot their virtual server and install their own kernels and kernel modules. With any decent provider, users get provisioned their own partitions on top of an LVM volume group.
Pretty much anything claming to be a VPS under the $14.95-$19.95 price point will be a chroot solution. You're lumped onto a big partition with everything else, you have shared memory allowing for abuse, you can't reboot your "machine", and some providers still won't give you root!
This isn't to say that a chroot solution might not be right for you, but it is not without its limitations. For someone looking for "just as good as the real thing, but cheaper", they will want Xen. If you're just looking for something more flexible than standard hosting plans, a chroot VPS (with root access) *may* do the trick.
Don't forget the new memory. Usually they tend to change the memory when they change to socket as well, and the dual-memory boards are usually from PC Chips or other quality manufacturers, like ECS. Right now, my basement is full of EDO, SDRAM, DDR, DDR2, etc. Some ECC, some not, some motherboards don't work with ECC, some don't (officially) work without ECC. I have some older and more exotic memory as well.
Am I complaining? Not much, I understand it is necessary to improve the architecture. Nn the other hand it isn't fair to say that a processor upgrade is only a processor and motherboard. It is often the case that new RAM is required as well.
Before I get flamed, yes, I've heard that AMD has been doing better with their heat than Intel in recent times. If anything, that section of my argument isn't specifically geared towards either camp.
That said, chipsets are more important than heat. As expensive as it is to power machines and to keep them cool, it is even more expensive to have a machine melt into a klump of toxins.
"Guinea pigs" is right. I've been a long-time user of AMD products and I haven't been happy. The problems have been less with the chips than with the chipsets, but what good is a processor without a quality motherboard? I've built a number of systems with AMD processors and from issues with overheating, to broken usb controllers that would reboot my box if I plugged anything into it, it is fair to say I've had my share of problems. I've used chipsets from VIA, Nvidia, and AMD.
On the Intel side of the pool, I've found that Intel's chipsets are the absolute top-notch, best quality out there, works as promised. I've never had a problem with an Intel motherboard or one based on their chipsets.
What motherboard should one use for their AMD system? I don't think a single AMD-compatable chipset manufacturer has consistently released quality chipsets. VIA is probably the best bet, which I don't believe is saying a whole lot.
As far as performance-per-watt is concerned, for those saying that doesn't matter, think again! This can be a significant difference for enterprise customers. In the datacenter, less-power-consuming and less-heat-producing processors are higly desirable. Electricity isn't free, not only does lower wattage have a direct power savings, it also saves power on the AC units. Furthermore, more power can mean additional costs in both physical space and per-port costs with switched PDU units. This is compounded when using dual power-supplies!
Finally, "AMD is cheaper" is a myth in the current market place. Dell doesn't do AMD yet. If you want to buy pre-built machines off the assembly line, you can choose between an AMD machine from HP/Compaq, IBM, or Sun.. or a machine from Dell. Guess which will be the cheapest? Guess which will have the best warranty? It won't be any of the AMD machines.
> "We didn't want to spend three or four months learning the quirks > of the language and then another six developing the sucker.
This is one of the interesting things about RubyOnRails.. Ruby and RubyOnRails are so easy, no real programmers should have any problems picking it up and using it. Unfortunately, I admit, the talent pool can run quite thin in the corporate world. Regardless, the time I've saved by basing my applications on RubyOnRails has proven to be well-worth the time invested to get aquainted with it.
I think RoR is a big step in the right direction, and while not at all popular in big business, it is definately worth learning.
Clearly, you've never used Lotus Notes before. Bloat isn't a bug, it is a feature! The Lotus Notes die-hards love Notes specifically because it is just like Emacs, it does everything, except for what it doesn't, and when that happens, you just write an extension.
The solution I posted DOES let you leave the session open and connect from a remote system. A vnc server is used to keep the session running, but the client connects via X11 instead. The only thing required on the client-side is an X11 server. If you need a web-based solution, WierdX will do the job.
My posted solution, however, improves on the idea by allowing you to create and manage multiple sessions for multiple users! It can automatically create new sessions if a user logs in more than once. If multiple sessions are found, on login, a menu is provided giving a list of active sessions.
> Don't forget. VNC is OS independant. I can fire up a VNC session on my > linux box and use a VNC client on the box itself then leave the session > open and connect to it from a windows box. Ok, via Cygwin you can pull off > X, but, it is definitely not worth all that extra clutter when a simple VNC > client can achieve the same purpose and is designed to do it better (remote > X is really intended for a lan dumb client type setup whereas VNC can be > used to add JPEG compression, decrease color depth, etc so works about as > well as you can hope over the internet.)
For a LAN, I've always believed the following to be faster than directly using the vncviewer on the client: 1. Run Xvnc on the server 2. Run on client, "ssh -X -C server-host vncviewer 127.0.0.1:0"
Instead of directly calling vncviewer and keeping a persistent Xvnc server, you can look at the following to provide multiple logins for a single user, ala Windows Terminal Services: MultisessionX.
Btw, the inside has vertical dividers which are great for keeping files/folders/papers straight. I've been using my bag since 2000 without any signs of wear and tear. This bag has survived a year of full-time college, two years part-time college, and international travel (every 6mo).
I love my saddlebag. They also make it in black now, and Kensington also has messenger and executive bags now labeled under the "Saddlebag" name. While those may also be excellent bags, I have experience with the old-faithful -- the brown/black model. This was the very first laptop backpack (that I'm aware of).
When I travel, I can easily fit two laptops, a multitude of chargers, cell phones, cables (including 25ft cat5), a mouse, a soda, camera, and some snacks. Easily, I can bring it to a weight that could easily break a smaller man's back.
On my side.. for a company, I setup a filter based on SpamAssassin to catch all of the stuff that Postini missed -- Postini was really worthless, in my opinion.
> And the satisfaction of having one of your songs distrobuted across the world is > nothing, right?
That isn't anything netcat couldn't fix...
bash$ for host in $(function count() { i=0; while [ $i -lt 255 ]; do i=$(($i+1)); echo $i; done }; for num in `count` ; do for num1 in `count`; do for num2 in `count`; do for num3 in `count`; do echo "$num.$num1.$num2.$num3"; done; done ; done ; done); do nc $host 80 audio.au ; done
I used port 80 as an example, but perhaps you can think of more interesting ports, perhaps 25? Or how about winpopup?:-)
The only version of IE for OSX is version 5, which isn't new enough for Windows Live and is no longer maintained or even available for download. It isn't included with newer Macs, either.
> the password is readable by only someone with root access.
It is also visible in the environment -- make sure you don't accidently print the environment out on some page -- don't publically expose phpinfo(); !
This false-security also assumes one of the following: 1) You have access to the httpd.conf file (and as such, there are better solutions...) 2) Other users don't have access to Apache.
You can't put the environmental variables into a.htaccess since, of course, thats just as secure as putting the variables into a.php file.
> By storing them in a PHP file, users other than root can read it.
Only if your server isn't securely configured.
You can secure your PHP files from reading in at least the following 2 ways. Both ways are considerably more secure than throwing variables into Apache. 1) Use PHP as a fastcgi/w suexec. 2) Run apache as your user, with your home directory non-readable by other users, and use mod_php.
One concern I immediately had -- and I happily saw noted in the article as well -- is the question of who will pay to support this? Data storage isn't free, or cheap.
This could kill small and medium-sized web hosting providers.
> l likely get a Mac so long as they don't follow with the same crap (and then Linux next).
Because Apple doesn't have its own DRM, nor does it ship a Trusted Computing Module with all of its new Macs -- Apple is far ahead on the DRM ball, my friend, not behind. Sadly.
More to this point.. if we're just data, and we (in essence) multiply.. is the Earth just a big computer? The universe? Makes you wonder if Douglas Adams was really onto something.
See, the other (and odd) way of viewing this is that no data is ever produced, only discovered. This goes, perhaps, into both chaos theory and psychology.
A movie file (say, a DivX movie in an.avi container) is simply a really big number. That number has always existed, but only recently computed (aka, discovered). An even deeper thought is that there are many ways that we could potentially materialize physical objects (such as humans) as data -- if you're data, you're just a number. Does this mean that you've always existed? It puts a new spin on religion, doesn't it?
More to the point -- Can numbers be owned? Should they be owned?
Worse.. try using it in your left hand. While the mouse *looks* like it can be used in the left-hand, don't be fooled. The brilliant space-age design of this mouse prevents it from functioning properly in a left hand.
Seriously, why are we seeing product announcements on the front page? OSTG already owns freshmeat, there is no reason to reproduce this information on Slashdot. I hope I'm not marked as a troll on this, and I'll even go as far and NOT post as a coward.
Various embedded projects use OpenSSH, one example would be HP switches. If the project was licensed GPL, it may not have been included in those embedded applications. Ideally, OpenBSD could have been successful being dual-licensed, but it would have never gained such popularity with a pure GPL license.
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> But 'AMD Cheaper' is NOT a myth. You can't say 'X isn't true because
> in Y area it isn't true.'
Clearly, I meant it is a myth within the server space, and possibly in the corporate workstation market as well. I can't even get 1U AMD servers from a certain "whitebox builder" at a cheaper price than intel machines, as they claim that they have to pay more money to get a motherboard that won't melt.
However, this isn't to say that it isn't a myth in the desktop market too. Whitebox has problems. A truely unique, untested configuration has many possible problems and unexpected side effects. White-box systems are NOT on par with OEMs in terms of quality, they simply aren't. Will you get Doom and Half-life to run? Sure, but would you trust your company's well-being to components from various manufacturers pieced together in a truely unique configuration? Or, perhaps, would you prefer to trust a tested and researched configuration used by thousands of customers?
I'll take it one step back, however, would you trust your marriage on a whitebox computer? My wife is tired of whitebox and is very unhappy when it fails, because computers do fail occassionally, and more often, my experiences have been that whitebox fails more frequently than OEM. Do I hear echos of "untested" and "unique"? YES! Often many problems arise from an overloaded the PSU, cheap PSU, cheap ram, cheap motherboard. I believe that if you want to build a system that is as rock-solid as an OEM, you really do need to pay OEM prices, and I don't mean store-front costs, I mean their R&D costs. A quality OEM won't just sell you the first thing that boots, they actually test machines and will swap out parts that don't work right. Do you do that, or do you just say, "crap, the USB controller doesn't work! I'll have to add an external card!"
> You can't base your entire analysis of cost on how they price
> their computers.
Certainly if my manufacturers of choice are big OEM shops, then yes, I can base my analysis how they price their computers! Mom and Pop shops aren't where the majority of US consumers shop at, and in my experience, those shops tend to overcharge customers anyway.
There isn't any logic to the statment: "I'm buying an AMD system from HP at $1000 more than I'd pay to Dell for an Intel system, but it is an AMD.. so I must be saving money. Although I have only 1/3 of the warranty, I'm sure I won't need that with AMD."
The host you mentioned doesn't provide the user with root access to their VPS. Plus, at that price point they're clearly chroot solutions.
Other hosts like these provide Xen VPS hosting which gives full root access and more hardware resources. They can reboot their virtual server and install their own kernels and kernel modules. With any decent provider, users get provisioned their own partitions on top of an LVM volume group.
Pretty much anything claming to be a VPS under the $14.95-$19.95 price point will be a chroot solution. You're lumped onto a big partition with everything else, you have shared memory allowing for abuse, you can't reboot your "machine", and some providers still won't give you root!
This isn't to say that a chroot solution might not be right for you, but it is not without its limitations. For someone looking for "just as good as the real thing, but cheaper", they will want Xen. If you're just looking for something more flexible than standard hosting plans, a chroot VPS (with root access) *may* do the trick.
Don't forget the new memory. Usually they tend to change the memory when they change to socket as well, and the dual-memory boards are usually from PC Chips or other quality manufacturers, like ECS. Right now, my basement is full of EDO, SDRAM, DDR, DDR2, etc. Some ECC, some not, some motherboards don't work with ECC, some don't (officially) work without ECC. I have some older and more exotic memory as well.
Am I complaining? Not much, I understand it is necessary to improve the architecture. Nn the other hand it isn't fair to say that a processor upgrade is only a processor and motherboard. It is often the case that new RAM is required as well.
Before I get flamed, yes, I've heard that AMD has been doing better with their heat than Intel in recent times. If anything, that section of my argument isn't specifically geared towards either camp.
That said, chipsets are more important than heat. As expensive as it is to power machines and to keep them cool, it is even more expensive to have a machine melt into a klump of toxins.
"Guinea pigs" is right. I've been a long-time user of AMD products and I haven't been happy. The problems have been less with the chips than with the chipsets, but what good is a processor without a quality motherboard? I've built a number of systems with AMD processors and from issues with overheating, to broken usb controllers that would reboot my box if I plugged anything into it, it is fair to say I've had my share of problems. I've used chipsets from VIA, Nvidia, and AMD.
On the Intel side of the pool, I've found that Intel's chipsets are the absolute top-notch, best quality out there, works as promised. I've never had a problem with an Intel motherboard or one based on their chipsets.
What motherboard should one use for their AMD system? I don't think a single AMD-compatable chipset manufacturer has consistently released quality chipsets. VIA is probably the best bet, which I don't believe is saying a whole lot.
As far as performance-per-watt is concerned, for those saying that doesn't matter, think again! This can be a significant difference for enterprise customers. In the datacenter, less-power-consuming and less-heat-producing processors are higly desirable. Electricity isn't free, not only does lower wattage have a direct power savings, it also saves power on the AC units. Furthermore, more power can mean additional costs in both physical space and per-port costs with switched PDU units. This is compounded when using dual power-supplies!
Finally, "AMD is cheaper" is a myth in the current market place. Dell doesn't do AMD yet. If you want to buy pre-built machines off the assembly line, you can choose between an AMD machine from HP/Compaq, IBM, or Sun.. or a machine from Dell. Guess which will be the cheapest? Guess which will have the best warranty? It won't be any of the AMD machines.
> "We didn't want to spend three or four months learning the quirks
> of the language and then another six developing the sucker.
This is one of the interesting things about RubyOnRails.. Ruby and RubyOnRails are so easy, no real programmers should have any problems picking it up and using it. Unfortunately, I admit, the talent pool can run quite thin in the corporate world. Regardless, the time I've saved by basing my applications on RubyOnRails has proven to be well-worth the time invested to get aquainted with it.
I think RoR is a big step in the right direction, and while not at all popular in big business, it is definately worth learning.
Clearly, you've never used Lotus Notes before. Bloat isn't a bug, it is a feature! The Lotus Notes die-hards love Notes specifically because it is just like Emacs, it does everything, except for what it doesn't, and when that happens, you just write an extension.
Are you trying to prove or disprove the grandparent? :-)
Take a look at CSS counters, I believe this is what you should be doing instead:
http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS2/generate.html#counters
The solution I posted DOES let you leave the session open and connect from a remote system. A vnc server is used to keep the session running, but the client connects via X11 instead. The only thing required on the client-side is an X11 server. If you need a web-based solution, WierdX will do the job.
My posted solution, however, improves on the idea by allowing you to create and manage multiple sessions for multiple users! It can automatically create new sessions if a user logs in more than once. If multiple sessions are found, on login, a menu is provided giving a list of active sessions.
> Don't forget. VNC is OS independant. I can fire up a VNC session on my
> linux box and use a VNC client on the box itself then leave the session
> open and connect to it from a windows box. Ok, via Cygwin you can pull off
> X, but, it is definitely not worth all that extra clutter when a simple VNC
> client can achieve the same purpose and is designed to do it better (remote
> X is really intended for a lan dumb client type setup whereas VNC can be
> used to add JPEG compression, decrease color depth, etc so works about as
> well as you can hope over the internet.)
For a LAN, I've always believed the following to be faster than directly using the vncviewer on the client:
1. Run Xvnc on the server
2. Run on client, "ssh -X -C server-host vncviewer 127.0.0.1:0"
Instead of directly calling vncviewer and keeping a persistent Xvnc server, you can look at the following to provide multiple logins for a single user, ala Windows Terminal Services: MultisessionX.
$ calc.exe
-bash: calc.exe: command not found
Btw, the inside has vertical dividers which are great for keeping files/folders/papers straight. I've been using my bag since 2000 without any signs of wear and tear. This bag has survived a year of full-time college, two years part-time college, and international travel (every 6mo).
I love my saddlebag. They also make it in black now, and Kensington also has messenger and executive bags now labeled under the "Saddlebag" name. While those may also be excellent bags, I have experience with the old-faithful -- the brown/black model. This was the very first laptop backpack (that I'm aware of).
When I travel, I can easily fit two laptops, a multitude of chargers, cell phones, cables (including 25ft cat5), a mouse, a soda, camera, and some snacks. Easily, I can bring it to a weight that could easily break a smaller man's back.
On my side.. for a company, I setup a filter based on SpamAssassin to catch all of the stuff that Postini missed -- Postini was really worthless, in my opinion.
> And the satisfaction of having one of your songs distrobuted across the world is
:-)
> nothing, right?
That isn't anything netcat couldn't fix...
bash$ for host in $(function count() { i=0; while [ $i -lt 255 ]; do i=$(($i+1)); echo $i; done }; for num in `count` ; do for num1 in `count`; do for num2 in `count`; do for num3 in `count`; do echo "$num.$num1.$num2.$num3"; done; done ; done ; done); do nc $host 80 audio.au ; done
I used port 80 as an example, but perhaps you can think of more interesting ports, perhaps 25? Or how about winpopup?
It didn't turn out that bad for DVD-RW and DVD+RW...
The only version of IE for OSX is version 5, which isn't new enough for Windows Live and is no longer maintained or even available for download. It isn't included with newer Macs, either.
> the password is readable by only someone with root access.
.htaccess since, of course, thats just as secure as putting the variables into a .php file.
/w suexec.
It is also visible in the environment -- make sure you don't accidently print the environment out on some page -- don't publically expose phpinfo(); !
This false-security also assumes one of the following:
1) You have access to the httpd.conf file (and as such, there are better solutions...)
2) Other users don't have access to Apache.
You can't put the environmental variables into a
> By storing them in a PHP file, users other than root can read it.
Only if your server isn't securely configured.
You can secure your PHP files from reading in at least the following 2 ways. Both ways are considerably more secure than throwing variables into Apache.
1) Use PHP as a fastcgi
2) Run apache as your user, with your home directory non-readable by other users, and use mod_php.
My company, btw, provides both solutions.
One concern I immediately had -- and I happily saw noted in the article as well -- is the question of who will pay to support this? Data storage isn't free, or cheap.
This could kill small and medium-sized web hosting providers.
> l likely get a Mac so long as they don't follow with the same crap (and then Linux next).
Because Apple doesn't have its own DRM, nor does it ship a Trusted Computing Module with all of its new Macs -- Apple is far ahead on the DRM ball, my friend, not behind. Sadly.
More to this point.. if we're just data, and we (in essence) multiply.. is the Earth just a big computer? The universe? Makes you wonder if Douglas Adams was really onto something.
See, the other (and odd) way of viewing this is that no data is ever produced, only discovered. This goes, perhaps, into both chaos theory and psychology.
.avi container) is simply a really big number. That number has always existed, but only recently computed (aka, discovered). An even deeper thought is that there are many ways that we could potentially materialize physical objects (such as humans) as data -- if you're data, you're just a number. Does this mean that you've always existed? It puts a new spin on religion, doesn't it?
A movie file (say, a DivX movie in an
More to the point -- Can numbers be owned? Should they be owned?
Worse.. try using it in your left hand. While the mouse *looks* like it can be used in the left-hand, don't be fooled. The brilliant space-age design of this mouse prevents it from functioning properly in a left hand.
Thank you slashdot, what would I do without you?
Seriously, why are we seeing product announcements on the front page? OSTG already owns freshmeat, there is no reason to reproduce this information on Slashdot. I hope I'm not marked as a troll on this, and I'll even go as far and NOT post as a coward.
Various embedded projects use OpenSSH, one example would be HP switches. If the project was licensed GPL, it may not have been included in those embedded applications. Ideally, OpenBSD could have been successful being dual-licensed, but it would have never gained such popularity with a pure GPL license.