I was going to post yesterday asking how long all this would take... but decided to just go ahead with my transfer and report back. 24 hours for me. No bumps.
I already had domains at GoDaddy and NameCheap and decided this was a good time to consolidate at NC. I had unlocked my GoDaddy domain a couple of weeks ago with the intention of dealing with it when I had some downtime over the holidays. I started the whole process this time yesterday. After a few notifications and accepting the transfer on both sides I got an email this afternoon that the transfer was done. Logged into my NameCheap control panel and there it is.
I still have one domain at GoDaddy but I am letting it expire anyway so no reason to transfer unless I decide to resurrect the site.
The partnership helped Dell increased their numbers but customers were always left to sway in the wind. Their sales process was a cluster. Their support for EMC was a cluster. We bought a lot of Dell branded EMC storage. Support came from Dell and their party line was to blame it on EMC but not provide any escalation to EMC engineers who could really help to identify solve problems. Basically all Dell was good for was sending a tech to replace disks that had 'phoned home' that they were failing.
After some major contract negotiations and threats to take all of our Dell desktop, server, and storage business somewhere else (millions a year) they transferred our support contract to EMC so we could get support directly. Considering the amount of time, money, and customer goodwill spent on Dell flubbing this relationship we should have just bought directly from EMC.
I'm in healthcare IT too, its as close as I can get to blood without getting queasy.
I was a developer for 10 years before I decided to work as a DBA exclusively. When I developed I was always the DB "go to guy" because it was always something that interested me. I wanted to make sure what I delivered performed well and the DB was a big part of that.
I enjoyed software development immensely but I got tired of the death marches and feature creep. One of my CEO's was nicknamed "Two Week Pete" because after visiting a customer he would always promise some 6 month feature in 2 weeks. I still develop software but just the 'fun' stuff mostly personal and open source projects. I'm the only DBA here that has Design Patterns and OO Software Engineering books right next to my SQL references.
While there is a lot of minutae involved in keeping a large DB instance running, generally my requirements are "We need an instance to support X amount of load and we need it by date Y". When I was a software developer I enjoyed producing elegant code. Now that I'm on the DB side I am responsible for producing elegant solutions which include hardware, software, and services. Yes, when its bad its bad. I usually have a couple of bad weeks a year where I get little to no sleep. I use the 'off time' to keep things running as smoothly as possible and try to reduce the episodes of nightmare performance.
It has been good to have a taste of both sides though. There are a lot of developers that are clueless about the DB side of things and a unfortunately a higher percentage of DBAs that have no idea what goes into developing a decent client or middle tier.
And as far as a private entity doing this, unless traffic becomes a widespread quality of life issue that gets the politicians attention, I doubt the government would ever get involved to provide this information for the benefit of the US population...
Tornadoes which can cause massive death and destruction are the domain of agencies like the NOAA/NWS. Traffic that can annoy and frustrate drivers in a localized area is the domain of local news at best.
As long as the data is properly anonymized its like a Cellular version of a US Census... Just in real time and a whole hell of a lot more interesting. How many TVs does the average household have? Who cares, I want to know how many beowulf clusters:D
I agree with your view of scalability as the most important . The ability to scale is especially apparent if you go the Enterprise Java Beans route. Each vendor's Application Server has its strengths and weaknesses.
Ideally you can pick an Application Server that has facilities that are most important to you application (handling DB connection pooling or specialized handling of resources your beans depend on, etc.)...
Also, n-tier can used in design but deployed on 2 tiers (like client/server). On the last big app I helped design we kept entity, logic, and interface objects separate so later on we could move to 3 tiers later if needed. The system is currently a fat client with logic and interface in the front room and a SQL server in the backroom.
It should work well now that we're looking at deploying a web solution. We can toss our interactive screen objects and implement an interface layer that talks to a browser instead of the local screen.
A couple of well placed design patterns early on(especially Facade when dealing with interface objects) go a long way to facilitate these changes.
But I would be wary of designing and implementing n-tier just for the sake of saying "We're n-tier". If your implementation doesn't have room or capability to scale, one of the major benefits of going n-tier is lost.
In the free software world, a number of sites are set up to "take in" software that the maintainer no longer develops until a new maintainer can be found.
Sounds like a junkyard for software:) I know some people I know get really attached to their software, but sometimes you just got to let go!
But I understand that sometimes isn't an option -- A company I worked with had a similar problem with a proprietary network API we bought from another company. We had some bug fixes we needed and went on a hunt for the company. It had been bought and sold a few times and ended up in the hands of a well known networking company who bought it simply to put it out of business. They were interested in completely rubbing out the company so we were left without a way to get to this source. We even tracked down the original programmer and he said he had the code but wouldn't dare do anything with it (like send it to us) for fear of being stomped into oblivion by this lantastic...errr fantastic networking company.
People don't use the signaling equipment they have on their cars now, I don't think another gadget attached to the car is going to make them pay any more attention to their driving.
I think its mainly a problem with the "American" licensing system... Driver's education was a joke, and besides being shown some gore films on safe driving, the whole rite is really not taken that seriously. Also, Americans view driving as a right, not just a privilege. Note the standard "I paid my taxes and I can do whatever the hell I want" attitudes and their variants (Drive as Fast as I Want, Drive as Close To You as I Want).
This is just one example, but last month we had an incident close to our town where an 80 year old driver backed into a school building, mowing down 6 kids in the process. I would hate to have to break it to their parents that this 80 year old will not have her license privileges taken away or even re-evaluated. (That AARP lobby is pretty powerful these days).
"Western Union Telegram messages are delivered in two ways: via telephone by a Western Union operator, or in person by a Western Union Agent."
Back in my BBSing days I remember a local HAM had a BBS where you could enter a message and it would get relayed to a HAM near the recipient. Dunno if it was packet radio or relayed by voice, anyone know what its called?
These come up for auction pretty often on EBay. I think IBM dumped a bunch of them a couple of years back. Just search for "Trackpoint Keyboard" and you'll get a few hits. Most all the ones i've seen for auction are unused in original box. I bring my true blue IBM keyboard with me wherever I work, I can't stand those mushy keyboards. Plus after 2 Thinkpads I got hooked on the nipples too:) -- Dave
Slashdot Mirror
I was going to post yesterday asking how long all this would take... but decided to just go ahead with my transfer and report back. 24 hours for me. No bumps.
I already had domains at GoDaddy and NameCheap and decided this was a good time to consolidate at NC. I had unlocked my GoDaddy domain a couple of weeks ago with the intention of dealing with it when I had some downtime over the holidays. I started the whole process this time yesterday. After a few notifications and accepting the transfer on both sides I got an email this afternoon that the transfer was done. Logged into my NameCheap control panel and there it is.
I still have one domain at GoDaddy but I am letting it expire anyway so no reason to transfer unless I decide to resurrect the site.
The partnership helped Dell increased their numbers but customers were always left to sway in the wind. Their sales process was a cluster. Their support for EMC was a cluster. We bought a lot of Dell branded EMC storage. Support came from Dell and their party line was to blame it on EMC but not provide any escalation to EMC engineers who could really help to identify solve problems. Basically all Dell was good for was sending a tech to replace disks that had 'phoned home' that they were failing.
After some major contract negotiations and threats to take all of our Dell desktop, server, and storage business somewhere else (millions a year) they transferred our support contract to EMC so we could get support directly. Considering the amount of time, money, and customer goodwill spent on Dell flubbing this relationship we should have just bought directly from EMC.
Since RDP is a necessary evil for administering remote windows PCs at least change the fracking port...
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\TerminalServer\WinStations\RDP-Tcp\PortNumber
I'm in healthcare IT too, its as close as I can get to blood without getting queasy.
I was a developer for 10 years before I decided to work as a DBA exclusively. When I developed I was always the DB "go to guy" because it was always something that interested me. I wanted to make sure what I delivered performed well and the DB was a big part of that.
I enjoyed software development immensely but I got tired of the death marches and feature creep. One of my CEO's was nicknamed "Two Week Pete" because after visiting a customer he would always promise some 6 month feature in 2 weeks. I still develop software but just the 'fun' stuff mostly personal and open source projects. I'm the only DBA here that has Design Patterns and OO Software Engineering books right next to my SQL references.
While there is a lot of minutae involved in keeping a large DB instance running, generally my requirements are "We need an instance to support X amount of load and we need it by date Y". When I was a software developer I enjoyed producing elegant code. Now that I'm on the DB side I am responsible for producing elegant solutions which include hardware, software, and services. Yes, when its bad its bad. I usually have a couple of bad weeks a year where I get little to no sleep. I use the 'off time' to keep things running as smoothly as possible and try to reduce the episodes of nightmare performance.
It has been good to have a taste of both sides though. There are a lot of developers that are clueless about the DB side of things and a unfortunately a higher percentage of DBAs that have no idea what goes into developing a decent client or middle tier.
-- Dave
A local realtor. Have to chuckle every time his TV commercial comes up on the Home Buyers Channel.
http://www.michaelhunt.com/home.html
-- Dave
And as far as a private entity doing this, unless traffic becomes a widespread quality of life issue that gets the politicians attention, I doubt the government would ever get involved to provide this information for the benefit of the US population...
Tornadoes which can cause massive death and destruction are the domain of agencies like the NOAA/NWS. Traffic that can annoy and frustrate drivers in a localized area is the domain of local news at best.
As long as the data is properly anonymized its like a Cellular version of a US Census... Just in real time and a whole hell of a lot more interesting. How many TVs does the average household have? Who cares, I want to know how many beowulf clusters
Sounds like they need a Wiki!
I agree with your view of scalability as the most important . The ability to scale is especially apparent if you go the Enterprise Java Beans route. Each vendor's Application Server has its strengths and weaknesses.
Ideally you can pick an Application Server that has facilities that are most important to you application (handling DB connection pooling or specialized handling of resources your beans depend on, etc.)...
Also, n-tier can used in design but deployed on 2 tiers (like client/server). On the last big app I helped design we kept entity, logic, and interface objects separate so later on we could move to 3 tiers later if needed. The system is currently a fat client with logic and interface in the front room and a SQL server in the backroom.
It should work well now that we're looking at deploying a web solution. We can toss our interactive screen objects and implement an interface layer that talks to a browser instead of the local screen.
A couple of well placed design patterns early on(especially Facade when dealing with interface objects) go a long way to facilitate these changes.
But I would be wary of designing and implementing n-tier just for the sake of saying "We're n-tier". If your implementation doesn't have room or capability to scale, one of the major benefits of going n-tier is lost.
-- Dave
In the free software world, a number of sites are set up to "take in" software that the maintainer no longer develops until a new maintainer can be found.
Sounds like a junkyard for software :) I know some people I know get really attached to their software, but sometimes you just got to let go!
But I understand that sometimes isn't an option -- A company I worked with had a similar problem with a proprietary network API we bought from another company. We had some bug fixes we needed and went on a hunt for the company. It had been bought and sold a few times and ended up in the hands of a well known networking company who bought it simply to put it out of business. They were interested in completely rubbing out the company so we were left without a way to get to this source. We even tracked down the original programmer and he said he had the code but wouldn't dare do anything with it (like send it to us) for fear of being stomped into oblivion by this lantastic...errr fantastic networking company.
People don't use the signaling equipment they have on their cars now, I don't think another gadget attached to the car is going to make them pay any more attention to their driving.
I think its mainly a problem with the "American" licensing system... Driver's education was a joke, and besides being shown some gore films on safe driving, the whole rite is really not taken that seriously. Also, Americans view driving as a right, not just a privilege. Note the standard "I paid my taxes and I can do whatever the hell I want" attitudes and their variants (Drive as Fast as I Want, Drive as Close To You as I Want).
This is just one example, but last month we had an incident close to our town where an 80 year old driver backed into a school building, mowing down 6 kids in the process. I would hate to have to break it to their parents that this 80 year old will not have her license privileges taken away or even re-evaluated. (That AARP lobby is pretty powerful these days).
Flavor "Wheels of Tragedy" Dave
You can check out their website...
"Western Union Telegram messages are delivered in two ways: via telephone by a Western Union operator, or in person by a Western Union Agent."
Back in my BBSing days I remember a local HAM had a BBS where you could enter a message and it would get relayed to a HAM near the recipient. Dunno if it was packet radio or relayed by voice, anyone know what its called?
These come up for auction pretty often on EBay. I think IBM dumped a bunch of them a couple of years back. Just search for "Trackpoint Keyboard" and you'll get a few hits. Most all the ones i've seen for auction are unused in original box. I bring my true blue IBM keyboard with me wherever I work, I can't stand those mushy keyboards. Plus after 2 Thinkpads I got hooked on the nipples too :) -- Dave