I keep my home systems on all the time unless there's a major T-storm approaching. (Guess I'm a little paranoid about lightening after seeing what it did to a friend's house and a lot of their electronics a few years ago.) At work we have industrial strength surge protection for the data centers and uptimes are quite long. (And would be even longer if it weren't for all the upgrades we're doing to finish up the Y2K compliance.)
BTW, while a lot of us have systems that are up for quite extended periods of time, I would imagine many Linux users have that system off to the side that they use for trying things out that could be considered too disruptive to do on a production system or their primary personal system. Or do all you NT admins just toss things onto your production servers without testing them?:-)
I've been waiting for this...
on
DIVX is dead
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· Score: 1
Anyone else notice the smaller and smaller ads for DIVX in the Circuit City flyers in the Sunday paper? The shrinking ad space was, I think, Circuit City's own realization that they'd goofed on DIVX.
I, for one, am glad to see a company back away from a marketing blunder.
Can anyone think of other companies that we'd like to see do the same?
I have wondered about the wisdom of placing serial ports on the motherboard for some time now. My first PC (XT clone) had serial ports on the motherboard and I was worried. Why? Because line driver chips fail. When the serial ports were on a separate card I could toss the card and replace it if the line drivers were socketed. Luckily, when I had a driver fail the chips on that old motherboard were socketed and a quick trip to Radio Trash saved the day. Newer motherboards don't have socketed line driver chips. I guess I'll need to buy a new motherboard if I have a problem with the serial ports on my current system.
Really... what's wrong with keeping ISA for things like mice and serial ports. The ISA bus is certainly capable of handling the I/O needs for those devices.
What do you do when you have a problem with a peripheral when everything's been put on the motherboard or requires USB? It'll be a cold day before I buy another Intel-based system if they're going to force me into hanging a RAID array off USB because they don't think I'm capable of dealing with a circuit board in a slot.
I look around in Computer Shopper at the motherboard ads and I still don't see the motherboards coming with more than 5 PCI slots. I have five slots on my 2-1/2 year old PPro system so the motherboard makers haven't been adding more PCI slots (and I'm out of PCI slots). I'm trying to figure out what my upgrade path is should I decide that my dual PPro is out of gas. A replacement m'board wouldn't have any more I/O capacity and if my growth requires more disk space I'll have to overload the SCSI busses I already have. Oh yes... I'm supposed to buy new motherboards with limited I/O capacity and access everything over a network. Again, there's that bottleneck. Anyone know whether there's an effort to get StorageWorks controllers to work under Linux? You can hang a boatload of disks off an HSZ array controller. Oh... I forgot. I'd still need a slot for the SCSI controller. Guess I'm still SOL.
Is everything going to be forced onto USB? Does Intel understand the potential for performance bottlenecks that they're going to be pushing us into? Are they suggesting that we put everything on USB? If the PS/2 and parallel ports are designated for removal, I'd hate to see my mouse response to go down the tubes because I'm printing a large file.
Users complain now about the tangled mess of cables that they have running out of their computers. Just wait until everything's got to plug into some damned USB hub that's sitting on your desk! Or even worse, sitting on the floor underneath your desk just waiting for you to kick a cable loose. Or worse, the USB cables I've seen look fragile to me.
If Intel wants to help, come up with a design that gives us two I/O busses: low speed for things like mice and asynch ports and high speed for things like video and disks.
...allow his beloved BASIC be cast aside and be replaced. He still thinks that it's a good programming language.
Can you imagine WordPerl? BillG thinks it's oh-so-clever to have BASIC as the scripting language for the Word (even though Word macros look so unlike any real BASIC programs that you'd never be able to tell that they're supposed to be the same language).
Just a thought, but maybe the poster was hoping that more web sites would include photos that didn't look like they were taken by my mother (heads chopped off, crappy lighting, etc.).
\begin{flame}
Just back off. Some of us might have interests that require being more than arm's reach from a keyboard.
I would have liked it better if the author didn't have to throw in that snipe about having to go through a repartitioning. Users are only forced to go through that process since MS had pretty much forced OEMs to preallocate the entire disk to Win9x before the computer leaves their manufacturing facility.
Give the customers (remember them? They're the only ones who are always right!) the option to either:
Select Win9x for pre-installation.
Select Win9X for shipment but not pre-installed.
Select DOS (or DR-DOS).
Select no operating system.
It would be nice to have a fifth and sixth option:
Select Linux for pre-installation.
Select Linux for shipment but not pre-installed.
but which Linux distribution would the OEM select? [Debian|Slackware|SuSe|Caldera|etc.] bigots would surely take to task any OEM that decided to ship Red Hat.
[DR-]DOS?! Are you mad?! Not really; just practical. I still find DOS useful for running diagnostics and/or setup utilities that manufacturers ship with their cards. Until the world standardizes on each machine having a bootable CD-ROM drive and all cards come with their utilities on a bootable CD, I think we're stuck with needing something that can launch our diagnostic/setup software. Since a lot of these utilities would be difficult or impossible to run while Linux was running, it doesn't bother me too much to keep a bootable DOS floppy or a 5MB DOS partition on the first hard drive. (I'm confident that the need for these will go away someday soon!)
Don't make me laugh! I live in a suburb NNW of Chicago and we can't get high speed network access in our town; at least not at a price that anyone would want to pay. I'm definitely not holding my breath until 100 Mb/sec access comes to my town.
DSL? Nope. Not available yet. Well, OK... one supplier tells me that it's available but with a $300 installation charge and $165/month. So, essentially, it's not available.
ISDN? Nope. Well, OK. It's available too but it costs as much as my previous employer paid for a T1. Then there's fees on top of that!
These new services only seem to be for those people who already live within the city limits of a major metropolitan city. I don't know anyone living outside the city limits of Chicago or one of a very few surburbs directly West of the Chicago who have access to any of these high-speed access options.
``We have to start talking about providing what suits call an "upgrade path" to get people out of NT4.''
I've been doing that already. You might also refer to this as Linux's road map! Another term that the suits are fond of lately.
Also, don't forget to use the phrase "Proprietary Microsoft Windows". The Micros~1 PR and trade press drones elevated the use of the ``P'' word to an art forms years ago when describing any non-MS software. You could barely open up a computer magazine without seeing something along the lines of
``We installed Windows NT and turned off our proprietary XYZ system...''
...even though there was nothing wrong with the XYZ system (other than the inexperienced IT technicians not knowing anything about it, not bothering to learn it, and bad-mouthing it at every turn).
Remember: Bill Gates idea of a portable operating system is that you can run Win95 on an Intel-based PC bought from any consumer electronics outlet.
``Now tell me how am I supposed to remember this if I ever reinstall NT?''
Umm... You could try writing it down and keeping it in an envelope inside the computer case. Just a thought. I think I'd have some paper records on hand as the bare minimum for a disaster recovery plan. Especially if you're running NT but I always keep a printout of the partition setup (from fdisk) for all of my disks, the fstab, and some other vital stuff that I'll need in case the system ever goes south on me.
``What if I buy a new system? what if my NIC blows up?''
Yah, bummer. Also, certain software licensing schemes use the MAC address to generate an internal key that the protected software checks against a key on disk. These software packages break when you have to replace your E'net card as well.
``The IP is supposed to dynamic, but for the last two years it hasnt [sic] changed for me.''
I'm not DHCP guru, but as I understand it DHCP doesn't have to give you a new IP address each time. Only if you configure it to assign address from a pool. Just because your address hasn't changed in a while doesn't mean it won't start changing every day starting tomorrow.:)
If you need to periodically renew access to your mission-critical software by contacting the vendor, aren't you essentially subscribing to it? What company is going to be silly enough to run their company on software that they are subscribing to? Jeez, the first time the accounting department gets shut down due to the vendors not renewing the keys to the software, someone's head is gonna roll. Perhaps you can get fired for buying Micros~1!
Personally, I can't see this happening industrywide since the infrastructure that a software vendor is going to have to put into place in order to use a software enabling mechanism like this is going to be considerable. Consider the class action suit that they leave themselves open to if their key distribution server is attacked and rendered unusable for several days. Also, consider the situation where your vendor is clobbered by some natural disaster. Selecting a software vendor located closer than 100 miles of the San Andreas fault could be considered a career-limiting move! Oh sure, they could build multiple servers to serve wide geographic areas and act as backups but methinks that the expense involved is going to make this something only the larger SW vendors are going to attempt.
I wouldn't count on internet-based software key distribution to catch on too quickly (my gut feeling) but technological advances could make something like this cheaper and more accessible to SW vendors. Then it'll be the royal pain-in-the-keister that everyone's complaining about today.
Just to be safe, let's make sure that this sort of software enabling becomes about as popular as parallel port dongles. You don't hear much about those nowadays, eh?
``Is it really so important for the computer community to get all foamy at the mouth when people use "hacker" and "cracker" synonymously? It's such an incredibly self-referential and arrogant response to something that just doesn't seem all that important. For all their posturing of strength, "hackers/crackers" get all bent out of shape when someone calls them the wrong freakin' word, as if their efforts for Good Things and Truth were instantly diluted when an outsider refers to them incorrectly.''
In answer to your question: Yes,IMHO, it is important. One of the things that the OSS movement is going to have to overcome is the image that some people have (and I mean decision-making people) of anything created by ``hackers''. If the news media insists on confusing ``hacker'' and ``cracker'' when reporting on criminal activity performed by ``crackers'', we'll never get past the issue of trust that these people need to have. It's great that you don't have a problem with the misuse of the term. If the general public has the idea that hackers engage in breaking into systems and other illegal activity, I would not want to run around calling myself a hacker except to a carefully selected few who understand the difference. If you are at all about your professional reputation you might wish to avoid calling yourself a hacker.
Even if they publicly renounced their past activities (``youthful indiscretions''?), I would not trust anyone like Kevin Mitnick or Phyber Optick (sp?) to do anything more sophisticated than insert a floppy on one of my systems... and maybe not even that.
Letting the press continue to misuse this term makes our advocacy efforts that much more difficult. If they can't or won't change their use of the term then, perhaps, it's time to create a new term (much like OSS was created in response to some of the negative connotations attached to ``Free Software'').
Are you sure this wasn't an old FORTRAN program that had been run through something like Cobalt Blue's FORTRAN-to-C translator? I played with^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hevaluated a copy of it back in the mid/late-80s and seem to recall it creating labels like that in the translated code.
``Clear longterm roadmap based on a customer focused vision''
Wouldn't it be more accurate to say:
``Clear longterm roadmap based on focusing on the customer's wallet''
That would be more in line with a company's asking for $60+ for a BETA copy of their product (how much yah wanna bet you get donged again once the ``official release'' is shipped?) Let's not even mention the ridiculous situation where some OEMs are pre-loading the beta software on new systems.
While I always feel a little morbid doing something like this, I will have to get out my copy of ``Freakin' At The Freakers Ball'' tonight and give it a listen. He was a great songwriter (``Boy Named Sue'', ``On The Cover of the Rolling Stone'', etc.) in addition to the poetry and children's books that he did. Great stuff and too bad that there won't be any more.
``I confess, under the guise of Anonymous Cowardice, to have once rooted for Microsoft and the destruction of Apple and IBM. I renounced my allegiance with the arrival of Windows and the bullsh** "your code ain't going nowhere else" compiler mentality shoved down our throats by Mr. Gates.''
Pansy! I won't hide behind the AC moniker. I was an MS advocate but gave up on old Bill "Thulsa Doom" Gates et. al. back about '88-'89. Too many bugs were found in their compilers even back then. Windows 2.x was a joke, 3.0 wouldn't run on any of our PCs (hell, it wasn't even stable enough to run Solitaire on our standard '286), and all of your products got too expensive. It was easy to leave them behind in those days since we were a PDP and VAX shop (That was one of the reasons that I pushed for the MS compiler was that it supposedly supported (the industry standard) VAX FORTRAN code -- it didn't for us and it sure wasn't easy to go into a staff meeting and say:
``You guys remember all those comments we had you put in your code? Yah, that's right, all those inline comments. Well, you're going to have to convert them to the old style. Oh, and here's a list of all the other VAX FORTRAN things that aren't going to compile. Sorry.''
Then the damned Macro assembler couldn't even generate correct fsin instructions. (Or was it fcos? I can't remember now. All I know was that it screwed up my FFT results royally and I never knew whether MS fixed the problem or not. Such is their superb support system.)
Sorry, Bill. MS products began departing my PCs over ten years ago thanks to your overreaching greed. My '386 switched over to Coherent. My '486 ran Consensys's SVR4.2, and now my PPros run Linux. Yes, now and again Windows made it back onto one of my systems (to support work brought home) but it was in as small a partition as I could make for it. Since purchasing Applixware I have no more use for you and your poorly written software.
``Are there any professionals (other than Unix system programmers) working with Linux? Can Linux be used as a desktop OS for anything besides coding?''
Gee... I use it my desk for network monitoring, word processing and spreadsheet (Applix), and other office-related functions. The only thing I use the Win9x-based laptop on my desk for is to communicate with those people who have only Windows-based e-mail packages and for MS-Project (and once I find a *nix-based package that'll be one less reason to use Windows).
Does the fact that I'm a sysadmin who sometimes does some systems programming discount this use of Linux on the desktop?
``What Linux is good for is development, non-MC web servers, email servers, file & print servers, dial up servers, and many other things.''
One's definition of ``mission critical'' is important. Mostly (at least at places where I've worked, if a downed system causes money to be lost, it's mission critical.
If e-mail isn't mission critical, someone please tell the people in the finance and administrative areas where I used to work. We probably had more complaints about problems with the e-mail being down (This was Groupwise and, then later, Netscape) than any other system. E-mail isn't just used for memoes from the boss or mundane corporate communications. When people can't get something done (oh, just un-important stuff like budget-related work or people trying to collaborate on presentations to the board of directors) and the e-mail server is down, you have the CIO calling and wanting updates every 10 minutes while the server is being revived.
Most of those ``non-mission critical'' functions that you listed are truly non-mission critical if the time and lost productivity of the people who depend on those systems are unimportant.
I worked with a guy who didn't see anything wrong with taking down a ``test'' system whenever he damned well felt like it. Until, that is, the bill came from the consultants who were sitting around unable to code and test. When an hour's unscheduled downtime costs several thousand dollars you find out how critical that seemingly unimportant little box in the corner of the data center really is.
``...Applix can't find a.so file, blahblahblah. I wiped the disk, reinstalled, and wound up with a completely new set of bugs, no amount of fiddling will get X to start. Huh?''
That's what I said when I read your post: Huh?
If it doesn't work the same way twice I have to assume that you didn't install it the same way twice. Redo your installation and document your selections.
If a file can't be found then perhaps you didn't select it for installation. I had problems like this on both Linux setups as well as Win9X setups. Since switching to RPM-based setups, though, it's happened far, far less. Ever go through the ``custom'' installation of Win9x only to find that something you needed and thought you'd selected didn't get installed? And when you go back to install it afterward you are likely to remove other software while you install the part you originally missed. Wonderful procedure. (Maybe Microcruft should license RPM?)
``It would allow us the opportunity to do bencmark comparisons on real world systems. i.e. from a lowly 386 to a 4 cpu SMP box. Not every desktop in the world is a 4 way pentium III xeon with 2Mb L2 caches, with 2Gb RAM and a 50Gb RAID array.''
Disclaimer: This is not an apology for MS or Mindcraft
Please remember that this is a benchmark regarding SERVER performance. Who cares what's on the average desktop. I've never worked for a company that set up an application server from someone's desktop. (OK, it might have been ``set up'' on someone's desk but when it went ``live'' it went into the data center.)
Of course, the average small business ain't gonna buy a quad Xeon system for their intranet server. But that doesn't make this benchmark's HW configuration any less valid, important, whatever.
I would like someone to do a study of how Walnut Creek was able to pump out so much data with a mere dual PPro (until their recent upgrade). IMHO, a quad processor machine isn't really that necessary unless you're doing something like running Oracle Parallel Server or similar application. Just how many business applications written for the Intel platform are really able to take advantage of SMP? Damn few I'll bet. The PC community (maybe this is Intel marketing machine at work) has convinced everyone that you need faster and faster CPUs all the time. Many of the applications that people use their servers for are I/O bound. Spend your money on faster disk drives, caching controllers, etc. But you sure won't hear that from Intel unless they decide to get into the disk/disk-controller business, that is.
``Why the time restrictions? the Linux experts aren't allowed to use any patch that came out after April 20th... One of the main points about the original test was the unsupported RAID card used... so if someone were to magically release a patch tomorrow that made that card run 3x as fast, they wouldn't be able to use it.''
Agreed. The disallows one of the main features of OSS: Software patches come out at a much greater rate than they can (or at least do) than one sees from a Cathedral-type development model. Is it possible that MS has had a say in the testing format because they don't want end-users to get the idea that receiving patches in this timely a manner is a Good Thing? That wold only serve to strengthen the arguments in favor of the OSS development model. I smell more than just FUD directed at Linux here; it's also directed at OSS in general.
Does anyone really buy software like this and not apply patches on a fairly regular basis? Have I spent too much time in the VMS/DEC UNIX/HP-UX world (i.e. traditional ``industrial-strength'' OSs) that I'm missing something.
Jeezy Pete! If I found out that I could get a patch that ran my HSZs 3X faster or I could make my backups run 3X faster and I didn't apply it my boss would (and should) be bitching me out no end.
IMHO, this 3rd test is an attempt by Mindcraft to regain some bit of respectability after Microsoft left them twisting in the wind following the first ``test''. How long do you think it'll be before Mindcraft either changes the part of their Services web page that says:
``With our custom performance testing service, we work with you to define test goals. Then we put together the necessary tools and do the testing. We report the results back to you in a form that satisfies the test goals.''
doesn't apply to manufacturers any more or that they vow never to do testing for vendors again.
I get this feeling that Mr. Weiner is still smarting from the experience of working with Microsoft on the NT-vs-Linux ``test''.
``Now, if only I had some tuning tip for them...''
Here's one:
Black text on a blue background is freaking hard to read. Choose a color scheme that's readable.
Otherwise, I'm glad someone's doing this to shut off the criticisms from those who are too lazy to visit more than one site for this information. Q: Why should the Apache group need to submit their documentation to someone else for dissemination? Do we bitch about Seagate's drive specs being on a different web site from Western Digitals's???
Slashdot Mirror
I keep my home systems on all the time unless there's a major T-storm approaching. (Guess I'm a little paranoid about lightening after seeing what it did to a friend's house and a lot of their electronics a few years ago.) At work we have industrial strength surge protection for the data centers and uptimes are quite long. (And would be even longer if it weren't for all the upgrades we're doing to finish up the Y2K compliance.)
BTW, while a lot of us have systems that are up for quite extended periods of time, I would imagine many Linux users have that system off to the side that they use for trying things out that could be considered too disruptive to do on a production system or their primary personal system. Or do all you NT admins just toss things onto your production servers without testing them? :-)
Anyone else notice the smaller and smaller ads for DIVX in the Circuit City flyers in the Sunday paper? The shrinking ad space was, I think, Circuit City's own realization that they'd goofed on DIVX.
I, for one, am glad to see a company back away from a marketing blunder.
Can anyone think of other companies that we'd like to see do the same?
I have wondered about the wisdom of placing serial ports on the motherboard for some time now. My first PC (XT clone) had serial ports on the motherboard and I was worried. Why? Because line driver chips fail. When the serial ports were on a separate card I could toss the card and replace it if the line drivers were socketed. Luckily, when I had a driver fail the chips on that old motherboard were socketed and a quick trip to Radio Trash saved the day. Newer motherboards don't have socketed line driver chips. I guess I'll need to buy a new motherboard if I have a problem with the serial ports on my current system.
Really... what's wrong with keeping ISA for things like mice and serial ports. The ISA bus is certainly capable of handling the I/O needs for those devices.
What do you do when you have a problem with a peripheral when everything's been put on the motherboard or requires USB? It'll be a cold day before I buy another Intel-based system if they're going to force me into hanging a RAID array off USB because they don't think I'm capable of dealing with a circuit board in a slot.
I look around in Computer Shopper at the motherboard ads and I still don't see the motherboards coming with more than 5 PCI slots. I have five slots on my 2-1/2 year old PPro system so the motherboard makers haven't been adding more PCI slots (and I'm out of PCI slots). I'm trying to figure out what my upgrade path is should I decide that my dual PPro is out of gas. A replacement m'board wouldn't have any more I/O capacity and if my growth requires more disk space I'll have to overload the SCSI busses I already have. Oh yes... I'm supposed to buy new motherboards with limited I/O capacity and access everything over a network. Again, there's that bottleneck. Anyone know whether there's an effort to get StorageWorks controllers to work under Linux? You can hang a boatload of disks off an HSZ array controller. Oh... I forgot. I'd still need a slot for the SCSI controller. Guess I'm still SOL.
Is everything going to be forced onto USB? Does Intel understand the potential for performance bottlenecks that they're going to be pushing us into? Are they suggesting that we put everything on USB? If the PS/2 and parallel ports are designated for removal, I'd hate to see my mouse response to go down the tubes because I'm printing a large file.
Users complain now about the tangled mess of cables that they have running out of their computers. Just wait until everything's got to plug into some damned USB hub that's sitting on your desk! Or even worse, sitting on the floor underneath your desk just waiting for you to kick a cable loose. Or worse, the USB cables I've seen look fragile to me.
If Intel wants to help, come up with a design that gives us two I/O busses: low speed for things like mice and asynch ports and high speed for things like video and disks.
...allow his beloved BASIC be cast aside and be replaced. He still thinks that it's a good programming language.
Can you imagine WordPerl? BillG thinks it's oh-so-clever to have BASIC as the scripting language for the Word (even though Word macros look so unlike any real BASIC programs that you'd never be able to tell that they're supposed to be the same language).
Ansel Adams. Now there was a guy who was in the ``zone'' his entire career. (OK. Maybe it's a pretty bad photography pun. Couldn't resist it.)
Just a thought, but maybe the poster was hoping that more web sites would include photos that didn't look like they were taken by my mother (heads chopped off, crappy lighting, etc.).
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Just back off. Some of us might have interests that require being more than arm's reach from a keyboard.
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I would have liked it better if the author didn't have to throw in that snipe about having to go through a repartitioning. Users are only forced to go through that process since MS had pretty much forced OEMs to preallocate the entire disk to Win9x before the computer leaves their manufacturing facility.
Give the customers (remember them? They're the only ones who are always right!) the option to either:
It would be nice to have a fifth and sixth option:
but which Linux distribution would the OEM select? [Debian|Slackware|SuSe|Caldera|etc.] bigots would surely take to task any OEM that decided to ship Red Hat.
[DR-]DOS?! Are you mad?! Not really; just practical. I still find DOS useful for running diagnostics and/or setup utilities that manufacturers ship with their cards. Until the world standardizes on each machine having a bootable CD-ROM drive and all cards come with their utilities on a bootable CD, I think we're stuck with needing something that can launch our diagnostic/setup software. Since a lot of these utilities would be difficult or impossible to run while Linux was running, it doesn't bother me too much to keep a bootable DOS floppy or a 5MB DOS partition on the first hard drive. (I'm confident that the need for these will go away someday soon!)
Don't make me laugh! I live in a suburb NNW of Chicago and we can't get high speed network access in our town; at least not at a price that anyone would want to pay. I'm definitely not holding my breath until 100 Mb/sec access comes to my town.
DSL? Nope. Not available yet. Well, OK... one supplier tells me that it's available but with a $300 installation charge and $165/month. So, essentially, it's not available.
ISDN? Nope. Well, OK. It's available too but it costs as much as my previous employer paid for a T1. Then there's fees on top of that!
These new services only seem to be for those people who already live within the city limits of a major metropolitan city. I don't know anyone living outside the city limits of Chicago or one of a very few surburbs directly West of the Chicago who have access to any of these high-speed access options.
I've been doing that already. You might also refer to this as Linux's road map! Another term that the suits are fond of lately.
Also, don't forget to use the phrase "Proprietary Microsoft Windows". The Micros~1 PR and trade press drones elevated the use of the ``P'' word to an art forms years ago when describing any non-MS software. You could barely open up a computer magazine without seeing something along the lines of
Remember: Bill Gates idea of a portable operating system is that you can run Win95 on an Intel-based PC bought from any consumer electronics outlet.
Umm... You could try writing it down and keeping it in an envelope inside the computer case. Just a thought. I think I'd have some paper records on hand as the bare minimum for a disaster recovery plan. Especially if you're running NT but I always keep a printout of the partition setup (from fdisk) for all of my disks, the fstab, and some other vital stuff that I'll need in case the system ever goes south on me.
Yah, bummer. Also, certain software licensing schemes use the MAC address to generate an internal key that the protected software checks against a key on disk. These software packages break when you have to replace your E'net card as well.
I'm not DHCP guru, but as I understand it DHCP doesn't have to give you a new IP address each time. Only if you configure it to assign address from a pool. Just because your address hasn't changed in a while doesn't mean it won't start changing every day starting tomorrow. :)
If you need to periodically renew access to your mission-critical software by contacting the vendor, aren't you essentially subscribing to it? What company is going to be silly enough to run their company on software that they are subscribing to? Jeez, the first time the accounting department gets shut down due to the vendors not renewing the keys to the software, someone's head is gonna roll. Perhaps you can get fired for buying Micros~1!
Personally, I can't see this happening industrywide since the infrastructure that a software vendor is going to have to put into place in order to use a software enabling mechanism like this is going to be considerable. Consider the class action suit that they leave themselves open to if their key distribution server is attacked and rendered unusable for several days. Also, consider the situation where your vendor is clobbered by some natural disaster. Selecting a software vendor located closer than 100 miles of the San Andreas fault could be considered a career-limiting move! Oh sure, they could build multiple servers to serve wide geographic areas and act as backups but methinks that the expense involved is going to make this something only the larger SW vendors are going to attempt.
I wouldn't count on internet-based software key distribution to catch on too quickly (my gut feeling) but technological advances could make something like this cheaper and more accessible to SW vendors. Then it'll be the royal pain-in-the-keister that everyone's complaining about today.
Just to be safe, let's make sure that this sort of software enabling becomes about as popular as parallel port dongles. You don't hear much about those nowadays, eh?
In answer to your question: Yes ,IMHO, it is important. One of the things that the OSS movement is going to have to overcome is the image that some people have (and I mean decision-making people) of anything created by ``hackers''. If the news media insists on confusing ``hacker'' and ``cracker'' when reporting on criminal activity performed by ``crackers'', we'll never get past the issue of trust that these people need to have. It's great that you don't have a problem with the misuse of the term. If the general public has the idea that hackers engage in breaking into systems and other illegal activity, I would not want to run around calling myself a hacker except to a carefully selected few who understand the difference. If you are at all about your professional reputation you might wish to avoid calling yourself a hacker.
Even if they publicly renounced their past activities (``youthful indiscretions''?), I would not trust anyone like Kevin Mitnick or Phyber Optick (sp?) to do anything more sophisticated than insert a floppy on one of my systems... and maybe not even that.
Letting the press continue to misuse this term makes our advocacy efforts that much more difficult. If they can't or won't change their use of the term then, perhaps, it's time to create a new term (much like OSS was created in response to some of the negative connotations attached to ``Free Software'').
Are you sure this wasn't an old FORTRAN program that had been run through something like Cobalt Blue's FORTRAN-to-C translator? I played with^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hevaluated a copy of it back in the mid/late-80s and seem to recall it creating labels like that in the translated code.
I remember the quote coming from Ed Post's famous "Real Programmers Don't Use Pascal" but it was
Close enough though.
One of my favorite parts:
Wouldn't it be more accurate to say:
That would be more in line with a company's asking for $60+ for a BETA copy of their product (how much yah wanna bet you get donged again once the ``official release'' is shipped?) Let's not even mention the ridiculous situation where some OEMs are pre-loading the beta software on new systems.
While I always feel a little morbid doing something like this, I will have to get out my copy of ``Freakin' At The Freakers Ball'' tonight and give it a listen. He was a great songwriter (``Boy Named Sue'', ``On The Cover of the Rolling Stone'', etc.) in addition to the poetry and children's books that he did. Great stuff and too bad that there won't be any more.
Pansy! I won't hide behind the AC moniker. I was an MS advocate but gave up on old Bill "Thulsa Doom" Gates et. al. back about '88-'89. Too many bugs were found in their compilers even back then. Windows 2.x was a joke, 3.0 wouldn't run on any of our PCs (hell, it wasn't even stable enough to run Solitaire on our standard '286), and all of your products got too expensive. It was easy to leave them behind in those days since we were a PDP and VAX shop (That was one of the reasons that I pushed for the MS compiler was that it supposedly supported (the industry standard) VAX FORTRAN code -- it didn't for us and it sure wasn't easy to go into a staff meeting and say:
Then the damned Macro assembler couldn't even generate correct fsin instructions. (Or was it fcos? I can't remember now. All I know was that it screwed up my FFT results royally and I never knew whether MS fixed the problem or not. Such is their superb support system.)
Sorry, Bill. MS products began departing my PCs over ten years ago thanks to your overreaching greed. My '386 switched over to Coherent. My '486 ran Consensys's SVR4.2, and now my PPros run Linux. Yes, now and again Windows made it back onto one of my systems (to support work brought home) but it was in as small a partition as I could make for it. Since purchasing Applixware I have no more use for you and your poorly written software.
And by the way, Bill, using PCs is FUN AGAIN!
Gee... I use it my desk for network monitoring, word processing and spreadsheet (Applix), and other office-related functions. The only thing I use the Win9x-based laptop on my desk for is to communicate with those people who have only Windows-based e-mail packages and for MS-Project (and once I find a *nix-based package that'll be one less reason to use Windows).
Does the fact that I'm a sysadmin who sometimes does some systems programming discount this use of Linux on the desktop?
One's definition of ``mission critical'' is important. Mostly (at least at places where I've worked, if a downed system causes money to be lost, it's mission critical.
If e-mail isn't mission critical, someone please tell the people in the finance and administrative areas where I used to work. We probably had more complaints about problems with the e-mail being down (This was Groupwise and, then later, Netscape) than any other system. E-mail isn't just used for memoes from the boss or mundane corporate communications. When people can't get something done (oh, just un-important stuff like budget-related work or people trying to collaborate on presentations to the board of directors) and the e-mail server is down, you have the CIO calling and wanting updates every 10 minutes while the server is being revived.
Most of those ``non-mission critical'' functions that you listed are truly non-mission critical if the time and lost productivity of the people who depend on those systems are unimportant.
I worked with a guy who didn't see anything wrong with taking down a ``test'' system whenever he damned well felt like it. Until, that is, the bill came from the consultants who were sitting around unable to code and test. When an hour's unscheduled downtime costs several thousand dollars you find out how critical that seemingly unimportant little box in the corner of the data center really is.
That's what I said when I read your post: Huh?
If it doesn't work the same way twice I have to assume that you didn't install it the same way twice. Redo your installation and document your selections.
If a file can't be found then perhaps you didn't select it for installation. I had problems like this on both Linux setups as well as Win9X setups. Since switching to RPM-based setups, though, it's happened far, far less. Ever go through the ``custom'' installation of Win9x only to find that something you needed and thought you'd selected didn't get installed? And when you go back to install it afterward you are likely to remove other software while you install the part you originally missed. Wonderful procedure. (Maybe Microcruft should license RPM?)
Disclaimer: This is not an apology for MS or Mindcraft
Please remember that this is a benchmark regarding SERVER performance. Who cares what's on the average desktop. I've never worked for a company that set up an application server from someone's desktop. (OK, it might have been ``set up'' on someone's desk but when it went ``live'' it went into the data center.)
Of course, the average small business ain't gonna buy a quad Xeon system for their intranet server. But that doesn't make this benchmark's HW configuration any less valid, important, whatever.
I would like someone to do a study of how Walnut Creek was able to pump out so much data with a mere dual PPro (until their recent upgrade). IMHO, a quad processor machine isn't really that necessary unless you're doing something like running Oracle Parallel Server or similar application. Just how many business applications written for the Intel platform are really able to take advantage of SMP? Damn few I'll bet. The PC community (maybe this is Intel marketing machine at work) has convinced everyone that you need faster and faster CPUs all the time. Many of the applications that people use their servers for are I/O bound. Spend your money on faster disk drives, caching controllers, etc. But you sure won't hear that from Intel unless they decide to get into the disk/disk-controller business, that is.
Agreed. The disallows one of the main features of OSS: Software patches come out at a much greater rate than they can (or at least do) than one sees from a Cathedral-type development model. Is it possible that MS has had a say in the testing format because they don't want end-users to get the idea that receiving patches in this timely a manner is a Good Thing? That wold only serve to strengthen the arguments in favor of the OSS development model. I smell more than just FUD directed at Linux here; it's also directed at OSS in general.
Does anyone really buy software like this and not apply patches on a fairly regular basis? Have I spent too much time in the VMS/DEC UNIX/HP-UX world (i.e. traditional ``industrial-strength'' OSs) that I'm missing something.
Jeezy Pete! If I found out that I could get a patch that ran my HSZs 3X faster or I could make my backups run 3X faster and I didn't apply it my boss would (and should) be bitching me out no end.
IMHO, this 3rd test is an attempt by Mindcraft to regain some bit of respectability after Microsoft left them twisting in the wind following the first ``test''. How long do you think it'll be before Mindcraft either changes the part of their Services web page that says:
doesn't apply to manufacturers any more or that they vow never to do testing for vendors again.
I get this feeling that Mr. Weiner is still smarting from the experience of working with Microsoft on the NT-vs-Linux ``test''.
YAUA: Yet Another Ugly American
You weren't referring to the British spelling that I noticed on the site, were you?
Here's one:
Otherwise, I'm glad someone's doing this to shut off the criticisms from those who are too lazy to visit more than one site for this information. Q: Why should the Apache group need to submit their documentation to someone else for dissemination? Do we bitch about Seagate's drive specs being on a different web site from Western Digitals's???
IMHO... If you're an individual who's getting into kernel tuning you already are the sysadmin.