Why choose one distro? Because it's not a moving target. Many of the people that are the first to bitch about how Slackware, Debian, SuSE (I'm a SuSE user) aren't supported probably haven't ever used an application of this class.
Anyone that's every put any time in a *production* environment, not a maw-and-paw ISP, knows that major application vendors support a very small subset of the possibilities.
I've supported A|W products on SGI, as well as Oracle under Digital UNIX and Solaris - the two products' purposes have nothing in common - but why don't you check out either vendor's support site. On the sites you'll find that not only is a specific version of an OS supported - but *only* with a specific set of patches installed. If you're not running *exactly* the specified rev level, you can kiss your tech support goodbye until you're matching their spec.
When you have something this large and complex, you can't be coding for a moving target. Even smaller applications can be bitten by this. I recall trying Linux Mandrake a while back, and finding that the library set it shipped with was horrid. Netscape would crash just about every time I tried to send a message. I switched to SuSE, and everything worked peachy.
While I'm not a huge Red Hat fan, the reality is that RH holds a dominant position in the Linux world. They've got the capital now to handle liability issues, and they've got the clout to throw around to get things like this done.
I, for one, am thrilled to see Maya ported to Linux.
Can Slashdot ever post some good news like this, and not get a crowd of fucking whiners?
I just went over to that site and checked it out, and although it comes close - it's not what I'm looking for.
You see, the "Serial Heartbeat" line in the middle of the first image is the kicker. It means that this cluster setup can support 2 nodes, unless you're willing do implement 2^n serial connections between nodes. TruCluster v5 supports 8 nodes on fibre channel, since the crosslink is done in the switching fabric.
A note to the user who replied below about how one RAID array is a single point of failure. You can design systems with *zero* points of failure (except software, bah!) for shared cluster setups. Granted, it approaches 7 figures for costs and uses fun things like EMC.
Now, one of the major advantages I've found with a shared cluster is the ability to move services around at will.
I can run all services on all nodes, or I can run a few services on different nodes, distributing the load to fit hardware availability - whatever.
Bear in mind people, HA clustering isn't for the light hearted, or the shallow pocketed. If you've got the time and especially the resources to dedicate to it (as most decent sized production shops do), do it right.
Maybe I'm biased, but their description doesn't really fit my (and probably others') description of what a "cluster" is.
I come from a Digital UNIX background [*], and I've been fortunate enough to use DEC's TruCluster product. True, it does require "better" hardware, and more support dollars - but you're not about to set up a production failover environment in your bedroom to "play" with it either.
Linux HA is still missing some of the major features of commercial clustering packages. These can be (and are, for me) showstoppers to using Linux in an HA environment.
The most notable, in my mind, is:
Shared disk. This doesn't mean shared filesystem (although TruCluster v5 is apparently approaching this). This means that all cluster nodes have a scsi (or fibre channel) controller on a shared bus. This bus is used to access the filesystems, but also for a non-network based inter-node communication method. When I see a TruCluster node boot, along with all the disks, I see "processor at id 2", "processor at id 3", corresponding to other nodes. In this manner, nodes know each other are up, even if the network "blips".
...and to a lesser extent (ie: I run without this now)
Shared System.TruCluster v5 introduces to the UNIX world what VMS has had for over a decade - the shared system disk. Each system uses the same system disk. I don't mean an identical copy, I mean the *same* disk. (Where disk can be, of course [and should be], a hardware mirror/RAID set). Node-dependent data is kept separate by maintaing private node config directories, which are referenced using "context dependant symlinks". CDSL's are essentially symlinks with variables in them.
This is the sort of stuff I'd like to see on Linux. I'd help code it but, unfortunately, I have neither the time nor the skill (yet).
I am not, nor have I ever been, an employee of DEC/Compaq - but I have used their products in an enterprise class environment for both user (www, mail, ldap, etc) and database (oracle) services.
-Jeff <ducks in the corner as the flames rise>
[*]: But I have been using Linux on my personal system since v1.2.8 (walnut creek slack aug 1995)
"as much as Linus tried to resurrect Unix by writing Linux"
Hrm. That's funny.. My Solaris and Digital UNIX boxes seemed to be running just fine without the Linux explosion.
I hate to break it to you, but Linux did not resurrect UNIX. UNIX was never dead.
Linux originally was authored out of frustration for the lack of a good UNIX-like system for the PC. UNIX had been running on larger machines "forever" at that point.
Granted I don't work for IBM, but I'd hazard a guess there isn't a snowball's chance in hell of that happening.
From the few commercial UNIX vendors that have been offering Linux support - NONE, AFAIK, have announced any plans to migrate completely.
I've posted this before, but Linux just isn't there yet for the enterprise environment. Sure, some sites are deploying it in that environment, but major feature sets that enterprise users demand aren't implemented. Personally, I find admins that deploy Linux in a "mission critical" environment irresponsible [*] I've seen a few clustering packages for Linux, and quite bluntly - they all suck at this point.
I *am* a Linux user. I have been since 1995. But I'm also a realist, and an admin in the enterprise environment. While I might consider deploying Linux for a small non-critical system (like my workstation), I wouldn't dream of deploying it for "critical" applications.
Now IBM migrating to Linux on the S/390 is just an entirely different argument. Not only are you suggesting that IBM would migrate to Linux, you're suggesting that IBM would dump its huge investment in a specifically NON-UNIX operation systems strategy.
I know people that run S/390s with MVS, and I don't think they'd ever considering giving up the consistantly proven reliability of MVS for anything UNIXish. Indeed, that's not even a problem with Linux, but UNIX in general. (Yes, UNIX is reliable - but not next to a mainframe)
-Jeff
[*]: Unless they fake failover with something like the Cisco LocalDirector.
Kudos to MS for taking the first steps in securing one of their most notorious products, but I think the method that they're using isn't an ideal solution.
There are plenty of legitimate uses for most of those extensions, and restricting them too severely may push many users away from applying this patch.
I think a better solution may be to implement a "Save to Disk"-only option. This way, executables (and scripts, etc) could still be attached to emails - and read by the client, but not executed automatically.
Is the real issue people getting programs and scripts through email? I don't think that it is. Disabling the automatic execution of potentially rogue programs/scripts is the answer - not disabling access to the attachment altogether.
The day after the ILOVEYOU virus hit our campus, I was walking to lunch with a co-worker of mine. On the way, we were discussing this very topic. He said, "Watch.. In a few days, there will be a story on Slashdot about how Linux triumphed over Windows because they weren't affected." Thinking that this viewpoint was a little cynical (even for me), we argued about this for a bit.
Sure enough, less than a week later, there is an obnoxious story on Slashdot about how Linux triumped over Windows.
Why is this obnoxious, you ask? Maybe it's because the virus was written for software that Linux doesn't even offer.
Was it a Slashdot story when crackers started taking out Linux/UNIX boxes via one of one wu-ftpd/proftpd buffer overflows, but not Windows boxes? Of course not. Was it a big story when Linux/UNIX-based email servers all over the world were getting rooted and turned into DDoS agents because of an imapd overflow, but not Windows? Of course not - Windows doesn't run that software, how could it affect it?
It seems that quite a few people don't understand that claiming triumph over Windows for something like this is very much like claiming that you're immortal because a bomb went off and didn't kill you - but the bomb went off two cities away.
I'm not an MS lover be any stretch of the imagination - but this sort of cocky, misinformed bullshit is exactly why the Linux community is laughed at so often - and exactly why the Linux community laughs at the "closed-source" world.
Moderate this down if you like, but do so knowing that you're proving my point.
Software vendors shouldn't be held responsible for their bugs. Why? Because it's pragmatically impossible to create bug-free software when you're dealing with millions of lines of code. Even if it is possible, it is economically infeasible to bring the required level of engineering to every project.
I think this line of reasoning is garbage. To extrapolate, anything complex can contain errors, and that's okay. What about the airplanes everybody flies on? What about the cars everyone drives day in-day out? What about the house you live in?
We've seen what happens if an airplane has a problem - (what if was a software problem?), but every one of them is recalled to be fixed. The same goes for cars. If your house has a leaky roof as soon as you move in (if it's newly built), the contractor had best fix it.
Why should the software industry be any different? Claiming exemption from the same responsibilities that every other industry must follow isn't a given right, it's lazy.
-Jeff
Re:ACL's using file permissions - a BAD idea.
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TrustedBSD Announced
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· Score: 1
The idea of ACLs is that root need not be involved to assign arbitrary groups.
While ACLs could be implemented using generic UNIX-style groups, it would be painful at best.
For example, under Digital UNIX (I think solaris has similar syntax supplied by setfacl), to set an acl so joe, mary, and all members of the project1 and project2 groups can access file foobie read/write, all I would need to do is:
As a System Admin for a major technical university, we've been grappling with this on a daily basis.
I'm a strong proponent of maintaining a completely open network in an academic environment. Obviously key administrative resources, like database servers, need to be restricted access - but you get the idea.
One thing many people never mention is that Colleges and Universities are NOT ISPs. The primary goal of institutes of higher learning is education. While I'll be the first to shout from the towers that the Internet is a great educational resource, parts of it are not.
Do sites like Napster foster educational value? It's debatable, but I'd lean towards ``no.''
High bandwidth connections are NOT free. They're not even close to being cheap, either. A T3 connection for a commercial enterprise is a few hundred thousand dollars per year. Educational institutes usually get a substantial discount on Internet services. However, a T3 is still over $100,000/year.
Your educational resources (buildings, classrooms, facilities, etc) and your internet connection funding come from the same pool of cash. Since the primary purpose of an educational institute is - education - the appropriate use of funds is clearly on resources.
When the pipe fills up, do you just get a bigger pipe? No. Any sane network administrator on the planet will tell you that when the network starts to become overutilized - you figure out why it's overutilized before you buy a bigger pipe.
Is something like Napster a good use of the available bandwidth? Faced with that question, and the knowledge of limited funding - my answer is no.
While I realize that the topic on hand is the dialpad/Clemson case (which I do think is a valid use of network resources) - I've noticed in the past that people throw up their arms in protest without keeping the simple fact that they're not an ISP in mind.
Did it actually play the song? Did you hear sound?
I've noticed that sometimes XMMS (when first installed) defaults to the disk writer plugin, which would do exactly what you describe, with no output sound.
Another possible problem is the sound driver. I use the OpenSound Aureal drivers, and if you don't select one of the ``virtual''/dev/audio's, the track plays just a little fast.. Not enough to make it worthless, but enough to be noticible and annoying.
Personally - I find xmms to be more convenient than mpg123. I have a private web server that creates playlists from a pointy-clicky javascript tree - and netscape spawning xmms works great. I know that mpg123 could do the same thing, but I don't wanna open an xterm to do it.. and xmms is prettier.
I wouldn't say that hardly anyone uses it because of licensing issues - I'd say hardly anyone uses it because not many SSH v2 servers have been deployed. In my experience, I haven't deployed any SSH v2 servers because of the lack of clients (which doesn't seem to be as true anymore). It's a catch-22 that comes with any new, fairly incompatible release.
Sorry to pick on just this post, but this is something that has been bothering me about slashdot comments for some time... NOT EVERYONE CARES WHETHER IT IS A ``FREE'' LICENSE OR NOT!
I certainly don't give a rat's ass about the GPL. The GPL is a damn virus. I like Linux, and associated products - but I wish it was all under the truly free BSD license.
As a previous poster noted - ``Humor is very individual.''
This brand of humor isn't Scott Kurtz's. Too bad. Boo hoo.
Like any form of humor - there is a target audience. Clearly, the target audience of User Friendly is NOT the people that are dumbfounded by computers.
I used to work in an ISP environment, and I still do work in Tech Support. User Friendly is funny, just like Dilbert, because it's true.
My posting using my username shows that I believe enough in what I say to put my name behind it. It shows that enough thought has been put into it that I'm willing to stake my reputation behind it.
Your remarks are nothing but inflammatory drivel.
I hadn't stated that your concerns aren't valid - merely that your methods of expression are childish.
You've made a blind suggestion without any technical backing or how your particular solution has merits over others. You've made allusions to ``other sites do it better'' without any references or demonstration. Further - you're unfamiliar with how the ``real'' Slashdot actually works - an experience that is quite limited to the maintainers themselves.
It also seems that you lack the life experience to realize that repeating the same tired drivel doesn't make your point heard more - it just deafens the ears you hope might listen.
You've yet to offer any constructive criticism, and that is where you fail.
One thing you haven't done is demonstrate the technical merits Java might have over Perl.
They are both interpreted languages - Perl compiles scripts into byte code just before execution just as Java does.
From what I've seen, Java just adds more bloat and bugs to anything it touches.
I think the major problem here is you see something *you* don't like. Despite the fact that many other thousands of users are quite happy with it, you feel the need to whine about it in a manner that causes annoyance - and ADDS to the the ``hundreds of thousands of bytes'' you must download.
Further, without a hint of irony, you call your detractors ``juvinile''. A quick lession: Attacking the author instead of the issue only makes your point look foolish. Ad Hominem tactics never get you anywhere.
In my own defense for attacking the author in this case - the authors credibility is now the topic at hand.
If you're so intent on ``utilizing your right to express yourself'', why do you insist on hiding behind a mask of anonymity?
Oracle (the database) is at 8.1.x Oracle Applications is at 11.x
Interesting to note, however, is that Oracle Appliciations from v9 to v10 became almost a completely different product. Both products had very similar functionality - but with extremely different interfaces. OA v9 was character cell-based, and v10 made the jump to ``Application Serving'' with Java-based applets.
Many commercial applications have NO open source rivals - and won't for some time. Examples include damn near anything by Oracle, Alias|Wavefront, Legato, Veritas - the list goes on.
Many of these applications aren't supported on different patchlevels of the same OS - nevermind just having a simple recompile make them work on multiple platforms.
The issue is more than whether or not the program will run, or whether it's ``programmed correctly'' -- it's how to offer support on ``n'' unknown platforms.
As I'm sure any coder will tell you - just because it compiles, doesn't mean it works.
They have the testdrive program for many other things besides Beowulf.
The site actually has a pretty complete list of test platforms. While there may be some sort of hidden agenda, which I doubt, the main purpose is to show the buyer just how much better the alpha performs.
I've found the program useful to check out Tru64 v5 before we upgrade the ~ 40 AlphaServers that we run from v 4.0F
When the output is a report, or a data file - don't you think that ``prettyprinting'' is a bit of an understatement?
-Jeff
Re:There are 3 digit date formats next year!
on
When Does Y2K Begin?
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· Score: 1
What you're describing is a struct tm.
The ``standard'' time method, for UNIX at least, is a gettimeofday() call which returns a 32 bit integer.
C can/convert/ this into a struct tm...and programmers who printf( "19%d", tm->tm_year ); are sloppy anyways. The correct implementation is printf( "%d", 1900 + tm->tm_year );
..a localtime() or gmtime() call (which both return strcut tm *) has to call gettimeofday(), too. -Jeff
Slashdot Mirror
You must not do much coding to be this naive about porting something that large.
-Jeff
Why choose one distro? Because it's not a moving target. Many of the people that are the first to bitch about how Slackware, Debian, SuSE (I'm a SuSE user) aren't supported probably haven't ever used an application of this class.
Anyone that's every put any time in a *production* environment, not a maw-and-paw ISP, knows that major application vendors support a very small subset of the possibilities.
I've supported A|W products on SGI, as well as Oracle under Digital UNIX and Solaris - the two products' purposes have nothing in common - but why don't you check out either vendor's support site. On the sites you'll find that not only is a specific version of an OS supported - but *only* with a specific set of patches installed. If you're not running *exactly* the specified rev level, you can kiss your tech support goodbye until you're matching their spec.
When you have something this large and complex, you can't be coding for a moving target. Even smaller applications can be bitten by this. I recall trying Linux Mandrake a while back, and finding that the library set it shipped with was horrid. Netscape would crash just about every time I tried to send a message. I switched to SuSE, and everything worked peachy.
While I'm not a huge Red Hat fan, the reality is that RH holds a dominant position in the Linux world. They've got the capital now to handle liability issues, and they've got the clout to throw around to get things like this done.
I, for one, am thrilled to see Maya ported to Linux.
Can Slashdot ever post some good news like this, and not get a crowd of fucking whiners?
Thanks for the link.
I just went over to that site and checked it out, and although it comes close - it's not what I'm looking for.
You see, the "Serial Heartbeat" line in the middle of the first image is the kicker. It means that this cluster setup can support 2 nodes, unless you're willing do implement 2^n serial connections between nodes. TruCluster v5 supports 8 nodes on fibre channel, since the crosslink is done in the switching fabric.
A note to the user who replied below about how one RAID array is a single point of failure. You can design systems with *zero* points of failure (except software, bah!) for shared cluster setups. Granted, it approaches 7 figures for costs and uses fun things like EMC.
Now, one of the major advantages I've found with a shared cluster is the ability to move services around at will.
I can run all services on all nodes, or I can run a few services on different nodes, distributing the load to fit hardware availability - whatever.
Bear in mind people, HA clustering isn't for the light hearted, or the shallow pocketed. If you've got the time and especially the resources to dedicate to it (as most decent sized production shops do), do it right.
I come from a Digital UNIX background [*], and I've been fortunate enough to use DEC's TruCluster product. True, it does require "better" hardware, and more support dollars - but you're not about to set up a production failover environment in your bedroom to "play" with it either.
Linux HA is still missing some of the major features of commercial clustering packages. These can be (and are, for me) showstoppers to using Linux in an HA environment.
The most notable, in my mind, is:
Shared disk. This doesn't mean shared filesystem (although TruCluster v5 is apparently approaching this). This means that all cluster nodes have a scsi (or fibre channel) controller on a shared bus. This bus is used to access the filesystems, but also for a non-network based inter-node communication method. When I see a TruCluster node boot, along with all the disks, I see "processor at id 2", "processor at id 3", corresponding to other nodes. In this manner, nodes know each other are up, even if the network "blips".
...and to a lesser extent (ie: I run without this now)
Shared System.TruCluster v5 introduces to the UNIX world what VMS has had for over a decade - the shared system disk. Each system uses the same system disk. I don't mean an identical copy, I mean the *same* disk. (Where disk can be, of course [and should be], a hardware mirror/RAID set). Node-dependent data is kept separate by maintaing private node config directories, which are referenced using "context dependant symlinks". CDSL's are essentially symlinks with variables in them.
..anyways, I've said enough. If you're truly interested in this sort of thing, I invite you to check out: http://www.unix.digital.com/cluster/in dex.html, which is the TruCluster site.
This is the sort of stuff I'd like to see on Linux. I'd help code it but, unfortunately, I have neither the time nor the skill (yet).
I am not, nor have I ever been, an employee of DEC/Compaq - but I have used their products in an enterprise class environment for both user (www, mail, ldap, etc) and database (oracle) services.
-Jeff
<ducks in the corner as the flames rise>
[*]: But I have been using Linux on my personal system since v1.2.8 (walnut creek slack aug 1995)
Whoops. My bad.
I misinterpretted the post I was replying to.
I guess the one I was replying to was actually the same point.
D'oh.
-Jeff
"as much as Linus tried to resurrect Unix by writing Linux"
Hrm. That's funny.. My Solaris and Digital UNIX boxes seemed to be running just fine without the Linux explosion.
I hate to break it to you, but Linux did not resurrect UNIX. UNIX was never dead.
Linux originally was authored out of frustration for the lack of a good UNIX-like system for the PC. UNIX had been running on larger machines "forever" at that point.
-Jeff
Granted I don't work for IBM, but I'd hazard a guess there isn't a snowball's chance in hell of that happening.
From the few commercial UNIX vendors that have been offering Linux support - NONE, AFAIK, have announced any plans to migrate completely.
I've posted this before, but Linux just isn't there yet for the enterprise environment. Sure, some sites are deploying it in that environment, but major feature sets that enterprise users demand aren't implemented. Personally, I find admins that deploy Linux in a "mission critical" environment irresponsible [*] I've seen a few clustering packages for Linux, and quite bluntly - they all suck at this point.
I *am* a Linux user. I have been since 1995. But I'm also a realist, and an admin in the enterprise environment. While I might consider deploying Linux for a small non-critical system (like my workstation), I wouldn't dream of deploying it for "critical" applications.
Now IBM migrating to Linux on the S/390 is just an entirely different argument. Not only are you suggesting that IBM would migrate to Linux, you're suggesting that IBM would dump its huge investment in a specifically NON-UNIX operation systems strategy.
I know people that run S/390s with MVS, and I don't think they'd ever considering giving up the consistantly proven reliability of MVS for anything UNIXish. Indeed, that's not even a problem with Linux, but UNIX in general. (Yes, UNIX is reliable - but not next to a mainframe)
-Jeff
[*]: Unless they fake failover with something like the Cisco LocalDirector.
Kudos to MS for taking the first steps in securing one of their most notorious products, but I think the method that they're using isn't an ideal solution.
There are plenty of legitimate uses for most of those extensions, and restricting them too severely may push many users away from applying this patch.
I think a better solution may be to implement a "Save to Disk"-only option. This way, executables (and scripts, etc) could still be attached to emails - and read by the client, but not executed automatically.
Is the real issue people getting programs and scripts through email? I don't think that it is. Disabling the automatic execution of potentially rogue programs/scripts is the answer - not disabling access to the attachment altogether.
-Jeff
The day after the ILOVEYOU virus hit our campus, I was walking to lunch with a co-worker of mine. On the way, we were discussing this very topic. He said, "Watch.. In a few days, there will be a story on Slashdot about how Linux triumphed over Windows because they weren't affected." Thinking that this viewpoint was a little cynical (even for me), we argued about this for a bit.
Sure enough, less than a week later, there is an obnoxious story on Slashdot about how Linux triumped over Windows.
Why is this obnoxious, you ask? Maybe it's because the virus was written for software that Linux doesn't even offer.
Was it a Slashdot story when crackers started taking out Linux/UNIX boxes via one of one wu-ftpd/proftpd buffer overflows, but not Windows boxes? Of course not. Was it a big story when Linux/UNIX-based email servers all over the world were getting rooted and turned into DDoS agents because of an imapd overflow, but not Windows? Of course not - Windows doesn't run that software, how could it affect it?
It seems that quite a few people don't understand that claiming triumph over Windows for something like this is very much like claiming that you're immortal because a bomb went off and didn't kill you - but the bomb went off two cities away.
I'm not an MS lover be any stretch of the imagination - but this sort of cocky, misinformed bullshit is exactly why the Linux community is laughed at so often - and exactly why the Linux community laughs at the "closed-source" world.
Moderate this down if you like, but do so knowing that you're proving my point.
-Jeff
Software vendors shouldn't be held responsible for their bugs. Why? Because it's pragmatically impossible to create bug-free software when you're dealing with millions of lines of code. Even if it is possible, it is economically infeasible to bring the required level of engineering to every project.
I think this line of reasoning is garbage. To extrapolate, anything complex can contain errors, and that's okay. What about the airplanes everybody flies on? What about the cars everyone drives day in-day out? What about the house you live in?
We've seen what happens if an airplane has a problem - (what if was a software problem?), but every one of them is recalled to be fixed. The same goes for cars. If your house has a leaky roof as soon as you move in (if it's newly built), the contractor had best fix it.
Why should the software industry be any different? Claiming exemption from the same responsibilities that every other industry must follow isn't a given right, it's lazy.
-Jeff
The idea of ACLs is that root need not be involved to assign arbitrary groups.
While ACLs could be implemented using generic UNIX-style groups, it would be painful at best.
For example, under Digital UNIX (I think solaris has similar syntax supplied by setfacl), to set an acl so joe, mary, and all members of the project1 and project2 groups can access file foobie read/write, all I would need to do is:
setacl -u user:joe:rw- foobie
setacl -u user:mary:rw- foobie
setacl -u group:project1:rw- foobie
setacl -u group:project2:rw- foobie
Now, clearly, this can be done using standard UNIX groups - but given the essentially limitless potential combinations - this is NOT a good plan.
-Jeff
Unfortunately, your condescending attitude doesn't seem to match your knowledge of the actual problem.
The bandwidth sucked down my napster is not to the napster server, it's to other clients. Not only does it change clients, but ports as well.
So, I suggest you heed your own advice.
-Jeff
Actually - My expertise expands beyond that, but wasn't relevant for this comment.
-Jeff
I'm a strong proponent of maintaining a completely open network in an academic environment. Obviously key administrative resources, like database servers, need to be restricted access - but you get the idea.
One thing many people never mention is that Colleges and Universities are NOT ISPs. The primary goal of institutes of higher learning is education. While I'll be the first to shout from the towers that the Internet is a great educational resource, parts of it are not.
Do sites like Napster foster educational value? It's debatable, but I'd lean towards ``no.''
High bandwidth connections are NOT free. They're not even close to being cheap, either. A T3 connection for a commercial enterprise is a few hundred thousand dollars per year. Educational institutes usually get a substantial discount on Internet services. However, a T3 is still over $100,000/year.
Your educational resources (buildings, classrooms, facilities, etc) and your internet connection funding come from the same pool of cash. Since the primary purpose of an educational institute is - education - the appropriate use of funds is clearly on resources.
When the pipe fills up, do you just get a bigger pipe? No. Any sane network administrator on the planet will tell you that when the network starts to become overutilized - you figure out why it's overutilized before you buy a bigger pipe.
Is something like Napster a good use of the available bandwidth? Faced with that question, and the knowledge of limited funding - my answer is no.
While I realize that the topic on hand is the dialpad/Clemson case (which I do think is a valid use of network resources) - I've noticed in the past that people throw up their arms in protest without keeping the simple fact that they're not an ISP in mind.
-Jeff
Did it actually play the song? Did you hear sound?
/dev/audio's, the track plays just a little fast.. Not enough to make it worthless, but enough to be noticible and annoying.
I've noticed that sometimes XMMS (when first installed) defaults to the disk writer plugin, which would do exactly what you describe, with no output sound.
Another possible problem is the sound driver. I use the OpenSound Aureal drivers, and if you don't select one of the ``virtual''
Personally - I find xmms to be more convenient than mpg123. I have a private web server that creates playlists from a pointy-clicky javascript tree - and netscape spawning xmms works great. I know that mpg123 could do the same thing, but I don't wanna open an xterm to do it.. and xmms is prettier.
-Jeff
I wouldn't say that hardly anyone uses it because of licensing issues - I'd say hardly anyone uses it because not many SSH v2 servers have been deployed. In my experience, I haven't deployed any SSH v2 servers because of the lack of clients (which doesn't seem to be as true anymore). It's a catch-22 that comes with any new, fairly incompatible release.
Sorry to pick on just this post, but this is something that has been bothering me about slashdot comments for some time... NOT EVERYONE CARES WHETHER IT IS A ``FREE'' LICENSE OR NOT!
I certainly don't give a rat's ass about the GPL. The GPL is a damn virus. I like Linux, and associated products - but I wish it was all under the truly free BSD license.
-Jeff
I'm in complete agreement.
As a previous poster noted - ``Humor is very individual.''
This brand of humor isn't Scott Kurtz's. Too bad. Boo hoo.
Like any form of humor - there is a target audience. Clearly, the target audience of User Friendly is NOT the people that are dumbfounded by computers.
I used to work in an ISP environment, and I still do work in Tech Support. User Friendly is funny, just like Dilbert, because it's true.
-Jeff
My posting using my username shows that I believe enough in what I say to put my name behind it. It shows that enough thought has been put into it that I'm willing to stake my reputation behind it.
Your remarks are nothing but inflammatory drivel.
I hadn't stated that your concerns aren't valid - merely that your methods of expression are childish.
You've made a blind suggestion without any technical backing or how your particular solution has merits over others. You've made allusions to ``other sites do it better'' without any references or demonstration. Further - you're unfamiliar with how the ``real'' Slashdot actually works - an experience that is quite limited to the maintainers themselves.
It also seems that you lack the life experience to realize that repeating the same tired drivel doesn't make your point heard more - it just deafens the ears you hope might listen.
You've yet to offer any constructive criticism, and that is where you fail.
-Jeff
One thing you haven't done is demonstrate the technical merits Java might have over Perl.
They are both interpreted languages - Perl compiles scripts into byte code just before execution just as Java does.
From what I've seen, Java just adds more bloat and bugs to anything it touches.
I think the major problem here is you see something *you* don't like. Despite the fact that many other thousands of users are quite happy with it, you feel the need to whine about it in a manner that causes annoyance - and ADDS to the the ``hundreds of thousands of bytes'' you must download.
Further, without a hint of irony, you call your detractors ``juvinile''. A quick lession: Attacking the author instead of the issue only makes your point look foolish. Ad Hominem tactics never get you anywhere.
In my own defense for attacking the author in this case - the authors credibility is now the topic at hand.
If you're so intent on ``utilizing your right to express yourself'', why do you insist on hiding behind a mask of anonymity?
-Jeff
Oracle (the database) is at 8.1.x
Oracle Applications is at 11.x
Interesting to note, however, is that Oracle Appliciations from v9 to v10 became almost a completely different product. Both products had very similar functionality - but with extremely different interfaces. OA v9 was character cell-based, and v10 made the jump to ``Application Serving'' with Java-based applets.
Just random trivia, I suppose.
-Jeff
Recompiling is only half the process.
Many commercial applications have NO open source rivals - and won't for some time. Examples include damn near anything by Oracle, Alias|Wavefront, Legato, Veritas - the list goes on.
Many of these applications aren't supported on different patchlevels of the same OS - nevermind just having a simple recompile make them work on multiple platforms.
The issue is more than whether or not the program will run, or whether it's ``programmed correctly'' -- it's how to offer support on ``n'' unknown platforms.
As I'm sure any coder will tell you - just because it compiles, doesn't mean it works.
-Jeff
They have the testdrive program for many other things besides Beowulf.
The site actually has a pretty complete list of test platforms. While there may be some sort of hidden agenda, which I doubt, the main purpose is to show the buyer just how much better the alpha performs.
I've found the program useful to check out Tru64 v5 before we upgrade the ~ 40 AlphaServers that we run from v 4.0F
-Jeff
When the output is a report, or a data file - don't you think that ``prettyprinting'' is a bit of an understatement?
-Jeff
What you're describing is a struct tm.
/convert/ this into a struct tm. ..and programmers who printf( "19%d", tm->tm_year ); are sloppy anyways. The correct implementation is printf( "%d", 1900 + tm->tm_year );
The ``standard'' time method, for UNIX at least, is a gettimeofday() call which returns a 32 bit integer.
C can
..a localtime() or gmtime() call (which both return strcut tm *) has to call gettimeofday(), too.
-Jeff
There may be a slight slant - but as a reminder, Compaq is still the largest PC manufacturer in the world.
Personally, I think it's in their interests to evaluate this objectively - so they can decide where to target their product lines.
(Dell recently surpassed Compaq in US sales - but not global)
-Jeff