I wonder how many will now look to re-use their existing hardware and opt for linux...
We did that during the Win2k era. I inherited a sprawling suburb of fiefdoms on NT domains. I set everybody up under the same roof, and migrated them to a single linux PDC, with a dedicated file server. This was back when the PDC software for Samba was still a bit rough around the edges. It was risky, but here I am in 2003, and it's still working.
Since then the Samba system has moved through 3 versions of RedHat, a reformat to Gentoo, and swapped physical cases a few times. But the data (and all of the accounts) live on. The users blissfully CTL-ALT-DEL, and log in.
My answer was to write a web based calendar and task list.
Sure it took some time, but I can participate in all this goodness from the comfort of my Linux box, a Mac laptop in the design department, or sipping a latte at the local coffee shop.
Plus you could always just keep a tarball of 1.99 on a CD somewhere. In fact, if you REALLY wanted to, you could continue to tweak it to keep it operational.
One better: Win4Lin. It also takes care of Quicken, the other thorn in my side. However, you know spouses. They are stubborn. I'm whiddling away at the issues one by one.
After the upgrade didn't work, I did do a clean install. The clean install gave me more trouble.
Let's face it, unless your components were designed with XP in mind, you are stuck in the eternel hell of unsigned drivers, finger pointing, and second-class-citizenship from vendors and Microsoft.
My hard core excel users are very much in the minority. Frankly most of my users don't get much past spell check, and the top of the food chain has secretaries to do powerpoint.
YES for specialists, OpenOffice is not a solution. However, not everyone is a specialist, indeed, most people can barely use the computer, follow printed instructions, or do much to help their cause beyond phoning the helpdesk.
I have a whitebox I built at home, and continually tweak when I have a few bucks to burn. It has an ATI all-in-wonder that I use to throw my playstation on the screen.
We upgraded from 98SE to XP because I wanted an OS that could walk and chew gum at the same time. Let me tell you, mistake, mistake, mistake. Anything that uses the 3d accelleration crashes the system randomly. Which defeats the purpose of having an athlon-XP to work on computer animation now doesn't it?
It's always dual booted, and I have finally gotten the Linux side so stable, my wife only boots into Windows to use M$ office. I have open office on the system, but she keeps mumbling something about layout. She like it because it boots from power switch to login, to KDE finished loading in 30 seconds. I'm digressing...
I never thought I would see the day, but I actually have better driver support under Linux than XP for my machine. I have the firewire card working, with software to OPERATE the firewire card. My printers work without having to reboot to clear a printer-error condition. (A bug in the USB driver for XP.) My DVD playback and surround sound are perfect.
And all this without having to drop another dime on hardware.
Er, no. This isn't like a car, this is an OS. There is no Consumer Product Safety Commission or a National Transportation Department looking over M$'s shoulder.
I think it's completely irresponsible, of course. Most meaningful systems have an ROI measured in years. Once the thing starts paying for itself, it sucks to have to yank it because it can't be repaired anymore.
Hell, what's the average lifespan of unix terminal, or a Mini? How about a Mainframe? These things would live for YEARS. We had a System 36 that operated our finance department from 1982 to 1999. That was replaced by an AS/400 that we are probably going to get another 10-15 years out of.
People, business is business. We are not put on this earth to keep the unscrupulous and wasteful fat and happy.
2 of my users recieved the virus, despite running a filter the looks for.pif (and the dozen of so other extensions you can click and shit with) attachments. It's supposed to decompress and scan zipfiles. I just added ZIP to the shitlist until I get it figured out.
My viruses were from support@dell.com. I've banned outlook, but looking through the headers, it is obvious that SOMEONE was using it.
I'm about to ban attachments alltogether and instead write a web-based document distribution system. At the very least it makes tracking the provenance of documents easier. Besides users have this habit of NEVER throwing away email, and the attachments eat up a lot of room on the server.
Ha. My I have more power in my TI-85 running off of (lets see 4*1.5...) 6V!
And I've programmed it for 12 years. Hell I even managed to get it generate strapinski triangles and mandelbrot sets. (If you have a week or two for the sucker to render, that is.)
A calculator from hp had I before that. Think I cannot about the calculator without Yoda sounding like.
Funny, I actually do have an application for the darn thing. I bought one of those wintergreen boxes to act as a firewall. It was small(ish) and cheap.
Unfortunately the AC in the place is really flaky. The system has an 1100Mhz athlon... can you say space heater meets sunlamp...
If I can't get the temperature situation squared away I'm going to look for something fanless. (Granted old pentium boards (with ram and chips) are so cheap people are using them to level furnature.)
Depending on the cost (and it would have to be cheap), these would make GREAT xterminals. Hell, as I speak I'm prepping a 233MHz laptop for a new life as a web kiosk/dumb terminal for a coffee shop.
Of course, this doesn't address the really issue with size: the screen.
I agree with a lot of the quotes about Linux being overkill for a thermostat or a fuel injector.
However, back when I was cutting my teeth on HC11 boards I would have killed for nice things like USB and 802.11 wireless. I spent weeks developing serial protocols to get Handyboards to yat with a PC. (Actually is was a Mac, so I also spent a good chuck of time writing a serial driver for TCL so my program COULD talk to the handyboard.)
I predict that with the emergence of Embedded Linux you are going to see a lot more devices with USB, Firewire, and network support. Yes, Linux is overkill for a thermostat, but what if something wants to TALK to your thermostat.
Hell, just make up some disability and tell them the computer is running a treatment program for him that hasn't been ported to windows. LOL
Really, if they are bent on Jihad I'll be happy to lend any advise on the best ways to camoflogue a Linux box. From KDE themes, to logging the machine into the Windows Domain, to having the right ports open to blend in with the crowd.
And BTW, Win4Lin is a great product for those 'Doze only apps. It gives you a complete working copy of Windows 98, just encapsulated in Linux.
I run the network at the Franklin Institute Science Museum in Philadelphia. We have our own distro that goes by the internal codeword of "Seanix". It's is based on the much maligned source distro that will remain unnamed.
We use it for workstations, kiosks, firewalls, and servers. I get around the constant compile hell by distrubuting the build process across our rackmount's using distcc, and caching the binaries. Build once, install many.
It's really only used internally (and for my network at home;). Its a convience factor, the elaborate mechanisms provided by the portage system allow me to knit together some really exotic combinations of hardware and software.
It's not for everybody, but my computers have to run for a few years between installs. By the time I had finished retrofitting and customizing RedHat, I practically had my own distro anyway.
One advantage of Seanix for my situation are my spellbook of network management scripts I call PREEN. Preen maintains RSA keys between the nodes, allows them to SSH back and forth, updates configurations for the entire network at once, and coordinates system shutdowns, among other things.
It also handles all the handshaking that must go on when someone changes his or her password.
It also synthesizes a custom passwd,shadow,and group file for every computer. Some machines running samba need the machine accounts. The new mail server runs everyone as a virtual mailbox, so I have no local accounts (for users) at all. Still others are workstation, and they download the user accounts for the expected population of users.
Stallman wasn't kidding when he said 90% of software is used internally and never published,
I would like to suggest folks also try a slightly different network: the social network.
Word of Mouth -
Until I landed my present gig (and I still do a lot of work on the side...) I was earning a moderately good living as a word-of-mouth contractor. I got a lot of gigs by knowing a lot of folks from college, who knew folks at work, who needed a reasonably priced Linux admin (who also happened to know someone...). The friend in college, of course, were folks I helped out in setting their machines up, or answering technical questions, or just playing shoot-em-ups on the network.
Referrals from other businesses -
My wife still runs a computer tutoring service, and every once in a while one of her clients needs a server set up, or a network build, and every so often one of my clients needs computer lessons.
Try not to compete with similar businesses. Instead, try to find areas where you can play off of one another's strengths. A web developer, rather than do the whole job, may want to establish a relationship with a server guru, who regularly refers work to a Wireless ubergeek.
In Kind arrangements -
Small business owners love to wheel and deal. My wife regularly gets repair bills knocked down by tutoring the local mechanic or the plumber's kid on how to use the internet. Wealth is sometimes measured in WHAT you don't have to spend money on.
I remember also being paid in RAM, server parts, etc.
Never hurts to ask -
I also got a few gigs by simply emailing the company and asking if they needed someone with X skills to work part-time as a contractor. Note: this usually doesn't work with ibm, usually IJustSetUpThisWebserver.com
Location, location, location - Most of my business is small business. I kept all of my clients in downtown Philadelphia so I could easily scooter from one to the other, to my apartment. Then again, my product is generally on-site service.
Get Involved in Volunteer organizations -
I also do a lot of volunteer work, and just about every organization needs someone to do IT stuff. A lot of these organizations ALSO interact with other volunteer organizations. A good reputation can proceed you, especially if you can point to a working website you put together.
Find a niche -
There is always an under-served market out there crying for a vender. You just have to be willing to find that market and cater to its specific needs. For some folks their market is chinchilla ranchers running Filemaker pro. But once you make a name for yourself in the FilemakerPro using chinchilla ranching circle, you will be the one they think of when they need, say, a website. And don't be afraid to be a middle-man. You never know when that web-developer you refer your chinchilla ranchers to needs someone who can code filemaker pro for, say, albino monkeys.
This stuff takes time -
One drawback: social networks take years to cultivate and minutes to destroy. The whole system only works if you gain a reputation as a compitent person who is honest in his dealings.
Eventually I stumbled on a job with benefits. But I still enjoy doing sidework to bring in a few extra bucks. That, and you never really know when the axe is going to fall. I still do work on the side, and I still do more business by dropping business cards off, and remembering peoples names that I honestly have time for.
YMMV, but I'd say the same sort of rules apply on the net as in the Blue room.
Eventually, you'll talk to someone at the ISP who can or will do something. If not, it's time to get a new provider.
Or use my old trick: BE the Internet Service Provider. Cable modems and the local phone company's DSL service provide way too much low hanging fruit for hackers.
For what these places charge for bandwidth you are better off getting a fractional T1 and splitting it with your nieghbors, or having a few doting small businesses pay you to host their websites.
Of course I haven't used windows in almost a year, and I convert old laptops to wireless dumb terminals. I got so sick of email games I have my own domain, hosted on my own (okay, temporarily work's) machine, hosted (until recently) in my living room.
I just bought a new house, and they haven't hooked up the DSL service yet. The good old fashioned kind with static IP's and a "we don't care what you do with it" usage agreement from a small player in the market.
Hmm. Does this post count as a rant or an ego stroking?
Do you kid a really big favor. Don't push college. I cracked my head up against the wall for 6 years trying to be an Electrical Engineer. If you think homework is bad in high school, that is ALL you get as an engineering major. Unfortunately for me, I never did enough of it to be able to do well on the tests.
I got good at math and physics in high school by exploring them in-depth on my own. The Univeristy I attended had 10 week terms, so there was absolutely no time to explore anything. It was like I was in hell, I could understand the concepts, but all they grade on is busywork.
Had I had a better guidance councillor, the would have told me that Engineering is in fact ALL busywork. You work things our analytically, lay out entire designs ahead of time, and do everything in your power to prevent the unexpected. This was completely counter to what I needed in a career.
I did finally drop out, and took up a job running computer networks. I am happy with what I do, it doesn't require a degree, every day is a fire to extinguish, and I have to maintain a complete mental image of the entire system I'm working on.
If I had to stop doing networking, I think I'd open up my own store, or a resteraunt, or just about anything where I would be "the owner". That guy who has been there since the beginning, gets to make all the snap judgments, and is right all the time because HE OWNS THE PLACE.
I've been happily married for 3 years to a woman who understands that I have a life with her and apart from her, and both are important to me. When we are doing things together, she gets my undivided attention. We do occassionally have some minor battles over gray areas, but we make it work.
The key is mutual respect. I have to make her a priority. She has to know that there are other things in this world that ALSO require my attention.
Finding such a person isn't easy. But they are out there. And you only have to find one.
I am one of those sickos who KNOWS he as ADD, but I absolutely refuse to go on mind-altering drugs to fix the problem.
My solution: Lay back and relax. You will find that you are in far less danger of being axed than you think. Stress seems to be your problem, and that can distract you from whatever you are trying to do.
Step 1 is to throw away your giant and ever growing todo list. Step 2, pick one task at a time and do it well. When you feel compelled to interrupt the task to start on something else, note what the other thing is on, say, a sheet of paper. Having "addressed" the other idea, get back to work on the original task. You will find that most of the items that were so "important" and needed to be done "now" in the process of completeing that one task were in fact useless, or could be done as well later on.
Once your one task is complete, move on to a second, and so on. Let nothing get in your way. (Voice mail exists for a reason, and email sifting is a task all by itself.)
Think of it like a stack algorythem, vs a queue, vs interrupt handling.
I think it has something to do with their notion that showing up for an hour a week, muttering a few songs, and dropping a 5 in the collection plate constitutes a religion.
They sound bad because they never fscking practice outside of the sanctuary!
2 big parties? Hell I thought we were simply selecting which representative of corporate interests. In my opinion sanity will not return to the US political system until we pass a law that states if you cannot vote, you cannot donate to a political campaign. Indeed, nor should you be able to lobby.
Corporations do not vote, they are not citizens. Organizations do not vote, they do not represent the interests of those that DO vote, they represent their own agenda. Quite simply a congressman is supposed to represent the interests of those that elected him or her.
Slashdot Mirror
We did that during the Win2k era. I inherited a sprawling suburb of fiefdoms on NT domains. I set everybody up under the same roof, and migrated them to a single linux PDC, with a dedicated file server. This was back when the PDC software for Samba was still a bit rough around the edges. It was risky, but here I am in 2003, and it's still working.
Since then the Samba system has moved through 3 versions of RedHat, a reformat to Gentoo, and swapped physical cases a few times. But the data (and all of the accounts) live on. The users blissfully CTL-ALT-DEL, and log in.
Sure it took some time, but I can participate in all this goodness from the comfort of my Linux box, a Mac laptop in the design department, or sipping a latte at the local coffee shop.
Plus you could always just keep a tarball of 1.99 on a CD somewhere. In fact, if you REALLY wanted to, you could continue to tweak it to keep it operational.
One better: Win4Lin. It also takes care of Quicken, the other thorn in my side. However, you know spouses. They are stubborn. I'm whiddling away at the issues one by one.
Let's face it, unless your components were designed with XP in mind, you are stuck in the eternel hell of unsigned drivers, finger pointing, and second-class-citizenship from vendors and Microsoft.
YES for specialists, OpenOffice is not a solution. However, not everyone is a specialist, indeed, most people can barely use the computer, follow printed instructions, or do much to help their cause beyond phoning the helpdesk.
We upgraded from 98SE to XP because I wanted an OS that could walk and chew gum at the same time. Let me tell you, mistake, mistake, mistake. Anything that uses the 3d accelleration crashes the system randomly. Which defeats the purpose of having an athlon-XP to work on computer animation now doesn't it?
It's always dual booted, and I have finally gotten the Linux side so stable, my wife only boots into Windows to use M$ office. I have open office on the system, but she keeps mumbling something about layout. She like it because it boots from power switch to login, to KDE finished loading in 30 seconds. I'm digressing...
I never thought I would see the day, but I actually have better driver support under Linux than XP for my machine. I have the firewire card working, with software to OPERATE the firewire card. My printers work without having to reboot to clear a printer-error condition. (A bug in the USB driver for XP.) My DVD playback and surround sound are perfect.
And all this without having to drop another dime on hardware.
I think it's completely irresponsible, of course. Most meaningful systems have an ROI measured in years. Once the thing starts paying for itself, it sucks to have to yank it because it can't be repaired anymore.
Hell, what's the average lifespan of unix terminal, or a Mini? How about a Mainframe? These things would live for YEARS. We had a System 36 that operated our finance department from 1982 to 1999. That was replaced by an AS/400 that we are probably going to get another 10-15 years out of.
People, business is business. We are not put on this earth to keep the unscrupulous and wasteful fat and happy.
Funny, I always thought the operating system was called "At least One Service Failed."
They had a popup add for it every time the computer started up...
My viruses were from support@dell.com. I've banned outlook, but looking through the headers, it is obvious that SOMEONE was using it.
I'm about to ban attachments alltogether and instead write a web-based document distribution system. At the very least it makes tracking the provenance of documents easier. Besides users have this habit of NEVER throwing away email, and the attachments eat up a lot of room on the server.
We run IMAP. (That's another discussion)
And I've programmed it for 12 years. Hell I even managed to get it generate strapinski triangles and mandelbrot sets. (If you have a week or two for the sucker to render, that is.)
A calculator from hp had I before that. Think I cannot about the calculator without Yoda sounding like.
Still cool your little computer is.
Unfortunately the AC in the place is really flaky. The system has an 1100Mhz athlon... can you say space heater meets sunlamp...
If I can't get the temperature situation squared away I'm going to look for something fanless. (Granted old pentium boards (with ram and chips) are so cheap people are using them to level furnature.)
Of course, this doesn't address the really issue with size: the screen.
However, back when I was cutting my teeth on HC11 boards I would have killed for nice things like USB and 802.11 wireless. I spent weeks developing serial protocols to get Handyboards to yat with a PC. (Actually is was a Mac, so I also spent a good chuck of time writing a serial driver for TCL so my program COULD talk to the handyboard.)
I predict that with the emergence of Embedded Linux you are going to see a lot more devices with USB, Firewire, and network support. Yes, Linux is overkill for a thermostat, but what if something wants to TALK to your thermostat.
Processing power is so cheap, why not use it.
Really, if they are bent on Jihad I'll be happy to lend any advise on the best ways to camoflogue a Linux box. From KDE themes, to logging the machine into the Windows Domain, to having the right ports open to blend in with the crowd.
And BTW, Win4Lin is a great product for those 'Doze only apps. It gives you a complete working copy of Windows 98, just encapsulated in Linux.
We use it for workstations, kiosks, firewalls, and servers. I get around the constant compile hell by distrubuting the build process across our rackmount's using distcc, and caching the binaries. Build once, install many.
It's really only used internally (and for my network at home ;). Its a convience factor, the elaborate mechanisms provided by the portage system allow me to knit together some really exotic combinations of hardware and software.
It's not for everybody, but my computers have to run for a few years between installs. By the time I had finished retrofitting and customizing RedHat, I practically had my own distro anyway.
One advantage of Seanix for my situation are my spellbook of network management scripts I call PREEN. Preen maintains RSA keys between the nodes, allows them to SSH back and forth, updates configurations for the entire network at once, and coordinates system shutdowns, among other things. It also handles all the handshaking that must go on when someone changes his or her password.
It also synthesizes a custom passwd,shadow,and group file for every computer. Some machines running samba need the machine accounts. The new mail server runs everyone as a virtual mailbox, so I have no local accounts (for users) at all. Still others are workstation, and they download the user accounts for the expected population of users.
Stallman wasn't kidding when he said 90% of software is used internally and never published,
I would like to suggest folks also try a slightly different network: the social network.
Eventually I stumbled on a job with benefits. But I still enjoy doing sidework to bring in a few extra bucks. That, and you never really know when the axe is going to fall. I still do work on the side, and I still do more business by dropping business cards off, and remembering peoples names that I honestly have time for.
YMMV, but I'd say the same sort of rules apply on the net as in the Blue room.
Or use my old trick: BE the Internet Service Provider. Cable modems and the local phone company's DSL service provide way too much low hanging fruit for hackers.
For what these places charge for bandwidth you are better off getting a fractional T1 and splitting it with your nieghbors, or having a few doting small businesses pay you to host their websites.
Of course I haven't used windows in almost a year, and I convert old laptops to wireless dumb terminals. I got so sick of email games I have my own domain, hosted on my own (okay, temporarily work's) machine, hosted (until recently) in my living room.
I just bought a new house, and they haven't hooked up the DSL service yet. The good old fashioned kind with static IP's and a "we don't care what you do with it" usage agreement from a small player in the market.
Hmm. Does this post count as a rant or an ego stroking?
Do you kid a really big favor. Don't push college. I cracked my head up against the wall for 6 years trying to be an Electrical Engineer. If you think homework is bad in high school, that is ALL you get as an engineering major. Unfortunately for me, I never did enough of it to be able to do well on the tests.
I got good at math and physics in high school by exploring them in-depth on my own. The Univeristy I attended had 10 week terms, so there was absolutely no time to explore anything. It was like I was in hell, I could understand the concepts, but all they grade on is busywork.
Had I had a better guidance councillor, the would have told me that Engineering is in fact ALL busywork. You work things our analytically, lay out entire designs ahead of time, and do everything in your power to prevent the unexpected. This was completely counter to what I needed in a career.
I did finally drop out, and took up a job running computer networks. I am happy with what I do, it doesn't require a degree, every day is a fire to extinguish, and I have to maintain a complete mental image of the entire system I'm working on.
If I had to stop doing networking, I think I'd open up my own store, or a resteraunt, or just about anything where I would be "the owner". That guy who has been there since the beginning, gets to make all the snap judgments, and is right all the time because HE OWNS THE PLACE.
The key is mutual respect. I have to make her a priority. She has to know that there are other things in this world that ALSO require my attention.
Finding such a person isn't easy. But they are out there. And you only have to find one.
My solution: Lay back and relax. You will find that you are in far less danger of being axed than you think. Stress seems to be your problem, and that can distract you from whatever you are trying to do.
Step 1 is to throw away your giant and ever growing todo list. Step 2, pick one task at a time and do it well. When you feel compelled to interrupt the task to start on something else, note what the other thing is on, say, a sheet of paper. Having "addressed" the other idea, get back to work on the original task. You will find that most of the items that were so "important" and needed to be done "now" in the process of completeing that one task were in fact useless, or could be done as well later on.
Once your one task is complete, move on to a second, and so on. Let nothing get in your way. (Voice mail exists for a reason, and email sifting is a task all by itself.)
Think of it like a stack algorythem, vs a queue, vs interrupt handling.
They sound bad because they never fscking practice outside of the sanctuary!
Case in point[sfgate.com]
Corporations do not vote, they are not citizens. Organizations do not vote, they do not represent the interests of those that DO vote, they represent their own agenda. Quite simply a congressman is supposed to represent the interests of those that elected him or her.
What copywrited software? I write all of my own system utilites, which build on top of software that is distributed under the BSD and GPL licenses.