Remember that this stuff wasn't just used in desktop PCs, but also in a wide variety of special purpose systems. For example, I used to repair video servers, which were basically a PC with a crapload of custom hardware, and each one uses a bare minimum of 5 72-pin simms (max 11, IIRC). There are hundreds of these things still chugging along doing their jobs quite nicely, keeping broadcasters like DirecTV going, despite the fact that some of them are old enough to be running NT3 on a 486.
Somebody has a use for them, and you might as well collect a little beer money from it.
That said, the ramdrive idea is cool, but it get's mentioned every year or so and there don't seem to be many of them out there, especially ones that use older form factors. If I had the know-how, though, I'd make one. I'm not convinced it's as unreasonable as some around here would have us believe.
It wasn't presented as a personal note. It was presented as a statement of fact, and it's wrong. TV is not dead, is not dying, and if anything is in fact healthier than ever.
Here's my own personal note: I used to hardly watch TV at all. In fact, the only reason we even owned a TV was because my wife watched it. I got her a Tivo as a present a couple years ago, and now, because of it, I probably watch about 2 hours a day. I'm able to watch the stuff I was interested on my own schedule, and suddenly TV is interesting again.
Could that functionality be provided via the internet? Sure, but there's no point. Tivo takes care of all the broadcast stuff, pretty much on the schedule that it would become available otherwise, and I can getting a movie from Netflix doesn't take much more time than downloading it at equivalent quality.
And, really, if TV is going to be killed by the internet, why is radio still around? There's your past history.
I'm not going to argue that the user experience isn't more or less the same, in fact I think that's a good thing. The real difference is on the Admin side, MY side, and that's why I make my pitch while I'm reinstalling Windows, or removing spyware, or performing any of the other major maintenance jobs Windows requires and Linux doesn't. Linux may be a bit more difficult to get running properly[1], but once you get it working it stays that way.
You say there's no compelling reason for them to switch, I say there's no compelling reason for them not to. Yeah, there's inertia to overcome, but I only make the pitch to friends and family whose PCs I keep running, who would much rather have me over just to hang out than to spend hours cleaning up spyware and viruses and/or reinstalling Windows. If it makes no difference to them, and it saves me time maintaining their system, why not? At that point the only barrier is fear of the unknown, but I find most people get over that pretty quickly once they actually sit down and try it.
I don't present theoretical arguments that don't mean anything to the person I'm presenting them to. Hell, I don't even push very hard, I pretty much just point out that it's an option for them, it would cost them nothing, they'd still be able to do all the stuff they do now, and they wouldn't have the problems that I'm generally in the middle of fixing while talking to them about it. And you know what? People do switch, and I've yet to have any of my converts go back.
And, regarding your system, I wasn't trying to argue the point, just making a suggestion regarding the possible source of your problem.
[1] I say may because, thanks to Suse's Yast, I actually find Linux easier to get working right than Windows.
It is a company, but the term has also become synonymous with "elevator music". Basically they offer background music -- guaranteed to be prescreened, scrubbed of any hint of offensiveness, and utterly bland -- for "public" spaces such as elevators, department stores, lobbies, etc.
And of the 2 listed, only one makes sense: Bono. Her district doesn't stand to benefit much, I don't think, but she certainly has a personal interest in supporting everything the RIAA and MPAA want to do.
But Radanovich? How does the rep of adistrict whose biggest population center is Fresno benefit from something like this?
The current topic is how the entertainment industry is trying to screw us via the legislative process, and Boxer is firmly in the pocket of the entertainment industry. Frist is not.
When the topic is how the drug companies are trying to screw us via the legislative process, then I'm sure Frist will get his turn.
TV is dead, because is sucks. I hardly watch any TV.
You are the exception, not the rule. Unless you have some evidence to present which shows conclusively that a statistically significant portion of the population are following your example, then your TV watching habits are irrelevant.
It is on their schedule which is never my schedule
That's why every cable or satelite company now offers PVRs as part of their service. Problem solved.
and it is what they want to broadcast, not what I want to see.
So what if it's not what you want to see? Enough other people do that it is profitable for the broadcasters to produce and broadcast that tripe. Again, you are irrelevant.
You forgot security. You can wave hands all you want about the reasons, but there just isn't a reason to be concerned with malware on Linux today. Even if it is a temporary phenomenon, it is that way today, and will continue to be so for the foreseeable future. And, of course that has ramifications for stability, reliability, and maintenance.
Price and stability are the only points I've been able to make the sale on, though. Most people don't really understand what security means to them.
though I will also say that I end up having to reboot my Fedora system every couple days because things start freezing on me for no apparent reason... just like my XP system used to
I doubt you're getting kernel updates every few days, so the other obvious culprit is Firefox. Whenever I get wierd lockups, bogging, etc I find killing firefox-bin almost always fixes it (unless it's due to a kernel update, of course).
This download applies to the following Office applications: Microsoft Office Word 2003 Microsoft Word 2002 Microsoft Word 2000 Microsoft Word 97
Maybe Word95 isn't Word for Windows? And before you say they just didn't mention it, they do specifically mention PowerPoint95 as being supported by the PowerPoint viewer linked at the bottom of the page.
Now, I'm prepared to be wrong. I don't don't have much call to mess about with older Word documents. It seems kinda dumb for them to not support it, but at the same time it wouldn't really surprise me either. I have had more than my share of headaches with Visio files created in 95-97.
Your whole argument is based on a false premise: that the average citizen wouldn't be inconvenienced if MA stuck with the current "standard", MS Office. But what about when the state upgrades to the next version of MS Office? Now everyone who wants to read current government documents has to upgrade as well. Even if all that means is downloading the free Doc Reader, how is that any less inconvenient than downloading OpenOffice, or AbiWord, or one of the other free tools that can read and/or write OpenDocument files.
Even better; how do you open a document created in MS Office 95? Government documents often need to be kept around for decades, even centuries, and yet MS doesn't even provide a way to open a.doc that's barely 10 years old.
The citizens will be inconvenienced either way, that's just a simple, unavoidable fact. But, at least with OpenDocument it won't cost them any money.
Not content to either do what it takes to win fairly or lose gracefully, they instead use the same tactics they accuse Microsoft of and engage in the holy effrontery of the self-righteous.
Sorry, but turn-about IS fair play. And anyway, what makes you say that the FOSS people have engaged in MS tactics? Who did they pay off? What special, one time only discounts did they offer? How many jobs did they threaten to move to another state? Which competing formats did they buy up and strangle?
All I see here is a state government that's actually considering the long-term effects of their IT policy, and making a perfectly rational decision. Perhaps you'd like to try and convince me otherwise?
I wish I had mod points, because this is the most intelligent post I've read in this article so far, so instead I'll just reply, thus making it seem like a more interesting thread.
Anyway, the guy in the article is an idiot.
Not responding to his vendor's request that he run a diagnostic so they can maybe troubleshoot the problem is bad enough, but then he goes on to complain that he had to manually apply patches. Well, the two possible responses I see are: (a) Red Hat has an autoupdate feature, and it can't be that difficult to turn it on (I don't use RH, but in SUSE you just check a box and set a time for it to phone home); or (b), one should do such testing on patches that are being applied to a mission critical system anyway, regardless of what OS you're using. Once again, either way you look at it, the guy's an idiot.
He also goes on about how this is a standard hardware configuration, and it's "certified" for Linux, so there shouldn't be a problem. Well, guess what, hardware sometimes has problems. Did he actually test the hardware before he put this thing into production? (For the record, I'm much more of a hardware guy, and my first though was that this is a hardware problem, and I have in the past traced similar problems down to hardware, for example a flakey +5V rail on a P/S, or a bad RAM cell that just happens to be at an address that doesn't get hit very often). The article sure makes it sound like he just took it on faith that his hardware is fine, and that's a pretty idiotic thing to do.
And why did he choose RH, anyway? I'm not trying to diss RH or anything, I'm just wondering what the basis for his choice was? Was it just the name he was familiar with when talking about Linux? Or did some vendor convince him it was the best distro for the job? Did he not do any research on hs own before picking the best distro to run his chosen application on? That sounds... idiotic.
think 1.25 million in income tax, plus state income tax if you don't
So he's left with a measly $2M per year after taxes. If he put just one years worth of net into an average mutual fund he could easily be looking at $200+k per year in dividends. That's over twice what my family lives on, and we're doing just fine.
And I very much doubt the CPA told him to just piss his money away. It might not be liquid, but it's still there, invested in something that could be liquidated if he needed it.
Sorry, but he's only going to be bankrupted if he's a complete fucking idiot, and that certainly won't get him any sympathy from me.
Law Enforcement might be able to entrap people (undercover cops pretending to be hookers for example)
I think you're confused about what entrapment actually is. Entrapment is inducing someone to break the law, like if an undercover cop was luring ricers into racing him so his buddy down the road could bust them. Simply setting up a situation where people will get caught doing what they would be doing anyway is NOT entrapment.
Those prostitution stings are carefully arranged so that they aren't entrapment. The undercover cop doesn't go walking up to peoples cars and soliciting them. Instead, she just stands around looking like she might be a prostitute, and the johns approach her. It's still a honeytrap, but not entrapment, since the john walks into it entirely of his own accord.
And while we're on the subject, a civil case has a much lower bar for what's admissible as evidence than a criminal trial. Something that would be thrown out as entrapment in a criminal case could be perfectly acceptable in a civil one.
The GPL has several serious restrictions as to what you can do with the code and binaries.
Complete bullshit. The GPL imposes no restriction beyond those under normal, basic copyright law. The fact that a few minor restrictions remain does not eliminate the fact that the code is considerably liberated from its default legal state.
Glad to help. I don't know how much help I can actually be, but the email address shown above is real, and I'm always willing to answer questions as best I can.
FWIW, it took me about 2 years to get to the point where I was ready to use Linux as my primary OS, though I was hardly on a mission or anything, and a lot of that time had to do with the fact that I started playing with it in fall of 1999, when Linux was definately ready for the desktop, r at least not mine anyway. Particularly missing were video card drivers, so I couldn't get X to work until SuSE 7.x (IIRC I skipped 7.0, though I can't remember why. Probably money). From that point things progressed pretty fast. When SuSE 8.0 came out I stopped using Windows at home, and told my wife she was now a Linux user[1]. About a year after that I realized I hadn't booted to Windows at all in that time, and finally wiped that partition and mounted it as/games (ut2k3 needed a lot of space).
Anyway, as I said I wasn't particularly dedicated to learning Linux at the time, I was mostly playing with it because a friend I respect highly said I should (and I mean play as in "Hey, look, I compiled something!") I did buy a lot of books, though, but hands down the most useful ones where the SuSE manuals, which is why I recommend buying the full Pro box. The only other one I would recommend is "Linux in a Nutshell", but that's mostly because it has printouts of most of the important man pages. Reading man pages is a skill, and for a lot of people it's easier to learn that skill using a book. It also has handy quick references for bash and vi, which you'll need (regardless of your preference, you'll have to know vi, at least a little bit. emacs is available for every *nix, but vi is included with every *nix, and sometimes you just don't have time or permissions to install stuff).
[1] I already had her using Mozilla (this was pre-Firefox) and OpenOffice (she doesn't do anything else) on Windows, so literally her only question was "How do I get in?" She's about as non-technical as they come, and I'm not sure she'd ever seen a login screen before, so I'm pretty confident the transition will be smooth for someone who's already switched their apps.
One's job as an administrator is not to go with what is 'cool', but what works and keeps the buisness running. Throwing out the existing config in order to "save money" is wrongheaded.
I think you're jumping the gun.
Just because something is 'cool' doesn't mean it isn't better. While admitedly rare, it's not unheard of for things to become 'cool' precisely because they are better.
Also, just because what you have now is adequate doesn't mean you shouldn't be looking at alternatives. While I agree that changing the existing config is not something to be taken lightly, refusing to consider alternatives is even more wrongheaded than switching willy-nilly. You never know how much better things could be, or how much resources might be freed up to grow the business, rather than merely keeping it running.
Only someone who doesn't understand the significance of IT evaluates IT decisions on TCO basis (and that statement is aimed at the article and the parent equally).
Since nobody else seems interested in posting anything actually helpful, I guess I will.
Buy SuSE Profesional, the full boxed set. For roughly $100, that will get you most of what you need in order to install, run, and learn to use Linux. My personal observation has been that people who start with SuSE stick with Linux. If you really want to be an expert on Linux, there are other distros that you should consider switching to after you're comfortable on SuSE, but I wouldn't start a new user out on anything else.
Before you switch ANY workstations, you'll want to switch the server. Before you do that you need to do 2 things: learn to use *nix (I highly recomend taking at least "Intro to Unix" at your local JC), and verify that you won't be losing any functionality your users care about in the switch (maybe you don't use any of the unique features of Exchange, maybe you do; only you know).
IFF you can switch the server, only then should you even consider switching the workstations. The right way to do this is to start with the apps. Firefox is probably the easiest first step, then maybe email (Thunderbird or Evolution, probably), then OpenOffice (honestly, if everyone inside your company is using OOo, you're better off in the long run having them save stuff in the default format, and just teaching them how to convert stuff if they need to send it to the outside world for any reason), and finally any job specific apps your employees use. ONLY after all apps required for people to do their jobs have been replaced, and proven to be functional, should you even consider switching the workstations to Linux On the bright side, though, at this point no one will care what OS they're running, and some of them might not even notice.
In short, starting from the point you're currently at, expect it to be AT LEAST a year before you're ready to start considering the server swap, and if all goes well AT LEAST another year before the workstations are switched over. YMMV, mostly depending on how much you apply yourself to learning to use and administer Linux. It isn't easy, but it is worth the effort.
Sure.doc is closed, but OOo does a damn good job figuring them out
Sure it does, better than MSO in some cases, and that's kind of the point of switching. You could have your document in a closed format that other suites or readers may be able to figure out, or you could have your document in an open format that you could write your own reader for if you had to.
If you're trying to open this document, say 15 years from now, which format do you think you'll have a better chance with? That is most of the point, and the sooner they switch, the sooner they get to realize the benefits of switching.
There's also a very real cost benefit: an open format can be supported by multiple vendors, and thus there is competition in the market for office suites that produce.odt documents that simply doesn't existfor.doc. As all good Americans know, competition is good for the consumer, so that's a very compelling reason to switch to.odt format.
MS provides a free Document Reader
Ah, yes, because nobody produced MS Office documents prior to 1997! Indeed, that was the dawn of computer use in government!
Government, even more than the private sector, has a need to be able to access old documents. There are places in this country, and I suspect Massachusetts is one of them, where deeds and titles might go back 400 years, and yet this reader only supports 4 versions of Word. That's not even 10 years!
"Oh, I'm sorry, you bought your house in 1996, and we're unable to open the deed file. Since we can't verify that you actually own it, you dont! AYBABTU! Have a nice day!"
Yeah, that's a great way to run a governemnt.
so it seems to me that the cited reasons of inter-office compatibility & free distribution to the public have already been achieved.
I don't see a version of MS Office or the free document reader for Linux, or Solaris, or AIX. Oh, but silly me, why would anyone in a state government be using any OS other than Windows?
Oh, that's right, they could just use OpenOffice, right? Until MS decides to lay the DMCA smackdown on it. I mean, if it worked for Lexmark and their printer cartiges, why shouldn't it for for something that actually contains copyrighted information?
It seemed that the authors were trying to make a point about the G5 vs. X86, and why Apple switched, but unless I missed it, there isn't any discussion of OSX Server on X86, or the opportunities that brings. It only seems to discuss OSXS vs. YDL on G5's. OK, Linux is faster. So? I don't get it.
Why is Apple switching to Intel? Because they claim IBM's design failures are what's holding them back performance-wise.
The whole point of comparing OSXvs. YDL on G5s, to me, is to test the validity of Apple's arguement. And guess what? Apple's arguement seems to fail.
What the test shows is that the G5 is capable of performing on par with comparable x86 offerings, and that, in fact, it is OSX that is holding the G5 back, not the other way around as Apple would like us to believe.
So, since the problem is actually OSX, and not the G5, exactly what opportunities does switching to x86 bring? Another opportunity to confirm that Apple sucks at systems programming?
Actually, my last interview was for a job at a large company, and was conducted pretty much the way you would probably do it.
Of course, in this case the interviewers were the department manager, who had risen up from the ranks and somewhere in the neighborhood of 15-20 years of technical experience, and his tehnical lead.
Fortunately for us both, they actually knew exactly what the position required, since otherwise they wouldn't have hired someone with the skillset they needed, and I probably wouldn't have even been considered. Even after working there over 2 years I can't say I'm qualified for the job title I was given, and in those terms I'm completely outclassed by my coworkers (all of whom are older than my dad, and more than half have been with the company longer than I've been alive). But, I'm able to do my job effectively, and the skills I do have are a nice balance to theirs, especially in light of the changes that have happened in the tech industry in the last decade or so.
of course, this is a company which has been around for almost 50 years (at least the division I worked for has), and seems to have learned a few things. They don't seem to include HR in hiring for technical positions, at least not until they get to the filling out paperwork part. Even better, the HR person helping me through that part, when remarking on the fact that I actually read the employment contract before I signed it, seemed genuinely shocked that any company would even consider using the kind of "all your base" clauses many in the industry seem to think of as boilerplate.
I'm sure there's a lesson in there about "companies you want to work for" for those who're interested.
My research at the time indicated that it was neither SuSE specific, nor a new problem, and there didn't seem to be any solution available, nor any interest in providing one. (My solution was to tell my wife she was now a Linux user, and in the long run we're both better off for it, but I still consider it a cardinal sin for a bit of software as crucial as a bootloader to not support a basic input device that is supported in BIOS.)
As for the other thing, I have never seen a "Reboot to Windows" option on a machine booting with GRUB, and seemed to be a pretty simple thing in lilo, so IMO any bootloader with such a pretentious name as GRand Unified Bootloader should be able to handle it.
Slashdot Mirror
That's probably the best suggestion.
Remember that this stuff wasn't just used in desktop PCs, but also in a wide variety of special purpose systems. For example, I used to repair video servers, which were basically a PC with a crapload of custom hardware, and each one uses a bare minimum of 5 72-pin simms (max 11, IIRC). There are hundreds of these things still chugging along doing their jobs quite nicely, keeping broadcasters like DirecTV going, despite the fact that some of them are old enough to be running NT3 on a 486.
Somebody has a use for them, and you might as well collect a little beer money from it.
That said, the ramdrive idea is cool, but it get's mentioned every year or so and there don't seem to be many of them out there, especially ones that use older form factors. If I had the know-how, though, I'd make one. I'm not convinced it's as unreasonable as some around here would have us believe.
72-pin is too big for a keychain. 30-pin is a much better size.
It wasn't presented as a personal note. It was presented as a statement of fact, and it's wrong. TV is not dead, is not dying, and if anything is in fact healthier than ever.
Here's my own personal note: I used to hardly watch TV at all. In fact, the only reason we even owned a TV was because my wife watched it. I got her a Tivo as a present a couple years ago, and now, because of it, I probably watch about 2 hours a day. I'm able to watch the stuff I was interested on my own schedule, and suddenly TV is interesting again.
Could that functionality be provided via the internet? Sure, but there's no point. Tivo takes care of all the broadcast stuff, pretty much on the schedule that it would become available otherwise, and I can getting a movie from Netflix doesn't take much more time than downloading it at equivalent quality.
And, really, if TV is going to be killed by the internet, why is radio still around? There's your past history.
I'm not going to argue that the user experience isn't more or less the same, in fact I think that's a good thing. The real difference is on the Admin side, MY side, and that's why I make my pitch while I'm reinstalling Windows, or removing spyware, or performing any of the other major maintenance jobs Windows requires and Linux doesn't. Linux may be a bit more difficult to get running properly[1], but once you get it working it stays that way.
You say there's no compelling reason for them to switch, I say there's no compelling reason for them not to. Yeah, there's inertia to overcome, but I only make the pitch to friends and family whose PCs I keep running, who would much rather have me over just to hang out than to spend hours cleaning up spyware and viruses and/or reinstalling Windows. If it makes no difference to them, and it saves me time maintaining their system, why not? At that point the only barrier is fear of the unknown, but I find most people get over that pretty quickly once they actually sit down and try it.
I don't present theoretical arguments that don't mean anything to the person I'm presenting them to. Hell, I don't even push very hard, I pretty much just point out that it's an option for them, it would cost them nothing, they'd still be able to do all the stuff they do now, and they wouldn't have the problems that I'm generally in the middle of fixing while talking to them about it. And you know what? People do switch, and I've yet to have any of my converts go back.
And, regarding your system, I wasn't trying to argue the point, just making a suggestion regarding the possible source of your problem.
[1] I say may because, thanks to Suse's Yast, I actually find Linux easier to get working right than Windows.
It is a company, but the term has also become synonymous with "elevator music". Basically they offer background music -- guaranteed to be prescreened, scrubbed of any hint of offensiveness, and utterly bland -- for "public" spaces such as elevators, department stores, lobbies, etc.
And of the 2 listed, only one makes sense: Bono. Her district doesn't stand to benefit much, I don't think, but she certainly has a personal interest in supporting everything the RIAA and MPAA want to do.
But Radanovich? How does the rep of adistrict whose biggest population center is Fresno benefit from something like this?
The current topic is how the entertainment industry is trying to screw us via the legislative process, and Boxer is firmly in the pocket of the entertainment industry. Frist is not.
When the topic is how the drug companies are trying to screw us via the legislative process, then I'm sure Frist will get his turn.
TV is dead, because is sucks. I hardly watch any TV.
You are the exception, not the rule. Unless you have some evidence to present which shows conclusively that a statistically significant portion of the population are following your example, then your TV watching habits are irrelevant.
It is on their schedule which is never my schedule
That's why every cable or satelite company now offers PVRs as part of their service. Problem solved.
and it is what they want to broadcast, not what I want to see.
So what if it's not what you want to see? Enough other people do that it is profitable for the broadcasters to produce and broadcast that tripe. Again, you are irrelevant.
You forgot security. You can wave hands all you want about the reasons, but there just isn't a reason to be concerned with malware on Linux today. Even if it is a temporary phenomenon, it is that way today, and will continue to be so for the foreseeable future. And, of course that has ramifications for stability, reliability, and maintenance.
Price and stability are the only points I've been able to make the sale on, though. Most people don't really understand what security means to them.
though I will also say that I end up having to reboot my Fedora system every couple days because things start freezing on me for no apparent reason... just like my XP system used to
I doubt you're getting kernel updates every few days, so the other obvious culprit is Firefox. Whenever I get wierd lockups, bogging, etc I find killing firefox-bin almost always fixes it (unless it's due to a kernel update, of course).
If you scroll down a bit you'll find:
This download applies to the following Office applications:
Microsoft Office Word 2003
Microsoft Word 2002
Microsoft Word 2000
Microsoft Word 97
Maybe Word95 isn't Word for Windows? And before you say they just didn't mention it, they do specifically mention PowerPoint95 as being supported by the PowerPoint viewer linked at the bottom of the page.
Now, I'm prepared to be wrong. I don't don't have much call to mess about with older Word documents. It seems kinda dumb for them to not support it, but at the same time it wouldn't really surprise me either. I have had more than my share of headaches with Visio files created in 95-97.
Show me something that says it does. Word 95 is not on the list of supported formats, and that was hardly the first version of Word.
Your whole argument is based on a false premise: that the average citizen wouldn't be inconvenienced if MA stuck with the current "standard", MS Office. But what about when the state upgrades to the next version of MS Office? Now everyone who wants to read current government documents has to upgrade as well. Even if all that means is downloading the free Doc Reader, how is that any less inconvenient than downloading OpenOffice, or AbiWord, or one of the other free tools that can read and/or write OpenDocument files.
.doc that's barely 10 years old.
Even better; how do you open a document created in MS Office 95? Government documents often need to be kept around for decades, even centuries, and yet MS doesn't even provide a way to open a
The citizens will be inconvenienced either way, that's just a simple, unavoidable fact. But, at least with OpenDocument it won't cost them any money.
Not content to either do what it takes to win fairly or lose gracefully, they instead use the same tactics they accuse Microsoft of and engage in the holy effrontery of the self-righteous.
Sorry, but turn-about IS fair play. And anyway, what makes you say that the FOSS people have engaged in MS tactics? Who did they pay off? What special, one time only discounts did they offer? How many jobs did they threaten to move to another state? Which competing formats did they buy up and strangle?
All I see here is a state government that's actually considering the long-term effects of their IT policy, and making a perfectly rational decision. Perhaps you'd like to try and convince me otherwise?
I wish I had mod points, because this is the most intelligent post I've read in this article so far, so instead I'll just reply, thus making it seem like a more interesting thread.
Anyway, the guy in the article is an idiot.
Not responding to his vendor's request that he run a diagnostic so they can maybe troubleshoot the problem is bad enough, but then he goes on to complain that he had to manually apply patches. Well, the two possible responses I see are: (a) Red Hat has an autoupdate feature, and it can't be that difficult to turn it on (I don't use RH, but in SUSE you just check a box and set a time for it to phone home); or (b), one should do such testing on patches that are being applied to a mission critical system anyway, regardless of what OS you're using. Once again, either way you look at it, the guy's an idiot.
He also goes on about how this is a standard hardware configuration, and it's "certified" for Linux, so there shouldn't be a problem. Well, guess what, hardware sometimes has problems. Did he actually test the hardware before he put this thing into production? (For the record, I'm much more of a hardware guy, and my first though was that this is a hardware problem, and I have in the past traced similar problems down to hardware, for example a flakey +5V rail on a P/S, or a bad RAM cell that just happens to be at an address that doesn't get hit very often). The article sure makes it sound like he just took it on faith that his hardware is fine, and that's a pretty idiotic thing to do.
And why did he choose RH, anyway? I'm not trying to diss RH or anything, I'm just wondering what the basis for his choice was? Was it just the name he was familiar with when talking about Linux? Or did some vendor convince him it was the best distro for the job? Did he not do any research on hs own before picking the best distro to run his chosen application on? That sounds... idiotic.
think 1.25 million in income tax, plus state income tax if you don't
So he's left with a measly $2M per year after taxes. If he put just one years worth of net into an average mutual fund he could easily be looking at $200+k per year in dividends. That's over twice what my family lives on, and we're doing just fine.
And I very much doubt the CPA told him to just piss his money away. It might not be liquid, but it's still there, invested in something that could be liquidated if he needed it.
Sorry, but he's only going to be bankrupted if he's a complete fucking idiot, and that certainly won't get him any sympathy from me.
Law Enforcement might be able to entrap people (undercover cops pretending to be hookers for example)
I think you're confused about what entrapment actually is. Entrapment is inducing someone to break the law, like if an undercover cop was luring ricers into racing him so his buddy down the road could bust them. Simply setting up a situation where people will get caught doing what they would be doing anyway is NOT entrapment.
Those prostitution stings are carefully arranged so that they aren't entrapment. The undercover cop doesn't go walking up to peoples cars and soliciting them. Instead, she just stands around looking like she might be a prostitute, and the johns approach her. It's still a honeytrap, but not entrapment, since the john walks into it entirely of his own accord.
And while we're on the subject, a civil case has a much lower bar for what's admissible as evidence than a criminal trial. Something that would be thrown out as entrapment in a criminal case could be perfectly acceptable in a civil one.
I was right with you up until that last word.
I've used Xenix...
The GPL has several serious restrictions as to what you can do with the code and binaries.
Complete bullshit. The GPL imposes no restriction beyond those under normal, basic copyright law. The fact that a few minor restrictions remain does not eliminate the fact that the code is considerably liberated from its default legal state.
Glad to help. I don't know how much help I can actually be, but the email address shown above is real, and I'm always willing to answer questions as best I can.
/games (ut2k3 needed a lot of space).
FWIW, it took me about 2 years to get to the point where I was ready to use Linux as my primary OS, though I was hardly on a mission or anything, and a lot of that time had to do with the fact that I started playing with it in fall of 1999, when Linux was definately ready for the desktop, r at least not mine anyway. Particularly missing were video card drivers, so I couldn't get X to work until SuSE 7.x (IIRC I skipped 7.0, though I can't remember why. Probably money). From that point things progressed pretty fast. When SuSE 8.0 came out I stopped using Windows at home, and told my wife she was now a Linux user[1]. About a year after that I realized I hadn't booted to Windows at all in that time, and finally wiped that partition and mounted it as
Anyway, as I said I wasn't particularly dedicated to learning Linux at the time, I was mostly playing with it because a friend I respect highly said I should (and I mean play as in "Hey, look, I compiled something!") I did buy a lot of books, though, but hands down the most useful ones where the SuSE manuals, which is why I recommend buying the full Pro box. The only other one I would recommend is "Linux in a Nutshell", but that's mostly because it has printouts of most of the important man pages. Reading man pages is a skill, and for a lot of people it's easier to learn that skill using a book. It also has handy quick references for bash and vi, which you'll need (regardless of your preference, you'll have to know vi, at least a little bit. emacs is available for every *nix, but vi is included with every *nix, and sometimes you just don't have time or permissions to install stuff).
[1] I already had her using Mozilla (this was pre-Firefox) and OpenOffice (she doesn't do anything else) on Windows, so literally her only question was "How do I get in?" She's about as non-technical as they come, and I'm not sure she'd ever seen a login screen before, so I'm pretty confident the transition will be smooth for someone who's already switched their apps.
One's job as an administrator is not to go with what is 'cool', but what works and keeps the buisness running. Throwing out the existing config in order to "save money" is wrongheaded.
I think you're jumping the gun.
Just because something is 'cool' doesn't mean it isn't better. While admitedly rare, it's not unheard of for things to become 'cool' precisely because they are better.
Also, just because what you have now is adequate doesn't mean you shouldn't be looking at alternatives. While I agree that changing the existing config is not something to be taken lightly, refusing to consider alternatives is even more wrongheaded than switching willy-nilly. You never know how much better things could be, or how much resources might be freed up to grow the business, rather than merely keeping it running.
Only someone who doesn't understand the significance of IT evaluates IT decisions on TCO basis (and that statement is aimed at the article and the parent equally).
Since nobody else seems interested in posting anything actually helpful, I guess I will.
Buy SuSE Profesional, the full boxed set. For roughly $100, that will get you most of what you need in order to install, run, and learn to use Linux. My personal observation has been that people who start with SuSE stick with Linux. If you really want to be an expert on Linux, there are other distros that you should consider switching to after you're comfortable on SuSE, but I wouldn't start a new user out on anything else.
Before you switch ANY workstations, you'll want to switch the server. Before you do that you need to do 2 things: learn to use *nix (I highly recomend taking at least "Intro to Unix" at your local JC), and verify that you won't be losing any functionality your users care about in the switch (maybe you don't use any of the unique features of Exchange, maybe you do; only you know).
IFF you can switch the server, only then should you even consider switching the workstations. The right way to do this is to start with the apps. Firefox is probably the easiest first step, then maybe email (Thunderbird or Evolution, probably), then OpenOffice (honestly, if everyone inside your company is using OOo, you're better off in the long run having them save stuff in the default format, and just teaching them how to convert stuff if they need to send it to the outside world for any reason), and finally any job specific apps your employees use. ONLY after all apps required for people to do their jobs have been replaced, and proven to be functional, should you even consider switching the workstations to Linux On the bright side, though, at this point no one will care what OS they're running, and some of them might not even notice.
In short, starting from the point you're currently at, expect it to be AT LEAST a year before you're ready to start considering the server swap, and if all goes well AT LEAST another year before the workstations are switched over. YMMV, mostly depending on how much you apply yourself to learning to use and administer Linux. It isn't easy, but it is worth the effort.
Sure .doc is closed, but OOo does a damn good job figuring them out
.odt documents that simply doesn't existfor .doc. As all good Americans know, competition is good for the consumer, so that's a very compelling reason to switch to .odt format.
Sure it does, better than MSO in some cases, and that's kind of the point of switching. You could have your document in a closed format that other suites or readers may be able to figure out, or you could have your document in an open format that you could write your own reader for if you had to.
If you're trying to open this document, say 15 years from now, which format do you think you'll have a better chance with? That is most of the point, and the sooner they switch, the sooner they get to realize the benefits of switching.
There's also a very real cost benefit: an open format can be supported by multiple vendors, and thus there is competition in the market for office suites that produce
MS provides a free Document Reader
Ah, yes, because nobody produced MS Office documents prior to 1997! Indeed, that was the dawn of computer use in government!
Government, even more than the private sector, has a need to be able to access old documents. There are places in this country, and I suspect Massachusetts is one of them, where deeds and titles might go back 400 years, and yet this reader only supports 4 versions of Word. That's not even 10 years!
"Oh, I'm sorry, you bought your house in 1996, and we're unable to open the deed file. Since we can't verify that you actually own it, you dont! AYBABTU! Have a nice day!"
Yeah, that's a great way to run a governemnt.
so it seems to me that the cited reasons of inter-office compatibility & free distribution to the public have already been achieved.
I don't see a version of MS Office or the free document reader for Linux, or Solaris, or AIX. Oh, but silly me, why would anyone in a state government be using any OS other than Windows?
Oh, that's right, they could just use OpenOffice, right? Until MS decides to lay the DMCA smackdown on it. I mean, if it worked for Lexmark and their printer cartiges, why shouldn't it for for something that actually contains copyrighted information?
I know, every time I think I might be ready to bite the bullet and use them again, they do something fucked up like this.
I don't normally wish this on anyone, but Paypal is badly in need of some Federal Regulation.
It seemed that the authors were trying to make a point about the G5 vs. X86, and why Apple switched, but unless I missed it, there isn't any discussion of OSX Server on X86, or the opportunities that brings. It only seems to discuss OSXS vs. YDL on G5's. OK, Linux is faster. So? I don't get it.
Why is Apple switching to Intel? Because they claim IBM's design failures are what's holding them back performance-wise.
The whole point of comparing OSXvs. YDL on G5s, to me, is to test the validity of Apple's arguement. And guess what? Apple's arguement seems to fail.
What the test shows is that the G5 is capable of performing on par with comparable x86 offerings, and that, in fact, it is OSX that is holding the G5 back, not the other way around as Apple would like us to believe.
So, since the problem is actually OSX, and not the G5, exactly what opportunities does switching to x86 bring? Another opportunity to confirm that Apple sucks at systems programming?
Actually, my last interview was for a job at a large company, and was conducted pretty much the way you would probably do it.
Of course, in this case the interviewers were the department manager, who had risen up from the ranks and somewhere in the neighborhood of 15-20 years of technical experience, and his tehnical lead.
Fortunately for us both, they actually knew exactly what the position required, since otherwise they wouldn't have hired someone with the skillset they needed, and I probably wouldn't have even been considered. Even after working there over 2 years I can't say I'm qualified for the job title I was given, and in those terms I'm completely outclassed by my coworkers (all of whom are older than my dad, and more than half have been with the company longer than I've been alive). But, I'm able to do my job effectively, and the skills I do have are a nice balance to theirs, especially in light of the changes that have happened in the tech industry in the last decade or so.
of course, this is a company which has been around for almost 50 years (at least the division I worked for has), and seems to have learned a few things. They don't seem to include HR in hiring for technical positions, at least not until they get to the filling out paperwork part. Even better, the HR person helping me through that part, when remarking on the fact that I actually read the employment contract before I signed it, seemed genuinely shocked that any company would even consider using the kind of "all your base" clauses many in the industry seem to think of as boilerplate.
I'm sure there's a lesson in there about "companies you want to work for" for those who're interested.
My research at the time indicated that it was neither SuSE specific, nor a new problem, and there didn't seem to be any solution available, nor any interest in providing one. (My solution was to tell my wife she was now a Linux user, and in the long run we're both better off for it, but I still consider it a cardinal sin for a bit of software as crucial as a bootloader to not support a basic input device that is supported in BIOS.)
As for the other thing, I have never seen a "Reboot to Windows" option on a machine booting with GRUB, and seemed to be a pretty simple thing in lilo, so IMO any bootloader with such a pretentious name as GRand Unified Bootloader should be able to handle it.