He talks about looking for the killer application that will make him go out and spend the big money on a whole new system.
Actually I have three of them:
Solaris 8 -- either the incredibly picky x86 version, or just buying a damn (ultra)sparc to run the sparc version
Oracle -- this is the real killer. According to my friend Lynn who had the inclination to run it and the money to keep buying stuff until it was happy, you need 512 meg of ram and up as a practical limit. Not to mention a fast disk that's in the 8+ gig range you plan on devoting solely to Oracle. And this is just for a smallish installation he's using to teach himself. God only knows how much it would want for a big one (well, a Sun E10K is a good bet, I seem to recall that was what eBay used to run their Oracle on).
Enterprise Java -- anything in the java app server / servlet / J2EE category just soaks up the ram as fast as I can throw it at the machine...
And all of these are not flashy, consumer, game-type 'ware, the usual suspects for driving hardware upgrades. My point being that even us CLI-only, minimalist sysadmin types are going to run into this phenomenon now and again. (Although in this realm I think the scaling axis is usually more ram / more processors as opposed to faster processors (and of course video cards aren't a factor at all), as an example see the configuration of the pretty-damn-busy-but-still-very-responsive ccwf, where my skool account is...).
I would so love to have hardknocks.edu! I know just about a bazillion people that would be qualified to have an alumni.hardknocks.edu email address (myself included, if having your kidneys fail when you're 20 counts as a hard knock;-) ).
You need apache, php, and mysql. Many, many hosting providers will have accounts set up around this configuration, allowing you to "just have a website up without all this bull" as you put it. They worry about server admin and security (on the host and network level anyway), all you have to do is write code and pay the bills.
As an example of a place that has the feature set you're looking for with very generous disk allocations for reasonable prices, see csoft.net. (I've never used them but I've heard good things about them, and when I emailed them some techie questions about their service they responed quickly and very professionally.) For example, the $25/mo. plan gives you unlimited disk. All plans include 1Gb/day of traffic ($6/Gb per Gb over 30 per month). Anyone here actually, directly used these guys that would like to comment?
I worked for a while in an academic dept. where all the secretarial pool used Macs, and everybody else used Linux (or occasionally Solaris, but mostly Linux). The Macs were a constant source of problems, and quite frankly just didn't get along well with anything else on the network. (Oh god, where to begin? Having ethernet adaptors that only worked with a specific kind of switch, causing broadcast stormlets, not being able to see network shares and printers and the internet at the same time, etc. etc.)
I'm not a mac-head, but it should be possible to configure the macs to use TCP/IP instead of Appletalk. This is supported better as you increase the MacOS version number. This cured a lot of our file sharing or printing but not both at the same time problems. (Note that we were using NFS mostly, with one file server running atalkd to interact with the macs). Don't know about netware.
So basically, your admins aren't bullshitting you. Macs are a royal pain in a heterogenous network (esp. the more you stick with Apple-specific protocols, of course).
Minor sidenote, as you may or may not know, the national service academies (west point, et al.) are $0/year institutions. Of course the students that go there are going to "pay back" the government by providing (what was it, 4 or 6 minimum?) years of dedicated service as officers in the armed forces. But then it could be argued that increasing our countries' stock of bright young engineers and scientists is of similar national benefit (heh, "work for American companies for 6 years and your tuition is free!" or something).
I suspect that they would use Qt. The reasons are threefold in my mind: 1) it's C++, and the object model would be fairly familiar to somebody whose done MFC, 2) it's pretty standard looking from one instllation to the next (no wild and wooliness like Gtk+ can get with themes; yes I know Qt is themeable too but frankly I haven't seen many of my KDE friends do that), 3) the company that makes Qt is open to it's use in a commercial, closed-source application (and has the corporate infrastructure to sell it).
Note that I said Qt and not KDE. I think the dithering over KDE or Gnome is a ruse, as I use apps from both "environments" quite regularly in my Enlightenment (0.16.5) WM. I truly don't think the WM has much to do with how the app operates (and if you're anal enough about the way your app's borders look to care about it at all, you've got problems a WM won't fix). Can anyone think of an instance where an application required (I mean would not operate without), Gnome or KDE (as opposed to gnome-libs or kde-libs)?
That being said, I'd gladly pay for some Microsoft applications on linux. Word and Excel spring immeadiately to mind becuase I pretty much have to use them for some of the classes I take (well, I could probably do without word but Excel simply offers things that gnumeric et al. don't). Heck, I'd pay for IE too if it didn't suck like some of the other Unix IE ports apparently have (figure $20 or $30). Further, I think the reason that Linux will never catch on in the corporate envirtonment outside of the IT dept is that it doesn't have Office/IE/Outlook. Too many normal business types (bizdev et al.) simply will not make the change (don't want to or can't), and why should they? The computer is just a tool for them to acheive their real goals, so once they've learned one application or application suite well enough to acheive those goals, why devote more brain power to switching abscent a compelling technical reason.
Anything that speeds the adoption of linux on the desktop and home market is good for linux, even for those of use that use it soley as a servcr and use it on our desktops. Quite simply, the larger our market share is, the more likely hardware companies will develop linux drivers at the same time as win32 ones. Increased hardware support benefits the entire community.
I found this pretty cool site through a comment or sig here IIRC... Either way, it covers all sorts of things (incl. ppp setup): FreeBSD Cheat Sheets. As far as the word processing thing goes, if you're laptop is beefy enough give StarOffice a try. If not, try AbiWord.
The ppp setup described above is for 3.x and it's for a lan2dial home gateway. You may wish to try looking at chapters 15 (Serial Communications) and 16 (PPP and SLIP) of the FreeBSD Handbook for more up to date or generalized instructions.
heh, the problem being that by virtue of VB programs' tendancy to allocate memory extremely poorly, VB:QE (quantum edition) might inadvertantly be running out of control one day and by virtue Heisenberg (et al.) end up running on (and screwing up) every atom in the known universe. Maybe this is MS's secret plot for world domination by atomic subjugation[1]?
In terms of usability anyway. I've heard many people say that the practical usability RAM minimum for Solaris 8, for example, is 128 even though the listed minimum is 64. 3 gigs is sort of big, but still, the recommended minimum for Solaris 8 is 2gb... And while I can run Linux on 16mb ram and 540meg disk, it's a lot more functional with 64mb+ ram and 4gb+...
And lordy, let's not get started on how much ram you need to run something like oracle!;-)
I think there are ultrasparc laptops being made, probably by the RDI folks that made the old Sparcbooks. But a) I don't know for sure and b) even if they are being made they'll be stunningly expensive.
well, sooner or later Cisco will cook up a CCNP or IE test for it then... ("Q1010: When attempting to establish an access-list on a 25xx router while under fire from customs...").
Your best bet may be to ask around in the science and engineering (under)graduate populations of a local university. Ideally you'll get some scientist/engineer type that discovered a love for computers while using them to further their own research...[1] They're guaranteed to have at least a minimal brain wave (at least after the second year;^) ), and more than likely they need money and/or a place to gain experience in as wide a range of things as possible.
You may also want to consider narrowing exactly what you are looking for. People that are, for example, expert at network administration and coding simulations code and soldering data collection circuits and (...) are rare enough in the tech field without also asking them to be scientists as well. Try segmenting your requirements out into seperate, smaller positions and then be willing to create an environment where learning and cross-training is encouraged.
Last but not least, look for a local uni that offers courses in scientific programming (UT Austin has them in CS, but also in other places like the Math dept, the ChE dept, etc., so you may want to look a little further than pure CS). Ask the professors if you could put up a job flyer in their class.
Anyhow, good luck!
[1] Hey, happened to me at least.:-) (In reality I know several other people that started out in Chemistry and ended up CS or whatnot. Maybe it's becuase the two buildings are across the street from each other on the UT campus?)
Re:damn javascript popups!!!
on
NSA Inside?
·
· Score: 1
Yeah, ultra-fundamentalist Muslims frequenting places where pornography is distributed... Next thing you know they'll be holding monthly terrorist meetings at Al's Big House of Liquor.;-)
You're right!:-) It was really bugging me where that came from... But now I recall reading it there. Thanks for reminding me, otherwise it would have bugged me for days...
openssh Re:typical of nutcase software...
on
New Linux Worm
·
· Score: 1
Actually I've never noticed OpenSSH having problems. Care to elaborate? (genuinely curious, I use ssh in a pretty vanilla fashion so maybe I'm not hitting the bugs)
More generally, what do you have against DJB's and TdR's code? (again, I ask because I'm curious, I don't have an agenda about this except I like qmail better than sendmail becuase it's easier to config and openbsd becuase I like IPF more than IPCHAINS)
Slashdot Mirror
Bruce Eckel's books are also pretty good (Thinking in C++ (2nd), also Thinking in (several other languages/ patterns)).
--
News for geeks in Austin: www.geekaustin.org
Actually I have three of them:
And all of these are not flashy, consumer, game-type 'ware, the usual suspects for driving hardware upgrades. My point being that even us CLI-only, minimalist sysadmin types are going to run into this phenomenon now and again. (Although in this realm I think the scaling axis is usually more ram / more processors as opposed to faster processors (and of course video cards aren't a factor at all), as an example see the configuration of the pretty-damn-busy-but-still-very-responsive ccwf, where my skool account is...).
--
News for geeks in Austin: www.geekaustin.org
I would so love to have hardknocks.edu! I know just about a bazillion people that would be qualified to have an alumni.hardknocks.edu email address (myself included, if having your kidneys fail when you're 20 counts as a hard knock ;-) ).
--
News for geeks in Austin: www.geekaustin.org
Buy Journalists Beer.
(Or: Get Journalists Laid)
Trust me, I know several journalists and outright bribery usually works well. ;-)
--
News for geeks in Austin: www.geekaustin.org
If it doesn't come out soon, I will start throwing cups at Jon. ;-)
--
News for geeks in Austin: www.geekaustin.org
The real silent majority: the Horny-Americans.
--
News for geeks in Austin: www.geekaustin.org
You need apache, php, and mysql. Many, many hosting providers will have accounts set up around this configuration, allowing you to "just have a website up without all this bull" as you put it. They worry about server admin and security (on the host and network level anyway), all you have to do is write code and pay the bills.
As an example of a place that has the feature set you're looking for with very generous disk allocations for reasonable prices, see csoft.net. (I've never used them but I've heard good things about them, and when I emailed them some techie questions about their service they responed quickly and very professionally.) For example, the $25/mo. plan gives you unlimited disk. All plans include 1Gb/day of traffic ($6/Gb per Gb over 30 per month). Anyone here actually, directly used these guys that would like to comment?
--
News for geeks in Austin: www.geekaustin.org
Well, I don't know, y'all had enough balls to kick some serious Soviet ass in the late 30s... :-)
--
News for geeks in Austin: www.geekaustin.org
I worked for a while in an academic dept. where all the secretarial pool used Macs, and everybody else used Linux (or occasionally Solaris, but mostly Linux). The Macs were a constant source of problems, and quite frankly just didn't get along well with anything else on the network. (Oh god, where to begin? Having ethernet adaptors that only worked with a specific kind of switch, causing broadcast stormlets, not being able to see network shares and printers and the internet at the same time, etc. etc.)
I'm not a mac-head, but it should be possible to configure the macs to use TCP/IP instead of Appletalk. This is supported better as you increase the MacOS version number. This cured a lot of our file sharing or printing but not both at the same time problems. (Note that we were using NFS mostly, with one file server running atalkd to interact with the macs). Don't know about netware.
So basically, your admins aren't bullshitting you. Macs are a royal pain in a heterogenous network (esp. the more you stick with Apple-specific protocols, of course).
--
News for geeks in Austin: www.geekaustin.org
Minor sidenote, as you may or may not know, the national service academies (west point, et al.) are $0/year institutions. Of course the students that go there are going to "pay back" the government by providing (what was it, 4 or 6 minimum?) years of dedicated service as officers in the armed forces. But then it could be argued that increasing our countries' stock of bright young engineers and scientists is of similar national benefit (heh, "work for American companies for 6 years and your tuition is free!" or something).
--
News for geeks in Austin: www.geekaustin.org
I suspect that they would use Qt. The reasons are threefold in my mind: 1) it's C++, and the object model would be fairly familiar to somebody whose done MFC, 2) it's pretty standard looking from one instllation to the next (no wild and wooliness like Gtk+ can get with themes; yes I know Qt is themeable too but frankly I haven't seen many of my KDE friends do that), 3) the company that makes Qt is open to it's use in a commercial, closed-source application (and has the corporate infrastructure to sell it).
Note that I said Qt and not KDE. I think the dithering over KDE or Gnome is a ruse, as I use apps from both "environments" quite regularly in my Enlightenment (0.16.5) WM. I truly don't think the WM has much to do with how the app operates (and if you're anal enough about the way your app's borders look to care about it at all, you've got problems a WM won't fix). Can anyone think of an instance where an application required (I mean would not operate without), Gnome or KDE (as opposed to gnome-libs or kde-libs)?
That being said, I'd gladly pay for some Microsoft applications on linux. Word and Excel spring immeadiately to mind becuase I pretty much have to use them for some of the classes I take (well, I could probably do without word but Excel simply offers things that gnumeric et al. don't). Heck, I'd pay for IE too if it didn't suck like some of the other Unix IE ports apparently have (figure $20 or $30). Further, I think the reason that Linux will never catch on in the corporate envirtonment outside of the IT dept is that it doesn't have Office/IE/Outlook. Too many normal business types (bizdev et al.) simply will not make the change (don't want to or can't), and why should they? The computer is just a tool for them to acheive their real goals, so once they've learned one application or application suite well enough to acheive those goals, why devote more brain power to switching abscent a compelling technical reason.
Anything that speeds the adoption of linux on the desktop and home market is good for linux, even for those of use that use it soley as a servcr and use it on our desktops. Quite simply, the larger our market share is, the more likely hardware companies will develop linux drivers at the same time as win32 ones. Increased hardware support benefits the entire community.
--
News for geeks in Austin: www.geekaustin.org
Well, at least it's easy to mirror...
--
News for geeks in Austin: www.geekaustin.org
Well, you could always just turn off your computer... (the-no-plug-in-socket-firewall, works every time)
--
News for geeks in Austin: www.geekaustin.org
Actually, slashcode is written in Gibberish. It's not mod_perl. (Well, ok, maybe it's Gibberish that plays mod_perl on TeeVee.)
--
News for geeks in Austin: www.geekaustin.org
I found this pretty cool site through a comment or sig here IIRC... Either way, it covers all sorts of things (incl. ppp setup): FreeBSD Cheat Sheets. As far as the word processing thing goes, if you're laptop is beefy enough give StarOffice a try. If not, try AbiWord.
The ppp setup described above is for 3.x and it's for a lan2dial home gateway. You may wish to try looking at chapters 15 (Serial Communications) and 16 (PPP and SLIP) of the FreeBSD Handbook for more up to date or generalized instructions.
--
News for geeks in Austin: www.geekaustin.org
--
News for geeks in Austin: www.geekaustin.org
Sure, to get the taste of the vegemite out... ;-)
--
News for geeks in Austin: www.geekaustin.org
heh, the problem being that by virtue of VB programs' tendancy to allocate memory extremely poorly, VB:QE (quantum edition) might inadvertantly be running out of control one day and by virtue Heisenberg (et al.) end up running on (and screwing up) every atom in the known universe. Maybe this is MS's secret plot for world domination by atomic subjugation[1]?
[1] Bill. Boris. Natasha. Lordy, do I need sleep.
--
News for geeks in Austin: www.geekaustin.org
In terms of usability anyway. I've heard many people say that the practical usability RAM minimum for Solaris 8, for example, is 128 even though the listed minimum is 64. 3 gigs is sort of big, but still, the recommended minimum for Solaris 8 is 2gb... And while I can run Linux on 16mb ram and 540meg disk, it's a lot more functional with 64mb+ ram and 4gb+...
And lordy, let's not get started on how much ram you need to run something like oracle! ;-)
--
News for geeks in Austin: www.geekaustin.org
I think there are ultrasparc laptops being made, probably by the RDI folks that made the old Sparcbooks. But a) I don't know for sure and b) even if they are being made they'll be stunningly expensive.
--
News for geeks in Austin: www.geekaustin.org
well, sooner or later Cisco will cook up a CCNP or IE test for it then... ("Q1010: When attempting to establish an access-list on a 25xx router while under fire from customs...").
--
News for geeks in Austin: www.geekaustin.org
Your best bet may be to ask around in the science and engineering (under)graduate populations of a local university. Ideally you'll get some scientist/engineer type that discovered a love for computers while using them to further their own research...[1] They're guaranteed to have at least a minimal brain wave (at least after the second year ;^) ), and more than likely they need money and/or a place to gain experience in as wide a range of things as possible.
You may also want to consider narrowing exactly what you are looking for. People that are, for example, expert at network administration and coding simulations code and soldering data collection circuits and (...) are rare enough in the tech field without also asking them to be scientists as well. Try segmenting your requirements out into seperate, smaller positions and then be willing to create an environment where learning and cross-training is encouraged.
Last but not least, look for a local uni that offers courses in scientific programming (UT Austin has them in CS, but also in other places like the Math dept, the ChE dept, etc., so you may want to look a little further than pure CS). Ask the professors if you could put up a job flyer in their class.
Anyhow, good luck!
[1] Hey, happened to me at least. :-) (In reality I know several other people that started out in Chemistry and ended up CS or whatnot. Maybe it's becuase the two buildings are across the street from each other on the UT campus?)
--
News for geeks in Austin: www.geekaustin.org
Yeah, ultra-fundamentalist Muslims frequenting places where pornography is distributed... Next thing you know they'll be holding monthly terrorist meetings at Al's Big House of Liquor. ;-)
--
News for geeks in Austin: www.geekaustin.org
You're right! :-) It was really bugging me where that came from... But now I recall reading it there. Thanks for reminding me, otherwise it would have bugged me for days...
--
News for geeks in Austin: www.geekaustin.org
Actually I've never noticed OpenSSH having problems. Care to elaborate? (genuinely curious, I use ssh in a pretty vanilla fashion so maybe I'm not hitting the bugs)
More generally, what do you have against DJB's and TdR's code? (again, I ask because I'm curious, I don't have an agenda about this except I like qmail better than sendmail becuase it's easier to config and openbsd becuase I like IPF more than IPCHAINS)
--
News for geeks in Austin: www.geekaustin.org