Our stuff is webapps running in Tomcat. We have had the blue-suited spirochetes around to try to sell us on Websphere for the same job. But we know from experience that even upgrading Tomcat is fraught with Apache's apparent inability to grasp the meaning of the word "stable", and that a ton of testing is required. But when it's the same Tomcat version on each of the OSes, all is well (enough) - the requirement of dev on Windows and deploy on something Unixish seems to be sufficient cross-platformness to enforce sufficient coding discipline.
Or, to otherwise precis your comment, all software sucks...
Java is cross-platform enough for our professional use - development on Windows, deployment on a mix of Solaris SPARC, Solaris x86, Debian, RHEL and Ubuntu Server. It really does Just Work, and well enough for actual money-making activities (niche professional publishing for paid subscribers, in this case) if you keep to pure Java.
That it's theoretically impossible doesn't mean it isn't worth trying to be useful.
The best way I find is to document whatever I wish I'd known before I started the job in question. Then I find it useful when I come back to it three months later and need to know what I did.
BOLGIAS 8 AND 9, Seattle, Tuesday (NTN) — Microsoft remains on the bleeding edge of innovation with its completely new-from-the-ground-up Windows Bing Voice Internet phone platform, formerly known as Skype.
Windows Bing Voice was developed entirely in-house at an acquisition cost of only $8.5 billion. “Our developer teams know the meaning of confidentiality,” said Steve Ballmer. “Heck, even they didn’t know it was Skype until today. That’s how, uh, stealth we are.”
The new Windows Bing Voice client will be included with Windows Phone 7, Office 365, Kin and Zune. “Microsoft will continue to invest in and support Skype clients on non-Microsoft platforms! On a case by case time and availability basis, of course. We’ll give our Mac Business Unit developer details for Windows Bing Voice 2011 Ultimate Edition by 2013, for sure.”
Service is expected to remain “at 100%” as the server infrastructure is moved from Linux to Windows, though Microsoft has not specified what that will be 100% of. The peer-to-peer functionality of Skype will also be harnessed to distribute Windows updates and Windows Genuine Advantage serial number blacklists.
Google said that the Google Voice servers were “holding up well” under the influx of new users.
COURT ROAD, Tottenham, Friday (NTN) — Internet advertising agency Google is opening its first retail store, selling the Internet-only Chromebook.
"We've put a lot of effort into making it feel welcoming, homely and, dare I say it, 'Googley'," said Arvind Desikan, head of consumer marketing. The revolutionary shopping experience leverages Google's famous abilities in customer service, having no staff. Customers seeking advice on a product can simply log in with their Google account to the in-store forum, where they and other customers can assist each other.
"People will be able to go in and have a play with the devices, so they can get a feel for what it's about and we can monitor their reaction." Persons seeking entry to the store must give their bank account name and glue an RFID tag to their forehead, so as to create a suitably decorous shopping environment, "just like in real life." Should they be discovered to be using a name the Google Identity algorithm considers unlikely, they will be ejected mid-purchase and their GMail and Android phone disabled, for their comfort and convenience.
The store is in Tottenham Court Road, so as to select for the valuable demographic of people who want shiny things and are willing to pay a hundred quid more than they would for an ordinary netbook that does more. A second store will be opened in Lakeside for customers of similar discernment.
The Google store still anticipates more customers than the Microsoft stores. Rumours of the purchase of a Windows 7 phone somewhere in Britain are as yet unconfirmed, despite investigations by sceptics' organisations.
I'm a sysadmin to developers. I describe my job to people as "computer roadie". I am but humble roadie, my job is to help the devs get up there and be Eric Clapton. Though "sysadmin" and "developer" cross over more than "roadie" and "guitarist".
No, the analogy makes no sense at all. It would only make sense if the developers were adding bugs to the code to collect the bounties. This is not what's being described.
The article is there to fill space and get ad clicks. Like most of the IT press.
I got bitten by this moving our SSL server from 2.2.9 to 2.2.20 - they changed the config processor and our SSL config broke.
Apache claim that a given "stable" series will keep a constant ABI. They seem utterly unable to comprehend that config files count as part of the ABI. Note that binary modules work the same all the way across 2.2.x... that doesn't help when a "nothing's changed" upgrade breaks stuff.
The changes are typically tightening the rules and disabling technical violations of them. That's a noble aim, but you need to save it for the next version - you can't pull that shit midstream in a "stable" series!
We previously got bitten by Apache's incomprehension on this point when we went from Tomcat 6.0.16 to 6.0.29.
So, before upgrading anything "stable" from the Apache Foundation: Thoroughly test the result, and make sure you can back out at a minute's notice.
The X11 deprecation model: break the code so it can't possibly work, wait two years with no bug reports, remove. This is literally how a lot of rubbish no actual users cared about was removed from X.
No - as I note, resistive-screen tablets are readily available at a similar price, at least in the UK - and appear to be widely regarded as rubbish ('cos they are).
Of course, just the screen in an HP Touchpad (which is the same screen in an iPad) is $127 on the BOM, so this really was a firesale price. But I do think "non-shitty screen" is the key point.
FWIW, scalpers on eBay seem to be getting $200 or even more on eBay for Touchpads, so the magic price point may be higher than this firesale price.
The Touchpad is reportedly shitty to use, even cheap. But who knows what Cyanogen will come up with... give a geek a porting problem.
The reason people went bloody wild for the fire sale Touchpads wasn't the prospect of a $99 tablet - it was the prospect of a $99 tablet with a capacitative screen. Cheap crappy resistive screen tablets are readily available, but anything that browses the web and has a decent screen at a low price point will sell.
So how's the price curve for capacitative screens looking?
The small, portable computers sold in stupendous numbers in 2009 and 2010, but industry watchers have been convinced by Microsoft and Intel to say that their popularity is waning. "No-one is buying a 10-inch netbook that costs £500 and runs Windows 7," said Stuart Miles of Pocket Unit. "So everyone will go back to expensive iPhones and full-sized laptops, any day now. This 'internet' thing is just a fad too."
What people are looking for now, he believes, is a machine that can keep up with the demands of contemporary web users. A small netbook running Windows 7 Dumbass Edition, which runs up to three applications at a time and holds your data hostage until you cough up eighty quid to run a fourth, is "thoroughly inadequate" to the task. "Linux, of course, doesn't exist, wasn't the impetus for cheap netbooks and didn't cripple Microsoft's bottom line for the last three years by providing actual competition for the first time in decades. So it's not like it can do twice as much in half the space."
Ian Drew, spokesman for chip designer ARM Holdings, also believes netbooks are in for a shake-up. "Apparently, netbooks that weigh nothing, run twice as fast and have an all-day battery but don't run Windows are a problem for ARM, not for Microsoft," he said, lighting a cigar off a fifty-pound note.
Mr Miles believes tablets will take up the mantle from the netbook. "If we carefully define tablets as 'not netbooks,' even though they're made by the same companies with the same technology running the same software, we can claim the netbook is dead even though people are suddenly realising how stupidly huge, unwieldy and heavy even a fourteen-inch laptop is. It's all about picking your terms rather than, e.g., selling what people actually want instead of what you'd like them to want. Also, if you whack in a 3G modem it's suddenly a phone instead, and never mind the Mini 9."
"Clap your hands if you don't believe in netbooks," said Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. "Marketers! Marketers! Marketers! Marketers!"
Sorry, that was me confusing issues. Friendster was kicking users off for not doing as they were told. With Buzz the problem was people being sucked into it and having their GMail network exposed (in some cases putting them in personal danger) without them doing anything, and switching Buzz off not actually switching it off. The similarity is a service designed entirely for the company and not at all for the users, who are then considered annoyances.
Slashdot Mirror
Our stuff is webapps running in Tomcat. We have had the blue-suited spirochetes around to try to sell us on Websphere for the same job. But we know from experience that even upgrading Tomcat is fraught with Apache's apparent inability to grasp the meaning of the word "stable", and that a ton of testing is required. But when it's the same Tomcat version on each of the OSes, all is well (enough) - the requirement of dev on Windows and deploy on something Unixish seems to be sufficient cross-platformness to enforce sufficient coding discipline.
Or, to otherwise precis your comment, all software sucks ...
Heh. In our intranet wiki - which I treat as my personal notes to self - I take the time to add the "why" and the paths not taken!
Yeah, but not even Linux is all that cross-platform on embedded ... We do have it a fair bit easier than you!
Java is cross-platform enough for our professional use - development on Windows, deployment on a mix of Solaris SPARC, Solaris x86, Debian, RHEL and Ubuntu Server. It really does Just Work, and well enough for actual money-making activities (niche professional publishing for paid subscribers, in this case) if you keep to pure Java.
That it's theoretically impossible doesn't mean it isn't worth trying to be useful.
The best way I find is to document whatever I wish I'd known before I started the job in question. Then I find it useful when I come back to it three months later and need to know what I did.
Either way, you should document the hell out of everything so that if you were hit by a bus tomorrow they wouldn't be similarly fucked.
BOLGIAS 8 AND 9, Seattle, Tuesday (NTN) — Microsoft remains on the bleeding edge of innovation with its completely new-from-the-ground-up Windows Bing Voice Internet phone platform, formerly known as Skype.
Windows Bing Voice was developed entirely in-house at an acquisition cost of only $8.5 billion. “Our developer teams know the meaning of confidentiality,” said Steve Ballmer. “Heck, even they didn’t know it was Skype until today. That’s how, uh, stealth we are.”
The new Windows Bing Voice client will be included with Windows Phone 7, Office 365, Kin and Zune. “Microsoft will continue to invest in and support Skype clients on non-Microsoft platforms! On a case by case time and availability basis, of course. We’ll give our Mac Business Unit developer details for Windows Bing Voice 2011 Ultimate Edition by 2013, for sure.”
Service is expected to remain “at 100%” as the server infrastructure is moved from Linux to Windows, though Microsoft has not specified what that will be 100% of. The peer-to-peer functionality of Skype will also be harnessed to distribute Windows updates and Windows Genuine Advantage serial number blacklists.
Google said that the Google Voice servers were “holding up well” under the influx of new users.
COURT ROAD, Tottenham, Friday (NTN) — Internet advertising agency Google is opening its first retail store, selling the Internet-only Chromebook.
"We've put a lot of effort into making it feel welcoming, homely and, dare I say it, 'Googley'," said Arvind Desikan, head of consumer marketing. The revolutionary shopping experience leverages Google's famous abilities in customer service, having no staff. Customers seeking advice on a product can simply log in with their Google account to the in-store forum, where they and other customers can assist each other.
"People will be able to go in and have a play with the devices, so they can get a feel for what it's about and we can monitor their reaction." Persons seeking entry to the store must give their bank account name and glue an RFID tag to their forehead, so as to create a suitably decorous shopping environment, "just like in real life." Should they be discovered to be using a name the Google Identity algorithm considers unlikely, they will be ejected mid-purchase and their GMail and Android phone disabled, for their comfort and convenience.
The store is in Tottenham Court Road, so as to select for the valuable demographic of people who want shiny things and are willing to pay a hundred quid more than they would for an ordinary netbook that does more. A second store will be opened in Lakeside for customers of similar discernment.
The Google store still anticipates more customers than the Microsoft stores. Rumours of the purchase of a Windows 7 phone somewhere in Britain are as yet unconfirmed, despite investigations by sceptics' organisations.
I'm a sysadmin to developers. I describe my job to people as "computer roadie". I am but humble roadie, my job is to help the devs get up there and be Eric Clapton. Though "sysadmin" and "developer" cross over more than "roadie" and "guitarist".
I started in ISP tech support. Competence was rewarded with doubled pay when I moved to a job as a sysadmin!
So, yeah. Keep away from tech support ;-p
No, the analogy makes no sense at all. It would only make sense if the developers were adding bugs to the code to collect the bounties. This is not what's being described.
The article is there to fill space and get ad clicks. Like most of the IT press.
The situation I'm thinking of is a largely Unix infrastructure with a few Windows boxes. It worked for us.
Cygwin and its sshd. Being able to ssh into Windows boxes is essential.
Cygwin is also just the thing if you're using Nagios - you can write bash scripts to use as plugins.
Slashdot's title says the power demand will fall; TFA says the rate of increase will fall, i.e. it'll still go up but more slowly. Please fix.
Welcome to enterprise!
I got bitten by this moving our SSL server from 2.2.9 to 2.2.20 - they changed the config processor and our SSL config broke.
Apache claim that a given "stable" series will keep a constant ABI. They seem utterly unable to comprehend that config files count as part of the ABI. Note that binary modules work the same all the way across 2.2.x ... that doesn't help when a "nothing's changed" upgrade breaks stuff.
The changes are typically tightening the rules and disabling technical violations of them. That's a noble aim, but you need to save it for the next version - you can't pull that shit midstream in a "stable" series!
We previously got bitten by Apache's incomprehension on this point when we went from Tomcat 6.0.16 to 6.0.29.
So, before upgrading anything "stable" from the Apache Foundation: Thoroughly test the result, and make sure you can back out at a minute's notice.
TFA says this is a theoretical result, and they're currently trying to make the actual alloy to see if it's practical.
No, it's actually about G+ too. Note that only +1 from G+ profiles will count.
Better than that - they're actively leveraging the search engine to collect identity profiles. Join G+ or your page falls down the search.
They're actually willing to compromise the search to collect profiles.
define bitrotten
The X11 deprecation model: break the code so it can't possibly work, wait two years with no bug reports, remove. This is literally how a lot of rubbish no actual users cared about was removed from X.
the time will always be correct in London.
One thing I really enjoy about Wikipedia is all timestamps being local time.
Except in summer. But then, BST can just fuck off too.
No - as I note, resistive-screen tablets are readily available at a similar price, at least in the UK - and appear to be widely regarded as rubbish ('cos they are).
Of course, just the screen in an HP Touchpad (which is the same screen in an iPad) is $127 on the BOM, so this really was a firesale price. But I do think "non-shitty screen" is the key point.
FWIW, scalpers on eBay seem to be getting $200 or even more on eBay for Touchpads, so the magic price point may be higher than this firesale price.
The Touchpad is reportedly shitty to use, even cheap. But who knows what Cyanogen will come up with ... give a geek a porting problem.
The reason people went bloody wild for the fire sale Touchpads wasn't the prospect of a $99 tablet - it was the prospect of a $99 tablet with a capacitative screen. Cheap crappy resistive screen tablets are readily available, but anything that browses the web and has a decent screen at a low price point will sell.
So how's the price curve for capacitative screens looking?
Cheap netbooks are too limited and no-one will want them any more, say high-ticket vendors at mere 103% increase in netbook sales year on year.
The small, portable computers sold in stupendous numbers in 2009 and 2010, but industry watchers have been convinced by Microsoft and Intel to say that their popularity is waning. "No-one is buying a 10-inch netbook that costs £500 and runs Windows 7," said Stuart Miles of Pocket Unit. "So everyone will go back to expensive iPhones and full-sized laptops, any day now. This 'internet' thing is just a fad too."
What people are looking for now, he believes, is a machine that can keep up with the demands of contemporary web users. A small netbook running Windows 7 Dumbass Edition, which runs up to three applications at a time and holds your data hostage until you cough up eighty quid to run a fourth, is "thoroughly inadequate" to the task. "Linux, of course, doesn't exist, wasn't the impetus for cheap netbooks and didn't cripple Microsoft's bottom line for the last three years by providing actual competition for the first time in decades. So it's not like it can do twice as much in half the space."
Ian Drew, spokesman for chip designer ARM Holdings, also believes netbooks are in for a shake-up. "Apparently, netbooks that weigh nothing, run twice as fast and have an all-day battery but don't run Windows are a problem for ARM, not for Microsoft," he said, lighting a cigar off a fifty-pound note.
Mr Miles believes tablets will take up the mantle from the netbook. "If we carefully define tablets as 'not netbooks,' even though they're made by the same companies with the same technology running the same software, we can claim the netbook is dead even though people are suddenly realising how stupidly huge, unwieldy and heavy even a fourteen-inch laptop is. It's all about picking your terms rather than, e.g., selling what people actually want instead of what you'd like them to want. Also, if you whack in a 3G modem it's suddenly a phone instead, and never mind the Mini 9."
"Clap your hands if you don't believe in netbooks," said Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. "Marketers! Marketers! Marketers! Marketers!"
Sorry, that was me confusing issues. Friendster was kicking users off for not doing as they were told. With Buzz the problem was people being sucked into it and having their GMail network exposed (in some cases putting them in personal danger) without them doing anything, and switching Buzz off not actually switching it off. The similarity is a service designed entirely for the company and not at all for the users, who are then considered annoyances.