Nah, that was based on experience. You can beat Windows into behaving reliably if you throw enough people at it. But if you can avoid it, you should.
Some things really are intrinsically more shit than others; noticing this isn't a religious objection. Just because pigs fly if you apply sufficient thrust and persistence doesn't actually make flying pigs a good idea.
The answer is: using Windows in the server room, except at gunpoint (the software needed runs on nothing else) is fundamentally brain-damaged behaviour.
Not in this case. VMware has eight years maturing, nothing else does.
I can accept that KVM might be good if everything is Linux (and the same kernel). But in the real world, VMware is so far ahead of every other virtual machine in combining a mature and stable implementation with usable performance that people will actually pay VMware's licensing costs. And I say that with the pain of having actually looked into said costs compared to the laughably inadequate alternatives.
Man, if any of the competitors were anywhere near practical usability beating VMware, sysadmins the world over would be tossing their hats in the air with joy. They aren't. Really really.
One really important skill of a sysadmin is a feel for how a new system will work, based on what you know about machines, systems and the people who develop them.
(This skill is honed by having random new stuff thrown at you that you are asked for meaningful advice on within 12 hours of having first heard of it.)
It's volunteer management. Volunteers will work ten times as hard as any paid employee... but only on stuff they want to do. So the management problem is: how to make this job look tasty to them?
With Linux, a metric will typically work. "Dudes," Linus could say, "this is our performance graph. What can we do about this?" And people will solve the problem in front of them. Remember the Mindcraft benchmark, where Microsoft put forward a horribly slanted benchmark which NT4 beat Linux on at the time, and the kernel coders made sure Linux won at that too?
The same sort of problem applies with Wikipedia, with just about any charity, with local sports clubs, with student clubs at university...
Volunteer management is herding cats. So the tricky bit is working out the local value of tuna.
"We want to be more responsive to your needs," said Sam Ramji of Microsoft during a Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit panel this week as he wiped rotten tomatoes off his suit.
"We want all open source innovation to happen on Windows. In practice, Windows is too slow, and just putting Linux underneath the same software stack triples performance. So we're running the Windows versions of the software on Linux using Wine. We'll also be funding the Wine on Windows initiative."
The new Microsoft Amazingly Open And Genuine Public License allows you complete freedom to use, modify and redistribute the software provided that every copy comes with a DVD of Windows Vista Ultimate, you acknowledge that Microsoft's FAT patent protects a remarkable and valuable innovation in computer science and all accompanying documentation is in OOXML. Also, all your data belongs to Microsoft.
The overwhelming dominance of Microsoft was assured, he said, pointing to their success in paying netbook manufacturers to use Windows XP and paying US retailers not to stock the Linux versions of the computers. "We're also enforcing our patent on right-clicking. And on the number seven." Ramji reassured journalists of his absolute faith in the power of Microsoft's vision, just before quitting to work somewhere -- anywhere -- else.
The minister for science and innovation, Lord Paul Drayson, has praised the high standards of science journalism at the sixth World Conference of Science Journalists in London yesterday. About 900 delegates attended the conference to congratulate each other on the remarkable quality of their press release transcription skills.
"The public relies on dependable science journalism to understand the forces shaping the modern world," said Lord Drayson. "Your work covering the things that really matter, such as pseudo-evolutionary explanations of current fashion trends, what will give us cancer this week, scaring the crap out of people over the MMR vaccine so their kids die of birth defects from measles instead and why fellatio is required for female health helps people make important choices about their lives and builds a vital gap between scientists and the public. I mean bridge."
He dismissed claims that typical science reporting primarily results in sensationalist and misleading headlines. "I wish more journalists would follow your example. The ones covering MPs' expenses certainly should have been working the way you do."
The speech was delivered to a backdrop of A-level students in lab coats. And bikinis.
Professor Gene Hunt of the University of Metro calculated that Lord Drayson's speech could power all of Britain for six months purely from harnessing the steam coming out of Ben Goldacreâ(TM)s ears.
Indeed. They put wifi into the first Zune and DIDN'T put a web browser in. They could have had an iPod Touch beater SIX MONTHS ahead of Apple. Why didn't they?
They are usually accurate and biased - i.e., you won't find a factual error - but if Apple made baby-mulching machines he'd write a novel-length article on how they're the best thing ever created, baby-mulching is the most noble human activity possible and Steve Jobs deserves a Nobel peace prize. And how any objection is all Microsoft FUDding the press.
In a bid to win back profits after huge layoffs worldwide, Microsoft has launched the new Zune MusicTurd(tm).
The highly competitive MusicTurd(tm) music store offers tracks at twice the price, DRM-locked to a chosen individual ear of the purchaser. Microsoft were careful to point out to the financial press that charging your account, however, works perfectly and that the helpline number has been connected to a fax machine.
Microsoft is confident the MusicTurd(tm) service will attract millions of people who will buy tracks from them to play on one player ever, not transferable to any other device including the same device's replacement, in preference to stores offering cheaper unlocked MP3s, and won't just drive people to filesharing networks, MP3 blogs or copying terabyte USB disks full of music from their friends in sheer disgust at these corporate tools.
"We understand that lots of people use electrical devices they carry around with them these days," said marketing marketer Hugh Jarse, "and you can even play music on them. A bit like a transistor radio. Whatever will they think of next! So if we get the consumer interest, we'll offer an enhanced version, MusicTurd(tm) Polished(tm). Like we're doing with Windows 7. You can't expect it to be any good until the third version, of course. So buy the first two and it'll be fantastic. Trust us on this. We have hundreds of loyal suck, er, customers, I'm sure we can squeeze them until the pips rattle.
"What do you mean, I'm lacking enthusiasm for our product? You'd think I was trying to get redundancy in the next round of layoffs or something. Ha! Ha! What a ridiculous notion."
Microsoft Corporation has announced a limited one-off extension of availability of its Windows XP operating system to April 2101 after criticism from large customers and analysts. This is the fifty-sixth extension of XP's availability since 2008.
Through successive releases of Microsoft's flagship Windows operating system, demand for XP has remained an important factor for businesses relying on stable XP-specific software and installations, who have pushed back strongly against the software company's attempts to move them to later versions. Windows administration skills have become rare in recent years and consultants have demanded high fees. Reviving Windows administrators from cryogenic freezing has proven insufficient to fill the market gap, as almost all begged to work on COBOL instead.
"Windows XP is currently in the extremely very prolonged super-extended support phase and Microsoft encourages customers to migrate to Windows for Neurons 2097 as soon as feasible," said William Gates V, CEO and great-grandson of the company founder. "Spare change?"
Microsoft Corporation, along with Monsanto Corporation and the RIAA, exists as a protected species in the Seattle Memorial Glass Crater Bad Ideas And Warnings To The Future National Park in north-west Washington on the radioactive remains of what was once the planet Earth, under the protection of our Linux-based superintelligent robot artificial intelligence overlords. Company revenues for 2098 were over $15.
You can tell when it's August or September and there's no proper news to print: the papers print an article saying the sexist notion of the day is proven by "our caveman ancestors".
Troll, how dare you sir! Everything except the last two paragraphs is actual "news" stories. Evidently our caveman ancestors are alive and well and working at Associated Newspapers in London.
I think we can make the game meaningfully shorter:
"You wanna install Windows? Here, drink this entire bottle of rotgut. Having your stomach pumped will be far more productive as well as more pleasurable."
British scientists have uncovered why little girls like pink toys. "Women are hardwired to like pink," says Professor Gene Hunt of the University of Metro, "because their cavewoman foremothers spent their days gathering red leaves and berries amongst the trees." Later, women needed to notice red-faced babies and blushing boyfriends. Men are attracted to blue because of the colour of the sky as seen when hunting.
Women are also predisposed to backstab one another in the workplace and cry in the boardroom, just like the social structures in the cave population as extrapolated from two bone needles. Being too successful will increase women's testosterone, giving them hairy nipples and male-pattern baldness. Females joining the hunt may also explain the end of the Neanderthals.
IQ test studies show that women have lower IQs on average than men, undoubtedly from lesser need for environmental variation while taking care of the cave. Tests on little boys prove that testosterone correlates with a sense of humour, so women naturally can't take a joke. Housework has been shown to cut the risk of several fatal diseases, and dressing up nicely around the house is psychologically healthy as it uses the Homo erectus clan maintenance abilities of the female of the tribe.
Men are naturally predisposed to sleep with as many women as possible, as proven by lions, whereas women are naturally predisposed to stay loyal to their man and their spawn. Women who sleep around are at increased risk of parasites and death, as proven by cheetahs, who are a pack of catty sluts.
In a final crowning achievement, the team has shown that daily fellatio greatly reduces the incidence of breast cancer. Furthermore, regular sexual intercourse is essential to feminine health, but may be injurious if prolonged for more than two minutes or conducted while the man is sober.
"In conclusion," says Professor Hunt, "all of this is top-notch science that you can absolutely rely on. Now get your knickers back on and make me a cuppa."
You must be some sorta connoisewer. Cheap vodka, cheap rotgut or methylated spirits are what we're after here. You some sort of Apple buyer, throwing all that money and classiness around?
Slashdot Mirror
Now find a popular web page these days that's static HTML. Even Wikipedia sends a metric arseload of JavaScript.
Nah, that was based on experience. You can beat Windows into behaving reliably if you throw enough people at it. But if you can avoid it, you should.
Some things really are intrinsically more shit than others; noticing this isn't a religious objection. Just because pigs fly if you apply sufficient thrust and persistence doesn't actually make flying pigs a good idea.
The answer is: using Windows in the server room, except at gunpoint (the software needed runs on nothing else) is fundamentally brain-damaged behaviour.
"Mature" is relative,
Not in this case. VMware has eight years maturing, nothing else does.
I can accept that KVM might be good if everything is Linux (and the same kernel). But in the real world, VMware is so far ahead of every other virtual machine in combining a mature and stable implementation with usable performance that people will actually pay VMware's licensing costs. And I say that with the pain of having actually looked into said costs compared to the laughably inadequate alternatives.
Man, if any of the competitors were anywhere near practical usability beating VMware, sysadmins the world over would be tossing their hats in the air with joy. They aren't. Really really.
a 3 month contract for $9/hr in a distant major metro area."
Lotta those are to "prove" they can't get a local so need an H1B or to outsource.
+1
One really important skill of a sysadmin is a feel for how a new system will work, based on what you know about machines, systems and the people who develop them.
(This skill is honed by having random new stuff thrown at you that you are asked for meaningful advice on within 12 hours of having first heard of it.)
It's volunteer management. Volunteers will work ten times as hard as any paid employee ... but only on stuff they want to do. So the management problem is: how to make this job look tasty to them?
With Linux, a metric will typically work. "Dudes," Linus could say, "this is our performance graph. What can we do about this?" And people will solve the problem in front of them. Remember the Mindcraft benchmark, where Microsoft put forward a horribly slanted benchmark which NT4 beat Linux on at the time, and the kernel coders made sure Linux won at that too?
The same sort of problem applies with Wikipedia, with just about any charity, with local sports clubs, with student clubs at university ...
Volunteer management is herding cats. So the tricky bit is working out the local value of tuna.
Microsoft has announced Microsoft CodePlex, its new Open Source foundation.
"We want to be more responsive to your needs," said Sam Ramji of Microsoft during a Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit panel this week as he wiped rotten tomatoes off his suit.
"We want all open source innovation to happen on Windows. In practice, Windows is too slow, and just putting Linux underneath the same software stack triples performance. So we're running the Windows versions of the software on Linux using Wine. We'll also be funding the Wine on Windows initiative."
The new Microsoft Amazingly Open And Genuine Public License allows you complete freedom to use, modify and redistribute the software provided that every copy comes with a DVD of Windows Vista Ultimate, you acknowledge that Microsoft's FAT patent protects a remarkable and valuable innovation in computer science and all accompanying documentation is in OOXML. Also, all your data belongs to Microsoft.
The overwhelming dominance of Microsoft was assured, he said, pointing to their success in paying netbook manufacturers to use Windows XP and paying US retailers not to stock the Linux versions of the computers. "We're also enforcing our patent on right-clicking. And on the number seven." Ramji reassured journalists of his absolute faith in the power of Microsoft's vision, just before quitting to work somewhere -- anywhere -- else.
The minister for science and innovation, Lord Paul Drayson, has praised the high standards of science journalism at the sixth World Conference of Science Journalists in London yesterday. About 900 delegates attended the conference to congratulate each other on the remarkable quality of their press release transcription skills.
"The public relies on dependable science journalism to understand the forces shaping the modern world," said Lord Drayson. "Your work covering the things that really matter, such as pseudo-evolutionary explanations of current fashion trends, what will give us cancer this week, scaring the crap out of people over the MMR vaccine so their kids die of birth defects from measles instead and why fellatio is required for female health helps people make important choices about their lives and builds a vital gap between scientists and the public. I mean bridge."
He dismissed claims that typical science reporting primarily results in sensationalist and misleading headlines. "I wish more journalists would follow your example. The ones covering MPs' expenses certainly should have been working the way you do."
The speech was delivered to a backdrop of A-level students in lab coats. And bikinis.
Professor Gene Hunt of the University of Metro calculated that Lord Drayson's speech could power all of Britain for six months purely from harnessing the steam coming out of Ben Goldacreâ(TM)s ears.
Not separating wholesale and retail operations was a major error when competition was first opened up.
If Conroy can pull this one off, he may not be an entirely surplus sack of shit after all.
win!
Indeed. They put wifi into the first Zune and DIDN'T put a web browser in. They could have had an iPod Touch beater SIX MONTHS ahead of Apple. Why didn't they?
They are usually accurate and biased - i.e., you won't find a factual error - but if Apple made baby-mulching machines he'd write a novel-length article on how they're the best thing ever created, baby-mulching is the most noble human activity possible and Steve Jobs deserves a Nobel peace prize. And how any objection is all Microsoft FUDding the press.
In a bid to win back profits after huge layoffs worldwide, Microsoft has launched the new Zune MusicTurd(tm).
The highly competitive MusicTurd(tm) music store offers tracks at twice the price, DRM-locked to a chosen individual ear of the purchaser. Microsoft were careful to point out to the financial press that charging your account, however, works perfectly and that the helpline number has been connected to a fax machine.
Microsoft is confident the MusicTurd(tm) service will attract millions of people who will buy tracks from them to play on one player ever, not transferable to any other device including the same device's replacement, in preference to stores offering cheaper unlocked MP3s, and won't just drive people to filesharing networks, MP3 blogs or copying terabyte USB disks full of music from their friends in sheer disgust at these corporate tools.
"We understand that lots of people use electrical devices they carry around with them these days," said marketing marketer Hugh Jarse, "and you can even play music on them. A bit like a transistor radio. Whatever will they think of next! So if we get the consumer interest, we'll offer an enhanced version, MusicTurd(tm) Polished(tm). Like we're doing with Windows 7. You can't expect it to be any good until the third version, of course. So buy the first two and it'll be fantastic. Trust us on this. We have hundreds of loyal suck, er, customers, I'm sure we can squeeze them until the pips rattle.
"What do you mean, I'm lacking enthusiasm for our product? You'd think I was trying to get redundancy in the next round of layoffs or something. Ha! Ha! What a ridiculous notion."
Illustration: The new Zune logo.
Microsoft Corporation has announced a limited one-off extension of availability of its Windows XP operating system to April 2101 after criticism from large customers and analysts. This is the fifty-sixth extension of XP's availability since 2008.
Through successive releases of Microsoft's flagship Windows operating system, demand for XP has remained an important factor for businesses relying on stable XP-specific software and installations, who have pushed back strongly against the software company's attempts to move them to later versions. Windows administration skills have become rare in recent years and consultants have demanded high fees. Reviving Windows administrators from cryogenic freezing has proven insufficient to fill the market gap, as almost all begged to work on COBOL instead.
"Windows XP is currently in the extremely very prolonged super-extended support phase and Microsoft encourages customers to migrate to Windows for Neurons 2097 as soon as feasible," said William Gates V, CEO and great-grandson of the company founder. "Spare change?"
Microsoft Corporation, along with Monsanto Corporation and the RIAA, exists as a protected species in the Seattle Memorial Glass Crater Bad Ideas And Warnings To The Future National Park in north-west Washington on the radioactive remains of what was once the planet Earth, under the protection of our Linux-based superintelligent robot artificial intelligence overlords. Company revenues for 2098 were over $15.
illustration: A background wallpaper for your insecurable XP desktop. (Anyone got a pointer to the 1024x768 version?)
It does if you have 2 gig of memory. Bit cramped with 1 gig. Unusable with 512MB.
Windows 7 is more user-responsive than Vista, but its arse is just as fat.
You can tell when it's August or September and there's no proper news to print: the papers print an article saying the sexist notion of the day is proven by "our caveman ancestors".
Just use real bullets!
*blam* "I ... CAIN'T ... DIE!"
Take a shot ... no, twelve shots! ... no, the bottle! ... no, give up drinking!
http://notnews.today.com/feed/
Troll, how dare you sir! Everything except the last two paragraphs is actual "news" stories. Evidently our caveman ancestors are alive and well and working at Associated Newspapers in London.
I think we can make the game meaningfully shorter:
"You wanna install Windows? Here, drink this entire bottle of rotgut. Having your stomach pumped will be far more productive as well as more pleasurable."
British scientists have uncovered why little girls like pink toys. "Women are hardwired to like pink," says Professor Gene Hunt of the University of Metro, "because their cavewoman foremothers spent their days gathering red leaves and berries amongst the trees." Later, women needed to notice red-faced babies and blushing boyfriends. Men are attracted to blue because of the colour of the sky as seen when hunting.
Women are also predisposed to backstab one another in the workplace and cry in the boardroom, just like the social structures in the cave population as extrapolated from two bone needles. Being too successful will increase women's testosterone, giving them hairy nipples and male-pattern baldness. Females joining the hunt may also explain the end of the Neanderthals.
IQ test studies show that women have lower IQs on average than men, undoubtedly from lesser need for environmental variation while taking care of the cave. Tests on little boys prove that testosterone correlates with a sense of humour, so women naturally can't take a joke. Housework has been shown to cut the risk of several fatal diseases, and dressing up nicely around the house is psychologically healthy as it uses the Homo erectus clan maintenance abilities of the female of the tribe.
Men are naturally predisposed to sleep with as many women as possible, as proven by lions, whereas women are naturally predisposed to stay loyal to their man and their spawn. Women who sleep around are at increased risk of parasites and death, as proven by cheetahs, who are a pack of catty sluts.
In a final crowning achievement, the team has shown that daily fellatio greatly reduces the incidence of breast cancer. Furthermore, regular sexual intercourse is essential to feminine health, but may be injurious if prolonged for more than two minutes or conducted while the man is sober.
"In conclusion," says Professor Hunt, "all of this is top-notch science that you can absolutely rely on. Now get your knickers back on and make me a cuppa."
You must be some sorta connoisewer. Cheap vodka, cheap rotgut or methylated spirits are what we're after here. You some sort of Apple buyer, throwing all that money and classiness around?
I was actually trying to win it with Alan Turing apologises for Gordon Brown. But this'll do ;-)