I focus on money very very much. My company is an all linux and open source shop, and my total cost of ownership as MS once loved to push is saving me an easy $250,000 a year or more. From servers and routers to desktops. We are not an IT company, and most of employees could hardly type when they came through the door. I am not against paying for software, I just have found free open source software which is superior for my purposes.
The open source biz model works. At our current small size, whenever possible I do things like select open source software projects that I can find commercial support for when we either grow or get in trouble. Using CentOS on our server would be a case in point, or Asterisk for our PBX phone system. When I make money, they will make money.
Yes, it is more however than just about the money. I simply do not trust MS. They have a proven record of insecurity, and a proven record of burning their customer base, holding them hostage to whatever bad decision comes down their company pipe, and generally ignoring the demands of their customers. Any company that does that, does not deserve to receive a part of my IT budget. I am simply not going to risk my future and my companies future on that.
So, can anyone tell me what the vulnerability is to this backup solution?
2 prime drives in raid 1. Another drive that is an rsnapshot backup drive, hot swap, connected by a USB cable through the back of a fireproof safe bolted to the floor next to the server. Once a week or so I swap that drive and place it in another safe. Once a month, I rotate that drive out of the region. Total cost for this solution by the way was about $400, to protect 500 gigs of data (2 TB with all the drives).
What could go wrong with this, assuming the frequency of backups are sufficient? Here I am not just trying to protect from data corruption, but fire, theft, natural disaster.
yea, I bought 5 western digitals of the same make, model, batch, store, shelf, and 3 failed or where simply DOA. Now we can curse at the TB of data lost.
Now because of the sheer size of drives and read / write speeds are not really keeping up so that it would take a lot of time to restore a full backup, it is the same as saying your data is not important unless you use Raid. Raid is a must, if you wish to see your data again.
I would be almost inclined to think this is some sort of conspiracy by the drive makers, as forced use of RAID solutions means selling more drives.
Well, they screamed about the glories of the unregulated market, now let them pay the price. They consistently produced inferior product lines for too long, and now we do have choice in open source.
Even better, how about not going to walmart and not buying it at all. repositories in Linux means that all the software is a click away.
As soon as people come to understand they do not need to buy the software that runs on linux, and they do not need to make a shopping trip, and that it is already included, that will be the end of software section at wall Mart. Even the closed source software circles are moving that way.
Does destroying an old car, that by today's standards only gets marginally better gas millage, really save resources? I don't know.
Instead how about running an old car in to the ground for another year or more, where the resources such as metal, electricity, gas, have already been spent to produce it, and instead produce one or two less cars. How about retrofitting cars, or just a tuneup bonus to keep the car running correctly.
Better yet, how about uninstalling AC from all cars? How about a tax deduction for running a car without AC? Remove all the automatics and force people to drive sticks.
I had an 82 dodge charger (Mitsubishi engine) hatchback when I was in School. After stripping all the unneeded stuff out of the engine such as AC, I was able to get better than 32 miles to the gallon out of it, and up to 38 miles to the gallon if let it drop in neutral and cost when possible. I ran it to well over 250,000 miles by religiously changing the oil, and I was the third owner. It had at least one more owner after me. Well built cars from the start.
The problem with that car was it was American car with an Asian Engine. Every American part broke on it. Luckily at that time only things like the door handles where made in the USA.
I think the USA should give up making cars for everyone's well being.
I remember as a teenager taking an aptitude test, which is basically a personality test. It scored me as being suited to every single category accept for forestry / outdoors work. I had just spent the last two summers as a backwoods guide in a remote area.
15 years of study in philosophy of mind and other behavioral sciences later, I have come to the conclusion there is ZERO grounding in real science for the definitive conclusions they are suppose to indicate.
In my post I said nearly as close to judgment proof as there is. It is the decentralized way of developing the software that creates the shield.
Perhaps we need to figure out a new license and open source project model that keeps the authors identity hidden to make it even more difficult for the patent trolls.
Let us see. We use to walk to the book shelf, pull off an copy of the encyclopedia or whatever, that was produced on paper, likely shipped around the world, printed on paper from trees, that wiped out some native forest to be grown for paper, that polluted some river.
So, if I have a $1,000 set of encyclopedias that I open once a month for a year before they are outdated, what is the cost of each search? In dollars, in energy, carbon? In anything it was going to be a lot more expensive.
I have lived in Guatemala, China, a few others. The problem is that the schools systems are so bad, the teachers so uneducated, the political system so corrupt, that books and pencils will never lift them out of poverty. They are way behind. Kids never make it to school, because their families need to them to work in order to live.
On the other hand I have seen personally how teaching just a little bit about computers has moved people with no basic education in even just a few days from the bottom of the work force to the top of the work force.
Hiring someone from the bottom of the society with little education or opportunity and giving them some basic computer training has worked so well for me, I still do it as a standard hiring practice in my current biz in a developing country. They see the practical opportunity and I get a very loyal dedicated employees, in places where dedicated employees are hard to find. Every time I have tried it, even in my limited sample, it has been 100% successful.
The reason they need that is because they will never have the rest, and it will not help them now. 50 years ago yea, now that sort of turn of the century educational planning will just keep them the developing world forever. Times have changed.
It was a success in respect of getting the makers off their duff, and pushing the envelope towards cheap netbooks. Otherwise we would still be working with the $600 floor for the same crap computers from the likes of HP and dell.
I have done several installs of Mandriva and PCLINUXOS for friends over 60. Most are still chugging along, virus free and hassle free. Now when they buy new notebooks with windows installed they come to me to remove them, with "I can not find my KDE icon".
I run a biz in South America, so I keep a mirror server in a data center in North America and my office in Southern Chile. Mostly for fear that someone will do something dumb and cut a cable in Central America, but also just for long-term security.
If you want true protection, distribute out to as many places in the World as possible. No one is going to Nuke the Patagonia for example.
Before wasting billions on AI, wilfrid sellers, "Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind" should be required reading by anyone in AI, brain research, language, philosophy, accounting, CEO's, CIO's, your dog.
It is not even so much the bosses that you need to catch, it is the employees. Most of our employees are young with very little computer background. To them one software was as good as the next. Once employees are in the closed source software rut, it is hard to retrain them. Once started on open source they become use to it, and I find them unable to work when faced with things like MS office and such. Add in lots of web apps, and it is all the same to them.
The limits of your ability to introduce software apps, are the limits of your employees flexibility to learn knew things.
I save easy $250,000 US a year being an all open source shop, and would likely not even be in buisness without open source software in a small company of less than 10 employees that is not primarily IT related but uses a lot of software to reduce cost.
For those that complain that they did better under Microsoft, chances are has no idea what their IT staff was doing when they ran MS.
I find it amazing that society does not have a problem going to a public library and checking out a book, reading it, and then perhaps thousands of other people read the book, but it is somehow wrong to download the book from the internet and read it. how about loaning a book to a friend? Or a book exchange with someone you do not know?
I have a BA and Masters in philosophy of Language and AI, and I just happen to work in an IT field. I Still find my philosophical training to be the intellectual Swiss Army knife for solving just about any problem I might encounter in my life. I use it from running a company to just knowing when I should kick my hard drive vs cracking a beer.
Science is about how the World IS. Philosophy is about how the World OUGHT to be. We deal in the norms. Once you know how the World "ought" to be, figuring out why the hell the World IS NOT that way is much easier.
I have worked and lived in dozens of countries, including many developing countries, that have far better and cheaper internet access than the United States. It is the Telco's monopoly and anti-competitive practices that have kept the last mile of internet in the States years behind much of the World.
It is another form of corruption (just because it is legal, does not make it right).
Slashdot Mirror
I focus on money very very much. My company is an all linux and open source shop, and my total cost of ownership as MS once loved to push is saving me an easy $250,000 a year or more. From servers and routers to desktops. We are not an IT company, and most of employees could hardly type when they came through the door. I am not against paying for software, I just have found free open source software which is superior for my purposes.
The open source biz model works. At our current small size, whenever possible I do things like select open source software projects that I can find commercial support for when we either grow or get in trouble. Using CentOS on our server would be a case in point, or Asterisk for our PBX phone system. When I make money, they will make money.
Yes, it is more however than just about the money. I simply do not trust MS. They have a proven record of insecurity, and a proven record of burning their customer base, holding them hostage to whatever bad decision comes down their company pipe, and generally ignoring the demands of their customers. Any company that does that, does not deserve to receive a part of my IT budget. I am simply not going to risk my future and my companies future on that.
yea, thanks that would be the thing I believe I am missing. The size of the data has reached the point where burning dvd's becomes a serious hassle.
So, is it possible to uniquely identify someone say by their shit?
So, can anyone tell me what the vulnerability is to this backup solution?
2 prime drives in raid 1. Another drive that is an rsnapshot backup drive, hot swap, connected by a USB cable through the back of a fireproof safe bolted to the floor next to the server. Once a week or so I swap that drive and place it in another safe. Once a month, I rotate that drive out of the region. Total cost for this solution by the way was about $400, to protect 500 gigs of data (2 TB with all the drives).
What could go wrong with this, assuming the frequency of backups are sufficient? Here I am not just trying to protect from data corruption, but fire, theft, natural disaster.
yea, I bought 5 western digitals of the same make, model, batch, store, shelf, and 3 failed or where simply DOA. Now we can curse at the TB of data lost.
Now because of the sheer size of drives and read / write speeds are not really keeping up so that it would take a lot of time to restore a full backup, it is the same as saying your data is not important unless you use Raid. Raid is a must, if you wish to see your data again.
I would be almost inclined to think this is some sort of conspiracy by the drive makers, as forced use of RAID solutions means selling more drives.
Well, they screamed about the glories of the unregulated market, now let them pay the price. They consistently produced inferior product lines for too long, and now we do have choice in open source.
Even better, how about not going to walmart and not buying it at all. repositories in Linux means that all the software is a click away.
As soon as people come to understand they do not need to buy the software that runs on linux, and they do not need to make a shopping trip, and that it is already included, that will be the end of software section at wall Mart. Even the closed source software circles are moving that way.
This is not 1985. There is an internet.
Does destroying an old car, that by today's standards only gets marginally better gas millage, really save resources? I don't know.
Instead how about running an old car in to the ground for another year or more, where the resources such as metal, electricity, gas, have already been spent to produce it, and instead produce one or two less cars. How about retrofitting cars, or just a tuneup bonus to keep the car running correctly.
Better yet, how about uninstalling AC from all cars? How about a tax deduction for running a car without AC? Remove all the automatics and force people to drive sticks.
I had an 82 dodge charger (Mitsubishi engine) hatchback when I was in School. After stripping all the unneeded stuff out of the engine such as AC, I was able to get better than 32 miles to the gallon out of it, and up to 38 miles to the gallon if let it drop in neutral and cost when possible. I ran it to well over 250,000 miles by religiously changing the oil, and I was the third owner. It had at least one more owner after me. Well built cars from the start.
The problem with that car was it was American car with an Asian Engine. Every American part broke on it. Luckily at that time only things like the door handles where made in the USA.
I think the USA should give up making cars for everyone's well being.
I remember as a teenager taking an aptitude test, which is basically a personality test. It scored me as being suited to every single category accept for forestry / outdoors work. I had just spent the last two summers as a backwoods guide in a remote area.
15 years of study in philosophy of mind and other behavioral sciences later, I have come to the conclusion there is ZERO grounding in real science for the definitive conclusions they are suppose to indicate.
yea, they do it by proxy to cover their legal ass.
Among others:
http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/10/12/1239205
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20071011205044141
In my post I said nearly as close to judgment proof as there is. It is the decentralized way of developing the software that creates the shield.
Perhaps we need to figure out a new license and open source project model that keeps the authors identity hidden to make it even more difficult for the patent trolls.
As for MS, it is just dose of their own medicine.
Prior art all the way.
It is a bit satisfying however to have MS be the target of a patent troll.
It is even nicer that some how they could not figure out how to name open source projects as defendant.
Eventually everyone will figure out that open source will be as close as you get to judgment proof in this patent system.
Let us see. We use to walk to the book shelf, pull off an copy of the encyclopedia or whatever, that was produced on paper, likely shipped around the world, printed on paper from trees, that wiped out some native forest to be grown for paper, that polluted some river.
So, if I have a $1,000 set of encyclopedias that I open once a month for a year before they are outdated, what is the cost of each search? In dollars, in energy, carbon? In anything it was going to be a lot more expensive.
I have lived in Guatemala, China, a few others. The problem is that the schools systems are so bad, the teachers so uneducated, the political system so corrupt, that books and pencils will never lift them out of poverty. They are way behind. Kids never make it to school, because their families need to them to work in order to live.
On the other hand I have seen personally how teaching just a little bit about computers has moved people with no basic education in even just a few days from the bottom of the work force to the top of the work force.
Hiring someone from the bottom of the society with little education or opportunity and giving them some basic computer training has worked so well for me, I still do it as a standard hiring practice in my current biz in a developing country. They see the practical opportunity and I get a very loyal dedicated employees, in places where dedicated employees are hard to find. Every time I have tried it, even in my limited sample, it has been 100% successful.
you ever been to developing country?
The reason they need that is because they will never have the rest, and it will not help them now. 50 years ago yea, now that sort of turn of the century educational planning will just keep them the developing world forever. Times have changed.
It was a success in respect of getting the makers off their duff, and pushing the envelope towards cheap netbooks. Otherwise we would still be working with the $600 floor for the same crap computers from the likes of HP and dell.
I have done several installs of Mandriva and PCLINUXOS for friends over 60. Most are still chugging along, virus free and hassle free. Now when they buy new notebooks with windows installed they come to me to remove them, with "I can not find my KDE icon".
I run a biz in South America, so I keep a mirror server in a data center in North America and my office in Southern Chile. Mostly for fear that someone will do something dumb and cut a cable in Central America, but also just for long-term security.
If you want true protection, distribute out to as many places in the World as possible. No one is going to Nuke the Patagonia for example.
Before wasting billions on AI, wilfrid sellers, "Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind" should be required reading by anyone in AI, brain research, language, philosophy, accounting, CEO's, CIO's, your dog.
Philosophy of AI, Language, and Mind are where you need to go before just plugging in wires at random.
It is not even so much the bosses that you need to catch, it is the employees. Most of our employees are young with very little computer background. To them one software was as good as the next. Once employees are in the closed source software rut, it is hard to retrain them. Once started on open source they become use to it, and I find them unable to work when faced with things like MS office and such. Add in lots of web apps, and it is all the same to them.
The limits of your ability to introduce software apps, are the limits of your employees flexibility to learn knew things.
I save easy $250,000 US a year being an all open source shop, and would likely not even be in buisness without open source software in a small company of less than 10 employees that is not primarily IT related but uses a lot of software to reduce cost.
For those that complain that they did better under Microsoft, chances are has no idea what their IT staff was doing when they ran MS.
I find it amazing that society does not have a problem going to a public library and checking out a book, reading it, and then perhaps thousands of other people read the book, but it is somehow wrong to download the book from the internet and read it. how about loaning a book to a friend? Or a book exchange with someone you do not know?
I have a BA and Masters in philosophy of Language and AI, and I just happen to work in an IT field. I Still find my philosophical training to be the intellectual Swiss Army knife for solving just about any problem I might encounter in my life. I use it from running a company to just knowing when I should kick my hard drive vs cracking a beer.
Science is about how the World IS. Philosophy is about how the World OUGHT to be. We deal in the norms. Once you know how the World "ought" to be, figuring out why the hell the World IS NOT that way is much easier.
I have worked and lived in dozens of countries, including many developing countries, that have far better and cheaper internet access than the United States. It is the Telco's monopoly and anti-competitive practices that have kept the last mile of internet in the States years behind much of the World.
It is another form of corruption (just because it is legal, does not make it right).