I had no idea that I was abusing the privilege of tabbed browsing by using it to keep as few browser windows open as possible.
I need to rethink my entire browsing paradigm. This guy makes too many good points, I've been browsing all wrong all these years, what could I have been thinking? Thank you Random Polish Guy, thank you for explaining why one shouldn't abuse tabs by having two separate sites open at the same time.
I have learned that in the Adult World, Uniquely Bright only gets you beat up, or at least makes people loathe you.
I dropped out of high school 12 years ago, with promises of good colleges. I spent a couple of years just hacking and hacking, when I turned 18, I spent the next 6 years working hard (labor, warehouse forklift driver type stuff, which is still the most fun I've had ever). I worked my ass off doing nights at the warehouse and days in a local computer store. Then I moved into a full time web-admin position in 99. Through hard work and intuitive understanding of "how networks are", I have become a reasonably successful administrator.
However, believing yourself to be "Uniquely Bright" at any stage of your career is a recipe for disaster. There are many people smarter, faster, and more prepared. You have to make your own way in the world. If you own your future the sense of accomplishment is unmatched. If you go to school and come out the other end before realizing that you're just like a thousand other Applicants, well, that's a mistake that will lead to boredom.
My advice is that everyone should have a laborious job for a time. A job that would get you looked down on by many people (and it will. Don't worry, don't need 'em). Make it yours, make friends, learn to have fun. Then you appreciate that cushy desk job with that $700 chair that much more. Plus you never, ever, have a sense of entitlement again, and you never, ever, become the type of person to look down their nose at anyone for anything as trivial as "class".
Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water. . . more FUD attacks.
This is so stupid I think we need a parody done by Scott Lazar. But I'll do my best to tell you the news with a straight face. The Alexis de Toqueville Institution, who as you may recall admitted it gets funding from Microsoft, has put out a press release on a "study" they have done that suggests that Linus isn't the father of Linux after all. Another "independent" study with Microsoft peeking out from behind the curtain.
It's good when you are opposed by Larry and Moe. How dumb do you need to be to attack Linus Torvalds? As I've said before, it's like kicking Dorothy's little dog, Toto. All you get for your trouble is a lot of really offended folks who seriously dislike you and all your supporters.
Their press release provides no proof, no facts, no details, but it claims the author, the head of the Institution, Ken Brown, did extensive interviews with Richard Stallman, Dennis Ritchie, and Andrew Tanenbaum before discovering Linux's "questionable" roots. Linus, unbeknownst to us, is not the man of integrity we know him to have proven himself to be. Instead, I gather they mean to say he is a common thief, or so the Institution hints, who stole from UNIX. Because they provide no explanation, beyond the hints, we are compelled to draw the conclusion that this is what they seem to mean:
"Brown suggests the invention of Unix is an integral part of the Linux story commenting, 'It is clear that people's exceptional interest in the Unix operating system made Unix one of the most licensed, imitated, and stolen products in the history of computer science.'"
I guess Linus'd have to be a liar too, because he has stated publicly that the origins of Linux were not UNIX (Cf. Minix reference in this historic Linus email). The article about their "study" is here. Here is a taste:
"Popular but controversial 'open source' computer software, generally contributed on a volunteer basis, is often taken or adapted from material owned by other companies and individuals, a study by the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution finds. . ..
"Among other points, the study directly challenges Linus Torvalds' claim to be the inventor of Linux."
Maybe Linus would lie and steal other people's code if it's like that movie, "Invasion of the Cabbage People", or whatever that horror movie was called, where people's brains were taken over, and they were then pliable and did things they never would do as their true selves.
This press release is disgusting, and I hope Linus sues, not that he is the type to sue. He may not be able to, because in true FUD fashion, the headline says "probably", as in "Torvalds claim to 'invent' Linux probably false, says new study." Of course the "study" itself is not available, consisting, I gather, of what is in Mr. Brown's head and notes. You can buy the book, and they probably put out the press release because they want you to, and there will be "excerpts" available on May 20.
If this group is the new SCO, we have lucked out. They incompetently provide a link from their article to what they say will be a UNIX and Linux timeline, but the link takes you instead to a Linux page, which is a bit out-of-date, listing Caldera Linux, which then links to the UNIX page. Except there is no timeline.
Not to worry. We are working on one. The Grokline research project, which will result in a ownership-history-of-UNIX timeline chart to amplify Eric Levenez' chart, will be going online this week. I'll tell you more soon, and I hope you will help us beat off the dark side's UNIX nonsense once and for all by contributing your knowledge and skills to that project, so we can prove where all the code came from and who owned it, making future "studies" like this one impossible. Not to mention future SCO's.
Anyway, when you get to the Linux page, it sings Linux's praises and correctly attributes Linux's aut
I've had no problem with the built-in 802.11b in my laptop (HP Pavilion ze5300). I HAVE run into ATI problems though. ATI is in copout-mode on these. They say that the individual manufacturers add/remove different features with their mobile parts, and hence, ATI won't give you drivers for a mobile part, saying "get them from HP/IBM/whoever".
I was under the impression that's what reference drivers are for eh? At least let me TRY and get 3d working.
However, I obviously don't hold SuSE responsible for this, it's by far my favorite distro. I'm a Linux-only type, so I want something that is comfortable and consistent between my home system, my work system with Xinerama and my laptop, and not to run several differnt distros.
$30 for Personal, $90 for Professional. Remember, Linux Isn't Windows. The differences between Personal and Professional are not going to amount to the Personal version being crippled and the Pro version being more powerful. It's more what's included. You want 64 bit support, buy Pro. But the versions are functionally the same, it's not like XP (wrt domain logins, etc).
I'm still trying to figure out what, besides 64-bit support, Pro HAS that Personal doesn't.
SuSE's model is the very spirit of the GPL. A company has every right to sell media for their software, as long as they make the source available to those who pay. In fact, SuSE is going above and beyond the LETTER of the GPL by allowing for-free FTP installs.
For those who want books, want media, etc, buy the CD. For those who are technical enough, use the FTP install. I've always used the FTP install and have zero problems with it, works great.
Of course, if you're a REAL whiner about it, you can always just STEAL the.ISO's for SuSE from various, primarily Eastern European resources. The same resources posting OpenBSD.ISO's, unofficial Debian.ISO's, etc. After all, it's all free software, yeah? So WHAT if OpenBSD copywrites their directory structure, they don't actually deserve MONEY for making the OS (or SuSE their distro), do they?
I mean, jeez, it's THIRTY bucks... I don't see anything in Pro that you can't just go download anyway. If it had Crossover Office/plugin, I might buy the thing, since I've been thinking about getting Crossover for my wife anyway.
So to do that a Linux distro needs to either be root all the time, or break away from the traditonal UNIX security model and offer something like Windows NT's Administrator accounts that, while not all powerful, are capable of doing just about anything.
It seems that many Linux users don't understand the concept of "wheel" as it was in the past. That being a group conceived so that you can have powerful users without them logging in as root. They can add/remove software for example if you want, up/down network cards, etc.
Works even better using RDP. Windows XP, Windows2k Server, and Win2k3 (and NT4 Terminal Services I guess...but...why?) work great through RDesktop. It's way fast, and with XP or 2k3 you can get 16-bit color and sound instead of just 256 as with Windows 2000.
Back 10 or 12 years ago, wasn't WalMart one putting American flags all over everything and a big part of "Buy American" campaigns? I could be mistaken.
It's just odd to see how they are now actively killing off American companies, or forcing them to offshore their production or sell to WalMart at a loss to compete. See Vlasic pickles, Master Locks, Dial soap, Levi's (although I think that might have been their own fault somewhat), etc.
I've tried to figure out a way to work either my full-time dayjob + some crap job, or full-time + consult on the side. So far the math won't line up. For instance, I'm at work at 8:45 with no end in sight, wouldn't be very good for my clients (or my gas station manager) if I had to call and say "no go, full time job is taking too much time".
You sound like you're in the perfect position to do what I'd like, which is work one full-time tech job + consulting during the day. I say keep the mainframe operator gig, and if you're at all competant at it, do small time network consulting during the day. If you're not that confident, charge like $25-$50/hour until you're a heavy-hitter and can charge much more.
I couldn't agree more with the idea. My new laptop is festooned with blue lights and it looks like a toy. The thing would look much more sharp without blue glows every couple of inches.
I have two machines on my work desktop:
P4 2.6, SuSE 9, 3 video cards, 3 x 17" monitor, many virtual desktops on each.
P4 2.6, Win2k Server, Headless.
Through the magic of RDesktop, I access the Win2k server for Outlook, and Visio. Aside from that it is used as file storage and IIS testbed.
RDesktop works as well as or better than the Windows or Mac term-serv clients. However, if you want full color (>256) and full sound support, you'll need WinXP or.Net server, its support for RDP 5.1 allows this.
I very very rarely have to attach a monitor to the Windows server, I often have multiple RDP sessions running, say on my laptop and on my desktop. You can configure X hotkeys to remain in effect within the RDP session, allowing you to run the remote desktop fullscreen with no borders, and still use hotkeys to switch virtual desktops (shift+left/right arrow for example).
Windows multi-head support is miles behind X, IMHO, and the 3 head setup is a huge productivity gain. If my lame desktop machine had any more slots, I'd totally slam more video cards in it.
We also use Term Services and RAdmin (www.famatech.com) to administer our production server farm, very convenient.
I struggled briefly with FreeS/WAN before getting a flawless working setup between my home net and the PIX at my office. It's exceedingly easy to configure, once you "get it". Never have been able to make it play with a Contivity though.
If anyone takes over development, I will definitely be testing each new version, at least as it pertains to my setup.
People expect that since you work at an "internet company", and management gets stricken by the "Business @ the Speed of Thought"(c) meme, that you're able to deliver infrastructure anywhere, instantly. In such an environment, requirements and standards docs tend to be quickly put together, vendors are expected to deliver yesterday, etc.
That has been the case at the last couple of places I've worked. A good example being a (very) small ISP I worked at in like 1999-2000. They wanted daily backup of 200 websites (roughly 60GB total of data), with offsite storage, for less than two grand. DDS didn't cut it anymore, since it took most of the day to make the daily backup. Since harddrives were just getting cheap, I implemented a quick skunk works solution of 8 removable (not hot swap) 36GB IDE drives in a custom padded backpack, half to be taken offsite each night, and half to remain for the daily backups, which I set up as differential FTP (they were a "Microsoft Shop"), there's 144GB of cheap daily networked backup, but what a hack.
I was given something like a month to get a solution, all the tape and storage vendors just laughed and laughed when we mentioned the price point we needed to hit, and the speed with which it needed to be implemented. 4 years later, for all I know they're still carrying that backpack around.
Software is the same way, I have friends at various software companies with incredible deadlines to implement extravagent features. I really feel for my programmer friends, I have it much easier as an admin monkey, so I hear.
However, you ARE able to print her Unicycle. All the cool kids have regular schwinns, but her unicycle is built to a much higher quality spec. Somepeople say unicycle people are elitist, but I don't see it. It has a very steep learning curve, to be sure, but once you're proficient, you can have just as much fun as if you had a regular bike. People might look at you funny, but it's ok, because you're among a higher class of the Unicylerati.
To quote John Grisham "It ain't sexy, but it's got teeth".
Good luck making that stick. As long as they show that they THOUGHT they were right, then they're clear. But I don't think they would have to, I would think it would be the up to the complainants to show that they DIDN'T think they were right. Have fun with that.
Where there are polar bears, there are no penguins, where there are penguins, there are no polar bears. I'm not sure exactly what the natural enemy of the penguin is, but my guess is it's something that lurks under the water and picks up a nice quick-swimming treat.
I almost bought a house (put an offer on) in an area with no cable and no DSL. I went to work researching DirecWay, and all I got from DSLreports was complaint after complaint. Well, I thought, no one ever writes in about how GREAT their service is, right?
So I looked at all the literature from DirecTV, and it didn't look much better from that angle. $600 UP FRONT fee for equipment, plus $60/month for a service which MIGHT give you 500kbps downstream and ~100 up. I do a lot of remote administration using Windows apps, and although I've done it on dialup, and it's not/that/ bad, it's not something I'd look forward to.
Plus, and here's where your problem would come in, they have TOC enforced caps. If you pass your given download quota for a given period (ie you transfer down a set of Debian.ISO's and it takes a day), blam, you're cut off. You have to call in and get them to undo it, which can take days. I wasn't prepared to call someone else when I was on call and say "hey, I know it's 1:30 am, but would you mind going on and fixing this server, DirecTV cut me off, again".
In the end I was going to just get dialup, maybe get 2 accounts and team 'em up to get a bit more speed, rather than deal with the flakiness I saw inherent in DirecWay and its competition. I looked HARD for any answer, and the best I could do was dual-dialup. (unless I wanted to spend $175/month on ISDN, or several hundred more for a full T).
Am I the only one who cannot enter any text into anything without locking the browser and having to kill it? If I launch the browser, it launches fine, click inside the URL field, locked. Put in a URL as a command line argument, comes up fine, hit something that has authentication, click in the auth dialog, locked. Bring up a site with a form (slashdot), browser launches, click in the search form at the bottom, locked.
What up with that? I assume there's some xft/aa checkbox somewhere?
But vFolders, that's about the most useful thing since duct tape. At least giving you the ability to do multiple levels of searching by dumping all your primary results into a vFolder in Evolution, then searching the vFolder. Outlook drives me insane with its inability to do stuff like this.
Many computer rooms use sprinklers. Halon is largely illegal now and many fire system contractors won't deal with it even if it is there.
We have a "dry" system, where you have to break 2 heads in separate zones for the system to flood, the room has to be almost 200F for water to actually flow.
Since the pipes are dry normally, it doesn't hurt at all if you accidentally wipe out a sprinkler head with a relay rack, or rip a pipe down in the ceiling. The rest of the building will be deeply engulfed in flame, and the computers will have already melted from ambient heat before the water system in that room kicks in.
In fact, my guess has always been that the reality, even with halon, is that halon/foam doesn't do you any good when the rest of the building falls down on top of your spiffy computer room.
The problem is, what happens if there's a LOCALIZED fire in that room. What if the PDU explodes into a million sparking pieces. What if the UPS explodes, bad things could happen. Of course, in either of those cases, the "bad things" would include probably sending a fairly deadly spike into the machines, frying them to the point that we don't care if the water is flowing or not.
I've been running 3.2 alpha1 on my primary desktop since it was released and haven't had any real problems (thank you konstruct). Tonight I grabbed 3.2b1 RPMS for SuSE and put it on a laptop I just built, and I seem to be having the same problems as everyone else, with only "Menu Settings" showing up in kcontrol.
So aside from not being able to change anything:-), everything looks great. Not much surprising since I've been using alpha1 anyway, but very nice and quick. Although I've got nothing to benchmark it against on this laptop.
Any workarounds for the kcontol menu issue, besides installing desktop-data-SuSE-8.2.99-61.noarch, which didn't work?
I'm running Alpha 2, and it is great. Many UI bugs fixed, like now they shrink tabs instead of making you scroll around when there are lots of tabs open.
I miss "view source" in the context menu on a webpage, and I'm still patiently waiting for some mid-mouse AutoScroll, Opera and Firebird seem to be able to deal with this as meaning "paste" when on a textarea, "scroll" when on plaintext, and "open in new tab" when on a link. I would love to see this in Konq. Konqeror is still my primary browser anyway.
We have implemented inbound and outbound Postfix relays, keeping the exchange servers safe. We're running Exchange 2000 native AD.
I feel much safer with Postfix and ssh being my only two internet-facing ports, and having Exchange well removed from the rest of the world.
Another note would be to keep an inbound and outbound relay system, primarily so you don't get bitten by your own configuration mistakes. It's possible to make a slip that would allow open relay.
Not to start a Postfix/Sendmail flamewar, but if all you're doing is relay, why drive a nail with a cinder block instead of a hammer? Postfix is the good "middle ground" between the flexibility of sendmail and the security of Qmail, easy to configure, secure and fast.
My current company is exceptionally flexible, at least as far as some users are concerned. In other places IT is very restrictive.
However, as to other places I've been as a consultant, they would just have people installing software and hardware just because they felt like it. It gives you terrible licencing headaches (the company will probably be ultimately responsible for any software found on an employee desktop, whether they knew about it or not). It's all about finding the right mix. If your developers are coding ASP.NET, and VB apps, should you let them bring in a random powerbook? Should you let them bring in their personal laptops without ensuring they're safe in any case? Nope.
You can have the best network topology, the best security policy, if someone brings in a laptop that has multiple backdoors and trojans on it, or if they get hit by a malicious site that installs an outbound nc.exe connection to another site over port 80, allowing an inbound tunnel to their cmd.exe, guess what all that architecture and planning is worth?
You have to give your users an environment in which they're comfortable and able to work, yes. You must NOT let it get to the point where your environment is so un-comfortable that they feel the need to plug in their own gear. When that happens, well, best laid plans and all that:-)
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I had no idea that I was abusing the privilege of tabbed browsing by using it to keep as few browser windows open as possible. I need to rethink my entire browsing paradigm. This guy makes too many good points, I've been browsing all wrong all these years, what could I have been thinking? Thank you Random Polish Guy, thank you for explaining why one shouldn't abuse tabs by having two separate sites open at the same time.
I have learned that in the Adult World, Uniquely Bright only gets you beat up, or at least makes people loathe you.
I dropped out of high school 12 years ago, with promises of good colleges. I spent a couple of years just hacking and hacking, when I turned 18, I spent the next 6 years working hard (labor, warehouse forklift driver type stuff, which is still the most fun I've had ever). I worked my ass off doing nights at the warehouse and days in a local computer store. Then I moved into a full time web-admin position in 99. Through hard work and intuitive understanding of "how networks are", I have become a reasonably successful administrator.
However, believing yourself to be "Uniquely Bright" at any stage of your career is a recipe for disaster. There are many people smarter, faster, and more prepared. You have to make your own way in the world. If you own your future the sense of accomplishment is unmatched. If you go to school and come out the other end before realizing that you're just like a thousand other Applicants, well, that's a mistake that will lead to boredom.
My advice is that everyone should have a laborious job for a time. A job that would get you looked down on by many people (and it will. Don't worry, don't need 'em). Make it yours, make friends, learn to have fun. Then you appreciate that cushy desk job with that $700 chair that much more. Plus you never, ever, have a sense of entitlement again, and you never, ever, become the type of person to look down their nose at anyone for anything as trivial as "class".
Holy page-widening Batman. Here's the text:
.
Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water. . . more FUD attacks.
This is so stupid I think we need a parody done by Scott Lazar. But I'll do my best to tell you the news with a straight face. The Alexis de Toqueville Institution, who as you may recall admitted it gets funding from Microsoft, has put out a press release on a "study" they have done that suggests that Linus isn't the father of Linux after all. Another "independent" study with Microsoft peeking out from behind the curtain.
It's good when you are opposed by Larry and Moe. How dumb do you need to be to attack Linus Torvalds? As I've said before, it's like kicking Dorothy's little dog, Toto. All you get for your trouble is a lot of really offended folks who seriously dislike you and all your supporters.
Their press release provides no proof, no facts, no details, but it claims the author, the head of the Institution, Ken Brown, did extensive interviews with Richard Stallman, Dennis Ritchie, and Andrew Tanenbaum before discovering Linux's "questionable" roots. Linus, unbeknownst to us, is not the man of integrity we know him to have proven himself to be. Instead, I gather they mean to say he is a common thief, or so the Institution hints, who stole from UNIX. Because they provide no explanation, beyond the hints, we are compelled to draw the conclusion that this is what they seem to mean:
"Brown suggests the invention of Unix is an integral part of the Linux story commenting, 'It is clear that people's exceptional interest in the Unix operating system made Unix one of the most licensed, imitated, and stolen products in the history of computer science.'"
I guess Linus'd have to be a liar too, because he has stated publicly that the origins of Linux were not UNIX (Cf. Minix reference in this historic Linus email). The article about their "study" is here. Here is a taste:
"Popular but controversial 'open source' computer software, generally contributed on a volunteer basis, is often taken or adapted from material owned by other companies and individuals, a study by the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution finds. . .
"Among other points, the study directly challenges Linus Torvalds' claim to be the inventor of Linux."
Maybe Linus would lie and steal other people's code if it's like that movie, "Invasion of the Cabbage People", or whatever that horror movie was called, where people's brains were taken over, and they were then pliable and did things they never would do as their true selves.
This press release is disgusting, and I hope Linus sues, not that he is the type to sue. He may not be able to, because in true FUD fashion, the headline says "probably", as in "Torvalds claim to 'invent' Linux probably false, says new study." Of course the "study" itself is not available, consisting, I gather, of what is in Mr. Brown's head and notes. You can buy the book, and they probably put out the press release because they want you to, and there will be "excerpts" available on May 20.
If this group is the new SCO, we have lucked out. They incompetently provide a link from their article to what they say will be a UNIX and Linux timeline, but the link takes you instead to a Linux page, which is a bit out-of-date, listing Caldera Linux, which then links to the UNIX page. Except there is no timeline.
Not to worry. We are working on one. The Grokline research project, which will result in a ownership-history-of-UNIX timeline chart to amplify Eric Levenez' chart, will be going online this week. I'll tell you more soon, and I hope you will help us beat off the dark side's UNIX nonsense once and for all by contributing your knowledge and skills to that project, so we can prove where all the code came from and who owned it, making future "studies" like this one impossible. Not to mention future SCO's.
Anyway, when you get to the Linux page, it sings Linux's praises and correctly attributes Linux's aut
I've had no problem with the built-in 802.11b in my laptop (HP Pavilion ze5300). I HAVE run into ATI problems though. ATI is in copout-mode on these. They say that the individual manufacturers add/remove different features with their mobile parts, and hence, ATI won't give you drivers for a mobile part, saying "get them from HP/IBM/whoever".
I was under the impression that's what reference drivers are for eh? At least let me TRY and get 3d working.
However, I obviously don't hold SuSE responsible for this, it's by far my favorite distro. I'm a Linux-only type, so I want something that is comfortable and consistent between my home system, my work system with Xinerama and my laptop, and not to run several differnt distros.
$30 for Personal, $90 for Professional. Remember, Linux Isn't Windows. The differences between Personal and Professional are not going to amount to the Personal version being crippled and the Pro version being more powerful. It's more what's included. You want 64 bit support, buy Pro. But the versions are functionally the same, it's not like XP (wrt domain logins, etc).
I'm still trying to figure out what, besides 64-bit support, Pro HAS that Personal doesn't.
SuSE's model is the very spirit of the GPL. A company has every right to sell media for their software, as long as they make the source available to those who pay. In fact, SuSE is going above and beyond the LETTER of the GPL by allowing for-free FTP installs.
.ISO's for SuSE from various, primarily Eastern European resources. The same resources posting OpenBSD .ISO's, unofficial Debian .ISO's, etc. After all, it's all free software, yeah? So WHAT if OpenBSD copywrites their directory structure, they don't actually deserve MONEY for making the OS (or SuSE their distro), do they?
For those who want books, want media, etc, buy the CD. For those who are technical enough, use the FTP install. I've always used the FTP install and have zero problems with it, works great.
Of course, if you're a REAL whiner about it, you can always just STEAL the
I mean, jeez, it's THIRTY bucks... I don't see anything in Pro that you can't just go download anyway. If it had Crossover Office/plugin, I might buy the thing, since I've been thinking about getting Crossover for my wife anyway.
So to do that a Linux distro needs to either be root all the time, or break away from the traditonal UNIX security model and offer something like Windows NT's Administrator accounts that, while not all powerful, are capable of doing just about anything. It seems that many Linux users don't understand the concept of "wheel" as it was in the past. That being a group conceived so that you can have powerful users without them logging in as root. They can add/remove software for example if you want, up/down network cards, etc.
Works even better using RDP. Windows XP, Windows2k Server, and Win2k3 (and NT4 Terminal Services I guess...but...why?) work great through RDesktop. It's way fast, and with XP or 2k3 you can get 16-bit color and sound instead of just 256 as with Windows 2000.
Back 10 or 12 years ago, wasn't WalMart one putting American flags all over everything and a big part of "Buy American" campaigns? I could be mistaken.
It's just odd to see how they are now actively killing off American companies, or forcing them to offshore their production or sell to WalMart at a loss to compete. See Vlasic pickles, Master Locks, Dial soap, Levi's (although I think that might have been their own fault somewhat), etc.
I've tried to figure out a way to work either my full-time dayjob + some crap job, or full-time + consult on the side. So far the math won't line up. For instance, I'm at work at 8:45 with no end in sight, wouldn't be very good for my clients (or my gas station manager) if I had to call and say "no go, full time job is taking too much time".
You sound like you're in the perfect position to do what I'd like, which is work one full-time tech job + consulting during the day. I say keep the mainframe operator gig, and if you're at all competant at it, do small time network consulting during the day. If you're not that confident, charge like $25-$50/hour until you're a heavy-hitter and can charge much more.
I couldn't agree more with the idea. My new laptop is festooned with blue lights and it looks like a toy. The thing would look much more sharp without blue glows every couple of inches.
I have two machines on my work desktop: P4 2.6, SuSE 9, 3 video cards, 3 x 17" monitor, many virtual desktops on each. P4 2.6, Win2k Server, Headless. Through the magic of RDesktop, I access the Win2k server for Outlook, and Visio. Aside from that it is used as file storage and IIS testbed.
.Net server, its support for RDP 5.1 allows this.
RDesktop works as well as or better than the Windows or Mac term-serv clients. However, if you want full color (>256) and full sound support, you'll need WinXP or
I very very rarely have to attach a monitor to the Windows server, I often have multiple RDP sessions running, say on my laptop and on my desktop. You can configure X hotkeys to remain in effect within the RDP session, allowing you to run the remote desktop fullscreen with no borders, and still use hotkeys to switch virtual desktops (shift+left/right arrow for example).
Windows multi-head support is miles behind X, IMHO, and the 3 head setup is a huge productivity gain. If my lame desktop machine had any more slots, I'd totally slam more video cards in it.
We also use Term Services and RAdmin (www.famatech.com) to administer our production server farm, very convenient.
I struggled briefly with FreeS/WAN before getting a flawless working setup between my home net and the PIX at my office. It's exceedingly easy to configure, once you "get it". Never have been able to make it play with a Contivity though.
If anyone takes over development, I will definitely be testing each new version, at least as it pertains to my setup.
People expect that since you work at an "internet company", and management gets stricken by the "Business @ the Speed of Thought"(c) meme, that you're able to deliver infrastructure anywhere, instantly. In such an environment, requirements and standards docs tend to be quickly put together, vendors are expected to deliver yesterday, etc.
That has been the case at the last couple of places I've worked. A good example being a (very) small ISP I worked at in like 1999-2000. They wanted daily backup of 200 websites (roughly 60GB total of data), with offsite storage, for less than two grand. DDS didn't cut it anymore, since it took most of the day to make the daily backup. Since harddrives were just getting cheap, I implemented a quick skunk works solution of 8 removable (not hot swap) 36GB IDE drives in a custom padded backpack, half to be taken offsite each night, and half to remain for the daily backups, which I set up as differential FTP (they were a "Microsoft Shop"), there's 144GB of cheap daily networked backup, but what a hack.
I was given something like a month to get a solution, all the tape and storage vendors just laughed and laughed when we mentioned the price point we needed to hit, and the speed with which it needed to be implemented. 4 years later, for all I know they're still carrying that backpack around.
Software is the same way, I have friends at various software companies with incredible deadlines to implement extravagent features. I really feel for my programmer friends, I have it much easier as an admin monkey, so I hear.
However, you ARE able to print her Unicycle. All the cool kids have regular schwinns, but her unicycle is built to a much higher quality spec. Somepeople say unicycle people are elitist, but I don't see it. It has a very steep learning curve, to be sure, but once you're proficient, you can have just as much fun as if you had a regular bike. People might look at you funny, but it's ok, because you're among a higher class of the Unicylerati.
To quote John Grisham "It ain't sexy, but it's got teeth".
Good luck making that stick. As long as they show that they THOUGHT they were right, then they're clear. But I don't think they would have to, I would think it would be the up to the complainants to show that they DIDN'T think they were right. Have fun with that.
Where there are polar bears, there are no penguins, where there are penguins, there are no polar bears. I'm not sure exactly what the natural enemy of the penguin is, but my guess is it's something that lurks under the water and picks up a nice quick-swimming treat.
...
Aside from that
I almost bought a house (put an offer on) in an area with no cable and no DSL. I went to work researching DirecWay, and all I got from DSLreports was complaint after complaint. Well, I thought, no one ever writes in about how GREAT their service is, right?
/that/ bad, it's not something I'd look forward to.
.ISO's and it takes a day), blam, you're cut off. You have to call in and get them to undo it, which can take days. I wasn't prepared to call someone else when I was on call and say "hey, I know it's 1:30 am, but would you mind going on and fixing this server, DirecTV cut me off, again".
So I looked at all the literature from DirecTV, and it didn't look much better from that angle. $600 UP FRONT fee for equipment, plus $60/month for a service which MIGHT give you 500kbps downstream and ~100 up. I do a lot of remote administration using Windows apps, and although I've done it on dialup, and it's not
Plus, and here's where your problem would come in, they have TOC enforced caps. If you pass your given download quota for a given period (ie you transfer down a set of Debian
In the end I was going to just get dialup, maybe get 2 accounts and team 'em up to get a bit more speed, rather than deal with the flakiness I saw inherent in DirecWay and its competition. I looked HARD for any answer, and the best I could do was dual-dialup. (unless I wanted to spend $175/month on ISDN, or several hundred more for a full T).
Am I the only one who cannot enter any text into anything without locking the browser and having to kill it? If I launch the browser, it launches fine, click inside the URL field, locked. Put in a URL as a command line argument, comes up fine, hit something that has authentication, click in the auth dialog, locked. Bring up a site with a form (slashdot), browser launches, click in the search form at the bottom, locked.
What up with that? I assume there's some xft/aa checkbox somewhere?
I want to like it!
But vFolders, that's about the most useful thing since duct tape. At least giving you the ability to do multiple levels of searching by dumping all your primary results into a vFolder in Evolution, then searching the vFolder. Outlook drives me insane with its inability to do stuff like this.
Many computer rooms use sprinklers. Halon is largely illegal now and many fire system contractors won't deal with it even if it is there.
We have a "dry" system, where you have to break 2 heads in separate zones for the system to flood, the room has to be almost 200F for water to actually flow.
Since the pipes are dry normally, it doesn't hurt at all if you accidentally wipe out a sprinkler head with a relay rack, or rip a pipe down in the ceiling. The rest of the building will be deeply engulfed in flame, and the computers will have already melted from ambient heat before the water system in that room kicks in.
In fact, my guess has always been that the reality, even with halon, is that halon/foam doesn't do you any good when the rest of the building falls down on top of your spiffy computer room.
The problem is, what happens if there's a LOCALIZED fire in that room. What if the PDU explodes into a million sparking pieces. What if the UPS explodes, bad things could happen. Of course, in either of those cases, the "bad things" would include probably sending a fairly deadly spike into the machines, frying them to the point that we don't care if the water is flowing or not.
I've been running 3.2 alpha1 on my primary desktop since it was released and haven't had any real problems (thank you konstruct). Tonight I grabbed 3.2b1 RPMS for SuSE and put it on a laptop I just built, and I seem to be having the same problems as everyone else, with only "Menu Settings" showing up in kcontrol.
:-), everything looks great. Not much surprising since I've been using alpha1 anyway, but very nice and quick. Although I've got nothing to benchmark it against on this laptop.
So aside from not being able to change anything
Any workarounds for the kcontol menu issue, besides installing desktop-data-SuSE-8.2.99-61.noarch, which didn't work?
I'm running Alpha 2, and it is great. Many UI bugs fixed, like now they shrink tabs instead of making you scroll around when there are lots of tabs open.
I miss "view source" in the context menu on a webpage, and I'm still patiently waiting for some mid-mouse AutoScroll, Opera and Firebird seem to be able to deal with this as meaning "paste" when on a textarea, "scroll" when on plaintext, and "open in new tab" when on a link. I would love to see this in Konq. Konqeror is still my primary browser anyway.
We have implemented inbound and outbound Postfix relays, keeping the exchange servers safe. We're running Exchange 2000 native AD.
I feel much safer with Postfix and ssh being my only two internet-facing ports, and having Exchange well removed from the rest of the world.
Another note would be to keep an inbound and outbound relay system, primarily so you don't get bitten by your own configuration mistakes. It's possible to make a slip that would allow open relay.
Not to start a Postfix/Sendmail flamewar, but if all you're doing is relay, why drive a nail with a cinder block instead of a hammer? Postfix is the good "middle ground" between the flexibility of sendmail and the security of Qmail, easy to configure, secure and fast.
My current company is exceptionally flexible, at least as far as some users are concerned. In other places IT is very restrictive.
:-)
However, as to other places I've been as a consultant, they would just have people installing software and hardware just because they felt like it. It gives you terrible licencing headaches (the company will probably be ultimately responsible for any software found on an employee desktop, whether they knew about it or not). It's all about finding the right mix. If your developers are coding ASP.NET, and VB apps, should you let them bring in a random powerbook? Should you let them bring in their personal laptops without ensuring they're safe in any case? Nope.
You can have the best network topology, the best security policy, if someone brings in a laptop that has multiple backdoors and trojans on it, or if they get hit by a malicious site that installs an outbound nc.exe connection to another site over port 80, allowing an inbound tunnel to their cmd.exe, guess what all that architecture and planning is worth?
You have to give your users an environment in which they're comfortable and able to work, yes. You must NOT let it get to the point where your environment is so un-comfortable that they feel the need to plug in their own gear. When that happens, well, best laid plans and all that