Fair enough, maybe it didn't deserve the mod up it received, but I don't always have time to register on these damn sites myself, and *I* appreciate it when somebody else posts the text in such situations where i've not registered and don't have the time or inclination to do so at that point in time. I read the post when nobody else had (apparantly) posted the article text. I felt I was helping out, not karma whoring.
Perhaps if/. had a better facility for carbon copies of articles intergrated into the article itself ("click here for text copy"), things would be better, and the signal/noise ratio improved.
FWIW, here's the text of the article, for those not wanting to register.
August 15, 2001
Cosmic Laws Like Speed of Light Might Be Changing, a Study Finds
By JAMES GLANZ and DENNIS OVERBYE
[Multimedia]
[interactive_feature] A Small Change, With Huge Implications
[A] n international team of astrophysicists has discovered that the basic laws of nature as understood today may be changing slightly as the universe ages, a surprising finding that could rewrite physics textbooks and challenge fundamental assumptions about the workings of the cosmos.
The researchers used the world's largest single telescope to study the behavior of metallic atoms in gas clouds as far away from Earth as 12 billion light years. The observations revealed patterns of light absorption that the team could not explain without assuming a change in a basic constant of nature involving the strength of the attraction between electrically charged particles.
If confirmed, the finding could mean that other constants regarded as immutable, like the speed of light, might also have changed over the history of the cosmos.
The work was conducted by scientists in the United States, Australia and Britain and was led by Dr. John K. Webb of the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. It is to be published on Aug. 27 in the field's most prestigious journal, Physical Review Letters.
Scientists who have examined the paper have not been able to find any obvious flaws. But because the consequences for science would be so far-reaching and because the differences from the expected measurements are so subtle, many scientists are expressing skepticism that the discovery will stand the test of time, and say they will wait for independent evidence before deciding whether the finding is true.
On the other hand, the finding would fit with some theorists' new views of the universe, particularly the prediction that previously unknown dimensions might exist in the fabric of space.
Even scientists on the project have been deliberately cautious in presenting their result. Describing the implications of what his team observed, Dr. Webb said, "It's possible that there is a time evolution of the laws of physics."
Dr. Webb added, "If it's correct, it's the result of a lifetime."
Dr. Rocky Kolb, an astrophysicist at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory who was not involved in the work, said the finding could not only force revisions in cosmology, the science of how the universe began and later evolved, but also add credence to an unproven theory of physics called string theory, which predicts that extra dimensions exist.
"The implication, if it is true, would just be so enormous that it's something people should look at and take seriously," Dr. Kolb said. "This would upset the apple cart."
The magnitude of the change apparently observed by the group is minute, amounting to just 1 part in 100,000 in a number called the fine structure constant over 12 billion years. That constant, also referred to as alpha, is defined in terms of more familiar quantities like the speed of light and the strength of electronic attractions within atoms.
But even that small change would rock physics and cosmology, said Dr. Sheldon Glashow of Boston University, who received a Nobel Prize in physics in 1979. The importance of such a discovery, Dr. Glashow said, would rank "10 on a scale of 1 to 10."
Considering the unexpected nature of the finding, both Dr. Glashow and Dr. Kolb said the chances were high that some more mundane explanation for the results would turn up.
Dr. John Bahcall, an astrophysicist at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., said the complicated analysis that was required to infer the tiny changes from the observations could ? in principle, at least ? be obscuring possible errors.
"The effect does not scream out at you from the data," Dr. Bahcall said. "You have to get down on all fours and claw through the details to see such a small effect."
But others said that the team had been very careful and that any unknown source of error would have to be extremely subtle to be missed.
"If they were claiming anything less dramatic, probably most people would find their work very careful and believable," said Dr. Massimo Stiavelli, an astrophysicist at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore.
"Exceptional results deserve extraordinary proof," Dr. Stiavelli said, adding that he was reserving judgment until further evidence became available.
The work relied on observations of light from distant beacons called quasars, which shine with a brightness equivalent to billions of suns. The light is probably emitted by matter torn from young galaxies by the powerful gravity of a black hole.
Besides Dr. Webb, the team included three other scientists at the University of New South Wales, Michael T. Murphy, Dr. Victor V. Flambaum, and Dr. Vladimir A. Dzuba; and one physicist at Cambridge University in Britain, Dr. John D. Barrow. Three American astronomers who are experts on quasars were also members of the team: Dr. Christopher W. Churchill of Pennsylvania State University; Dr. Jason X. Prochaska of the Carnegie Observatories; and Dr. Arthur M. Wolfe of the University of California at San Diego.
The observations, made by the 30- foot-wide Keck Telescope on Mauna Kea, in Hawaii, looked in detail at the absorption of quasar light by gas clouds in deep space between Earth and the quasars. Metal atoms like zinc and aluminum are often present in trace amounts in the clouds.
The absorption of light by such atoms creates dark spikes at various wavelengths in the quasar's spectrum, with a pattern so well defined that it is often likened to a fingerprint. The value of those wavelengths is directly related to the value of the fine structure constant.
But the fingerprint seemed to change in time, Mr. Murphy said, indicating that the constant grows larger as one goes nearer to the present and was not really constant.
"What we have found is that, statistically, there is a difference between the fine structure constant a long time ago and here on earth," he said.
Far from being of interest only in understanding atomic behavior, said Dr. Barrow of Cambridge University, the effect would be important "because it gives you such a feedback into fundamental physics."
String theory, for example, could accommodate changes in quantities that accepted physics theory considers immutable. String theorists postulate that space contains tiny, unseen dimensions. Any change in the size of those dimensions ? much like the expansion of the universe in the space we are familiar with ? could change quantities like the fine structure constant, said Dr. Paul Steinhardt, a physicist at Princeton University.
Dr. Steinhardt said most theorists would have expected those changes to have occurred in the first seconds of the universe's life and be virtually unobservable by astronomers today. Still, he pointed out that several years ago, other astronomers unexpectedly found that the present universe is apparently filled with a mysterious kind of energy that counteracts gravity on large scales. Perhaps the two effects are somehow related, Dr. Steinhardt said.
Other scientists pointed out that geologic processes, like naturally occurring nuclear fission, have been used to determine that the fine structure constant has probably changed little over the past two billion years on Earth. But researchers on the new paper point out that their results reach back much farther in time, and that interpreting the geological results is also a complicated matter.
But a few physicists, like Dr. Jacob D. Bekenstein of Hebrew University in Israel, noted that some theories have long been predicting a change in some of nature's apparent constants. Dr. Bekenstein called the findings "potentially revolutionary" and said he was inclined to believe them.
"After much thinking about this issue," Dr. Bekenstein said, "I think the quasar observations may have found the real variation."
A small gripe - but what I'd most like to see is some breakout of the individual apps into seperate packages. As my post above states, I love kmail - but I do wish I could keep up with stable(ish) development releases of that, without having to download the entire kdenetwork module.
I was all ready on Monday to get my SuSE install of KDE upgraded, but disappointed when it didn't appear. Tuesday's announcement of hardware problems (don't they always hit you when you least expect it), meant a bit of rummaging about (and ftp.suse.com dropped my connections frequently), but thankfully SuSE RPM's were available on ftp.mirror.ac.uk - So I've been running it for a couple of days now.
Well worth the upgrade. It's slicker and feels faster than before, and the "kpersonalizer" is a nice quick way to tune your environment. Konquerer is nice, but still a bit clunky, so Moz wins for me here. KMail simply goes from strength to strength.
If you've not done it yet, go for it. You won't be disappointed, you'll certainly be impressed at the hard work that has clearly gone into this environment. Well done the KDE team!
Keep on doing what you're doing here - spread the word about great software! If you like it, tell people.
Microsoft are unleashing a huge FUD campain against Open source software. Good news doesn't travel at all well in this age (unless it involves cute animals or kids), so spreading the word (without going OTT) is the best plan.
Word of mouth is a powerful medium, often under-rated - look at film reviews - a critically panned film can be a huge success just on word of mouth,
Whilst it's a good and interesting article, echoing many of my reservations wrt. open source databases, it misses perhaps the single biggest point that people need support with an agreed escalation process, for the DBMS implementation - often the single most important component in any system
If a database goes wrong (and in Oracles case, my experience is that that's often), and we can't solve it ourselves, we need to be able to get on the phone and speak to somebody who can help. Now, I know that there are companies that offer support for OS DBMS's, but Oracle, Sybase and IBM's round the clock support offering is what i'm after. and getting skilled technicians (possibly the development team itself) involved quickly. OK, so open source offers this as by merit of "use the source luke", but in a corporate environment, this is neither likely or necessarily sensible.
Another, and perhaps more important, aspect to bear in mind (and this is not covered by the article for obvious reasons) is that Oracle, Sybase and DB2 are not the be-all and end-all of RDBMS offerings. There are better, and often significantly cheaper, closed-source offerings out there. One of my current favourites (which I'm working with at the moment) is Clustra - a DBMS that offers 99.999% availability, scheduled and unscheduled, pretty much out of the box, with Linux as their first released OS for the latest 4.1 offering
So, in a nutshell - Open source support offerings need to be improved, but don't rule out the smaller fish in this crowded, and very competitive pond.
Interesting question. Here are several points to consider that I think are important.
It's important when formulating the questions for a sysadmin to avoid trying to ask "catch out" questions, and better to have a good stock of "standard" questions that will ensure you know the candidate has a solid understanding of the principles. Knowing all of the flags to "ls" or "tcpdump" for example, doesn't tell you much, but knowing that they understand the differences between RAID 1 and RAID 5 is. Crank up the difficulty as appropriate for the position.
Asking questions that only catch out the candidate, leaves them feeling bad throughout the interview, and you with little more knowledge than what they don't know, and maybe a pointless feeling that you caught them out. If that floats-your-boat, go for it, but not me. been there, done that, thinkgeek ain't got the t-shirt.
Also, once you've identified that the candidate has a good foundation of knowledge, start asking about approaches they've taken to problems. One of my favourite questions is "What's your biggest f#&* up". Everybody makes mistakes. If a candidate can't think of a big fubar situation that they've been involved in, chances are they're either very good or inexperienced. It's also a good talking point to base additional questions around. Bring in your own situations as a way of lightening the questioning. You can reverse the question for the age-old fav "Tell me about your biggest achievement", but I prefer problem solving skills in an SA.
I'm also a big believer in "fit". If the candidate "feels" right, but has made a few boo-boo's in the answers given to questions, better to take them than somebody who doesn't "feel" right, and got all the questions right.
At the end of the day, it's a judgement call, and there are plenty of other factors to take into consideration that i've not mentioned here (and I'm sure others will). In a nutshell, find a questioning style/interview technique that ensures the candidate is at ease, feels they can be honest, and covers all of the main points.
Oh, and personally I hate giving and doing technical tests where they're left to fend for themselves for an hour in an empty office. Wasted time all round. Get somebody to interview them in that time who can get more out of them.
Needless to say, get different people to interview as well. Technical skills are but one part of a good employee. HR departments sometimes come out with very good points all the techies in the world couldn't find out.
It's worth remembering that this sort of problem has been seen before, with the Robert Morris Worm is 1988. The similairities in terms of spread are clear, although the damaging affect (Morris brought down a large percentage of the then mainly academic based Internet) was much more severe - so far. The article makes clear that we need to be aware that things could be worse, when script kiddies start playing with this virus
Lessons were learnt then, and it probably makes sense to revisit them and ensure we haven't missed anything.
Those of us with machines at home running services should all be careful (be it Windows, Linux, Solaris, *BSD or whatever), and review our presentation to the world. Check out Bastille Linux for a start.
Rarely have I seen such an article on/. become so absolutely partisan, divided, bitter, twisted and antagonistic (as well as the site itself/.'d)
I know where my opinions lie, but I'll leave that to my other posts. My point here is VERY different (but not IMNSHO offtopic), so please no flames. My point relates to how/. can support a debate on such contentious issues. Right now, I see/. overwhelmed by pretty much two *entirely* contentious and unreconsilable points of view, akin to "Does God Exist", and politics in general (Left or Right; Democrat or Republican).
Firstly, and least importantly: Where were the poll(s)? Two polls could be added here which could add to the debate: "Which region do you live in" and "Global Warming, True or False". We could then get a picture of the underlying beliefs of the/. population (i know it's mainly US posters, but it'd perhaps help understand the wider/. population, where they live and how they relate to each other, and why various points are being made)
Moderation also seems to have entirely broken down. The majority of high posts are Global Warming disclaimers (Fair enough, they have a point to be made). The moderation system seems to have unfairly punished believers in Global Warming by not promoting their posts. Not entirely, but generally. Given the demographic make up of/. (US -centric), I figured it'd be mainly anti-Global Warming posts, but *SUCH* a dominance is scary, and I kind of hope people happy to have their personal views challenged and questioned agree with me on this matter.
Yes, I know that mod points are allocated out generally fairly, and people can reply directly to points, but this situation has illustrated an exception (a boundary condition almost), and *these* are precisely the ones to watch out for. It's clearly hard to automatically give more points to one side of an argument over another without appearing biased, but perhaps the administrators could see such a contentious issue in the making, and *assist* in the allocation of mod points to *ALTERNATIVE* points of view (whether they agree with them or not). I know this may sound like "moderators are biased in this case", but itis apparant it's not working as well as it normally does. There are also a *LOT* of posts (and this one just adds to the weight). How can moderators expect to see the low rated AC posts, and rate them up as they possibly deserve if they don't read them? (A case for forcing a viewing preference on people with mod points?)
I'm asking for suggestions. Am I wrong here in believing/. faces a system/rating/moderating problem when dealing with such a contentious issue? Can it be improved, or am I just a whinging reader?
Answers in a Stamped, Self addressed comment box please.
Invogue? From an American perspective maybe, but the rest of the world has been aware of this, and looking to act for at least the last 10 years. Even if it's a small act like walking to the shops or using Public Transport instead of using their car.
They were always smiling as well. Even after dying heroic deaths in inter-galactic battles. I was convinced they were plotting something, in my lego box under my bed, late at night.
They probably still are, just hidden away in my parents roof, undisturbed for the last 15 years.
Agreed. It was at about the same time that we had the song "Mulder and Scully" by Catatonia getting solid airtime. You know the feeling - it's on every radio station you tune into. Becoming a household name is often the first sign of forthcoming doom.
Abiomed wants to observe a ''quiet period'' with no media comment so the patient can recover with his or her family in private, and so the surgical team can devote all its energy to the operation and patient care, Ed Berger, an Abiomed spokesman, has said over the past several months.
Stressing again that he was not confirming or denying that the implant had taken place, Berger said yesterday that Abiomed and the surgical team had agreed to comment only when they were sure they could ''meet the demands of the press without compromising patient care.''
Whilst this development in heart surgey is exciting, I figure it'd be rather bizarre, and possibly very counter-productive, for the poor patient to become the subject of a (possibly) intrustive press campaign, whilst they battles with their recovery.
Re:District Line in rush hour and focal length
on
Psion's über-Gadgets
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· Score: 1
yes, if you get on a Wimbledon train at Earls court at about 8.25am. Hey, you could even use their armpit if you'd rather. Lovely.
I like the projection idea, although I can't see the projection onto the palm of the hand being ideal. I get enough stares on The Tube as it is when I pull out my Palm pilot, but projecting my appointments onto my hand ("what IS he doing over there?") the roof (remember when the laser pens first came out? Oh the fun we had), or the forehead of the person opposite me ("Why's everyone staring at me"), could lead to fun and games on a packed District Line in rush hour....
Have a read of The Innovators Dilemma - When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail - One of the main examples used throughout the book is how the hard disk industry is moving very rapidly, but that even innovative companies breaking new ground in the market, and keeping their customers sweet, still fail and die. I don't have my copy with me, but there was an interesting diagram in the first few chapters, showing how solid state disks are catching up, and will overtake hard disks, in the next few years.
The drive's record-breaking internal transfer rate -- 69.3 Mbytes per second -- is fast enough to copy an hour of MP3 music in under one second. Barracuda ATA IV is fast enough to stream eight movies simultaneously, in DVD quality, without dropping a frame
Blimey. Genuinely impressive. Now I only need to buy myself eight televisions.
The company has to ensure it's following the court rulings, and letting any client connect exposes it to the very abuse it's been charged with encouraging.
You've got to wonder why they chose to site some of the cameras in spots where a tree obscures about a third of the picture, or it's pointing at land...
Is this yet another sign that Sun is weakening? Their hardware sales are begininning to be impacted by x86 as their system line falters and their OS if being whacked (especially on the low end) by Linux and its BSD bretheren
Oh come on! Yes, Sun are probably getting nibbled away by GNU/Linux at the bottom end (The Netra's are cute 1U's, but out the box as a web box, they suck in comparison to a nice Redhat/VALinux box), but when it comes to large scale (ie >4 CPU) boxes running highly critical systems, with high demands on reliability, they're leagues ahead of the competition, and innovating with the Serengeti range (UltraSparcIII based systems).
Ok, so i'm a Sun admin in my day job, and it's not that there haven't been any problems with Sun, and their chips, but to say they're declining on the basis of x86 eating their market, is significantly exaggerating the state of affairs.
As far as revenue goes, they're suffering along with many other tech companies as demand declines as dot coms (a big part of their market the last few years) go under, but they're certainly not being eaten alive by X86 offerings in their core market.
Surely, when making a decision to outsource your data, you're making a trade off in management and maintenance costs, response and scalability issues etc.
What you must do, however, is ensure that the arrangements you make with a company hosting your data provide a means for you to recover the data in the event of them winding operations down, and ensuring that any "upgrades" that may interfere with your operations are notified to you well in advance. If they're worth their salt, they'd have a decent SLA to cover such things.
If they're not happy providing such a thing, avoid them like the plague, but the likes of Storage Networksseem to be doing rather well off the back of large ISP's/Co-Lo's where they claim to offer a very flexible, low-cost storage solution.
It's a trade off, pure and simple. If you can afford to have your own EMC or sun storage array(s) (and scale them when you need to), then do it. If you want the services of an SSP, without the hefty outlay to buy storage, fine, but be careful, and keep your eye on them, and the fine print.
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps if /. had a better facility for carbon copies of articles intergrated into the article itself ("click here for text copy"), things would be better, and the signal/noise ratio improved.
FWIW, here's the text of the article, for those not wanting to register.
August 15, 2001
Cosmic Laws Like Speed of Light Might Be Changing, a Study Finds
By JAMES GLANZ and DENNIS OVERBYE
[Multimedia]
[interactive_feature] A Small Change, With Huge Implications
[A] n international team of astrophysicists has discovered that the basic laws of nature as understood today may be changing slightly as the universe ages, a surprising finding that could rewrite physics textbooks and challenge fundamental assumptions about the workings of the cosmos.
The researchers used the world's largest single telescope to study the behavior of metallic atoms in gas clouds as far away from Earth as 12 billion light years. The observations revealed patterns of light absorption that the team could not explain without assuming a change in a basic constant of nature involving the strength of the attraction between electrically charged particles.
If confirmed, the finding could mean that other constants regarded as immutable, like the speed of light, might also have changed over the history of the cosmos.
The work was conducted by scientists in the United States, Australia and Britain and was led by Dr. John K. Webb of the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. It is to be published on Aug. 27 in the field's most prestigious journal, Physical Review Letters.
Scientists who have examined the paper have not been able to find any obvious flaws. But because the consequences for science would be so far-reaching and because the differences from the expected measurements are so subtle, many scientists are expressing skepticism that the discovery will stand the test of time, and say they will wait for independent evidence before deciding whether the finding is true.
On the other hand, the finding would fit with some theorists' new views of the universe, particularly the prediction that previously unknown dimensions might exist in the fabric of space.
Even scientists on the project have been deliberately cautious in presenting their result. Describing the implications of what his team observed, Dr. Webb said, "It's possible that there is a time evolution of the laws of physics."
Dr. Webb added, "If it's correct, it's the result of a lifetime."
Dr. Rocky Kolb, an astrophysicist at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory who was not involved in the work, said the finding could not only force revisions in cosmology, the science of how the universe began and later evolved, but also add credence to an unproven theory of physics called string theory, which predicts that extra dimensions exist.
"The implication, if it is true, would just be so enormous that it's something people should look at and take seriously," Dr. Kolb said. "This would upset the apple cart."
The magnitude of the change apparently observed by the group is minute, amounting to just 1 part in 100,000 in a number called the fine structure constant over 12 billion years. That constant, also referred to as alpha, is defined in terms of more familiar quantities like the speed of light and the strength of electronic attractions within atoms.
But even that small change would rock physics and cosmology, said Dr. Sheldon Glashow of Boston University, who received a Nobel Prize in physics in 1979. The importance of such a discovery, Dr. Glashow said, would rank "10 on a scale of 1 to 10."
Considering the unexpected nature of the finding, both Dr. Glashow and Dr. Kolb said the chances were high that some more mundane explanation for the results would turn up.
Dr. John Bahcall, an astrophysicist at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., said the complicated analysis that was required to infer the tiny changes from the observations could ? in principle, at least ? be obscuring possible errors.
"The effect does not scream out at you from the data," Dr. Bahcall said. "You have to get down on all fours and claw through the details to see such a small effect."
But others said that the team had been very careful and that any unknown source of error would have to be extremely subtle to be missed.
"If they were claiming anything less dramatic, probably most people would find their work very careful and believable," said Dr. Massimo Stiavelli, an astrophysicist at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore.
"Exceptional results deserve extraordinary proof," Dr. Stiavelli said, adding that he was reserving judgment until further evidence became available.
The work relied on observations of light from distant beacons called quasars, which shine with a brightness equivalent to billions of suns. The light is probably emitted by matter torn from young galaxies by the powerful gravity of a black hole.
Besides Dr. Webb, the team included three other scientists at the University of New South Wales, Michael T. Murphy, Dr. Victor V. Flambaum, and Dr. Vladimir A. Dzuba; and one physicist at Cambridge University in Britain, Dr. John D. Barrow. Three American astronomers who are experts on quasars were also members of the team: Dr. Christopher W. Churchill of Pennsylvania State University; Dr. Jason X. Prochaska of the Carnegie Observatories; and Dr. Arthur M. Wolfe of the University of California at San Diego.
The observations, made by the 30- foot-wide Keck Telescope on Mauna Kea, in Hawaii, looked in detail at the absorption of quasar light by gas clouds in deep space between Earth and the quasars. Metal atoms like zinc and aluminum are often present in trace amounts in the clouds.
The absorption of light by such atoms creates dark spikes at various wavelengths in the quasar's spectrum, with a pattern so well defined that it is often likened to a fingerprint. The value of those wavelengths is directly related to the value of the fine structure constant.
But the fingerprint seemed to change in time, Mr. Murphy said, indicating that the constant grows larger as one goes nearer to the present and was not really constant.
"What we have found is that, statistically, there is a difference between the fine structure constant a long time ago and here on earth," he said.
Far from being of interest only in understanding atomic behavior, said Dr. Barrow of Cambridge University, the effect would be important "because it gives you such a feedback into fundamental physics."
String theory, for example, could accommodate changes in quantities that accepted physics theory considers immutable. String theorists postulate that space contains tiny, unseen dimensions. Any change in the size of those dimensions ? much like the expansion of the universe in the space we are familiar with ? could change quantities like the fine structure constant, said Dr. Paul Steinhardt, a physicist at Princeton University.
Dr. Steinhardt said most theorists would have expected those changes to have occurred in the first seconds of the universe's life and be virtually unobservable by astronomers today. Still, he pointed out that several years ago, other astronomers unexpectedly found that the present universe is apparently filled with a mysterious kind of energy that counteracts gravity on large scales. Perhaps the two effects are somehow related, Dr. Steinhardt said.
Other scientists pointed out that geologic processes, like naturally occurring nuclear fission, have been used to determine that the fine structure constant has probably changed little over the past two billion years on Earth. But researchers on the new paper point out that their results reach back much farther in time, and that interpreting the geological results is also a complicated matter.
But a few physicists, like Dr. Jacob D. Bekenstein of Hebrew University in Israel, noted that some theories have long been predicting a change in some of nature's apparent constants. Dr. Bekenstein called the findings "potentially revolutionary" and said he was inclined to believe them.
"After much thinking about this issue," Dr. Bekenstein said, "I think the quasar observations may have found the real variation."
Well worth the upgrade. It's slicker and feels faster than before, and the "kpersonalizer" is a nice quick way to tune your environment. Konquerer is nice, but still a bit clunky, so Moz wins for me here. KMail simply goes from strength to strength.
If you've not done it yet, go for it. You won't be disappointed, you'll certainly be impressed at the hard work that has clearly gone into this environment. Well done the KDE team!
Microsoft are unleashing a huge FUD campain against Open source software. Good news doesn't travel at all well in this age (unless it involves cute animals or kids), so spreading the word (without going OTT) is the best plan.
Word of mouth is a powerful medium, often under-rated - look at film reviews - a critically panned film can be a huge success just on word of mouth,
If a database goes wrong (and in Oracles case, my experience is that that's often), and we can't solve it ourselves, we need to be able to get on the phone and speak to somebody who can help. Now, I know that there are companies that offer support for OS DBMS's, but Oracle, Sybase and IBM's round the clock support offering is what i'm after. and getting skilled technicians (possibly the development team itself) involved quickly. OK, so open source offers this as by merit of "use the source luke", but in a corporate environment, this is neither likely or necessarily sensible.
Another, and perhaps more important, aspect to bear in mind (and this is not covered by the article for obvious reasons) is that Oracle, Sybase and DB2 are not the be-all and end-all of RDBMS offerings. There are better, and often significantly cheaper, closed-source offerings out there. One of my current favourites (which I'm working with at the moment) is Clustra - a DBMS that offers 99.999% availability, scheduled and unscheduled, pretty much out of the box, with Linux as their first released OS for the latest 4.1 offering
So, in a nutshell - Open source support offerings need to be improved, but don't rule out the smaller fish in this crowded, and very competitive pond.
Who said databases were boring?
It's important when formulating the questions for a sysadmin to avoid trying to ask "catch out" questions, and better to have a good stock of "standard" questions that will ensure you know the candidate has a solid understanding of the principles. Knowing all of the flags to "ls" or "tcpdump" for example, doesn't tell you much, but knowing that they understand the differences between RAID 1 and RAID 5 is. Crank up the difficulty as appropriate for the position.
Asking questions that only catch out the candidate, leaves them feeling bad throughout the interview, and you with little more knowledge than what they don't know, and maybe a pointless feeling that you caught them out. If that floats-your-boat, go for it, but not me. been there, done that, thinkgeek ain't got the t-shirt.
Also, once you've identified that the candidate has a good foundation of knowledge, start asking about approaches they've taken to problems. One of my favourite questions is "What's your biggest f#&* up". Everybody makes mistakes. If a candidate can't think of a big fubar situation that they've been involved in, chances are they're either very good or inexperienced. It's also a good talking point to base additional questions around. Bring in your own situations as a way of lightening the questioning. You can reverse the question for the age-old fav "Tell me about your biggest achievement", but I prefer problem solving skills in an SA.
I'm also a big believer in "fit". If the candidate "feels" right, but has made a few boo-boo's in the answers given to questions, better to take them than somebody who doesn't "feel" right, and got all the questions right.
At the end of the day, it's a judgement call, and there are plenty of other factors to take into consideration that i've not mentioned here (and I'm sure others will). In a nutshell, find a questioning style/interview technique that ensures the candidate is at ease, feels they can be honest, and covers all of the main points.
Oh, and personally I hate giving and doing technical tests where they're left to fend for themselves for an hour in an empty office. Wasted time all round. Get somebody to interview them in that time who can get more out of them.
Needless to say, get different people to interview as well. Technical skills are but one part of a good employee. HR departments sometimes come out with very good points all the techies in the world couldn't find out.
Hope that helps.
It's worth remembering that this sort of problem has been seen before, with the Robert Morris Worm is 1988. The similairities in terms of spread are clear, although the damaging affect (Morris brought down a large percentage of the then mainly academic based Internet) was much more severe - so far. The article makes clear that we need to be aware that things could be worse, when script kiddies start playing with this virus
Lessons were learnt then, and it probably makes sense to revisit them and ensure we haven't missed anything.
Those of us with machines at home running services should all be careful (be it Windows, Linux, Solaris, *BSD or whatever), and review our presentation to the world. Check out Bastille Linux for a start.
Rarely have I seen such an article on /. become so absolutely partisan, divided, bitter, twisted and antagonistic (as well as the site itself /.'d)
/. can support a debate on such contentious issues. Right now, I see /. overwhelmed by pretty much two *entirely* contentious and unreconsilable points of view, akin to "Does God Exist", and politics in general (Left or Right; Democrat or Republican).
/. population (i know it's mainly US posters, but it'd perhaps help understand the wider /. population, where they live and how they relate to each other, and why various points are being made)
/. (US -centric), I figured it'd be mainly anti-Global Warming posts, but *SUCH* a dominance is scary, and I kind of hope people happy to have their personal views challenged and questioned agree with me on this matter.
/. faces a system/rating/moderating problem when dealing with such a contentious issue? Can it be improved, or am I just a whinging reader?
I know where my opinions lie, but I'll leave that to my other posts. My point here is VERY different (but not IMNSHO offtopic), so please no flames. My point relates to how
Firstly, and least importantly: Where were the poll(s)? Two polls could be added here which could add to the debate: "Which region do you live in" and "Global Warming, True or False". We could then get a picture of the underlying beliefs of the
Moderation also seems to have entirely broken down. The majority of high posts are Global Warming disclaimers (Fair enough, they have a point to be made). The moderation system seems to have unfairly punished believers in Global Warming by not promoting their posts. Not entirely, but generally. Given the demographic make up of
Yes, I know that mod points are allocated out generally fairly, and people can reply directly to points, but this situation has illustrated an exception (a boundary condition almost), and *these* are precisely the ones to watch out for. It's clearly hard to automatically give more points to one side of an argument over another without appearing biased, but perhaps the administrators could see such a contentious issue in the making, and *assist* in the allocation of mod points to *ALTERNATIVE* points of view (whether they agree with them or not). I know this may sound like "moderators are biased in this case", but itis apparant it's not working as well as it normally does. There are also a *LOT* of posts (and this one just adds to the weight). How can moderators expect to see the low rated AC posts, and rate them up as they possibly deserve if they don't read them? (A case for forcing a viewing preference on people with mod points?)
I'm asking for suggestions. Am I wrong here in believing
Answers in a Stamped, Self addressed comment box please.
Tell that to someone living in a low level country such as Bangladesh or the Netherlands, as the sea levels rise up and destroy their countries.
How about taking a look for yourself on the web for some of the information that is out there. I just hacked in 'Global Warming' into Google and had a nice selection of sites from a variety of perspectives, including this, from the "Union of Concerned Scientists".
It's a fact. Wake up America.
They were always smiling as well. Even after dying heroic deaths in inter-galactic battles. I was convinced they were plotting something, in my lego box under my bed, late at night.
They probably still are, just hidden away in my parents roof, undisturbed for the last 15 years.
Agreed. It was at about the same time that we had the song "Mulder and Scully" by Catatonia getting solid airtime. You know the feeling - it's on every radio station you tune into. Becoming a household name is often the first sign of forthcoming doom.
Abiomed wants to observe a ''quiet period'' with no media comment so the patient can recover with his or her family in private, and so the surgical team can devote all its energy to the operation and patient care, Ed Berger, an Abiomed spokesman, has said over the past several months.
Stressing again that he was not confirming or denying that the implant had taken place, Berger said yesterday that Abiomed and the surgical team had agreed to comment only when they were sure they could ''meet the demands of the press without compromising patient care.''
Whilst this development in heart surgey is exciting, I figure it'd be rather bizarre, and possibly very counter-productive, for the poor patient to become the subject of a (possibly) intrustive press campaign, whilst they battles with their recovery.
:-O
;-)
I like the projection idea, although I can't see the projection onto the palm of the hand being ideal. I get enough stares on The Tube as it is when I pull out my Palm pilot, but projecting my appointments onto my hand ("what IS he doing over there?") the roof (remember when the laser pens first came out? Oh the fun we had), or the forehead of the person opposite me ("Why's everyone staring at me"), could lead to fun and games on a packed District Line in rush hour....
It actually appears to be a pretty much verbatim copy of the Seagate press release (Well, at least the online version)
Have a read of The Innovators Dilemma - When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail - One of the main examples used throughout the book is how the hard disk industry is moving very rapidly, but that even innovative companies breaking new ground in the market, and keeping their customers sweet, still fail and die. I don't have my copy with me, but there was an interesting diagram in the first few chapters, showing how solid state disks are catching up, and will overtake hard disks, in the next few years.
Blimey. Genuinely impressive. Now I only need to buy myself eight televisions.
The company has to ensure it's following the court rulings, and letting any client connect exposes it to the very abuse it's been charged with encouraging.
Perhaps the monsters been fiddling.... ;-)
No, I'm not a member, just stumbled on the link whilst reading around the story.
You might also remember the cartoon series based around loch ness monsters... The Family-Ness - classic stuff. I always liked silly-ness...
The BBC have a good article on this too.
Oh come on! Yes, Sun are probably getting nibbled away by GNU/Linux at the bottom end (The Netra's are cute 1U's, but out the box as a web box, they suck in comparison to a nice Redhat/VALinux box), but when it comes to large scale (ie >4 CPU) boxes running highly critical systems, with high demands on reliability, they're leagues ahead of the competition, and innovating with the Serengeti range (UltraSparcIII based systems).
Ok, so i'm a Sun admin in my day job, and it's not that there haven't been any problems with Sun, and their chips, but to say they're declining on the basis of x86 eating their market, is significantly exaggerating the state of affairs.
As far as revenue goes, they're suffering along with many other tech companies as demand declines as dot coms (a big part of their market the last few years) go under, but they're certainly not being eaten alive by X86 offerings in their core market.
What you must do, however, is ensure that the arrangements you make with a company hosting your data provide a means for you to recover the data in the event of them winding operations down, and ensuring that any "upgrades" that may interfere with your operations are notified to you well in advance. If they're worth their salt, they'd have a decent SLA to cover such things.
If they're not happy providing such a thing, avoid them like the plague, but the likes of Storage Networks seem to be doing rather well off the back of large ISP's/Co-Lo's where they claim to offer a very flexible, low-cost storage solution.
It's a trade off, pure and simple. If you can afford to have your own EMC or sun storage array(s) (and scale them when you need to), then do it. If you want the services of an SSP, without the hefty outlay to buy storage, fine, but be careful, and keep your eye on them, and the fine print.