Were you even around during the win95 release? There were TONS of apps that didn't work. Anything with a driver comes to mind. Many other apps just flaked out. Win 3.1 was also unstable as hell (not saying that 95 was stable either). If you wanted to move towards stability, you had to upgrade due to the fact that MS had no interest in fixing old versions of windows to increase security / stability. That sucks.
OSS solves this. OS unstable? Port to something else. Bug? Fix it. Need an enhancement? Just do it.
Apache needs MORE support?? Hmm. Don't think so. I think you have that backwards. In the apache world, you don't have to rev the OS to rev the web server. You also don't have to apply the right hotfix / service packs in the right order just to install the freaking product - you just install the latest rev. You can also EASILY run 27 (or whatever) different releases / configurations of apache on the same box if you wish. Try that with IIS.
I don't think anyone is talking about using a product after support runs out. This may be just fine for some, but in the business world you need to have stable / secure systems that keep up with changing requirements.
4&5 are VALID arguments. Again, in the business world, you can't go running unsupported stuff. It is not about someone FORCING you to upgrade, you are forced due to the lack of needed support for an old version. In this case, the submitter is talking about search engine software. You can't lock that in a closet and pretend that old security problems can go forever without getting fixed. Hence the cost of a forced upgrade to get security fixes is a TOTALLY VALID argument in TCO.
In 5, are you expecting your VENDOR to go and install all the patches for you??? You trust your vendor to release patches that work 100% perfectly all the time? You don't test vendor related patches before pushing to production? Please. Your support staff has to monitor the vendor list just as they would OSS lists. The same work / testing / etc has to be done, yet OSS historically has been MUCH faster at releasing patches.
There are VERY FEW commercial software companies that support a particular app for more 5 years. 5 years is a LIFETIME. Win98 is EOL and it's only 4 years old. Ditto for NT4 which was still being sold 2 years ago, and support is for the most part GONE.
With OSS, you can basically support it forever, porting to new architectures, adding enhancements, fixing bugs, whatever. You just can't do that with comercial closed-source software.
The problem with code-escrow of commercial code is that you won't know how bad the code is until you NEED it. You may find that it's unmaintainable. Not an issue with OSS, where you know what you are getting into right up front. There are also other problems with code escrow but it usually is dependant on the terms of the contract.
I developed an application / custom hardware sold to utility companies about 8 years ago that is still in use. That code has had about 6 different maintainers since I left, and they hacked the code to shit, lost backups, etc. leaving my former clients in the lurch. We did offer code escrow, since the utilities end up using this stuff for 20 years or so, but not all the utilities took us up on the offer (since we charged extra for it.) Some of the equipment we replaced was over 50 years old. If I was doing this again, I would have pushed to just give the code to the utility up front. It just ain't right what happened to them. If they had the code, they could have hired someone to port to more modern hardware (it was PC based) or even a different OS (the code was designed to be very portable.) The code was useless to anyone that didn't have the custom hardware.
Bottom line is that comercial support is USELESS if your needs are long-term, and the company can't / won't support it long-term.
OSS give you freedom. It's hard to put a dollar figure on freedom. Some say that it's priceless.
This assumes that you need a full time programmer, which is a flawed assumption. Ever hear of contractors? There are LOTS of programmers out there, many outside the US willing and able to work for a VERY reasonable price. A programmer has no need to be onsite.
Not a flame or anything, but seriously. Get someone who knows what the hell they are doing to do some consulting for you. There are lots of them on the market, and you can get them cheap. Hey, you plan to make money with this, right? Don't want to lose your ass? Then you need someone with experience. You woudn't start a business without consulting a lawyer and CPA would you? While you don't mention what experience YOU have, I'm assuming that you have SOME, but not much based on your questions.
If you are gonna provide an SLA, you want TECHNICAL advice and LEGAL advice. Most SLA's are actually toothless in real life. The lawyers give you enough outs that you will never have to pay up with most customers (a few have the talent to see through the crap and make changes to your contract to put teeth back in.) Even though lawyers are expensive, it pays for itself in the long run.
The advise on slashdot is going to be spotty at best, especially in the light that so many NOC's are run poorly. Without experience on hand, you will run into the SAME traps / problems that most NOC's with inexperienced leaders run into.
Well, here are a few things that you may need.
A TESTED disaster recovery plan for servers, network, power, and cooling.
A trouble ticket system customized for your needs usable by inside and out (internally generated tickets and customer generated tickets.)
A network monitoring / management system that tracks not only subsystem availability but performance and keeps a history.
A customer management system that can bring up EVERYTHING you need to know about a customer, their syetems, their people, notification proceedures, etc. (this is VERY non-trivial)
A change control system - what happened, who approved it, who did it, how long did it take, what did they do, how did they do it, when was it active, how do you revert, etc.
Sigh. Setting up a NOC correctly is one of the most difficult tasks in IT.
This just isn't the case. The TRUTH is that the contracts MS forces OEM's to agree to require Windows on ALL computers of a specific model. What this means is that OEM's have to have DIFFERENT models if they want to offer computers without Windows. This is expensive to do, so they only offer a very limited set of models for those running other operating systems.
This is the anti-competitive behavior we are talking about. It's the illegal stuff they are doing to maintain their monopoly. Unfortunately we have a totally clueless legal system and a corrupt DOJ.
The former MS negotiator for Dell is a family friend, and he had some VERY interesting things to say about this topic.
Oh please. The TRUTH is that MOST (98% or so) configurations are ONLY availble with the required purhase of Windows. Some manufacturers offer a very limited number of models that come without Windows, and even fewer of those are laptops. Until you are able to choose ANY pc and "unbundle" Windows, there is a problem (MS Tax.) The problem is compunded by the fact that the "license" is "tied" to the machine and I can't sell it off to someone else. The reason for this is that MS has forced companies to sign anti-competitive agreements.
Blah blah blah "refuse to buy from X unless X" yeah right. That's not the reality of the world, especially in light of the fact that MS is a monopoly. Licenses change CONSTANTLY. Sometimes (such as the Win2000 SP3 EULA) change things out from under you AFTER you purchase the product. Before you say that it's optional, it's NOT optional if you want security fixes (which are for all practical purposes required.) Kinda like buying a car and being forced to agree not to say anything bad about the manufacturer in order to get a safety-related recall problem fixed. While you can choose to buy another brand of car and drive on every road that any other brand of car can, the same is NOT the case with computer operating systems where MS has a monopoly.
Not to be a troll, but what I REALLY want to know is what is going on under the hood. What more has MS done on DRM, corporate spyware, "activation" copy protection crap (Will I have to call MS if I upgrade my mouse now?) etc. Let's see the new EULA too.
From an IT standpoint, I want to know what MS has done on "trustworthy computing." Will it continue to be virus / worm prone? Rather then spend their time making the system "pretty" and adding more features nobody cares about, MS needs to secure the OS and make it more reliable.
It's genenerally not a 5M limit on mail BOXES, but individual messages.
With modern mail stores, mail box limits of 100M / user is fairly realistic, although you can KILL your mail server if you use POP with frequent checks and "leave mail on the server" options.
5M is a resonable max to expect someone to get over a modem, although that's pretty bad too.
Re:Personally very sick of the e-mail size snobs
on
E-Mail Size Limits?
·
· Score: 2
Would you use a Honda Accord to haul a ton of rock or a Ford F350 pickup? It's really that simple. People who think FTP is hard haven't used it frequently. You don't need tp use the command line tool anymore. Really.
There are several great ways of creating "easy to use" drop boxes for internal / external users. It's the IT department's JOB is to create and maintain these resources. Instead of whining how it's hard, just DO it. Sheesh. This is NOT HARD people!
Yeah, this is a bitch. Filters are a fact of life, and as long as people insist on emailing "funny" apps, and MS keeps insisting on shipping outlook configured as a virus distribution tool, filters will thrive.
Other filters "defang" mail by nuking image references in html mail, javascript, etc.
More and more filtering is being done in the corporate space to the point where email has become an unreliable way to send files. Again, as long as MS (and others) contine to ignore the virus problem and intentionally design their products to be prone to viruses, filtering will only get more pervasive. As a side note, Anti-virus software generally fails due to the fact that virus definitions are created AFTER the virus is discovered, and is only effective AFTER users install upgraded definitions. This creates a time-lag where users are basically unprotected. File-type based rejection / defanging is therefore a much more effective tool against email borne viruses / worms (which doesn't mean that you shouldn't use anti-virus software of course.)
Back to the main topic, while the reality is that more and more people are sending huge files around, it is still a bad idea as mail servers and the mail protocols (smtp & pop mainly) are not designed to handle large messages. There is no "resume transfer" for example. Large files mailed to mailing lists can explode out to many gigabytes: a concept many users don't understand. MUA's don't generally offer the option of skipping a message that they are having a problem downloading. IMAP of course is a better solution to this but many ISP's don't offer IMAP access.
As for your specific problem, you are letting someone elses problem be your problem, and causing other problems as a result, which is very problematic when you think about it:-/
So you would placate the stupid bitch who insists on backing up her hard drive by emailing her files to herself and ends up with a 4G mail spool and kills your mail server for all other users?
You can't run IT like that. You need to have a clear set of policies and proceedures. Get these blessed by senior managment. As long as you have justification, this is a no-brainer. People who violate those need to be delt with via the normal disciplinary proceedures your company has which may even eventually lead to termination of employment for the violator.
IT personel do NOT need to put up with verbal abuse on the phone. Hang up. Call HR to report the asshole.
That's how I run MY IT department. Moral increased greatly in the rank and file of IT, and end users (and management) are happy because systems are more reliable / responsive due to proper use / end of abuse.
Huh. Sounds like a dumb ISP. Should at LEAST give your users the option of paying more for a larger quota. For every 10M more, another $5 / month or so. This pays for itself quite quickly.
This is a bogus argument. There are MANY ftp clients that are just drag and drop. Totally simple to use. The corporate intra / extranet can just be a fileshare.
Don't forget the concept of "training" and online help.
Even the most clueless can handle this concept.
There are MANY methods to prevent search engines from indexing drop boxes including password access to the dropbox directory / ssl, etc. Again, a bogus argument. Search the net for more info.
Oh please. Solaris x86 is SUCH a dead product. Sun hasn't given it any respect. Yeah, they revived it from the pit of doom due to some loyal users noisy protests, but that won't fix the horrid hardware compatability, and the total lack of third party vendor support. As long as you don't use ANY commercial code, and use totally generic (old) hardware, Solaris x86 may be OK. I ran a medium large web site on it a couple years ago (~30M page views / day) with 40 Solaris x86 production boxes and a smattering of larger sparc boxes, and my experience with it is to avoid x86 solaris at all costs.
While your statement may be true, the sizing tool should have a SEPARATE metric for growth and not be built-in. Some apps' needs NEVER grow, while others may grow rapidly. Depends on the app and usage. If the tool truely does spec machines that are far beyond true need, and does NOT specifically state exactly what growth is factored in, then that tool is BROKEN and USELESS.
My guess is that the tool specs machines way bigger than true need so they don't have customers comming back saying "You told us that this machine would do the job and it's way too slow." The CYA factor.
Good admins of course don't need marketing tools. They are for the pointy haired types that don't know enough to make good decisions.
Yeah, mod that up. HOWEVER, it depends on the application. Poorly written / designed SQL can REAllY pound the snot out of a database in terms of CPU. I ran into this at my last company. I worked with the DBA and programmers to redesign the app and we ended up reducing the CPU load by a factor of 50. We were murdering an 8 CPU Sun 5K, and after optimizations we ran on a couple 2 CPU E450 box saving us HUGE licensing dollars (2 boxes for redundancy.) Sometimes there is not much you can do to fix CPU usage of certain types of queries.
Memory and IO are still the biggies on most DB processing though.
It's actually quite simple to fix this. If you want a secure WLAN, put it off a leg on your firewall, require ALL traffic to be IPSEC to the IPSEC server. Deny ALL non-IPSEC traffic on that leg.* I see no reason to have an open WLAN unless you WANT an open WLAN.
* Obviously, you need a dhcp server handling that leg so it's not quite ALL traffic, but you can really restrict what that leg can do, how it's logged, etc.
Possibly you are taking analogies too far. If you scanned a computer and found open services, you must get authorization from the computer OWNER. The computer itself doesn't know who the hell you are, or whether you REALLY should be there or not. It's just following it's pre-programed tasks.
But if we want to continue this analogy, even with all it's flaws, it needs to be thought as a conversation.
Scanner: Knock Knock. Computer: Hi. Scanner: I'm comming in. Computer: OK. I assume you are authorized since you wouldn't just barge in if you wern't, and I have not been instructed on who is authorized and who is not. Scanner: Ahh. I see you have some nice files in here. Computer: Yes. I have files. Scanner: I'm copying them. Computer: Whatever.
There is no "automated system" that invites you in. You have to turn the knob and open the door, step in, and do shit. It's a standard request / response protocol. If you don't make the request, you don't get a response.
The basic reasoning flaw or morals problem you and some other seem to have is that you have default permission to go into any computer you want regardless of the owners wishes. Most computer users don't understand security. Period. They don't even know that their computer is wide open. Most users also don't want random unknown people plowing throught their files.
Shit man, it's the stuff they teach you in pre-school. Be nice to others, don't take their stuff, if you want to play with someone elses toys you NEED TO ASK FIRST. Oh, and that't the PERSON you ask, not the TOY.
You can't equate web searching (like google) to file share searching. When you put something on the web, you are usually publishing for others. File shares however are frequently enabled automagically by pooly designed and configured OS's. They are RARELY setup for the INTENT of general public access.
The answering machine solution SUCKS. I HATE it when someone I know does this.
Instead, spend a few more bucks and get a REAL phone system. For about $100, you can get one. The call goes like this. The system answers after the second ring (to get caller ID info), and plays a message which can say "If this is a sales call, hang up now. For John, press 1. For Lisa, press 2." If the caller presses a number, the call rings through to your actual phone with caller ID info. It can do selective ringing for different people in the house. If the person doesn't pick up, it goes to voicemail.
I don't have the name of this box, but one of my friends has one and so does my brother. Search google.
Slashdot Mirror
Were you even around during the win95 release? There were TONS of apps that didn't work. Anything with a driver comes to mind. Many other apps just flaked out. Win 3.1 was also unstable as hell (not saying that 95 was stable either). If you wanted to move towards stability, you had to upgrade due to the fact that MS had no interest in fixing old versions of windows to increase security / stability. That sucks.
OSS solves this. OS unstable? Port to something else. Bug? Fix it. Need an enhancement? Just do it.
Apache needs MORE support?? Hmm. Don't think so. I think you have that backwards. In the apache world, you don't have to rev the OS to rev the web server. You also don't have to apply the right hotfix / service packs in the right order just to install the freaking product - you just install the latest rev. You can also EASILY run 27 (or whatever) different releases / configurations of apache on the same box if you wish. Try that with IIS.
I don't think anyone is talking about using a product after support runs out. This may be just fine for some, but in the business world you need to have stable / secure systems that keep up with changing requirements.
4&5 are VALID arguments. Again, in the business world, you can't go running unsupported stuff. It is not about someone FORCING you to upgrade, you are forced due to the lack of needed support for an old version. In this case, the submitter is talking about search engine software. You can't lock that in a closet and pretend that old security problems can go forever without getting fixed. Hence the cost of a forced upgrade to get security fixes is a TOTALLY VALID argument in TCO.
In 5, are you expecting your VENDOR to go and install all the patches for you??? You trust your vendor to release patches that work 100% perfectly all the time? You don't test vendor related patches before pushing to production? Please. Your support staff has to monitor the vendor list just as they would OSS lists. The same work / testing / etc has to be done, yet OSS historically has been MUCH faster at releasing patches.
There are VERY FEW commercial software companies that support a particular app for more 5 years. 5 years is a LIFETIME. Win98 is EOL and it's only 4 years old. Ditto for NT4 which was still being sold 2 years ago, and support is for the most part GONE.
With OSS, you can basically support it forever, porting to new architectures, adding enhancements, fixing bugs, whatever. You just can't do that with comercial closed-source software.
The problem with code-escrow of commercial code is that you won't know how bad the code is until you NEED it. You may find that it's unmaintainable. Not an issue with OSS, where you know what you are getting into right up front. There are also other problems with code escrow but it usually is dependant on the terms of the contract.
I developed an application / custom hardware sold to utility companies about 8 years ago that is still in use. That code has had about 6 different maintainers since I left, and they hacked the code to shit, lost backups, etc. leaving my former clients in the lurch. We did offer code escrow, since the utilities end up using this stuff for 20 years or so, but not all the utilities took us up on the offer (since we charged extra for it.) Some of the equipment we replaced was over 50 years old. If I was doing this again, I would have pushed to just give the code to the utility up front. It just ain't right what happened to them. If they had the code, they could have hired someone to port to more modern hardware (it was PC based) or even a different OS (the code was designed to be very portable.) The code was useless to anyone that didn't have the custom hardware.
Bottom line is that comercial support is USELESS if your needs are long-term, and the company can't / won't support it long-term.
OSS give you freedom. It's hard to put a dollar figure on freedom. Some say that it's priceless.
This assumes that you need a full time programmer, which is a flawed assumption. Ever hear of contractors? There are LOTS of programmers out there, many outside the US willing and able to work for a VERY reasonable price. A programmer has no need to be onsite.
Not a flame or anything, but seriously. Get someone who knows what the hell they are doing to do some consulting for you. There are lots of them on the market, and you can get them cheap. Hey, you plan to make money with this, right? Don't want to lose your ass? Then you need someone with experience. You woudn't start a business without consulting a lawyer and CPA would you? While you don't mention what experience YOU have, I'm assuming that you have SOME, but not much based on your questions.
If you are gonna provide an SLA, you want TECHNICAL advice and LEGAL advice. Most SLA's are actually toothless in real life. The lawyers give you enough outs that you will never have to pay up with most customers (a few have the talent to see through the crap and make changes to your contract to put teeth back in.) Even though lawyers are expensive, it pays for itself in the long run.
The advise on slashdot is going to be spotty at best, especially in the light that so many NOC's are run poorly. Without experience on hand, you will run into the SAME traps / problems that most NOC's with inexperienced leaders run into.
Well, here are a few things that you may need.
A TESTED disaster recovery plan for servers, network, power, and cooling.
A trouble ticket system customized for your needs usable by inside and out (internally generated tickets and customer generated tickets.)
A network monitoring / management system that tracks not only subsystem availability but performance and keeps a history.
A customer management system that can bring up EVERYTHING you need to know about a customer, their syetems, their people, notification proceedures, etc. (this is VERY non-trivial)
A change control system - what happened, who approved it, who did it, how long did it take, what did they do, how did they do it, when was it active, how do you revert, etc.
Sigh. Setting up a NOC correctly is one of the most difficult tasks in IT.
Yeah, windows has improved it's speed. It crashes so fast it doesn't even get a chance to display the BSOD anymore. It just freezes instead.
This just isn't the case. The TRUTH is that the contracts MS forces OEM's to agree to require Windows on ALL computers of a specific model. What this means is that OEM's have to have DIFFERENT models if they want to offer computers without Windows. This is expensive to do, so they only offer a very limited set of models for those running other operating systems.
This is the anti-competitive behavior we are talking about. It's the illegal stuff they are doing to maintain their monopoly. Unfortunately we have a totally clueless legal system and a corrupt DOJ.
The former MS negotiator for Dell is a family friend, and he had some VERY interesting things to say about this topic.
Oh please. The TRUTH is that MOST (98% or so) configurations are ONLY availble with the required purhase of Windows. Some manufacturers offer a very limited number of models that come without Windows, and even fewer of those are laptops. Until you are able to choose ANY pc and "unbundle" Windows, there is a problem (MS Tax.) The problem is compunded by the fact that the "license" is "tied" to the machine and I can't sell it off to someone else. The reason for this is that MS has forced companies to sign anti-competitive agreements.
Blah blah blah "refuse to buy from X unless X" yeah right. That's not the reality of the world, especially in light of the fact that MS is a monopoly. Licenses change CONSTANTLY. Sometimes (such as the Win2000 SP3 EULA) change things out from under you AFTER you purchase the product. Before you say that it's optional, it's NOT optional if you want security fixes (which are for all practical purposes required.) Kinda like buying a car and being forced to agree not to say anything bad about the manufacturer in order to get a safety-related recall problem fixed. While you can choose to buy another brand of car and drive on every road that any other brand of car can, the same is NOT the case with computer operating systems where MS has a monopoly.
Not to be a troll, but what I REALLY want to know is what is going on under the hood. What more has MS done on DRM, corporate spyware, "activation" copy protection crap (Will I have to call MS if I upgrade my mouse now?) etc. Let's see the new EULA too.
From an IT standpoint, I want to know what MS has done on "trustworthy computing." Will it continue to be virus / worm prone? Rather then spend their time making the system "pretty" and adding more features nobody cares about, MS needs to secure the OS and make it more reliable.
Kinda like a Mounds bar, but more crunchy.
It's genenerally not a 5M limit on mail BOXES, but individual messages.
With modern mail stores, mail box limits of 100M / user is fairly realistic, although you can KILL your mail server if you use POP with frequent checks and "leave mail on the server" options.
5M is a resonable max to expect someone to get over a modem, although that's pretty bad too.
Would you use a Honda Accord to haul a ton of rock or a Ford F350 pickup? It's really that simple. People who think FTP is hard haven't used it frequently. You don't need tp use the command line tool anymore. Really.
There are several great ways of creating "easy to use" drop boxes for internal / external users. It's the IT department's JOB is to create and maintain these resources. Instead of whining how it's hard, just DO it. Sheesh. This is NOT HARD people!
Yeah, this is a bitch. Filters are a fact of life, and as long as people insist on emailing "funny" apps, and MS keeps insisting on shipping outlook configured as a virus distribution tool, filters will thrive.
:-/
Other filters "defang" mail by nuking image references in html mail, javascript, etc.
More and more filtering is being done in the corporate space to the point where email has become an unreliable way to send files. Again, as long as MS (and others) contine to ignore the virus problem and intentionally design their products to be prone to viruses, filtering will only get more pervasive. As a side note, Anti-virus software generally fails due to the fact that virus definitions are created AFTER the virus is discovered, and is only effective AFTER users install upgraded definitions. This creates a time-lag where users are basically unprotected. File-type based rejection / defanging is therefore a much more effective tool against email borne viruses / worms (which doesn't mean that you shouldn't use anti-virus software of course.)
Back to the main topic, while the reality is that more and more people are sending huge files around, it is still a bad idea as mail servers and the mail protocols (smtp & pop mainly) are not designed to handle large messages. There is no "resume transfer" for example. Large files mailed to mailing lists can explode out to many gigabytes: a concept many users don't understand. MUA's don't generally offer the option of skipping a message that they are having a problem downloading. IMAP of course is a better solution to this but many ISP's don't offer IMAP access.
As for your specific problem, you are letting someone elses problem be your problem, and causing other problems as a result, which is very problematic when you think about it
So you would placate the stupid bitch who insists on backing up her hard drive by emailing her files to herself and ends up with a 4G mail spool and kills your mail server for all other users?
You can't run IT like that. You need to have a clear set of policies and proceedures. Get these blessed by senior managment. As long as you have justification, this is a no-brainer. People who violate those need to be delt with via the normal disciplinary proceedures your company has which may even eventually lead to termination of employment for the violator.
IT personel do NOT need to put up with verbal abuse on the phone. Hang up. Call HR to report the asshole.
That's how I run MY IT department. Moral increased greatly in the rank and file of IT, and end users (and management) are happy because systems are more reliable / responsive due to proper use / end of abuse.
please tell me how to determine the size of $some_large_number?
:-)
That is a number that would be unique to your business needs and resources (money, equipment, software, bandwidth, etc.)
I can help for $some_large_number / hour consulting...
Huh. Sounds like a dumb ISP. Should at LEAST give your users the option of paying more for a larger quota. For every 10M more, another $5 / month or so. This pays for itself quite quickly.
This is a bogus argument. There are MANY ftp clients that are just drag and drop. Totally simple to use. The corporate intra / extranet can just be a fileshare.
Don't forget the concept of "training" and online help.
Even the most clueless can handle this concept.
There are MANY methods to prevent search engines from indexing
drop boxes including password access to the dropbox directory / ssl, etc. Again, a bogus argument. Search the net for more info.
Oh please. Solaris x86 is SUCH a dead product. Sun hasn't given it any respect. Yeah, they revived it from the pit of doom due to some loyal users noisy protests, but that won't fix the horrid hardware compatability, and the total lack of third party vendor support. As long as you don't use ANY commercial code, and use totally generic (old) hardware, Solaris x86 may be OK. I ran a medium large web site on it a couple years ago (~30M page views / day) with 40 Solaris x86 production boxes and a smattering of larger sparc boxes, and my experience with it is to avoid x86 solaris at all costs.
While your statement may be true, the sizing tool should have a SEPARATE metric for growth and not be built-in. Some apps' needs NEVER grow, while others may grow rapidly. Depends on the app and usage. If the tool truely does spec machines that are far beyond true need, and does NOT specifically state exactly what growth is factored in, then that tool is BROKEN and USELESS.
My guess is that the tool specs machines way bigger than true need so they don't have customers comming back saying "You told us that this machine would do the job and it's way too slow." The CYA factor.
Good admins of course don't need marketing tools. They are for the pointy haired types that don't know enough to make good decisions.
Yeah, mod that up. HOWEVER, it depends on the application. Poorly written / designed SQL can REAllY pound the snot out of a database in terms of CPU. I ran into this at my last company. I worked with the DBA and programmers to redesign the app and we ended up reducing the CPU load by a factor of 50. We were murdering an 8 CPU Sun 5K, and after optimizations we ran on a couple 2 CPU E450 box saving us HUGE licensing dollars (2 boxes for redundancy.) Sometimes there is not much you can do to fix CPU usage of certain types of queries.
Memory and IO are still the biggies on most DB processing though.
Wouldn't it also depend on if SQL server is compiled with optimizations for the P4? It's probably compiled for the 386.
It's actually quite simple to fix this. If you want a secure WLAN, put it off a leg on your firewall, require ALL traffic to be IPSEC to the IPSEC server. Deny ALL non-IPSEC traffic on that leg.* I see no reason to have an open WLAN unless you WANT an open WLAN.
* Obviously, you need a dhcp server handling that leg so it's not quite ALL traffic, but you can really restrict what that leg can do, how it's logged, etc.
Possibly you are taking analogies too far. If you scanned a computer and found open services, you must get authorization from the computer OWNER. The computer itself doesn't know who the hell you are, or whether you REALLY should be there or not. It's just following it's pre-programed tasks.
But if we want to continue this analogy, even with all it's flaws, it needs to be thought as a conversation.
Scanner: Knock Knock.
Computer: Hi.
Scanner: I'm comming in.
Computer: OK. I assume you are authorized since you wouldn't just barge in if you wern't, and I have not been instructed on who is authorized and who is not.
Scanner: Ahh. I see you have some nice files in here.
Computer: Yes. I have files.
Scanner: I'm copying them.
Computer: Whatever.
There is no "automated system" that invites you in. You have to turn the knob and open the door, step in, and do shit. It's a standard request / response protocol. If you don't make the request, you don't get a response.
The basic reasoning flaw or morals problem you and some other seem to have is that you have default permission to go into any computer you want regardless of the owners wishes. Most computer users don't understand security. Period. They don't even know that their computer is wide open. Most users also don't want random unknown people plowing throught their files.
Shit man, it's the stuff they teach you in pre-school. Be nice to others, don't take their stuff, if you want to play with someone elses toys you NEED TO ASK FIRST. Oh, and that't the PERSON you ask, not the TOY.
You can't equate web searching (like google) to file share searching. When you put something on the web, you are usually publishing for others. File shares however are frequently enabled automagically by pooly designed and configured OS's. They are RARELY setup for the INTENT of general public access.
The "intent" is everything.
Does this help?
The answering machine solution SUCKS. I HATE it when someone I know does this.
Instead, spend a few more bucks and get a REAL phone system. For about $100, you can get one. The call goes like this. The system answers after the second ring (to get caller ID info), and plays a message which can say "If this is a sales call, hang up now. For John, press 1. For Lisa, press 2." If the caller presses a number, the call rings through to your actual phone with caller ID info. It can do selective ringing for different people in the house. If the person doesn't pick up, it goes to voicemail.
I don't have the name of this box, but one of my friends has one and so does my brother. Search google.