I understand there were no laptops in the 60s when they sent the first people up. but wouldnt the new picturebooks be lighter than a writing pad plus a paper?
And with the new digital cameras, we should be getting much higher resolutions of pictures we see around.
How hard would it be to install a nuclear reactor on an oil rig in international waters and start splitting seawater?
Pretty hard with all that competition. The US can sit on the Iraqi oilfields, but they cant sit on 70% of the earth's surface. They'd rather make sure all cars manufactured eats gas and not too many countries build nuclear power plants.
I finished Giants: Citizen Kabuto fast, and regretted it. That was a beautiful but short game. I loved the length of the Monkey Island series. The original Wolfenstein and Doom were also nicely sized.
But Ive never finished Zeliard. Now that feels like a sharp stick. I would agree with your comments for a very few games like zeliard which cannot be finished in years, but you know what? When I'll finish it I'll disagree with you again. Because I would be loving it.
Perhaps its not a great idea to be working at a financial company, and go about broadcasting your insecurities and saying you dont know much about security.
Good thing your email address is from a yahoo domain.
It still might just be possible that the cost of hiring security specialists/developers in the long term is more costly than paying through insurance the very occasional mishap.
And as you mentioned it is a check printing app. The one we use just runs in a windows2000 server and prints to a network dot-matrix printer. We take care of the security at the network level and at the workstation, so all is well. Unless the application must be accessed over the Internet, I doubt much security is required at that level.
-Properly secure a firewall
This should really include configuring and using snort as the IDS part, full control over the iptables command and NOT using squid.
-Compile and install a kernel
And change the default screen color, use rdev and use ksymoops to locate the source of a crash and report it properly using the right bugreport email format to the exactly right group of people after having searched mailinglist archives and newsgroups for the same problem. Should also know enough C and about makefiles to correct function typos, comment out assert blocks and point the makefiles to the right libraries and include directories. Remember we're talking about a linux SPECIALIST, not a kiddie compiler.
-Configure the third button on thier mouse
No thats too tough
-Print to a Panasonic KXP-8410 printer in color
Too many Linux experts know little about printers. Many printers dont have drivers but can shared to smb/active directory users who do have the drivers. I strongly agree with this point.
-Make coffee that is restricted under OSHA guidelines
Or Quetta Tea. Doodh Pati. Not all geeks are scrawny white suburban californians.
-Recognize a minimum 8 of 10 random network cards by thier chipset number only
I would agree with this one, but you can have software-only experts too. I can tell ethernet, tokenring, fddi, atm, arcnet and isdn cards by their chipset, whether they will run under Linux/FreeBSD or Solaris, but I know guys who dont change their RAM but develop sophisticated KDE apps. There are niches...
-Understand the usefullness of the SysRq button
This can be learned in a day, so a specialist MUST know it.
-Install linux on any appliance that does not come with a keyboard or mouse
I am tempted to say he should be able to do the same with Solaris. Should also be able to install Plan9, Windows 2000 Advanced Server, Unixware, AIX and QNX on vmware images. (bochs would do)
-Setup a cron job to order pizza online
Too easy
-Pay a license fee to SCO
Uhh yeah. I'll hire such a person.
-Assemble a beowolf cluster which includes more than one type of gaming console
I'll bring a serious point here. This is not a practical skill. Just test for RHCE and that covers the really required sysadmin skills. Someone who is obsessed with gamebox clusters will not be interested in 99.9999 uptime. He will be playing unreal on the servers at night.
-Install a really cool kde/gnome/enlightenment theme
And get used to twm and CDE. Learn to enjoy the command line.
-Run desktops at no less than 1600x1200 resolution, native
Why? Use a real DEC VT520 dumb terminal.
-Name all boxen after sci-fi characters/objects
Come on geeks are more diverse than that. I havent seen star wars.
-Any cats owned must be named after cabling specifications
Or kernel header files, or commands.
-Adequate space must be reserved in all hardware racks for pizza boxes
One PC-XT case should be home to a hamster.
-Every system must glow at night. Server rooms should be scary
I second that. Modders for beautification are generally not all that interested in the software and are gamers.
Here are some others:
Take a 10GB ext3 or XFS or reiserfs partition full of data, and dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/partition block=512 count=4096, do the same for the END of the partition, and dd if=/dev/partition of=/tmp/file and give the file to him to recover as much data as possible.
Give him a Linux server and a Pentium1 with no harddisk but a bootable nic, and tell him to remote-boot windows95. Hire him for at least $80k if he can do that.
Act like a project manager and ask him to put all his work in project form on MS Project 2000, and submit weekly reports. Cause deliber
The conclusion was a bit opinionated and not as analytical as I'd like, but its true, Linux does trample all over Solaris both on x86, and with Solaris running on a comparable sparc platform.
Now the whole focus of Solaris has been in a different direction. Being UNIX, Solaris is a very standard market OS, it is THE standard and most commonly used UNIX out there. No other UNIX has such a huge codebase. You download oracle or websphere, and it installs without any package-type or library problems. Linux comes in too diverse a flavor to allow that.
Solaris is also poised to be more stable and robust than fast. Linux 2.6.0-test8 with a preemptive kernel and XFS filesystem runs nicely. But Solaris runs robustly. They're both miles away from Microsoft in stability, but you get issues with the thread libraries in Linux more often than in Solaris. In Linux, theres a large set of drivers that are EXPERIMENTAL, and for many things, you have to get the packages from various places (think ATM networking or ipsec VPN) while theyre already sitting there in Solaris.
In that sense, Solaris is more like FreeBSD, and comparisons with FreeBSD would be more interesting. What I'd like to see however, is a large shootout between Linux 2.4, 2.6, Free/Net/OpenBSD, AIX4.3/5.1, Solaris9 (sparc64), IRIX, BeOS comparing filesystem performance, threads, IO, network throughput, number of packages available and the likes.
Versions of PowerPC comes with 2 and 4 cores. Playstation3 is already being designed with cell processors. Seems like we'll hit the clockcycle limit, already have hit the bits limit to 64-bits (128 bits will never be practical) and shrunk the die to have each wire 5 atoms wide. The next logical step is to increase the number of cores, maybe incorporate the memory itself (maybe 128MBs of it) at full core speed on the same die, maybe incorporate the GPU on the same die and start going vertical.
I think for now moore's law will be bent and we'll see the slowing down of processor development, until they bring in quantum computing when the processor performance will spike up and correct the moore's law line.
I dont get why the boss ASKS for Exchange, but offer him a list of email systems including Lotus Domino, Courier MTA, Sendmail, Qmail, Exim, Postfix and others you think are appropriate for such sized organizations.
Then run a few basic tests. It doesnt take too many hours to install and configure each of the above mail MTAs (or routers) for demonstration purposes.
Heres how you can explain the thing... Microsoft is insecure. Thats a given (show the documents proving so) and you will need an additional layer in front of Exchange to go through the emails, maybe including Bayesian filters like spamassassin. You could run it unprotected, but working unprotected is something you just dont do...
There are cable-laying ships laying cables in all the seas out there to make distance carriers rich. Each cable is a big bundle of optic fibres carrying ip over ATM traffic between juniper routers. Each cable also carries somewhere between an OC-48 to OC192 traffic. This really makes me wonder:
(1) Why is 5gbps a record? Why is it not possible to connect OC48-supporting ATM or FDDI PCI-64 cards on both ends to servers and then mirror some important servers carrying all the free OSes (like ibiblio.org) to countries out there? Take the PCI-64 bandwidth, take the CPU FSB and SCSI disk write sustained speed (for strip-RAIDed 15k cheetahs or at least terabytes of RAM, take the bandwidth including the ATM overhead and you have an enormous bandwidth out there.
(2) Why DSL connections in Toronto cost so much? How expensive is it anyway to lay a thick bundle of fibre cables (200 fibres in each), OC-192 in each fibre between North American and European cities? Now divide all that bandwidth between all the DSL users and include the costs of laying cables, nontechnical tech support, automated phone menu systems, ip port blocking and other RIAA software and many copies of windows2000 servers, it should still be really cheap for us.
Ive two networks of Solaris and Linux connected together with cisco routers, all working with OSPF. I change the default route once in a while, hook up the second network behind yet another network and watch the route updates spread.
Now the firewall that I use used to be Linux, but has been replaced by Solaris just because I'm studying for its certs. The box runs NAT and squid, letting through certain IPs without mapping them, ip accounting, ipsec VPN and zebra for updates, rp_pppoe software for the dsl connection, and of course the apache, postfix, samba and other such things.
Now should I go about writing a slashdot article on this? I would have, but I know other guys who have other complex settings involving Linux/FreeBSD and dont think much of it.
That was a bunch of negative words but the facts were all real. FSF's enthuisiasm about Linux has probably turned it into an armtwister. After all the legal stories we hear on slashdot are all too one-sided, and theres obviously some backlash going on behind the stories.
I had been predicting the manufacturers to diversify their drives a bit now. Till now we've had two directions, the big ATA and fast SCSI drives. This will change as some people need bigger for lower cost, like this drive provides, some will need really fast 7200/8mb SATA drives to become their C: drive, many others will need really cheap low power drives for the lower end machines (maybe still at 10gb - 30gb for cost reasons) and the server guys will pay big bucks for 15k Cheetahs.
My main interest in these ranges is (1) Huge but cheap drives, possibly slow with lower cache, so we can have 1TB+ space in standard machines. With this drive, we can have 1.2TBs in a standard Pentium2, Celeron or Duron machine to act as a cheap fileserver. (2) Really low cost and low power drives, possibly slow and low on space. Even 10GBs will still do for people who need computers for emails and web browsing only. 2GBs is enough for Windows 2000 or XP, Office, antivirus, a few games, winamp, winzip, real, and the rest of the list. 30GBs at 5200 selling at $50 will cover a very important market other drives cannot cover.
I wonder why noone has come up with those old Seagate multi-level 8-plate thick drives for faster data rates and high volumes.
IT staff does not have to be ignorant to deny introducing the Mac to the workplace. Theres a reason why they use all workstations from one vendor... ie IBM or Dell or HP and not mix and match. They may have problems but the problems will be consistent, rather than having a wide range of problems specific to each computer.
IT staff also tend to have their hands full with various tasks and the management wouldnt hire more coops or temps to help. So if the workers can support their own Macs, BeOSes etc, all wonderful. But we all know the moment that messenger doesnt seem to work, they hit the IT department with the problem.
An IT department could start the whole network by building it all on Macs or Linux workstations... but most frequently, that decision was already made by the previous sysadmin, and changing all workstations would be too expensive.
'We can put genes into mice and create Arnold Schwarzenegger mice.'
Umm, Arnold is not a bodybuilder because of his genes. So we'll see athletes who inject Arnold genes, and wonder why it doesnt quite work, but their accents go really bad.
Changing the number is obvious, but how about receiving faxes to a computer software? That way, paper is not wasted for one.
And if the new location has phone lines too, try switching the fax and phone lines. You'll get plenty of beeping calls, but they should disappear as their sends will be unsuccessful.
Would be more interesting if a gps locator can be hooked to one of these PDAs, using a microdrive and hopefully running Linux, so you could throw the thing in a mailman's vehicle and get a geographical map of hotspots. I wonder if it would be small enough to strap on a stray cat, get a really detailed map, or that slutty girl down the street, get a REALLY detailed map of the whole city. Dont get too involved strapping it on her though.
In another study conducted by Ford, GM and Toyota, it was discovered that driving multiple cars increases travel. It was found that individuals driving new cars, and multiple cars, not necessarily at the same time, are happier as a result. This should be hopefully a new incentive for managers to increase the wages of their employees so they can make Toyota mangers rich.
I have seen so much hype and no numbers. So what if each Cell is an overclocked ARM7TDMI and they use 16 of them in the box? I am more interested in how the memory is connected to each of the cells (northbridge), the memory specs (surely not the PC133), and how much of the OpenGL pipeline is offloaded further from the GPU to the chips. This is after all what they claim theyre doing.
I've seen dual and quad ARM cores in one chip, seen a simple GPU with an ARM in one chip and an ARM chip with a large FPGA on board. These are real production objects being used in cell phones and the likes. Everyone knows a dual Pentium2 500MHz doesnt necessarily beat a single Pentium3 at 1GHz, so how does this translate into cool gaming?
You should check with www.securityie.com about the hardware required for the CCIE Security certification. You might have to use some cisco hardware, but for the most part, it will be a bunch of Linux, OpenBSD and Solaris machines, some windows machines and some other Linux machines with traffic generation software. You will also need an Internet connection and a domain name, so you can direct real outside spam and other attacks to yourself.
Here's a better idea. If you are in a university, setup a server and name it FINANCIAL or something, give it an ftp or http server that gives a stern warning for students be penalized and expelled if the server is attacked. Sit back and enjoy the show.
The network includes a Linux Primary Domain Controller, Cisco router, port redirection for VNC, tape backup solution etc.
Thats complex? Almost any network would have Microsoft-based machines in it, therefore an Active Directory setup with some Linux servers in it, and a backup-tape system. The connection to the Internet is usually through a connection-sharing MS or Linux computer, or a linksys/netopia or cisco router. And I'm describing a small company.
We have all that plus more, including ethernet, fddi and 802.11b, and a linux-based vpn and firewall using x509 certs.
For changes, we just have some co-op or temp students we keep around with some experience who come in handy if someone major is replaced. We do have a large tree structure of documents as one big MS help file containing linked HTML pages and diagrams. It includes daily, weekly, monthly and annual procedures and license update requirements. The whole set is refreshed with new information continuously, and any joe IT guy gets a good understanding of the company's IT structure.
The purpose of the document is not to explain technology, but act as a reference so it is based on bulleted points rather than paragraphs. It starts with the network technologies and OSes used, then goes on about the OS, patches, settings and major software installed on the 8-odd servers, and their purposes. An appendix lists all important contacts, licenses and security watchouts.
This setting works with a company with one key IT person dealing with temp/co-op workers. If the organization involves IT managers and teams, then the documentation becomes horrendously complicated.
This question was asked a few times before on slashdot... the usual answer is squirrelmail. I tried a bunch of things including squirrelmail, a J2EE app, and even building my own webmail thingy (which by the way worked very well short of dealing with the MIME types, but now I've just retreated to using mutt in telnet.
And it parks the head in one-tenths of a second too. Come to think of it, how fast does sound travel in plastic? Does it go from one corner of the laptop to the harddisk in more than one tenth of a second? I thought sound travels in solids faster than in gas.
Much more useful would be to flatten the head more and add structures around it to not damage the platter. This will make the head heavy and slow. So they can add two or more seperate heads in the same structure. More expensive, but good technology does not come cheap.
I've always wondered if someone has made a laptop with solidstate IDE disks, maybe compactflash, or at least the microdrive.
I agree with you that its the freedom to just get it and install on an old computer rather than go through the hassles, but Linux is just a swiss army knife. We were trying to run a VPN solution, proxy server, antivirus server, webserver, lotus domino test server, fileserver etc on a windows 2000 advanced server and we were still running into obstacles. To be fair, another techie at my workplace doesnt know Linux very well and will have more problems with it around. Hopefully, the presence of Linux will convince him to get more acquainted with it, and use it later for other kinds of patchwork.
Slashdot Mirror
Please tell me again why they dont use laptops?
I understand there were no laptops in the 60s when they sent the first people up. but wouldnt the new picturebooks be lighter than a writing pad plus a paper?
And with the new digital cameras, we should be getting much higher resolutions of pictures we see around.
How hard would it be to install a nuclear reactor on an oil rig in international waters and start splitting seawater?
Pretty hard with all that competition. The US can sit on the Iraqi oilfields, but they cant sit on 70% of the earth's surface. They'd rather make sure all cars manufactured eats gas and not too many countries build nuclear power plants.
I finished Giants: Citizen Kabuto fast, and regretted it. That was a beautiful but short game. I loved the length of the Monkey Island series. The original Wolfenstein and Doom were also nicely sized.
But Ive never finished Zeliard. Now that feels like a sharp stick. I would agree with your comments for a very few games like zeliard which cannot be finished in years, but you know what? When I'll finish it I'll disagree with you again. Because I would be loving it.
Perhaps its not a great idea to be working at a financial company, and go about broadcasting your insecurities and saying you dont know much about security.
Good thing your email address is from a yahoo domain.
It still might just be possible that the cost of hiring security specialists/developers in the long term is more costly than paying through insurance the very occasional mishap.
And as you mentioned it is a check printing app. The one we use just runs in a windows2000 server and prints to a network dot-matrix printer. We take care of the security at the network level and at the workstation, so all is well. Unless the application must be accessed over the Internet, I doubt much security is required at that level.
...that can do several interesting things like titling...
That last word of yours sounds dirty but I have no clue what it means.
This should really include configuring and using snort as the IDS part, full control over the iptables command and NOT using squid.
-Compile and install a kernel
And change the default screen color, use rdev and use ksymoops to locate the source of a crash and report it properly using the right bugreport email format to the exactly right group of people after having searched mailinglist archives and newsgroups for the same problem. Should also know enough C and about makefiles to correct function typos, comment out assert blocks and point the makefiles to the right libraries and include directories. Remember we're talking about a linux SPECIALIST, not a kiddie compiler.
-Configure the third button on thier mouse
No thats too tough
-Print to a Panasonic KXP-8410 printer in color
Too many Linux experts know little about printers. Many printers dont have drivers but can shared to smb/active directory users who do have the drivers. I strongly agree with this point.
-Make coffee that is restricted under OSHA guidelines
Or Quetta Tea. Doodh Pati. Not all geeks are scrawny white suburban californians.
-Recognize a minimum 8 of 10 random network cards by thier chipset number only
I would agree with this one, but you can have software-only experts too. I can tell ethernet, tokenring, fddi, atm, arcnet and isdn cards by their chipset, whether they will run under Linux/FreeBSD or Solaris, but I know guys who dont change their RAM but develop sophisticated KDE apps. There are niches...
-Understand the usefullness of the SysRq button
This can be learned in a day, so a specialist MUST know it.
-Install linux on any appliance that does not come with a keyboard or mouse
I am tempted to say he should be able to do the same with Solaris. Should also be able to install Plan9, Windows 2000 Advanced Server, Unixware, AIX and QNX on vmware images. (bochs would do)
-Setup a cron job to order pizza online
Too easy
-Pay a license fee to SCO
Uhh yeah. I'll hire such a person.
-Assemble a beowolf cluster which includes more than one type of gaming console
I'll bring a serious point here. This is not a practical skill. Just test for RHCE and that covers the really required sysadmin skills. Someone who is obsessed with gamebox clusters will not be interested in 99.9999 uptime. He will be playing unreal on the servers at night.
-Install a really cool kde/gnome/enlightenment theme
And get used to twm and CDE. Learn to enjoy the command line.
-Run desktops at no less than 1600x1200 resolution, native
Why? Use a real DEC VT520 dumb terminal.
-Name all boxen after sci-fi characters/objects
Come on geeks are more diverse than that. I havent seen star wars.
-Any cats owned must be named after cabling specifications
Or kernel header files, or commands.
-Adequate space must be reserved in all hardware racks for pizza boxes
One PC-XT case should be home to a hamster.
-Every system must glow at night. Server rooms should be scary
I second that. Modders for beautification are generally not all that interested in the software and are gamers.
Here are some others:
Or very lightweight airplanes.
Imagine computer cases that dont bend and break. Ever.
Imagine taller skyscrapers.
The conclusion was a bit opinionated and not as analytical as I'd like, but its true, Linux does trample all over Solaris both on x86, and with Solaris running on a comparable sparc platform.
Now the whole focus of Solaris has been in a different direction. Being UNIX, Solaris is a very standard market OS, it is THE standard and most commonly used UNIX out there. No other UNIX has such a huge codebase. You download oracle or websphere, and it installs without any package-type or library problems. Linux comes in too diverse a flavor to allow that.
Solaris is also poised to be more stable and robust than fast. Linux 2.6.0-test8 with a preemptive kernel and XFS filesystem runs nicely. But Solaris runs robustly. They're both miles away from Microsoft in stability, but you get issues with the thread libraries in Linux more often than in Solaris. In Linux, theres a large set of drivers that are EXPERIMENTAL, and for many things, you have to get the packages from various places (think ATM networking or ipsec VPN) while theyre already sitting there in Solaris.
In that sense, Solaris is more like FreeBSD, and comparisons with FreeBSD would be more interesting. What I'd like to see however, is a large shootout between Linux 2.4, 2.6, Free/Net/OpenBSD, AIX4.3/5.1, Solaris9 (sparc64), IRIX, BeOS comparing filesystem performance, threads, IO, network throughput, number of packages available and the likes.
Versions of PowerPC comes with 2 and 4 cores. Playstation3 is already being designed with cell processors. Seems like we'll hit the clockcycle limit, already have hit the bits limit to 64-bits (128 bits will never be practical) and shrunk the die to have each wire 5 atoms wide. The next logical step is to increase the number of cores, maybe incorporate the memory itself (maybe 128MBs of it) at full core speed on the same die, maybe incorporate the GPU on the same die and start going vertical.
I think for now moore's law will be bent and we'll see the slowing down of processor development, until they bring in quantum computing when the processor performance will spike up and correct the moore's law line.
I dont get why the boss ASKS for Exchange, but offer him a list of email systems including Lotus Domino, Courier MTA, Sendmail, Qmail, Exim, Postfix and others you think are appropriate for such sized organizations.
Then run a few basic tests. It doesnt take too many hours to install and configure each of the above mail MTAs (or routers) for demonstration purposes.
Heres how you can explain the thing... Microsoft is insecure. Thats a given (show the documents proving so) and you will need an additional layer in front of Exchange to go through the emails, maybe including Bayesian filters like spamassassin. You could run it unprotected, but working unprotected is something you just dont do...
Theyll understand.
There are cable-laying ships laying cables in all the seas out there to make distance carriers rich. Each cable is a big bundle of optic fibres carrying ip over ATM traffic between juniper routers. Each cable also carries somewhere between an OC-48 to OC192 traffic. This really makes me wonder:
(1) Why is 5gbps a record? Why is it not possible to connect OC48-supporting ATM or FDDI PCI-64 cards on both ends to servers and then mirror some important servers carrying all the free OSes (like ibiblio.org) to countries out there? Take the PCI-64 bandwidth, take the CPU FSB and SCSI disk write sustained speed (for strip-RAIDed 15k cheetahs or at least terabytes of RAM, take the bandwidth including the ATM overhead and you have an enormous bandwidth out there.
(2) Why DSL connections in Toronto cost so much? How expensive is it anyway to lay a thick bundle of fibre cables (200 fibres in each), OC-192 in each fibre between North American and European cities? Now divide all that bandwidth between all the DSL users and include the costs of laying cables, nontechnical tech support, automated phone menu systems, ip port blocking and other RIAA software and many copies of windows2000 servers, it should still be really cheap for us.
Ive two networks of Solaris and Linux connected together with cisco routers, all working with OSPF. I change the default route once in a while, hook up the second network behind yet another network and watch the route updates spread.
Now the firewall that I use used to be Linux, but has been replaced by Solaris just because I'm studying for its certs. The box runs NAT and squid, letting through certain IPs without mapping them, ip accounting, ipsec VPN and zebra for updates, rp_pppoe software for the dsl connection, and of course the apache, postfix, samba and other such things.
Now should I go about writing a slashdot article on this? I would have, but I know other guys who have other complex settings involving Linux/FreeBSD and dont think much of it.
That was a bunch of negative words but the facts were all real. FSF's enthuisiasm about Linux has probably turned it into an armtwister. After all the legal stories we hear on slashdot are all too one-sided, and theres obviously some backlash going on behind the stories.
I had been predicting the manufacturers to diversify their drives a bit now. Till now we've had two directions, the big ATA and fast SCSI drives. This will change as some people need bigger for lower cost, like this drive provides, some will need really fast 7200/8mb SATA drives to become their C: drive, many others will need really cheap low power drives for the lower end machines (maybe still at 10gb - 30gb for cost reasons) and the server guys will pay big bucks for 15k Cheetahs.
My main interest in these ranges is (1) Huge but cheap drives, possibly slow with lower cache, so we can have 1TB+ space in standard machines. With this drive, we can have 1.2TBs in a standard Pentium2, Celeron or Duron machine to act as a cheap fileserver. (2) Really low cost and low power drives, possibly slow and low on space. Even 10GBs will still do for people who need computers for emails and web browsing only. 2GBs is enough for Windows 2000 or XP, Office, antivirus, a few games, winamp, winzip, real, and the rest of the list. 30GBs at 5200 selling at $50 will cover a very important market other drives cannot cover.
I wonder why noone has come up with those old Seagate multi-level 8-plate thick drives for faster data rates and high volumes.
IT staff does not have to be ignorant to deny introducing the Mac to the workplace. Theres a reason why they use all workstations from one vendor... ie IBM or Dell or HP and not mix and match. They may have problems but the problems will be consistent, rather than having a wide range of problems specific to each computer.
IT staff also tend to have their hands full with various tasks and the management wouldnt hire more coops or temps to help. So if the workers can support their own Macs, BeOSes etc, all wonderful. But we all know the moment that messenger doesnt seem to work, they hit the IT department with the problem.
An IT department could start the whole network by building it all on Macs or Linux workstations... but most frequently, that decision was already made by the previous sysadmin, and changing all workstations would be too expensive.
'We can put genes into mice and create Arnold Schwarzenegger mice.'
Umm, Arnold is not a bodybuilder because of his genes. So we'll see athletes who inject Arnold genes, and wonder why it doesnt quite work, but their accents go really bad.
Changing the number is obvious, but how about receiving faxes to a computer software? That way, paper is not wasted for one.
And if the new location has phone lines too, try switching the fax and phone lines. You'll get plenty of beeping calls, but they should disappear as their sends will be unsuccessful.
Would be more interesting if a gps locator can be hooked to one of these PDAs, using a microdrive and hopefully running Linux, so you could throw the thing in a mailman's vehicle and get a geographical map of hotspots. I wonder if it would be small enough to strap on a stray cat, get a really detailed map, or that slutty girl down the street, get a REALLY detailed map of the whole city. Dont get too involved strapping it on her though.
In another study conducted by Ford, GM and Toyota, it was discovered that driving multiple cars increases travel. It was found that individuals driving new cars, and multiple cars, not necessarily at the same time, are happier as a result. This should be hopefully a new incentive for managers to increase the wages of their employees so they can make Toyota mangers rich.
I have seen so much hype and no numbers. So what if each Cell is an overclocked ARM7TDMI and they use 16 of them in the box? I am more interested in how the memory is connected to each of the cells (northbridge), the memory specs (surely not the PC133), and how much of the OpenGL pipeline is offloaded further from the GPU to the chips. This is after all what they claim theyre doing.
I've seen dual and quad ARM cores in one chip, seen a simple GPU with an ARM in one chip and an ARM chip with a large FPGA on board. These are real production objects being used in cell phones and the likes. Everyone knows a dual Pentium2 500MHz doesnt necessarily beat a single Pentium3 at 1GHz, so how does this translate into cool gaming?
You should check with www.securityie.com about the hardware required for the CCIE Security certification. You might have to use some cisco hardware, but for the most part, it will be a bunch of Linux, OpenBSD and Solaris machines, some windows machines and some other Linux machines with traffic generation software. You will also need an Internet connection and a domain name, so you can direct real outside spam and other attacks to yourself.
Here's a better idea. If you are in a university, setup a server and name it FINANCIAL or something, give it an ftp or http server that gives a stern warning for students be penalized and expelled if the server is attacked. Sit back and enjoy the show.
The network includes a Linux Primary Domain Controller, Cisco router, port redirection for VNC, tape backup solution etc. Thats complex? Almost any network would have Microsoft-based machines in it, therefore an Active Directory setup with some Linux servers in it, and a backup-tape system. The connection to the Internet is usually through a connection-sharing MS or Linux computer, or a linksys/netopia or cisco router. And I'm describing a small company. We have all that plus more, including ethernet, fddi and 802.11b, and a linux-based vpn and firewall using x509 certs. For changes, we just have some co-op or temp students we keep around with some experience who come in handy if someone major is replaced. We do have a large tree structure of documents as one big MS help file containing linked HTML pages and diagrams. It includes daily, weekly, monthly and annual procedures and license update requirements. The whole set is refreshed with new information continuously, and any joe IT guy gets a good understanding of the company's IT structure. The purpose of the document is not to explain technology, but act as a reference so it is based on bulleted points rather than paragraphs. It starts with the network technologies and OSes used, then goes on about the OS, patches, settings and major software installed on the 8-odd servers, and their purposes. An appendix lists all important contacts, licenses and security watchouts. This setting works with a company with one key IT person dealing with temp /co-op workers. If the organization involves IT managers and teams, then the documentation becomes horrendously complicated.
This question was asked a few times before on slashdot... the usual answer is squirrelmail.
I tried a bunch of things including squirrelmail, a J2EE app, and even building my own webmail thingy (which by the way worked very well short of dealing with the MIME types, but now I've just retreated to using mutt in telnet.
And it parks the head in one-tenths of a second too. Come to think of it, how fast does sound travel in plastic? Does it go from one corner of the laptop to the harddisk in more than one tenth of a second? I thought sound travels in solids faster than in gas.
Much more useful would be to flatten the head more and add structures around it to not damage the platter. This will make the head heavy and slow. So they can add two or more seperate heads in the same structure. More expensive, but good technology does not come cheap.
I've always wondered if someone has made a laptop with solidstate IDE disks, maybe compactflash, or at least the microdrive.
I agree with you that its the freedom to just get it and install on an old computer rather than go through the hassles, but Linux is just a swiss army knife. We were trying to run a VPN solution, proxy server, antivirus server, webserver, lotus domino test server, fileserver etc on a windows 2000 advanced server and we were still running into obstacles. To be fair, another techie at my workplace doesnt know Linux very well and will have more problems with it around. Hopefully, the presence of Linux will convince him to get more acquainted with it, and use it later for other kinds of patchwork.