A large part of the course was focused on creating programmers, which isn't a field I was too interested in (still not, really).
I see programming as a means to an end - the "end" is creating workable computing environments. The software is, effectively, trivia. Understanding the architecture is key.
OTOH, when we were given a network programming assignment, the attitude to "A-level taught us Pascal, for fsck's sake!" was "Surely you know C?" - but nobody taught it - Modula2, Ada, etc. No C at all.
I'm not at all surprised to see all the C buffer overflows if my cohort are now writing software in C.
I agree with you that there's not one type of CS, but I think there's far more than two. Far too many to accurately list, in fact, so I won't bother.
Two-hour on-site service with 24/7 coverage
(The footnote mentions a difference based on locale - here in the UK, it's 4 hours). For phone support - phone through, give serial number (eh? I obviously own one!), describe problem, get put through to an engineer.
Sometimes I get through to voicemail (if they're on the line already) - get a call straight back.
I don't phone with trivial problems, obviously (I'm sure you don't, either) - normally some strange combination of sw/hw/etc - get through to someone who knows the technology, and at least understands the questions immediately - THAT'S A BIGGIE - and so can find the answer, even if it's not immediately to hand (if it were, I should know it, too, if I'm doing my job right).
If needs be, they'll replicate the config in the lab.
I suspect we're dealing with different scales of problems - not "how do i?" questions - you should be googling for that, it's your job, not your vendor's - but "it's not doing what it should", which is when you need to go to the vendor.
The opportunity here, for everyone involved (you, your employer, your customer), is for you to point this lot out to your manager, offer some consultancy work, to:
Investigate cause of frequent crashes
Investigate, summarise and prioritise remedies - these may include:
Reconfigure their Windows network
Replace with Linux
Replace with Other (UNIX, maybe MacOS)
Replace buggy app with alternative (eg IE -> Mozilla)
Provide project management for the upgrade
Provide services and hardware for the upgrade
Everyone gains - your employer gets a bigger cheque for all that work, not just $15k/month, and the customer gets a better system. They also trust you more - you're not just fixing problems as they happen, you're identifying and eliminating the cause of those problems. That's worth the big up-front investment for them.
When I say "You", I mean that they trust your firm, but they also trust you personally - that's a big incentive for your employer to treat you well. If a big customer says "We really want Pavera to come and deal with this", that should get noticed by your management.
If the company are paying you $25/hr to be an engineer, and you double-up as a salesman, creating new revenue for the company, you should be able to get yourself some commission, credibility, bonus, etc. on this deal.
This is in no way an attack on Apple, just a recent experience of an Apple user.
I'd been on a certain customer site for a couple of weeks, and had to sign in and out with the security guards each day, so we got to know each other.
One day, one of the guards had brought in his new Mac, running, AFAICT, MacOS X. He had an audio CD, and wanted to rip it to his Mac.
He said to me as I signed out, "Hey, you do computers, don't you?" (Well, I had been getting datacentre passes from them for the past 2 weeks!) "How do I copy CDs to this?"
I'd never seen MacOS X before (barely ever used MacOS at all); while he was on the phone, I soon found that the process is:
Insert audio CD
Track listing pops up
Drag track from track-listing to desktop (or a folder; I was feeling lazy and the desktop was "just there")
Done!
If he goes away and complains that MacOS is hard to use, I can't see what Apple can do for him.
The next day, he said, "You never told me how to copy songs" (true, I'd just done it and gone home). So I showed him again; he seemed to think that the new icon on his desktop was just a link to the song, even when I removed the CD and played the song back to him with the CD in my hand.
On an unrelated note, the CD was R. Kelly... Surely fewer copies of that sh!t in the world would be better than more? There's no accounting for taste:-(
Important The Resource Kit tools are not localized. They are
written and tested in English only. Using these tools with a different language version of Windows 2000 might produce unpredictable results.
So I think you meant to say:
s/it even works/it might work/g
A crash analyser that "might produce unpredictable results". That's a really great touch - Only one vendor could come up with that.
How do you debug crashes of the crash-debugger?!
Exhibit 1: IBM, the Little Linux guy's friend on Slashdot.
Ah, bless the lil'un.
IBM get sued by SCO, so they're automatically the Good Guys.
I remember when the world was that simple - in those days, Mummy and Daddy were the Good Guys.
Just because IBM have put support for their mainframes (helps them sell obsolete hardware) and filesystems (helps them maintain compatability) to Linux, does that really make IBM "the Little Linux Guy's Friend"?
They're still a major Microsoft reseller, they're strongly into the proprietary UNIX side of things (which a significant part of what this court case is about - their right to develop and distribute AIX)
I still don't understand this/. and GrokLaw "IBM-Love" attitude - it's as proprietary a company as you can get in the IT world... the PC is only a standard because they slipped up - they tried too late (and failed) to fix that with MCA and OS/2 which nobody was interested in.
What they are certainly not, is "the Little Linux guy's friend on Slashdot."
Could somebody explain this/. and GrokLaw attitude in coherent terms?
My Vauxhall Vectra's engine warning light came on - I was in an unfamiliar town, so I took it to the local Vauxhall dealership.
No choice, really, I had a 260 mile drive home, and wasn't prepared to do that at half-efficiency (which happens by default with the light on).
They had the car all day, kept stalling me when I phoned for status reports, then finally admitted that they were confused because it was reporting a problem with the aircon unit - that model doesn't *have* aircon!
They charged me 80 to upgrade the firmware so it wouldn't do it again!
Your "costs nothing" approach, again, this time with feeling?
Steve
SunOS4 = Solaris 1.x (aka SunOS, the BSD-based OS)
SunOS5 = Solaris 2.x - 10 (aka Solaris OE, the SysV-based OS.
SunOS4 is ancient (1995?) and was replaced by Solaris 2; it does not even run on modern hardware.
That makes it "surprising" that you can even find comparisons between the two on modern hardware.
Gcc is indeed getting better at supporting modern SPARC processors, but Sun's Forte compiler is, naturally, more optimised. I believe Intel's compiler is better than gcc at creating Intel code (last I heard, a year or two ago). Again, that's totally understandable.
You should go back and read AKAImBatman's post again - just because Linux *can* run on powerful Sun hardware, doesn't mean that it should - I understand that Dave Miller got Linux going on an E10k, but nobody's heard of anybody using it - it just doesn't make sense when Solaris is built for the task.
Solaris has already been mentioned (esp. with the new stuff in Sol10 - FireEngine, DTrace, etc etc), so I'll nominate SunCluster.
For bonus points, although it's already part of Solaris, Solaris Volume Manager (SVM - previously known as DiskSuite) is as good as Veritas Volume Manager for nearly every case; UFS seems to beat VxFS on benchmarks these days, too. No need for Veritas, and part of the OS.
A lot of comments here along the lines of "Don't look like you're carrying anything worthwhile" - look scruffy, put it in a rucksack, etc.
Whenever I go to London, it's normally to "The City" - where I already look "scruffy" by not wearing pinstripes and braces (that's "Suspenders to you Americans out there:-)
Turning up unshaven at HSBC*'s office in combats, dirty t-shirt with a backpack wouldn't get the job done - the fact that I have an ID badge with a photo which looks something like me might get me into the building, but even if I convince everyone there that I have a legitimate reason to be there, I am guaranteed to get complaints (if not kicked out of the building for unprofessionalism).
Anybody got any ideas for those of us who have to wear suits for customer visits?
*HSBC used as an example because I've never been there
Isnt't that the problem? Ximian, Sun, et al, are pushing corporate Linux solutions, where the cost-per-head is low ($50 in Sun's case) but the volume is high enough to deal with those low costs.
Personally, I raised (via my employer's support team) one bug with MS, in 1994, and I can't even remember what it was, just that the answer was "tough - that's how it is". For history's sake, I wish I'd made a note.
Support is a really strange thing - on one hand, you've got the users who say "fsck support, it works!" and on the other, you've got people who say "I don't care if it 'just works', I want someone to cover my ass if it doesn't work!"
For those people, support is worth megabucks.
These people who will pay megabucks for support will also live without functionality (eg, SATA drive support, WiFI, etc) for supportability.
I heard recently of a Gov't who nearly went back on a known-working cluster config because one of the (3+) vendors involved didn't explicitly support it (they'd not got around to testing it, although the other 2 vendors had tested it).
Support is a strange creature, which must be endured, but also understood.
In my experience, GNU/Linux support costs all of $0.
Plus your time. What does that cost your employer?
I'd largely agree with your post, but your employer pays you for your expertise. If that costs, say, $50k pa, then that's part of the cost of supporting Linux.
I've not seen 2.6 yet, but if that "feature" is clearly wrong, distro's will change the default. And it's distro's which end-users will use, not stock Gnome.
If someone installs stock 2.6 from source and survives the version and dependency problems without losing their sanity, they will certainly be capable of configuring it.
If someone installs (say) a RedHat with 2.6 and it's crap, they can switch to (say) a SuSE with 2.6.
If none of the distro's have changed the default, then it's not clearly wrong.
Adding things like DRM into Linux would surely mean changes to the kernel, so if Sun (or anybody) wanted to do that, they'd have to comply with the GPL and distribute the code, and make it available to all (note: in some countries, it's still legal to read source code of crypto:-)
So there's not too much to fear for DRM - it has to be built into the kernel, or it's useless.
I think a more realistic question is the relationship between Java and.Net - Sun swear blind that they're still 100% behind Java (and calling everything Java, like JDS, JES, etc seems to back that up) but then, why do they need access to MS technology? I dunno.
Not mentioning GPL is a straw-man - RedHat, SuSE, even Debian, don't mention the GPL in the install process.
Also, I understand that JDS is intended to be a cross-platform UI - JDS on Linux, JDS on Solaris, etc. Schwartz said a while ago "we don't have a Linux strategy" or words to that effect. I think that could mean something like "we don't need a *linux* strategy, we've got an OE (Operating Environment) strategy".
Solaris is an OE; the kernel is SunOS. Using JDS as an OE, the kernel can be SunOS, linux, whatever. Of course, SunOS + Solaris OE is more than Linux + JDS OE; STMS (aka MPxIO), IPMP, SVM, etc are part of stock Solaris, but then, Linux has far better support of the thousands (millions?) of strange x86PC devices than Solaris_x86 supports.
Slashdot Mirror
Surely the better approach would be to use "wc" for this task ;-)
A large part of the course was focused on creating programmers, which isn't a field I was too interested in (still not, really).
I see programming as a means to an end - the "end" is creating workable computing environments. The software is, effectively, trivia. Understanding the architecture is key.
OTOH, when we were given a network programming assignment, the attitude to "A-level taught us Pascal, for fsck's sake!" was "Surely you know C?" - but nobody taught it - Modula2, Ada, etc. No C at all.
I'm not at all surprised to see all the C buffer overflows if my cohort are now writing software in C.
I agree with you that there's not one type of CS, but I think there's far more than two. Far too many to accurately list, in fact, so I won't bother.
If you're using the speedtch driver, could you provide details? (ie, how to configure, etc, as well as SMP support?)
Cheers,
Steve.
http://www.sun.com/service/support/sunspectrum/pla tinum.html
Two-hour on-site service with 24/7 coverage
(The footnote mentions a difference based on locale - here in the UK, it's 4 hours). For phone support - phone through, give serial number (eh? I obviously own one!), describe problem, get put through to an engineer.
Sometimes I get through to voicemail (if they're on the line already) - get a call straight back.
I don't phone with trivial problems, obviously (I'm sure you don't, either) - normally some strange combination of sw/hw/etc - get through to someone who knows the technology, and at least understands the questions immediately - THAT'S A BIGGIE - and so can find the answer, even if it's not immediately to hand (if it were, I should know it, too, if I'm doing my job right).
If needs be, they'll replicate the config in the lab.
I suspect we're dealing with different scales of problems - not "how do i?" questions - you should be googling for that, it's your job, not your vendor's - but "it's not doing what it should", which is when you need to go to the vendor.
For all of the above, in a pretty short timescale, I've heard.
I'll have some of what you're smoking!
And, it's worth noting (MCA) that this was despite IBM's best efforts.
The opportunity here, for everyone involved (you, your employer, your customer), is for you to point this lot out to your manager, offer some consultancy work, to:
- Investigate cause of frequent crashes
- Investigate, summarise and prioritise remedies - these may include:
- Reconfigure their Windows network
- Replace with Linux
- Replace with Other (UNIX, maybe MacOS)
- Replace buggy app with alternative (eg IE -> Mozilla)
- Provide project management for the upgrade
- Provide services and hardware for the upgrade
Everyone gains - your employer gets a bigger cheque for all that work, not just $15k/month, and the customer gets a better system. They also trust you more - you're not just fixing problems as they happen, you're identifying and eliminating the cause of those problems. That's worth the big up-front investment for them.When I say "You", I mean that they trust your firm, but they also trust you personally - that's a big incentive for your employer to treat you well. If a big customer says "We really want Pavera to come and deal with this", that should get noticed by your management.
If the company are paying you $25/hr to be an engineer, and you double-up as a salesman, creating new revenue for the company, you should be able to get yourself some commission, credibility, bonus, etc. on this deal.
Everybody wins.
I'd been on a certain customer site for a couple of weeks, and had to sign in and out with the security guards each day, so we got to know each other.
One day, one of the guards had brought in his new Mac, running, AFAICT, MacOS X. He had an audio CD, and wanted to rip it to his Mac.
He said to me as I signed out, "Hey, you do computers, don't you?" (Well, I had been getting datacentre passes from them for the past 2 weeks!) "How do I copy CDs to this?"
I'd never seen MacOS X before (barely ever used MacOS at all); while he was on the phone, I soon found that the process is:
- Insert audio CD
- Track listing pops up
- Drag track from track-listing to desktop (or a folder; I was feeling lazy and the desktop was "just there")
- Done!
If he goes away and complains that MacOS is hard to use, I can't see what Apple can do for him.The next day, he said, "You never told me how to copy songs" (true, I'd just done it and gone home). So I showed him again; he seemed to think that the new icon on his desktop was just a link to the song, even when I removed the CD and played the song back to him with the CD in my hand.
On an unrelated note, the CD was R. Kelly ... Surely fewer copies of that sh!t in the world would be better than more? There's no accounting for taste :-(
s/it even works/it might work/g
A crash analyser that "might produce unpredictable results". That's a really great touch - Only one vendor could come up with that.
How do you debug crashes of the crash-debugger?!
Ah, bless the lil'un.
IBM get sued by SCO, so they're automatically the Good Guys.
I remember when the world was that simple - in those days, Mummy and Daddy were the Good Guys.
Just because IBM have put support for their mainframes (helps them sell obsolete hardware) and filesystems (helps them maintain compatability) to Linux, does that really make IBM "the Little Linux Guy's Friend"?
They're still a major Microsoft reseller, they're strongly into the proprietary UNIX side of things (which a significant part of what this court case is about - their right to develop and distribute AIX)
I still don't understand this /. and GrokLaw "IBM-Love" attitude - it's as proprietary a company as you can get in the IT world ... the PC is only a standard because they slipped up - they tried too late (and failed) to fix that with MCA and OS/2 which nobody was interested in.
What they are certainly not, is "the Little Linux guy's friend on Slashdot."
Could somebody explain this /. and GrokLaw attitude in coherent terms?
My Vauxhall Vectra's engine warning light came on - I was in an unfamiliar town, so I took it to the local Vauxhall dealership.
No choice, really, I had a 260 mile drive home, and wasn't prepared to do that at half-efficiency (which happens by default with the light on).
They had the car all day, kept stalling me when I phoned for status reports, then finally admitted that they were confused because it was reporting a problem with the aircon unit - that model doesn't *have* aircon!
They charged me 80 to upgrade the firmware so it wouldn't do it again!
Your "costs nothing" approach, again, this time with feeling? Steve
Java has 3 million developers (that's from 2003)
SunOS5 = Solaris 2.x - 10 (aka Solaris OE, the SysV-based OS.
SunOS4 is ancient (1995?) and was replaced by Solaris 2; it does not even run on modern hardware. That makes it "surprising" that you can even find comparisons between the two on modern hardware.
Gcc is indeed getting better at supporting modern SPARC processors, but Sun's Forte compiler is, naturally, more optimised. I believe Intel's compiler is better than gcc at creating Intel code (last I heard, a year or two ago). Again, that's totally understandable.
You should go back and read AKAImBatman's post again - just because Linux *can* run on powerful Sun hardware, doesn't mean that it should - I understand that Dave Miller got Linux going on an E10k, but nobody's heard of anybody using it - it just doesn't make sense when Solaris is built for the task.
Solaris has already been mentioned (esp. with the new stuff in Sol10 - FireEngine, DTrace, etc etc), so I'll nominate SunCluster.
For bonus points, although it's already part of Solaris, Solaris Volume Manager (SVM - previously known as DiskSuite) is as good as Veritas Volume Manager for nearly every case; UFS seems to beat VxFS on benchmarks these days, too. No need for Veritas, and part of the OS.
Whenever I go to London, it's normally to "The City" - where I already look "scruffy" by not wearing pinstripes and braces (that's "Suspenders to you Americans out there :-)
Turning up unshaven at HSBC*'s office in combats, dirty t-shirt with a backpack wouldn't get the job done - the fact that I have an ID badge with a photo which looks something like me might get me into the building, but even if I convince everyone there that I have a legitimate reason to be there, I am guaranteed to get complaints (if not kicked out of the building for unprofessionalism).
Anybody got any ideas for those of us who have to wear suits for customer visits?
*HSBC used as an example because I've never been there
Personally, I raised (via my employer's support team) one bug with MS, in 1994, and I can't even remember what it was, just that the answer was "tough - that's how it is". For history's sake, I wish I'd made a note.
Support is a really strange thing - on one hand, you've got the users who say "fsck support, it works!" and on the other, you've got people who say "I don't care if it 'just works', I want someone to cover my ass if it doesn't work!"
For those people, support is worth megabucks.
These people who will pay megabucks for support will also live without functionality (eg, SATA drive support, WiFI, etc) for supportability.
I heard recently of a Gov't who nearly went back on a known-working cluster config because one of the (3+) vendors involved didn't explicitly support it (they'd not got around to testing it, although the other 2 vendors had tested it).
Support is a strange creature, which must be endured, but also understood.
Plus your time. What does that cost your employer?
I'd largely agree with your post, but your employer pays you for your expertise. If that costs, say, $50k pa, then that's part of the cost of supporting Linux.
Hassle the http://speedtouch.sourceforge.net/ team for this, not the http://speedtouchconf.sourceforge.net "team" (ie, me) for it.
If someone installs stock 2.6 from source and survives the version and dependency problems without losing their sanity, they will certainly be capable of configuring it.
If someone installs (say) a RedHat with 2.6 and it's crap, they can switch to (say) a SuSE with 2.6.
If none of the distro's have changed the default, then it's not clearly wrong.
Check your preferences / file associations.
and look up "Irony." I'm guessing you're American.
So there's not too much to fear for DRM - it has to be built into the kernel, or it's useless.
I think a more realistic question is the relationship between Java and
Not mentioning GPL is a straw-man - RedHat, SuSE, even Debian, don't mention the GPL in the install process.
Also, I understand that JDS is intended to be a cross-platform UI - JDS on Linux, JDS on Solaris, etc. Schwartz said a while ago "we don't have a Linux strategy" or words to that effect. I think that could mean something like "we don't need a *linux* strategy, we've got an OE (Operating Environment) strategy".
Solaris is an OE; the kernel is SunOS. Using JDS as an OE, the kernel can be SunOS, linux, whatever. Of course, SunOS + Solaris OE is more than Linux + JDS OE; STMS (aka MPxIO), IPMP, SVM, etc are part of stock Solaris, but then, Linux has far better support of the thousands (millions?) of strange x86PC devices than Solaris_x86 supports.
So STFU
I'm sure there are plenty of examples of "more than one preferred way" to make it more interesting ;-)