Lots of folks feel a need to spend hoards (think: $1,500) on enclosed racks with fans and fancy power taps and the like. Yes, they are nice but I don't think they are worth the extra cash.
What you need is a simple tapped, extruded aluminum rack. A 19"x84" rack runs $140-$200 at DataComm Warehouse. A 21" rack runs a bit more.
These aluminum racks don't have fans or electrical connections. Get a few tie-wraps and attach a power strip to the back and you will be living large. Since the rack is not enclosed, there is no need for additional fans.
Spend some money on rack-mount cases for your servers. I can't tell you how much easier this will make your life and how much more professional your data center will look. A rack mount case may add a couple hundred dollars to an order. It is worth it.
If your boss needs a justification to spend the extra money, ask him how much your office costs per square foot. With a rack, you should be able to stuff six to a dozen servers where one server once sat on the ground. Do the math for him. That alone should show him that building up is the way to go.
IBM (now Tivoli) has a wonderful product called ADSM (now TSM). It backs up data from the client to a disk storage pool. It then migrates that information from disk to tape while, optionally, leaving a copy on disk.
This gives you the advantages of doing fast backups and restores (from disk) while giving you the off site options of tape.
It ain't cheaper than just writing it to disk, of course, but if the data is worth backing up, it's worth keeping safe, right?
My company spent over $75,000 on OpenView plus training. Within two years we dropped it in favor of MRTG.
MRTG is one of the most flexiable, easy to use (not so easy to setup) monitoring tools around. It doesn't do notification but that's what Big Brother is for.
What you've just done is an excellent learning experiment. You're a better person for having done it.
That said, I'd bet you a buck that the specification is already available if you ask the right people.
I deal with country government on a regular basis. Everything they buy or develop is spec'ed out in painful detail. If any public money is flowing into the bus system, you could probably have called them and requested the specs.
Some states are more open than others, however, so I can't tell you how easy it might have been. In Florida, where I function as a human being, I could file an FOIA and get the color of the mayor's underwear.
If you want to publish the data, go for it. But you better be ready to have someone say 'dude, like, that is *so* old news'.
My gut reaction is that this is simply a hoax or urban legend. Unless someone can supply a first-person account, I'm going to write it off and think less of Slashdot for posting hearsay.
There may be a kernel of truth in the story but I bet it is along the lines of someone having to pay per byte.
See if this doesn't ring more true. A user has an offensive web site up. Someone or a group of someones DoSes the site. A person who is used to paying $19.95 a month suddenly finds himself hitting the bandwidth clause in his boilerplate user agreement. Something along the lines of 'base rate covers up to 750 mb of data transfer a month; all usage above that will be rated at $25 a gig'.
The user gets his bill for $700 and says that he won't pay it because the hits and transfers came in the form of a DoS over the course of 30 hours. ISP says 'tough, pay the bill or be cut off'.
Web site owner (possibly a script kiddy himself) gets on IRC/Slashdot/etc. and tells this half truth that his ISP killed his account because of a DoS. Internet becomes enraged. Etc.
Sound more likely?
Of course, this really could have happened just like the submission says. But I doubt it.
Make sure your cooling system is on when your servers are on. It does no good to have your servers run for an hour on UPS is the temperature in the computer room climbs past the allowable operating temperature.
I ran into a situation where a company I was working with spent God knows how much on a huge rack-mount UPS that would keep their dozen or so servers and network hardware up for three hours in case of a power outtage.
Good planning on their part, right?
Unfortunately, the first time they had an outtage (July in Florida), the air conditioning to this 14 foot by 18 foot room died. When I opened the door an hour and a half into the outtage, I as hit with a blast of hot air like you wouldn't believe.
The room temperature hit 117F degrees. The internal temperature on some of the machines was certainly over 125F.
They burned out a Cisco 5500, two CPUs and 11 10k RPM drives. I'm surprised they didn't lose more. I know and hour and a half in there would have caused me to cease funtioning.
The irony is that the UPS was probably cranking out more heat than anything else in the room.
Moral of the story: Computers are big heaters. Make sure they stay cool.
InitZero
Re: network failure should be handled by network
on
Linux Failover?
·
· Score: 1
Slashdot has been saturated with 'IANAL' for several weeks now. I think we need a new acronym for this discussion: IDKCAHA. 'I Don't Know Crap About High Availability.'
I've been trained in IBM's high availability product, HACMP, 'High Availability Cluster MultiProcessing' and manage a few production clusters.
This is typical of what I'm hearing on Slashdot today...
If a network node goes down, it's better if network equipment handles the failover.
It ain't that simple. The node that went down has resources other than network ports. What about the application? What about the filesystems? What if the network connection is up but the application or filesystem is down? Show me a chunk of networking equipment that can handle those failures and I'll send you a dollar.
In our production environment, we have an Oracle database running in an IBM HACMP cluster. The SSA (think: SCSI over token ring) drives are shared between the primary node and the backup node but can only be active on one node at a time.
Should a network card fail, in the primary node, it will down the sick interface and bring up the IP and MAC on the backup card. Linux, too, can do that rather easily.
But what if the problem isn't the network. What if the applicaiton on the primary node has failed? HACMP can down the primary node and bring the application up on the backup node, taking the disk drives with it. I have yet to find a Linux tool that will do disk failover.
I've also seen comments in this discussion to the effect that secondary heartbeat paths are 'silly'. Obviously, the person who made that comment is insane. (We use a target mode SCSI over SSA for a heatbeat.)
If your only heartbeat is running over the network and the network fails, neither node knows if the other is up and both nodes will attempt to claim the disk resources, come up on the same IP/MAC address and start the applicaiton. This is Very Bad. What do you think will happen when the network comes back online? I'll give you a hint. All of a sudden you've got duplicate nodes on the network. That's never good.
To answer the consultant question, I think the person is stearing you in the wrong direction. Either you need to rethink your failover solution or you need to move to a platform that better supports the type of failover you want to do such as AIX or Solaris.
Real Soon Now, I expect that there will a viable Linux HA solution. However, there ain't one now and that's where you are. Since you're a B2B startup with venture funds to burn, I suggest you throw some of that money toward IBM's HACMP or another commercial solution on a platform that has had an HA solution for more than a few months. I'd hate for your company to save a few bucks by using Linux and lose lots of money to downtime.
Hopefully none of the higher ups will get one, they are dumb enough to open it without thinking about it...
It ain't just the people at the top of the food chain that are stupid. There are 1,500 Outlook users (and one mailx user {ahem}) in this company. Of the ten people who have opened the attachment, three have been VP-level. The other *seven* were people in our web development group. {sigh}
The worst part of it all is that the ILOVEYOU author writes better code than our online group. Then again, I guess that ain't too hard.
Why was the choice made to use one beefy-as-hell SQL server instead of multiple lesser powered systems?
Didn't you hear? MySQL doesn't do replication. Without such tools, creating multiple servers and keeping them in sync would be a massive pain in the buttocks.
Why don't you give me one feature of 950 that will beat similarly priced configuration of a SLR and film scanner.
I can shoot a picture with the 950 and have it on the web two minutes later. Show me a chrome-shooting SLR that can do that.
You're missing the point that being able to shoot and then turn around and upload it to the net is a real benefit.
I'm not anti-SLR by any means. I've got an FM-2, 8008, F2 and Nikonus 5. I've shot a ton of film. I've been published in magazines and in newspapers (the latter as a real photojournalist). I really like film.
At the same time, there is a real benfit to being able to quickly get film from point A to point B. A month and a half ago, I had my wedding shot on silver by the professional, but my father was shooting with the CoolPix. Less than two hours after the reception, my father had the CoolPix pictures online for the out-of-town friends and relatives to check out. It took two weeks to get the proofs and negatives from the professional.
Same thing with the honeymoon pictures. There was no way in hell my wife was going to let me take along a negative scanner and C-41 kit with us. But she had no problems with shooting digital and uploading the pictures every few days from the hotel room.
The professional pictures are better quality, of course, but the digital images served a purpose.
Certainly you see some value in digital cameras, right?
For point'n'shoot photographers additional annoyance will be lack of red-eye reduction.
The 900, 950 and 990 all have red-eye reduction. All three have also have a connection so you can use an external flash (SB-28/28DX/26/25/24/22 supported as well as clones).
In addition to the CoolPix 950's still ability, it also allows you to do video out (NTSC and PAL). Since I don't have a real video camera, this is a useful feature for me.
I won't take it personally if folks don't buy the Nikon CoolPix series, but I will think that they are making a mistake if they are looking for a serious, one-step-under-professional, digital camera.
It's been said for the last 3 years that digital cameras are replacing "film" cameras. I don't think that's happening.
Think again.
I work for a large newspaper (which won a Pulitzer this year, by the way). Five years ago, digital was a joke. We wanted to move that direction (digital allows us to extend deadlines) but the quality and ease of use was simply not there.
This year, we've replaced our analog cameras in almost a dozen bureaus with digital cameras. No longer are there dark rooms in the field offices. We'd like to get rid of the analog cameras in the main office as well and, in fact, are moving that direction. As often as possible, we're shooting assignments digitally.
Costs are down. Deadlines have been extended. Photographers no longer have to leave a sporting event at 10pm to get back to the office and have the film processed by 11:30 pm. Now the photographer waits till 11 pm to stop shooting and them simply emails the photo to the main office.
Real estate agents who used to shoot analog film are shooting digital almost exclusively.
In high school and college, I did a lot of shooting myself. Since I got my Nikon CoolPix 950, I haven't shot an analog picture. While I certainly see analog film sticking around for the foreseeable future (my recent wedding was shot on silver (yes, B&W)), publication work will be almost entirely digital in two years. Futher, I predict, more than half the snapshots in the next ten years will be digital.
Which brings me to the only on-topic part of this message... Get the Nikon CoolPix 950 (or whatever might have replaced it since I bought it). The picture quality is great. The camera is ultra-flexiable. It can go fully-manual or be used as a point and shoot. I own own. My father who was a professional photographer for 35 years got one. I've talk two friends into them. I can't speak highly enough about the camera. (And I don't even have Nikon stock.)
I hope where ever you work does not pay you much, as you simply are not worth it. Thank you for so clearly stating your incompetence and posting with a registered account. I will be sure to watch for your resume and file it in the "bitches too stupid to piss their pants" file.
Anonymous Coward Dude, chill. Please. You're going to blow a gasket or something.
I was on my honeymoon (if you get off the crack rock you might just have a change at one) when the processor blew. Not only was I out of the office, I was out of the country.
Since the node is part of our development and test cluster, it's not monitored by our computer operators and a 30-minute outtage slipped under the radar.
One of these days (once you get out of your high school's computer lab) you'll think back on this and wonder how you could have been such a moron. When you do, don't feel too bad. We were all jerks in high school.
(Of course, if you're no longer in high school, please consider professional help. Or, at least, a vacation.)
I'm sick and tired of leafing through their site to find it.
I totally agree. A few redesigns ago, I grabbed a copy of their seach interface and put it up on my own site (http://matt.steinhoff.net/deja.html). Since doing that, I've not been back to the real site.
Better than a perl application, my simple web site allows me to do USENET search using the old school style from any PC, not just my own.
One server hold the master file, yes. That master file is mirrored among many other servers which are not only located in different parts of the country but also in different parts of the world.
No load balancing/[obligatory beowulf]/Round Robin? I would like to think there is some redundancy in there...
{sigh} Spoken like a true PC server user.
I've got four S70s which are almost identical to the S80 but max at 12 processors instead of the S80's 24.
When you think server, you see a tower or maybe even a rack-mount PC. The S80 is no such beast. It is literally the size of an industrial refridgerator. And that's just for the processors. Right next to it is another cabinet of a similar size which has the IO drawers, drives and else.
The only parts of the S80 that are not redundant are the processors and memory. Since both are non-moving, non-mechanical parts, they have an ultra long MTBF. If either fries, the machine takes itself down, 'deconfigures' the failed item and then brings itself back online. Try to get any PC server out there to do that.
(Our S70 lost one of 12 processors three weeks ago at threeish in the morning. It was down and up so quickly no one even noticed it. A few days later, I was reviewing some logs and noticed that I was short a processor.)
Yes, no system is failure-proof. However, the mindset that the S80 suffers from the same problems as a PC server is as silly as thinking a Piper Cub is in the same league as Air Force One (the president's plane).
Internally, the S80 is redundant and can support an amazing load, externally, the DNS system will out-live us all.
My last job was with Florida Call 511, a project of the BellSouth Real Yellow Pages. We used Dialogic cards and handled several thousand calls an hour on a pair of 486-33s with 32 meg of RAM and 96 ports.
Dialogic has some great libraries (C; I don't think they do perl) and even better hardware. Even with 48 ports off-hook, the machine didn't break a sweat. (Fast SCSI drives are a must for this sort of application, by the way.) We ran the boards under SunSoft Interactive Unix (ugh!) though Solaris (x86; ugh!) and, if I remember correctly, BSD are supported platforms.
Of note, Dialogic boards aren't free. Neither are phone lines. Before you abandon the fax service vendor, make sure you have a firm grasp of what it is you want to do. It is just about impossible to make any money at faxing and even with deep pockets for promotion, it ain't easy to break even. (After five years of trying, huge promotion, a staff of 20 and millions of dollars, my division was axed for being a giant money-sucking pit.)
My company has over a thousand users, each with at least one password. I believe that the policy your company has is fair.
Passwords are not a systems or technology issue. They are a management issue. As soon as that is understood and policies are put in place, the problem will go away.
Memorizing Passwords
We recently looked into our password policies. There was much whining even among the technical folks about manditory password lengths of at least seven characters and changes every six months. The most common complaint was 'no one can remember seven mostly meaningless characters'.
To dispell such nonesense, ask such whiners their phone number. Then ask them what their phone number was at their last three places of residence. Ask them what their best friend's phone number is. Or their 12-digit bank account number. Of their third-grade teacher's name. Or Ken Griffy's batting average.
Folks are certainly able to memorize random bits of information. Anyone who can't memorize seven to ten characters for a period of six months will be fired. Period. Memorizing a password is part of our job requirements.
Password Resets
But, some people do forget a password or lock themselves out. Then what?
We're a newspaper so most of our deadline work outside 'normal' business hours, between eight at night at two in the morning.
It used to be common for the computer room to get frantic calls from sports reporters who had locked themselves out on deadline.
Used to be.
If a person needs a password reset, he has to call his direct supervisor. That supervisor has to call the division head. The division head then has to call the computer room to get the account opened.
Not only does this better ensure that the caller is actually who he says he is, no one wants to wake his boss up at midnight on a Sunday. Further, once your boss has to wake up his boss at midnight on a Sunday, the chances are that you'll never forget your password again.
(Those that are repeat lusers often think it better to dictate the story over the phone and fix the problem the next day than to wake anyone up.)
I wonder if they will charge him with simple theft or treason... Fourty years ago, this would have been high treason and he probably would have been shot on sight.
I was in your position a few years ago. I wanted my own internet server for hosting the family but didn't know much about what to do.
I did a generic Red Hat install and found a local ISP that would co-locate me for $100 a month. (It has since gone up to $150.)
That's super-expensive, you say. Not really. When I consider all I've learned, it was the best $100 a month I've ever spent.
Granted, your site will not be as secure as nsa.gov when it first goes up. But, who cares? So long as you've got a backup, it won't be a big deal if some slim bucket nukes your server. Not that anyone is going to hack you in the first place; you're too low-profile.
Since putting up the server -- still a 486-66DX with 48 meg of RAM and a 2-gig SCSI drive, by the way, no need to get anything faster for what you're doing -- I've taken on a few small sites for friends. For $25 a month, they get more extensive access than any ISP would allow (shell, CGI, etc.). With just a few people, I basically get my co-location for free.
So, while it may seem too expensive and a pain in the buttocks now, really think about going the co-located route. The skills you learn now could very possibly get you a job in the future. Not to mention the uber-geek fact that you have your very own server hanging out there on the net.
Probably not. I'd be willing to bet that most of the time (SETI, Dnet, etc. aside), you're current PC is sitting there spinning its wheels.
Except for a relative few, computers have far more CPU cycles than they need. Even my NT servers sitting on 450mHz processors are idle more often than not.
So, unless you have a clearly defined reason and performance statistics showing you that you need dual processors, you probably don't. Even if you do have performance statistics saying that you need more power, think twice about going dual.
Is your bottleneck the CPU? Can your application really use more than one processor?
For a single-user system, chances are one CPU is more than enough.
And, though I know this has been covered before, never buy a dual CPU board unless you are ready to put both CPUs on it when purchased. I've never met anyone who has actually put a second CPU in the box later. By the time you have the money or need to add a second processor, you can get a single processor that out-performs the dual along with a motherboard with all sorts of new bells and whistles for about what the the old processor cost you new.
This assumes that the people who are watching online would have watched on TV otherwise.
That's irrelevant to my primary point.
Let's walk through another example.
I'm hungry. I don't have any money. Since I don't have any money, I can't buy a McDonalds burger. My neighbor (Bob) has a rancid, three-day old burger that he's not using and offers it to me. You would say that because I'm not going to buy a burger anyway, it should be okay with McDonalds corporate office if Bob gives me his burger.
I say that even though McDonalds doesn't make any money in either transaction, McDonalds has reason not to let me eat Bob's rancid burger. The reason: quality. If I eat the rancid burger, McDonalds may lose future business.
If I watch Star Wars: Episode One in a three-inch window on my 19-inch computer monitor with $40 computer speakers because the local movie theater isn't showing it, can you understand why I may be turned off by the experience and not want to see Episode Two in the theater when it is released?
Sometimes, in an advertiser's eyes, it's better to have a few eyeballs miss the message than to see the message under less than great circumstances. That's the point that folks here are missing.
The ad guys are selling eyeballs. Who cares whether those eyballs see "regular TV" or "Internet TV"
You are missing an important factor: Some eyeballs are worth more than others.
Which advertisement do you think would be more effective, one on a 25-inch color TV or one in a jittery 3-inch by 3-inch window on a 19-inch monitor?
Which interstate billboard do you think makes more money, the one downtown where traffic crawls and folks have minutes to read the message or the one on the outskirts of town where traffic whips by at 85 miles an hour? Both get seen by the same nubmer of eyes but the billboard downtown rents for far more money.
One more example. Star Wars: Episode One could only be shown in certain theaters meeting a high visual and sound quality. You would state that more eyeballs and tickets sold would be prime and that Lucas should have shown the movie in all theaters where a ticket could be sold. But that would have been the wrong approach to take. Lucas had to consider quality of projection as well.
Online eyeballs aren't worth as much as television eyeballs and online pulls people away from television.
Those of you who think eyeballs and nothing else are missing two points. First, copyright is golden. And, second, quality counts; not all eyeballs are equal.
Slashdot Mirror
Lots of folks feel a need to spend hoards (think: $1,500) on enclosed racks with fans and fancy power taps and the like. Yes, they are nice but I don't think they are worth the extra cash.
What you need is a simple tapped, extruded aluminum rack. A 19"x84" rack runs $140-$200 at DataComm Warehouse. A 21" rack runs a bit more.
These aluminum racks don't have fans or electrical connections. Get a few tie-wraps and attach a power strip to the back and you will be living large. Since the rack is not enclosed, there is no need for additional fans.
Spend some money on rack-mount cases for your servers. I can't tell you how much easier this will make your life and how much more professional your data center will look. A rack mount case may add a couple hundred dollars to an order. It is worth it.
If your boss needs a justification to spend the extra money, ask him how much your office costs per square foot. With a rack, you should be able to stuff six to a dozen servers where one server once sat on the ground. Do the math for him. That alone should show him that building up is the way to go.
InitZero
IBM (now Tivoli) has a wonderful product called ADSM (now TSM). It backs up data from the client to a disk storage pool. It then migrates that information from disk to tape while, optionally, leaving a copy on disk.
This gives you the advantages of doing fast backups and restores (from disk) while giving you the off site options of tape.
It ain't cheaper than just writing it to disk, of course, but if the data is worth backing up, it's worth keeping safe, right?
InitZero
My company spent over $75,000 on OpenView plus training. Within two years we dropped it in favor of MRTG .
MRTG is one of the most flexiable, easy to use (not so easy to setup) monitoring tools around. It doesn't do notification but that's what Big Brother is for.
I give the combination two thumbs up.
InitZero
What you've just done is an excellent learning experiment. You're a better person for having done it.
That said, I'd bet you a buck that the specification is already available if you ask the right people.
I deal with country government on a regular basis. Everything they buy or develop is spec'ed out in painful detail. If any public money is flowing into the bus system, you could probably have called them and requested the specs.
Some states are more open than others, however, so I can't tell you how easy it might have been. In Florida, where I function as a human being, I could file an FOIA and get the color of the mayor's underwear.
If you want to publish the data, go for it. But you better be ready to have someone say 'dude, like, that is *so* old news'.
The king has no clothes. Long live the king!
InitZero
My gut reaction is that this is simply a hoax or urban legend. Unless someone can supply a first-person account, I'm going to write it off and think less of Slashdot for posting hearsay.
There may be a kernel of truth in the story but I bet it is along the lines of someone having to pay per byte.
See if this doesn't ring more true. A user has an offensive web site up. Someone or a group of someones DoSes the site. A person who is used to paying $19.95 a month suddenly finds himself hitting the bandwidth clause in his boilerplate user agreement. Something along the lines of 'base rate covers up to 750 mb of data transfer a month; all usage above that will be rated at $25 a gig'.
The user gets his bill for $700 and says that he won't pay it because the hits and transfers came in the form of a DoS over the course of 30 hours. ISP says 'tough, pay the bill or be cut off'.
Web site owner (possibly a script kiddy himself) gets on IRC/Slashdot/etc. and tells this half truth that his ISP killed his account because of a DoS. Internet becomes enraged. Etc.
Sound more likely?
Of course, this really could have happened just like the submission says. But I doubt it.
InitZero
Make sure your cooling system is on when your servers are on. It does no good to have your servers run for an hour on UPS is the temperature in the computer room climbs past the allowable operating temperature.
I ran into a situation where a company I was working with spent God knows how much on a huge rack-mount UPS that would keep their dozen or so servers and network hardware up for three hours in case of a power outtage.
Good planning on their part, right?
Unfortunately, the first time they had an outtage (July in Florida), the air conditioning to this 14 foot by 18 foot room died. When I opened the door an hour and a half into the outtage, I as hit with a blast of hot air like you wouldn't believe.
The room temperature hit 117F degrees. The internal temperature on some of the machines was certainly over 125F.
They burned out a Cisco 5500, two CPUs and 11 10k RPM drives. I'm surprised they didn't lose more. I know and hour and a half in there would have caused me to cease funtioning.
The irony is that the UPS was probably cranking out more heat than anything else in the room.
Moral of the story: Computers are big heaters. Make sure they stay cool.
InitZero
Slashdot has been saturated with 'IANAL' for several weeks now. I think we need a new acronym for this discussion: IDKCAHA. 'I Don't Know Crap About High Availability.'
I've been trained in IBM's high availability product, HACMP, 'High Availability Cluster MultiProcessing' and manage a few production clusters.
This is typical of what I'm hearing on Slashdot today...
If a network node goes down, it's better if network equipment handles the failover.
It ain't that simple. The node that went down has resources other than network ports. What about the application? What about the filesystems? What if the network connection is up but the application or filesystem is down? Show me a chunk of networking equipment that can handle those failures and I'll send you a dollar.
In our production environment, we have an Oracle database running in an IBM HACMP cluster. The SSA (think: SCSI over token ring) drives are shared between the primary node and the backup node but can only be active on one node at a time.
Should a network card fail, in the primary node, it will down the sick interface and bring up the IP and MAC on the backup card. Linux, too, can do that rather easily.
But what if the problem isn't the network. What if the applicaiton on the primary node has failed? HACMP can down the primary node and bring the application up on the backup node, taking the disk drives with it. I have yet to find a Linux tool that will do disk failover.
I've also seen comments in this discussion to the effect that secondary heartbeat paths are 'silly'. Obviously, the person who made that comment is insane. (We use a target mode SCSI over SSA for a heatbeat.)
If your only heartbeat is running over the network and the network fails, neither node knows if the other is up and both nodes will attempt to claim the disk resources, come up on the same IP/MAC address and start the applicaiton. This is Very Bad. What do you think will happen when the network comes back online? I'll give you a hint. All of a sudden you've got duplicate nodes on the network. That's never good.
To answer the consultant question, I think the person is stearing you in the wrong direction. Either you need to rethink your failover solution or you need to move to a platform that better supports the type of failover you want to do such as AIX or Solaris.
Real Soon Now, I expect that there will a viable Linux HA solution. However, there ain't one now and that's where you are. Since you're a B2B startup with venture funds to burn, I suggest you throw some of that money toward IBM's HACMP or another commercial solution on a platform that has had an HA solution for more than a few months. I'd hate for your company to save a few bucks by using Linux and lose lots of money to downtime.
InitZero
(let the flames begin)
Hopefully none of the higher ups will get one, they are dumb enough to open it without thinking about it...
It ain't just the people at the top of the food chain that are stupid. There are 1,500 Outlook users (and one mailx user {ahem}) in this company. Of the ten people who have opened the attachment, three have been VP-level. The other *seven* were people in our web development group. {sigh}
The worst part of it all is that the ILOVEYOU author writes better code than our online group. Then again, I guess that ain't too hard.
InitZero
Didn't you hear? MySQL doesn't do replication. Without such tools, creating multiple servers and keeping them in sync would be a massive pain in the buttocks.
InitZero
Big deal.
I've written code of which I only have a vague understanding that has been running without problems on mission-critical servers for over five years.
Any programmer who claims he understands all his own code -- let alone the code of others -- is a liar.
InitZero
Why don't you give me one feature of 950 that will beat similarly priced configuration of a SLR and film scanner.
I can shoot a picture with the 950 and have it on the web two minutes later. Show me a chrome-shooting SLR that can do that.
You're missing the point that being able to shoot and then turn around and upload it to the net is a real benefit.
I'm not anti-SLR by any means. I've got an FM-2, 8008, F2 and Nikonus 5. I've shot a ton of film. I've been published in magazines and in newspapers (the latter as a real photojournalist). I really like film.
At the same time, there is a real benfit to being able to quickly get film from point A to point B. A month and a half ago, I had my wedding shot on silver by the professional, but my father was shooting with the CoolPix. Less than two hours after the reception, my father had the CoolPix pictures online for the out-of-town friends and relatives to check out. It took two weeks to get the proofs and negatives from the professional.
Same thing with the honeymoon pictures. There was no way in hell my wife was going to let me take along a negative scanner and C-41 kit with us. But she had no problems with shooting digital and uploading the pictures every few days from the hotel room.
The professional pictures are better quality, of course, but the digital images served a purpose.
Certainly you see some value in digital cameras, right?
InitZero
For point'n'shoot photographers additional annoyance will be lack of red-eye reduction.
The 900, 950 and 990 all have red-eye reduction. All three have also have a connection so you can use an external flash (SB-28/28DX/26/25/24/22 supported as well as clones).
In addition to the CoolPix 950's still ability, it also allows you to do video out (NTSC and PAL). Since I don't have a real video camera, this is a useful feature for me.
Nikon is offering a $100 rebate on the 950 now the Nikon CoolPix 990 is out. The 990 has some awesome specs.
I won't take it personally if folks don't buy the Nikon CoolPix series, but I will think that they are making a mistake if they are looking for a serious, one-step-under-professional, digital camera.
InitZero
It's been said for the last 3 years that digital cameras are replacing "film" cameras. I don't think that's happening.
Think again.
I work for a large newspaper (which won a Pulitzer this year, by the way). Five years ago, digital was a joke. We wanted to move that direction (digital allows us to extend deadlines) but the quality and ease of use was simply not there.
This year, we've replaced our analog cameras in almost a dozen bureaus with digital cameras. No longer are there dark rooms in the field offices. We'd like to get rid of the analog cameras in the main office as well and, in fact, are moving that direction. As often as possible, we're shooting assignments digitally.
Costs are down. Deadlines have been extended. Photographers no longer have to leave a sporting event at 10pm to get back to the office and have the film processed by 11:30 pm. Now the photographer waits till 11 pm to stop shooting and them simply emails the photo to the main office.
Real estate agents who used to shoot analog film are shooting digital almost exclusively.
In high school and college, I did a lot of shooting myself. Since I got my Nikon CoolPix 950, I haven't shot an analog picture. While I certainly see analog film sticking around for the foreseeable future (my recent wedding was shot on silver (yes, B&W)), publication work will be almost entirely digital in two years. Futher, I predict, more than half the snapshots in the next ten years will be digital.
Which brings me to the only on-topic part of this message... Get the Nikon CoolPix 950 (or whatever might have replaced it since I bought it). The picture quality is great. The camera is ultra-flexiable. It can go fully-manual or be used as a point and shoot. I own own. My father who was a professional photographer for 35 years got one. I've talk two friends into them. I can't speak highly enough about the camera. (And I don't even have Nikon stock.)
InitZero
I hope where ever you work does not pay you much, as you simply are not worth it. Thank you for so clearly stating your incompetence and posting with a registered account. I will be sure to watch for your resume and file it in the "bitches too stupid to piss their pants" file.
Anonymous Coward Dude, chill. Please. You're going to blow a gasket or something.
I was on my honeymoon (if you get off the crack rock you might just have a change at one) when the processor blew. Not only was I out of the office, I was out of the country.
Since the node is part of our development and test cluster, it's not monitored by our computer operators and a 30-minute outtage slipped under the radar.
One of these days (once you get out of your high school's computer lab) you'll think back on this and wonder how you could have been such a moron. When you do, don't feel too bad. We were all jerks in high school.
(Of course, if you're no longer in high school, please consider professional help. Or, at least, a vacation.)
Cheers, InitZero
I totally agree. A few redesigns ago, I grabbed a copy of their seach interface and put it up on my own site (http://matt.steinhoff.net/deja.html). Since doing that, I've not been back to the real site.
Better than a perl application, my simple web site allows me to do USENET search using the old school style from any PC, not just my own.
InitZero
*One* Server holds the master file?
One server hold the master file, yes. That master file is mirrored among many other servers which are not only located in different parts of the country but also in different parts of the world.
No load balancing/[obligatory beowulf]/Round Robin? I would like to think there is some redundancy in there...
{sigh} Spoken like a true PC server user.
I've got four S70s which are almost identical to the S80 but max at 12 processors instead of the S80's 24.
When you think server, you see a tower or maybe even a rack-mount PC. The S80 is no such beast. It is literally the size of an industrial refridgerator. And that's just for the processors. Right next to it is another cabinet of a similar size which has the IO drawers, drives and else.
The only parts of the S80 that are not redundant are the processors and memory. Since both are non-moving, non-mechanical parts, they have an ultra long MTBF. If either fries, the machine takes itself down, 'deconfigures' the failed item and then brings itself back online. Try to get any PC server out there to do that.
(Our S70 lost one of 12 processors three weeks ago at threeish in the morning. It was down and up so quickly no one even noticed it. A few days later, I was reviewing some logs and noticed that I was short a processor.)
Yes, no system is failure-proof. However, the mindset that the S80 suffers from the same problems as a PC server is as silly as thinking a Piper Cub is in the same league as Air Force One (the president's plane).
Internally, the S80 is redundant and can support an amazing load, externally, the DNS system will out-live us all.
InitZero
Ditto.
My last job was with Florida Call 511, a project of the BellSouth Real Yellow Pages. We used Dialogic cards and handled several thousand calls an hour on a pair of 486-33s with 32 meg of RAM and 96 ports.
Dialogic has some great libraries (C; I don't think they do perl) and even better hardware. Even with 48 ports off-hook, the machine didn't break a sweat. (Fast SCSI drives are a must for this sort of application, by the way.) We ran the boards under SunSoft Interactive Unix (ugh!) though Solaris (x86; ugh!) and, if I remember correctly, BSD are supported platforms.
Of note, Dialogic boards aren't free. Neither are phone lines. Before you abandon the fax service vendor, make sure you have a firm grasp of what it is you want to do. It is just about impossible to make any money at faxing and even with deep pockets for promotion, it ain't easy to break even. (After five years of trying, huge promotion, a staff of 20 and millions of dollars, my division was axed for being a giant money-sucking pit.)
InitZero
My company has over a thousand users, each with at least one password. I believe that the policy your company has is fair.
Passwords are not a systems or technology issue. They are a management issue. As soon as that is understood and policies are put in place, the problem will go away.
Memorizing PasswordsWe recently looked into our password policies. There was much whining even among the technical folks about manditory password lengths of at least seven characters and changes every six months. The most common complaint was 'no one can remember seven mostly meaningless characters'.
To dispell such nonesense, ask such whiners their phone number. Then ask them what their phone number was at their last three places of residence. Ask them what their best friend's phone number is. Or their 12-digit bank account number. Of their third-grade teacher's name. Or Ken Griffy's batting average.
Folks are certainly able to memorize random bits of information. Anyone who can't memorize seven to ten characters for a period of six months will be fired. Period. Memorizing a password is part of our job requirements.
Password ResetsBut, some people do forget a password or lock themselves out. Then what?
We're a newspaper so most of our deadline work outside 'normal' business hours, between eight at night at two in the morning.
It used to be common for the computer room to get frantic calls from sports reporters who had locked themselves out on deadline.
Used to be.
If a person needs a password reset, he has to call his direct supervisor. That supervisor has to call the division head. The division head then has to call the computer room to get the account opened.
Not only does this better ensure that the caller is actually who he says he is, no one wants to wake his boss up at midnight on a Sunday. Further, once your boss has to wake up his boss at midnight on a Sunday, the chances are that you'll never forget your password again.
(Those that are repeat lusers often think it better to dictate the story over the phone and fix the problem the next day than to wake anyone up.)
InitZero
I wonder if they will charge him with simple theft or treason... Fourty years ago, this would have been high treason and he probably would have been shot on sight.
InitZero
I was in your position a few years ago. I wanted my own internet server for hosting the family but didn't know much about what to do.
I did a generic Red Hat install and found a local ISP that would co-locate me for $100 a month. (It has since gone up to $150.)
That's super-expensive, you say. Not really. When I consider all I've learned, it was the best $100 a month I've ever spent.
Granted, your site will not be as secure as nsa.gov when it first goes up. But, who cares? So long as you've got a backup, it won't be a big deal if some slim bucket nukes your server. Not that anyone is going to hack you in the first place; you're too low-profile.
Since putting up the server -- still a 486-66DX with 48 meg of RAM and a 2-gig SCSI drive, by the way, no need to get anything faster for what you're doing -- I've taken on a few small sites for friends. For $25 a month, they get more extensive access than any ISP would allow (shell, CGI, etc.). With just a few people, I basically get my co-location for free.
So, while it may seem too expensive and a pain in the buttocks now, really think about going the co-located route. The skills you learn now could very possibly get you a job in the future. Not to mention the uber-geek fact that you have your very own server hanging out there on the net.
Init 'steinhoff.net' Zero
{laughs} Uhh... No.
InitZero
This is new?
In my area of the world (Orland, Florida, USA), Primeco has been sending us text ads for months.
This ain't cool.
InitZero
Probably not. I'd be willing to bet that most of the time (SETI, Dnet, etc. aside), you're current PC is sitting there spinning its wheels.
Except for a relative few, computers have far more CPU cycles than they need. Even my NT servers sitting on 450mHz processors are idle more often than not.
So, unless you have a clearly defined reason and performance statistics showing you that you need dual processors, you probably don't. Even if you do have performance statistics saying that you need more power, think twice about going dual.
Is your bottleneck the CPU? Can your application really use more than one processor?
For a single-user system, chances are one CPU is more than enough.
And, though I know this has been covered before, never buy a dual CPU board unless you are ready to put both CPUs on it when purchased. I've never met anyone who has actually put a second CPU in the box later. By the time you have the money or need to add a second processor, you can get a single processor that out-performs the dual along with a motherboard with all sorts of new bells and whistles for about what the the old processor cost you new.
InitZero
That's irrelevant to my primary point.
Let's walk through another example.
I'm hungry. I don't have any money. Since I don't have any money, I can't buy a McDonalds burger. My neighbor (Bob) has a rancid, three-day old burger that he's not using and offers it to me. You would say that because I'm not going to buy a burger anyway, it should be okay with McDonalds corporate office if Bob gives me his burger.
I say that even though McDonalds doesn't make any money in either transaction, McDonalds has reason not to let me eat Bob's rancid burger. The reason: quality. If I eat the rancid burger, McDonalds may lose future business.
If I watch Star Wars: Episode One in a three-inch window on my 19-inch computer monitor with $40 computer speakers because the local movie theater isn't showing it, can you understand why I may be turned off by the experience and not want to see Episode Two in the theater when it is released?
Sometimes, in an advertiser's eyes, it's better to have a few eyeballs miss the message than to see the message under less than great circumstances. That's the point that folks here are missing.
InitZero
You are missing an important factor: Some eyeballs are worth more than others.
Which advertisement do you think would be more effective, one on a 25-inch color TV or one in a jittery 3-inch by 3-inch window on a 19-inch monitor?
Which interstate billboard do you think makes more money, the one downtown where traffic crawls and folks have minutes to read the message or the one on the outskirts of town where traffic whips by at 85 miles an hour? Both get seen by the same nubmer of eyes but the billboard downtown rents for far more money.
One more example. Star Wars: Episode One could only be shown in certain theaters meeting a high visual and sound quality. You would state that more eyeballs and tickets sold would be prime and that Lucas should have shown the movie in all theaters where a ticket could be sold. But that would have been the wrong approach to take. Lucas had to consider quality of projection as well.
Online eyeballs aren't worth as much as television eyeballs and online pulls people away from television.
Those of you who think eyeballs and nothing else are missing two points. First, copyright is golden. And, second, quality counts; not all eyeballs are equal.
Init 'Never More Than +2' Zero/P