The right language depends on who's doing the work. That's right. Today, there really is NO right language. There are many languages. Some of them are very comparable.
But the language doesn't really matter. Look at the developers, your staff. What are they proficient in?
I once had an executive ask me about buying Sun hardware. I told him that Sun was irrelevant. Take a look at his staff. What were they familiar with?
I'm personally very familiar with RedHat on Intel - so I'll buy Intel Hardware, and run Fedora or Whitebox on it. I'll do a good job, and what I put together works very well.
I know Windows admins who do a good job with Microsoft tools. Not my boat, and I'm not floating in it - but they do a competent job.
Don't look at the language, look at your staff, and compare that to what you're trying to accomplish. Trying to ask what's the "best" language is like asking what's the "best" car.
What are you trying to do? A car that goes 0-60 in 4.5 seconds is probably going to suck if you have 5 children in your family that you need to transport from soccer games!
If all it takes to do great things is to be 'passionately curious', then it should be possible for a great many people to change the world.
This thread is late, you may not see this post. But, if you do, please answer:
Where does my.sig imply that being 'passionately curious' == "great things"? All that's there is that A. Einstein felt he had no great talents - but was just passionately curious...
Where's the hypocrisy? I happen to consider that genuine, unblinded curiosity is the hallmark of all great scientists: where curiosity is answered by observation and proof, rather than half-baked theories.
There are more than, say 500 good engineers in the US (supposing Google and Yahoo hired 500 people). Sure, not many VPs of big dot-coms are easy to hire but would a startup be able to afford the salaries/perks they demand?
I don't think it's that much of an issue....
When you are talking about engineers generally, 500 is a drop in the bucket. When you are talking about the top notch engineers, that's a massive brain drain.
Most engineers go about their lives, doing more/less commodity work, often of high quality, and live un-notable lives producing good works.
But there are a few, a very, very few, that have what it takes to really upset the apple cart. These are the top notch folks - those who change not only industries, but ways of life. For millions of people.
It takes a very small number of these guys to change the world. And, right now, they're all flocking to google/yahoo.
Linux is dominated by the sort of people on whom it is still lost that ease of use, administration, and support are paramount over everything else for end-users. Windows XP and Mac OSX give them what Linux never will as long as the current crop of leaders and movers and shakers controls the Linux scene.
Which is so much HORSEPUCKY. Recently, my Dell Inspiron 600m laptop died. A hardware failure, I'm still waiting for my system back from Dell. (with a new MB)
So, I have a laptop HDD, with all my email, browser, data, documents, and everything else that matters, sitting on a 2.5 inch HDD in my hand.
I called around to ask about installing a laptop HDD into a desktop system, and am told by a qualified professional that it's simply NOT A GOOD IDEA to mount my HDD into another system because of all the driver issues that will arise.
Well, guess what? I installed said HDD into a desktop system (after buyting a $15 adapter) and in 10 minutes had everything working fine. Sound, video, X Windows, KDE, the works.
Other than a changed resolution, it's the same computer, and all my stuff is there. So, I spend a morning, and am 100% back up and running.
Can Windows do this?!?!?!
I didn't think so. Linux isn't for everybody - but it's definitely for ME. I can't afford to have a hardware failure take me out, and my filesystem is contiguous to 1998! (I have email, documents, etc. going back now 7 years in a continuous history, across many O/S upgrades and system changes, yet I can read it all just fine. Can Windows do that, too?)
If I buy a Television (OR motherboard, hard drive, child's car seat, shingles for the roof, combine for the wheat harvest, CNC press brake for the machine shop, etc.) that doesn't work I can get my money back.
If it works when I get it, I use it correctly, and it breaks in a short period of time (because of a hidden weakness in the product) I get it fixed for free.
In most industries, anyone who doesn't follow that rule goes out of business very quickly.
I think that we are just used to software being an exception.
Which is, of course, silly. When's the last time you turned in a stolen car for a recall/repair? When you do, they'll look up the VIN (Vehicle Identification Number) and make sure that you're legally entitled to the free repair.
Microsoft is doing the same thing, here. Bitch all you want to, but your license number is effectively the "VIN" for your software. Why shouldn't they have some reasonable means to check it?
So get a job at NASA. Obviously, YOU have the answer to it all. Perhaps your "friends" at NASA can put a good recommendation, here?/dumbass tag needed here
I guess you missed my point: performance on a computer now is marginal in value. Good enough, is good enough. So long as it's reasonably current, who cares? Really, unless you're in a specialized field or have special needs, how much does a 2.x Ghz chip vs 1.x chip make for you? How much time do you *really* spend waiting for your computer?
A 60 gig drive can be had for just $77 on pricewatch. (and I'm well aware that it's 4200 RPM, not 7200, see above about performance being marginal in value)
My Dell Inspiron 600m has a 60GB, 4200 RPM drive. With 1.5 GB of RAM installed, it manages to run Fedora Core 3, Windows XP, AND Windows 98 simultaneously (VMWare) with enough speed to allow for my primary job to go quite successfully. (I write database software in PHP/PHP-GTK)
I won't argue that laptops aren't more expensive, I never did. But what I'm saying is: It's worth it and now having tasted the fruit, I will not stop eating it! The ability to manage my servers while sitting in my back patio by the pool while the kids swim is priceless.
The ability to show up at a client's location, armed with all relevant and available information (a la email, web, bookmarks, and documents) and update things in realtime according to changing specs in real time is priceless.
If the $150 for a replacement CDROM is a big deal, then you fall under "limited means". Note that your $30 CDRom is a piece of crap that might last a year if you're lucky - a decent, quality, name-brand item with a warrrantee is going to cost more like $75, and you haven't figured in the cost of installation. If you have it done by a "service professional" at your local best buy, it'll be another $50, while the laptop cdrom is installed/removed by just yanking on it.
Hmmm - now your $170 savings just dropped to $75 or so. How much is an hour or two of YOUR time worth?
Notice that the focus of the speculation is on LINUX, not on the embedded market. "If Nokia chose Linux..." But, why would they? Why would Symbian no longer be a good choice?
It's like saying... "If I won the lottery, I'd be rich!". Linux is great, and I'm sure will eventually command the information/communications industries. But individual speculations like this, unfounded by even a quality rumor, are just a waste of time.
Several reasons: 1. Desktops are less expensive for the same amount of CPU horsepower. 2. RAM, hard drives, opticals are all faster and less expensive. 3. Desktops are easy to fix if something breaks- parts are standard (except for some Mac parts.) Laptops are all proprietary. A $30 CD drive will cost $200 to replace.
Based on this post, I'd guess that (pick one)
1) You've never used a laptop system.
2) You've only used a dysfunctional laptop system.
3) You are tight of means.
I resisted having a laptop, until my work more or less forced me to buy one. I bought a 1.7 Ghz Dell Inspiron 600m, and I run RedHat Fedora Core on it. It took a few months for me to get used to 60 GB instead of 250 GB. I think it was when I upgraded to 1.5 GB of RAM that it really started to grow on me.
Now, I go anywhere, compute on the couch, back patio, coffee shop, airport, etc. I take "workations" now, where I go on vacation with my wife/kids, knowing that I'll be working a partial workweek. Throw the laptop in the back, and off I go...
Once you've experienced the freedom and comfort of a good laptop system, you'll *never* want to go back! I know I sure won't!
I wonder if this has any impact on the view of racism?
Racism is a *very* touchy subject, and I may get flamed just for bringing it up, but doesn't this sound like butterfly racism? If this were, in fact, a provable, natural, biological mechanism, then, wouldn't we, as biological organisms, be falling prety to much the same effect? Isn't racism a social form of speciation?
What impact would this have on the ACLU? Hiring quotas? The civil rights movement in general?
I'm not suggesting that racism is good. But, might these be related?
I meant "you" in the condescending, general sense. Not "you" in the "so lame and insecure you'd resort to namecalling" sense. Take it personally, why don't ye?
All I was pointing out is that "commodity" can mean different things. I remember pointing this out to a friend of mine who was upset that a company had spent $10,000 on some software with a free, open solution available.
I indicated to him that $10,000 really wasn't that much when you consider the size of the company (hundreds of staff) and compared it to a coke. Do you drive across town to the megamart to buy your sodas in 24-packs at $0.12 per can, or do you pay $.65 for the same thing at a convenience store 2 blocks away?
Soda pop is a (small-time) commodity. When the organization is bigger, the scope of "commodity" grows, also.
PS: People see in others what they see in themselves - keep that in mind next time you see your sister.
I remember having a CD called something like Encarta Streets or something that was MICROSOFT mapping software long before google was anything other than a mispelling of goggle.
Transactions and subselects, ACID compliance. MySQL has done quite a bit of catching up, but I still use (and love!) PG.
Any particular language and database is going to be obsolete in a decade. What are you planning to upgrade to?
Sorry? Why would PHP, (now a decade old, and going strong) be obsolete in another 10 years? How old is C++? Java? Perl? All are perfectly viable today, and (AFAIK) all are nearly 10 years old or are older.
Do you find the cost structure (TCO) of LAMP to be persuasive over the MS solution, or is just an accident of history?
I find LAMP to be stable, secure, capable, and highly profitable. So long as these elements remain, I'll continue to use it. When something truly better comes along, I'll switch.
The initial cost of going LAMP is $0, so when a young, starving business is rearing its head (such as mine a few years ago) it gets quite a boost from that. The fact that the end result is still highly commercially viable is gravy, and the upgrade path (EG: the "enterprise" distros) is well paved.
Which reminds me -- I've tried the ScrapBook Firefox extension, but for some reason I didn't seem to "get it". For one, I think all this needs to happen on my "personal server", not on the desktop, since I use several different computers.
Which brings an interesting idea to mind:
Squid has an authentication scheme so that it can be used on the wild 'net with reasonable security. It also keeps a log of all requests. (actually, GET, it doesn't log POST as far as I know)
What if you were to combine these two capabilities with some parser to provide a cross-system memex generator? If you authenticate to Squid as you on whatever machinees, you end up with a system that does exactly what you are talking about.
Wonderful for personal use, but would you trust your ISP to collate this information for you? What about your privacy?
If you started studying CS right after the dot-com bubble burst (around 2000, "worst" time to get into IT), you will be very popular right about now.
Not really. I have friends who went in around then and still can't find a job. Yes, hiring is up, but this isn't 1998 again. People who know their shit and have experience are definitely in demand right now. People who have nothing significant to their name other than a newly minted bachelor's degree are not in demand.
But that's not what I've seen. I sold my (successful!) computer-repair business to do full-time software development, using PHP and PostgreSQL on Linux spring of 2000. There were a few HARD years, but I've done a TON of development for dozens of clients, and I'm now turning away work that I don't think is gravy enough.
Meanwhile, my personal income has skyrocketed the last 2 years, and things continue to improve, as I develop my way towards financial freedom.
I'm doing work I love, at home among the people I love most, for clients (some of them now friends) that appreciate my efforts, who are happy to pay my invoices. What's not to like?
And there ARE periods of stress - I'm in the middle of one of them. Since we target education, late summer (right before the next schoolyear) is always a bit painful, no matter what I do. But, I wouldn't trade my career path for just about ANYTHING, thank you!
It's amazing how little some humans appreciate the nature of humans. The fact that people are more likely to store gigabytes of porn on their 'memex' than encyclopedias probably didn't enter the poor little guy's head.
So what? Just because he envisioned the use of the memex machines for scientific purposes doesn't mean that the use for porn negates its benefit.
In fact, it provides the economic benefit of having the idiots who download 6 GB of porn per month help fund a public communication system that can also be used to promote the sciences!
Everybody wins! Porn freak gets lots of material to whack off with, (and is that much more likely to remove himself from the gene pool) while the scientists (using a public communications network paid for by porn freaks) can advance their arts at their leisure.
It's like a common argument for OSS "success" - it isn't measured by whether or not it commands a majority of the marketshare, it's measured by whether there's enough activity to continue development. So long as there's enough bandwidth/webspace/filtering of noise in the system so that those who are performing science can do so, it's a net benefit.
The problem with search engines today is that they exactly do not do what Bush was envisioning... they do not record the associations, the context, of the informat ion.
Actually, when you think about it, Google's "Page Rank" technology is a sort of group/aggregate memex calculator.
PageRank effectively adds up the sum of various peoples' memexes to calculate which pages the most people felt was relevant within their respective memes. (websites) Sort of a "mass-memex" calculator, effectively a public poll of a large number of memexes.
Despite being cheaper, the perception most Americans have is that mass transit is something beneath them (only poor people take the bus, right?). They see the automobile as a symbol of freedom and independence, and in their minds auto ownership has a much better value despite the higher costs of a car compared with utilizing transit systems.
It's because of this perception that American city expansion and development is done almost exclusively to accommodate the automobile, leaving alternative means of transport like walking (which is both cheaper and better for you then driving) forgotten or a cursory afterthought.
It's much simpler than that. Cars are easier, faster, and more convenient.
Think about it:
1) BREVITY: You don't have to think about when the next car comes.
2) COMFORT: You won't sit next to some guy who talks too much and smells bad.
3) SPEED: You drive 35 the whole way, instead of just 1 block at a time.
4) PARKING: You park where you want to, instead of 6 blocks away.
5) AVAILABILITY: Buses only go certain places. You can't take a bus (easily/cheaply) to the next town, or to a remote state park.
6) CAPACITY: You can't launch a boat with a bus. You can't haul more than a few bags of groceries with a bus. Ever try throwing a lawn mower, big-screen TV, kayak, or couch into the back of a bus? (without 30 people glaring at you?)
7) SCHEDULE: You can't be late for a bus. If you're 5 minutes late, the car's still in the garage...
Oh, and then there's status and price, which you mention.
Public transportation just doesnt' solve well for the needs of the average US citizen. It works better in Europe or Japan because of much higher population density. There are a few places in the US where public transportation works well. (EG: San Fransisco, New York)
But, (for exammple) here in small town, Central Valley, California, it's just silly. There are busses, and they are a PAIN IN THE REAR because they come only every hour, and they only cover certain "key" routes. EG: to the mall, movie theatre, downtown, large apartments, and that's about it.
Honestly, I telecommute, mostly working from home. Except for business trips, I drive 100 miles per month. For "business trips", I fly 1-2 times per month an average round trim of about 400 miles. I have 5 kids, and the grocery store (my most frequent trip) is about 1.5 miles away. I live near downtown, so the kids can experience lots by walking 8 blocks, so it's not as though I'm one of those "car people".
But I haven't stepped foot on a bus in probably 5-6 years...
I have seen tons of these for 12+ months. Highly annoying.
Yes. I've seen these, too. Didn't do much, though, so I wonder why it's "highly annoying". I disable root access by password (keys only) so the password attempts (over 3,000 I logged) to root did absoltively nothing.
What I need is an IDS that will just drop the remote IPs into iptables.
So, write your own !@# script in PHP/Perl/Bash/Python/Ruby/Java. It's a simple regex...
Me, when I saw this, I changed the port in/etc/sshd/sshd_config to some goofy high port. Never seen it since.
What the hell are you talking about? The creator of the Internet served for eight years as Vice President!
Yeah, it's funny and all - but Al Gore deserves some credit - as a young politician, he did recognize te power of the Internet, and did do significant work to see its development.
Don't forget to give credt where it's actually due, eh?
Imagine what something like this could do for laptop screens? Unless you're playing an FPS, a computer screen is fairly static - so updating the screen and then 0 power consumption until you do something... man oh man!
What's the refresh rate like? Can it be backlit? Having a laptop you can read in the sun might be quite nice...
One of the servers I manage is a "backup" server that incrementally backs up numerous other hosts using software I wrote (in part) Backup Buddy.
Basically, it's an old AMD K6-2 450 (yes, it's so ancient it's even AT instead of ATX) with a few PCI IDE controller cards and a crapload of IDE HDDs. CPU performance is irrelevant - it's all I/O bound, rsync over SSH.
It does the job wonderfully, and has for a long time. I have many months worth of backups of all important hosts and data on this "backup" server..
Slashdot Mirror
The right language depends on who's doing the work. That's right. Today, there really is NO right language. There are many languages. Some of them are very comparable.
But the language doesn't really matter. Look at the developers, your staff. What are they proficient in?
I once had an executive ask me about buying Sun hardware. I told him that Sun was irrelevant. Take a look at his staff. What were they familiar with?
I'm personally very familiar with RedHat on Intel - so I'll buy Intel Hardware, and run Fedora or Whitebox on it. I'll do a good job, and what I put together works very well.
I know Windows admins who do a good job with Microsoft tools. Not my boat, and I'm not floating in it - but they do a competent job.
Don't look at the language, look at your staff, and compare that to what you're trying to accomplish. Trying to ask what's the "best" language is like asking what's the "best" car.
What are you trying to do? A car that goes 0-60 in 4.5 seconds is probably going to suck if you have 5 children in your family that you need to transport from soccer games!
Your .sig does not seem to match your worldview.
.sig imply that being 'passionately curious' == "great things"? All that's there is that A. Einstein felt he had no great talents - but was just passionately curious...
If all it takes to do great things is to be 'passionately curious', then it should be possible for a great many people to change the world.
This thread is late, you may not see this post. But, if you do, please answer:
Where does my
Where's the hypocrisy? I happen to consider that genuine, unblinded curiosity is the hallmark of all great scientists: where curiosity is answered by observation and proof, rather than half-baked theories.
There are more than, say 500 good engineers in the US (supposing Google and Yahoo hired 500 people). Sure, not many VPs of big dot-coms are easy to hire but would a startup be able to afford the salaries/perks they demand?
I don't think it's that much of an issue....
When you are talking about engineers generally, 500 is a drop in the bucket. When you are talking about the top notch engineers, that's a massive brain drain.
Most engineers go about their lives, doing more/less commodity work, often of high quality, and live un-notable lives producing good works.
But there are a few, a very, very few, that have what it takes to really upset the apple cart. These are the top notch folks - those who change not only industries, but ways of life. For millions of people.
It takes a very small number of these guys to change the world. And, right now, they're all flocking to google/yahoo.
Linux is dominated by the sort of people on whom it is still lost that ease of use, administration, and support are paramount over everything else for end-users. Windows XP and Mac OSX give them what Linux never will as long as the current crop of leaders and movers and shakers controls the Linux scene.
Which is so much HORSEPUCKY. Recently, my Dell Inspiron 600m laptop died. A hardware failure, I'm still waiting for my system back from Dell. (with a new MB)
So, I have a laptop HDD, with all my email, browser, data, documents, and everything else that matters, sitting on a 2.5 inch HDD in my hand.
I called around to ask about installing a laptop HDD into a desktop system, and am told by a qualified professional that it's simply NOT A GOOD IDEA to mount my HDD into another system because of all the driver issues that will arise.
Well, guess what? I installed said HDD into a desktop system (after buyting a $15 adapter) and in 10 minutes had everything working fine. Sound, video, X Windows, KDE, the works.
Other than a changed resolution, it's the same computer, and all my stuff is there. So, I spend a morning, and am 100% back up and running.
Can Windows do this?!?!?!
I didn't think so. Linux isn't for everybody - but it's definitely for ME. I can't afford to have a hardware failure take me out, and my filesystem is contiguous to 1998! (I have email, documents, etc. going back now 7 years in a continuous history, across many O/S upgrades and system changes, yet I can read it all just fine. Can Windows do that, too?)
If I buy a Television (OR motherboard, hard drive, child's car seat, shingles for the roof, combine for the wheat harvest, CNC press brake for the machine shop, etc.) that doesn't work I can get my money back.
If it works when I get it, I use it correctly, and it breaks in a short period of time (because of a hidden weakness in the product) I get it fixed for free.
In most industries, anyone who doesn't follow that rule goes out of business very quickly.
I think that we are just used to software being an exception.
Which is, of course, silly. When's the last time you turned in a stolen car for a recall/repair? When you do, they'll look up the VIN (Vehicle Identification Number) and make sure that you're legally entitled to the free repair.
Microsoft is doing the same thing, here. Bitch all you want to, but your license number is effectively the "VIN" for your software. Why shouldn't they have some reasonable means to check it?
So get a job at NASA. Obviously, YOU have the answer to it all. Perhaps your "friends" at NASA can put a good recommendation, here? /dumbass tag needed here
I guess you missed my point: performance on a computer now is marginal in value. Good enough, is good enough. So long as it's reasonably current, who cares? Really, unless you're in a specialized field or have special needs, how much does a 2.x Ghz chip vs 1.x chip make for you? How much time do you *really* spend waiting for your computer?
A 60 gig drive can be had for just $77 on pricewatch. (and I'm well aware that it's 4200 RPM, not 7200, see above about performance being marginal in value)
My Dell Inspiron 600m has a 60GB, 4200 RPM drive. With 1.5 GB of RAM installed, it manages to run Fedora Core 3, Windows XP, AND Windows 98 simultaneously (VMWare) with enough speed to allow for my primary job to go quite successfully. (I write database software in PHP/PHP-GTK)
I won't argue that laptops aren't more expensive, I never did. But what I'm saying is: It's worth it and now having tasted the fruit, I will not stop eating it! The ability to manage my servers while sitting in my back patio by the pool while the kids swim is priceless.
The ability to show up at a client's location, armed with all relevant and available information (a la email, web, bookmarks, and documents) and update things in realtime according to changing specs in real time is priceless.
If the $150 for a replacement CDROM is a big deal, then you fall under "limited means". Note that your $30 CDRom is a piece of crap that might last a year if you're lucky - a decent, quality, name-brand item with a warrrantee is going to cost more like $75, and you haven't figured in the cost of installation. If you have it done by a "service professional" at your local best buy, it'll be another $50, while the laptop cdrom is installed/removed by just yanking on it.
Hmmm - now your $170 savings just dropped to $75 or so. How much is an hour or two of YOUR time worth?
Notice that the focus of the speculation is on LINUX, not on the embedded market. "If Nokia chose Linux..." But, why would they? Why would Symbian no longer be a good choice?
It's like saying... "If I won the lottery, I'd be rich!". Linux is great, and I'm sure will eventually command the information/communications industries. But individual speculations like this, unfounded by even a quality rumor, are just a waste of time.
Several reasons: 1. Desktops are less expensive for the same amount of CPU horsepower. 2. RAM, hard drives, opticals are all faster and less expensive. 3. Desktops are easy to fix if something breaks- parts are standard (except for some Mac parts.) Laptops are all proprietary. A $30 CD drive will cost $200 to replace.
Based on this post, I'd guess that (pick one)
1) You've never used a laptop system.
2) You've only used a dysfunctional laptop system.
3) You are tight of means.
I resisted having a laptop, until my work more or less forced me to buy one. I bought a 1.7 Ghz Dell Inspiron 600m, and I run RedHat Fedora Core on it. It took a few months for me to get used to 60 GB instead of 250 GB. I think it was when I upgraded to 1.5 GB of RAM that it really started to grow on me.
Now, I go anywhere, compute on the couch, back patio, coffee shop, airport, etc. I take "workations" now, where I go on vacation with my wife/kids, knowing that I'll be working a partial workweek. Throw the laptop in the back, and off I go...
Once you've experienced the freedom and comfort of a good laptop system, you'll *never* want to go back! I know I sure won't!
I wonder if this has any impact on the view of racism?
Racism is a *very* touchy subject, and I may get flamed just for bringing it up, but doesn't this sound like butterfly racism? If this were, in fact, a provable, natural, biological mechanism, then, wouldn't we, as biological organisms, be falling prety to much the same effect? Isn't racism a social form of speciation?
What impact would this have on the ACLU? Hiring quotas? The civil rights movement in general?
I'm not suggesting that racism is good. But, might these be related?
I meant "you" in the condescending, general sense. Not "you" in the "so lame and insecure you'd resort to namecalling" sense. Take it personally, why don't ye?
All I was pointing out is that "commodity" can mean different things. I remember pointing this out to a friend of mine who was upset that a company had spent $10,000 on some software with a free, open solution available.
I indicated to him that $10,000 really wasn't that much when you consider the size of the company (hundreds of staff) and compared it to a coke. Do you drive across town to the megamart to buy your sodas in 24-packs at $0.12 per can, or do you pay $.65 for the same thing at a convenience store 2 blocks away?
Soda pop is a (small-time) commodity. When the organization is bigger, the scope of "commodity" grows, also.
PS: People see in others what they see in themselves - keep that in mind next time you see your sister.
My guess is that serious financial is not done on run-of-the-mill "commodity" hardware.
My guess is that the guidlines for what YOU call "commodity" hardware is quite different than what serious financial calls "commodity" hardware.
What THEY call commodity hardware, you'd call "OMFG s0 1ee7 m3g4 S3RV3R!", you know, the kind that runs $25,000. (instead of $250,000)
/PEDANTIC
Google is a mispelling of googol which, as a word, has it's its own interesting history:
Its very name is a derivation of the word googol, a term invented in 1938 by nine-year-old Milton Sirotta to denote a 1 followed by 100 zeros.
'runs as user NOBODY'
Perchild MPM, which lets apache run as the user owning NN vhost has been all-but dropped.
A few other guys have (kind of) picked it back up again, and gotten it to (mostly) work, but it doesn't scale well, yet... (barfs at 256 hosts)
Why can't somebody get this to work? (I would, but I'm not a c coder)
I've been using the same 10 Mb hub for my home network since the mid-90s. Would this mean I have to upgrade?
Why postgres sql vs mysql?
Transactions and subselects, ACID compliance. MySQL has done quite a bit of catching up, but I still use (and love!) PG.
Any particular language and database is going to be obsolete in a decade. What are you planning to upgrade to?
Sorry? Why would PHP, (now a decade old, and going strong) be obsolete in another 10 years? How old is C++? Java? Perl? All are perfectly viable today, and (AFAIK) all are nearly 10 years old or are older.
Do you find the cost structure (TCO) of LAMP to be persuasive over the MS solution, or is just an accident of history?
I find LAMP to be stable, secure, capable, and highly profitable. So long as these elements remain, I'll continue to use it. When something truly better comes along, I'll switch.
The initial cost of going LAMP is $0, so when a young, starving business is rearing its head (such as mine a few years ago) it gets quite a boost from that. The fact that the end result is still highly commercially viable is gravy, and the upgrade path (EG: the "enterprise" distros) is well paved.
Which reminds me -- I've tried the ScrapBook Firefox extension, but for some reason I didn't seem to "get it". For one, I think all this needs to happen on my "personal server", not on the desktop, since I use several different computers.
Which brings an interesting idea to mind:
Squid has an authentication scheme so that it can be used on the wild 'net with reasonable security. It also keeps a log of all requests. (actually, GET, it doesn't log POST as far as I know)
What if you were to combine these two capabilities with some parser to provide a cross-system memex generator? If you authenticate to Squid as you on whatever machinees, you end up with a system that does exactly what you are talking about.
Wonderful for personal use, but would you trust your ISP to collate this information for you? What about your privacy?
If you started studying CS right after the dot-com bubble burst (around 2000, "worst" time to get into IT), you will be very popular right about now.
Not really. I have friends who went in around then and still can't find a job. Yes, hiring is up, but this isn't 1998 again. People who know their shit and have experience are definitely in demand right now. People who have nothing significant to their name other than a newly minted bachelor's degree are not in demand.
But that's not what I've seen. I sold my (successful!) computer-repair business to do full-time software development, using PHP and PostgreSQL on Linux spring of 2000. There were a few HARD years, but I've done a TON of development for dozens of clients, and I'm now turning away work that I don't think is gravy enough.
Meanwhile, my personal income has skyrocketed the last 2 years, and things continue to improve, as I develop my way towards financial freedom.
I'm doing work I love, at home among the people I love most, for clients (some of them now friends) that appreciate my efforts, who are happy to pay my invoices. What's not to like?
And there ARE periods of stress - I'm in the middle of one of them. Since we target education, late summer (right before the next schoolyear) is always a bit painful, no matter what I do. But, I wouldn't trade my career path for just about ANYTHING, thank you!
It's amazing how little some humans appreciate the nature of humans. The fact that people are more likely to store gigabytes of porn on their 'memex' than encyclopedias probably didn't enter the poor little guy's head.
So what? Just because he envisioned the use of the memex machines for scientific purposes doesn't mean that the use for porn negates its benefit.
In fact, it provides the economic benefit of having the idiots who download 6 GB of porn per month help fund a public communication system that can also be used to promote the sciences!
Everybody wins! Porn freak gets lots of material to whack off with, (and is that much more likely to remove himself from the gene pool) while the scientists (using a public communications network paid for by porn freaks) can advance their arts at their leisure.
It's like a common argument for OSS "success" - it isn't measured by whether or not it commands a majority of the marketshare, it's measured by whether there's enough activity to continue development. So long as there's enough bandwidth/webspace/filtering of noise in the system so that those who are performing science can do so, it's a net benefit.
The problem with search engines today is that they exactly do not do what Bush was envisioning... they do not record the associations, the context, of the informat ion.
Actually, when you think about it, Google's "Page Rank" technology is a sort of group/aggregate memex calculator.
PageRank effectively adds up the sum of various peoples' memexes to calculate which pages the most people felt was relevant within their respective memes. (websites) Sort of a "mass-memex" calculator, effectively a public poll of a large number of memexes.
Despite being cheaper, the perception most Americans have is that mass transit is something beneath them (only poor people take the bus, right?). They see the automobile as a symbol of freedom and independence, and in their minds auto ownership has a much better value despite the higher costs of a car compared with utilizing transit systems.
It's because of this perception that American city expansion and development is done almost exclusively to accommodate the automobile, leaving alternative means of transport like walking (which is both cheaper and better for you then driving) forgotten or a cursory afterthought.
It's much simpler than that. Cars are easier, faster, and more convenient.
Think about it:
1) BREVITY: You don't have to think about when the next car comes.
2) COMFORT: You won't sit next to some guy who talks too much and smells bad.
3) SPEED: You drive 35 the whole way, instead of just 1 block at a time.
4) PARKING: You park where you want to, instead of 6 blocks away.
5) AVAILABILITY: Buses only go certain places. You can't take a bus (easily/cheaply) to the next town, or to a remote state park.
6) CAPACITY: You can't launch a boat with a bus. You can't haul more than a few bags of groceries with a bus. Ever try throwing a lawn mower, big-screen TV, kayak, or couch into the back of a bus? (without 30 people glaring at you?)
7) SCHEDULE: You can't be late for a bus. If you're 5 minutes late, the car's still in the garage...
Oh, and then there's status and price, which you mention.
Public transportation just doesnt' solve well for the needs of the average US citizen. It works better in Europe or Japan because of much higher population density. There are a few places in the US where public transportation works well. (EG: San Fransisco, New York)
But, (for exammple) here in small town, Central Valley, California, it's just silly. There are busses, and they are a PAIN IN THE REAR because they come only every hour, and they only cover certain "key" routes. EG: to the mall, movie theatre, downtown, large apartments, and that's about it.
Honestly, I telecommute, mostly working from home. Except for business trips, I drive 100 miles per month. For "business trips", I fly 1-2 times per month an average round trim of about 400 miles. I have 5 kids, and the grocery store (my most frequent trip) is about 1.5 miles away. I live near downtown, so the kids can experience lots by walking 8 blocks, so it's not as though I'm one of those "car people".
But I haven't stepped foot on a bus in probably 5-6 years...
I have seen tons of these for 12+ months. Highly annoying.
/etc/sshd/sshd_config to some goofy high port. Never seen it since.
Yes. I've seen these, too. Didn't do much, though, so I wonder why it's "highly annoying". I disable root access by password (keys only) so the password attempts (over 3,000 I logged) to root did absoltively nothing.
What I need is an IDS that will just drop the remote IPs into iptables.
So, write your own !@# script in PHP/Perl/Bash/Python/Ruby/Java. It's a simple regex...
Me, when I saw this, I changed the port in
What the hell are you talking about? The creator of the Internet served for eight years as Vice President!
Yeah, it's funny and all - but Al Gore deserves some credit - as a young politician, he did recognize te power of the Internet, and did do significant work to see its development.
Don't forget to give credt where it's actually due, eh?
Imagine what something like this could do for laptop screens? Unless you're playing an FPS, a computer screen is fairly static - so updating the screen and then 0 power consumption until you do something... man oh man!
What's the refresh rate like? Can it be backlit? Having a laptop you can read in the sun might be quite nice...
If its IO bound, these may function just fine.
One of the servers I manage is a "backup" server that incrementally backs up numerous other hosts using software I wrote (in part) Backup Buddy.
Basically, it's an old AMD K6-2 450 (yes, it's so ancient it's even AT instead of ATX) with a few PCI IDE controller cards and a crapload of IDE HDDs. CPU performance is irrelevant - it's all I/O bound, rsync over SSH.
It does the job wonderfully, and has for a long time. I have many months worth of backups of all important hosts and data on this "backup" server..