As the website states, "$85/campus for support". That's truly amazing, and especially so when you realize that they're going to get a ton of calls about some of the translation from M$ formatted docs to SO formatted docs. I'm sure that it doesn't seem so bad when you're looking at supporting small colleges, but what about the Ohio State's, Michigan State's with around 50,000 students per campus? Also, what about state systems like UC and SUNY? What constitutes a cam pus? Is SUNY-Albany covered if SUNY-Buffalo gets support?
The only caveat here is getting campuses to support two office suites, since you know that the overwhelming majority aren't going to just pick up and move over to SO and leave M$Office behind in one fell swoop. Initially, those who decide to adopt SO will have to transition users into using SO instead of M$Office, and that means more support costs for the campus IT personnel.
Of course, get a few students who want instant resume material (read: participated in a major campus-wide application migration project), and it might not be an issue.
Rule #1...check your references. Rule #2...double check them.
Darn it...February 2001, 1st ed. My bad. Guess it just seems like longer.
An essential tome in any sysadmin's library
on
SSH, The Secure Shell
·
· Score: 4, Informative
I can't tell you how many times I've earmarked, copied, lent out, and otherwise thumbed through that book. Even after a few years now, I still find gems that I can find uses for in my daily grind.
I'd also check out the following books for great sysadmin knowledge:
"The Practice of System and Network Administration", Limoncelli & Hogan "UNIX System Administration Handbook", Nemeth, Snyder, Seebass, & Hein "Programming Perl", Wall, Christiansen, and Orwant "Essential System Administration", Frisch
I know this will come off sounding like a shameless plug for a radio station, but the folks at CD101 in Columbus really have it right. They are one of the only non-corporatized radio stations in the city, and have won the local "Columbus Magazine" award for best radio station for the past 10 years or so.
They also broadcast over the Internet, sponsor special things for the community, such as Comfest and the Andyman-a-thon in December (one of the DJ's goes on-air for 48 straight hours and plays great music and auctions off some pretty cool gear throughout the 2 day period with all proceeds going to charity), and bring in great bands from all over the nation and the world in fact in order to keep non-standard music on the horizon.
Add to this idea the encryption of the maildb via pgp or gpg, and access to the folders within the maildb granted on an ACL basis. Saves space, preserves rights to access/modify/delete, ensures integrity of the message, and allows for easy and fast redundancy. All the pillars of security and reliability are covered in a single paradigm shift.
Wouldn't this be something if the deleted email also just happened to contain additional FBI memos and/or information related to the pre-9/11 memo that has been circulating around the news.
"Whoops. Sorry boss, but I destroyed that damning piece of evidence that links our field office to the overlooked memos regarding the WTC tragedy. I hope this doesn't get me in too much trouble...."
Personally, I think that Darwinism will rear its head in this case. Those that don't appreciate what it is or what it takes to run a computer safely and successfully will be subject to the bugs and malware of others that they blindly accept.
Hardware cost is not an issue. School districts that have the money will buy the necessary hardware regardless of what OS goes on top. Those don't have the money, but still want computing services will re-use old hardware and/or attempt to get donated hardware. So in both cases, the hardware is usually acquired regardless of the software solution.
The benefits of using Linux come with the costs involved in the economy of scale when school's IT departments begin to grow substantially. The overwhelming majority of software for Linux, including the OS itself, is provided for free, forever. There are going to be support costs either way, and the difference here is simply finding adequate support for Linux at school-district affordability. And compared to Windows support, the costs are going to be about the same, so no problem there.
As far as applicability, school-based computers need to serve a very limited subset of functions -- word-processing, computations, email, web browsing, perhaps graphic design, and code compilation. Linux boxes can handle this set of functions easily, and all with free software.
So why not use Linux? The only reason I can see is initial learning curve time based on the new environment, but kids can pick up things quickly, so this ought not to be a factor. Once the learning curve is overcome, students and teachers alike will be able use Linux just as easily as Windows, and with minimal cost to the school district.
Basically, there isn't a good reason not to use Linux in the schools.
If you count only the 3-day weekend for each movie's opening, Spidey beats out AotC by almost $30M. Because of AotC's mid-week opening, it comes in ahead for the overall weekend, but the numbers don't lie. This is simply a case of journalists trying to stretch the truth to make it seem like something happened that actually didn't.
Also, they talk about the highest revenue weekend of all-time. Well, that's great, but what about ticket sales and inflation in ticket prices over the years? The last movie I saw in the theaters was a few weeks ago and it was $9 for entrance. If you do the math, for AotC, that comes out to a little under 13 million viewers of the movie. Now take into account how many more people are alive today as compared one or two generations ago, do the math again...I'll bet that although this is still an impressive opening, that it's not a record per capita.
Pardon the conspiracy theories, but wouldn't this justify the USPTO's current position of accepting frivolous patents like this if they knew that the process of re-examination will also bring in additional funds?
OK, let me rephrase, they may have licenses to operate on the band, but per the FCC rules, they were well aware of the fact that they will also be required to accept any and all interference that they received on that band. The FCC allowed them to operate there, but gave them a caveat which might prove true in the not too distant future.
Hopefully though, this will be a moot point if/when Wi-fi-2 takes hold and uses the band around the 5GHz area. That is reserved for them, so there shouldn't be any issues like this one on that band.
If you lease an apartment and you find squatters living there, do you (a) ask them nicely to leave since that's your space now, or (b) call your landlord to have the police throw the freeloaders out?
This is no different. Fusion Lighting is playing by the FCC rules, while all the Bluetooth, Wi-fi, and cordless phone manufacturers were getting away with squatting on a frequency that they knew could be a problem down the line, but that no one was using yet. Now that someone has a legitimate claim to the frequency, they're crying foul? BS...you have no basis for that frequency in the first place. Move to the 5GHz band, establish a right to that band, and fsck off on the 2.4GHz band. I do feel sorry for the people who have already invested in devices running on that band, but you need to do your homework folks.
Not true. Walmart is now selling "Windows-less" PC's with a price-reduction for not having to pay the Windows-tax. There was a thread about this not too long ago here. It's up to the user to get an OS, install it and support it, but at least there's an option.
...and go use something else. This is the kind of thing that drives me a bit insane, since this fuels the fire of people thinking that using Microsoft products is the only way of using a computer. "I can't use this because Microsoft won't let me....wahhhhh...." There are other products out there. Don't like Internet Explorer? Go use Opera. Don't like MS Office, go use OpenOffice. Don't like Windows? Go use Linux or Mac OSX, or FreeBSD, or etc...
If enough people start using other products, perhaps Microsoft will take notice and start building things that people actually want. It's called market tendencies folks...not exactly rocket science.
What does the number of employees have to do with the number of licenses? The last time I checked, Oracle was licensed on a per server basis, not on who uses it...
Also, I'm going to assume that there are far fewer servers in the CA gov't than there are employees, and if so, then someone made a made a REALLY big error in budgeting. Of course, we are the country that paid $43,000 for a screwdriver and that sort of thing, so who knows?
I've always wondered why it was that we've let Congress decide on technological standards, when we already have a government body chartered to do just that.
The National Institute for Standards and Technology has done a fair job in the past of qualifying and quantifying standards in the past, why aren't we using them now? I don't believe that we need to regulate standards in this case at this time, but if others feel so inclined, then why aren't we, the voters, telling Congress to do their jobs?
My recommendation would be to look at Interhack as a possible security audit firm. They specialize in this sort of thing, aren't biased to one OS over another, and can provide detailed information on where to go and what to do following your assessment.
The system is broken, and can't fix itself. No matter how much we help it from the inside.
I disagree. Run for office yourself. If you understand the issues well enough, you ought to be in a position to make policy, and at a governmental level, we are sorely lacking these types of people.
The possibility of unfettered access to spread-spectrum technology for broadcasting must scares the bejeezus out of the RIAA. So far, their whole arguement against the web-based radio stations has been easy for them to try to enforce it because the pay-per-listen criteria is trackable.
However, if this technology becomes feasible to the average web-caster to broadcast their favorites tunes over the airwaves, then the measurement criteria for tracking who's listening goes out the window, and the RIAA has no power to enforce their rules.
Expect the RIAA to be on the side of the radio station conglomerates on this one.
UNIX was never dying in the first place
on
Unix Isn't Dead
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Unlike many Windows servers, my experience with UNIX servers has been that its longevity is one of its endearing qualities. Services running on UNIX servers tend to have a very long usable lifespan, IMHO due to the fact that the underlying system runs well enough that the application tends to be updated before the system needs to be.
But there is a caveat with using UNIX. The people who can successfully design, architect, administer, and maintain UNIX servers are a tight knit bunch, and as a result of its longevity, they don't tend to move around very often because a given server may be alive far longer than the average Windows server. Additionally, it's been my experience that the longer an individual concentrates on a given subject, such as a single UNIX server, that the more in-depth knowledge they begin to amass about that OS and therefore, they become even more valuable/pigeon-holed into a given organization's IT plans.
This combination of longevity and expertise results in a decreased pool of available personnel available for UNIX projects to organizations at any given time, compared to what I perceive as a larger pool of available Windows talent at any given time. Does this necessarily lead to new projects being run on Windows because the only available talent is Windows? Perhaps...
My vision of UNIX's biggest fear, is that it won't necessarily die, but be bred out of existence because new projects tend to be addressed by whatever resources are available at that time, and if there aren't any available UNIX experts, then nature abhors a vacuum and the projects will be filled with whomever is available at that time.
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As the website states, "$85/campus for support". That's truly amazing, and especially so when you realize that they're going to get a ton of calls about some of the translation from M$ formatted docs to SO formatted docs. I'm sure that it doesn't seem so bad when you're looking at supporting small colleges, but what about the Ohio State's, Michigan State's with around 50,000 students per campus? Also, what about state systems like UC and SUNY? What constitutes a cam pus? Is SUNY-Albany covered if SUNY-Buffalo gets support?
The only caveat here is getting campuses to support two office suites, since you know that the overwhelming majority aren't going to just pick up and move over to SO and leave M$Office behind in one fell swoop. Initially, those who decide to adopt SO will have to transition users into using SO instead of M$Office, and that means more support costs for the campus IT personnel.
Of course, get a few students who want instant resume material (read: participated in a major campus-wide application migration project), and it might not be an issue.
Journalism 101
Rule #1...check your references.
Rule #2...double check them.
Darn it...February 2001, 1st ed. My bad. Guess it just seems like longer.
I can't tell you how many times I've earmarked, copied, lent out, and otherwise thumbed through that book. Even after a few years now, I still find gems that I can find uses for in my daily grind.
I'd also check out the following books for great sysadmin knowledge:
"The Practice of System and Network Administration", Limoncelli & Hogan
"UNIX System Administration Handbook", Nemeth, Snyder, Seebass, & Hein
"Programming Perl", Wall, Christiansen, and Orwant
"Essential System Administration", Frisch
Unless you live in Philadelphia where you have KYW...go figure. I think one of the radio stations in Pittsburgh has the same discrepancy.
I know this will come off sounding like a shameless plug for a radio station, but the folks at CD101 in Columbus really have it right. They are one of the only non-corporatized radio stations in the city, and have won the local "Columbus Magazine" award for best radio station for the past 10 years or so.
They also broadcast over the Internet, sponsor special things for the community, such as Comfest and the Andyman-a-thon in December (one of the DJ's goes on-air for 48 straight hours and plays great music and auctions off some pretty cool gear throughout the 2 day period with all proceeds going to charity), and bring in great bands from all over the nation and the world in fact in order to keep non-standard music on the horizon.
Worth a good listen if you have the chance.
Add to this idea the encryption of the maildb via pgp or gpg, and access to the folders within the maildb granted on an ACL basis. Saves space, preserves rights to access/modify/delete, ensures integrity of the message, and allows for easy and fast redundancy. All the pillars of security and reliability are covered in a single paradigm shift.
Wouldn't this be something if the deleted email also just happened to contain additional FBI memos and/or information related to the pre-9/11 memo that has been circulating around the news.
"Whoops. Sorry boss, but I destroyed that damning piece of evidence that links our field office to the overlooked memos regarding the WTC tragedy. I hope this doesn't get me in too much trouble...."
I think they mean a private citizen piloting his own craft to that altitude, not being a passenger.
Personally, I think that Darwinism will rear its head in this case. Those that don't appreciate what it is or what it takes to run a computer safely and successfully will be subject to the bugs and malware of others that they blindly accept.
Caveat emptor, and this is no exception.
Hardware cost is not an issue. School districts that have the money will buy the necessary hardware regardless of what OS goes on top. Those don't have the money, but still want computing services will re-use old hardware and/or attempt to get donated hardware. So in both cases, the hardware is usually acquired regardless of the software solution.
The benefits of using Linux come with the costs involved in the economy of scale when school's IT departments begin to grow substantially. The overwhelming majority of software for Linux, including the OS itself, is provided for free, forever. There are going to be support costs either way, and the difference here is simply finding adequate support for Linux at school-district affordability. And compared to Windows support, the costs are going to be about the same, so no problem there.
As far as applicability, school-based computers need to serve a very limited subset of functions -- word-processing, computations, email, web browsing, perhaps graphic design, and code compilation. Linux boxes can handle this set of functions easily, and all with free software.
So why not use Linux? The only reason I can see is initial learning curve time based on the new environment, but kids can pick up things quickly, so this ought not to be a factor. Once the learning curve is overcome, students and teachers alike will be able use Linux just as easily as Windows, and with minimal cost to the school district.
Basically, there isn't a good reason not to use Linux in the schools.
Evolution is just more Yankee bullshit. Ever since reconstruction, the Yankees have been destroying the truth.
Yet another reason to hate Steinbrenner....um, uh, oh nevermind...
If you count only the 3-day weekend for each movie's opening, Spidey beats out AotC by almost $30M. Because of AotC's mid-week opening, it comes in ahead for the overall weekend, but the numbers don't lie. This is simply a case of journalists trying to stretch the truth to make it seem like something happened that actually didn't.
Also, they talk about the highest revenue weekend of all-time. Well, that's great, but what about ticket sales and inflation in ticket prices over the years? The last movie I saw in the theaters was a few weeks ago and it was $9 for entrance. If you do the math, for AotC, that comes out to a little under 13 million viewers of the movie. Now take into account how many more people are alive today as compared one or two generations ago, do the math again...I'll bet that although this is still an impressive opening, that it's not a record per capita.
We are Handspring of Borg. Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.
Pardon the conspiracy theories, but wouldn't this justify the USPTO's current position of accepting frivolous patents like this if they knew that the process of re-examination will also bring in additional funds?
OK, let me rephrase, they may have licenses to operate on the band, but per the FCC rules, they were well aware of the fact that they will also be required to accept any and all interference that they received on that band. The FCC allowed them to operate there, but gave them a caveat which might prove true in the not too distant future.
Hopefully though, this will be a moot point if/when Wi-fi-2 takes hold and uses the band around the 5GHz area. That is reserved for them, so there shouldn't be any issues like this one on that band.
If you lease an apartment and you find squatters living there, do you (a) ask them nicely to leave since that's your space now, or (b) call your landlord to have the police throw the freeloaders out?
This is no different. Fusion Lighting is playing by the FCC rules, while all the Bluetooth, Wi-fi, and cordless phone manufacturers were getting away with squatting on a frequency that they knew could be a problem down the line, but that no one was using yet. Now that someone has a legitimate claim to the frequency, they're crying foul? BS...you have no basis for that frequency in the first place. Move to the 5GHz band, establish a right to that band, and fsck off on the 2.4GHz band. I do feel sorry for the people who have already invested in devices running on that band, but you need to do your homework folks.
Ignorance is no excuse.
Not true. Walmart is now selling "Windows-less" PC's with a price-reduction for not having to pay the Windows-tax. There was a thread about this not too long ago here. It's up to the user to get an OS, install it and support it, but at least there's an option.
...and go use something else. This is the kind of thing that drives me a bit insane, since this fuels the fire of people thinking that using Microsoft products is the only way of using a computer. "I can't use this because Microsoft won't let me....wahhhhh...." There are other products out there. Don't like Internet Explorer? Go use Opera. Don't like MS Office, go use OpenOffice. Don't like Windows? Go use Linux or Mac OSX, or FreeBSD, or etc...
If enough people start using other products, perhaps Microsoft will take notice and start building things that people actually want. It's called market tendencies folks...not exactly rocket science.
What does the number of employees have to do with the number of licenses? The last time I checked, Oracle was licensed on a per server basis, not on who uses it...
Also, I'm going to assume that there are far fewer servers in the CA gov't than there are employees, and if so, then someone made a made a REALLY big error in budgeting. Of course, we are the country that paid $43,000 for a screwdriver and that sort of thing, so who knows?
I've always wondered why it was that we've let Congress decide on technological standards, when we already have a government body chartered to do just that.
The National Institute for Standards and Technology has done a fair job in the past of qualifying and quantifying standards in the past, why aren't we using them now? I don't believe that we need to regulate standards in this case at this time, but if others feel so inclined, then why aren't we, the voters, telling Congress to do their jobs?
My recommendation would be to look at Interhack as a possible security audit firm. They specialize in this sort of thing, aren't biased to one OS over another, and can provide detailed information on where to go and what to do following your assessment.
It's truly a class organization.
Even if no one voted for you, at least your opinions would make the public view, and at the very least get a few people thinking.
Get a few more people thinking and talking, and soon enough you have a movement, and then you run again with popular support....
IIRC, Lincoln did this for 20 years before finally succeeding.
The system is broken, and can't fix itself. No matter how much we help it from the inside.
I disagree. Run for office yourself. If you understand the issues well enough, you ought to be in a position to make policy, and at a governmental level, we are sorely lacking these types of people.
The possibility of unfettered access to spread-spectrum technology for broadcasting must scares the bejeezus out of the RIAA. So far, their whole arguement against the web-based radio stations has been easy for them to try to enforce it because the pay-per-listen criteria is trackable.
However, if this technology becomes feasible to the average web-caster to broadcast their favorites tunes over the airwaves, then the measurement criteria for tracking who's listening goes out the window, and the RIAA has no power to enforce their rules.
Expect the RIAA to be on the side of the radio station conglomerates on this one.
Unlike many Windows servers, my experience with UNIX servers has been that its longevity is one of its endearing qualities. Services running on UNIX servers tend to have a very long usable lifespan, IMHO due to the fact that the underlying system runs well enough that the application tends to be updated before the system needs to be.
But there is a caveat with using UNIX. The people who can successfully design, architect, administer, and maintain UNIX servers are a tight knit bunch, and as a result of its longevity, they don't tend to move around very often because a given server may be alive far longer than the average Windows server. Additionally, it's been my experience that the longer an individual concentrates on a given subject, such as a single UNIX server, that the more in-depth knowledge they begin to amass about that OS and therefore, they become even more valuable/pigeon-holed into a given organization's IT plans.
This combination of longevity and expertise results in a decreased pool of available personnel available for UNIX projects to organizations at any given time, compared to what I perceive as a larger pool of available Windows talent at any given time. Does this necessarily lead to new projects being run on Windows because the only available talent is Windows? Perhaps...
My vision of UNIX's biggest fear, is that it won't necessarily die, but be bred out of existence because new projects tend to be addressed by whatever resources are available at that time, and if there aren't any available UNIX experts, then nature abhors a vacuum and the projects will be filled with whomever is available at that time.