He required everyone - great and small, rich and poor, slave and free - to be given a mark on the right hand or on the forehead. And no one could buy or sell anything without that mark, which was either the name of the beast or the number representing his name.
Yeah I am one of the few, the proud. I am a Christian and I am a geek, all in the same package. Not to preach doom & gloom on y'all, but John the Revalator saw this coming a couple of thousand years ago.
Check out Penguin Computing. They have a full line of server boxes, and dare I say, extend to greater and lesser capable hardware configurations than VA seems to.
We had a need for a fairly low-end print server. Something that didn't have to have RAID or even SCSI hard drives on it. Just needs to drive a few department printers. We put together a Penguin box on their web site for about $2400 which will MORE than do the job. In fact, at that price I could have two of them with hot failover software for less money than I was seeing for the low end VA rackmounts. Oh yeah the Penguin is a 1U so I could fit two of the penguins in the space of 1 VA rackmount.
Don't forget, also, that Chris DiBona has been seen in the past on Slashdot slamming Penguin, slinging mud at Sam Ockman (president of Penguin), and in general acting very unprofessionally towards his competition. While Penguin may be in the #2 slot behind VA in terms of funding, they're #1 in terms of ethics and professional conduct in my book. I never once saw Mr. Ockman flaming VA or Mr. DiBona on/. forums.
Bugtraq guys seemed to think NT was vulnerable enough to spin off a seperate list. I subscribe to both (as I maintain a diverse network).
If memory serves, there have been a half dozen alerts for NT and 2000 just in the last week alone on that mailing list.
Many of the so-called "Linux" exploits are really weaknesses in the add-on tools, not the kernel itself, which could cause vulnerability in any *NIX system.
Most of the *NIX vulnerabilities are caught at the source code level, before there is an exploit out there, and patched before the script kiddies even know about it. Can you say the same for NT vulnerabilities?
Linux has its place, and so does NT. I prefer each of them for different applications. And there are some things I'd only trust to FreeBSD or NetBSD. Just don't give me any more Solaris systems, please.;-) But seriously, I'm a sysadmin for many NT and *NIX systems and can say that I sleep much better at night every time I replace an NT server with a *NIX server. This guy gives journalists a bad name. Shame on you!
It's just a domain squatter that is putting the site into a frame so they can spam you with banner ads at the bottom. The real site that they are ruining is http://www.kekatos.net/sysadmin.
These are the same creeps who are squatting on all the slashdot.org misspellings and putting our beloved News For Nerds site into frames.
Moderators please jack this up so people get the right site. (either way, it's still slashdotted right now)
I can seriously recommend the Network Appliance Filer for back-end storage.
I can second that enthusiastically. The Filers have NFS performance that can often exceed local disk performance (on gigabit ethernet). The NFS performance of a Sun E450 with 280GB RAID 5 array pales next to a similarly configured Netapp Filer.
I would have a whole lot of CPU cycles to share if the human genome project jumped on this distributed processing trend. Being the sysadmin of 200+ machines (slowest one being a 600MHz Katmai) has its advantages.:-)
He has unfortunately been the victim of some really bad writing as he's had to settle for less than wonderful roles in the past. In the Evil Dead series he actually showed quite a dramatic range considering it was a low budget horror flick.
Duchovny has the acting range of a turnip. He is no more animated than a cigar store indian. Watching X Files actually hurts, mostly because of the Mulder character.
I think Bruce Campbell would make for a wonderful contrast against Mulder, and also against Scully as well.
And picture the first time he runs into an alien... "You want some of this?"
I used to work for a major computer magazine publisher, doing "objective" reviews and comparisons of software & hardware. There is this big software company in the pacific northwest that I'll bet you've heard of before that was one of our sponsors. On more than one occaision they were given editorial options on articles that weren't favorable to their products. I had the integrity to not participate in these shams but apparently many others didn't mind. This company would directly provide perks to the writers who were cooperative, mostly in the way of computer hardware & software for their personal home use (i.e. try doing the review again, we'll provide the hardware... oh and take the hardware home when you're done I don't think we could find a use for all that stuff).
Really what they should do is provide hostname entries under gnu.org or fsf.org rather than cluttering up namespace with yet another TLD. There is no need for a.gnu TLD, and the FSF is really showing some audacity to think that they deserve one.
There is a way around it. Compare Apogee games to some really tripe games in a positive way. For example "The graphics in this game compare favorably to other popular hits like Zork or Pong". Or "The music tracks were heavily influenced by timeless favorites like Space Invaders."
So really the wording of the review is positive, but the readers will clue in.
I used to be one of Metallica's biggest fans. In 1989 I won a particularly grooling radio contest revolving around Metallica trivia which basically boiled down to me getting:
A copy of every Metallica CD that was ever available in stores.
A couple of promo CD's that only radio stations got.
A small collection of video tapes (Cliff Burton tribute, "Two of One", etc.)
The one I was most stoked about, two front row tickets & backstage passes to meet these guys in Philadelphia.
It's kind of ironic. On the "Two of One" video, Lars makes some kind of rant about how MTV sucks and this is probably the only video they'll ever make. Of course, now every time Metallica comes out with a new CD, they are bending over for MTV and doing promos left and right. You see their videos all the time. They all got haircuts, and became good little MTV soldiers.
When I met them, I could see the fame getting to Kirk first. He wanted nothing to do with the fans. He hid in his dressing room and only came out to get a fresh batch of women. Lars was just the opposite; the girls were on him, and he said "These other people are waiting patiently... have some consideration." The man who impressed me the most at the time was Jason; he and I split a hoagie and shot the bull about who knows what. He seemed real down to earth. Of course, he hadn't yet had a chance to let the concept of fame and fortune sink in.
Fast forward 11 years. The fans mean nothing. MTV airtime and record sales are everything. Most of the people downloading Metallica MP3's (myself included) are likely to own legal copies of the music that they are downloading. In my case, it's faster to download than to rip it myself. If I'm on Metallica's Black List, let them come, I am legally covered.
What I have gotten out of this is a real distaste for Metallica. Their attitudes about the establishment were apparently as big a draw as the music itself. Now that they are puppets of the establishment that they used to sing against, going after their own fans, the music has lost its appeal. I've got no interest in their music anymore. This reminds me very much of the big baseball strike of a few years back. I used to have season tickets behind first base for the Phillies... now I have zero interest in professional baseball.
Instant assholes. Just add fame, fortune, then stir.
Sure the idea of Linux being officially supported on Big Iron is very sexy. This will certainly get some media attention, and put the idea that "Linux isn't scalable" firmly into the grave.
However, there is a fundamental difference in philosphy between Linux sysadmins and mainframe operators. I think if and when we see large corporations adopt this, the sysadmins and operators will be at each other's throats. IBM is not going to be too forthcoming about opening things that they don't have to. The sizzle will disappear, and a few universities will have great fun with this but it won't catch on in the corporate arena.
HOWEVER, this is the Holy Grail for IBM. They can now effectively say they have a cross-platform OS that runs on everything from their PDA to the Big Iron and everything in between. Even in their wildest dreams, OS/2 wasn't supposed to ever be this portable. IBM is posturing itself to do something that no one else can: provide a complete end-to-end enterprise information infrastructure based on common tools cross-platform to reduce the need for sysadmins versed in multiple OS's. This concept won't necessarily sell big iron, but it WILL sell IBM.
Google has been doing this from the start, and seems to do it pretty well. All without annoying banner ads, portal front-ends, lag, etc. that make the other popular search engines a real drag to use.
The old server is responding better than the new one.
Hey Andover... stop messing around with lame PC hardware and break down and get a small farm of load balanced Sun boxes. Or one big honkin' Sun box. PC servers aren't holding up well and Slashdot continues to be one of the slowest sites I visit in my daily surfing.
Hemos says "[...]the device actually blocks UHF signals, but can be modified for other bands." My question is, when can I get one to block all cell phones within a 100 yard radius of my truck while on the highway? Cell phone operators are nearly as impaired on the road as the heavily inebreated, yet we have no legal recourse with which to protect ourselves on the road. I think the first guy to come up with a decent cell phone jammer will become an instant hero.
With the wide spread deployment of xDSL and Cable Modem technology in the metropolitan areas of the U.S., why didn't Sony take a more modular approach? Drop the price of the console and charge for an upgrade which will either add a modem or an ethernet adapter?
The ethernet adapter option is also a good way to get people to buy MULTIPLE playstations in homes with multiple kids & TV sets. Some games frankly suck when four people are on the same screen. PC gamers have an edge here in FPS's and other competetive (rather than collaborative) games.
We've been running with this idea the last couple of days. There is a lot of interest in setting up a Linux-oriented geek festival in the RDU area. I'm personally working on securing the location, and we're basically pushing for a large outdoor area with lots of open grassy areas to set up tents, volleyball, bands, etc. It's all very much up in the air right now.
Most of the discussion is currently taking place on the TriLUG mailing list. Other LUGs in North and South Carolina are being invited as I write this to help organize the event. We have our kickoff meeting next week where other LUGs will be invited to attend.
If Slashdot wants to continue running stories on the major developments I'd be glad to submit them if they'll get picked up and run.
Disclaimer - I'm not an officer of TriLUG or anything. Just one of the many tarheels that wants to preserve the tradition of annual geek congregation in the Old North State. Also one of the volunteers helping to organize this event.
...Beaver is an excellent school. My wife spent some time there on a volleyball scholarship and speaks very highly of the quality of education she recieved while studying there. It was also perhaps the most challenging school, but she felt it prepared her for the work force.
Now she is in her final semester at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and thinks its a horrible waste of time. There is very little hands-on work, the class sizes number in the hundreds, the professors are ill qualified to teach anyone, and most importantly she does not feel prepared to do any sort of valuable work with what she's studied thus far at UNC.
I admit, I've always had a great time giving her a good natured ribbing about the name of the last school she went to. Every time she said "Beaver", I snickered just to give her a hard time. Yes, I also asked her to bring me home a Beaver tee shirt but she never did.
All of this isn't too odd though coming from Pennsylvania. Not far from there in Lancaster County there are such towns as Intercourse, Blue Ball, Bird-In-Hand, etc.
Even very small LAN's now use TCP/IP. NetBEUI is a thing of the past. And where it is used, it is usually used incorrectly. I remember a large corporate network that bridged NetBEUI to over 2,000 nodes and hired me for big bucks to determine why their network was so unstable. Duh.
"Linux" is not a company. We don't have to fear the things that sank all the companies he mentioned. Linux did fine when it was just a plaything for hardcore hobbyists, and it will continue to do fine even if our 15 minutes in the spotlight ends and all the corporate support ceases to exist.
Today, all the big companies supporting Linux could stop and run to FreeBSD instead. Does it matter? Not really. I'll still be able to download Linux for free, modify the source code, redistribute it, etc.
What we need is an organization much like the RBL, except this will be a black hole for networks who permit spoofed packets to go through their routers. I certainly don't want any spoofed headers reaching my network, but the power to do anything about it is on the router of the network originating the spoofed packet.
I am the sysadmin at a rapidly growing high tech firm. Our hardware design engineers have been working diligently with NT, and cursing it frequently as it will die two hours into a simulation. Our design tools are mostly available on Linux, and the few that aren't will run on our Solaris boxes which is a similar user experience. They only need to understand one interface.
There are some key areas though where we need Linux-based solutions and don't currently seem to have any.
1) Visio - We do use Visio on NT quite extensively and need something like it on Linux. It doesn't have to be open source.
2) Single sign on - You're gonna shreik but MS is going to have the best solution in terms of Active Directory. Using NSS and PAM we hope to have Linux users authenticated by a Win2K server. Samba as an NT domain controller is still quite immature, and doesn't scale well across the enterprise.
3) MS Outlook - Our company depends heavily on Outlook. The integration between E-mail, calendar, and delegated tasks is a godsend to us and works precisely how we want it to. We're in a bit of a pickle on how we're ever going to share calendars and delegate tasts between Windows and Linux users. We need to have a groupware product that does all of this and runs on all platforms.
There's more, of course, but those are the big ones.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah I am one of the few, the proud. I am a Christian and I am a geek, all in the same package. Not to preach doom & gloom on y'all, but John the Revalator saw this coming a couple of thousand years ago.
We had a need for a fairly low-end print server. Something that didn't have to have RAID or even SCSI hard drives on it. Just needs to drive a few department printers. We put together a Penguin box on their web site for about $2400 which will MORE than do the job. In fact, at that price I could have two of them with hot failover software for less money than I was seeing for the low end VA rackmounts. Oh yeah the Penguin is a 1U so I could fit two of the penguins in the space of 1 VA rackmount.
Don't forget, also, that Chris DiBona has been seen in the past on Slashdot slamming Penguin, slinging mud at Sam Ockman (president of Penguin), and in general acting very unprofessionally towards his competition. While Penguin may be in the #2 slot behind VA in terms of funding, they're #1 in terms of ethics and professional conduct in my book. I never once saw Mr. Ockman flaming VA or Mr. DiBona on /. forums.
Bugtraq guys seemed to think NT was vulnerable enough to spin off a seperate list. I subscribe to both (as I maintain a diverse network).
;-) But seriously, I'm a sysadmin for many NT and *NIX systems and can say that I sleep much better at night every time I replace an NT server with a *NIX server. This guy gives journalists a bad name. Shame on you!
If memory serves, there have been a half dozen alerts for NT and 2000 just in the last week alone on that mailing list.
Many of the so-called "Linux" exploits are really weaknesses in the add-on tools, not the kernel itself, which could cause vulnerability in any *NIX system.
Most of the *NIX vulnerabilities are caught at the source code level, before there is an exploit out there, and patched before the script kiddies even know about it. Can you say the same for NT vulnerabilities?
Linux has its place, and so does NT. I prefer each of them for different applications. And there are some things I'd only trust to FreeBSD or NetBSD. Just don't give me any more Solaris systems, please.
These are the same creeps who are squatting on all the slashdot.org misspellings and putting our beloved News For Nerds site into frames.
Moderators please jack this up so people get the right site. (either way, it's still slashdotted right now)
I can second that enthusiastically. The Filers have NFS performance that can often exceed local disk performance (on gigabit ethernet). The NFS performance of a Sun E450 with 280GB RAID 5 array pales next to a similarly configured Netapp Filer.
I would have a whole lot of CPU cycles to share if the human genome project jumped on this distributed processing trend. Being the sysadmin of 200+ machines (slowest one being a 600MHz Katmai) has its advantages. :-)
He has unfortunately been the victim of some really bad writing as he's had to settle for less than wonderful roles in the past. In the Evil Dead series he actually showed quite a dramatic range considering it was a low budget horror flick.
Duchovny has the acting range of a turnip. He is no more animated than a cigar store indian. Watching X Files actually hurts, mostly because of the Mulder character.
I think Bruce Campbell would make for a wonderful contrast against Mulder, and also against Scully as well.
And picture the first time he runs into an alien... "You want some of this?"
I used to work for a major computer magazine publisher, doing "objective" reviews and comparisons of software & hardware. There is this big software company in the pacific northwest that I'll bet you've heard of before that was one of our sponsors. On more than one occaision they were given editorial options on articles that weren't favorable to their products. I had the integrity to not participate in these shams but apparently many others didn't mind. This company would directly provide perks to the writers who were cooperative, mostly in the way of computer hardware & software for their personal home use (i.e. try doing the review again, we'll provide the hardware... oh and take the hardware home when you're done I don't think we could find a use for all that stuff).
Really what they should do is provide hostname entries under gnu.org or fsf.org rather than cluttering up namespace with yet another TLD. There is no need for a .gnu TLD, and the FSF is really showing some audacity to think that they deserve one.
There is a way around it. Compare Apogee games to some really tripe games in a positive way. For example "The graphics in this game compare favorably to other popular hits like Zork or Pong". Or "The music tracks were heavily influenced by timeless favorites like Space Invaders."
So really the wording of the review is positive, but the readers will clue in.
I used to be one of Metallica's biggest fans. In 1989 I won a particularly grooling radio contest revolving around Metallica trivia which basically boiled down to me getting:
It's kind of ironic. On the "Two of One" video, Lars makes some kind of rant about how MTV sucks and this is probably the only video they'll ever make. Of course, now every time Metallica comes out with a new CD, they are bending over for MTV and doing promos left and right. You see their videos all the time. They all got haircuts, and became good little MTV soldiers.
When I met them, I could see the fame getting to Kirk first. He wanted nothing to do with the fans. He hid in his dressing room and only came out to get a fresh batch of women. Lars was just the opposite; the girls were on him, and he said "These other people are waiting patiently... have some consideration." The man who impressed me the most at the time was Jason; he and I split a hoagie and shot the bull about who knows what. He seemed real down to earth. Of course, he hadn't yet had a chance to let the concept of fame and fortune sink in.
Fast forward 11 years. The fans mean nothing. MTV airtime and record sales are everything. Most of the people downloading Metallica MP3's (myself included) are likely to own legal copies of the music that they are downloading. In my case, it's faster to download than to rip it myself. If I'm on Metallica's Black List, let them come, I am legally covered.
What I have gotten out of this is a real distaste for Metallica. Their attitudes about the establishment were apparently as big a draw as the music itself. Now that they are puppets of the establishment that they used to sing against, going after their own fans, the music has lost its appeal. I've got no interest in their music anymore. This reminds me very much of the big baseball strike of a few years back. I used to have season tickets behind first base for the Phillies... now I have zero interest in professional baseball.
Instant assholes. Just add fame, fortune, then stir.
Sure the idea of Linux being officially supported on Big Iron is very sexy. This will certainly get some media attention, and put the idea that "Linux isn't scalable" firmly into the grave.
However, there is a fundamental difference in philosphy between Linux sysadmins and mainframe operators. I think if and when we see large corporations adopt this, the sysadmins and operators will be at each other's throats. IBM is not going to be too forthcoming about opening things that they don't have to. The sizzle will disappear, and a few universities will have great fun with this but it won't catch on in the corporate arena.
HOWEVER, this is the Holy Grail for IBM. They can now effectively say they have a cross-platform OS that runs on everything from their PDA to the Big Iron and everything in between. Even in their wildest dreams, OS/2 wasn't supposed to ever be this portable. IBM is posturing itself to do something that no one else can: provide a complete end-to-end enterprise information infrastructure based on common tools cross-platform to reduce the need for sysadmins versed in multiple OS's. This concept won't necessarily sell big iron, but it WILL sell IBM.
Google has been doing this from the start, and seems to do it pretty well. All without annoying banner ads, portal front-ends, lag, etc. that make the other popular search engines a real drag to use.
The old server is responding better than the new one.
Hey Andover... stop messing around with lame PC hardware and break down and get a small farm of load balanced Sun boxes. Or one big honkin' Sun box. PC servers aren't holding up well and Slashdot continues to be one of the slowest sites I visit in my daily surfing.
Hemos says "[...]the device actually blocks UHF signals, but can be modified for other bands." My question is, when can I get one to block all cell phones within a 100 yard radius of my truck while on the highway? Cell phone operators are nearly as impaired on the road as the heavily inebreated, yet we have no legal recourse with which to protect ourselves on the road. I think the first guy to come up with a decent cell phone jammer will become an instant hero.
With the wide spread deployment of xDSL and Cable Modem technology in the metropolitan areas of the U.S., why didn't Sony take a more modular approach? Drop the price of the console and charge for an upgrade which will either add a modem or an ethernet adapter?
The ethernet adapter option is also a good way to get people to buy MULTIPLE playstations in homes with multiple kids & TV sets. Some games frankly suck when four people are on the same screen. PC gamers have an edge here in FPS's and other competetive (rather than collaborative) games.
In Coca-Cola's beginning, all three names belonged together. Check out the history of Coca-Cola and some of the previous ingredients.
RDU = Raleigh/Durham - FAA designation for our airport
RTP = Research Triangle Park - basically an east coast silicon valley
We've been running with this idea the last couple of days. There is a lot of interest in setting up a Linux-oriented geek festival in the RDU area. I'm personally working on securing the location, and we're basically pushing for a large outdoor area with lots of open grassy areas to set up tents, volleyball, bands, etc. It's all very much up in the air right now.
Most of the discussion is currently taking place on the TriLUG mailing list. Other LUGs in North and South Carolina are being invited as I write this to help organize the event. We have our kickoff meeting next week where other LUGs will be invited to attend.
If Slashdot wants to continue running stories on the major developments I'd be glad to submit them if they'll get picked up and run.
Disclaimer - I'm not an officer of TriLUG or anything. Just one of the many tarheels that wants to preserve the tradition of annual geek congregation in the Old North State. Also one of the volunteers helping to organize this event.
...Beaver is an excellent school. My wife spent some time there on a volleyball scholarship and speaks very highly of the quality of education she recieved while studying there. It was also perhaps the most challenging school, but she felt it prepared her for the work force.
Now she is in her final semester at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and thinks its a horrible waste of time. There is very little hands-on work, the class sizes number in the hundreds, the professors are ill qualified to teach anyone, and most importantly she does not feel prepared to do any sort of valuable work with what she's studied thus far at UNC.
I admit, I've always had a great time giving her a good natured ribbing about the name of the last school she went to. Every time she said "Beaver", I snickered just to give her a hard time. Yes, I also asked her to bring me home a Beaver tee shirt but she never did.
All of this isn't too odd though coming from Pennsylvania. Not far from there in Lancaster County there are such towns as Intercourse, Blue Ball, Bird-In-Hand, etc.
Microsoft wasn't the first to use it commercially. I know IBM was using it before MS, and I think there may have been others.
Even very small LAN's now use TCP/IP. NetBEUI is a thing of the past. And where it is used, it is usually used incorrectly. I remember a large corporate network that bridged NetBEUI to over 2,000 nodes and hired me for big bucks to determine why their network was so unstable. Duh.
"Linux" is not a company. We don't have to fear the things that sank all the companies he mentioned. Linux did fine when it was just a plaything for hardcore hobbyists, and it will continue to do fine even if our 15 minutes in the spotlight ends and all the corporate support ceases to exist.
Today, all the big companies supporting Linux could stop and run to FreeBSD instead. Does it matter? Not really. I'll still be able to download Linux for free, modify the source code, redistribute it, etc.
What we need is an organization much like the RBL, except this will be a black hole for networks who permit spoofed packets to go through their routers. I certainly don't want any spoofed headers reaching my network, but the power to do anything about it is on the router of the network originating the spoofed packet.
I am the sysadmin at a rapidly growing high tech firm. Our hardware design engineers have been working diligently with NT, and cursing it frequently as it will die two hours into a simulation. Our design tools are mostly available on Linux, and the few that aren't will run on our Solaris boxes which is a similar user experience. They only need to understand one interface.
There are some key areas though where we need Linux-based solutions and don't currently seem to have any.
1) Visio - We do use Visio on NT quite extensively and need something like it on Linux. It doesn't have to be open source.
2) Single sign on - You're gonna shreik but MS is going to have the best solution in terms of Active Directory. Using NSS and PAM we hope to have Linux users authenticated by a Win2K server. Samba as an NT domain controller is still quite immature, and doesn't scale well across the enterprise.
3) MS Outlook - Our company depends heavily on Outlook. The integration between E-mail, calendar, and delegated tasks is a godsend to us and works precisely how we want it to. We're in a bit of a pickle on how we're ever going to share calendars and delegate tasts between Windows and Linux users. We need to have a groupware product that does all of this and runs on all platforms.
There's more, of course, but those are the big ones.