I can say for a fact that through the evolution of the Windows NT product (NT 3.51 - XP) the speed of accessing NetWare servers has steadily decreased.
In fact, WinNT 4.0 had a MUP.SYS problem that caused NetWare access to be slow, for which they released a hotfix. When Win2k and XP exhibit the exact same problem, M$ claims they can't find the solution. Every time we ask them how the fix is going they say they're still working on it.
We also had to take a NetWare box over to NT because an in-house developed app (using M$ Visual C++ products) slowed to a crawl when we upgraded the clients from NT to 2k. Same machines, same code, just upgraded from NT to 2k.
XP is even worse.
There's more evidence we have collected. But there is no doubt in my mind that M$ is trying to drive the nails into Novell's coffin through purposefully sabotaging the performance of accessing NetWare servers.
With all the OpenBSD vs. Linux talk going on - I thought I'd mention that the Sidewinder firewall that currently runs Secure's Type Enforcement is based on BSDi.
Not sure if that clears the waters or muddies them. The *BSD's and BSDi are all siblings, so doing an OpenBSD version should be relatively simple in comparison with Linux. However, if the NSA wanted a BSD derived version, they probably would have just bought Sidewinder (with the appropriate NSA "improvements").
We picked a convention that lets us have a little fun, but still walks the "professional corporate line."
We're a communications and navigations manufacturer, so we chose cities. Toronto, Berlin, etc... The entertaining part (for geeks like me) is when the names mean something. Here's a quick list of some of the better ones:
Alexandria -- web server Pergamum -- backup web server Istanbul -- e-commerce server Chernobyl -- test Netware box Shiloh -- test AS/400 box
and my favorite (although not very PC, it seems that most everyone can take a joke)
Dresden -- firewall
Of course, Rockwell's firewall is asbestos - pretty hard to top that.
I've also used classical composers and great authors for names. Gives you an ego kick when someone asks "Who the hell is Kafka?"
I really meant the adding-machine reference as a metaphor. I didn't really want to know why people use them rather than their computer (believe me, my wife has already explained that to me many times.) For me, the calculator on my PC is more than adequate for most things, but for some, the specialized adding-machine is a necessity.
What I'm saying is that total integration often is not the best solution. There will always be special tools that complete a particular job better than a large tool that tries to do everything. Even over the course of generations, this will not change. Heck, I still wash some of my clothes by hand (rather, my wife, sexist pig that I am) even though the washing machine has been with us for years. Even the ubiquitous automobile - while basically the same technology across many incarnations, has different breeds to do different tasks. Can you image a 0-60, 1g skidpad auto pulling your boat to the lake, and delivering cement to build the basement for your neighbor's house?
Linus is right - dedicated appliances that do one job, and do it very well, will be with us for a long time, and the preferred tool for many.
Of course, a perfect analogy can be seen in the failings of NT...
Why is it that 50% of the people in my building have adding-machines on their desk - next to their computer? (Yet another reason I will never really comprehend my wife, who is one of the guilty.) And most of our engineers have Matlab, spice, who-knows-what-else, and must have their HP calculator.
I had the "pleasure" of attending a BXA (Bureau of Export Administration) conference on the subject of encryption export, though it has been a year or more ago, and the information presented may be a bit dated. The fun part was that there was a representative of the NSA at the conference.
Basically, the NSA wants to keep the "knowledge and capability to produce strong encryption technologies" out of the hands of other nations. Of course, according to the BXA, that "other nations" thing is actually broken down into several catagories of other nations. Canada, UK, Australia and such are better than Lybia, North Korea and the like. You can do different things with the different categories of countries.
What it boils down to is that, regardless of your physical location, transferring encryption knowledge or capability to another country is a Bad Thing, regardless of how it is done. Working in the US and doing stuff for another country is uncool in their eyes. For those of us with international WANs, we also must be careful what the other nations can see on our domestic networks - if they can get to any encryption software, that constitutes export. FYI - they also cover foreign nationals working in the US, and Joe Blow taking his laptop with PGP installed abroad.
If you want to know what you can and can't do, contact the BXA. They mentioned this several times in their presentation - they are there to help you understand the laws, and they claim to be very happy to help you with your questions (though I have never personally had the experience.) As rapidly as things change, if you're not involved heavily with encryption export, you are likely to not have the correct information. Even the folks at BXA are on their toes, but they know who to contact for the latest dirt (the NSA, I presume...)
Not to diminish the significance of this to our friends down-under, but think for a minute what Bill (the other one) and Al must be thinking.
"Look, the Australians have censorship, we can do the same thing here! They may have beaten CDA, but now there's precedence. I can make the ACLU look like they want an America that is the degenerate of the global community. I can ride the Magic Carpet of Morality and Decency into the Whitehouse.
And we can censor all internet sites related to guns as well!"
Yes, it's absurd, but it will happen. History is repeating, albeit in a new context. Poland has fallen - can the Berlin Wall be far behind?
This is the response I sent to their feedback address a few minutes ago:
A common comment I have seen from Amazon.com regarding the creation of Purchase-Circles is that it is anonymous. No information is tied to any person.
I know that, in today's world, this may seem odd, but I hold a certain degree of loyalty to my company. Believe me, I spend enough time here that my company is truly a part of me. While you may not be able to track purchases to me, you will certainly publish all of the purchases my company makes. To presume that concept of anonynimity only applies to individuals is absurd. Rather than violating the privacy of an individual, you are violating the privacy of a group of individuals. The difference is insignificant, except possibly in the minds of whatever suits dreamed this up. Perhaps this would pass in a traditional, bricks-and-mortar, beaurocratic company that is capable of cramming it's will down their customer's throats, but this is not behavior that should be accepted in the Internet community, nor by the purveyors. It is unfortunate that Amazon.com is no longer a leading member of our community.
With the advent of Purchase Circles, you have decided to publish information that my company may deem private. As a manager of our IT group, one of my tasks is to ensure that electronic communications with our suppliers and vendors remains private. We do not want our competitors to learn what purchases we make, because this may give them some insight into our current or planned production, or, worse yet, our R&D efforts, the secrecy of which we deem critical to our future success. No vendor or supplier we deal with should ever publish information about what business we do with them, especially without our permission.
I personally will not pursue any business with Amazon.com because I believe in ethical Internet conduct, and you have violated the values on which the Internet was built. Regardless of whether or not you will publish my personal information, I will not send my money to a company that implements such an absurd practice.
This is the response I sent to their feedback address a few minutes ago:
A common comment I have seen from Amazon.com regarding the creation of Purchase-Circles is that it is anonymous. No information is tied to any person.
I know that, in today's world, this may seem odd, but I hold a certain degree of loyalty to my company. Believe me, I spend enough time here that my company is truly a part of me. While you may not be able to track purchases to me, you will certainly publish all of the purchases my company makes. To presume that concept of anonynimity only applies to individuals is absurd. Rather than violating the privacy of an individual, you are violating the privacy of a group of individuals. The difference is insignificant, except possibly in the minds of whatever suits dreamed this up. Perhaps this would pass in a traditional, bricks-and-mortar, beaurocratic company that is capable of cramming it's will down their customer's throats, but this is not behavior that should be accepted in the Internet community, nor by the purveyors. It is unfortunate that Amazon.com is no longer a leading member of our community.
With the advent of Purchase Circles, you have decided to publish information that my company may deem private. As a manager of our IT group, one of my tasks is to ensure that electronic communications with our suppliers and vendors remains private. We do not want our competitors to learn what purchases we make, because this may give them some insight into our current or planned production, or, worse yet, our R&D efforts, the secrecy of which we deem critical to our future success. No vendor or supplier we deal with should ever publish information about what business we do with them, especially without our permission.
I personally will not pursue any business with Amazon.com because I believe in ethical Internet conduct, and you have violated the values on which the Internet was built. Regardless of whether or not you will publish my personal information, I will not send my money to a company that implements such an absurd practice.
That's the standard edition of Exchange. Enterprise Edition (implicit expectation that your enterprise is relatively small) has an "unlimited" message store size.
Of course, to get that registry bit switched costs $3000.
If Compaq were to throw Alpha into Linux with force - why would you buy Alpha as opposed to an Intel-based Beowolf (or something) cluster? Of course, I'm assuming that, by the time compaq could push the Alpha & Linux combination hard enough to gain momentum, real clustering of Intel & Linux will be commonplace - perhaps this is not valid, but I hope so.
Yeah, Alpha is great stuff - no arguments there, but, what makes it an appealing alternative to Linux & Intel? It's certainly pricier, proprietary (relative to Intel? - that may not be valid for much longer), and I'm contending that the performance will be attainable more cheaply by other means before Compaq could shift gears (as the parent message proclaimed they should do)
But why would Joe Corporate MIS guy buy alpha? Yeah, great chips, great technology, obviously superior to anything else on the market, but real expensive. Alpha cannot compete with Intels price, and one of the great reasons why the MIS guy can sell Linux in the real world is cost. Why buy Alpha when I can run four Intel boxes for the same performance at 1/2 the price?
Unless you're betting on Linux overtaking the world, (which I hope it will, but it won't happen soon enough to save Alpha) Intel will always be cheaper, and Joe would always prefer a cluster of cheap boxes over a couple expensive ones (at least - a true cluster, which I'm hoping will be viable soon ) At least, this Joe would (after seeing too many machines die and doing too many hardware upgrades)
Slashdot Mirror
I can say for a fact that through the evolution of the Windows NT product (NT 3.51 - XP) the speed of accessing NetWare servers has steadily decreased.
In fact, WinNT 4.0 had a MUP.SYS problem that caused NetWare access to be slow, for which they released a hotfix. When Win2k and XP exhibit the exact same problem, M$ claims they can't find the solution. Every time we ask them how the fix is going they say they're still working on it.
We also had to take a NetWare box over to NT because an in-house developed app (using M$ Visual C++ products) slowed to a crawl when we upgraded the clients from NT to 2k. Same machines, same code, just upgraded from NT to 2k.
XP is even worse.
There's more evidence we have collected. But there is no doubt in my mind that M$ is trying to drive the nails into Novell's coffin through purposefully sabotaging the performance of accessing NetWare servers.
With all the OpenBSD vs. Linux talk going on - I thought I'd mention that the Sidewinder firewall that currently runs Secure's Type Enforcement is based on BSDi.
Not sure if that clears the waters or muddies them. The *BSD's and BSDi are all siblings, so doing an OpenBSD version should be relatively simple in comparison with Linux. However, if the NSA wanted a BSD derived version, they probably would have just bought Sidewinder (with the appropriate NSA "improvements").
They must be up to something.
Interesting...
Jimi's strat was a right-handed instrument. He flipped the nut re-strung it, and played it "upside down."
I'm being anal, aren't I?
We picked a convention that lets us have a little fun, but still walks the "professional corporate line."
We're a communications and navigations manufacturer, so we chose cities. Toronto, Berlin, etc... The entertaining part (for geeks like me) is when the names mean something. Here's a quick list of some of the better ones:
Alexandria -- web server
Pergamum -- backup web server
Istanbul -- e-commerce server
Chernobyl -- test Netware box
Shiloh -- test AS/400 box
and my favorite (although not very PC, it seems that most everyone can take a joke)
Dresden -- firewall
Of course, Rockwell's firewall is asbestos - pretty hard to top that.
I've also used classical composers and great authors for names. Gives you an ego kick when someone asks "Who the hell is Kafka?"
I really meant the adding-machine reference as a metaphor. I didn't really want to know why people use them rather than their computer (believe me, my wife has already explained that to me many times.) For me, the calculator on my PC is more than adequate for most things, but for some, the specialized adding-machine is a necessity.
What I'm saying is that total integration often is not the best solution. There will always be special tools that complete a particular job better than a large tool that tries to do everything. Even over the course of generations, this will not change. Heck, I still wash some of my clothes by hand (rather, my wife, sexist pig that I am) even though the washing machine has been with us for years. Even the ubiquitous automobile - while basically the same technology across many incarnations, has different breeds to do different tasks. Can you image a 0-60, 1g skidpad auto pulling your boat to the lake, and delivering cement to build the basement for your neighbor's house?
Linus is right - dedicated appliances that do one job, and do it very well, will be with us for a long time, and the preferred tool for many.
Of course, a perfect analogy can be seen in the failings of NT...
Not to be argumentative, but...
Why is it that 50% of the people in my building have adding-machines on their desk - next to their computer? (Yet another reason I will never really comprehend my wife, who is one of the guilty.) And most of our engineers have Matlab, spice, who-knows-what-else, and must have their HP calculator.
I tend to favor Linus' predictions.
I had the "pleasure" of attending a BXA (Bureau of Export Administration) conference on the subject of encryption export, though it has been a year or more ago, and the information presented may be a bit dated. The fun part was that there was a representative of the NSA at the conference.
Basically, the NSA wants to keep the "knowledge and capability to produce strong encryption technologies" out of the hands of other nations. Of course, according to the BXA, that "other nations" thing is actually broken down into several catagories of other nations. Canada, UK, Australia and such are better than Lybia, North Korea and the like. You can do different things with the different categories of countries.
What it boils down to is that, regardless of your physical location, transferring encryption knowledge or capability to another country is a Bad Thing, regardless of how it is done. Working in the US and doing stuff for another country is uncool in their eyes. For those of us with international WANs, we also must be careful what the other nations can see on our domestic networks - if they can get to any encryption software, that constitutes export. FYI - they also cover foreign nationals working in the US, and Joe Blow taking his laptop with PGP installed abroad.
If you want to know what you can and can't do, contact the BXA. They mentioned this several times in their presentation - they are there to help you understand the laws, and they claim to be very happy to help you with your questions (though I have never personally had the experience.) As rapidly as things change, if you're not involved heavily with encryption export, you are likely to not have the correct information. Even the folks at BXA are on their toes, but they know who to contact for the latest dirt (the NSA, I presume...)
Hope this helps some.
Chalk one up for Seumas...
Not to diminish the significance of this to our friends down-under, but think for a minute what Bill (the other one) and Al must be thinking.
"Look, the Australians have censorship, we can do the same thing here! They may have beaten CDA, but now there's precedence. I can make the ACLU look like they want an America that is the degenerate of the global community. I can ride the Magic Carpet of Morality and Decency into the Whitehouse.
And we can censor all internet sites related to guns as well!"
Yes, it's absurd, but it will happen. History is repeating, albeit in a new context. Poland has fallen - can the Berlin Wall be far behind?
gee - double post. Aren't I special?
This is the response I sent to their feedback address a few minutes ago:
A common comment I have seen from Amazon.com regarding the creation of Purchase-Circles is that it is anonymous. No information is tied to any person.
I know that, in today's world, this may seem odd, but I hold a certain degree of loyalty to my company. Believe me, I spend enough time here that my company is truly a part of me. While you may not be able to track purchases to me, you will certainly publish all of the purchases my company makes. To presume that concept of anonynimity only applies to individuals is absurd. Rather than violating the privacy of an individual, you are violating the privacy of a group of individuals. The difference is insignificant, except possibly in the minds of whatever suits dreamed this up. Perhaps this would pass in a traditional, bricks-and-mortar, beaurocratic company that is capable of cramming it's will down their customer's throats, but this is not behavior that should be accepted in the Internet community, nor by the purveyors. It is unfortunate that Amazon.com is no longer a leading member of our community.
With the advent of Purchase Circles, you have decided to publish information that my company may deem private. As a manager of our IT group, one of my tasks is to ensure that electronic communications with our suppliers and vendors remains private. We do not want our competitors to learn what purchases we make, because this may give them some insight into our current or planned production, or, worse yet, our R&D efforts, the secrecy of which we deem critical to our future success. No vendor or supplier we deal with should ever publish information about what business we do with them, especially without our permission.
I personally will not pursue any business with Amazon.com because I believe in ethical Internet conduct, and you have violated the values on which the Internet was built. Regardless of whether or not you will publish my personal information, I will not send my money to a company that implements such an absurd practice.
This is the response I sent to their feedback address a few minutes ago:
A common comment I have seen from Amazon.com regarding the creation of Purchase-Circles is that it is anonymous. No information is tied to any person.
I know that, in today's world, this may seem odd, but I hold a certain degree of loyalty to my company. Believe me, I spend enough time here that my company is truly a part of me. While you may not be able to track purchases to me, you will certainly publish all of the purchases my company makes. To presume that concept of anonynimity only applies to individuals is absurd. Rather than violating the privacy of an individual, you are violating the privacy of a group of individuals. The difference is insignificant, except possibly in the minds of whatever suits dreamed this up. Perhaps this would pass in a traditional, bricks-and-mortar, beaurocratic company that is capable of cramming it's will down their customer's throats, but this is not behavior that should be accepted in the Internet community, nor by the purveyors. It is unfortunate that Amazon.com is no longer a leading member of our community.
With the advent of Purchase Circles, you have decided to publish information that my company may deem private. As a manager of our IT group, one of my tasks is to ensure that electronic communications with our suppliers and vendors remains private. We do not want our competitors to learn what purchases we make, because this may give them some insight into our current or planned production, or, worse yet, our R&D efforts, the secrecy of which we deem critical to our future success. No vendor or supplier we deal with should ever publish information about what business we do with them, especially without our permission.
I personally will not pursue any business with Amazon.com because I believe in ethical Internet conduct, and you have violated the values on which the Internet was built. Regardless of whether or not you will publish my personal information, I will not send my money to a company that implements such an absurd practice.
That's the standard edition of Exchange. Enterprise Edition (implicit expectation that your enterprise is relatively small) has an "unlimited" message store size.
Of course, to get that registry bit switched costs $3000.
BUT
If Compaq were to throw Alpha into Linux with force - why would you buy Alpha as opposed to an Intel-based Beowolf (or something) cluster? Of course, I'm assuming that, by the time compaq could push the Alpha & Linux combination hard enough to gain momentum, real clustering of Intel & Linux will be commonplace - perhaps this is not valid, but I hope so.
Yeah, Alpha is great stuff - no arguments there, but, what makes it an appealing alternative to Linux & Intel? It's certainly pricier, proprietary (relative to Intel? - that may not be valid for much longer), and I'm contending that the performance will be attainable more cheaply by other means before Compaq could shift gears (as the parent message proclaimed they should do)
Maybe I should get my crystal ball cleaned.
But why would Joe Corporate MIS guy buy alpha? Yeah, great chips, great technology, obviously superior to anything else on the market, but real expensive. Alpha cannot compete with Intels price, and one of the great reasons why the MIS guy can sell Linux in the real world is cost. Why buy Alpha when I can run four Intel boxes for the same performance at 1/2 the price?
Unless you're betting on Linux overtaking the world, (which I hope it will, but it won't happen soon enough to save Alpha) Intel will always be cheaper, and Joe would always prefer a cluster of cheap boxes over a couple expensive ones (at least - a true cluster, which I'm hoping will be viable soon ) At least, this Joe would (after seeing too many machines die and doing too many hardware upgrades)
That said, it's really sad to see DEC go...