> Throw in the other benefits - lower cost, giving the pundits something else to target,
> the ability to run WINE without an emulator - and the move to Intel looks good on all
> fronts. Besides, Mac OS X's roots are Intel-native... OPENSTEP never ran on PowerPC
> hardware.
Just a note; OPENSTEP was x86, m68k, and SPARC native. NeXTSTEP ran on those three and HP PARISC. The first platform for it was m68k (on NeXT's so-called black hardware). More complete information is available here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OPENSTEP.
I found, after getting a wheeled mouse at home, that I was trying to use the wheel by instinct on mice that were wheel-less. My solution was to disable support for scrolling with the wheel in X. The side effect of that is that the wheel then only behaves as the middle button (solving the middle click and scroll awkwardness).
While optical mice are nice, I've also not seen any that are just three simple buttons. I was, about a year ago, able to find a plain three button non-optical PS/2 mouse. If it weren't dedicated to my old Tektronix Xterminal, I'd have it on my workstation. I've never looked for another one like it (too lazy).
I've also tried the IntelliMouse Explorer style setup with thumb and pinky buttons. On those I just end up clicking by accident as I move the mouse around. So, again in X I don't bind the 4th and 5th buttons to anything, and I just hope I don't have to use those mice in Windows.:)
Overall, my preference is for older real 3 button mice or for a two button plus wheel mouse with scrolling via the wheel disabled. Yeah, yeah, I'm strange... So what.:)
At my house I have two dual drive mirrors. (I started with one and added the second later, hence the lack of mirrored stripes or striped mirrors.) I chose this method because I generally don't have problems with virii/trojans and am aware of the consequences of deleting the wrong file(s). I was more interested in protection from physical drive failure.
The actual setup is an older Socket 7 machine, two Promise PCI IDE cards (one ATA-66 and one ATA-133), and Linux software mirroring.
My former workplace uses two of the Arena Indy 2400 units on their backup server. This box stores data from 150+ other machines on their network that can be restored by their system administrator, so raw access speed isn't that important (i.e. it isn't a general purpose file server). Lots of space, however, is important. They have enough space (~2.4 TB) to store a copy of each machines drive and about two weeks of changes.
That machine is a single processor P3 running Linux. The filesystems are reiserfs since their favorite distribution (Slackware) supported installing to reiser (and not yet ext3) at the time the box was built.
Some of the later NeXTstations had ADB interfaces and peripherals. The earlier ones used, AFAIK, their own proprietary interface. The 5 pin DIN sounds like the older style to me. If the mouse is rectangular (not rounded) it is the older style.
I didn't have problems/fun with ANSI bombs, though I remember how much nicer ANSI art was when I moved from a 2400bps modem to a 14.4kbps one.:)
And I do remember Texas flag DOS prompt. I know I still have it laying around on a DOS box at my dad's house, but I can't quite remember the ANSI escape sequences to generate it. Ahh, Google came to the rescue with this page.
In reference to your price comparisons among the three 1U servers you mention; the Sun Netra X1 is a single CPU system with IDE drives while the Dell PowerApp.web 120 (aka PowerEdge 1550) and the VALinux 1220 are both capable of being dual CPU systems and have SCSI drives. At least on the Dell front, the PowerApp.web 110 (aka PowerEdge 350) is a closer match in terms of hardware to the Sun Netra X1. I don't know what the performance differences would be given my lack of experience with Sun's hardware and recent versions of Solaris, but the other comment(s) here have some thoughts on that issue.
I agree with what you've said, though I would generalize the part about treating people with respect to be treat all people with respect. You don't have to agree with someone, just don't be an ass to them.:-)
I'm working at a high school where we're using NDS and ZenWorks now.
We have NDS so that we can deal with the 2100+ accounts needed for the student body and staff. Logins, in our case, are in the form ".jarehart.subgroup.school.aisd" (where subgroup is faculty, library, or a room number, school is the campus abbreviation, and aisd is the school district abbreviation).
We are using ZenWorks to automate software distribution to the 120+ workstations around the building. Because of the setup, we can also have the system repair a damaged install (by checking to see that all necessary files and registry keys are indeed as they should be on the workstation). Also, since each account has a home directory on the fileserver, the hard drives in the workstations are only used for software storage, and are therefore essentially expendible. We can reinstall to a workstaion quite quickly thanks to the existence of a basic hard drive image for each type of machine (only 3 types in our case) and then as students use software on the system ZenWorks will re-distribute the applications on demand, and finish rebuilding the system.:-)
So, in effect, NDS and ZenWorks implement system security as well. Students are not allowd to see drives (or drive mappings) to which they don't need access. They do not get desktop icons, have a stripped Start menu, and instead are given the Network Application Launcher, which lets them only run the software we designate their account capable of using. And as was mentioned elsewhere, ZenWorks will allow the administrator(s) to force-run applications at certain times. We have one "application" (a package of settings really) that re-sets several preferences, by changing registry keys at each login, so that if a student does find a way to change those preferences, it doesn't matter too much.:-)
So, now that I've given my understanding of what ZenWorks can do, I agree that much of this type of system can be created with clever setup on Un*x systems already. IMHO, ZenWorks fixes much of how Windows 9x is broken when used in such an environment.
Jonathan Arehart arehartjATioDOTcom
(And no, I cannot take credit for developing the system... That goes to the CNE that the high school was lucky enough to find.)
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> Throw in the other benefits - lower cost, giving the pundits something else to target,
> the ability to run WINE without an emulator - and the move to Intel looks good on all
> fronts. Besides, Mac OS X's roots are Intel-native... OPENSTEP never ran on PowerPC
> hardware.
Just a note; OPENSTEP was x86, m68k, and SPARC native. NeXTSTEP ran on those three and HP PARISC. The first platform for it was m68k (on NeXT's so-called black hardware). More complete information is available here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OPENSTEP.
Hehe... No, I live in Texas. A/C is a requirement. :)
I found, after getting a wheeled mouse at home, that I was trying to use the wheel by instinct on mice that were wheel-less. My solution was to disable support for scrolling with the wheel in X. The side effect of that is that the wheel then only behaves as the middle button (solving the middle click and scroll awkwardness).
:)
:)
While optical mice are nice, I've also not seen any that are just three simple buttons. I was, about a year ago, able to find a plain three button non-optical PS/2 mouse. If it weren't dedicated to my old Tektronix Xterminal, I'd have it on my workstation. I've never looked for another one like it (too lazy).
I've also tried the IntelliMouse Explorer style setup with thumb and pinky buttons. On those I just end up clicking by accident as I move the mouse around. So, again in X I don't bind the 4th and 5th buttons to anything, and I just hope I don't have to use those mice in Windows.
Overall, my preference is for older real 3 button mice or for a two button plus wheel mouse with scrolling via the wheel disabled. Yeah, yeah, I'm strange... So what.
At my house I have two dual drive mirrors. (I started with one and added the second later, hence the lack of mirrored stripes or striped mirrors.) I chose this method because I generally don't have problems with virii/trojans and am aware of the consequences of deleting the wrong file(s). I was more interested in protection from physical drive failure.
The actual setup is an older Socket 7 machine, two Promise PCI IDE cards (one ATA-66 and one ATA-133), and Linux software mirroring.
My former workplace uses two of the Arena Indy 2400 units on their backup server. This box stores data from 150+ other machines on their network that can be restored by their system administrator, so raw access speed isn't that important (i.e. it isn't a general purpose file server). Lots of space, however, is important. They have enough space (~2.4 TB) to store a copy of each machines drive and about two weeks of changes.
That machine is a single processor P3 running Linux. The filesystems are reiserfs since their favorite distribution (Slackware) supported installing to reiser (and not yet ext3) at the time the box was built.
Yes, they all at least have 10Base-2 (thinnet) connectors and the later NeXT machines have 10Base-T (RJ-45) connectors as well.
Some of the later NeXTstations had ADB interfaces and peripherals. The earlier ones used, AFAIK, their own proprietary interface. The 5 pin DIN sounds like the older style to me. If the mouse is rectangular (not rounded) it is the older style.
One quick comment... AMI recently sold their hardware RAID business to LSI Logic. See this page for LSI's RAID information.
I didn't have problems/fun with ANSI bombs, though I remember how much nicer ANSI art was when I moved from a 2400bps modem to a 14.4kbps one. :)
And I do remember Texas flag DOS prompt. I know I still have it laying around on a DOS box at my dad's house, but I can't quite remember the ANSI escape sequences to generate it. Ahh, Google came to the rescue with this page.
In reference to your price comparisons among the three 1U servers you mention; the Sun Netra X1 is a single CPU system with IDE drives while the Dell PowerApp.web 120 (aka PowerEdge 1550) and the VALinux 1220 are both capable of being dual CPU systems and have SCSI drives. At least on the Dell front, the PowerApp.web 110 (aka PowerEdge 350) is a closer match in terms of hardware to the Sun Netra X1. I don't know what the performance differences would be given my lack of experience with Sun's hardware and recent versions of Solaris, but the other comment(s) here have some thoughts on that issue.
Jonathan
I agree with what you've said, though I would generalize the part about treating people with respect to be treat all people with respect. You don't have to agree with someone, just don't be an ass to them. :-)
Jonathan
I'm working at a high school where we're using NDS and ZenWorks now.
:-)
:-)
We have NDS so that we can deal with the 2100+ accounts needed for the student body and staff. Logins, in our case, are in the form ".jarehart.subgroup.school.aisd" (where subgroup is faculty, library, or a room number, school is the campus abbreviation, and aisd is the school district abbreviation).
We are using ZenWorks to automate software distribution to the 120+ workstations around the building. Because of the setup, we can also have the system repair a damaged install (by checking to see that all necessary files and registry keys are indeed as they should be on the workstation). Also, since each account has a home directory on the fileserver, the hard drives in the workstations are only used for software storage, and are therefore essentially expendible. We can reinstall to a workstaion quite quickly thanks to the existence of a basic hard drive image for each type of machine (only 3 types in our case) and then as students use software on the system ZenWorks will re-distribute the applications on demand, and finish rebuilding the system.
So, in effect, NDS and ZenWorks implement system security as well. Students are not allowd to see drives (or drive mappings) to which they don't need access. They do not get desktop icons, have a stripped Start menu, and instead are given the Network Application Launcher, which lets them only run the software we designate their account capable of using. And as was mentioned elsewhere, ZenWorks will allow the administrator(s) to force-run applications at certain times. We have one "application" (a package of settings really) that re-sets several preferences, by changing registry keys at each login, so that if a student does find a way to change those preferences, it doesn't matter too much.
So, now that I've given my understanding of what ZenWorks can do, I agree that much of this type of system can be created with clever setup on Un*x systems already. IMHO, ZenWorks fixes much of how Windows 9x is broken when used in such an environment.
Jonathan Arehart
arehartjATioDOTcom
(And no, I cannot take credit for developing the system... That goes to the CNE that the high school was lucky enough to find.)