Just so you're aware, Norton hasn't REALLY changed their game lately, but they have begun to suck less. If you can hear a little more clearly lately when you go outside, that was it. If not, well, consider yourself lucky you're not close enough to hear it constantly.
Um, I think I remember seeing some of the first generation be fanless, but the cases still had fans. After that first set of them though, fans became pretty well mandatory. But my comment about passivity was in regards to 486's, not Pentium class, so take that for what it's worth.
I remember all the Cyrix chips came with HSFs that I ever saw, but those were usually upgrade chips, so they naturally were beefier and therefore were of a faster speed to begin with.
Not that I should bother replying to an A/C, but it did only on some models require a fan. However, I've yet to see a 486 that didn't omit the heatsink. They've always been quite necessary. The huge chunk of crumbly stuff on top of older CPUs (ya know, the part that _held_ the silicon) was effective, but after a couple hundred thousand transistors within a sufficiently small space at that voltage, a heatsink is pretty well mandatory.
And most boxes did have fans at the time, but you're correct, likely not cpu fans.
Expect the fans to go out first, then the power supply. It wouldn't hurt to build a duplicate of the system, for spares; however since that defeats the purpose of the build a single box strategy, then obviously that won't work so well.
What are you thinking for storage? I would at the least focus on SATA (the 3.0 spec) and use probably software raid, so you're not stuck on a hardware raid failure causing ultimate data loss. This is probably one of the only times in my life I have ever suggested software raid, but since you have low processing requirements, this should not be a problem.
I think that people are going to say hard drives, but those wouldn't be the first ones to go out. And what about virtualization options? That lets you move around to various hardware without causing an upset on the system build. You might look there, and then even if you replace the base system every couple of years there's no upset, except data retention (meaning, make sure you're running RAID 1 on the boxes...)
But seriously, don't you remember it's the Archon's that are the best, and given enough time in a mission or brutal game, Protoss "should" win over all.
I do consider myself a computer expert, and I do run Linux as well as Windows. I've known probably 50s of people who run linux, all the way from non-comittally to only choice of OS is the one they compiled and installed themselves from a kernel bootdisk and a precompiled nic driver...
And I tend to use Ubuntu on my laptop because it's the one most people are going to see in public, so the one most likely to have a counter-point to the alternative-os-unenlightened. But I'm a debian guy at heart.
Umm... VMWare Server "just works" for me on my debian box. I don't know if you would consider that in the same vein as what you're doing, but I'll point out that I'm hosting Windows SBS for a ~10 user company and we're doing just fine. VMWare Server also hosts 2 app servers (Windows VMs with smallish db stuff, think CMS's on WAMP - no, I didn't choose that config, I just support it) and at any one time ~6 virtual workstations, for whatever nefarious purposes we have.
Given the small number of DB apps we have running over the 1+0 RAID, we never notice that the machines aren't running "bare metal style". And that's a deb server with a full X + Gnome setup (for the next guy behind me - I'm not a total asshat, and I do plan on leaving here before too long)
Now, I may not be the target group that you're looking for, I don't know what your base hw is (we're running dual quads with 16GB RAM on supermicro) and I don't know what your target app base is (DB, Email, web, etc) but I do know that for less than $4,000 I was able to get quite a few "boxes" up and running (not counting windows licenses - we do the MAP, cheaper licenses overall).
Now, the flipside to the story is I use VirtualBox almost religiously for myself, so I guess it's a little odd that I swap the two environments regularly. Now I wish I had some Xen stuff to play with, but there's always a laptop reformat...
No, what's unfunnier is emailing admin@slashdot.org... I get an unknown mailbox failure.
So when you get errors like this, you do submit them upstream with a possible time of occurrence, right? (I did as well, and cc'd your post addy into my email)...
Oh c'mon guys, it was funny. Not only was it two answers to two questions, it was also the very likely definitive answer of the combined probability. And it most likely evaluates to "FILE NOT FOUND" as per TDWTF, making it a valid probability...
Ya know, if I had re-read it when I copy-pasted, I would've seen what ya'll seen. The first two times I read it I never saw the word "servers" only the fighting with management to login.
IDK, going back and looking at the summary... idk <hangs head>
Based on the fact that my OP got modded insightful, perhaps I wasn't the only one???
After fighting with our external management servers to login I finally was able to get in and start looking at traffic.
you would have immediately been labeled as troll. As it is, you've been labeled insightful because neither you nor the mods read the summary. Excellent. What IS your secret?
The point is, they hadn't already given him direct access to those connections before yesterday, and he had to spend a large chunk of those 75 minutes getting the authorization to access the equipment so he COULD fix it.
THANK YOU! A couple of folks have already responded upstream to the same effect, but I really think some people don't understand what managed switches are, nor redundant networks, etc. Really, who would expect OSDN to only pay for one circuit and one set of IPs?
So Jamie, did it have any longer-term detrimental effects?
Caveat: ok, maybe the word totally was irresponsible of me. But I constantly worry that I'm wide open to attack, even with my protection resources. To not use any sort of system protection to me implies that you consider yourself to be totally immune. Not being totally immune implies using some sort of protection.
And you're less likely to have your house broken into when you have a fence around your entire yard, but those people are also often the ones with the most tendency to have their doors locked.
Just because you're not likely to get a virus or malware, doesn't mean you shouldn't run AV or similar utilities. Just because you have a fence around your house, doesn't mean you shouldn't lock your door.
And my computer is on the network because I'm trying to be responsible as I get on the network. I don't connect raw boxes to the internet, I put some sort of protection mechanism on there first, and then I work over a nat'd connection without specific port forwarding, and then I run as few processes as possible, and I monitor my live traffic speeds to see how much data I'm transmitting versus how much I expect to be transmitting. When I get concerned that I might have unnecessary traffic, I check my open connections.
Sorry that you think I'm trying to ram something up everyone else's maw, but I think it's irresponsible to say "I don't need AV, I run Linux Distro X" just like you think my saying "totally" means I'm irresponsible for connecting to the network in the first place.
a) I don't even listen to music if it's not broadcast b) He's not MY lawyer, but I don't need one, so... c) You have obviously read his blog d) Why am I responding to a AC with a list?
Can I just pause for a moment and point out the futility of attempting to argue with 'our champion' here? I mean, it's one thing to point out an actual fallacy in Ray's logic or reasoning, but when you just try and attack Ray, that will not work out in your favor very well. We all hold him in high regard, and appreciate his work at publicizing the wrongs that are being committed in the name of 'justice'. I know he's not the only lawyer out there doing this, but he's 'our' lawyer.
Then again, you did post AC, so perhaps you realize that.
Also, how is making a guess as to someone else's frame of mind a bad thing? Do you really expect NYCL to just "know" what someone else was thinking? All he can do is guess.
Way to reinforce the stereotype that AC comments have no valid substance on a regular basis, and for reminding me why my thresholds subtract 1 from AC comments. Cheers!
Crap, I hate my ADHD. Forgot to mention something in response to the RAM. I'm sorry, but how many 64bit boards are there out there that don't run more than 3GB RAM? Those are all early model PoS's, so should be upgraded. Also, those users don't normally upgrade from 32 to 64
So in my head, we're only considering the subset who would know about the fact that the upgrade is possible. Therefore, I don't think those users would choose to upgrade given a board memory cap at 3GB. But... YMMV, eh?
Ok, so I forgot about drivers. Sorry, point well taken. This IS the power of the internet.
I'm with the other guy on the 16bit code. For the first part, wtf... And for the second part, I still hate the 16bit legacy stuff I'm having to support right now on x86 archs, like old sensor measurement stuff.
Why aren't you running some sort of AV on your Linux box? Surely you don't think you're totally immune? Granted, the update utilities on most distros make Windows look like a crying shame, but on to the next topic.
PDF readers. WTF? Mine opens in moments rather than seconds or minutes. I assume you're using Adobe Reader 8 or better, so you're using a 300MB installation to do what many others are doing in 3MB. Time for a change. I would recommend the one I'm using, but let's adopt the new "standard" and I'll point you to pdfreaders.org.
As for the loading 100MB driver packages for devices with 50k modules, eh, that sounds like a dev manufacturer complaint, not Windows or Microsoft.
As a matter of fact, besides the update+reboot thing (which can be disabled), most of your complaints are with third parties. Take it up with the right people.
As for the bit about apps stealing focus, yeah, I hate that too. Good thing the Gnome and KDE teams thought about adding some functionality for that in the base packages rather than the way Microsoft handles it. I forever despise the system stopping me while I'm typing an email to pop up a box that I needed to see and my space bar gets tapped before I realize that I've gotten an alert, and now the alert is gone again. ARGGGGGGG. I feel your pain.
If you're talking about the impossibility of "upgrading" from x86 to amd64, as it were, well, no - that should be possible. The problem is not to do with the boot environment but rather the way the system handles "thunking" and the way it handles auxillary files. Check out %systemroot%\WinSxS and c:\Program Files (x86) vs C:\Program Files or similar directory structures. It copies any dlls that the system wants to put in system32 in there, and then references it all in a massive lookup table, allowing multiple dlls of the same type/name to be installed concurrently, without having the problems that were present in 9x. However, the difference between 64 and 32 is key, such that I don't think it's possible to "upgrade" a 32 bit install to a 64 bit install if you've installed many programs. Well, not to expect it to work afterwards.
But there shouldn't be any problem in taking a base install up to 64 from 32 after the fact.
Not that I would even try. Who wouldn't install 64bit at this point in time anyways? What's the benefit to not installing 64bit?
Slashdot Mirror
Just so you're aware, Norton hasn't REALLY changed their game lately, but they have begun to suck less. If you can hear a little more clearly lately when you go outside, that was it. If not, well, consider yourself lucky you're not close enough to hear it constantly.
Still drags a box down though...
Um, I think I remember seeing some of the first generation be fanless, but the cases still had fans. After that first set of them though, fans became pretty well mandatory. But my comment about passivity was in regards to 486's, not Pentium class, so take that for what it's worth.
I remember all the Cyrix chips came with HSFs that I ever saw, but those were usually upgrade chips, so they naturally were beefier and therefore were of a faster speed to begin with.
Not that I should bother replying to an A/C, but it did only on some models require a fan. However, I've yet to see a 486 that didn't omit the heatsink. They've always been quite necessary. The huge chunk of crumbly stuff on top of older CPUs (ya know, the part that _held_ the silicon) was effective, but after a couple hundred thousand transistors within a sufficiently small space at that voltage, a heatsink is pretty well mandatory.
And most boxes did have fans at the time, but you're correct, likely not cpu fans.
Expect the fans to go out first, then the power supply. It wouldn't hurt to build a duplicate of the system, for spares; however since that defeats the purpose of the build a single box strategy, then obviously that won't work so well.
What are you thinking for storage? I would at the least focus on SATA (the 3.0 spec) and use probably software raid, so you're not stuck on a hardware raid failure causing ultimate data loss. This is probably one of the only times in my life I have ever suggested software raid, but since you have low processing requirements, this should not be a problem.
I think that people are going to say hard drives, but those wouldn't be the first ones to go out. And what about virtualization options? That lets you move around to various hardware without causing an upset on the system build. You might look there, and then even if you replace the base system every couple of years there's no upset, except data retention (meaning, make sure you're running RAID 1 on the boxes...)
shouldn't that be like 'fan'gels or something to keep in line with the forums theme? Just saying is all...
But seriously, don't you remember it's the Archon's that are the best, and given enough time in a mission or brutal game, Protoss "should" win over all.
I guess we do all need macs, huh?
I do consider myself a computer expert, and I do run Linux as well as Windows. I've known probably 50s of people who run linux, all the way from non-comittally to only choice of OS is the one they compiled and installed themselves from a kernel bootdisk and a precompiled nic driver...
And I tend to use Ubuntu on my laptop because it's the one most people are going to see in public, so the one most likely to have a counter-point to the alternative-os-unenlightened. But I'm a debian guy at heart.
Umm... VMWare Server "just works" for me on my debian box. I don't know if you would consider that in the same vein as what you're doing, but I'll point out that I'm hosting Windows SBS for a ~10 user company and we're doing just fine. VMWare Server also hosts 2 app servers (Windows VMs with smallish db stuff, think CMS's on WAMP - no, I didn't choose that config, I just support it) and at any one time ~6 virtual workstations, for whatever nefarious purposes we have.
Given the small number of DB apps we have running over the 1+0 RAID, we never notice that the machines aren't running "bare metal style". And that's a deb server with a full X + Gnome setup (for the next guy behind me - I'm not a total asshat, and I do plan on leaving here before too long)
Now, I may not be the target group that you're looking for, I don't know what your base hw is (we're running dual quads with 16GB RAM on supermicro) and I don't know what your target app base is (DB, Email, web, etc) but I do know that for less than $4,000 I was able to get quite a few "boxes" up and running (not counting windows licenses - we do the MAP, cheaper licenses overall).
Now, the flipside to the story is I use VirtualBox almost religiously for myself, so I guess it's a little odd that I swap the two environments regularly. Now I wish I had some Xen stuff to play with, but there's always a laptop reformat...
No, what's unfunnier is emailing admin@slashdot.org... I get an unknown mailbox failure.
So when you get errors like this, you do submit them upstream with a possible time of occurrence, right? (I did as well, and cc'd your post addy into my email)...
Sorry for the piggyback post going way OT
Oh c'mon guys, it was funny. Not only was it two answers to two questions, it was also the very likely definitive answer of the combined probability. And it most likely evaluates to "FILE NOT FOUND" as per TDWTF, making it a valid probability...
I say this is brillant!
Ya know, if I had re-read it when I copy-pasted, I would've seen what ya'll seen. The first two times I read it I never saw the word "servers" only the fighting with management to login.
IDK, going back and looking at the summary... idk <hangs head>
Based on the fact that my OP got modded insightful, perhaps I wasn't the only one???
/me slinks away slowly
Is he a twitter clone? I don't follow that fantasy trip often enough...
so what? you're trying for shittiest karma ever? what do you want to come back as?
His level is over 9000!!!!
*yes, I am mixing meme's
Ya know, if I had just quoted this:
After fighting with our external management servers to login I finally was able to get in and start looking at traffic.
you would have immediately been labeled as troll. As it is, you've been labeled insightful because neither you nor the mods read the summary. Excellent. What IS your secret?
The point is, they hadn't already given him direct access to those connections before yesterday, and he had to spend a large chunk of those 75 minutes getting the authorization to access the equipment so he COULD fix it.
THANK YOU! A couple of folks have already responded upstream to the same effect, but I really think some people don't understand what managed switches are, nor redundant networks, etc. Really, who would expect OSDN to only pay for one circuit and one set of IPs?
So Jamie, did it have any longer-term detrimental effects?
Uh, wha? Look, I get a lot of stuff, but that one just went WHOOSH... Care to elaborate?
So why didn't ya'll have access from the home office?
Caveat: ok, maybe the word totally was irresponsible of me. But I constantly worry that I'm wide open to attack, even with my protection resources. To not use any sort of system protection to me implies that you consider yourself to be totally immune. Not being totally immune implies using some sort of protection.
And you're less likely to have your house broken into when you have a fence around your entire yard, but those people are also often the ones with the most tendency to have their doors locked.
Just because you're not likely to get a virus or malware, doesn't mean you shouldn't run AV or similar utilities. Just because you have a fence around your house, doesn't mean you shouldn't lock your door.
And my computer is on the network because I'm trying to be responsible as I get on the network. I don't connect raw boxes to the internet, I put some sort of protection mechanism on there first, and then I work over a nat'd connection without specific port forwarding, and then I run as few processes as possible, and I monitor my live traffic speeds to see how much data I'm transmitting versus how much I expect to be transmitting. When I get concerned that I might have unnecessary traffic, I check my open connections.
Sorry that you think I'm trying to ram something up everyone else's maw, but I think it's irresponsible to say "I don't need AV, I run Linux Distro X" just like you think my saying "totally" means I'm irresponsible for connecting to the network in the first place.
a) I don't even listen to music if it's not broadcast
b) He's not MY lawyer, but I don't need one, so...
c) You have obviously read his blog
d) Why am I responding to a AC with a list?
Can I just pause for a moment and point out the futility of attempting to argue with 'our champion' here? I mean, it's one thing to point out an actual fallacy in Ray's logic or reasoning, but when you just try and attack Ray, that will not work out in your favor very well. We all hold him in high regard, and appreciate his work at publicizing the wrongs that are being committed in the name of 'justice'. I know he's not the only lawyer out there doing this, but he's 'our' lawyer.
Then again, you did post AC, so perhaps you realize that.
Also, how is making a guess as to someone else's frame of mind a bad thing? Do you really expect NYCL to just "know" what someone else was thinking? All he can do is guess.
Way to reinforce the stereotype that AC comments have no valid substance on a regular basis, and for reminding me why my thresholds subtract 1 from AC comments. Cheers!
Crap, I hate my ADHD. Forgot to mention something in response to the RAM. I'm sorry, but how many 64bit boards are there out there that don't run more than 3GB RAM? Those are all early model PoS's, so should be upgraded. Also, those users don't normally upgrade from 32 to 64
So in my head, we're only considering the subset who would know about the fact that the upgrade is possible. Therefore, I don't think those users would choose to upgrade given a board memory cap at 3GB. But... YMMV, eh?
Ok, so I forgot about drivers. Sorry, point well taken. This IS the power of the internet.
I'm with the other guy on the 16bit code. For the first part, wtf... And for the second part, I still hate the 16bit legacy stuff I'm having to support right now on x86 archs, like old sensor measurement stuff.
Why aren't you running some sort of AV on your Linux box? Surely you don't think you're totally immune? Granted, the update utilities on most distros make Windows look like a crying shame, but on to the next topic.
PDF readers. WTF? Mine opens in moments rather than seconds or minutes. I assume you're using Adobe Reader 8 or better, so you're using a 300MB installation to do what many others are doing in 3MB. Time for a change. I would recommend the one I'm using, but let's adopt the new "standard" and I'll point you to pdfreaders.org.
As for the loading 100MB driver packages for devices with 50k modules, eh, that sounds like a dev manufacturer complaint, not Windows or Microsoft.
As a matter of fact, besides the update+reboot thing (which can be disabled), most of your complaints are with third parties. Take it up with the right people.
As for the bit about apps stealing focus, yeah, I hate that too. Good thing the Gnome and KDE teams thought about adding some functionality for that in the base packages rather than the way Microsoft handles it. I forever despise the system stopping me while I'm typing an email to pop up a box that I needed to see and my space bar gets tapped before I realize that I've gotten an alert, and now the alert is gone again. ARGGGGGGG. I feel your pain.
If you're talking about the impossibility of "upgrading" from x86 to amd64, as it were, well, no - that should be possible. The problem is not to do with the boot environment but rather the way the system handles "thunking" and the way it handles auxillary files. Check out %systemroot%\WinSxS and c:\Program Files (x86) vs C:\Program Files or similar directory structures. It copies any dlls that the system wants to put in system32 in there, and then references it all in a massive lookup table, allowing multiple dlls of the same type/name to be installed concurrently, without having the problems that were present in 9x. However, the difference between 64 and 32 is key, such that I don't think it's possible to "upgrade" a 32 bit install to a 64 bit install if you've installed many programs. Well, not to expect it to work afterwards.
But there shouldn't be any problem in taking a base install up to 64 from 32 after the fact.
Not that I would even try. Who wouldn't install 64bit at this point in time anyways? What's the benefit to not installing 64bit?