Do you absolutely need FreeBSD? Unless your needs are very special, you can probably adapt to Linux, and that's what most inexpensive hosting providers run. It doesn't make sense to restrict your options just to avoid a little relearning.
I use Dreamhost, mainly because they have good uptime and connectivity. (I do have issues with their lag in software updates.) But there are a lot of decent providers out there. To separate them from the (also numerous) flakes, you need to ask questions. If it's not on their web site, email them: How many people do you have? What kind of turnaround can I expect for support requests? What kind of network connections (it had better be plural) do you have? How much downtime have you had?
It's less on you than the editor. I don't think anybody (except a few language nazis) really cares if stories are properly spelled. But it's a sign that editors are posting stories without looking at them very carefully. And that gets to be a pain when stories contain language that's vague, confusing, junkspeak, or just plain misinformed.
According to this week's Gentoo Weekly Newsletter, Gentoo is planning a port to Sun's partially-announced OpenSolaris.
A port of what? I wasted a couple of minutes trying to understand how you can port an OS to an OS. Turns out that they're porting a Gentoo application (Portage). What's an editor for, if they can't clear up ambiguities like this?
Dvorak didn't invent this myth, he just passed the myth along. A lot of intelligent people did that -- including me. I would still be doing so, except that the web has made it possible for typewriter historians (of which there are a mind-boggling number) to set the record straight.
A hosting provider can't wave a magic wand and make a misbehaving customer behave. Nor can they terminate a customer upon the first complaint. What they can do is to pass your complaint along and pressure the customer to act on it. Which is obviously what they did in this case. I very much doubt if your (obviously empty) threats to sue made any difference.
Where they did screw up (and this is pretty typical for them) is in failing to keep you posted on the progress of your complaint, and for not keeping on the problem so the spammer was forced to respond quickly. They should probably also have an enforced policy about opt-out links. But these are failure of management and communication, not an indifference to the spam problem.
Sure. And if Bit Torrent users were to noticably inflate an ISPs network costs, they'd probably crack down. But no single Bit Torrent user contributes that much, so I doubt if it will ever be an issue.
Actually, most ERs are in privately owned hospitals. Which cover the costs of non-paying patients by adding to the bill of paying patients. So they're not sucking up your tax dollars, they're sucking up your insurance dollars. Let's get this straight!
Also, most of the non-paying patients in ERs are people with no insurance who go there because they know they can't be refused service. (Though they may have to wait 12 hours or so to be seen.) If that pisses you off, go complain to Sam Walton.
Actually, HE doesforbid spam, as do all the major hosting companies. The question is whether they're serious about this policy, or it's just nudge-nudge-wink-wink.
I worked at HE for about 7 months. We didn't exactly part on friendly terms, but I have to say that their reputation as a Spam hoster is quite undeserved. I worked in tech support, and a big part of my job was making sure that complaints about spammers got dealt with. Management had its flaws, but they did take the spam problem very seriously.
Their big problem is they don't do a very good job of communicating their policies to other network companies and to spam blacklist maintainers. The communication effort is badly coordinated, and there's a certain short-sighted self-righteousness by key people, who hate the thought of sucking up to blacklist maintainers.
The sad thing is that sanctions against HE mostly hurt their email customers. It doesn't hurt HE, which seems to have all the business it can handle. And it certainly doesn't hurt the spammers, against whom HE is already doing all they can -- and who just move on to another provider when they do get busted.
Still, most decent web servers can handle a load like that. Nowadays when you see a server brought down by the Slashdot effect, it's usually because there's an amateur running it.
...giving a blurb for my former employer Hurricane Electric, even though I despise the idiot who owns the place. They'll rent you cabinet space that is probably not much more expensive than a MacMini "condo". And they provide 24/7 human intervention for free, something MacMiniColo charges extra for.
Also, I'd wonder about any colo facility located in a former bank vault. It sounds cool, but it doesn't strike me as a very cost-effective place to put a data center.
What I'm wondering, is how would the Slashdot community respond if it were Microsoft doing the hiring, and THEY were promising Ben's day to day tasks wouldn't change much.
People wouldn't believe them. Not because of who they are, but because of their track record. Not a record of honesty!
Besides which, the MS party line has always been that Open Source is a Bad Thing. It's not unreasonable to assume that anything they do with respect to OS is negative.
Take another look at that URL. That's not his personal machine, is one of those shared hosting machines that ISPs provide. Probably more susceptible to Slashdotting than most servers, but right now it's responding fine.
Last I checked people ARE switching to firefox in droves.
Where did you check? Firefox usage is still something like 3%. Reports vary, but I've never seen anybody claim much more than that.
I'd be encouraged if there were even a tiny trend, like a percentage point every couple of months. But I don't see it.
I'm not sure how to respond to the rest of your post, which kind of contradicts itself. All I can say is that your patronizing attitude ("ignorant masses"?) is not helpful.
Heard an interview with Suketu Mehta, who just published a novel about the city, and refuses to call it "Mumbai". He claims the new name is just the result of the Shiv Sena party pandering to their Maratha constituents, and the 60% of the city that isn't Maratha mostly still calls it "Bombay".
...but if I were representative of 99% of the population, Linux would be massive on the desktop.
You've put your finger on the number one blind spot in the desktop wars. Most geeks just can't seem to grasp that they are not typical computer users. This has always been a source of conflict between the two main computer user communities: people who live and breathe computing, and the great mass of people who see computers as nothing but tools. It's always been a bad thing, but it's paticularly bad when geeks actually reinforce the Microsoft monopoly by refusing to understand the needs of the people who are forced to used Microsoft technology.
And that's what's happening right now in the browser war. You'd think that IE users would be jumping ship in droves, what with the spyware thing being so thoroughly out of control. But it's not happening, and I think the geek/nongeek cultural gap is a big reason.
...but I have not seen the price of something like bus or cab fare which, to me, should be directly proportional to the price of gasoline or fuel. I do not live in an area where public transportation or cabs are a viable means of transportation, so my experience is limited there...
Careful what you record, it may come back to haunt you.
I had a job where they just had to do a "Weakest Link" takeoff at all company meetings, just because they happened to have a female marketeer with a British accent. Made me dread the meetings. She was a lot more attractive than Anne Robinson, but her impersonation sucked.
Doesn't count. Making bad jokes is not any sign of a sense of humor. Rather the opposite. Standard Buffy reference:
Anya : OK. A man walks in to the office of a doctor. He's wearing on his head, um, oh wait, there's a duck, is that right?
Guy From Audience: You suck!
Anya : Quiet, you'll miss the humorous conclusion.
The kind of fraud and corruption you describe has been a big problem, not just for outsourcers, but all companies doing business in places like China and Russia. But don't count on this remaining the status quo. Eventually, these countries are going to realize that this BS is hurting the economies, and they'll crack down.
I don't quite agree that outsources is a "fad", but that word is not too far off the mark. Every time Corporate America discovers a new management concept, they rush into it without stopping to think whether they're applicable to the problem at hand. Eventually, CA will realize that not every job can be sent overseas, and they'll start to think about what's really practical to outsource, and what isn't. But there are millions of jobs that can actually be done overseas. These jobs are not returning to these shores anytime soon.
Slashdot Mirror
I use Dreamhost, mainly because they have good uptime and connectivity. (I do have issues with their lag in software updates.) But there are a lot of decent providers out there. To separate them from the (also numerous) flakes, you need to ask questions. If it's not on their web site, email them: How many people do you have? What kind of turnaround can I expect for support requests? What kind of network connections (it had better be plural) do you have? How much downtime have you had?
It's less on you than the editor. I don't think anybody (except a few language nazis) really cares if stories are properly spelled. But it's a sign that editors are posting stories without looking at them very carefully. And that gets to be a pain when stories contain language that's vague, confusing, junkspeak, or just plain misinformed.
As I said, I'm only looking at Linux PDAs because I'm fed up with Palm. So a Linux-based Palm lacks appeal.
Dvorak didn't invent this myth, he just passed the myth along. A lot of intelligent people did that -- including me. I would still be doing so, except that the web has made it possible for typewriter historians (of which there are a mind-boggling number) to set the record straight.
Where they did screw up (and this is pretty typical for them) is in failing to keep you posted on the progress of your complaint, and for not keeping on the problem so the spammer was forced to respond quickly. They should probably also have an enforced policy about opt-out links. But these are failure of management and communication, not an indifference to the spam problem.
Also, most of the non-paying patients in ERs are people with no insurance who go there because they know they can't be refused service. (Though they may have to wait 12 hours or so to be seen.) If that pisses you off, go complain to Sam Walton.
If you did, you must be blind!
Actually, HE does forbid spam, as do all the major hosting companies. The question is whether they're serious about this policy, or it's just nudge-nudge-wink-wink.
Their big problem is they don't do a very good job of communicating their policies to other network companies and to spam blacklist maintainers. The communication effort is badly coordinated, and there's a certain short-sighted self-righteousness by key people, who hate the thought of sucking up to blacklist maintainers.
The sad thing is that sanctions against HE mostly hurt their email customers. It doesn't hurt HE, which seems to have all the business it can handle. And it certainly doesn't hurt the spammers, against whom HE is already doing all they can -- and who just move on to another provider when they do get busted.
Who modded this as "informative"? This is the same link that's in the story.
Second time HE has come up on Slashdot today. Scary.
And what trap is that?
Still, most decent web servers can handle a load like that. Nowadays when you see a server brought down by the Slashdot effect, it's usually because there's an amateur running it.
Also, I'd wonder about any colo facility located in a former bank vault. It sounds cool, but it doesn't strike me as a very cost-effective place to put a data center.
Besides which, the MS party line has always been that Open Source is a Bad Thing. It's not unreasonable to assume that anything they do with respect to OS is negative.
Take another look at that URL. That's not his personal machine, is one of those shared hosting machines that ISPs provide. Probably more susceptible to Slashdotting than most servers, but right now it's responding fine.
I'd be encouraged if there were even a tiny trend, like a percentage point every couple of months. But I don't see it.
I'm not sure how to respond to the rest of your post, which kind of contradicts itself. All I can say is that your patronizing attitude ("ignorant masses"?) is not helpful.
Heard an interview with Suketu Mehta, who just published a novel about the city, and refuses to call it "Mumbai". He claims the new name is just the result of the Shiv Sena party pandering to their Maratha constituents, and the 60% of the city that isn't Maratha mostly still calls it "Bombay".
And that's what's happening right now in the browser war. You'd think that IE users would be jumping ship in droves, what with the spyware thing being so thoroughly out of control. But it's not happening, and I think the geek/nongeek cultural gap is a big reason.
I had a job where they just had to do a "Weakest Link" takeoff at all company meetings, just because they happened to have a female marketeer with a British accent. Made me dread the meetings. She was a lot more attractive than Anne Robinson, but her impersonation sucked.
I don't quite agree that outsources is a "fad", but that word is not too far off the mark. Every time Corporate America discovers a new management concept, they rush into it without stopping to think whether they're applicable to the problem at hand. Eventually, CA will realize that not every job can be sent overseas, and they'll start to think about what's really practical to outsource, and what isn't. But there are millions of jobs that can actually be done overseas. These jobs are not returning to these shores anytime soon.