Works great with iSync and the bluetooth thing is absolutely cool. Takes really really crappy digital photos too. (To be fair I suspect most cell phones take really crappy photos anyway). That was for cingular in the upstate NY area.
I've heard that some of the Nokias work well too, but around here only AT&T sells them and TDMA AT&T coverage sucks in this area.
Verizon didn't have any bluetooth phones. At least not that I could find, or for less than several hundred bucks.
You're running a business. Get over the idealism and focus on what you _need_.
You need an accounting system that an auditor from a public firm will write an unqualified opinion on. In general this is going to mean a commercial product -- Solomon, Great Plains, Quickbooks, etc.
You need a payroll system that always works. Flawlessly. Many companies outsource this. Explaining to folks that the.7 version borked the checks and you've upgraded to.8 and that borked the witholding info so now you need to rebuild it -- that's unacceptable. Bite the bullet and focus on your business needs.
You need a business plan that the investors technical people will sign off on. Betting everything on untried and little-used systems isn't going to get you there.
So for a lot of things: buckle down and do what needs to be done.
For the other 90% -- use open office, linux or bsd desktops, open groupware or even openexchange (suse). There are plenty of Linux/BSD/Apache/whatever storefront systems. Work on it. For the accounting/finance/etc folks -- get a windows terminal server and use rdesktop for those windows apps.
The problem is that computer scientists don't make good programmers and vice-versa. If you're good with code and hunker down to write lots of programs, then you tend to clash with the all-theory-no-code camp that delights in big-O notation and graph theory. Of course there is a lot of middle ground, but in general the PHd professor types that staff CompSci departments I've been in tend to have stopped learning about computers as soon as they finished their doctorate and instead concentrate on internecine politics, incomprehensible papers, and teaching the occaisional class (leaving most of that to T.A.'s who actually teach the class and understand how to compile programs).
Meanwhile the coder types graduate with a B.S. or maybe a masters then go into commercial development shops and crank out code, forgetting as much as they can about red-black trees and other subtle CompSci concepts.
So if you want to crank out programmers, then assembly is probably a good thing. God knows I learned a lot from the assembly classes I took.
If you're trying to scare students away then assembly is also a good tactic. Nothing like a good hex dump to get some non CompSci students eyes to glaze over. Sort of like making people take Biology or Physics, but instead of teaching about cells and newtonian motion, jump right into the finer points of quantum mechanics or amino acid chemistry.
On the other hand, for 2nd year CompSci students, Assembly is probably a good thing to get out of the way. It really sucks, for example to take economics for 4 years only to learn at the end "just kidding, reality is too complex to model so these are all just gross oversimplifications." Sort of like thinking programming == Java then finding out how it all _really_ works.
I've got to say that I've gotten used to the "Red Hat Style" startup, especially in the past couple of years where you have an/etc/init.d/ directory to do things like/etc/init.d/httpd restart or whatever.
One thing I've disliked about BSD style startup is that while there is a lot of potential, a busy admin is all-too-likely to just pop one more line in rc.local and call it good.
It's nice not to have to recall every bizarre syntax for daemon restarts -- lets see, is it/usr/local/ndc restart, or was it kill -HUP `cat/var/run/named.pid`... A simple/etc/init.d/named restart takes care of it. Sounds like freebsd has a real similar way of doing this too.
Look on the bright side -- anything is better than start->control panel->services->pick service->right-click->advanced tab->dependencies->etc. etc. yikes...
One advantage to cable is that they usually have to provide a 'low cost' option, aside from the $40/50/60 'basic' package.
We have this, it's $8.95 per month, and has about 28 channels, including NASA. Technically it's supposed to have less, but they just give you 'basic' with a filter to block channels 24+. In practice 25 comes in snowy, 76 is snowy, and 77-116 are fine. (Albany NY area, Time Warner -- your milage may vary)
You have to push and prod and get the cable company to admit to offering this, but it's worth looking into.
Of course you don't have the 100+ channels and endless opportunities for pay-per-view, but then you've got an extra $40 a month to buy DVDs or use for other entertainment purposes...
"I acknowledge that Unix people are more technical (by necessity since they often compile their own software)"
I disagree. Yes, paper MCSE-morons are less technical since they view the world as a series of wizards, magical patches, and religious rites (like reboots).
However, true windows experts are _way_ more techincal than Unix type people. Unix people get to look at source code to figure out how things work. Unix people get to rely on published standards for reference. Unix people get to draw on decades of collective experience and can often see how things evolved over time, and usually have some kind of known-good reference site to emulate.
Windows, on the other hand, requires you to work with closed, buggy code, figure out where the bugs are and how to work around them, figure out what proprietary 'extensions' MS has 'helpfully added' to otherwise standard protocols, figure out how to script an essentially unscriptable system, deal with mysterious registry problems, malware, viruses, virtually no security to protect important files, etc. Ever try to replicate an IIS metabase to several servers? Ask an apache admin how hard it is (copy a few text files), then a seasoned windows person (buy a really expensive tool from Microsoft, or try to script it, or use ghost to move _the_entire_operating_system, or more likely manually point and click through the whole thing). Then think about which has the more challenging job. The Apache guy just needs to know a text editor and some copy commands. The Windows guy needs to understand, at a fundamental level, how the metabase file is used, why it cant be copied directly, and how to work around the situation. Frequently this type of problem then requires you to purchase a tool, either from MS or a 3rd party which means the ability to understand the problem well enough to explain it to management, evaluate the options, etc.
So, no, I don't think Unix people are more technical, they just aren't as masochistic.
Sounds like Cisco, Nortel, book publishers, and testing centers made a few bucks on the deal.
You, on the other hand, are left with zero exerpience and a lot of soon-forgotten theoretical knowledge based on fictional networks used by fictional organizations.
I recently had an interview candidate who had (literally) 30-40 certifications, but 'friends of friends' informed me that he was an arrogant ass who couldn't work with anyone else. It didn't matter much because he had no clue. Too much time spent in the testing center, not enough in the data center.
If you really want to prove your networking mettle, then write a BGP routing package for OpenBSD, or some other OS. You'll learn a lot more at the fundamental level and have a nice line item on your resume.
Can't write code? How about finding someone -- anyone -- YMCA, local school, red cross office, library, etc. who will let you change an old PC into a Linux/BSD/whatever firewall. Do it for free and for the line item on the resume. Do a couple more. If you're collecting unenployment, just consider it an investment in 'training' since that sort of experience is a heck of a lot more valuable to an employer than yet-another-IT-certification. An added bonus is that although these organizations usually have zero money, you would be working with the head of the office who would report this sort of thing at the board meeting. Guess who sits on the board? -- Prominent local business leaders. Holy crap -- networking in the human sense at the same time. If you're lucky you'll get asked to present your idea directly to the board. Nothing gets you more 'in the door' than having a VP ask the HR director to get you an interview because you seem like a nice guy...
Let your certs expire -- you can always claim 'former CC-whatever' and employers shouldn't care since (lets face it) TCPIP routing, and the Cisco user interface, hasn't changed all that much in the past few years. If certifications haven't opened the door for you yet (and they usually don't) then they are unlikely to magically open it next week or next year.
shmexperts must refer to experts of shared memory -- what exactly does that have to do with predictions of the future?
I predict that a new algorithm for thread-safe access to shared memory will be developed using either semaphores and spin-locks. But them, I'm no expert.
Whatever you get, make sure it's postscript. Although you can 'make it work' when it's not, it's nice to have it supported out of the box. The biggest reason for this is cross-platform compatability -- if you've got postscript it's easy to print from Windows, Mac, Linux, *BSD, Solaris, HPUX, etc. If you don't, then its an exersize in finding drivers and setting up lpr filters. Postscript adds a lot of functionality to a printer. For example, one feature I like is to print 2 pages on one sheet. This is really easy to do if you've got a postscript printer since it's part of the 'page setup' when you print. Although it's possible to render 2 pages per sheet on a non-postscript printer, it's not nearly as easy to set up or use.
Another point -- make sure you plan for an ethernet lpd style connection. Right now you might just have it hooked up to one machine, but long-term you will likely have 2 or more machines to print from and it's a lot cleaner to just have the printer 'on the network' than shared from another computer. Many printers have ethernet 10baseT or 100baseT ports as options, or as part of a slightly more expensive model. You can also get 3rd party connections as well, from companies like Lantronix or Castelle. Built-in ethernet is a lot faster for printing than an ethernet adapter plugged into a parallel port.
I finally bit the bullet and got an HP LaserJet 6MP about 7 years ago. At the time it was around $1,000 -- and as far as I'm concerned it was worth every penny. Still prints great, cartridges last 2-3 years (and I print 300+ sheets a month).
I got a color inkjet last year and have already spend more on ink in one year than I spent on toner in 7.
Christmas ornament Crystal doo-dads like a bowl or candlesticks Food-related items; candy, booze, etc. Flowers Sport-related items: football, frisbee, etc. Pet-related items: new leash, kitty toys Memorabelia: baseball cards, etc. Clothing-related items: tie, sweater, shirt, etc. Sex-related items: lingerie (always get a small size even if she's not), massage oils, etc. Other personal care items: shaver, lotions, perfume, etc.
Some of these of course are not appropriate in all situations...:)
Actually we use the rsync feature to keep revs of the data, so when a file is updated the old one is renamed and the new one takes it's place.
As far as getting nothing in terms of features, I disagree completely. We've fulfilled the business requirement, didn't spend a ton of money, and don't have a vendor siphoning cash every month for 'features' we don't care about since we use tape backup anyway.
I work at a largish company where we do our own 'online' backup of a remote office. Around 400Gigs over a T1 line, we use rsync (works with linux and windows systems) and keep the data on an Apple XRaid (very cost effecitve and better-supported than a roll-your-own). Since the daily deltas are rarely more than a gig, this works really well.
We did this because the tape system has a long history of reliability problems. We've since fixed the tape problem (we still do tape backups) but tape is used for off-site storage and disaster recovery at remote sites -- for typical "I deleted an excel file I didn't mean to" requests we can just drill into the xraid and pull the file over without having to mount tapes, get the offsite people to bring them back etc.
Tape might seem expensive, but you have to look at the business benefit, not the cost of drives, software, etc. For example -- point-in-time backups -- our online system is great for yesterdays data, but useless for files from 3 months ago. Our tape system has monthly tapes for a year, weekly tapes for a month, and daily (full-not differntial) for a week. This has 'saved the bacon' more than once and I highly recommend it. Another good point of tape is database backups -- sure you can dump a database to disk and then rsync it offsite, but it requires that all of your database servers have much more disk capacity, and depending on how rsync treats the backup file, it could kill the entire online concept unless you've got a T3 or something.
The killer is restores though. You have to practice them and get the process nailed, otherwise your backups (online or tape) are useless.
I've used Sybase Power Designer (an older version) before. It's not too bad and a lot cheaper then erwin. Works with lots of database servers, and prints purty wall-sized pictures assuming you've got a plotter or don't mind pasting together a bunch of sheets. Also generates SQL for building/altering databases -- typical stuff.
The only thing to look out for is which 'version' you get -- this is one of those products where you pay extra for specific features, so you'll pay anywhere from $800 or so to over $3000 or more depending on what you get and what other products they bundle in. Good luck!
I appreciate the need to boost revenues, but the dropping of redhat network 'up2date' for all of the paying customers is really a power-play to force those customers to pay several times as much per year. This feels like a 'professional management team' kind of move -- the kind that kills a company but keep the name.
Given that every sysadmin I know is mad as hell, the only outcome for all but the most critical (e.g.: oracle/db2) systems running redhat is a migration to some other distribution -- which one do you think it will be?
Make sure that all of your employees celebrate Christmas. If you've got people who don't -- e.g. Jewish, Islamic, Buhdist, etc. they may take offense at a "Christmas" bonus -- call it a "Holiday" bonus instead.
If most of your employees have major obligations (e.g.: are married with small kids, are divorced with alimony payments, etc.) then just giving them money is likely to end up paying for diapers, toys, etc. -- nothing for them specifically. Consider a gift that they would appreciate and the balance as the bonus. That way they get something they want (like an iPod or a digital camera, or some power tools), but that they couldn't buy if they were given the money. You may be able to spin this as a business expense so that the employees don't end up paying taxes on the gift. Good question for a tax accountant.
Also consider a 'bonus for the office' -- if you gave everyone $1000 instead of $1500 that would leave a few thousand for something like an expresso machine or free soda machine, or a la-z-boy massaging recliner in the break room -- some kind of luxury they get to enjoy all year.
Get a cage at a colocation facility. Sell all of your stuff, get a sleeping bag and a laptop then move in.
100MB+ internet access and it's only a few $hundred a month, but since you will live there (cm'on -- you're probably on IRC 19 hours a day anyway -- right?) you can eliminate rent.
Just get a few boxes of 'wet naps' -- maybe from your local KFC and you don't need to worry about showering or whatever.
Hey -- where else is it 70 degrees all day every day? Hawaii? San Diego? Who can afford to move there? Plus you would have major geek bragging rights at the local starbucks.
Sheesh, sounds a lot like what my old Commodore with a 300-baud dial up into someone elses Commodore as a "BBS" system would do. Of course the "Server" had 64K RAM and a 160K floppy disk, but it customized what you saw based on your login.
I think this was in 1983 or 1984.
Of course CompuServe did this in a bigger way as well as many other online providers. Anyone remember Quantum?
Under the DMCA it's illegal to distribute programs that circumvent technical measures to protect copyright.
This would seem to mean that all non-Windows OS's (e.g.: Mac OS X, *BSD, Linux, Gnu/Hurd, Unix, etc.) that don't support either the autorun 'technology' or support the specific DLL they are trying to run, would circumvent the copyright holders protection mechanism.
This would also seem to mean that spreading info about changing specific registry keys to disable autorun, the tweakui program, and probably many other programs that do similar things are also illegal.
All because a company made some inept software. Yuck.
Go vertical whenever you can. Often you can't e.g.: public ftp or web server should probably not host a database full of sensitive information. Often you can.
Big challenge is windows apps. Big name packaged stuff like Exchange or Weblogic or whatever you can probably pack together on one server. Once you get into specialized and very expensive software (e.g.: Sagent, Mercator, Fax Software, etc.) the vendor will insist that you dedicate 2 servers (one production one development/test) and refuse to guarantee performance if you don't dedicate a server.
A solution to reduce machine clutter, if not OS clutter, is to virtualize with something like VMWare. In a DMZ for example you could have separate 'boxes' running SMTP, FTP, DNS, etc. all running on one server. Get two of these servers and you've got a pretty secure setup with load balancing. Another big advantage to that is that migrating between servers is as simple as copying the disk image and booting it up. If a system gets compromised you can save that disk image and boot from a known-good one, patch it, and still have the other one for analysis/prosecution.
Same thing goes for internal networks -- run test/development on a VMWare system with a boatload of 'machines'. If VMWare performance is acceptable, then you can run production as well.
So how long until some innovative person brings a digital camera, photo's someone elses ticket, prints their own, then 'cashes' it before they do?
More to the point, how long until an 'innovative' casino takes advantage of the ephemeral (no chips/coins to count) nature of this and causes computer records to change things in their favor. Yes the various gaming comission types and auditors would frown on it, but done cleverly enough it could be pulled off (and probably already is).
What do you _really_ want? Do you want to quit student life and become a contract programmer? If so, push for a decent rate -- $100/hour w/out benefits, minimum 40 hours per week is a good starting point.
The fixed-price-per-feature idea is OK, but again you'll be working 40+ hours a week on it and you might as well not be a student.
A more rational approach is to work 'as available' for a monthly stipend. Get enough to cover your rent and maybe some pizza and a car payment. Say $1,500 so you end up with $1,000 after taxes. Make sure the contract states you retain all rights to your code (although you will probably have to give a license to the company).
They are buying first-priority access to your time -- you will implement the features they want even if they are boring or difficult. No other promises.
If some other company approaches you then do the same thing. If you're running out of time (too many companies) re-negotiate and go with the highest bidder(s).
If they offer some kind of 'in-kind' service, like hosting a server or whatever -- then all the better (just keep good backups in case the relationship sours).
It sounds like you've got a site written around a very proprietary system, and that your scalability etc. is tied to what that proprietary system can do.
The solution, therefore, is to get away from the proprietary system. But only if you think you can do better. Either find a better proprietary system or write your own. If you write your own then plan for 'scale out' on lots of servers running something cheap like *BSD or Gnu/Linux, Apache, Tomcat, JBOSS, posgres, mysql, etc.
If you _can't_ get away from the proprietary app, then perhaps you can 'wrap' it in something else. Use static pages, PHP/mod_perl/C++/Lisp/jsp/whatever and a cheap but good database (mysql, postgres). Use these for all of the 'custom' content. Then have them access your 'back end' and dumb down the back end to get rid of everything that is not essential to a data feed. If possible aggregate the 'php' users into a few categories for the CMS to deal with. E.g.: have a 'sports' profile with 10,000 php users accessing a single 'sports' user on CMS.
Try negotiating with the vendor. Perhaps you can present your 'success story' at a gartner symposium or somesuch. Complain about scalability. Demand a linux version. Get them to agree to some unlikely performance guarantee and use that to cut costs down (via penalties). Get some free consulting from them to help fix the problems. Make sure to wear a T-Shirt or use a pen from their major competitor whenever they are around -- much more fun that way.
Find a failed.com that used the same proprietary system. Buy the company for pennies on the dollar and assume their license portfolio.
Another approach is to update your resume and get the heck out of there.
I'd go for the ramdisk idea. However UPS systems are bulky and potentially noisy, and don't protect you from some unrelated computer crash (e.g.: CPU overheating and the resulting lock-up.
Therefore find some secondary storage medium and schedule a cronjob that rsync's the ramdisk to the permament media. The permament media could be:
* a flash disk, but this time you know that you do the rsync every X minutes, and that the life of the media is Y writes, therefore you'll need to replace the thing every Z years. * a remote server accessed via SSH * any kind of local disk -- the tradeoff being the noise of the thing running periodically.
Blackbox and other outfits like that have just about every oddball convertor, splitter, etc. you might ever want.
The reseller I used to work at seemed to do a lot of this kind of business. We found a taiwanese firm with an office in CA and were able to order stuff like VGA splitter boxes (still > $100 most places) for like $9.
We got tons of stuff from this place -- 1000's of printer cables and the like. If the going retail price was $25 we'd buy them for $0.27 ($0.25 for 100 or more).
Problem is we'd have to stock a bunch because they only had so much then it was wait for the next boat from China.
But we really needed the margin. We'd net more dollars on the cables and network hubs than we'd make on a $10k server, especially if it was a name-brand server.
Somehow my boss never got the idea that service is where the _real_ markup is made -- $100 an hour for a tech we paid maybe $20 an hour to. Business is funny that way.
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Works great with iSync and the bluetooth thing is absolutely cool. Takes really really crappy digital photos too. (To be fair I suspect most cell phones take really crappy photos anyway). That was for cingular in the upstate NY area.
I've heard that some of the Nokias work well too, but around here only AT&T sells them and TDMA AT&T coverage sucks in this area.
Verizon didn't have any bluetooth phones. At least not that I could find, or for less than several hundred bucks.
You're running a business. Get over the idealism and focus on what you _need_.
.7 version borked the checks and you've upgraded to .8 and that borked the witholding info so now you need to rebuild it -- that's unacceptable. Bite the bullet and focus on your business needs.
You need an accounting system that an auditor from a public firm will write an unqualified opinion on. In general this is going to mean a commercial product -- Solomon, Great Plains, Quickbooks, etc.
You need a payroll system that always works. Flawlessly. Many companies outsource this. Explaining to folks that the
You need a business plan that the investors technical people will sign off on. Betting everything on untried and little-used systems isn't going to get you there.
So for a lot of things: buckle down and do what needs to be done.
For the other 90% -- use open office, linux or bsd desktops, open groupware or even openexchange (suse). There are plenty of Linux/BSD/Apache/whatever storefront systems. Work on it. For the accounting/finance/etc folks -- get a windows terminal server and use rdesktop for those windows apps.
The problem is that computer scientists don't make good programmers and vice-versa. If you're good with code and hunker down to write lots of programs, then you tend to clash with the all-theory-no-code camp that delights in big-O notation and graph theory. Of course there is a lot of middle ground, but in general the PHd professor types that staff CompSci departments I've been in tend to have stopped learning about computers as soon as they finished their doctorate and instead concentrate on internecine politics, incomprehensible papers, and teaching the occaisional class (leaving most of that to T.A.'s who actually teach the class and understand how to compile programs).
Meanwhile the coder types graduate with a B.S. or maybe a masters then go into commercial development shops and crank out code, forgetting as much as they can about red-black trees and other subtle CompSci concepts.
So if you want to crank out programmers, then assembly is probably a good thing. God knows I learned a lot from the assembly classes I took.
If you're trying to scare students away then assembly is also a good tactic. Nothing like a good hex dump to get some non CompSci students eyes to glaze over. Sort of like making people take Biology or Physics, but instead of teaching about cells and newtonian motion, jump right into the finer points of quantum mechanics or amino acid chemistry.
On the other hand, for 2nd year CompSci students, Assembly is probably a good thing to get out of the way. It really sucks, for example to take economics for 4 years only to learn at the end "just kidding, reality is too complex to model so these are all just gross oversimplifications." Sort of like thinking programming == Java then finding out how it all _really_ works.
I've got to say that I've gotten used to the "Red Hat Style" startup, especially in the past couple of years where you have an /etc/init.d/ directory to do things like /etc/init.d/httpd restart or whatever.
/usr/local/ndc restart, or was it kill -HUP `cat /var/run/named.pid`... A simple /etc/init.d/named restart takes care of it. Sounds like freebsd has a real similar way of doing this too.
One thing I've disliked about BSD style startup is that while there is a lot of potential, a busy admin is all-too-likely to just pop one more line in rc.local and call it good.
It's nice not to have to recall every bizarre syntax for daemon restarts -- lets see, is it
Look on the bright side -- anything is better than start->control panel->services->pick service->right-click->advanced tab->dependencies->etc. etc. yikes...
One advantage to cable is that they usually have to provide a 'low cost' option, aside from the $40/50/60 'basic' package.
We have this, it's $8.95 per month, and has about 28 channels, including NASA. Technically it's supposed to have less, but they just give you 'basic' with a filter to block channels 24+. In practice 25 comes in snowy, 76 is snowy, and 77-116 are fine. (Albany NY area, Time Warner -- your milage may vary)
You have to push and prod and get the cable company to admit to offering this, but it's worth looking into.
Of course you don't have the 100+ channels and endless opportunities for pay-per-view, but then you've got an extra $40 a month to buy DVDs or use for other entertainment purposes...
"I acknowledge that Unix people are more technical (by necessity since they often compile their own software)"
I disagree. Yes, paper MCSE-morons are less technical since they view the world as a series of wizards, magical patches, and religious rites (like reboots).
However, true windows experts are _way_ more techincal than Unix type people. Unix people get to look at source code to figure out how things work. Unix people get to rely on published standards for reference. Unix people get to draw on decades of collective experience and can often see how things evolved over time, and usually have some kind of known-good reference site to emulate.
Windows, on the other hand, requires you to work with closed, buggy code, figure out where the bugs are and how to work around them, figure out what proprietary 'extensions' MS has 'helpfully added' to otherwise standard protocols, figure out how to script an essentially unscriptable system, deal with mysterious registry problems, malware, viruses, virtually no security to protect important files, etc. Ever try to replicate an IIS metabase to several servers? Ask an apache admin how hard it is (copy a few text files), then a seasoned windows person (buy a really expensive tool from Microsoft, or try to script it, or use ghost to move _the_entire_operating_system, or more likely manually point and click through the whole thing). Then think about which has the more challenging job. The Apache guy just needs to know a text editor and some copy commands. The Windows guy needs to understand, at a fundamental level, how the metabase file is used, why it cant be copied directly, and how to work around the situation. Frequently this type of problem then requires you to purchase a tool, either from MS or a 3rd party which means the ability to understand the problem well enough to explain it to management, evaluate the options, etc.
So, no, I don't think Unix people are more technical, they just aren't as masochistic.
Sounds like Cisco, Nortel, book publishers, and testing centers made a few bucks on the deal.
You, on the other hand, are left with zero exerpience and a lot of soon-forgotten theoretical knowledge based on fictional networks used by fictional organizations.
I recently had an interview candidate who had (literally) 30-40 certifications, but 'friends of friends' informed me that he was an arrogant ass who couldn't work with anyone else. It didn't matter much because he had no clue. Too much time spent in the testing center, not enough in the data center.
If you really want to prove your networking mettle, then write a BGP routing package for OpenBSD, or some other OS. You'll learn a lot more at the fundamental level and have a nice line item on your resume.
Can't write code? How about finding someone -- anyone -- YMCA, local school, red cross office, library, etc. who will let you change an old PC into a Linux/BSD/whatever firewall. Do it for free and for the line item on the resume. Do a couple more. If you're collecting unenployment, just consider it an investment in 'training' since that sort of experience is a heck of a lot more valuable to an employer than yet-another-IT-certification. An added bonus is that although these organizations usually have zero money, you would be working with the head of the office who would report this sort of thing at the board meeting. Guess who sits on the board? -- Prominent local business leaders. Holy crap -- networking in the human sense at the same time. If you're lucky you'll get asked to present your idea directly to the board. Nothing gets you more 'in the door' than having a VP ask the HR director to get you an interview because you seem like a nice guy...
Let your certs expire -- you can always claim 'former CC-whatever' and employers shouldn't care since (lets face it) TCPIP routing, and the Cisco user interface, hasn't changed all that much in the past few years. If certifications haven't opened the door for you yet (and they usually don't) then they are unlikely to magically open it next week or next year.
I've got an old IBM 8215 out in the garage I can fire up -- Will that make me some kind of he-man uber-hacker?
I've got a sissy-ass 17" imac and love it, but maybe I could strengthen the lampshade-arm and bolt on the old CRT...
shmexperts must refer to experts of shared memory -- what exactly does that have to do with predictions of the future?
I predict that a new algorithm for thread-safe access to shared memory will be developed using either semaphores and spin-locks. But them, I'm no expert.
Whatever you get, make sure it's postscript. Although you can 'make it work' when it's not, it's nice to have it supported out of the box. The biggest reason for this is cross-platform compatability -- if you've got postscript it's easy to print from Windows, Mac, Linux, *BSD, Solaris, HPUX, etc. If you don't, then its an exersize in finding drivers and setting up lpr filters. Postscript adds a lot of functionality to a printer. For example, one feature I like is to print 2 pages on one sheet. This is really easy to do if you've got a postscript printer since it's part of the 'page setup' when you print. Although it's possible to render 2 pages per sheet on a non-postscript printer, it's not nearly as easy to set up or use.
Another point -- make sure you plan for an ethernet lpd style connection. Right now you might just have it hooked up to one machine, but long-term you will likely have 2 or more machines to print from and it's a lot cleaner to just have the printer 'on the network' than shared from another computer. Many printers have ethernet 10baseT or 100baseT ports as options, or as part of a slightly more expensive model. You can also get 3rd party connections as well, from companies like Lantronix or Castelle. Built-in ethernet is a lot faster for printing than an ethernet adapter plugged into a parallel port.
I finally bit the bullet and got an HP LaserJet 6MP about 7 years ago. At the time it was around $1,000 -- and as far as I'm concerned it was worth every penny. Still prints great, cartridges last 2-3 years (and I print 300+ sheets a month).
I got a color inkjet last year and have already spend more on ink in one year than I spent on toner in 7.
Christmas ornament
:)
Crystal doo-dads like a bowl or candlesticks
Food-related items; candy, booze, etc.
Flowers
Sport-related items: football, frisbee, etc.
Pet-related items: new leash, kitty toys
Memorabelia: baseball cards, etc.
Clothing-related items: tie, sweater, shirt, etc.
Sex-related items: lingerie (always get a small size even if she's not), massage oils, etc.
Other personal care items: shaver, lotions, perfume, etc.
Some of these of course are not appropriate in all situations...
Actually we use the rsync feature to keep revs of the data, so when a file is updated the old one is renamed and the new one takes it's place.
As far as getting nothing in terms of features, I disagree completely. We've fulfilled the business requirement, didn't spend a ton of money, and don't have a vendor siphoning cash every month for 'features' we don't care about since we use tape backup anyway.
I work at a largish company where we do our own 'online' backup of a remote office. Around 400Gigs over a T1 line, we use rsync (works with linux and windows systems) and keep the data on an Apple XRaid (very cost effecitve and better-supported than a roll-your-own). Since the daily deltas are rarely more than a gig, this works really well.
We did this because the tape system has a long history of reliability problems. We've since fixed the tape problem (we still do tape backups) but tape is used for off-site storage and disaster recovery at remote sites -- for typical "I deleted an excel file I didn't mean to" requests we can just drill into the xraid and pull the file over without having to mount tapes, get the offsite people to bring them back etc.
Tape might seem expensive, but you have to look at the business benefit, not the cost of drives, software, etc. For example -- point-in-time backups -- our online system is great for yesterdays data, but useless for files from 3 months ago. Our tape system has monthly tapes for a year, weekly tapes for a month, and daily (full-not differntial) for a week. This has 'saved the bacon' more than once and I highly recommend it. Another good point of tape is database backups -- sure you can dump a database to disk and then rsync it offsite, but it requires that all of your database servers have much more disk capacity, and depending on how rsync treats the backup file, it could kill the entire online concept unless you've got a T3 or something.
The killer is restores though. You have to practice them and get the process nailed, otherwise your backups (online or tape) are useless.
I've used Sybase Power Designer (an older version) before. It's not too bad and a lot cheaper then erwin. Works with lots of database servers, and prints purty wall-sized pictures assuming you've got a plotter or don't mind pasting together a bunch of sheets. Also generates SQL for building/altering databases -- typical stuff.
The only thing to look out for is which 'version' you get -- this is one of those products where you pay extra for specific features, so you'll pay anywhere from $800 or so to over $3000 or more depending on what you get and what other products they bundle in.
Good luck!
I appreciate the need to boost revenues, but the dropping of redhat network 'up2date' for all of the paying customers is really a power-play to force those customers to pay several times as much per year. This feels like a 'professional management team' kind of move -- the kind that kills a company but keep the name.
Given that every sysadmin I know is mad as hell, the only outcome for all but the most critical (e.g.: oracle/db2) systems running redhat is a migration to some other distribution -- which one do you think it will be?
Make sure that all of your employees celebrate Christmas. If you've got people who don't -- e.g. Jewish, Islamic, Buhdist, etc. they may take offense at a "Christmas" bonus -- call it a "Holiday" bonus instead.
If most of your employees have major obligations (e.g.: are married with small kids, are divorced with alimony payments, etc.) then just giving them money is likely to end up paying for diapers, toys, etc. -- nothing for them specifically. Consider a gift that they would appreciate and the balance as the bonus. That way they get something they want (like an iPod or a digital camera, or some power tools), but that they couldn't buy if they were given the money. You may be able to spin this as a business expense so that the employees don't end up paying taxes on the gift. Good question for a tax accountant.
Also consider a 'bonus for the office' -- if you gave everyone $1000 instead of $1500 that would leave a few thousand for something like an expresso machine or free soda machine, or a la-z-boy massaging recliner in the break room -- some kind of luxury they get to enjoy all year.
Get a cage at a colocation facility. Sell all of your stuff, get a sleeping bag and a laptop then move in.
100MB+ internet access and it's only a few $hundred a month, but since you will live there (cm'on -- you're probably on IRC 19 hours a day anyway -- right?) you can eliminate rent.
Just get a few boxes of 'wet naps' -- maybe from your local KFC and you don't need to worry about showering or whatever.
Hey -- where else is it 70 degrees all day every day? Hawaii? San Diego? Who can afford to move there? Plus you would have major geek bragging rights at the local starbucks.
Good luck!
Sheesh, sounds a lot like what my old Commodore with a 300-baud dial up into someone elses Commodore as a "BBS" system would do. Of course the "Server" had 64K RAM and a 160K floppy disk, but it customized what you saw based on your login.
I think this was in 1983 or 1984.
Of course CompuServe did this in a bigger way as well as many other online providers. Anyone remember Quantum?
Under the DMCA it's illegal to distribute programs that circumvent technical measures to protect copyright.
This would seem to mean that all non-Windows OS's (e.g.: Mac OS X, *BSD, Linux, Gnu/Hurd, Unix, etc.) that don't support either the autorun 'technology' or support the specific DLL they are trying to run, would circumvent the copyright holders protection mechanism.
This would also seem to mean that spreading info about changing specific registry keys to disable autorun, the tweakui program, and probably many other programs that do similar things are also illegal.
All because a company made some inept software. Yuck.
Go vertical whenever you can. Often you can't e.g.: public ftp or web server should probably not host a database full of sensitive information. Often you can.
Big challenge is windows apps. Big name packaged stuff like Exchange or Weblogic or whatever you can probably pack together on one server. Once you get into specialized and very expensive software (e.g.: Sagent, Mercator, Fax Software, etc.) the vendor will insist that you dedicate 2 servers (one production one development/test) and refuse to guarantee performance if you don't dedicate a server.
A solution to reduce machine clutter, if not OS clutter, is to virtualize with something like VMWare. In a DMZ for example you could have separate 'boxes' running SMTP, FTP, DNS, etc. all running on one server. Get two of these servers and you've got a pretty secure setup with load balancing. Another big advantage to that is that migrating between servers is as simple as copying the disk image and booting it up. If a system gets compromised you can save that disk image and boot from a known-good one, patch it, and still have the other one for analysis/prosecution.
Same thing goes for internal networks -- run test/development on a VMWare system with a boatload of 'machines'. If VMWare performance is acceptable, then you can run production as well.
So how long until some innovative person brings a digital camera, photo's someone elses ticket, prints their own, then 'cashes' it before they do?
More to the point, how long until an 'innovative' casino takes advantage of the ephemeral (no chips/coins to count) nature of this and causes computer records to change things in their favor. Yes the various gaming comission types and auditors would frown on it, but done cleverly enough it could be pulled off (and probably already is).
What do you _really_ want? Do you want to quit student life and become a contract programmer? If so, push for a decent rate -- $100/hour w/out benefits, minimum 40 hours per week is a good starting point.
The fixed-price-per-feature idea is OK, but again you'll be working 40+ hours a week on it and you might as well not be a student.
A more rational approach is to work 'as available' for a monthly stipend. Get enough to cover your rent and maybe some pizza and a car payment. Say $1,500 so you end up with $1,000 after taxes. Make sure the contract states you retain all rights to your code (although you will probably have to give a license to the company).
They are buying first-priority access to your time -- you will implement the features they want even if they are boring or difficult. No other promises.
If some other company approaches you then do the same thing. If you're running out of time (too many companies) re-negotiate and go with the highest bidder(s).
If they offer some kind of 'in-kind' service, like hosting a server or whatever -- then all the better (just keep good backups in case the relationship sours).
Just a thought.
It sounds like you've got a site written around a very proprietary system, and that your scalability etc. is tied to what that proprietary system can do.
.com that used the same proprietary system. Buy the company for pennies on the dollar and assume their license portfolio.
The solution, therefore, is to get away from the proprietary system. But only if you think you can do better. Either find a better proprietary system or write your own. If you write your own then plan for 'scale out' on lots of servers running something cheap like *BSD or Gnu/Linux, Apache, Tomcat, JBOSS, posgres, mysql, etc.
If you _can't_ get away from the proprietary app, then perhaps you can 'wrap' it in something else. Use static pages, PHP/mod_perl/C++/Lisp/jsp/whatever and a cheap but good database (mysql, postgres). Use these for all of the 'custom' content. Then have them access your 'back end' and dumb down the back end to get rid of everything that is not essential to a data feed. If possible aggregate the 'php' users into a few categories for the CMS to deal with. E.g.: have a 'sports' profile with 10,000 php users accessing a single 'sports' user on CMS.
Try negotiating with the vendor. Perhaps you can present your 'success story' at a gartner symposium or somesuch. Complain about scalability. Demand a linux version. Get them to agree to some unlikely performance guarantee and use that to cut costs down (via penalties). Get some free consulting from them to help fix the problems. Make sure to wear a T-Shirt or use a pen from their major competitor whenever they are around -- much more fun that way.
Find a failed
Another approach is to update your resume and get the heck out of there.
I'd go for the ramdisk idea. However UPS systems are bulky and potentially noisy, and don't protect you from some unrelated computer crash (e.g.: CPU overheating and the resulting lock-up.
Therefore find some secondary storage medium and schedule a cronjob that rsync's the ramdisk to the permament media. The permament media could be:
* a flash disk, but this time you know that you do the rsync every X minutes, and that the life of the media is Y writes, therefore you'll need to replace the thing every Z years.
* a remote server accessed via SSH
* any kind of local disk -- the tradeoff being the noise of the thing running periodically.
Blackbox and other outfits like that have just about every oddball convertor, splitter, etc. you might ever want.
The reseller I used to work at seemed to do a lot of this kind of business. We found a taiwanese firm with an office in CA and were able to order stuff like VGA splitter boxes (still > $100 most places) for like $9.
We got tons of stuff from this place -- 1000's of printer cables and the like. If the going retail price was $25 we'd buy them for $0.27 ($0.25 for 100 or more).
Problem is we'd have to stock a bunch because they only had so much then it was wait for the next boat from China.
But we really needed the margin. We'd net more dollars on the cables and network hubs than we'd make on a $10k server, especially if it was a name-brand server.
Somehow my boss never got the idea that service is where the _real_ markup is made -- $100 an hour for a tech we paid maybe $20 an hour to. Business is funny that way.