First things first: K. Mitnick did not kill anybody... nor did he cause physical injury. So speculations about "drunk drivers plowing into crowds"(of nuns?) or "serial murders with cars" and whatnot is wildly off. Kevin stole. The analogy is more like someone who uses a car to rip off a million dollars. Actually, given the nature of the actual crimes, it's like "using a car to disrupt a system worth millions of dollars". You know how you "disrupt a system worth millions of dollars" with your car? You park it in the middle of the Holland Tunnel at rush hour, throw the keys down a grate and walk away. And you know what your punishment for that act will be?
obviously. Any statement to the contrary would imply you were a winders user:-)
Seriously, CW's last major improvement was the java RAD. While I have one issue with it (complete code rewrite for even the smallest change) it's otherwise really good. The intro of the RAD, however, was inspired by the possibility that developers would move to another platform and ide for their java designing. With java's semi-deserved WORA rep, that was a possibility metrowerks had to consider seriously.
For the aesthetically sensitive, the present version of CodeWarrior also happens to be very ugly, those black tab things in the project window - yuck.
black tab things? You mean the files/design/link order/targets tabs? (mine are grey). I kinda like those, even though they're not appearance manager compliant... I think the project manager in general is well laid out. Even for big projects, the whole thing takes up only 20% of my screen real-estate and I get access to the necessary-but-not-often-used windows on demand but without clutter. My biggest aesthetic complaint is the lack of splash screen ("is it on yet?")
It is incredibly ackward to use multiple-target projects in CodeWarrior
I must admit you've got me there, I only rarely build to anything other than PPC release and debug. Heck, I skip debug most of the time...
Last time I checked, I could still have gcc and everything else I need for much less than $100. As a matter of fact, I can have it for $0:).
gcc is a Good Thing. However, it's not an IDE. For the $100 CW gave you compile/link for four languages (well, one's pascal...) a decent debugger, a bunch o' useful tools (viz zoneranger), a fully-developed C++ framework (powerplant), a shwack of documentation (in pre-internet-explosion days a big deal) and a fantastic text editor. An IDE should be one-stop coding. Metrowerks gave me that.... for a hundred bucks. I gotta admit that what really hooked me on CW was the text editor. It sounds stupid, but it's what you're looking at 90% of coding time so it's worthwhile having a nice one. vi and emacs are functional I suppose but, ultimately, are designed for console use and have the finesse of a rowboat (flame at will). Kwrite has syntax colouring, but is so out of line with every other editor in the world that using it feels like playing scrabble in a foreign language. When I write for the Solaris box, I use CW, save the file to the ethershare volume and telnet to run gcc.
Is it obvious that I'm a hopeless fan?
So, what Borland is really offering is a whole line of tools capable of running in all important platforms. For a developer it is a heavenly deal.
CodeWarrior is also available on Winders and there's a Linux version as well (redhat only as near as I can tell). I can't vouch for the quality of experience on the "secondary" platforms, though.
"This is the first real development tool on the Mac for the last eight years,"
What the hell? I'm stunned that Borland would make such a statement. CodeWarrior is most definitely a "real development tool"... oh, and it does java rad too (although even a small change in the RAD builder rewrites all RAD code forcing you to do some fancy copy/paste...)
Borland may be surprised to find that the Mac community really loves their CodeWarrior, and for good reasons: 1. When all had abandoned the mac, Metrowerks toughed it out and gave us some pretty hot stuff. 2. When IDEs on "other platforms" were going for hundreds (sometimes hundreds and hundreds) of dollars, metrowerks offered a "discover" package that compiled C, C++, Java and Pascal for $100. 3. Everyone knows mac programming can be a bit of a black art (just how many times do I need to call moreMasters()? three? oops... let's try four) Their response? CodeWarriorU. For free. If you're of the opinion that Dan Parks Sydow can't write (and he can't) you're grateful... 4. If you download code for the mac it's almost always in an.mcp format. Heck, even Apple does this... not a great vote of confidence for MPW. Mind you, with java it's not such a big deal, but it's helped ingrain CW into the Mac psyche. 5. Merchandise. Will Borland offer boxers as cool as the PowerPlant ones? Will their mascot be cooler than Arnold? Hm. Probably not.
There are people starving next door. Let's stop giving them fish and start teaching them how to fish
Since when have we even been "giving them fish?" In point of fact your idea is fantastic. Right now (no, really, right now) the Grand Chief election in Canada is being counted. phil fontane has been campaigning pretty hard for the last couple of months on "modernizing" the first nations' economies (ie, diversifying from the casino/cigarett/land lease model of the 80's) and now that DIA will actually talk to the Grand Chief (post-Oka stress syndrome on the part of the DIA) and, maybe, pursue some sort of economic "modernization" policy...
I usually have an extra Adaptec SCSI controller around, and RAM I can always redistribute, and the same for disks. And it is possible to run with 1 CPU.
Well, first off, if I wanted to have spares for everything in the shop it would cost more than the service contract. There are two things to consider when you asses your reliability: a) The likelihood of failure b) The speed to return to full capacity
Sun stuff is good for a, my story aside. This is the most important consideration seeing as even the fastest return to normal is slower than no failure at all. The drawback is that if you do have a failure, getting it back can be a drag. (Note: if you're not a Mac fan, go open up a G4. It's a tinkerer's wet dream). Try buying a frambuffer for a sparc10 from that internet cafe... hence, the service contract.
No, not a flame, but I don't 100% agree it's the truth...
I feel that as the SysAdmin it's my duty to know everything about everything on my network.
Ideally, that is true. However, there are two factors to consider:
1. Scale. In a small network the "boss man" partitions the raid him/herslef. Sets up Legato all by his/her lonesome yatta yatta. Scale that up by a factor of 3 and the boss man gets a "subordinate" to set up Legato to his or her spec. Scale by another factor of 3 and the boss man gets a subordinate to cook up a 1 page proposal ("Amanda's nice, but we should buy Legato...") and then implement it. The bossman still knows what's going on, but actual implementation is diversified. Clinton doesn't train marines or cut Blue Cross cheques, but he's head of those departments.
This leads to two situations: a) Bob knows Legato cold, Rachel doesn't. If it bombs on Rachel's shift and Bob is at the cabin/serving his weekend time there's a serious problem. b) Sysadmin's get paranoid. We all work in an environment of trust and mutual respect for the capabilities of our colleagues (if you don't you should be reading dice.com). But the sysadmins job is on the line in the event of catastrophic failure. 2. Nobody knows the product like the manufacturer. Really. You call tech and they say "oh, that's a common problem." Common? It's the first time _I've_ seen it! Sun sees it 3 times a day. So, while I could use my well-honed trouble-shooting skills to narrow it down to a set of three potential causes and then methodically try the most-likely responses, logging results as I go, Sun knows you just have to wiggle the this and restart the that and you're up and running.
and I'm also getting 60k, then what the whole idea for me being there?
You're there to implement, configure, maintain and fix non-life-threatening problems for dozens and dozens of pieces of software and hardware. And make them all work together. How many servers do you have? How many pieces of high-performance software? Scripts? Kilometers of cat 5? Swiches? Make it work together effectively and reliably for your end users and you've earned your $60K.
I work in a Sun shop... we all know that Sun is outrageously expensive.... so, here's my true story:
10:35pm cruching away on E3000. I hear a slight "pop" come from the SENA array. Watch in mild fascination/horror as the database drifts away from the front end like an un-hawsered boat from the pier. 10:36pm Panic. Check cables/power. Panic more. 10:38pm init 6 the whole thing. Call the end users (only 2... it's night shift). Act calm. 10:43pm system up. No data. 10:49pm call Sun (finding the card with the service number takes 5 min). Tell them my theory: "it's the gbic card". Sun's response: "we'll be the judge of that." 11:21pm Sun guy comes through the door. He's actually running... 11:58pm Sun guy stops working. Computer starts working. It's not the gbic cards, but he throws in a pair of new ones "just 'coz". 1:00pm I come in to work the next day because my ass is not fired.
The situation as it would be with that "free" rig note, this is an untrue story...
10:35pm slight pop. no data. some screaming. 10:36pm assume it's the scsi card. remove casing. use compressed air to clear smoke away.. 10:38pm scan room for compatible card to replace with. Find two ISA's used to prop up a short leg on a desk and Safeway bag full of SIMMs in the coat closet. screaming throughout. 10:41pm call Harold. He has lots of stuff. Mom answers and takes message. Find out later she relays the words "networth is down: need scooby cart". 10:51pm Debate "calling the boss man". 10:57pm call the boss man. "why don't you use the ones under the desk leg?" inform him their ISA. screaming from both parties throughout. 11:16pm have abandoned post. At "java bytes" internet cafe on 12th St. Offer pimply-faced teen large sum of cash for card from beaten Gateway in corner. 11:32 $200 poorer. case open. card in. 11:33pm it's the bus. 11:36pm surfing dice.com.
The bottom line is, if you think you're smart enough that you don't need that expensive contract you're too dumb to admin a network.
goddamn, for a guy who spent two years as an English major I sure can't spell names... one of these days I'm going to get around to correcting my misspell of Bill Gosper's name in my.sig.
He's a really cool guy with a lot of neat stories to tell!
no doubt. I used to think I was pretty hot shit cos I could get LD off of elevator emergency phones and I could use my $10 EdTel ball cap and toolbelt to get into PBX rooms.... Then I saw America's Most Wanted. Pretty humbling...
It's a fantastic hype cycle. Apple comes up with a neat-o thing-a-ma-bob. Rumour site sees it and posts a story. Apple's legal team gets on the phone and the story is taken down. The total viewing period for the story is, oh, 5 hours (just guessing). That's not nearly enough time for most interested parties (ie me) to see and read it, but long enough for the rest of the media to get a peek. The result? All the people who didn't see the story now have curiosity levels pusing the red line and are pacing the floor waiting for MacWorld to see what the fuss is about. This is a fantastic way for Apple to get the news out that something big is brewing in Cupertino, but you won't know about it until the The Day arrives. It's sorta like Christmas as a kid (for all of you brought up in a nominally Christian home that is...). You can see the wrapped presents. You know their size and shape but you gotta wait till The Day to find out what it is. The suspense is a killer. Personally, I wouldn't have it any other way.
Oh yeah, and Apple never gives socks or underwear...
As a side note, this tactic does not hurt MOSR in any way. In fact, it helps them. For last MacWorld Expo I was checking MOSR every hour for the 3 weeks leading up to The Day, just so I wouldn't miss that magic window of gossip. Talk about a way to boost hits/ad revenue!
Although it doesn't really say anywhere, I am assuming that the Kevin Poulson referred to here is the phone phreak god of the 80's. Man, when I was young(er) I worshipped that guy...
SUVs (as you may well know) are not required to have clean emissions cuz car manufacturers payed Washington politicians to have them legally classified as trucks
When the CAFE standards were introduced by Carter, the transport and particularly the agricultural lobbies pushed the hardest for truck exemptions. The rationale was that an agricultural vehicle would become deprecated through rigourous use and be tossed aside before the savings of increased fuel efficiency had the chance to offset the greater sticker price of a fuel-efficient vehicle. In canada we're stuck with the CAFE standards since we have no national car-maker and even further complicate the problem by massively subsidizing agricultural-use gasoline (so-called "purple gas" as it is dyed purple as a way of enforcing it for farm-only use... when you get pulled over at a check stop in rural Alberta they give you a breathalyzer and do a dip test on your gas tank!)
I heard that Gore is campaigning (a bit) on tightening up CAFE. With the OPEC scene right now and Iraq still being fresh in the collective memory and companies like Toyota coming out with functional and (semi) affordable hybrids he might get away with it...
For your spelling information, it is "van de Graaf"
d'oh! I had a bad feeling about that one but figgured I'd just see if it would slide.....
English-speaking-as-first-langauge people tend to have bad spelling in general because we are taught early on that spelling is almost entirely arbitrary and that any rule has enough exceptions to make it not worthy of remembering (double letters, of which I am guilty in this case, is one of the worst). Secondly, the concept of "non-English" words gets pretty blurry since English itself is little more than a jumble of other languages. While the French and to a lesser extent the Germans and Spaniards locked down their language several hundred years ago, the English-speaking world is notorious for absorbing new words (and grammatical forms even, viz. the gerund). Of course the "recent" trend is now to exporting English. Ack! Who in their right mind would volunatily accept linguistic influence from a language with three present tenses! Talk about bad design...
He might mean it's being pushed down from 'Brown Cloud' level to street level.
hmmm... ground-level o3 does tend to occupy the top-bit of inverted thermal domes... a good thing as it tends to keep it out of our lungs. In theory though, ozone should only be a problem if you have: 1. the thermal inversiona from hell 2. A much-bigger-than-normal amount being produced.. ie, 250 vand de graff generators running a street level.
I vote for number 1 since if there were 250 van de graff generators being run at street level anywhere cmdrTaco would have run it as a story... viz:
posted by cmdrTaco on Monday July 10 @04:22AM from the It-makes-my-hair-stand-on-end-but-in-a-good-way dept. BozoTheClown writes "The Mayfield Daily Blatt has this story about an high school science teacher who is trying for the Guiness record for "largest baloon stuck to wall with static electricity". He has a full size replica of the Hindenberg (no, not hydrogen filled, thank god) and, get this, 250 full-sized van de graff generators... better than rubbing the blimp on your head!" 250? Wow, that's like a Beowulf cluster of van de graff generators!!
Basically, the heat, mixed with other effects have actually pushed the ozone down to ground level
Are you sure that the ozone is being "pushed down?". It's almost impossible for gas to move from the stratoshpere into the troposhere... A more likely explanation would be that ozone is created at ground level by electrical sparking. Since ozone is just O3, any electrical discharge in an O2 "rich" area (ie, the atmosphere) will generate ozone. You know when you can "smell" static electricity? That's ozone. If you have a particularly strong thermal inversion, O3 can be prevented from floating up... however in those cases you almost invariably get high levels of H2S04 and that's usually a bigger concern (no shit!).
No, I fully understand your point and agree with what you are saying. All I'm trying to point out is that benchmarks that deal exclusively with performance and do not mention cost are necessary. In this case there is a clear winner and a clear loser, but that isn't always the situation, so as a general approach it doesn't work....
Test them on price/performance instead of performance;
It's not easy to do that. Everyone has different weightings that they put on those categories. A honda gives fantastic price/performance, but if you want to win the Indie500, it is definitely not the right choice. Some people will pay a lot more for a small gain in performance because they need all the performance they can get. Others will take a significantly inferior product for even a small price drop because they just don't have the extra $100, period.
And shouldn't the goal be to convert categories 2-4 into category 1?
uh, yes... What I was trying to say (as if trying counts...) was:" 1. Linux has a steep learning curve. If you deny that you're a genius or a liar and the ratio is so in favour of the latter.... 2. MC*E people are used to guis and are under the impression (rightly or wrongly) that guis equal ease-of-use. 3. A gui will reduce the resistence to incorporating Linux into their systems. This resistance is mostly fostered by 1 and 2. Olympus addresses these points. 4. Admins are not normal people (there I go, sounding like my mom again...). Given a system, it's really only a matter of time until they get curious enough to shake it till it breaks just to see what sort of pieces fall out. End users are content to point-n-click all the live-long day. Even an NT admin will eventually pick up the manual to find that faster, neater way to do stuff. Newbies, of course, are just bursting at the seams with enthusiasm (we hired a fresh grad here last week.... keen? oh yeah) anyway, that's what I meant to say...
Administering a unix server takes more than what any single GUI can give you. You can't anticipate every flat file or program that is going to be installed with a module. Shell interaction is the backbone of *nix and its not going to go away anytime soon.
No, a single gui will never give it all... but remember that we're discussing admins or to-be-admins, not the stereotypical end user. It's a fair assumption that these admins will want to expand their control over the machine as time progresses. It's like guitar. If you want to be a serious guitarist you need to be able to read sheet music, but that's tough to learn and makes an already steep learning curve near verticle. Enter TAB. The real guitar geeks will get around to sheet music, but TAB actually gets people playing the guitar fairly quickly....
I would rather have a smaller number of well maintained linux servers than a large number of insecure or broken linux boxes.
Well, I don't subscribe to the (semi-popular) view that gui = broken. It depends, obviously, what the rig is being used for.... I suspect that the average NT admin will choose to use his/her NT box for heavy lifting, until s/he becomes more comfortable with and confident in the Linux box. Part of initiating that level of comfort, of course, is a decent gui.
Certification is nice to show that you know some stuff, but is no where nere a minimum requirement for someone to administer a server
I agree... when the day arrives when a total system failure presents you with a multiple choice question and the correct answer will fix the problem, MC*Es will rule the world. Since I'm completely self-taught, however, the continued survival of my ego depends on me diss-ing the heavily-credentialed. (mind you, I just found out about atoi(char*) yesterday... so maybe there's something to be said for education)
It should only become easy, by people becoming more skilled in what they do, not in the interface.
I think the interface is very important. We use 'ls' to list files in a directory. Easy. I could cook up an OS where the same comand was 47 characters long, most of them pipes, l's and colons. viz: frymaster{/opt]# i||llll|||;;;|::|;||l:l:::::\/\/| Perl jokes aside, the choice of a simple intuitive word to represent the command indicates that someone was thinking about the interface, if even only on the most rudimentary level... Computers are supposed to be used. Therefore they must be useable...
Working to "improve" linux with the goal of attracting more users and more companies is not working on Linux for the right reasons
No, I think the two are completely intertwined. Computers are supposed to be used. All of the imporvements in computing have been with the end goal of making them easier and more powerful. Perl was invented because it is easier and more powerful than C. C was invented because it was easier and more powerful (and portable) than assembly. Assembly was invented because it was easier and more powerful than flicking tiny switches to lodge 1s and 0s into RAM. Ultimately, it's all about making computer more useable. Witness Ted Nelson's third (fourth?) law: "It should be easier to use a computer than not use a computer."
"Beating" windows is a byproduct. There are two types of computer users: Those who use them now and those who don't but will in the fairly-near future. If Linux is going to expand then at least part of it will have to be into the first category which, currently, is mostly occupied by Windows users. If BeOS had 90% marketshare, I'd be talking about expanding into BeOS's turf.
Lastly, it does not necessarily correlate that accessibility by the "least common denominator" means the OS will become "shitty". Everybody can use a phone. Tell Bellcore their system is "shitty." Computers should be empowering.... that means that joe average should be able to access it, get up to speed fairly quickly and then, hopefully, after some time discover the clockwork behind glockinspiel show.
Let's establish some assumptions, okay? 1. We want more people/companies to use Linux as servers 2. People need to administer servers
With those assumptions in mind, let's look at the people who adminster servers. There are 4 potential categories of server admins. 1. *nix geeks 2. MC*E winders types 3. "other" (isn't Banyan Vines still in business?) 4. Newbies and aspiring server admins
Now, given assumption 1, that we want to see Linux expand, we will need to see a lot more admins be Linux savvy and Linux friendly. All of those future Linux admins will have to come from the 4 categories above. We've got category 1 wrapped up, so if we want more Linux admins it will have to be at the expense of 2, 3 and 4. Ignoring the VMS hold-overs from category 3, this boils down to acheiving 2 things: 1. Converting MC*E types to Linux 2. Convincing new admins that they would really rather do Linux than Winders
Olympus helps in both these cateogries. For the MC*E type, the ability to have access to the Linux box from a Win rig will make them more amenable to setting up a hetrogenous environment. Really, if I had a dollar for every WinAdmin who said they wouldn't consider incorporating Linux in their network because it was too tough to integrate... well, I'd have enough to go see a movie, but damn are movies expensive these days! And don't rattle off at me about Samba. Rattle off at those WinAdmins. Olympus will help gain converts from category 2. Mock MC*E's all you want... but keep in mind they can be converted and "see the light". Olympus will go a long way towards that.
Category 4, new admins, is much more fertile. Lots of aspiring admins go the MCSE route. There are a number of reasons for that, the biggest being that MCSE is an instant credetential. We have responded to that in part with the Red Hat cert. Another major reason for the continued success of NT is the illusion that it is easy to admin (it's an illusion because the troubleshooting of inevitable failures, in the long run, more than make up for the crunchy point-and-click ease of setup). By giving a straighforward config interface to Linux servers we provide newbies with real ease of use. I like to think of this in terms of "total ease of ownership". Once Linux runs, it runs. Easy. Making the config easy is step two.
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First things first: K. Mitnick did not kill anybody ... nor did he cause physical injury. So speculations about "drunk drivers plowing into crowds"(of nuns?) or "serial murders with cars" and whatnot is wildly off. Kevin stole. The analogy is more like someone who uses a car to rip off a million dollars. Actually, given the nature of the actual crimes, it's like "using a car to disrupt a system worth millions of dollars". You know how you "disrupt a system worth millions of dollars" with your car? You park it in the middle of the Holland Tunnel at rush hour, throw the keys down a grate and walk away. And you know what your punishment for that act will be?
A fucking traffic ticket.
obviously. Any statement to the contrary would imply you were a winders user :-)
Seriously, CW's last major improvement was the java RAD. While I have one issue with it (complete code rewrite for even the smallest change) it's otherwise really good. The intro of the RAD, however, was inspired by the possibility that developers would move to another platform and ide for their java designing. With java's semi-deserved WORA rep, that was a possibility metrowerks had to consider seriously.
For the aesthetically sensitive, the present version of CodeWarrior also happens to be very ugly, those black tab things in the project window - yuck.
black tab things? You mean the files/design/link order/targets tabs? (mine are grey). I kinda like those, even though they're not appearance manager compliant... I think the project manager in general is well laid out. Even for big projects, the whole thing takes up only 20% of my screen real-estate and I get access to the necessary-but-not-often-used windows on demand but without clutter. My biggest aesthetic complaint is the lack of splash screen ("is it on yet?")
It is incredibly ackward to use multiple-target projects in CodeWarrior
I must admit you've got me there, I only rarely build to anything other than PPC release and debug. Heck, I skip debug most of the time...
gcc is a Good Thing. However, it's not an IDE. For the $100 CW gave you compile/link for four languages (well, one's pascal...) a decent debugger, a bunch o' useful tools (viz zoneranger), a fully-developed C++ framework (powerplant), a shwack of documentation (in pre-internet-explosion days a big deal) and a fantastic text editor. An IDE should be one-stop coding. Metrowerks gave me that.... for a hundred bucks. I gotta admit that what really hooked me on CW was the text editor. It sounds stupid, but it's what you're looking at 90% of coding time so it's worthwhile having a nice one. vi and emacs are functional I suppose but, ultimately, are designed for console use and have the finesse of a rowboat (flame at will). Kwrite has syntax colouring, but is so out of line with every other editor in the world that using it feels like playing scrabble in a foreign language. When I write for the Solaris box, I use CW, save the file to the ethershare volume and telnet to run gcc.
Is it obvious that I'm a hopeless fan?
So, what Borland is really offering is a whole line of tools capable of running in all important platforms. For a developer it is a heavenly deal.
CodeWarrior is also available on Winders and there's a Linux version as well (redhat only as near as I can tell). I can't vouch for the quality of experience on the "secondary" platforms, though.
What the hell? I'm stunned that Borland would make such a statement. CodeWarrior is most definitely a "real development tool"... oh, and it does java rad too (although even a small change in the RAD builder rewrites all RAD code forcing you to do some fancy copy/paste...)
Borland may be surprised to find that the Mac community really loves their CodeWarrior, and for good reasons: .mcp format. Heck, even Apple does this... not a great vote of confidence for MPW. Mind you, with java it's not such a big deal, but it's helped ingrain CW into the Mac psyche.
1. When all had abandoned the mac, Metrowerks toughed it out and gave us some pretty hot stuff.
2. When IDEs on "other platforms" were going for hundreds (sometimes hundreds and hundreds) of dollars, metrowerks offered a "discover" package that compiled C, C++, Java and Pascal for $100.
3. Everyone knows mac programming can be a bit of a black art (just how many times do I need to call moreMasters()? three? oops... let's try four) Their response? CodeWarriorU. For free. If you're of the opinion that Dan Parks Sydow can't write (and he can't) you're grateful...
4. If you download code for the mac it's almost always in an
5. Merchandise. Will Borland offer boxers as cool as the PowerPlant ones? Will their mascot be cooler than Arnold? Hm. Probably not.
Since when have we even been "giving them fish?" In point of fact your idea is fantastic. Right now (no, really, right now) the Grand Chief election in Canada is being counted. phil fontane has been campaigning pretty hard for the last couple of months on "modernizing" the first nations' economies (ie, diversifying from the casino/cigarett/land lease model of the 80's) and now that DIA will actually talk to the Grand Chief (post-Oka stress syndrome on the part of the DIA) and, maybe, pursue some sort of economic "modernization" policy...
geekcorps is sending a corps of geeks to Africa sometime in the next few months...
Well, first off, if I wanted to have spares for everything in the shop it would cost more than the service contract. There are two things to consider when you asses your reliability:
a) The likelihood of failure
b) The speed to return to full capacity
Sun stuff is good for a, my story aside. This is the most important consideration seeing as even the fastest return to normal is slower than no failure at all. The drawback is that if you do have a failure, getting it back can be a drag. (Note: if you're not a Mac fan, go open up a G4. It's a tinkerer's wet dream). Try buying a frambuffer for a sparc10 from that internet cafe... hence, the service contract.
No, not a flame, but I don't 100% agree it's the truth...
I feel that as the SysAdmin it's my duty to know everything about everything on my network.
Ideally, that is true. However, there are two factors to consider:
1. Scale. In a small network the "boss man" partitions the raid him/herslef. Sets up Legato all by his/her lonesome yatta yatta. Scale that up by a factor of 3 and the boss man gets a "subordinate" to set up Legato to his or her spec. Scale by another factor of 3 and the boss man gets a subordinate to cook up a 1 page proposal ("Amanda's nice, but we should buy Legato...") and then implement it. The bossman still knows what's going on, but actual implementation is diversified. Clinton doesn't train marines or cut Blue Cross cheques, but he's head of those departments.
This leads to two situations:
a) Bob knows Legato cold, Rachel doesn't. If it bombs on Rachel's shift and Bob is at the cabin/serving his weekend time there's a serious problem.
b) Sysadmin's get paranoid. We all work in an environment of trust and mutual respect for the capabilities of our colleagues (if you don't you should be reading dice.com). But the sysadmins job is on the line in the event of catastrophic failure.
2. Nobody knows the product like the manufacturer. Really. You call tech and they say "oh, that's a common problem." Common? It's the first time _I've_ seen it! Sun sees it 3 times a day. So, while I could use my well-honed trouble-shooting skills to narrow it down to a set of three potential causes and then methodically try the most-likely responses, logging results as I go, Sun knows you just have to wiggle the this and restart the that and you're up and running.
and I'm also getting 60k, then what the whole idea for me being there?
You're there to implement, configure, maintain and fix non-life-threatening problems for dozens and dozens of pieces of software and hardware. And make them all work together. How many servers do you have? How many pieces of high-performance software? Scripts? Kilometers of cat 5? Swiches? Make it work together effectively and reliably for your end users and you've earned your $60K.
10:35pm cruching away on E3000. I hear a slight "pop" come from the SENA array. Watch in mild fascination/horror as the database drifts away from the front end like an un-hawsered boat from the pier.
10:36pm Panic. Check cables/power. Panic more.
10:38pm init 6 the whole thing. Call the end users (only 2... it's night shift). Act calm.
10:43pm system up. No data.
10:49pm call Sun (finding the card with the service number takes 5 min). Tell them my theory: "it's the gbic card". Sun's response: "we'll be the judge of that."
11:21pm Sun guy comes through the door. He's actually running...
11:58pm Sun guy stops working. Computer starts working. It's not the gbic cards, but he throws in a pair of new ones "just 'coz".
1:00pm I come in to work the next day because my ass is not fired.
The situation as it would be with that "free" rig
note, this is an untrue story...
10:35pm slight pop. no data. some screaming.
10:36pm assume it's the scsi card. remove casing. use compressed air to clear smoke away..
10:38pm scan room for compatible card to replace with. Find two ISA's used to prop up a short leg on a desk and Safeway bag full of SIMMs in the coat closet. screaming throughout.
10:41pm call Harold. He has lots of stuff. Mom answers and takes message. Find out later she relays the words "networth is down: need scooby cart".
10:51pm Debate "calling the boss man".
10:57pm call the boss man. "why don't you use the ones under the desk leg?" inform him their ISA. screaming from both parties throughout.
11:16pm have abandoned post. At "java bytes" internet cafe on 12th St. Offer pimply-faced teen large sum of cash for card from beaten Gateway in corner.
11:32 $200 poorer. case open. card in.
11:33pm it's the bus.
11:36pm surfing dice.com.
The bottom line is, if you think you're smart enough that you don't need that expensive contract you're too dumb to admin a network.
flame at will.
goddamn, for a guy who spent two years as an English major I sure can't spell names... one of these days I'm going to get around to correcting my misspell of Bill Gosper's name in my .sig.
He's a really cool guy with a lot of neat stories to tell!
no doubt. I used to think I was pretty hot shit cos I could get LD off of elevator emergency phones and I could use my $10 EdTel ball cap and toolbelt to get into PBX rooms.... Then I saw America's Most Wanted. Pretty humbling...
Yeah, okay, but that was when Amelio was CEO... he never had any style.... although he did have enough taste to wear boxers...
Oh yeah, and Apple never gives socks or underwear...
As a side note, this tactic does not hurt MOSR in any way. In fact, it helps them. For last MacWorld Expo I was checking MOSR every hour for the 3 weeks leading up to The Day, just so I wouldn't miss that magic window of gossip. Talk about a way to boost hits/ad revenue!
Although it doesn't really say anywhere, I am assuming that the Kevin Poulson referred to here is the phone phreak god of the 80's. Man, when I was young(er) I worshipped that guy...
When the CAFE standards were introduced by Carter, the transport and particularly the agricultural lobbies pushed the hardest for truck exemptions. The rationale was that an agricultural vehicle would become deprecated through rigourous use and be tossed aside before the savings of increased fuel efficiency had the chance to offset the greater sticker price of a fuel-efficient vehicle. In canada we're stuck with the CAFE standards since we have no national car-maker and even further complicate the problem by massively subsidizing agricultural-use gasoline (so-called "purple gas" as it is dyed purple as a way of enforcing it for farm-only use... when you get pulled over at a check stop in rural Alberta they give you a breathalyzer and do a dip test on your gas tank!)
I heard that Gore is campaigning (a bit) on tightening up CAFE. With the OPEC scene right now and Iraq still being fresh in the collective memory and companies like Toyota coming out with functional and (semi) affordable hybrids he might get away with it...
d'oh! I had a bad feeling about that one but figgured I'd just see if it would slide.....
English-speaking-as-first-langauge people tend to have bad spelling in general because we are taught early on that spelling is almost entirely arbitrary and that any rule has enough exceptions to make it not worthy of remembering (double letters, of which I am guilty in this case, is one of the worst). Secondly, the concept of "non-English" words gets pretty blurry since English itself is little more than a jumble of other languages. While the French and to a lesser extent the Germans and Spaniards locked down their language several hundred years ago, the English-speaking world is notorious for absorbing new words (and grammatical forms even, viz. the gerund). Of course the "recent" trend is now to exporting English. Ack! Who in their right mind would volunatily accept linguistic influence from a language with three present tenses! Talk about bad design...
hmmm... ground-level o3 does tend to occupy the top-bit of inverted thermal domes... a good thing as it tends to keep it out of our lungs. In theory though, ozone should only be a problem if you have:
1. the thermal inversiona from hell
2. A much-bigger-than-normal amount being produced.. ie, 250 vand de graff generators running a street level.
I vote for number 1 since if there were 250 van de graff generators being run at street level anywhere cmdrTaco would have run it as a story... viz:
posted by cmdrTaco on Monday July 10 @04:22AM
from the It-makes-my-hair-stand-on-end-but-in-a-good-way dept.
BozoTheClown writes "The Mayfield Daily Blatt has this story about an high school science teacher who is trying for the Guiness record for "largest baloon stuck to wall with static electricity". He has a full size replica of the Hindenberg (no, not hydrogen filled, thank god) and, get this, 250 full-sized van de graff generators... better than rubbing the blimp on your head!" 250? Wow, that's like a Beowulf cluster of van de graff generators!!
(Read More... | 2 of 1045 comments | Stunts )
Are you sure that the ozone is being "pushed down?". It's almost impossible for gas to move from the stratoshpere into the troposhere... A more likely explanation would be that ozone is created at ground level by electrical sparking. Since ozone is just O3, any electrical discharge in an O2 "rich" area (ie, the atmosphere) will generate ozone. You know when you can "smell" static electricity? That's ozone. If you have a particularly strong thermal inversion, O3 can be prevented from floating up... however in those cases you almost invariably get high levels of H2S04 and that's usually a bigger concern (no shit!).
No, I fully understand your point and agree with what you are saying. All I'm trying to point out is that benchmarks that deal exclusively with performance and do not mention cost are necessary. In this case there is a clear winner and a clear loser, but that isn't always the situation, so as a general approach it doesn't work....
It's not easy to do that. Everyone has different weightings that they put on those categories. A honda gives fantastic price/performance, but if you want to win the Indie500, it is definitely not the right choice. Some people will pay a lot more for a small gain in performance because they need all the performance they can get. Others will take a significantly inferior product for even a small price drop because they just don't have the extra $100, period.
uh, yes... What I was trying to say (as if trying counts...) was:"
1. Linux has a steep learning curve. If you deny that you're a genius or a liar and the ratio is so in favour of the latter....
2. MC*E people are used to guis and are under the impression (rightly or wrongly) that guis equal ease-of-use.
3. A gui will reduce the resistence to incorporating Linux into their systems. This resistance is mostly fostered by 1 and 2. Olympus addresses these points.
4. Admins are not normal people (there I go, sounding like my mom again...). Given a system, it's really only a matter of time until they get curious enough to shake it till it breaks just to see what sort of pieces fall out. End users are content to point-n-click all the live-long day. Even an NT admin will eventually pick up the manual to find that faster, neater way to do stuff. Newbies, of course, are just bursting at the seams with enthusiasm (we hired a fresh grad here last week.... keen? oh yeah) anyway, that's what I meant to say...
No, a single gui will never give it all... but remember that we're discussing admins or to-be-admins, not the stereotypical end user. It's a fair assumption that these admins will want to expand their control over the machine as time progresses. It's like guitar. If you want to be a serious guitarist you need to be able to read sheet music, but that's tough to learn and makes an already steep learning curve near verticle. Enter TAB. The real guitar geeks will get around to sheet music, but TAB actually gets people playing the guitar fairly quickly....
I would rather have a smaller number of well maintained linux servers than a large number of insecure or broken linux boxes.
Well, I don't subscribe to the (semi-popular) view that gui = broken. It depends, obviously, what the rig is being used for.... I suspect that the average NT admin will choose to use his/her NT box for heavy lifting, until s/he becomes more comfortable with and confident in the Linux box. Part of initiating that level of comfort, of course, is a decent gui.
Certification is nice to show that you know some stuff, but is no where nere a minimum requirement for someone to administer a server
I agree... when the day arrives when a total system failure presents you with a multiple choice question and the correct answer will fix the problem, MC*Es will rule the world. Since I'm completely self-taught, however, the continued survival of my ego depends on me diss-ing the heavily-credentialed. (mind you, I just found out about atoi(char*) yesterday... so maybe there's something to be said for education)
It should only become easy, by people becoming more skilled in what they do, not in the interface.
I think the interface is very important. We use 'ls' to list files in a directory. Easy. I could cook up an OS where the same comand was 47 characters long, most of them pipes, l's and colons. viz:
frymaster{/opt]# i||llll|||;;;|::|;||l:l:::::\/\/|
Perl jokes aside, the choice of a simple intuitive word to represent the command indicates that someone was thinking about the interface, if even only on the most rudimentary level... Computers are supposed to be used. Therefore they must be useable...
No, I think the two are completely intertwined. Computers are supposed to be used. All of the imporvements in computing have been with the end goal of making them easier and more powerful. Perl was invented because it is easier and more powerful than C. C was invented because it was easier and more powerful (and portable) than assembly. Assembly was invented because it was easier and more powerful than flicking tiny switches to lodge 1s and 0s into RAM. Ultimately, it's all about making computer more useable. Witness Ted Nelson's third (fourth?) law: "It should be easier to use a computer than not use a computer."
"Beating" windows is a byproduct. There are two types of computer users: Those who use them now and those who don't but will in the fairly-near future. If Linux is going to expand then at least part of it will have to be into the first category which, currently, is mostly occupied by Windows users. If BeOS had 90% marketshare, I'd be talking about expanding into BeOS's turf.
Lastly, it does not necessarily correlate that accessibility by the "least common denominator" means the OS will become "shitty". Everybody can use a phone. Tell Bellcore their system is "shitty." Computers should be empowering.... that means that joe average should be able to access it, get up to speed fairly quickly and then, hopefully, after some time discover the clockwork behind glockinspiel show.
Sadly, though, Calgary is located on "Aspen Parkland" and "Montane" land and not prarie.... and I doubt "Silicon Aspen Parkland" would catch on.
1. We want more people/companies to use Linux as servers
2. People need to administer servers
With those assumptions in mind, let's look at the people who adminster servers. There are 4 potential categories of server admins.
1. *nix geeks
2. MC*E winders types
3. "other" (isn't Banyan Vines still in business?)
4. Newbies and aspiring server admins
Now, given assumption 1, that we want to see Linux expand, we will need to see a lot more admins be Linux savvy and Linux friendly. All of those future Linux admins will have to come from the 4 categories above. We've got category 1 wrapped up, so if we want more Linux admins it will have to be at the expense of 2, 3 and 4. Ignoring the VMS hold-overs from category 3, this boils down to acheiving 2 things:
1. Converting MC*E types to Linux
2. Convincing new admins that they would really rather do Linux than Winders
Olympus helps in both these cateogries. For the MC*E type, the ability to have access to the Linux box from a Win rig will make them more amenable to setting up a hetrogenous environment. Really, if I had a dollar for every WinAdmin who said they wouldn't consider incorporating Linux in their network because it was too tough to integrate... well, I'd have enough to go see a movie, but damn are movies expensive these days! And don't rattle off at me about Samba. Rattle off at those WinAdmins. Olympus will help gain converts from category 2. Mock MC*E's all you want... but keep in mind they can be converted and "see the light". Olympus will go a long way towards that.
Category 4, new admins, is much more fertile. Lots of aspiring admins go the MCSE route. There are a number of reasons for that, the biggest being that MCSE is an instant credetential. We have responded to that in part with the Red Hat cert. Another major reason for the continued success of NT is the illusion that it is easy to admin (it's an illusion because the troubleshooting of inevitable failures, in the long run, more than make up for the crunchy point-and-click ease of setup). By giving a straighforward config interface to Linux servers we provide newbies with real ease of use. I like to think of this in terms of "total ease of ownership". Once Linux runs, it runs. Easy. Making the config easy is step two.