Serial console servers, in answer to your question, provide a scalable way for systems to access via the network serial consoles. By being dedicated, moderately simple systems with 40+ serial cables, they can provide access (via telnet generally)
Up to here, I was with you -- but this is very bad advice. Every terminal server worth its price has ssh access nowadays. If you come around one that does only telnet, scream and run.
I'm old enough -- I was involved in the anti-US demonstrations 25 years ago.
But the GP is right nevertheless: The demonstrations at this time, and the reservations were about US politics, and distrust of US military. While we protested against US politics, we still went to the US and had many friends there. (25 years ago, there was also a peace movement in the US, not like today.)
Currently, I experience a growing dislike of US in total, that doesn't differentiate between people and politics any more; a dislike that is spawned by media reports that the US citizens actually side with the Neocon politics and that a new McCarthy area might be at the horizon. So, I know many European folks who say that they don't will go to the US privately any more, as long as they look as being a nation of nutcases.
What's frightening me most is that I, having been derided 25 years ago as US-foe (which I wasn't), am now derided as US-friend. Yes, being a "US-friend" is reason for mockery today. (And that without having changed my position much.) This illustrates the change of view that the GP meant.
Yes, and he predicted a religious fascist dictatorship in the USA.
I still wait for his prediction to come true completely. I suppose it won't take long, the process started already... For all the technical nonsense that he wrote, his insight in US society is downright scary. Here's to one of the great storytellers of the last century.
It doesn't matter if it hurts you or not, and I don't care. After all, modding is done for the benefit of other/. readers and not for you. Half of your post was an attack on the writing style of the GGP and not on its content and thus should be modded down as flamebait.
Does your native language not being English give you a particular license to make ad hominem attacks like this?
I don't see that I have attacked you personally; I wrote about the specific post of yours and its content, even citing your own words (`distrust'). Do you really think that I attack you personally by pointing out that/. is an international forum and the used language on/. is more akin to spoken language than to a written essay? Well, then you should check your sensitivity-meter -- especially in the light of your own writing style.
Or was it about the `distrust' that I took from your post? Surely not, because then your own post would be an ad-hominem attack itself -- and such a thing is not your style, is it? Or was the ad-hominem accusation a straw man, to deflect from your original inappropriate grammar lesson? No, no, no -- you wouldn't use such a stupid strategy, would you?
It's even easier to distrust posters who think that everybody in the world has to write perfect English, even on a discussion board where the style is more alike a spoken chat at a pub.
As a non-native English participant on this board, I hope you will get modded down.
Thanks for your comment, that was insightful. I have to admit that I don't know much about low-level digital cameras; I'm still using film for most of my pictures.
While I agree with your principal sentiment, the configuration cost is not an argument either. (Usually the user interfaces for non-experts are much better in proprietary software.) Proprietary products must be configured as well, and configuration of proprietary tools like Tivoli, Unicenter, or OpenView needs as much work as Nagios' setups do. I worked with all of them, and can assert that.
Nevertheless, the feature list check should be a first look, that is a given. For example, the OP gave the impression that he was looking for network performance management, too. To recommend Nagios for that is nonsense, Nagios doesn't record performance values and their changes and it's also hard to implement that with its simple check-and-exit-code model. Nagios is fine for event and outage (availability) management, but not for performance or capacity stuff.
Yesterday, on amazon.de, I wanted to listen to a snippet for a CD that I'm interested in -- and it didn't work, because I have RealPlayer 10, and that product has no codec for the older real audio format that was in RealPlayer 8. The codec is not downloadable on Real's Web site either. RealPlayer 8 is not downloadable from there as well, as a stop-gap measure. I had to dig out an old version from some old CDs.
And that's on Linux. On Windows, it's worse -- this is spyware that cannot be stopped easily contacting its home base. I spent five minutes in the configuration dialog to turn it off, and when my Windows firewall still informed me about outbound connections, I de-installed it.
So, I still consider Real software as crap; Helix not withstanding.
Which brings to mind a Dilbert strip about how the outsourced work had been so undercut while being bounced to foreign markets that eventually it went to the lowest bidder -- the original company.
You might mean that this is irony, but you're describing reality. I was recently involved in a project where the local contractor should not be used because higher management decreed that offshoring is the call of the day. Then the contract was given to WIPRO, who hired the original local contractors to do the work -- after all, with their internal knowledge of the clients they were so productive that they were cheaper than the low-wage Indian IT workers.
Please note that I'm not against outsourcing per se -- I think it's very sensible to use a contractor for his specialized skills and to achieve better work results when this task is not part of a company's central business. As a CEO, I don't do my company's tax declaration myself either, I hire accountants. Using such contractors is outsourcing, plain and simple. The problem, IMNSHO, is that nowadays public discussions often equate outsourcing to offshoring. I'm all for local outsourcing, and also for globalized outsourcing where it makes sense; but all so often the business decisions follow only the current fad and make no business sense whatsoever.
Hey, that would be really great, as it makes it easier to mirror released files of selected SF projects.
I'm one of the CTAN administrators, and we often have the requirement to mirror released files of TeX-related projects on SourceForge. That is better for the TeX community since TeX-Live and eventually MikTeX prefer to take their upstream material from CTAN, their workflow processes are set up this way. (We have downloads of >6TB per month on our three main nodes currently, not counting our dozens of mirror sites. Yes, TeX is alive and kicking!)
Currently we're working with a mirror script that I wrote that scraps the SF HTML download pages and determines the files to mirror and the files to delete. Having stable URLs for downloads would make the job of that script much easier and would create easier operations on our side.
So, here's to let you know that advances in this area would really be appreciated.
If you want to know more about MS Research results, you just have to look in any ACM proceedings. They and IBM's TJ Watson Research Center publish more refereed papers than any other commercial research organization. Especially recommended is POPL and other programming language conferences.
Some well-known researcher called the emperor naked. Maybe they believe him more than they did the practicioners that pointed the Semantic Web's problems out long before. Here we'll see that fairy tales are not true -- a small child is not sufficient, we need a bigshot to notice.
First, I would count VMware under Linux virtualization, too. After all, Linux is its primary platform and ESX is Linux.
That said, your list of open source virtualization products have one missing feature that I don't want to miss any more: snapshots, the ability to go back in time to a previous state that is known to be stable. (Or an erroneous state; it's also great to be able to try out different remedies for a problem that one has and where the repair must be thoroughly tested before it's rolled out on 1000s of systems.)
Yes, some SAN products give me snapshots as well. But many environments where we work don't have the money for an EMC box, whereas they can afford VMware.
If you don't try to hold your breath, exposure to space for half a minute or so is unlikely to produce permanent injury. [...] You do not explode and your blood does not boil because of the containing effect of your skin and circulatory system. You do not instantly freeze because, although the space environment is typically very cold, heat does not transfer away from a body quickly. Loss of consciousness occurs only after the body has depleted the supply of oxygen in the blood.
I.e., Lovell's citation is Right Stuff(tm) blabber. That's Hollywood imaging, but not reality. Go and read the FAQ, it's interesting.
The only problem with your argument is that does not represent the facts completely.
In Germany, the real power grid is not underground either. (From my backyard, I can see dozens of big power grid poles (> 10m high, that's ca. 30ft), since I live in the neighbourhood of a power distribution center.) What is underground, is just the distribution grid within a town -- and, yes, that is difference to many US towns that I have been at.
What actually seems to be different is the stability of the power grid. A power outage is a very rare occasion here in Germany. I live near Frankfurt, and we had perhaps one in the last three years, and that lasted for just five minutes. My USV didn't even needed to shut down the servers. My US friends tell me much more often about power outages. But maybe this is different from region to region as well. There are many regions in US with much harsher weather than we've got usually in Germany -- when the weather really gets bad, nothing will prevent power outages.
And while your opinion about our organizing efficieny is flattering, the reality is different. The streets are digged up all the time, for gas, water, electricity, phone lines, by the different utility companies, without any coordination to speak of. When the water company has just closed the street again, the gas company starts to dig in again. Actually, the missing coordination is an often-heard complaint of people who have to endure the construction noise.
Obviously, you've never read Ken McLeod or Iain M. Banks.
Too centered on US authors, may be?
(Btw, I consider Heinlein one of the best SF storytellers of the last century. I'm just wondering at this prize, because Glory Road ain't one of his good books. He's written great stuff, but this run-of-the-mill fantasy doesn't come close.)
Slashdot Mirror
Thank you for illustrating my point so vividly, though probably without intent.
But the GP is right nevertheless: The demonstrations at this time, and the reservations were about US politics, and distrust of US military. While we protested against US politics, we still went to the US and had many friends there. (25 years ago, there was also a peace movement in the US, not like today.)
Currently, I experience a growing dislike of US in total, that doesn't differentiate between people and politics any more; a dislike that is spawned by media reports that the US citizens actually side with the Neocon politics and that a new McCarthy area might be at the horizon. So, I know many European folks who say that they don't will go to the US privately any more, as long as they look as being a nation of nutcases.
What's frightening me most is that I, having been derided 25 years ago as US-foe (which I wasn't), am now derided as US-friend. Yes, being a "US-friend" is reason for mockery today. (And that without having changed my position much.) This illustrates the change of view that the GP meant.
I still wait for his prediction to come true completely. I suppose it won't take long, the process started already... For all the technical nonsense that he wrote, his insight in US society is downright scary. Here's to one of the great storytellers of the last century.
No, 1984 is much to obvious and could be criticized by NGOs. Read "Brave New World" to see where we are heading to.
Or was it about the `distrust' that I took from your post? Surely not, because then your own post would be an ad-hominem attack itself -- and such a thing is not your style, is it? Or was the ad-hominem accusation a straw man, to deflect from your original inappropriate grammar lesson? No, no, no -- you wouldn't use such a stupid strategy, would you?
As a non-native English participant on this board, I hope you will get modded down.
The intro at Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marketing is not too bad.
Marketing is a honest task.
Thanks for your comment, that was insightful. I have to admit that I don't know much about low-level digital cameras; I'm still using film for most of my pictures.
Maybe I'm simply not in the know -- I usually do dark scenes without flash with my Nikon F2, Ilford film, a stativ, and a good lens. :-)
Nevertheless, the feature list check should be a first look, that is a given. For example, the OP gave the impression that he was looking for network performance management, too. To recommend Nagios for that is nonsense, Nagios doesn't record performance values and their changes and it's also hard to implement that with its simple check-and-exit-code model. Nagios is fine for event and outage (availability) management, but not for performance or capacity stuff.
Yesterday, on amazon.de, I wanted to listen to a snippet for a CD that I'm interested in -- and it didn't work, because I have RealPlayer 10, and that product has no codec for the older real audio format that was in RealPlayer 8. The codec is not downloadable on Real's Web site either. RealPlayer 8 is not downloadable from there as well, as a stop-gap measure. I had to dig out an old version from some old CDs.
And that's on Linux. On Windows, it's worse -- this is spyware that cannot be stopped easily contacting its home base. I spent five minutes in the configuration dialog to turn it off, and when my Windows firewall still informed me about outbound connections, I de-installed it.
So, I still consider Real software as crap; Helix not withstanding.
You might mean that this is irony, but you're describing reality. I was recently involved in a project where the local contractor should not be used because higher management decreed that offshoring is the call of the day. Then the contract was given to WIPRO, who hired the original local contractors to do the work -- after all, with their internal knowledge of the clients they were so productive that they were cheaper than the low-wage Indian IT workers.
Please note that I'm not against outsourcing per se -- I think it's very sensible to use a contractor for his specialized skills and to achieve better work results when this task is not part of a company's central business. As a CEO, I don't do my company's tax declaration myself either, I hire accountants. Using such contractors is outsourcing, plain and simple. The problem, IMNSHO, is that nowadays public discussions often equate outsourcing to offshoring. I'm all for local outsourcing, and also for globalized outsourcing where it makes sense; but all so often the business decisions follow only the current fad and make no business sense whatsoever.
Sigh, but that's live in our current IT business.
This is not true, PJ confirms that the posts are from Linus: http://www.groklaw.net/comment.php?mode=display&si d=20060727140038810&title=This+is+or+is+not+Linus& type=article&order=&hideanonymous=0&pid=466194#c46 6294
I'm one of the CTAN administrators, and we often have the requirement to mirror released files of TeX-related projects on SourceForge. That is better for the TeX community since TeX-Live and eventually MikTeX prefer to take their upstream material from CTAN, their workflow processes are set up this way. (We have downloads of >6TB per month on our three main nodes currently, not counting our dozens of mirror sites. Yes, TeX is alive and kicking!)
Currently we're working with a mirror script that I wrote that scraps the SF HTML download pages and determines the files to mirror and the files to delete. Having stable URLs for downloads would make the job of that script much easier and would create easier operations on our side.
So, here's to let you know that advances in this area would really be appreciated.
If you want to know more about MS Research results, you just have to look in any ACM proceedings. They and IBM's TJ Watson Research Center publish more refereed papers than any other commercial research organization. Especially recommended is POPL and other programming language conferences.
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not "Eureka!" (I found it!) but "That's funny..."
It's commonly attributed to Isaac Asimov, but I don't know the exact citation.
News at 11...
That said, your list of open source virtualization products have one missing feature that I don't want to miss any more: snapshots, the ability to go back in time to a previous state that is known to be stable. (Or an erroneous state; it's also great to be able to try out different remedies for a problem that one has and where the repair must be thoroughly tested before it's rolled out on 1000s of systems.)
Yes, some SAN products give me snapshots as well. But many environments where we work don't have the money for an EMC box, whereas they can afford VMware.
The only thing that he forgot to mention is the advantage of snapshots.
You don't want to be accused to be a troll? Bad luck -- if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck...
In Germany, the real power grid is not underground either. (From my backyard, I can see dozens of big power grid poles (> 10m high, that's ca. 30ft), since I live in the neighbourhood of a power distribution center.) What is underground, is just the distribution grid within a town -- and, yes, that is difference to many US towns that I have been at.
What actually seems to be different is the stability of the power grid. A power outage is a very rare occasion here in Germany. I live near Frankfurt, and we had perhaps one in the last three years, and that lasted for just five minutes. My USV didn't even needed to shut down the servers. My US friends tell me much more often about power outages. But maybe this is different from region to region as well. There are many regions in US with much harsher weather than we've got usually in Germany -- when the weather really gets bad, nothing will prevent power outages.
And while your opinion about our organizing efficieny is flattering, the reality is different. The streets are digged up all the time, for gas, water, electricity, phone lines, by the different utility companies, without any coordination to speak of. When the water company has just closed the street again, the gas company starts to dig in again. Actually, the missing coordination is an often-heard complaint of people who have to endure the construction noise.
Too centered on US authors, may be?
(Btw, I consider Heinlein one of the best SF storytellers of the last century. I'm just wondering at this prize, because Glory Road ain't one of his good books. He's written great stuff, but this run-of-the-mill fantasy doesn't come close.)