I think Microsoft's answer should be "We ain't going to bundle sh*t. We are taking MPlayer out, and we'll leave it to the user to install whatever he wants."
Why should microsoft be forced to bundle competitors' producs? What about regression testing, supporting bugs in those programs, etc?
What is a good open source alternative for centralized information sharing (workgroup planning, email, address book, etc) ? Yes, email can be done by anyone... On the other hand most POP3 implementations out of the box are significantly less secure than exchange because the data -- and especially the authentication -- is transfered in cleartext.
and p.s. it does not cost you anything more than hardware to set up a windows update-like service either. We cache all QFEs on our server, then generate recommended updates based on the xml catalog published by MS (see hfnetchk). This list is processed on every machine in the logon script.
Believe it or not, I have not had to clean up any worms from my Windows machines last year.
Why? Because my network has a firewall. Then my machine has a firewall. And I run a virus checker. And I keep reasonably up to date with patches. And no, it's really not a big deal.
In our last audit, guess what we found. Windows 2000 servers on the audited networks were patched. Linux machines were not patched for recent holes. Why? The metality that Linux is secure out of the box. We showed how the audited network's firewall (running Linux, because it's k00l and the admin was a linux zealot) was rooted in 15 seconds using a familiar recent exploit.
Why shouldn't Linus send out the same survey to see what will take to get Linux on the desktop in place of windows?
Maybe because all the geeks would be threatened by the reponses? What, replace sendmail configuration with something that does not take a whole book to document? Don't require novice users (and those who cannot type) to use the command line? Easy printer configuration? Where would linux geeks find jobs where they can actually look down at people?
I do not see anythign wrong with what MS is doing. If they asked me, and they implemented all my suggestions, I would use their product. Every product should be customer driven instead of techno-nerd-programmer driven.
...you don't place your servers and build the server room around them. You build the server room first, then you place your servers.... so, for future reference, you put the cart before the horse.
Since my job includes SQL design as a subset of my duties (i'm a developer/architect, not a DBA) these two tools are significantly more valuable than ERWin.
...with flexresp2, implemented in hardware? I confess I have not read the pdf, but I have read the article.
http://cerberus.sourcefire.com/~jeff/archives/sn or t/sp_respond2/
to quote:
Active response is not guaranteed to sucessfully terminate connections. Snort is a passive system, except when used in 'inline' mode. In a passive configuration, the process of active response is a race between Snort and the endpoints in network communication. Depending on the CPU and/or bus speed of a system running Snort, available memory, I/O states and network latency Snort may or may not win this race in which case active response will have no effect.
Active response is a supplementary tool, something deployed in addition to other security technologies. It should not be solely relied upon to protect systems or services that are known to be vulnerable.
The process of transmitting active response packets will "block" the rest of the system, meaning that while Snort is busy sending TCP reset or ICMP unreachable packets, it is unable to capture packets and perform other intrusion detection functions. The amount of time spent performing active response is extremely small (measured in milliseconds) but can result in a degredation of performance in high-speed environments.
Unfortunatelly RAD development (especially UI) was Borland's strong point. If they did abandon that, I am afraid they may end up being clobbered in the market by Visual Studio, at least on the windows platform. Will non-windows sales be sufficient to keep the company in business? I doubt it, at least judging by the/. OSS community which seems to equate open source with free.
So, for their sake, I hope they kept the awesome RAD features they had. And furthermore, I hope they changed their mentality of abandoning versions of the compiler and forcing the user to buy whole new versions.
Case in point: Visual C++ 6.0 had what,4-6 service packs? C++ Builder 5.0 has one. And not even that fixed all the annoying UI bugs. Borland is terrible when it comes to fixing bugs in existing releases. This is the very reason I have gradually moved my development to Microsoft tools, except when the UI is more than 80% of the total application code. And this is why I have not bothered to update my C++ Builder 5. At least I know the bugs in this version, and I know they will not fix them and break my work-arounds:)
Sorry borland, but you lost me as a customer because of your policy of abandoning released products. You had a great product, but you had awful post-sales support. For a $1500 (?) piece of software (enterprise version), I expect a lot more!
some annoying bugs in the 5.0 version:
1. In two of my programs, the compiler always gives a bogus compilation error on the first full build. All I have to do is hit "build" again and the build error magically vanishes. Fine and dandy for me, but this will confuse someone else taking over the code.
2. On a certain application, the UI locks up in the "link" stage periodically. I have to kill the task and restart it.
3. How hard it is to fix the access violation when users select a new console application??? I get it 90% of the time.
4. Who the hell implemented code insight in C++ builder?? It's a fine feature if you can wait 20-30 seconds for it to decide on the proper hint (during which time it locks up your UI). And i have a 2P, 2GHz Xeon workstation with 1Gb of ram. I just turn it off.
5. The TODO list works fine with TODOs embedded in the code. Just try to use it by adding TODOs directly to the list (using the UI, instead of embedding the items in comments)... You can say goodbye to it after a few items.
6. The XML parser for the project files is somewhat weird. If I remember correctly, XML is supposed to ignore white spaces; however simply removing a library reference using notepad can cause the whole project to be unopenable. If I use the BC++ editor, it works fine.. however the two project files are visually identical side by side.
7. Access violations and screwed up code generation for ActiveX and type libraries. Every time I create COM or ActiveX I expect to have to manually edit the makefiles, mostly because either it access violates during the code generation or it just simply forget to generate certain code.
These are all bugs that the service pack should've addressed. No, I am not the only one seeing them, all developers at our site have this issue. There are tons more bugs, I am just blocking them out of memory right now. Comparatively, the Visual C++ UI is rock solid. BCB5 UI barely edges out the VB6 UI if that gives you any idea.
Just because you switch to open source, it doesn't mean you switch to free software. There is plenty of open source that needs to be licensed for commercial or government use.
It also depends if the govt is willing to absolve open source authors of all liability. I doubt VN govt is ready to do that. If i were to be held liable for my free software breaking in VN, I would very well put a licensing clause that it may not be used in VN.
Nothing good can come from government mandates, especially in a country which still has a communist mentality at the higher levels.
FreeBSD is alive and well here as well. We use it to run a number of firewalls, a few web server, and a network monitoring station. It is a lot cleaner than linux, and integrates userland better than Linux.
So basically, we have a heavy Windows installation protected by FreeBSD running IPF, snort, etc.
And I am in the process of installing BSD on a diskless PC. I got 4.8 down to 8 megs, which includes kernel, shell, userland commands, network tools, etc. You come to appreciate features as the freebsd jail when you do things like this.
I wouldn't suggest an upgrade to 5.1. It currently has GIANT still in kernel, so in some cases it is trying to do the same thing twice or with significant overhead. I believe they aim to improve that in 5.2.
On the other hand, if performance is not your goal, 5.1 may be ready for some limited use. But I do not see the point, unless you really need some hardware support which is not in 4.9.
It was an awful comparison. The 5.x series is known to have performance problems and experimental code. It is nowhere near production grade yet, and 4.x will beat it as far as performance goes.
Yes, there is no atmosphere in space. But people, stop being nerdy. They were not testing the enteprise for space deployment.
Can't people separate science from fiction?
Is it hard to assume that it was just an aerodynamics test, and the object under test happened to be the enterprise just because it had a pretty, aerodynamic shape? If they test the aerodynamics of a carrot, are people going to whine about the different viscosity of common garden soil?
Would virtualpc work? I have no idea, I don't own a mac. But I think it might.
Eventually libnetmd will be completed. That would be your best bet.
Personally, I think OpenMG (the sony program for managing your MD) is the most god-awful piece of software developed in some dark corner of Sri Lanka. It is very unstable, clunky, and limited. I hate it so much I ended up using Real One to upload music to my MD.. and I hate Real software as well (because it keeps hooking itself in my registry).. but at least the UI is more stable than OpenMG..
(MG = The G could stand for garbage, but that would be an insult to garbage everywhere.)
I always wanted just one thing: One big neon sign on my rear window, that I can program with whatever message I wanted at the moment.
My most used macro would probably be:
HANG UP THE DAMN PHONE AND STEP ON THE GAS, YOU MORON!
I *hate* people who get on the freeway at 40 MPH just because they want to concentrate on their phone conversation. And I can't even give them a dirty look, I got tinted windows!
1. What is the use of this data? Who accesses it? How many concurent users? What type of transfer rate? Will you need funky network cards (for example 10GB nics which may not work in some solutions)
2. Can you accept downtime? If not, how much redundancy do you need? How fast can you get replacement parts?
3. Do you need specialized apps running on the machine (such as virus checkers, management tools, etc)?
For a professional installation, I would say you would at least want to ensure some redundancy. For example, an hp Proliant DL-360 G2 or G3 with redundant power supplies, redundant fans and a drive array or two. The server itself is fairly cheap, what will cost you money is all those drives you will need to buy. However it's a sturdy box.
I don't mean to single out hp, you can look for other alternatives as well. We do run an hp/compaq shop, and I am familiar with them. All this redundancy helps in ways you don't expect. For example tonight I was able to move the server from one rack to another without losing service.. I disconnected one power supply and connected it to the new rack, then disconnected one network cable (the 2 onboard NIcs were teamed) and rerouted it.. dropped the other nic and cable, mounted the server in the rack and connected the remaining cables.. The users at the other end had no idea anything happened.
This may not sound like a big deal to many, but for us to schedule a 30-minute shutdown of a critical server requires up to a month advance notice.
You could of course accomplish the same thing using a cluster setup, but not without some major headaches. Clusters are cool on paper but for most users the bang-to-headache ratio is too low to justify it.
Buy a cellular telephone subscription, write a java (or whatever the phone supports) applet to interface with your monitoring hardware (insight manager or whatever it may be), and have the phone send an SMS message in case something goes down...
Or even better, use the Nextel/Verizon walkie-talkie feature.. nothing like a syntehsized voice announcing "Help, router ABC has fallen and it can't get up" to your entire support group.
Never mind, I looked again and it's at $820. I'm not an experienced ebayer so I don't know how the price would be crashing so fast, but I'd like to know that trick for the next time I place a bid.;)
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I think Microsoft's answer should be "We ain't going to bundle sh*t. We are taking MPlayer out, and we'll leave it to the user to install whatever he wants."
Why should microsoft be forced to bundle competitors' producs? What about regression testing, supporting bugs in those programs, etc?
Avoid DRM? You must be kidding. Besides, DRM only affects media made for DRM.
Non-compliance to standards? Since when is there a standard for media players?
who-nows-what in the future? Great, real player is someone we can trust with the future of less-than-savy computer players.
die realsched.exe, die.
die realevent.exe die.
I believe a lot of people profit from GPL.
So what you want is this ??
;)
Yeah... the bellbottoms of the computer world.
Is Dimentia how you spell Dementia when you got Dementia?
"Why would anyone need exchange? "
What is a good open source alternative for centralized information sharing (workgroup planning, email, address book, etc) ? Yes, email can be done by anyone... On the other hand most POP3 implementations out of the box are significantly less secure than exchange because the data -- and especially the authentication -- is transfered in cleartext.
and p.s. it does not cost you anything more than hardware to set up a windows update-like service either. We cache all QFEs on our server, then generate recommended updates based on the xml catalog published by MS (see hfnetchk). This list is processed on every machine in the logon script.
Believe it or not, I have not had to clean up any worms from my Windows machines last year.
Why? Because my network has a firewall. Then my machine has a firewall. And I run a virus checker. And I keep reasonably up to date with patches. And no, it's really not a big deal.
In our last audit, guess what we found. Windows 2000 servers on the audited networks were patched. Linux machines were not patched for recent holes. Why? The metality that Linux is secure out of the box. We showed how the audited network's firewall (running Linux, because it's k00l and the admin was a linux zealot) was rooted in 15 seconds using a familiar recent exploit.
Why shouldn't Linus send out the same survey to see what will take to get Linux on the desktop in place of windows?
Maybe because all the geeks would be threatened by the reponses? What, replace sendmail configuration with something that does not take a whole book to document? Don't require novice users (and those who cannot type) to use the command line? Easy printer configuration? Where would linux geeks find jobs where they can actually look down at people?
I do not see anythign wrong with what MS is doing. If they asked me, and they implemented all my suggestions, I would use their product. Every product should be customer driven instead of techno-nerd-programmer driven.
...you don't place your servers and build the server room around them. You build the server room first, then you place your servers. ...
so, for future reference, you put the cart before the horse.
I assume that you are working with relational databases, although you don't mention it.. (data modeling could mean a lot of things)
:)
Some DBMSs have some decent, albeit limited graphical design tools (MSSQL, Access..)
together from borland does entity relationship diagramming, and so much more. (great tool)
I believe IBM's rational rose may also do it.
Since my job includes SQL design as a subset of my duties (i'm a developer/architect, not a DBA) these two tools are significantly more valuable than ERWin.
I just wish I could get my boss to buy them.
...with flexresp2, implemented in hardware? I confess I have not read the pdf, but I have read the article.
n or t/sp_respond2/
http://cerberus.sourcefire.com/~jeff/archives/s
to quote:
Active response is not guaranteed to sucessfully terminate connections. Snort is a passive
system, except when used in 'inline' mode. In a passive configuration, the process of active
response is a race between Snort and the endpoints in network communication. Depending
on the CPU and/or bus speed of a system running Snort, available memory, I/O states and
network latency Snort may or may not win this race in which case active response will have
no effect.
Active response is a supplementary tool, something deployed in addition to other security
technologies. It should not be solely relied upon to protect systems or services that are known
to be vulnerable.
The process of transmitting active response packets will "block" the rest of the system, meaning
that while Snort is busy sending TCP reset or ICMP unreachable packets, it is unable to capture
packets and perform other intrusion detection functions. The amount of time spent performing
active response is extremely small (measured in milliseconds) but can result in a degredation
of performance in high-speed environments.
Unfortunatelly RAD development (especially UI) was Borland's strong point. If they did abandon that, I am afraid they may end up being clobbered in the market by Visual Studio, at least on the windows platform. Will non-windows sales be sufficient to keep the company in business? I doubt it, at least judging by the /. OSS community which seems to equate open source with free.
:)
So, for their sake, I hope they kept the awesome RAD features they had. And furthermore, I hope they changed their mentality of abandoning versions of the compiler and forcing the user to buy whole new versions.
Case in point: Visual C++ 6.0 had what,4-6 service packs? C++ Builder 5.0 has one. And not even that fixed all the annoying UI bugs. Borland is terrible when it comes to fixing bugs in existing releases. This is the very reason I have gradually moved my development to Microsoft tools, except when the UI is more than 80% of the total application code. And this is why I have not bothered to update my C++ Builder 5. At least I know the bugs in this version, and I know they will not fix them and break my work-arounds
Sorry borland, but you lost me as a customer because of your policy of abandoning released products. You had a great product, but you had awful post-sales support. For a $1500 (?) piece of software (enterprise version), I expect a lot more!
some annoying bugs in the 5.0 version:
1. In two of my programs, the compiler always gives a bogus compilation error on the first full build. All I have to do is hit "build" again and the build error magically vanishes. Fine and dandy for me, but this will confuse someone else taking over the code.
2. On a certain application, the UI locks up in the "link" stage periodically. I have to kill the task and restart it.
3. How hard it is to fix the access violation when users select a new console application??? I get it 90% of the time.
4. Who the hell implemented code insight in C++ builder?? It's a fine feature if you can wait 20-30 seconds for it to decide on the proper hint (during which time it locks up your UI). And i have a 2P, 2GHz Xeon workstation with 1Gb of ram. I just turn it off.
5. The TODO list works fine with TODOs embedded in the code. Just try to use it by adding TODOs directly to the list (using the UI, instead of embedding the items in comments)... You can say goodbye to it after a few items.
6. The XML parser for the project files is somewhat weird. If I remember correctly, XML is supposed to ignore white spaces; however simply removing a library reference using notepad can cause the whole project to be unopenable. If I use the BC++ editor, it works fine.. however the two project files are visually identical side by side.
7. Access violations and screwed up code generation for ActiveX and type libraries. Every time I create COM or ActiveX I expect to have to manually edit the makefiles, mostly because either it access violates during the code generation or it just simply forget to generate certain code.
These are all bugs that the service pack should've addressed. No, I am not the only one seeing them, all developers at our site have this issue. There are tons more bugs, I am just blocking them out of memory right now. Comparatively, the Visual C++ UI is rock solid. BCB5 UI barely edges out the VB6 UI if that gives you any idea.
Just because you switch to open source, it doesn't mean you switch to free software. There is plenty of open source that needs to be licensed for commercial or government use.
It also depends if the govt is willing to absolve open source authors of all liability. I doubt VN govt is ready to do that. If i were to be held liable for my free software breaking in VN, I would very well put a licensing clause that it may not be used in VN.
Nothing good can come from government mandates, especially in a country which still has a communist mentality at the higher levels.
Which image? FreeBSD?
8 6/
Suuure.... Here:
ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/ISO-IMAGES-i3
FreeBSD is alive and well here as well. We use it to run a number of firewalls, a few web server, and a network monitoring station. It is a lot cleaner than linux, and integrates userland better than Linux.
So basically, we have a heavy Windows installation protected by FreeBSD running IPF, snort, etc.
And I am in the process of installing BSD on a diskless PC. I got 4.8 down to 8 megs, which includes kernel, shell, userland commands, network tools, etc. You come to appreciate features as the freebsd jail when you do things like this.
I wouldn't suggest an upgrade to 5.1. It currently has GIANT still in kernel, so in some cases it is trying to do the same thing twice or with significant overhead. I believe they aim to improve that in 5.2.
On the other hand, if performance is not your goal, 5.1 may be ready for some limited use. But I do not see the point, unless you really need some hardware support which is not in 4.9.
It was an awful comparison. The 5.x series is known to have performance problems and experimental code. It is nowhere near production grade yet, and 4.x will beat it as far as performance goes.
Yes, there is no atmosphere in space. But people, stop being nerdy. They were not testing the enteprise for space deployment.
Can't people separate science from fiction?
Is it hard to assume that it was just an aerodynamics test, and the object under test happened to be the enterprise just because it had a pretty, aerodynamic shape? If they test the aerodynamics of a carrot, are people going to whine about the different viscosity of common garden soil?
This was NOT a deep space test!
Would virtualpc work? I have no idea, I don't own a mac. But I think it might.
Eventually libnetmd will be completed. That would be your best bet.
Personally, I think OpenMG (the sony program for managing your MD) is the most god-awful piece of software developed in some dark corner of Sri Lanka. It is very unstable, clunky, and limited. I hate it so much I ended up using Real One to upload music to my MD.. and I hate Real software as well (because it keeps hooking itself in my registry).. but at least the UI is more stable than OpenMG..
(MG = The G could stand for garbage, but that would be an insult to garbage everywhere.)
Not sure how many times this has to be brought up, but.. you can't compare GHz across different processor architecture.
Case in point, the 500 MHz Alpha could keep up with processors way above its clock speed.
I always wanted just one thing: One big neon sign on my rear window, that I can program with whatever message I wanted at the moment.
My most used macro would probably be:
HANG UP THE DAMN PHONE AND STEP ON THE GAS, YOU MORON!
I *hate* people who get on the freeway at 40 MPH just because they want to concentrate on their phone conversation. And I can't even give them a dirty look, I got tinted windows!
1. What is the use of this data? Who accesses it? How many concurent users? What type of transfer rate? Will you need funky network cards (for example 10GB nics which may not work in some solutions)
2. Can you accept downtime? If not, how much redundancy do you need? How fast can you get replacement parts?
3. Do you need specialized apps running on the machine (such as virus checkers, management tools, etc)?
For a professional installation, I would say you would at least want to ensure some redundancy. For example, an hp Proliant DL-360 G2 or G3 with redundant power supplies, redundant fans and a drive array or two. The server itself is fairly cheap, what will cost you money is all those drives you will need to buy. However it's a sturdy box.
I don't mean to single out hp, you can look for other alternatives as well. We do run an hp/compaq shop, and I am familiar with them.
All this redundancy helps in ways you don't expect. For example tonight I was able to move the server from one rack to another without losing service.. I disconnected one power supply and connected it to the new rack, then disconnected one network cable (the 2 onboard NIcs were teamed) and rerouted it.. dropped the other nic and cable, mounted the server in the rack and connected the remaining cables.. The users at the other end had no idea anything happened.
This may not sound like a big deal to many, but for us to schedule a 30-minute shutdown of a critical server requires up to a month advance notice.
You could of course accomplish the same thing using a cluster setup, but not without some major headaches. Clusters are cool on paper but for most users the bang-to-headache ratio is too low to justify it.
Buy a cellular telephone subscription, write a java (or whatever the phone supports) applet to interface with your monitoring hardware (insight manager or whatever it may be), and have the phone send an SMS message in case something goes down...
Or even better, use the Nextel/Verizon walkie-talkie feature.. nothing like a syntehsized voice announcing "Help, router ABC has fallen and it can't get up" to your entire support group.
Yeah, that works for all those planned outages, but what about those unplanned ones? Wouldn't you have to carry the phone with you all the time?
Never mind, I looked again and it's at $820. I'm not an experienced ebayer so I don't know how the price would be crashing so fast, but I'd like to know that trick for the next time I place a bid. ;)