I'm willing to share my medical history to the world to protect medical insurers from the grinding influence of government.
THe only problem is when health care executives and medical specialists are unable to purchase porches and drink $2,000 bottles of wine, the entire universe will come to a halt.
You obviously didn't have a clue about purchasing, or didn't have a manager or purchasing person who did.
You don't buy things through GSA. GSA holds the contracts for whatever you are going to buy. If you call staples and order the pen, the price is based upon whatever price was agreed to in the GSA contract. It is ordred by your agency and shipped to your agency.
If you buy off contract, there are still ways around the formal bidding process. You can get a mini-bid for purchases up to around $20,000 by getting quotes from a couple of vendors. You may be confusing budget issues with the agencies accounting office with the ordering process.
I recently contracted on a project that had specific monies allocated to it in the agencies budget (and fast-tracked for release) I ordered about $750,000 of servers from IBM and a newly released ESS and received the whole kit in about 2.5 weeks (the build time for the hardware)
Government pays slow, because they can. I once heard an agency accounting dork joke about how their average Net-30 invoice is paid in 150 days. The vendors cannot afford to lose gov't business, so they put up with it.
The problem isn't the Union -- it's the government.
The government created the Canadian health service, which in turn made it impossible for medical workers to negotiate via collective bargaining.
The "lazy union worker" image is just that -- an image pushed by business and the media. And while some things, particularly senority systems and the greviance process, seem very strange and wasteful, they are there because employers like railroads, meat packers, health services and school boards screwed their employees in those areas.
I expect anti-union attitude amongst IT staff and programmers will change as their jobs are rendered obsolete by automation and cheap competition.
What you are suggesting has been done since the 70's at least.
Various entities create one-time pads based on cosmic waves or the behavior of radioactive items. They then produce a large pad and then re-use for a specified number of times by manipulating it with various algorithims. The algorithms are sent in a seperate one-time pad.
All of the major ideas in encyrption have existed for decades or centuries. Future advances will come algorithms that deliver degrees of randomness. Future flaws encyptions will come from subtle errors in those algorithims.
I don't think that can happen in the open-source world. The whole windows model integrates filesystems, network user-ids and machines transparently and securely. That is what people mean when they compare NT to the VMS os of VAX fame.
To shoehorn that sort of model on Unix would be difficult -- to do so on Linux would be impossible. The "Trusted" Unix OS's hit the nail on the head from a filesystem point-of-view, but except for DCE (which is a nightmare) makes no allowance for networked users.
I think the next evolutionary step for this sort of thing is a "Trusted-AFS on crack" which would create a universal, virtual filesystem namespace instead of local filesystems and a universally available LDAP or other database. If you have used Tivoli Enterprise software, think of it as having Framework (except it works well) mixed with the AFS network filesystem.
I looked for a stable Win-NFS client -- the only ones available at the time were very expensive. I think the only people using it were DoD/DoE and Petroleum types who had very fixed requirements.
That's what led me to use SMB -- samba works very well and I already paid for the client when I bought windows!
That being said, I don't think anything offers what the Windows 2000 domain model does. You get Dynamic DNS and authentication for both clients and machines that also allow you to place ACLs on filesystem objects.
I'd say the closest thing to this in the Unix world would be LDAP on an SGI or Linux box with the XFS filesystem and bind 9 (supports DDNS, right?). That would require alot of hacking just to get what Windows gives you out of the box.
I do not mean any insult to Samba itself -- it's a great project run by some world-class coders. That was one example meant to illustrate the real crux of his problem: Who is going to maintain all of this custom crap?
You are correct that open-source doesn't mean fix it yourself -- but open source isn't an IT nirvana either.
Let's assume one day this guy's company grows and he hires a sys admin, or a programmer who wears a sys admin hat. The original poster is an attorney now and is busy running his company.
Who in the hell has the time to do routine IT crap, and figure out all sorts of bizarre configurations. If you stick to standard configurations you'll be able to find people to run/fix/upgrade/maintain them. Unless you are a huge organization with lots of technical expertise, don't customize for the sake of doing it or to save $500.
This leads to another thought: If you don't want to run non-free software -- don't use Windows! If you want to adhere to open standards -- don't use a proprietary directory scheme! If you want a free user directory -- don't use a domain!
You gave as an example setting up a Samba DC versus using Windows 2000 Server... that example should be telling launching redflags as you ask this question...
If you want to run a Windows domain -- use windows. While you *CAN* use samba, is it worth your time (which is in very limited supply if I read your post correctly) and your money to setup a custom, "free" solution to everything?
What do you do when Windows XP ServicePack 8 stops interacting with your Samba DC?? Do you stop studying for the bar, drop your management duties to figure out how to fix it? Do you have enough money lying around to pay an expert to fix it?
At work I try to stick with things that everyone is familiar with that also happen to work.
Use the best, simplest solution you can afford. If you want a Windows Domain, buy a server from Dell for $2000 with a W2k Server licence. You spend about 4 hours setting it up with resources available readiliy online.
If you go with a samba solution, you buy a server for $1200, and buy 16 hours of consulting time, while losing 8 hours of your time learning how to use it.
The problem is, he didn't read any documentation about installing OS's to thinkpads...
Thinkpads stick extended system information on a certain area of the hard disk. This guy either wiped it out, or installed another partitition that looks exactly like the system partition.
Back in the old days, IBM would tell you to go away if you complained about this problem. Hopefully they have become more enlightened.
I think your issue is more a Windows vs. Unix problem, or a ported Unix app running on Windows problem.
It is hard to justify spending money on Unix servers and workstations when you can get a 3x faster Intel system for 1/3 of the cost.
For example, I had to spec a server that would be running an interal app on Websphere. My choice was a dual 333Mhz Power3 AIX box w/1GB RAM and 2x18GB drives, redundant power, etc. The cost? 15,000. The alternate choice was a dual Xeon 2.4 ghz w/2GB RAM, 2x36GB disks, redundant power, etc. The cost? $10,000.
Why do you think Sun and IBM are seeing the light and investing in Linux? In the midrange in low-end, you don't really get anything to justify the outrageous cost of Unix hardware.
I've worked with a state agency which, not suprisingly, handles alot of paperwork. They have a scanning solution which brings in the images, stores them in graphics format (i thibk TIFF), and indexes the document under the case number it is associated with. Meta-info can be added by the people who work with the documents.
Note that if you need to have legal proof of a signature or if your auditiors require you to keep documents for x years, they must be in graphic format --- an OCR'd document in ASCII text won't fly.
If you are looking to automate data-entry, get a high speed commercial scanner (if you have large volume) from a company like Bell & Howell and outsource the OCR activity to another company. Tons of companies (Lockheed Martin does it for most federal agencies) do this. The outsourcers send your documents to a 3rd world country like Ghana for proofreading. OCR is only about 95% accurate, and automated OCR is not reliable enough for anything!
The free Ziff-Davis magazine "Baseline" ran an article about this a couple of months ago, you might want to find their website (or look through the pile of free mags on your desk) and see fi you can find it.
Don't shop for a solution based on platform, "Free"/non-"Free", etc. A "Free" solution will take longer and and your cost driver will be the implementation, not inital licensing cost.
Get whatever provides you with the best solution, period.
Including GPL'd code might be easier than you think. What if used another library that had a BSD or other license, but incorporated code that was GPL without disclosing it at first?
What if you are running a non-GPL open source project and one of your unpaid developers contributes GPLd code from another app? An entire release of your software is now polluted by the GPL.
And when you say that you cannot remember entire libraries in detail, this is true. But companies HAVE sued because former employees or contractors have seen or had access to proprietary source code and subsequently developed some similar application. In these cases, whether they remembered what they saw or even saw anything wasn't an issue -- only access was.
Slashdot Mirror
You are still free -- to not buy my modifications.
With GPL, I am forced to give my modification away for free! What if I don't want to?
I saw one of these things the other day at a mall. The people called it a "movie theatre".
It's a novel concept. You give this guy $8 and you watch a movie. There are people selling popped corn and candy, although it is very expensive.
Hi,
I have been diagnosed with toe cancer, and would like to self treat since the drugs they want to give me are patented and not open-source.
I figure that using linux I will build my self a GNU/NuclearMedicine box and treat my cancer with gamma rays.
Does anyone know where I can find information on this?
I'm willing to share my medical history to the world to protect medical insurers from the grinding influence of government.
THe only problem is when health care executives and medical specialists are unable to purchase porches and drink $2,000 bottles of wine, the entire universe will come to a halt.
Not to sully google's name or image, but that statement means exactly nothing.
Enron told everyone that they made money.
WorldCom told us they carried 60% of internet traffic
The guy in the used car lot says that he is honest.
You obviously didn't have a clue about purchasing, or didn't have a manager or purchasing person who did.
You don't buy things through GSA. GSA holds the contracts for whatever you are going to buy. If you call staples and order the pen, the price is based upon whatever price was agreed to in the GSA contract. It is ordred by your agency and shipped to your agency.
If you buy off contract, there are still ways around the formal bidding process. You can get a mini-bid for purchases up to around $20,000 by getting quotes from a couple of vendors. You may be confusing budget issues with the agencies accounting office with the ordering process.
I recently contracted on a project that had specific monies allocated to it in the agencies budget (and fast-tracked for release) I ordered about $750,000 of servers from IBM and a newly released ESS and received the whole kit in about 2.5 weeks (the build time for the hardware)
Government pays slow, because they can. I once heard an agency accounting dork joke about how their average Net-30 invoice is paid in 150 days. The vendors cannot afford to lose gov't business, so they put up with it.
So says Apple's PR department...
Testing in popular applications like Photoshop and Illustrator show that the "Mhz doesn't matter" argument just doesn't hold water.
The problem isn't the Union -- it's the government.
The government created the Canadian health service, which in turn made it impossible for medical workers to negotiate via collective bargaining.
The "lazy union worker" image is just that -- an image pushed by business and the media. And while some things, particularly senority systems and the greviance process, seem very strange and wasteful, they are there because employers like railroads, meat packers, health services and school boards screwed their employees in those areas.
I expect anti-union attitude amongst IT staff and programmers will change as their jobs are rendered obsolete by automation and cheap competition.
The world already has a standard -- UTC.
System time should be set to UTC, and the time display should be seperate configuration step.
Using NTP should take care of the leap second problem, as long as your Stratum-1 server is accurate.
Seems like a blatant advertisement to me...
How much does placing an advertising "news" story cost, my company may be interested!
Slashbot Linux h4x0rs don't know what GMT is.
What you are suggesting has been done since the 70's at least.
Various entities create one-time pads based on cosmic waves or the behavior of radioactive items. They then produce a large pad and then re-use for a specified number of times by manipulating it with various algorithims. The algorithms are sent in a seperate one-time pad.
All of the major ideas in encyrption have existed for decades or centuries. Future advances will come algorithms that deliver degrees of randomness. Future flaws encyptions will come from subtle errors in those algorithims.
Actually, GA releases of two Microsoft products for non-english languages shipped with the Klez worm.
I don't think that can happen in the open-source world. The whole windows model integrates filesystems, network user-ids and machines transparently and securely. That is what people mean when they compare NT to the VMS os of VAX fame.
To shoehorn that sort of model on Unix would be difficult -- to do so on Linux would be impossible. The "Trusted" Unix OS's hit the nail on the head from a filesystem point-of-view, but except for DCE (which is a nightmare) makes no allowance for networked users.
I think the next evolutionary step for this sort of thing is a "Trusted-AFS on crack" which would create a universal, virtual filesystem namespace instead of local filesystems and a universally available LDAP or other database. If you have used Tivoli Enterprise software, think of it as having Framework (except it works well) mixed with the AFS network filesystem.
I looked for a stable Win-NFS client -- the only ones available at the time were very expensive. I think the only people using it were DoD/DoE and Petroleum types who had very fixed requirements.
That's what led me to use SMB -- samba works very well and I already paid for the client when I bought windows!
That being said, I don't think anything offers what the Windows 2000 domain model does. You get Dynamic DNS and authentication for both clients and machines that also allow you to place ACLs on filesystem objects.
I'd say the closest thing to this in the Unix world would be LDAP on an SGI or Linux box with the XFS filesystem and bind 9 (supports DDNS, right?). That would require alot of hacking just to get what Windows gives you out of the box.
I do not mean any insult to Samba itself -- it's a great project run by some world-class coders. That was one example meant to illustrate the real crux of his problem: Who is going to maintain all of this custom crap?
You are correct that open-source doesn't mean fix it yourself -- but open source isn't an IT nirvana either.
Let's assume one day this guy's company grows and he hires a sys admin, or a programmer who wears a sys admin hat. The original poster is an attorney now and is busy running his company.
Who in the hell has the time to do routine IT crap, and figure out all sorts of bizarre configurations. If you stick to standard configurations you'll be able to find people to run/fix/upgrade/maintain them. Unless you are a huge organization with lots of technical expertise, don't customize for the sake of doing it or to save $500.
This leads to another thought: If you don't want to run non-free software -- don't use Windows! If you want to adhere to open standards -- don't use a proprietary directory scheme! If you want a free user directory -- don't use a domain!
You gave as an example setting up a Samba DC versus using Windows 2000 Server... that example should be telling launching redflags as you ask this question...
If you want to run a Windows domain -- use windows. While you *CAN* use samba, is it worth your time (which is in very limited supply if I read your post correctly) and your money to setup a custom, "free" solution to everything?
What do you do when Windows XP ServicePack 8 stops interacting with your Samba DC?? Do you stop studying for the bar, drop your management duties to figure out how to fix it? Do you have enough money lying around to pay an expert to fix it?
At work I try to stick with things that everyone is familiar with that also happen to work.
Use the best, simplest solution you can afford. If you want a Windows Domain, buy a server from Dell for $2000 with a W2k Server licence. You spend about 4 hours setting it up with resources available readiliy online.
If you go with a samba solution, you buy a server for $1200, and buy 16 hours of consulting time, while losing 8 hours of your time learning how to use it.
free doesn't always mean free.
That's the problem... since it's a vertical market, no warez are available to pirate. This guy next moves to "open source" for his free solution.
This segment of the open-source "community" is often overlooked.
The problem is, he didn't read any documentation about installing OS's to thinkpads...
Thinkpads stick extended system information on a certain area of the hard disk. This guy either wiped it out, or installed another partitition that looks exactly like the system partition.
Back in the old days, IBM would tell you to go away if you complained about this problem. Hopefully they have become more enlightened.
I think your issue is more a Windows vs. Unix problem, or a ported Unix app running on Windows problem.
It is hard to justify spending money on Unix servers and workstations when you can get a 3x faster Intel system for 1/3 of the cost.
For example, I had to spec a server that would be running an interal app on Websphere. My choice was a dual 333Mhz Power3 AIX box w/1GB RAM and 2x18GB drives, redundant power, etc. The cost? 15,000. The alternate choice was a dual Xeon 2.4 ghz w/2GB RAM, 2x36GB disks, redundant power, etc. The cost? $10,000.
Why do you think Sun and IBM are seeing the light and investing in Linux? In the midrange in low-end, you don't really get anything to justify the outrageous cost of Unix hardware.
That's funny.
AIX has more (and growing) marketshare than Irix has had in years. The Power4 and Power5 chip is attracting alot of business away from Sun.
SGI has been obsolete since 1996. A $2,500 Dell Workstation can do as much as a $25,000 SGI workstation.
Wake up McFly! It's 2002 calling!
It depends on what you want to do.
I've worked with a state agency which, not suprisingly, handles alot of paperwork. They have a scanning solution which brings in the images, stores them in graphics format (i thibk TIFF), and indexes the document under the case number it is associated with. Meta-info can be added by the people who work with the documents.
Note that if you need to have legal proof of a signature or if your auditiors require you to keep documents for x years, they must be in graphic format --- an OCR'd document in ASCII text won't fly.
If you are looking to automate data-entry, get a high speed commercial scanner (if you have large volume) from a company like Bell & Howell and outsource the OCR activity to another company. Tons of companies (Lockheed Martin does it for most federal agencies) do this. The outsourcers send your documents to a 3rd world country like Ghana for proofreading. OCR is only about 95% accurate, and automated OCR is not reliable enough for anything!
The free Ziff-Davis magazine "Baseline" ran an article about this a couple of months ago, you might want to find their website (or look through the pile of free mags on your desk) and see fi you can find it.
Don't shop for a solution based on platform, "Free"/non-"Free", etc. A "Free" solution will take longer and and your cost driver will be the implementation, not inital licensing cost.
Get whatever provides you with the best solution, period.
Members of the kernel development community don't seem to agree that the development kernel will function on IDE drives without destroying them...
Maybe instead of bloating the featureset, they should be working on getting the I/O working?
That Lindows is a really shady operation? Everything they do seems a litle scummy.
Reminds me of AIMster.
That was a trivial example.
Including GPL'd code might be easier than you think. What if used another library that had a BSD or other license, but incorporated code that was GPL without disclosing it at first?
What if you are running a non-GPL open source project and one of your unpaid developers contributes GPLd code from another app? An entire release of your software is now polluted by the GPL.
And when you say that you cannot remember entire libraries in detail, this is true. But companies HAVE sued because former employees or contractors have seen or had access to proprietary source code and subsequently developed some similar application. In these cases, whether they remembered what they saw or even saw anything wasn't an issue -- only access was.