the supply and demand rule means that if you drop the price, demand for the product goes up, and if you rase the price demand for the product goes down
Actually, economics teaches that price does not affect demand - but rather the quantity demanded.
Very true. I work for Kmart for a little over a year, we didn't take back opened CDs. Bring back a opened CD/Game/DVD... even-exchange only. It was even policy to open the new item so you couldn't come back later and return it. Lots of people tried various ways to return things (mostly because they bought it and realized they didn't like what they purchased). Exchanging until we gave up didn't work though. The only guy who ever tried it was so rude that we just kept re-shrinkwrapping and exchanging the same two discs (a playstation game as I recall). He gave up eventually. The only method I remember working was crying about it to a store-level manager. Don't settle for a department head (my boss' nickname was Brunhilda), go for an assistant manager or store manager. I vividly recall them always caving in to whiny "customers."
The article was indeed preaching the glories of Linux. That's fine, however it's done using half truths (that's half lies for the pessimists among us) instead of the actual great benefits. Some examples:
"If Largo ran Windows 2000 as a server operating system, Dave says they'd have to run "a substantial server cluster" instead of a single machine, because "NT [or 2000] gets flaky when you run more than 40 clients, while Linux can handle hundreds." Dave has no exact figure for the cost of of an adequate Windows server array for Largo's civic needs; it was obviously so much more expensive than the Linux alternative that it was never seriously considered."
Half true. I've been using DOS/Windows for years... these guys were running SCO back in 1992. Linux is an understandable (and smart) upgrade path for them, it's familiar and it's compatible. More importantly, they were already familiar with it. However their comparisons to Windows based solutions make me wonder - being relatively new to Linux I'm sure I'd assume things fed to me by popular culture or the media if I was trying to plan a comparable solution. They're right about cost - a Windows based solution to do the same thing is rediculously expensive. It's not however terminally buggy. I personally run Windows 2000 Pro on all but one of my computers - they don't crash... ever. Neither do our NT4 or 2000 servers at work (all 6 of them). Then again, neither does my Linux box.
If they wanted to run a Terminal Services environment under 2000 with MetaFrame (for sound, true color, etc.) they could pull it off on that same server - with the same thin clients. This document (MS word... sorry) discusses Terminal Services capacity planning - you might want to look here for a rough comparison between the processor speeds in the whitepaper and those used in the article (a few quick calculations show a P-III 933 to be about twice as fast as a P-III 450, of course these are highly subjective benchmarks).
Needless to say, they should be clustering under either OS for redundancy, not because of an hypothetically unstable configuration. Server crashes, whether Linux or Windows, generally involve rebooting or restarting services. However what happens when your hardware fails on the single machine supporting 800 users?
"Their 10-person IT staff supports 800 users running 400 devices (as Dave calls the thin clients). There is no way they could adequately support that many users and devices with such a small staff if they ran Windows on individual desktops. Dave says that if they had gone that route, "We'd be doing nothing but running around fixing PCs all day."
This is absolutely rediculous. We have 2 people (and 2 more who spend about 5 hours a week each doing IS work) dedicated to supporting about 175 users in 3 offices, all running Windows PCs, mostly 98. Our servers almost universally run NT4. Management hasn't had a single complaint in over 4 months. Email, websites, printers, etc. run without a hitch. If we wanted to make our lives easier - we could always deploy Windows 2000 and deny local administrator to the user of the PC. So long webshots!
Don't get me wrong - I don't have a problem with Linux. We use it at work for our firewalls, because of the low hardware requirements and the complete superiority of IPChains over MS Proxy server at the time we made the decision. I use it at home for my second PC because I want to learn more about it. However I do have a problem when an OS is touted as the only reasonable solution - when it's not. Linux may be the best way to go for these guys, if so please tell us the real reasons, like the cost benefits (familiarity, lower initial cost, etc).
Actually, I believe that it's more along the lines of saying "no no, that would be bad" - based on my impressions from both the service agreement (which unfortunately isn't available on the web) and people I've talked to, as long as you don't use so much bandwidth that is slows your neighbor's connection down (which is probably going to be rather difficult, since there's a 300K upstream limit), or let a bunch of people use your FTP server, they won't really care. I'd also like to believe that either a majority of their people don't know how to portscan and/or otherwise monitor the users, or they choose not to do it to their customers (although I'd be interested to see somebody test that theory). I'm sure that they will however take action if somebody was to "tell" on you (just like many ISPs will pull a web page that violates their terms of service once somebody complains about it).
I subscribe to ATT@Home, and it's not bad. The speed could be more consistant, but I haven't experienced any downtime so far and overall I'm happy. After looking at the Comcast@Home Subscriber Agreement, I certainly hope that AT&T doesn't start making policy changes using Comcast as a model.
AT&T's policy is that you cannot run any servers, i.e. FTP, Telnet, News, etc. including VPN servers. They could care less whether or not I connect to work or elsewhere through VPN. The Terms of Service also say nothing about hosting a personal web site. It goes along with the upstream bandwidth limits, they want you to subscribe to their business services (which just happen to be significantly more expensive).
As far as sharing the internet connection goes (this is what I was told by the installation guy), the policy "we don't support home networks" really means "we're not going to set one up for you." I personally use a 2000 server configured as an internet router to share my connection. But he said he'd seen quite a few people with linux boxes or hardware routers. The companies just want you to buy more IP addresses from them (at $4-5 a month per IP address, it adds up).
That's funny, because all the benchmarks I've ever seen show exactly the opposite - PIII squeaks ahead of Thunderbird (granted, you'd never notice the difference between equally clocked & configured Coppermine and Thunderbird systems... a few percentage points aren't much to get excited about). Perhaps you'd be kind enough to enlighten the rest of us with the particular data you're referring to.
Here's a couple of reviews I've seen that come to mind:
Slashdot Mirror
the supply and demand rule means that if you drop the price, demand for the product goes up, and if you rase the price demand for the product goes down
Actually, economics teaches that price does not affect demand - but rather the quantity demanded.
Very true. I work for Kmart for a little over a year, we didn't take back opened CDs. Bring back a opened CD/Game/DVD... even-exchange only. It was even policy to open the new item so you couldn't come back later and return it. Lots of people tried various ways to return things (mostly because they bought it and realized they didn't like what they purchased). Exchanging until we gave up didn't work though. The only guy who ever tried it was so rude that we just kept re-shrinkwrapping and exchanging the same two discs (a playstation game as I recall). He gave up eventually. The only method I remember working was crying about it to a store-level manager. Don't settle for a department head (my boss' nickname was Brunhilda), go for an assistant manager or store manager. I vividly recall them always caving in to whiny "customers."
The article was indeed preaching the glories of Linux. That's fine, however it's done using half truths (that's half lies for the pessimists among us) instead of the actual great benefits. Some examples:
"If Largo ran Windows 2000 as a server operating system, Dave says they'd have to run "a substantial server cluster" instead of a single machine, because "NT [or 2000] gets flaky when you run more than 40 clients, while Linux can handle hundreds." Dave has no exact figure for the cost of of an adequate Windows server array for Largo's civic needs; it was obviously so much more expensive than the Linux alternative that it was never seriously considered."
Half true. I've been using DOS/Windows for years... these guys were running SCO back in 1992. Linux is an understandable (and smart) upgrade path for them, it's familiar and it's compatible. More importantly, they were already familiar with it. However their comparisons to Windows based solutions make me wonder - being relatively new to Linux I'm sure I'd assume things fed to me by popular culture or the media if I was trying to plan a comparable solution. They're right about cost - a Windows based solution to do the same thing is rediculously expensive. It's not however terminally buggy. I personally run Windows 2000 Pro on all but one of my computers - they don't crash... ever. Neither do our NT4 or 2000 servers at work (all 6 of them). Then again, neither does my Linux box.
If they wanted to run a Terminal Services environment under 2000 with MetaFrame (for sound, true color, etc.) they could pull it off on that same server - with the same thin clients. This document (MS word... sorry) discusses Terminal Services capacity planning - you might want to look here for a rough comparison between the processor speeds in the whitepaper and those used in the article (a few quick calculations show a P-III 933 to be about twice as fast as a P-III 450, of course these are highly subjective benchmarks). Needless to say, they should be clustering under either OS for redundancy, not because of an hypothetically unstable configuration. Server crashes, whether Linux or Windows, generally involve rebooting or restarting services. However what happens when your hardware fails on the single machine supporting 800 users?
"Their 10-person IT staff supports 800 users running 400 devices (as Dave calls the thin clients). There is no way they could adequately support that many users and devices with such a small staff if they ran Windows on individual desktops. Dave says that if they had gone that route, "We'd be doing nothing but running around fixing PCs all day."
This is absolutely rediculous. We have 2 people (and 2 more who spend about 5 hours a week each doing IS work) dedicated to supporting about 175 users in 3 offices, all running Windows PCs, mostly 98. Our servers almost universally run NT4. Management hasn't had a single complaint in over 4 months. Email, websites, printers, etc. run without a hitch. If we wanted to make our lives easier - we could always deploy Windows 2000 and deny local administrator to the user of the PC. So long webshots!
Don't get me wrong - I don't have a problem with Linux. We use it at work for our firewalls, because of the low hardware requirements and the complete superiority of IPChains over MS Proxy server at the time we made the decision. I use it at home for my second PC because I want to learn more about it. However I do have a problem when an OS is touted as the only reasonable solution - when it's not. Linux may be the best way to go for these guys, if so please tell us the real reasons, like the cost benefits (familiarity, lower initial cost, etc).
My 2 cents.
Actually, I believe that it's more along the lines of saying "no no, that would be bad" - based on my impressions from both the service agreement (which unfortunately isn't available on the web) and people I've talked to, as long as you don't use so much bandwidth that is slows your neighbor's connection down (which is probably going to be rather difficult, since there's a 300K upstream limit), or let a bunch of people use your FTP server, they won't really care. I'd also like to believe that either a majority of their people don't know how to portscan and/or otherwise monitor the users, or they choose not to do it to their customers (although I'd be interested to see somebody test that theory). I'm sure that they will however take action if somebody was to "tell" on you (just like many ISPs will pull a web page that violates their terms of service once somebody complains about it).
I subscribe to ATT@Home, and it's not bad. The speed could be more consistant, but I haven't experienced any downtime so far and overall I'm happy. After looking at the Comcast@Home Subscriber Agreement, I certainly hope that AT&T doesn't start making policy changes using Comcast as a model.
AT&T's policy is that you cannot run any servers, i.e. FTP, Telnet, News, etc. including VPN servers. They could care less whether or not I connect to work or elsewhere through VPN. The Terms of Service also say nothing about hosting a personal web site. It goes along with the upstream bandwidth limits, they want you to subscribe to their business services (which just happen to be significantly more expensive).
As far as sharing the internet connection goes (this is what I was told by the installation guy), the policy "we don't support home networks" really means "we're not going to set one up for you." I personally use a 2000 server configured as an internet router to share my connection. But he said he'd seen quite a few people with linux boxes or hardware routers. The companies just want you to buy more IP addresses from them (at $4-5 a month per IP address, it adds up).
That's funny, because all the benchmarks I've ever seen show exactly the opposite - PIII squeaks ahead of Thunderbird (granted, you'd never notice the difference between equally clocked & configured Coppermine and Thunderbird systems... a few percentage points aren't much to get excited about). Perhaps you'd be kind enough to enlighten the rest of us with the particular data you're referring to.
Here's a couple of reviews I've seen that come to mind:
Tom's Hardware
PC World (pre-Coppermine/Thunderbird)
Gee. that's a brilliant plan. Let's show that we can be jerks too by spoiling something for everyone, not just the people we have a problem with.