I'm not assuming anything. I know the two companies I worked for are still running multiple mainframes and have huge tape libraries. One is a mutual funds company and the other is a telco. The telco processes enough transactions daily that it's not cost effective to spin that much storage. They run on monthly batches anyway.
I've seen $500k a year mainframes (leased, of course) replaced with a pair of $10k IBM x86 servers. Setup with failover in mind one PC could be yanked out and the other taking over the load in a fraction of a second without notice to users.
Those numbers are abnormal. If they were properly utilizing that $500k mainframe, it wouldn't be possible to replace it with a $10k x86 box. $10k doesn't buy much of an enterprise server. Our 4 processor Netfinity SQL server alone cost several times that much.
Companies that buy/lease 390s tend to need the capacity. Otherwise they're using AS/400, Sun or Alpha, and the hardware costs aren't enough higher to outweigh the fragile nature of x86 hardware.
A lot of people here seem to assume that mainframe means it was purchased in the 70s and hasn't been upgraded since. The only places I've seen that to be true are in universities and non-profits.
You are of course, speaking from experience, right?
Not only are nightly batch cycles still used in mainframe environments, but I have also seen them in PC based SQL environments.
And I think you are missing the point; x86 servers may have plenty of CPU, you can even build clusters, but you simply don't have the I/O capacity. Consider a company with half a million 600meg tape cartridges in their library and 5-10,000 of those get cycled every night. Now I haven't been a tape ape for over 10 years, and those are still pretty big numbers.
An odd coincidence, but Newsforge had an article on QT Designer this week. I grabbed a copy and it looks promising. (And it is RAD) The interface is kind of crowded and clunky, but so was the original version of Kylix. IMO it's miles ahead of KDevelop.
If Borland won't open source Kylix when they abandon it, maybe we can just talk them into passing Kylix to Trolltech. If I remember correctly, they bought 5% of them when they decided to build Kylix on QT.
While C# builder runs under Win32, it only targets.NET. It's just another one of their IDEs slapped on top of Microsoft's.NET tools. It's actually called C#Builder for the Microsoft.NET framework. I haven't been following what promises they might have made concerning it, but their product page doesn't have any reference to a Win32 version. (and I can't see why anyone would be interested in a Win32 version anyway)
Re:Isn't Delphi based on Pascal?
on
Kylix in Limbo
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
So, *why*, exactly, did Borland think Pascal would be a good language to sell
to Linux users?
Because those of us who earn a living doing Delphi work asked them to. It gave us a choice of platforms in the future. I certainly don't want to do.NET work. But I'm not sure I'd like C/C++ work under Linux much better.
I think we should force every C programmer who can't be bothered to do bounds checking to use Delphi. We'd definately spend less time patching our systems.
FWIW, the limitations you mention might be a concern for standard pascal, but for Object Pascal they are generally myths. The only thing OP forces you to do is think about what you are doing.
Re:The Problem
on
Kylix in Limbo
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Yup, the problem is squarely with Delphi.
You've never used Kylix, have you?
I haven't had a chance to look at QT Designer or Anjuta, but KDevelop isn't a true visual (RAD) environment. Maybe I'm just spoiled, but I like being able to click on a component and drop it on my form. I'm not aware of any IDE on Linux that is as easy to use as Kylix.
Also, Kylix v3 supports both Object Pascal and C++. It is the Linux equivalents of Delphi and C++Builder.
For a shareware developer, just about any compiler is too expensive. Shareware development has odds slightly greater than the lottery. For commercial use the price is trivial. I wouldn't even mess with the Pro version, I could justify the cost of the Enterprise version in about 2 months.
It's not that Kylix was too late, it's still too early. Linux still doesn't have enough desktop penetration to support it.
But personally I wonder if Borland is having some kind of identity crisis. They have just about dropped all future Win32 support. C++Builder has been removed from their product list, C++BuilderX is the replacement. But 512meg of RAM to run your compiler??? Kylix is on life support. And even Delphi for Win32 is in doubt. Their new tools all seem to be an IDE slapped on top of Microsoft's.NET. It makes you wonder if Borland is migrating from a tools vendor to simply an IDE vendor.
You missunderstand. I'm not saying screw you to anybody. All the barcodes, lines, images, etc that can be produced by an Intermec 3400 printer can be programmed in plain text. You don't have to write any drivers or send any kind of binary file to them.
My reference to graphical is in the DESIGN stage. Having a pretty little window where you can drag and drop various label objects. It's not a requirement, but it's nice when you want to pass the design work the the users and free up your programmers for real programming.
Then again, you could just send raw text to the printer as well. IPL (Intermec), ZPL (Zebra), and EPL (Eltron) all support text. Send it a text command saying print this barcode at x,y using symbology z and here's what I want it to say....
Clever is too much work, I just set my printers to Generic/Text.
If you really want to do graphical label design to create templates for your applications, there is a Windows package from Loftware. You can create the labels in their LLM software, set up the print server, and then use their ActiveX control to read the LBL template.
I don't have any A's, I have B's, D's, and E's. I've never had any problem with them keeping up with the datastream. We do have some 4000s that are older than yours. We have them connected to Extendnet boxes. Originally they were connected directly to a DECserver, but we wanted to get LAT off of our network. And other than the fact that parts aren't available anymore, they work just fine. And we print a lot.
First I'd recommend that you check your flow control, it sounds like you have it turned off. If that doesn't work then check eBay for Extendnet. Or you could also connect it to a PC (I have some B's connected to a Win95A box via parallel ports) I'm not sure whether VMS will like talking to a PC though.
There are also some things you can adjust in the printer config like label speed and the number of image bands. But I wouldn't really recommend changing them.
Or you could be like me. I've been using GSM with Voicestream/T-mobile for 2 years. I bought a Samsung phone on eBay to replace the piece of crap Nokia 3390 I started with. Moved my SIM card and everything was great.
Now my Samsung (N105) is going to need to be replaced soon. The phone I want (S105) is too expensive on eBay. I can get it on Amazon for $99 + $35 activation as a NEW user. T-Mobile's 'upgrade' plan for current users will cost me $149 including activation. Both plans require a 1 year contract with a $200 early termination fee. It's actually $15 cheaper to be someone's new customer than it is to be loyal to T-Mobile.
I probably won't change after number portability. But it gives me some leverage to at least be on a level playing field with new customers. I know that Cingular (yuck) and AT&T have GSM service.
It's a customer lock-in mentality that designs programs where a $120 discount on a new phone comes with a $200 termination fee.
Why is Diebold counting votes in the first place? Why do they even have access to the votes? Counting votes falls under the domain of the election commissioners, it's not something they can farm out to third parties. I would maintain that any election committee that purchases equipment that allows individual votes to be available to outside parties should probably be in jail. Or at least unemployed.
It's funny, as I was reading some of those e-mails I wondered if Diebold hired it's execs from Ford or Firestone. They seem to have the mentality that as long as they can maintain the perception that their product is safe, there is no reason to fix anything.
When I go vote they hand me a ballot and a black marker. I fill in the bubbles for the candidates I want to vote for and then hand it to a person operating a scanning machine. The machine scans it and immediately responds whether it did so sucessfully.
So what we have is a paper trail along with 1 expensive vote tabulating machine and a bunch of cheap, black markers.
We don't need electronic VOTING machines, we need electronic TABULATING machines.
Multi-processor doesn't scale that well. 4 processors doesn't mean you can support 4 times as many users. Although it will probably mean more than 4 times the cost. Use 1-2 processor boxes. (we have racks of Netfinity x330 servers) Use Terminal Services load balancing or put a hardware balancer in front of them. Fewer eggs in each basket and cheaper too.
And our experience with Citrix is that it adds a whole lot of $$$ to the equation without bringing much to the table. If you aren't using non-RDP clients, I'd pass on Citrix.
Oh, and don't jump on Win 2003 until you know that your apps are going to run on it.
There's more to it than that if you truly centralize. Assuming 40 users per server you're looking at maintaining 1 machine instead of 40. That machine is in a controlled environment. You only have to patch the machines in the computer room. When you need to upgrade software you only have to do it once. You don't have to deal with users installing software, or gator, or the latest and greatest Outlook plugin. You should have identical servers, that way you can create an image and build a complete replacement in minutes. (I think 25-30 servers for 1000 users would be reasonable) If you look back at our past a little, it wasn't uncommon for one IT person to support 200-300 mainframe users. So one payoff is a smaller helpdesk staff.
Then if you replace those desktop PCs with something like a WYSE terminal, you end up with something on the desktop that is probably good for 10 years. Compared to the disservice you're giving your users now by making them use those 5 year old Win 95 machines.
Now of course the idea of putting Win XP on existing PCs as thin clients has to be the most ridiculous idea I have ever heard. I suppose if those old machines aren't large enough to handle it, you're supposed to buy new PCs to replace them.... If they're going to go this route, install the terminal services client on the existing PCs. They should start moving their core applications to the TS servers and removing them from the desktop. Then as they replace systems, put non-power users on dedicated terminals. Shoot for balancing costs by reducing staff or freeing them up for other support tasks. And then look for savings in desktop hardware costs by increasing the useful life of the equipment.
I'm curious to see where this trend goes. While X-Terminals and Linux servers would be great. RDP terminals and Terminal Services will work for those 'gotta be MS' bosses.
Careful how you handle your users though. No local CD means they can't use 'their' PC to listen to music. They also won't be able to copy files (that they probably shouldn't copy anyway) to take home and work. Part of centralization is IT taking back control of the computing environment. And some users aren't going to like that.
It's nice to say "there are laws against that" and that it's as simple as contacting your phone service provider, but in fact it's not the case.
Verizon (cellular) will most likely tell you that they don't have the ability to get the number if it's blocked. They'll fall back on 'other providers' not passing along the information.
I had a similar (extremely frustrating) experience with my cell phone and TMobile. I had someone that would call every 30 min to an hour for several hours each day. It would go on for several days and then it would stop for several days before it started again. There was never anyone there. Telemarketer with a screwed up system or a fax machine? Never found out. I eventually just forwarded my cell to a company fax and the calls stop. (although no fax was ever received)
I talked to TMobile and the only option they offered was to change my number, which isn't practical when you only have a cell. With landline you can contact a local law enforcement agency, put a trace on the line, and prosecute the offender. I dicussed this with the local PD, the county sheriff, and the state AG. All said there was no mechanism for dealing with harassing phone calls made to a cell phone.
This case is a little different because he has contact info for the company. The simplest way to deal with it is to call them, tell them the number they are calling is a cell phone, and don't call again. Most likely that will be the end of it. If not, then they have been made aware that they are calling a cell number and you can file a complaint with your Attorney General's office.
BTW, even a collector has to stop calling if you tell them to. You can specify that all correspondence should be made through snail mail.
While you can print images on some barcode printers, most deal with plain text. Here is code that prints the same barcode using three different programming languages.
Intermec IPL B17;o500,100;f3;c6,0,0;h200;w4;i1;d3,12345 ( prefixed/suffixed with STX/ETX codes, which Slashdot happily strips)
Zebra ZPL ^FO100,725^BCN,200,N,N,N,N^FV12345^FS
Eltron EPL B700,500,2,1,4,12,200,N,"12345"
If you are really interested in learning the languages, you can download them in PDF format from the manufacturers. (Eltron is now owned by Zebra)
We're currently using software from Loftware to handle most of our barcode printing. It has a decent (but not great) GUI designer. And it's not cheap or OS. My biggest problem with it is that it stores the printer type in the label. It's entirely too rigid. For example; we purchased Intermec 3400D printers to create PDF417s. But all of the rest of our printers are 3400Bs. While the D model can do everything a B model can do, Loftware doesn't allow you to print a B label on a D printer. OTOH, it has a nice feature where you can use a label design as a template, then drop a text data file in a directory and it will print the label. It's a simple way to interface with other applications.
BTW, an earlier poster implied that UPC was synonymous with barcode. That's like telling someone who asks for a PC to go see Dell. It may be one of the more commonly known formats, but there is much more to them than UPCs. (Or EAN barcodes for the non-american viewers)
The VOIP Blaster was a piece of crap, like most of the rest of the stuff they sell. (Video Blaster PVR anyone?) A. it requires a computer, B. it requires a headset or regular phone, C. the volume adjustment was inadequate. I bought two. One is stuck to the side of my desk (unused) and I gave the other one away. And yes, I know about fobbit.
I had been looking at the Grandstream phones, but never found anyone willing to sell them without requiring a monthly service.
What VOIP needs is free directory service (like this one) and individual phones in the $50-75 range. I'll probably end up buying a pair of these. I would definately buy one if I could get it for $65.
All our fiber is installed with this type of stuff. But it's larger (2"?) and bright orange. I assume that's so they can charge us $5 a foot when they install it.
Of course that still didn't stop the Cat or the backhoe from taking it out. (outside the building):-) Wanna guess what it costs to splice fiber on a Sunday afternoon? Or how much stupidity a construction crew has to have to do it twice?
What do you do when that non-standard OS breaks your network? Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't know that installing my Linux box on the network with a DHCP server running would keep all my co-workers from getting to their server shares. I meant to start the DHCP client, not the DHCP server. (could also be done by the well meaning employee that just wanted to get a look at Win 2003 server, with the added benefit that is could do some nasty stuff to your ActiveDirectory) At the very least you have kept a lot of people from working, pissed off the CEO, and your IT director is giving you a very odd look that's none too friendly. IE. you're one step closer to a pinkslip.
As much as IT types like living in the old west, we don't like other people doing it and screwing up our playground. A little restraint and following the standards makes everyones life easier. We can play with our Linux boxen at home. Isn't that why we all have 5 or 6 systems running there?
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I'm not assuming anything. I know the two companies I worked for are still running multiple mainframes and have huge tape libraries. One is a mutual funds company and the other is a telco. The telco processes enough transactions daily that it's not cost effective to spin that much storage. They run on monthly batches anyway.
I've seen $500k a year mainframes (leased, of course) replaced with a pair of $10k IBM x86 servers. Setup with failover in mind one PC could be yanked out and the other taking over the load in a fraction of a second without notice to users.
Those numbers are abnormal. If they were properly utilizing that $500k mainframe, it wouldn't be possible to replace it with a $10k x86 box. $10k doesn't buy much of an enterprise server. Our 4 processor Netfinity SQL server alone cost several times that much.
Companies that buy/lease 390s tend to need the capacity. Otherwise they're using AS/400, Sun or Alpha, and the hardware costs aren't enough higher to outweigh the fragile nature of x86 hardware.
A lot of people here seem to assume that mainframe means it was purchased in the 70s and hasn't been upgraded since. The only places I've seen that to be true are in universities and non-profits.
And just imagine what that payroll is going to look like when those ASCII based systems start reading EBCDIC data files....
You are of course, speaking from experience, right?
Not only are nightly batch cycles still used in mainframe environments, but I have also seen them in PC based SQL environments.
And I think you are missing the point; x86 servers may have plenty of CPU, you can even build clusters, but you simply don't have the I/O capacity. Consider a company with half a million 600meg tape cartridges in their library and 5-10,000 of those get cycled every night. Now I haven't been a tape ape for over 10 years, and those are still pretty big numbers.
An odd coincidence, but Newsforge had an article on QT Designer this week. I grabbed a copy and it looks promising. (And it is RAD) The interface is kind of crowded and clunky, but so was the original version of Kylix. IMO it's miles ahead of KDevelop.
If Borland won't open source Kylix when they abandon it, maybe we can just talk them into passing Kylix to Trolltech. If I remember correctly, they bought 5% of them when they decided to build Kylix on QT.
While C# builder runs under Win32, it only targets .NET. It's just another one of their IDEs slapped on top of Microsoft's .NET tools. It's actually called C#Builder for the Microsoft .NET framework. I haven't been following what promises they might have made concerning it, but their product page doesn't have any reference to a Win32 version. (and I can't see why anyone would be interested in a Win32 version anyway)
So, *why*, exactly, did Borland think Pascal would be a good language to sell to Linux users?
.NET work. But I'm not sure I'd like C/C++ work under Linux much better.
Because those of us who earn a living doing Delphi work asked them to. It gave us a choice of platforms in the future. I certainly don't want to do
I think we should force every C programmer who can't be bothered to do bounds checking to use Delphi. We'd definately spend less time patching our systems.
FWIW, the limitations you mention might be a concern for standard pascal, but for Object Pascal they are generally myths. The only thing OP forces you to do is think about what you are doing.
Yup, the problem is squarely with Delphi.
.NET. It makes you wonder if Borland is migrating from a tools vendor to simply an IDE vendor.
You've never used Kylix, have you?
I haven't had a chance to look at QT Designer or Anjuta, but KDevelop isn't a true visual (RAD) environment. Maybe I'm just spoiled, but I like being able to click on a component and drop it on my form. I'm not aware of any IDE on Linux that is as easy to use as Kylix.
Also, Kylix v3 supports both Object Pascal and C++. It is the Linux equivalents of Delphi and C++Builder.
For a shareware developer, just about any compiler is too expensive. Shareware development has odds slightly greater than the lottery. For commercial use the price is trivial. I wouldn't even mess with the Pro version, I could justify the cost of the Enterprise version in about 2 months.
It's not that Kylix was too late, it's still too early. Linux still doesn't have enough desktop penetration to support it.
But personally I wonder if Borland is having some kind of identity crisis. They have just about dropped all future Win32 support. C++Builder has been removed from their product list, C++BuilderX is the replacement. But 512meg of RAM to run your compiler??? Kylix is on life support. And even Delphi for Win32 is in doubt. Their new tools all seem to be an IDE slapped on top of Microsoft's
You missunderstand. I'm not saying screw you to anybody. All the barcodes, lines, images, etc that can be produced by an Intermec 3400 printer can be programmed in plain text. You don't have to write any drivers or send any kind of binary file to them.
My reference to graphical is in the DESIGN stage. Having a pretty little window where you can drag and drop various label objects. It's not a requirement, but it's nice when you want to pass the design work the the users and free up your programmers for real programming.
Then again, you could just send raw text to the printer as well. IPL (Intermec), ZPL (Zebra), and EPL (Eltron) all support text. Send it a text command saying print this barcode at x,y using symbology z and here's what I want it to say....
Clever is too much work, I just set my printers to Generic/Text.
If you really want to do graphical label design to create templates for your applications, there is a Windows package from Loftware. You can create the labels in their LLM software, set up the print server, and then use their ActiveX control to read the LBL template.
Yeah, Zebra makes some nice printers *cough*, now that they've bought Eltron. :-)
I don't have any A's, I have B's, D's, and E's. I've never had any problem with them keeping up with the datastream. We do have some 4000s that are older than yours. We have them connected to Extendnet boxes. Originally they were connected directly to a DECserver, but we wanted to get LAT off of our network. And other than the fact that parts aren't available anymore, they work just fine. And we print a lot.
First I'd recommend that you check your flow control, it sounds like you have it turned off. If that doesn't work then check eBay for Extendnet. Or you could also connect it to a PC (I have some B's connected to a Win95A box via parallel ports) I'm not sure whether VMS will like talking to a PC though.
There are also some things you can adjust in the printer config like label speed and the number of image bands. But I wouldn't really recommend changing them.
Or you could be like me. I've been using GSM with Voicestream/T-mobile for 2 years. I bought a Samsung phone on eBay to replace the piece of crap Nokia 3390 I started with. Moved my SIM card and everything was great.
Now my Samsung (N105) is going to need to be replaced soon. The phone I want (S105) is too expensive on eBay. I can get it on Amazon for $99 + $35 activation as a NEW user. T-Mobile's 'upgrade' plan for current users will cost me $149 including activation. Both plans require a 1 year contract with a $200 early termination fee. It's actually $15 cheaper to be someone's new customer than it is to be loyal to T-Mobile.
I probably won't change after number portability. But it gives me some leverage to at least be on a level playing field with new customers. I know that Cingular (yuck) and AT&T have GSM service.
It's a customer lock-in mentality that designs programs where a $120 discount on a new phone comes with a $200 termination fee.
Why is Diebold counting votes in the first place? Why do they even have access to the votes? Counting votes falls under the domain of the election commissioners, it's not something they can farm out to third parties. I would maintain that any election committee that purchases equipment that allows individual votes to be available to outside parties should probably be in jail. Or at least unemployed.
It's funny, as I was reading some of those e-mails I wondered if Diebold hired it's execs from Ford or Firestone. They seem to have the mentality that as long as they can maintain the perception that their product is safe, there is no reason to fix anything.
When I go vote they hand me a ballot and a black marker. I fill in the bubbles for the candidates I want to vote for and then hand it to a person operating a scanning machine. The machine scans it and immediately responds whether it did so sucessfully.
So what we have is a paper trail along with 1 expensive vote tabulating machine and a bunch of cheap, black markers.
We don't need electronic VOTING machines, we need electronic TABULATING machines.
Multi-processor doesn't scale that well. 4 processors doesn't mean you can support 4 times as many users. Although it will probably mean more than 4 times the cost. Use 1-2 processor boxes. (we have racks of Netfinity x330 servers) Use Terminal Services load balancing or put a hardware balancer in front of them. Fewer eggs in each basket and cheaper too.
And our experience with Citrix is that it adds a whole lot of $$$ to the equation without bringing much to the table. If you aren't using non-RDP clients, I'd pass on Citrix.
Oh, and don't jump on Win 2003 until you know that your apps are going to run on it.
There's more to it than that if you truly centralize. Assuming 40 users per server you're looking at maintaining 1 machine instead of 40. That machine is in a controlled environment. You only have to patch the machines in the computer room. When you need to upgrade software you only have to do it once. You don't have to deal with users installing software, or gator, or the latest and greatest Outlook plugin. You should have identical servers, that way you can create an image and build a complete replacement in minutes. (I think 25-30 servers for 1000 users would be reasonable) If you look back at our past a little, it wasn't uncommon for one IT person to support 200-300 mainframe users. So one payoff is a smaller helpdesk staff.
Then if you replace those desktop PCs with something like a WYSE terminal, you end up with something on the desktop that is probably good for 10 years. Compared to the disservice you're giving your users now by making them use those 5 year old Win 95 machines.
Now of course the idea of putting Win XP on existing PCs as thin clients has to be the most ridiculous idea I have ever heard. I suppose if those old machines aren't large enough to handle it, you're supposed to buy new PCs to replace them.... If they're going to go this route, install the terminal services client on the existing PCs. They should start moving their core applications to the TS servers and removing them from the desktop. Then as they replace systems, put non-power users on dedicated terminals. Shoot for balancing costs by reducing staff or freeing them up for other support tasks. And then look for savings in desktop hardware costs by increasing the useful life of the equipment.
I'm curious to see where this trend goes. While X-Terminals and Linux servers would be great. RDP terminals and Terminal Services will work for those 'gotta be MS' bosses.
Careful how you handle your users though. No local CD means they can't use 'their' PC to listen to music. They also won't be able to copy files (that they probably shouldn't copy anyway) to take home and work. Part of centralization is IT taking back control of the computing environment. And some users aren't going to like that.
It's nice to say "there are laws against that" and that it's as simple as contacting your phone service provider, but in fact it's not the case.
Verizon (cellular) will most likely tell you that they don't have the ability to get the number if it's blocked. They'll fall back on 'other providers' not passing along the information.
I had a similar (extremely frustrating) experience with my cell phone and TMobile. I had someone that would call every 30 min to an hour for several hours each day. It would go on for several days and then it would stop for several days before it started again. There was never anyone there. Telemarketer with a screwed up system or a fax machine? Never found out. I eventually just forwarded my cell to a company fax and the calls stop. (although no fax was ever received)
I talked to TMobile and the only option they offered was to change my number, which isn't practical when you only have a cell. With landline you can contact a local law enforcement agency, put a trace on the line, and prosecute the offender. I dicussed this with the local PD, the county sheriff, and the state AG. All said there was no mechanism for dealing with harassing phone calls made to a cell phone.
This case is a little different because he has contact info for the company. The simplest way to deal with it is to call them, tell them the number they are calling is a cell phone, and don't call again. Most likely that will be the end of it. If not, then they have been made aware that they are calling a cell number and you can file a complaint with your Attorney General's office.
BTW, even a collector has to stop calling if you tell them to. You can specify that all correspondence should be made through snail mail.
Oddly enough, the users have never found this suggestion all that amusing. I'm not sure why.
Although one ingenious user did actually create barcodes with MS Paint. Nothing could scan them, but they sure looked good.
While you can print images on some barcode printers, most deal with plain text. Here is code that prints the same barcode using three different programming languages.
( prefixed/suffixed with STX/ETX codes, which Slashdot happily strips)
Intermec IPL
B17;o500,100;f3;c6,0,0;h200;w4;i1;d3,12345
Zebra ZPL
^FO100,725^BCN,200,N,N,N,N^FV12345^FS
Eltron EPL
B700,500,2,1,4,12,200,N,"12345"
If you are really interested in learning the languages, you can download them in PDF format from the manufacturers. (Eltron is now owned by Zebra)
We're currently using software from Loftware to handle most of our barcode printing. It has a decent (but not great) GUI designer. And it's not cheap or OS. My biggest problem with it is that it stores the printer type in the label. It's entirely too rigid. For example; we purchased Intermec 3400D printers to create PDF417s. But all of the rest of our printers are 3400Bs. While the D model can do everything a B model can do, Loftware doesn't allow you to print a B label on a D printer. OTOH, it has a nice feature where you can use a label design as a template, then drop a text data file in a directory and it will print the label. It's a simple way to interface with other applications.
BTW, an earlier poster implied that UPC was synonymous with barcode. That's like telling someone who asks for a PC to go see Dell. It may be one of the more commonly known formats, but there is much more to them than UPCs. (Or EAN barcodes for the non-american viewers)
Yeah, but without a decent Alpha box to put it on, what's the point? We should observe a moment of silence for the passing of DEC. RIP Alpha.
The VOIP Blaster was a piece of crap, like most of the rest of the stuff they sell. (Video Blaster PVR anyone?) A. it requires a computer, B. it requires a headset or regular phone, C. the volume adjustment was inadequate. I bought two. One is stuck to the side of my desk (unused) and I gave the other one away. And yes, I know about fobbit.
I had been looking at the Grandstream phones, but never found anyone willing to sell them without requiring a monthly service.
What VOIP needs is free directory service (like this one) and individual phones in the $50-75 range. I'll probably end up buying a pair of these. I would definately buy one if I could get it for $65.
All our fiber is installed with this type of stuff. But it's larger (2"?) and bright orange. I assume that's so they can charge us $5 a foot when they install it.
:-) Wanna guess what it costs to splice fiber on a Sunday afternoon? Or how much stupidity a construction crew has to have to do it twice?
Of course that still didn't stop the Cat or the backhoe from taking it out. (outside the building)
What do you do when that non-standard OS breaks your network? Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't know that installing my Linux box on the network with a DHCP server running would keep all my co-workers from getting to their server shares. I meant to start the DHCP client, not the DHCP server. (could also be done by the well meaning employee that just wanted to get a look at Win 2003 server, with the added benefit that is could do some nasty stuff to your ActiveDirectory) At the very least you have kept a lot of people from working, pissed off the CEO, and your IT director is giving you a very odd look that's none too friendly. IE. you're one step closer to a pinkslip.
As much as IT types like living in the old west, we don't like other people doing it and screwing up our playground. A little restraint and following the standards makes everyones life easier. We can play with our Linux boxen at home. Isn't that why we all have 5 or 6 systems running there?
While it is interesting that Maine is working to restore A Fort Knox. It's not THE Fort Knox where gold reserves are stored.
r re ncy/fort-knox.html
http://www.ustreas.gov/education/fact-sheets/cu