I've been running VMWare under Debian for the past six months or so with good results. I've got it installed on a dual-core PIV 3.2Ghz with a gig of RAM and Windows in the VM sessions is about as snappy as it is on my 2Ghz gaming box (although I am not using them for gaming nor would I care to try). I run the Windows clients primarily as test beds so they are not getting heavy or regular strain, but they are running simultaneously with one another and with several Linux server sessions, and the performance is more than adequate. RAM seems to be the limiting factor; I had performance problems when I had only 512MB installed that went away when I moved up to 1GB, and if you were going to be running the VM sessions as production machines I imagine you'd want 2GB. The dual core CPU is more than adequate for anything I've tried.
As the other poster said, installing VMware tools in the client session is a must. And you get a bit of a hiccup when switching sessions regardless of what else you do. On the whole, though, I've found it entirely usable with sufficient RAM.
I don't see the difference; if any company is able to use it successfully with 60,000 employees, then you know it can work with 60,000 employees. And Microsoft is among the most heavily e-mail dependent companies that you will ever run across... if it weren't working, they wouldn't be working.
Pick whatever database backend you like; big, centrally managed, scalable, as complex as you like. IT manages it; handles the schema and maintenance, necessary stored procedures. A professional data architect in the IT department has final say on the architecture, but works with the requesting parties to ensure that it can fill their data needs. If necessary, views or similar can be constructed and made available on top of the actual data structure to make it easier for the non-programmers to interact with. You then expose, with appropriately restricted permissions, the database server to all these people with their small pet database projects. You know that most of them are going to be looking at most of the same basic table structure--they need names, phone numbers, whatever. It's a decent bet, since they're in the same company, that they're actually going to be storing the same data, no less. Let them at it--give 'em ODBC connections and turn 'em loose.
They do the work; you give some input and assistance, but don't turn any of them into full-blown development projects. All you have to do is manage the backend. They get to scratch their itch, you get to look helpful and enabling, and no one gets sucked into big, expensive tools or projects.
I think rational discussion of the topic would be great. I don't think that is possible with anyone who insists on labeling as "Fact:" a lot of things which by their very nature can't possibly be known as such.
While your points are correct, I think it's safe to say they're only really significant in hindsight. One of the classic problems with conspiracy theory is that it retroactively highlights facts that, at the time, no one would necessarily have thought significant. Roosevelt may well have expected a Japanese attack of some sort; he almost certainly never imagined a defeat on the scale of Pearl Harbor and the loss of the Phillipines. Similarly, it's unlikely that anyone in the chain of command responsible for blowing the Tonkin incident out of proportion imagined what a quagmire Vietnam would turn into when we took over the war there and their motivations may have been much less grand than sparking a full-blown intervention anyway.
So I think it's a little off-base to say that anyone allowed disasters to happen. The chain of events leading up to them is always clear in retrospect, but another flaw in conspiracy theory is that it attributes such masterful vision and control to the conspiracists leading into the event, and then presumes such incompetence in handling and covering it up. In reality, no one has such complete control nor such prescience. Things become immensely confusing and fractious around such events, and no one who has ever been in the middle of such confusion could give much credence to these grand theories of shadowy orchestration. The Clausewitzian concept of "friction" is very real and works against such clockwork machinations as most concepts of conspiracy would have you believe.
Digital lifestyle or no, that site sucks. What is it that online retailers can't get through their heads about making it easy for people to see their stuff, and to give them money for it? As someone else already suggested, I'll be sticking with Tom Bihn.
I would venture to guess that Google, et al, already have "business class service"... it doesn't seem to be doing them much good against these telco proposals to cap rates, interfere with service, etc.
Whatever service you think you are getting for those extra rates, realize it's still at the whim of the provider, and just like they are proposing to do to these other entities, they will happily find a way to jack you for more if they see an opportunity to do so.
Re:MUCH MUCH Much better solution
on
Sudo vs. Root
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· Score: 1
I don't really care about that assertion; it's entirely correct. The one I take issue with is stating that all you need is a good password and everything will come up roses. You do need a good password; you may also need sudo, and you need other mechanisms in place in case those fail, and that's the point, not that sudo is somehow the end-all, be-all of secure systems.
Re:MUCH MUCH Much better solution
on
Sudo vs. Root
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· Score: 3, Interesting
This may be true for an individual user who doesn't have a lot to protect, but it's hopelessly naive in a business or other multi-user situation, or anywhere that security needs to be taken seriously. If you don't play games like "what if they have your password" and institute suitable measures to mitigate those potential situations, you're not even remotely secure. Things get accidently executed under the wrong account, keyloggers exist, people look over your shoulder... there are any number of ways the simply having a good password isn't really good enough. Redundancy and layering is the ONLY way to get trustworthy levels of security.
Wow, you had me scared, I'm at about double that... but looking at that chart more closely, I think that's cents per kilowatt hour--they're giving cost per region, rather than usage per region.
I'd be curious to see what that figure is, too, though.
I dunno if this is what the grandparent was getting at, or if you are ignorant as to the BSD underpinnings of OS X and the relative ease of compiling *nix based code for it, but there is an awful lot of Unix-based software that has already been ported over to OS X via the DarwinPorts, Fink, and other projects, so it's not really a bad suggestion. I use a lot of desktop programs on my Mac which are traditionally associated with Linux and might not turn up in a search for OS X only software--but they work great on my Powerbook. I can't say for server-side solutions but it's certainly worth taking a look.
Whether they can be held accountable is up for the courts to decide.
Provided you have sufficiently deep pockets to fight it out with the legal juggernaut that is Microsoft's counsel in that venue for a decade or more, sure. But Microsoft is actually pretty good about keeping the few major corporate entities which might do so appeased for their particular needs, so this is unlikely to happen, and for all practical purposes for the vast majority of users, the grandparent is correct.
Besides, at the heart of the argument, they have pretty clearly signalled that they don't intend to accept responsibility just by including that language in the EULA, so that should give pause to anyone who thinks that's an important factor in purchasing decisions.
Actually, it went both ways. Scalping was a more or less common practice throughout North America well before the arrival of Europeans, as archeological evidence well-attests. However, the settlers quickly adopted it as a much superior alternative to the traditional European technique of lopping off the whole head (much easier to cart around a scalp than a skull!) and commonly required scalps for bounty payment--from both white settlers AND allied Indians--although that practice in itself lapsed when it was found that you could lift a scalp without actually killing the victim first (although the victim might well welcome death first) and they went back to requiring the whole head, a much more reliable indicator of the victim's demise.
However, I was really just trolling for +Funny points and have clearly been denied by the mods, so thanks for the impromptu historical rambling as an alternative.
A third of the US thinks establishing a secret police force with no judicial oversight is a real good idea.
Well, I'm pretty sure what they are actually thinking is, "Damn it, if those pinko Democrats would just let Dirty Harry and Rambo go after those raghead bastards and stop pesterin' 'em with all their RULES and their REGULATIONS, hell, we'd kick some ass and get unleaded down to $.50 a gallon by Christmas!"
No; nor does it work particularly well even with MS stuff, in my experience. But that was NT4/2000 days, and it sucked to the point where I automatically turn it off for most installations now.
Then read the EULAs sometime. That can be a violation, depending on your license. Particularly if you buy OEM preinstalls of, say, Office or something, that copy is ONLY to be used on the hardware it was purchased with.
The real issue with compliance enforcement is that licensing is now so complex that the enforcement is basically arbitrary. Every person who reads this post and uses Microsoft software in any decent sized environment is almost certainly out of compliance in some respect or other. You may not think so, but if Microsoft does, it doesn't matter what you think. And I've personally sat through presentations by MS employees on this very topic where the same question about terms of compliance can elicit two entirely different answers. That sort of thing should scare you if you run their software. It basically means it's up to them, on any given day, whether you're complying with their Byzantine EULA or not.
Even to make an effort to stay in compliance is costly and time consuming for any decent sized business, and it's increasingly difficult for me to see the justification in even making the attempt when in the end, your best efforts don't really matter--only their interpretation.
You are correct and I never claimed otherwise. But my understanding from TFA was that he was an employee... independent contractor wasn't mentioned that I saw.
This is all really just an outgrowth of copyright protection... "spyware", "adware", and "software" are all just on a sliding scale of annoyance, but the unfortunate truth is that as long as more reputable software companies champion draconian EULAs and their right to control over the way software is run on your machine, the spyware and adware companies will enjoy those same legal rights.
Consider... what is the difference between Microsoft's latest DRM scheme built into WMP and say, the latest P2P app bundled with Gator? You probably don't want either of them on your computer, but they both have a click-wrap EULA protecting them, and your only legal choice is to not install the software they are bundled with if you really don't want them.
The fact that you can get rid of Gator and it's ilk pretty easily is just because they don't have Microsoft's resources to sue anti-spyware makers. In fact, it's a big reason why only MS can safely enter the commercial anti-spyware market... they have the big guns to handle the lawsuits. But they are relying on the same legal principles as the spyware manufacturers to defend them when they bundle crap into Windows that they don't want you to remove.
This is all setting up a pretty interesting challenge for the courts. I expect it won't fully play out for years, and probably not consistently even then, but it really gets down to the heart of the matter: who decides what runs on your computer? You? Or any software company with access to your box?
Yup... a few guys with Support kits turning their muzzles skyward for a bit are generally enough to chase off all but the most suicidal of pilots. I rarely get kills but frequently inflict enough damage to get them to back off. Also works well for shredding door gunners.
What the grandparent is getting at is that the corporate entity is the author of software, or any other "work for hire" built by an employee during his or her term of employment. That would be a better phrase to Google for, actually. Anything you come up with during your normal course of business (and in some cases, I believe it's been interpreted to including anything at all you create while employeed by the company) belongs to them.
Doesn't really matter what your or his or my time is worth... we're not going to be the ones to crack it, it's gonna be some kid in a basement in Estonia who has got nothing but time and deep motivation, and when he does it, then you and I and the next guy all will have access to it, too. It was never worth my time to sit down and crack CSS, either, but I can rip DVDs just like Jon can now. It doesn't take massive individual effort on the part of everyone who wants to circumvent this stuff, just one or two people who figure out the easy way for the rest of us.
Why not accomplish things that Windows can't which will appeal to the mainstream desktop market?
Like what?
Ah, full circle! Refer to orginal article, topic, etc.
My point is exactly what you are saying: Linux can already do all those things just fine. So can Windows. So, what's left to differentiate? OS-specific features, which is what the author of the article is on about in the first place.
Agree with you on the preloads, though, I think that the general volume of quality free software would astound most Windows users... although that's probably not much of a selling point to the average corporate IT department.
You're right, but no one is arguing about that. Yes, Linux has strengths that Windows does not. But they are strengths that play to the hobbyists and early adopters. Why not accomplish things that Windows can't which will appeal to the mainstream desktop market?
Frankly, aside from the gaming crowd, at this point OS-specific features are pretty much the only thing with any leverage. The basic business functionality can be accomplished on both platforms, and the only question left is which makes it easier... and it's the operating system that dictates that.
Don't put absurd requirements for Linux that the latest MS Windows can't accomplish..
But that was exactly his point--Linux NEEDS to be able to accomplish things Windows can't accomplish, dramatic and useful things, to overcome the barriers to adoption. I think the risk-free install is a bit pie-in-the-sky, but his point is well-taken... there is an opportunity to do some big, dramatic things to make it easy to adopt Linux on the desktop, because there is no corporate imperative in the way. If you saddle yourself to only to features that the latest Windows can accomplish, you're discarding one of the main advantages in the fight.
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I've been running VMWare under Debian for the past six months or so with good results. I've got it installed on a dual-core PIV 3.2Ghz with a gig of RAM and Windows in the VM sessions is about as snappy as it is on my 2Ghz gaming box (although I am not using them for gaming nor would I care to try). I run the Windows clients primarily as test beds so they are not getting heavy or regular strain, but they are running simultaneously with one another and with several Linux server sessions, and the performance is more than adequate. RAM seems to be the limiting factor; I had performance problems when I had only 512MB installed that went away when I moved up to 1GB, and if you were going to be running the VM sessions as production machines I imagine you'd want 2GB. The dual core CPU is more than adequate for anything I've tried.
As the other poster said, installing VMware tools in the client session is a must. And you get a bit of a hiccup when switching sessions regardless of what else you do. On the whole, though, I've found it entirely usable with sufficient RAM.
I don't see the difference; if any company is able to use it successfully with 60,000 employees, then you know it can work with 60,000 employees. And Microsoft is among the most heavily e-mail dependent companies that you will ever run across... if it weren't working, they wouldn't be working.
Pick whatever database backend you like; big, centrally managed, scalable, as complex as you like. IT manages it; handles the schema and maintenance, necessary stored procedures. A professional data architect in the IT department has final say on the architecture, but works with the requesting parties to ensure that it can fill their data needs. If necessary, views or similar can be constructed and made available on top of the actual data structure to make it easier for the non-programmers to interact with. You then expose, with appropriately restricted permissions, the database server to all these people with their small pet database projects. You know that most of them are going to be looking at most of the same basic table structure--they need names, phone numbers, whatever. It's a decent bet, since they're in the same company, that they're actually going to be storing the same data, no less. Let them at it--give 'em ODBC connections and turn 'em loose.
They do the work; you give some input and assistance, but don't turn any of them into full-blown development projects. All you have to do is manage the backend. They get to scratch their itch, you get to look helpful and enabling, and no one gets sucked into big, expensive tools or projects.
I think rational discussion of the topic would be great. I don't think that is possible with anyone who insists on labeling as "Fact:" a lot of things which by their very nature can't possibly be known as such.
While your points are correct, I think it's safe to say they're only really significant in hindsight. One of the classic problems with conspiracy theory is that it retroactively highlights facts that, at the time, no one would necessarily have thought significant. Roosevelt may well have expected a Japanese attack of some sort; he almost certainly never imagined a defeat on the scale of Pearl Harbor and the loss of the Phillipines. Similarly, it's unlikely that anyone in the chain of command responsible for blowing the Tonkin incident out of proportion imagined what a quagmire Vietnam would turn into when we took over the war there and their motivations may have been much less grand than sparking a full-blown intervention anyway.
So I think it's a little off-base to say that anyone allowed disasters to happen. The chain of events leading up to them is always clear in retrospect, but another flaw in conspiracy theory is that it attributes such masterful vision and control to the conspiracists leading into the event, and then presumes such incompetence in handling and covering it up. In reality, no one has such complete control nor such prescience. Things become immensely confusing and fractious around such events, and no one who has ever been in the middle of such confusion could give much credence to these grand theories of shadowy orchestration. The Clausewitzian concept of "friction" is very real and works against such clockwork machinations as most concepts of conspiracy would have you believe.
Digital lifestyle or no, that site sucks. What is it that online retailers can't get through their heads about making it easy for people to see their stuff, and to give them money for it? As someone else already suggested, I'll be sticking with Tom Bihn.
I would venture to guess that Google, et al, already have "business class service"... it doesn't seem to be doing them much good against these telco proposals to cap rates, interfere with service, etc.
Whatever service you think you are getting for those extra rates, realize it's still at the whim of the provider, and just like they are proposing to do to these other entities, they will happily find a way to jack you for more if they see an opportunity to do so.
I don't really care about that assertion; it's entirely correct. The one I take issue with is stating that all you need is a good password and everything will come up roses. You do need a good password; you may also need sudo, and you need other mechanisms in place in case those fail, and that's the point, not that sudo is somehow the end-all, be-all of secure systems.
This may be true for an individual user who doesn't have a lot to protect, but it's hopelessly naive in a business or other multi-user situation, or anywhere that security needs to be taken seriously. If you don't play games like "what if they have your password" and institute suitable measures to mitigate those potential situations, you're not even remotely secure. Things get accidently executed under the wrong account, keyloggers exist, people look over your shoulder... there are any number of ways the simply having a good password isn't really good enough. Redundancy and layering is the ONLY way to get trustworthy levels of security.
Wow, you had me scared, I'm at about double that... but looking at that chart more closely, I think that's cents per kilowatt hour--they're giving cost per region, rather than usage per region.
I'd be curious to see what that figure is, too, though.
I dunno if this is what the grandparent was getting at, or if you are ignorant as to the BSD underpinnings of OS X and the relative ease of compiling *nix based code for it, but there is an awful lot of Unix-based software that has already been ported over to OS X via the DarwinPorts, Fink, and other projects, so it's not really a bad suggestion. I use a lot of desktop programs on my Mac which are traditionally associated with Linux and might not turn up in a search for OS X only software--but they work great on my Powerbook. I can't say for server-side solutions but it's certainly worth taking a look.
Whether they can be held accountable is up for the courts to decide.
Provided you have sufficiently deep pockets to fight it out with the legal juggernaut that is Microsoft's counsel in that venue for a decade or more, sure. But Microsoft is actually pretty good about keeping the few major corporate entities which might do so appeased for their particular needs, so this is unlikely to happen, and for all practical purposes for the vast majority of users, the grandparent is correct.
Besides, at the heart of the argument, they have pretty clearly signalled that they don't intend to accept responsibility just by including that language in the EULA, so that should give pause to anyone who thinks that's an important factor in purchasing decisions.
Actually, it went both ways. Scalping was a more or less common practice throughout North America well before the arrival of Europeans, as archeological evidence well-attests. However, the settlers quickly adopted it as a much superior alternative to the traditional European technique of lopping off the whole head (much easier to cart around a scalp than a skull!) and commonly required scalps for bounty payment--from both white settlers AND allied Indians--although that practice in itself lapsed when it was found that you could lift a scalp without actually killing the victim first (although the victim might well welcome death first) and they went back to requiring the whole head, a much more reliable indicator of the victim's demise.
However, I was really just trolling for +Funny points and have clearly been denied by the mods, so thanks for the impromptu historical rambling as an alternative.
Naw, you gotta play to your strengths. Sponsor and hold GUN LAN tournaments at existing tribal casinos, and laugh all the way to the bank!
(Alternate ending: "Liquor up the players then scalp 'em when they pass out!")
A third of the US thinks establishing a secret police force with no judicial oversight is a real good idea.
Well, I'm pretty sure what they are actually thinking is, "Damn it, if those pinko Democrats would just let Dirty Harry and Rambo go after those raghead bastards and stop pesterin' 'em with all their RULES and their REGULATIONS, hell, we'd kick some ass and get unleaded down to $.50 a gallon by Christmas!"
No; nor does it work particularly well even with MS stuff, in my experience. But that was NT4/2000 days, and it sucked to the point where I automatically turn it off for most installations now.
Then read the EULAs sometime. That can be a violation, depending on your license. Particularly if you buy OEM preinstalls of, say, Office or something, that copy is ONLY to be used on the hardware it was purchased with.
The real issue with compliance enforcement is that licensing is now so complex that the enforcement is basically arbitrary. Every person who reads this post and uses Microsoft software in any decent sized environment is almost certainly out of compliance in some respect or other. You may not think so, but if Microsoft does, it doesn't matter what you think. And I've personally sat through presentations by MS employees on this very topic where the same question about terms of compliance can elicit two entirely different answers. That sort of thing should scare you if you run their software. It basically means it's up to them, on any given day, whether you're complying with their Byzantine EULA or not.
Even to make an effort to stay in compliance is costly and time consuming for any decent sized business, and it's increasingly difficult for me to see the justification in even making the attempt when in the end, your best efforts don't really matter--only their interpretation.
You are correct and I never claimed otherwise. But my understanding from TFA was that he was an employee... independent contractor wasn't mentioned that I saw.
This is all really just an outgrowth of copyright protection... "spyware", "adware", and "software" are all just on a sliding scale of annoyance, but the unfortunate truth is that as long as more reputable software companies champion draconian EULAs and their right to control over the way software is run on your machine, the spyware and adware companies will enjoy those same legal rights.
Consider... what is the difference between Microsoft's latest DRM scheme built into WMP and say, the latest P2P app bundled with Gator? You probably don't want either of them on your computer, but they both have a click-wrap EULA protecting them, and your only legal choice is to not install the software they are bundled with if you really don't want them.
The fact that you can get rid of Gator and it's ilk pretty easily is just because they don't have Microsoft's resources to sue anti-spyware makers. In fact, it's a big reason why only MS can safely enter the commercial anti-spyware market... they have the big guns to handle the lawsuits. But they are relying on the same legal principles as the spyware manufacturers to defend them when they bundle crap into Windows that they don't want you to remove.
This is all setting up a pretty interesting challenge for the courts. I expect it won't fully play out for years, and probably not consistently even then, but it really gets down to the heart of the matter: who decides what runs on your computer? You? Or any software company with access to your box?
Yup... a few guys with Support kits turning their muzzles skyward for a bit are generally enough to chase off all but the most suicidal of pilots. I rarely get kills but frequently inflict enough damage to get them to back off. Also works well for shredding door gunners.
What the grandparent is getting at is that the corporate entity is the author of software, or any other "work for hire" built by an employee during his or her term of employment. That would be a better phrase to Google for, actually. Anything you come up with during your normal course of business (and in some cases, I believe it's been interpreted to including anything at all you create while employeed by the company) belongs to them.
Doesn't really matter what your or his or my time is worth... we're not going to be the ones to crack it, it's gonna be some kid in a basement in Estonia who has got nothing but time and deep motivation, and when he does it, then you and I and the next guy all will have access to it, too. It was never worth my time to sit down and crack CSS, either, but I can rip DVDs just like Jon can now. It doesn't take massive individual effort on the part of everyone who wants to circumvent this stuff, just one or two people who figure out the easy way for the rest of us.
Why not accomplish things that Windows can't which will appeal to the mainstream desktop market?
Like what?
Ah, full circle! Refer to orginal article, topic, etc.
My point is exactly what you are saying: Linux can already do all those things just fine. So can Windows. So, what's left to differentiate? OS-specific features, which is what the author of the article is on about in the first place.
Agree with you on the preloads, though, I think that the general volume of quality free software would astound most Windows users... although that's probably not much of a selling point to the average corporate IT department.
You're right, but no one is arguing about that. Yes, Linux has strengths that Windows does not. But they are strengths that play to the hobbyists and early adopters. Why not accomplish things that Windows can't which will appeal to the mainstream desktop market?
Frankly, aside from the gaming crowd, at this point OS-specific features are pretty much the only thing with any leverage. The basic business functionality can be accomplished on both platforms, and the only question left is which makes it easier... and it's the operating system that dictates that.
Don't put absurd requirements for Linux that the latest MS Windows can't accomplish..
But that was exactly his point--Linux NEEDS to be able to accomplish things Windows can't accomplish, dramatic and useful things, to overcome the barriers to adoption. I think the risk-free install is a bit pie-in-the-sky, but his point is well-taken... there is an opportunity to do some big, dramatic things to make it easy to adopt Linux on the desktop, because there is no corporate imperative in the way. If you saddle yourself to only to features that the latest Windows can accomplish, you're discarding one of the main advantages in the fight.