I'm right handed, but I flip pages the same way you do.;) I have no idea why, but I've noticed that many, many people do this. In fact, magazine ad sales (and costs) are very high for the inside of the back cover. I don't know if it's some societal conditioning that we've learned (since there's no good content in the first twenty pages anyway) or if it's something more basic.
But I guess this is still part of the first post. There are a lot of funny human behaviors we can't (easily) explain but which are learned from our environment.
We're used to the word icon meaning that little bitmap on a desktop or menu. But in the larger sense, something iconic is a visual symbol, a graphic representation of a larger idea. In my field, architecture, when something is iconic we mean that it someone has used a shortcut to communicate some greater idea. A city hall may choose to represent being a seat of power by suggesting the form of a chair. Or a window may tell us it is floating within a wall by it's odd or angular placement within a building elevation.
The desktop environment icon serves as the visual handle for some object like a document, an application or an action. To say that we can find some new paradigm other than an icon doesn't solve the basic problem that humans need handles on things to understand and use them. Granted, there may be another clever re-interpretation of the desktop metaphor, but we'll still need the same handles. And because visual perception is the first means humans have to approach something, I doubt anything non-visual will serve the purpose as well. Let's just say that if we want to replace icons on the GUI, the replacement concept would need to be provable on road signs, transportation graphics, automobile controls... you get the idea.
(Let me just add at this point, that the inevitable humorous comments in the thread regarding the command line actually outline one way people do communication in the real world: voice. Typing at the command line is equivalent to verbal communication. But we can see the failing of this in a real world situation: road signs use shapes and color to communicate more than written text. Sure we need road names and specific situational info to be spelled out, but if every stop sign and light was only verbal, there would be a lot more accidents.)
Personally, I think real improvements could be made on the desktop metaphor. We walk around in 3D environments every day and get feedback by moving through spacial environments. While I'll be the first to condemn first-person game-like 3D navigation, I think there's quite a large area of exploration that is untouched.
For example, we navigate through a book by proceeding from page to page. These pages are numbered, too. And we have a table of contents. But did you know that a large percentage of people actually read magazines backwards? They defy the entire designed navigation structure for a spacial comfort. (It's arguably easier for a right-hander to flip a magazine from back to front.) You also have a sense of where you are in a book by the visual ques offered by the number of pages on either side of your present position. And you get a sense of the book's content and quality by it's heft, it's font, line spacing, margin widths and general graphic tone.
So why can't a computing environment use more and more types of visual ques?
Can't an environmental indication of virtual desktop position be shown beyond some little icon pager? (Borders on either side of the desktop?)
Couldn't icon groupings be toned by spacial means, not just alphabetic organization or gross categorization? Shouldn't desktops be zoned and reactive based on these groupings?
Couldn't the design of the icons themselves indicate categories of function, similar to the typical doc+symbol used for MIME types but yet broader ranging? (Why does the icon for a word processor look so similar to a document made by it? In one sense they're un-related.)
I think the huge barrier to a new approach is the amount of coordination and effort required. Face it, most projects in my desktop environment are doing well just to have a picture, let alone one that also follows rules of purpose, frequency of use, tone, or anything else social that helps us to navigate the real world. We are appalled when menus re-organize themselves by use, but perhaps an environment that adjusts itself to my "position" more capably could rely on some of the same types of spatial input I get from the real world.
...when they all have to be contained within a single large rectangular container, you lose the option of having a funny-shaped container which leaves open 'holes' into which you can see the rest of your desktop workspace.
And why, exactly, if you're doing graphics professionally do you need to leave little gaps between windows? So that you can make cool 31337 screenshots with the windows covering the most private parts of the nudes on your background suggestively exposed between?
...from the interface point of view, i'd pick gimp over photoshop any day... tho not being a graphics-savvy person, the gimp is more than sufficient for my needs
As I sit here reading comments, I'm struck by the two conflicting desires of the posters:
MDI v. window manager
Window mouse-clicking/virtual workspace-swapping v. Alt+Tab/Window list mouse-clicking
Perhaps we're using GIMP two different ways.
It appears those that do not want MDI want to be able to arrange their windows around the desktop leaving little areas to peer through to other apps in the background. This group likes to use the mouse to focus windows and may enjoy being able to swap to another workspace to preserve this environment.
Others of us (myself included) sometimes do graphics professionally for days straight at a time. We're in the environment 10-12 hours and may have 20-50 image windows open in one session, maybe 500 a day. (Such as when producing icons, or bullets, or thumbnails, etc.) In this case, having to select objects by visual means is almost impossible. There are enough windows to completely obstruct the background with frames alone. And who on earth would actually go to the trouble to physically arrange them all?! Instead, we prefer a single Alt+Tab or mouse click on the window list to switch away, and another to return to the graphic application environment. The MDI has it's own window list which aids in having to decide between different names and other applications in the same list. It also has its own separate Ctrl+Tab key combination to page between them.
I guess I'm tired of seeing the flames. Can't the developers simply acknowldege that there is more than one way to look at the UI and add the simple option to have MDI? Or is it really not that simple? Perhaps not. Is that why the option is being avoided?
Honestly, HTML is a decent precedent for XML. Sure the structure is less ordered, and not so clearly delineated between logical/structral and layout/presentation halves. But the idea of using containing tags to structure text has been around since at least SGML in 1986.
Let's hope that this patent applies to a specific implementation of XML, such as the form:
Interesting enough then, that Activision, the one megacorp that would actually be thanked for bringing us Doom (well... Doom 3 anyways), seems unable to do so.
Moderators: Note that in some cases +1 Funny should override your urge to mod as -1 Offtopic. Thank you.
Given the general efforts by freedesktop.org and the like to improve interoperability between the two largest free desktops, isn't the so-called desktop war is really a mute point? Sure there are two complete systems, but even as a die-hard GNOME user myself, I still want all the KDE desktop available even if only to occasionally try out some KDE app or feature.
I think keeping both desktops as strong and competitive as possible is the best for all of us. In fact, my concern down the road is that through general merging of functionalities and core libraries (even allowing for C v. C++ differences), the whole thing may become one big homogenous effort prone to stagnation. (The wheel gets so big, it gets harder and harder for the community as a whole to re-work efficiencies or pursue dreams beyond current capabilities.)
Perhaps the (justified) business concern of trying to do too much without focus applies here, but why can't the KDE effort simply fork and find supporting funding if abandoned? If the demand is there, no one business can ever kill off Free Software. Maybe how Novell decides to treat KDE (or Ximian) really doesn't have as big an impact as we think. Does corporate funding really prove to be the most significant factor in a desktop's success or effectiveness?
Bzzzz. Wrong answer. In fact I use a 2.6 Ghz P4 1Gb RAM with XP Pro at work with over $10K in CAD, office, graphics, and publishing applications and yet it is actually quite comparable in speed and feel to my home system. (Which, BTW, has a web cam, full sound support, drag-n-drop CD burning, DVD watching, blah, blah, blah that any neighbor of mine has with Windows whatever.)
Funny how despite being on such a kickin' system at work, I have no desire to upgrade at home because Linux makes so much more of the resource.
You're feeding a troll, this guy is more interested in holding his ground than learning. He's obviously done very little research, or never explored his system (if he even has one, or if it's relatively current).
Three years ago, his points would have been valid, but not today. Regarding choice, yes, I do prefer to be prompted and informed before said installation sledgehammers my master boot record and uses my drives. I also prefer that if I install some monolithic monopoly's software that it doesn't push aside all my third party software and snakily insert generic looking/described icons for its own services.
(Sorry, I'm a bit OT on this thread, but needed a place to explain some of the supporting evidence the OP seems to overlook.)
Have you ever seen Synaptic? Windows has nothing on it, an entire library of software to install. (Taken from any apt-get repository.) All dependencies handled automatically.
Granted, Linux is still several years behind Windows in application breadth. (Example: genealogy software -- Linux has one decent one, GRAMPS, Windows has literally dozens.) But this continues to improve with time, from being pathetic back when I started in 1999, to having "most major applications" today.
I'm certainly no software developer, but both my wife and I now use Linux full time. Neither of us have booted to Win95 in over a month. All this on a four year old P3-450.
Not only will your dollar go much farther, but you can piece together what you want. I started out with an old Canon AE1 body, two lenses (35mm and 20mm), a cheap leather body/lense case, a camera gear case with adjustable foam inserts, several filters, a remote bulb, and some cleaning stuff for maybe $200 US.
Granted the camera is manual, without any automatic settings, but this is absolutely the best way to learn. Film and developing costs a huge amount, so save yourself the shiny new camera and killer telescopic lense, and instead buy a book on photography, invest in a decent light meter and go shoot a bunch of film, documenting your exposure lengths, f-stops, and light levels in a notebook. Wow, will you get better in a hurry.
Better yet, take a cheapo community college course which will force you to learn basic things like optics, framing, how cameras work, how film works and some general composition rules. Plus it will give you the motivation to shoot rolls more often than you usually would.
3. One of the Linux IDE Gods will become sufficently annoyed that a proper investigation will happen, the flaw in LG's firmware will be documented in overkill detail.
Heh, best laugh I had all day, thanks! (And I'm pushing my 18th hour awake.)
Unfortunately, architects like being in charge all the time, and in specific cases like this they might overshadow an engineer's advice.
Heh, the goal is coordination of all concerns. Feel free to use any professional that you feel comfortable will be competant throughout the process.
One example would be the floor loading stated by the parent. Generally, the only things that are a concern in an office building are the UPS system and the batteries.
Perhaps in a measly telecom room. A real data center might use rows of 24"x30" racks loaded to 1,800 lbs each. The OP's building's beams, steel connections, floor system, computer floor post configuration, and lateral bracing may *easily* be taxed by such a condition. Somewhere in between is where it gets hairy, but the details decide it.
The solution is generally just to spread out the load. (Actually, almost all density-related problems (structural, cooling, or electrical) are best solved with this approach.)
"Best solved"? Square footage is expensive, I've never seen management convinced to displace hundreds of workers to avoid calculating and re-engineering increased structural, cooling and power loads in favor of spreading out a data center to "uh, bigger".
A serious data center is no place for the home improvment, do-it-yourself approach. Do some planning and get some help. Not only will you save money in the end, but you'll give yourself future opportunities that you wouldn't have seen otherwise. Plus it's much easier to convice managment with a third party opinion that you really do need another HVAC unit or electrical service.
You need help. (With an architect, I used to do this stuff for the "largest router company in the world".)
From an architectural perspective, don't underestimate the complexity of space planning. Equipment access, emergency egress, and growth of all engineering and supporting systems may put you at a very different place than you might imagine if you consider only your direct server capacity. I'm sure every geek around here would like to think they can solve most engineering type problems with a little extra effort, but building design has more than a few gotchas you don't want to miss.
On the building engineering side, the general trend is for higher and higher densities. Ten years ago, one might have projected that data centers would be getting exponentially larger, but the increasing density of electronic components keeps that growth more reasonable. However, density of equipment has a nasty side effect in that it pushes HVAC, power, UPS, and structural limits far beyond what your average spec office building is designed for. I know from experience that increasing structural floor load capacities from 80psf to 150psf is eyebrow-raising expensive with an operative data center!
Don't make dangerous mistakes. Beyond the expense, embarrasment, and possible job loss, you could create a serious life safety problem for yourselves or those working around you. Obviously four servers isn't exactly a major data center, but if that triples in the middle of a low load floor bay, (or if they're already some mondo racks) you might be closer to floor capacity than you realize. Sounds like you're beyond UPS, power, and HVAC load now--hire an architect with an engineer in tow for a few hours ($400-ish) to advise you. (Or mail me with your geographical location if you need recommendations.;)
Is the source code for Red Hat's installers available? How about their build and dependency system/database?
(Not trying to flame, just curious myself--I'm a long time Red Hat user but I've never seen mention of where to go to find either these. And both seem to be quite significant differentiating features of their distribution.)
Not everyone is willing to upgrade as often as Microsoft would like. (Or RedHat, Debian, Apple, BSD, etc.) Platform stability is a huge deal for a corporation, so simply plugging into the Borg to fix yet-another-hole obviously isn't the end-all solution. Again, I say *design* plays a more important role in security than patches.
You bunch of you-should've-patched posers have no clue how things work on an installation base broader than your own PC.
The point is that creating an architecture which encourages "interactive" features with a higher priority than security sets up the problem to begin with. I don't care if patches finally get released, the OS is full of software that encourages poor security (NetMeeting anyone?) and is not *designed* to be secure.
Obviously no one is perfect, the upgrade/patch process is necessary, but I'm not arguing that. Duh.
The fact that these [SoBig.F] attacks are coming out and that people's software is not up to date in a way that fully prevents an attack on them is something we feel very bad about.
This is double-speak. He is trying to imply that people's failure to auto-update is somehow related to Windows' risk of virus/worm attack. But they are in no way related.
System architecture that fails to maintain security is a design flaw, not a maintenance problem. Gates and Microsoft are attempting to blame shift their responsibilities to their product's users. Pretty much anyone would recognize this in a tort law suit, although I expect very few to make this claim in court simply because of Microsoft's size and reputation.
I used a relatively simple MS-DOS batch file for just this purpose for years. All you need are 24 CD-RW (for one year's worth of backups), Zip (WinZIP's command line is what I used), a CD drive that can be accessed as a drive letter (Drive Letter Access (DLA) or some other proprietary name), and basic command line ability.
Have the batch compress each folder into a temp file by the same name (in \windows\temp or something) and then copy each to CD-RW. Use Window's scheduler (all have it, I use Win95a) to run the batch every night and rotate CD-RWs for each day of the week ("child"). Each Friday, rotate one of four separate CD-RW's ("father", a child grows up), and the first Friday of every month, retire one permenantly ("grandfather", a father stops working).
I actually clean off the temp zip files each night and re-write them in entirety. There are more complex, only-changed-since-last-backup, archive bit methods, but I like this simple-minded organization and being able to have immediate access to any previous day within 7, any previous week within 4, and any previous month indefinitely. Plus the Zip files in temp are redundant with the CD, meaning every file exists three places at any time. Also, media is not re-used too often in this scheme (it retires when "old"), and there aren't multi-media dependencies which can botch the entire system if a single tape goes bad.
Of course, this was up to a few months ago when my drive crashed, I completely bailed to Linux, and re-wrote the whole thing as a Bash script. I also now have more content than will fit on a disk bzipped, but it's essentially the same process except that I have odd/even day staggering and only half the redundancy. But at least I always know what's on any given disk and know how to go back to any given time to find backups if needed. (The BackupExec our NT servers use at work, OTOH, is abysmal in reliability, setup and actually trying to restore a file in less than an hour. Probably theoretically more sound, but darned if I can see that it has more *practical* application.)
Slashdot Mirror
I'm right handed, but I flip pages the same way you do. ;) I have no idea why, but I've noticed that many, many people do this. In fact, magazine ad sales (and costs) are very high for the inside of the back cover. I don't know if it's some societal conditioning that we've learned (since there's no good content in the first twenty pages anyway) or if it's something more basic.
But I guess this is still part of the first post. There are a lot of funny human behaviors we can't (easily) explain but which are learned from our environment.
We're used to the word icon meaning that little bitmap on a desktop or menu. But in the larger sense, something iconic is a visual symbol, a graphic representation of a larger idea. In my field, architecture, when something is iconic we mean that it someone has used a shortcut to communicate some greater idea. A city hall may choose to represent being a seat of power by suggesting the form of a chair. Or a window may tell us it is floating within a wall by it's odd or angular placement within a building elevation.
The desktop environment icon serves as the visual handle for some object like a document, an application or an action. To say that we can find some new paradigm other than an icon doesn't solve the basic problem that humans need handles on things to understand and use them. Granted, there may be another clever re-interpretation of the desktop metaphor, but we'll still need the same handles. And because visual perception is the first means humans have to approach something, I doubt anything non-visual will serve the purpose as well. Let's just say that if we want to replace icons on the GUI, the replacement concept would need to be provable on road signs, transportation graphics, automobile controls... you get the idea.
(Let me just add at this point, that the inevitable humorous comments in the thread regarding the command line actually outline one way people do communication in the real world: voice. Typing at the command line is equivalent to verbal communication. But we can see the failing of this in a real world situation: road signs use shapes and color to communicate more than written text. Sure we need road names and specific situational info to be spelled out, but if every stop sign and light was only verbal, there would be a lot more accidents.)
Personally, I think real improvements could be made on the desktop metaphor. We walk around in 3D environments every day and get feedback by moving through spacial environments. While I'll be the first to condemn first-person game-like 3D navigation, I think there's quite a large area of exploration that is untouched.
For example, we navigate through a book by proceeding from page to page. These pages are numbered, too. And we have a table of contents. But did you know that a large percentage of people actually read magazines backwards? They defy the entire designed navigation structure for a spacial comfort. (It's arguably easier for a right-hander to flip a magazine from back to front.) You also have a sense of where you are in a book by the visual ques offered by the number of pages on either side of your present position. And you get a sense of the book's content and quality by it's heft, it's font, line spacing, margin widths and general graphic tone.
So why can't a computing environment use more and more types of visual ques?
I think the huge barrier to a new approach is the amount of coordination and effort required. Face it, most projects in my desktop environment are doing well just to have a picture, let alone one that also follows rules of purpose, frequency of use, tone, or anything else social that helps us to navigate the real world. We are appalled when menus re-organize themselves by use, but perhaps an environment that adjusts itself to my "position" more capably could rely on some of the same types of spatial input I get from the real world.
And why, exactly, if you're doing graphics professionally do you need to leave little gaps between windows? So that you can make cool 31337 screenshots with the windows covering the most private parts of the nudes on your background suggestively exposed between?
Uh, yeah. I thought so.
As I sit here reading comments, I'm struck by the two conflicting desires of the posters:
Perhaps we're using GIMP two different ways.
It appears those that do not want MDI want to be able to arrange their windows around the desktop leaving little areas to peer through to other apps in the background. This group likes to use the mouse to focus windows and may enjoy being able to swap to another workspace to preserve this environment.
Others of us (myself included) sometimes do graphics professionally for days straight at a time. We're in the environment 10-12 hours and may have 20-50 image windows open in one session, maybe 500 a day. (Such as when producing icons, or bullets, or thumbnails, etc.) In this case, having to select objects by visual means is almost impossible. There are enough windows to completely obstruct the background with frames alone. And who on earth would actually go to the trouble to physically arrange them all?! Instead, we prefer a single Alt+Tab or mouse click on the window list to switch away, and another to return to the graphic application environment. The MDI has it's own window list which aids in having to decide between different names and other applications in the same list. It also has its own separate Ctrl+Tab key combination to page between them.
I guess I'm tired of seeing the flames. Can't the developers simply acknowldege that there is more than one way to look at the UI and add the simple option to have MDI? Or is it really not that simple? Perhaps not. Is that why the option is being avoided?
Honestly, HTML is a decent precedent for XML. Sure the structure is less ordered, and not so clearly delineated between logical/structral and layout/presentation halves. But the idea of using containing tags to structure text has been around since at least SGML in 1986.
Let's hope that this patent applies to a specific implementation of XML, such as the form:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?><XML>
</XML>
Heh.
Looks like I need to integrate a grammar checker into my Vim beyond my current spell checker.
Thanks for the pointer, I'll never confuse them now. ;)
Moderators: Note that in some cases +1 Funny should override your urge to mod as -1 Offtopic. Thank you.
Is this correct:
(emphasis mine)
I thought we knew that they purchased some licensing rights from Novell, but that basically Novell still owns licensing rights (and the IP).
If so, it appears that the NYT hasn't exactly stated the situation correctly. Correct me if I'm wrong.
Given the general efforts by freedesktop.org and the like to improve interoperability between the two largest free desktops, isn't the so-called desktop war is really a mute point? Sure there are two complete systems, but even as a die-hard GNOME user myself, I still want all the KDE desktop available even if only to occasionally try out some KDE app or feature.
I think keeping both desktops as strong and competitive as possible is the best for all of us. In fact, my concern down the road is that through general merging of functionalities and core libraries (even allowing for C v. C++ differences), the whole thing may become one big homogenous effort prone to stagnation. (The wheel gets so big, it gets harder and harder for the community as a whole to re-work efficiencies or pursue dreams beyond current capabilities.)
Perhaps the (justified) business concern of trying to do too much without focus applies here, but why can't the KDE effort simply fork and find supporting funding if abandoned? If the demand is there, no one business can ever kill off Free Software. Maybe how Novell decides to treat KDE (or Ximian) really doesn't have as big an impact as we think. Does corporate funding really prove to be the most significant factor in a desktop's success or effectiveness?
Whoohooo! Thanks for reminding me of QEMM, that was the heat.
Bzzzz. Wrong answer. In fact I use a 2.6 Ghz P4 1Gb RAM with XP Pro at work with over $10K in CAD, office, graphics, and publishing applications and yet it is actually quite comparable in speed and feel to my home system. (Which, BTW, has a web cam, full sound support, drag-n-drop CD burning, DVD watching, blah, blah, blah that any neighbor of mine has with Windows whatever.)
Funny how despite being on such a kickin' system at work, I have no desire to upgrade at home because Linux makes so much more of the resource.
You're feeding a troll, this guy is more interested in holding his ground than learning. He's obviously done very little research, or never explored his system (if he even has one, or if it's relatively current).
Three years ago, his points would have been valid, but not today. Regarding choice, yes, I do prefer to be prompted and informed before said installation sledgehammers my master boot record and uses my drives. I also prefer that if I install some monolithic monopoly's software that it doesn't push aside all my third party software and snakily insert generic looking/described icons for its own services.
(Sorry, I'm a bit OT on this thread, but needed a place to explain some of the supporting evidence the OP seems to overlook.)
Have you ever seen Synaptic? Windows has nothing on it, an entire library of software to install. (Taken from any apt-get repository.) All dependencies handled automatically.
Granted, Linux is still several years behind Windows in application breadth. (Example: genealogy software -- Linux has one decent one, GRAMPS, Windows has literally dozens.) But this continues to improve with time, from being pathetic back when I started in 1999, to having "most major applications" today.
I'm certainly no software developer, but both my wife and I now use Linux full time. Neither of us have booted to Win95 in over a month. All this on a four year old P3-450.
Do what I did and go to a used camera store (like Southeastern Camera).
Not only will your dollar go much farther, but you can piece together what you want. I started out with an old Canon AE1 body, two lenses (35mm and 20mm), a cheap leather body/lense case, a camera gear case with adjustable foam inserts, several filters, a remote bulb, and some cleaning stuff for maybe $200 US.
Granted the camera is manual, without any automatic settings, but this is absolutely the best way to learn. Film and developing costs a huge amount, so save yourself the shiny new camera and killer telescopic lense, and instead buy a book on photography, invest in a decent light meter and go shoot a bunch of film, documenting your exposure lengths, f-stops, and light levels in a notebook. Wow, will you get better in a hurry.
Better yet, take a cheapo community college course which will force you to learn basic things like optics, framing, how cameras work, how film works and some general composition rules. Plus it will give you the motivation to shoot rolls more often than you usually would.
HTH.
You are so right. I can't imagine anything else these guys have done that would have given them the amount of publicity they received today!
Heh, best laugh I had all day, thanks! (And I'm pushing my 18th hour awake.)
Heh, the goal is coordination of all concerns. Feel free to use any professional that you feel comfortable will be competant throughout the process.
Perhaps in a measly telecom room. A real data center might use rows of 24"x30" racks loaded to 1,800 lbs each. The OP's building's beams, steel connections, floor system, computer floor post configuration, and lateral bracing may *easily* be taxed by such a condition. Somewhere in between is where it gets hairy, but the details decide it.
"Best solved"? Square footage is expensive, I've never seen management convinced to displace hundreds of workers to avoid calculating and re-engineering increased structural, cooling and power loads in favor of spreading out a data center to "uh, bigger".
A serious data center is no place for the home improvment, do-it-yourself approach. Do some planning and get some help. Not only will you save money in the end, but you'll give yourself future opportunities that you wouldn't have seen otherwise. Plus it's much easier to convice managment with a third party opinion that you really do need another HVAC unit or electrical service.
You need help. (With an architect, I used to do this stuff for the "largest router company in the world".)
From an architectural perspective, don't underestimate the complexity of space planning. Equipment access, emergency egress, and growth of all engineering and supporting systems may put you at a very different place than you might imagine if you consider only your direct server capacity. I'm sure every geek around here would like to think they can solve most engineering type problems with a little extra effort, but building design has more than a few gotchas you don't want to miss.
On the building engineering side, the general trend is for higher and higher densities. Ten years ago, one might have projected that data centers would be getting exponentially larger, but the increasing density of electronic components keeps that growth more reasonable. However, density of equipment has a nasty side effect in that it pushes HVAC, power, UPS, and structural limits far beyond what your average spec office building is designed for. I know from experience that increasing structural floor load capacities from 80psf to 150psf is eyebrow-raising expensive with an operative data center!
Don't make dangerous mistakes. Beyond the expense, embarrasment, and possible job loss, you could create a serious life safety problem for yourselves or those working around you. Obviously four servers isn't exactly a major data center, but if that triples in the middle of a low load floor bay, (or if they're already some mondo racks) you might be closer to floor capacity than you realize. Sounds like you're beyond UPS, power, and HVAC load now--hire an architect with an engineer in tow for a few hours ($400-ish) to advise you. (Or mail me with your geographical location if you need recommendations. ;)
(Not trying to flame, just curious myself--I'm a long time Red Hat user but I've never seen mention of where to go to find either these. And both seem to be quite significant differentiating features of their distribution.)
Updating doesn't solve all problems! In fact, in some cases, it causes them. We found an XP hot fix that contaminates AutoDesk Viz files !
Not everyone is willing to upgrade as often as Microsoft would like. (Or RedHat, Debian, Apple, BSD, etc.) Platform stability is a huge deal for a corporation, so simply plugging into the Borg to fix yet-another-hole obviously isn't the end-all solution. Again, I say *design* plays a more important role in security than patches.
You bunch of you-should've-patched posers have no clue how things work on an installation base broader than your own PC.
The point is that creating an architecture which encourages "interactive" features with a higher priority than security sets up the problem to begin with. I don't care if patches finally get released, the OS is full of software that encourages poor security (NetMeeting anyone?) and is not *designed* to be secure.
Obviously no one is perfect, the upgrade/patch process is necessary, but I'm not arguing that. Duh.
This is double-speak. He is trying to imply that people's failure to auto-update is somehow related to Windows' risk of virus/worm attack. But they are in no way related.
System architecture that fails to maintain security is a design flaw, not a maintenance problem. Gates and Microsoft are attempting to blame shift their responsibilities to their product's users. Pretty much anyone would recognize this in a tort law suit, although I expect very few to make this claim in court simply because of Microsoft's size and reputation.
That was the funniest post of this whole article. Thanks.
Yep, agree with these two... mod you up if I could.
I used a relatively simple MS-DOS batch file for just this purpose for years. All you need are 24 CD-RW (for one year's worth of backups), Zip (WinZIP's command line is what I used), a CD drive that can be accessed as a drive letter (Drive Letter Access (DLA) or some other proprietary name), and basic command line ability.
Have the batch compress each folder into a temp file by the same name (in \windows\temp or something) and then copy each to CD-RW. Use Window's scheduler (all have it, I use Win95a) to run the batch every night and rotate CD-RWs for each day of the week ("child"). Each Friday, rotate one of four separate CD-RW's ("father", a child grows up), and the first Friday of every month, retire one permenantly ("grandfather", a father stops working).
I actually clean off the temp zip files each night and re-write them in entirety. There are more complex, only-changed-since-last-backup, archive bit methods, but I like this simple-minded organization and being able to have immediate access to any previous day within 7, any previous week within 4, and any previous month indefinitely. Plus the Zip files in temp are redundant with the CD, meaning every file exists three places at any time. Also, media is not re-used too often in this scheme (it retires when "old"), and there aren't multi-media dependencies which can botch the entire system if a single tape goes bad.
Of course, this was up to a few months ago when my drive crashed, I completely bailed to Linux, and re-wrote the whole thing as a Bash script. I also now have more content than will fit on a disk bzipped, but it's essentially the same process except that I have odd/even day staggering and only half the redundancy. But at least I always know what's on any given disk and know how to go back to any given time to find backups if needed. (The BackupExec our NT servers use at work, OTOH, is abysmal in reliability, setup and actually trying to restore a file in less than an hour. Probably theoretically more sound, but darned if I can see that it has more *practical* application.)