I run ESXi at home. I haven't missed a single one of the advanced for-pay features yet. HA? DRS? Hell, I haven't even missed the Virtual Infrastructure server because I just don't need it.
Now, don't get me wrong... I'm not saying that I don't think the licensing is a little high for what you get... I do think they need to reduce pricing somewhat. However, I also watch what VMware does as a company and I can see that they take the lion's share of the profits and roll it all right back into R&D. Let's just say that I've seen what's coming up, and Xen has leapfrogged the competition in some ways, today... but will be playing catchup again really soon.
Did you consider calling a Citrix sales rep? Or posting on the Citrix XenServer forums?
Yup... and yup. The Citrix sales rep told me he'd get me the support I needed and call me back. An hour later I called again, and he said that he'd call me back. Two hours later than that I gave up.
Same was true on the XenServer forums. I had a few responses, but no-one fixed the problem.
When you're dealing with time-critical infrastructure you can't wait for a salesdroid to get off the green and call you back any more than you can wait for a support forum to respond. Not with Xen, but I've had the CEO, CIO and various other managers hovering in my cube before when we had a failure of a SAN which caused a major outage. If I'd been sitting there telling them that I was hitting REFRESH on Firefox trying to get an answer then I suspect I would've been working at McDonalds right about now. Instead I was on the phone with the vendor refusing to let them hang up on me until they had escalated me to someone who could tell me how to get the SAN back online and worry about fixing the bug later.
Three companies with whom I have never had a support problem are VMware, HP and EMC. That's why we use their products.
LOL... thanks. I know, I used to work in consulting as well... these kinds of gigs are the bread and butter of your kind of company... and that's awesome:)
In our case though, it was important to our management that we used people for the trial who knew our environment inside and out... i.e. myself, our Citrix head admin and a few application folks (in their spare time). While I admit a supported trial would've been more efficient, the way we did it allowed us to work within the constraints of our staff schedules (which are incredibly tight right now given the lean model under which we run).
However, I will say for anyone else looking to do a trial of VMware vs. Xen vs. Hyper-V vs. Whatever... give these guys a call! I completely agree that having a supported rollout is important.
Oh I agree, YMMV... as will anyone's. It depends on what you want to do with your infrastructure. VMware still excels in the management of virtual machines, managing as an enterprise rather than a discrete set of virtual hosts.
Part of it is also supportability. VMware is supported by third-party vendors as well to a significant degree. As a result, third-party support and tools are incredibly good (I run a few from Veeam) and finding a solution to a particular problem is usually really easy.
I would advise everyone to do what you and I have both already done; test it and figure out what suits your needs. We figured that (a) we already had a significant investment in VMware and managing two environments would be unnecessary overhead, and (b) my senior management wanted to reduce the number of phone calls we would ever have to make to a vendor... so our last set of host machines were bought from HP, including VMware licenses... so all we need do is call them. (the legacy licenses will be rolled up under an agreement we're penning now).
That kind of support is invaluable when you just want to get the job done. We're in the business of doing business, not trying to place blame so we can fix infrastructure problems.
While you're at it, download ESXi to be fair. VMware Server is no comparison with the Enterprise products and comparing it against XenServer would be unfair at best.
Now, in counterpoint, you DO have to pay for the advanced features of ESXi that are free in XenServer, but at least you'll have a fair comparison to work with.
The other thing to think about is actual support... as in picking up a phone and calling someone when something breaks.
Sure, with a good admin that's rarely a problem... but that 1% of the time you actually need it, you're 100% glad you've got it!
I've managed VM farms since ESX 1... now I have a rather nice ESX 3.5 farm I manage. We've recently gone into an head-to-head between Xen and VMware running Xenapp servers. You know what? We're still buying VMware. Make of that what you will.
Personally I find the Xen product interesting, but still fundamentally missing the "mainframe-ish-ness" of VMware, even out of the box. I love the fact that I reboot my VM hosts only when I patch them, and even then I haven't lost a guest since ESX 3.0 (as in, it went down unexpectedly). I also love the fact that it's well-supported with a fantastic range of third-party products that make my job easier. I also love the fact that the one time we actually needed someone on the other end of the phone, I was able to get one of the developer leads of ESX on the phone with only about 15 minutes of troubleshooting with lower support and have him help us sort through the issues (which ended up being a bug, BTW).
When I was trying to do the Xen test, I got no support from Citrix since they wanted to charge me for the call (VMware didn't), and even when I had a problem I told them that it was a serious issue that would impact this head-to-head they told me I needed to give them a credit card number before I could get anyone to even listen to the problem. So much for support.
Disclaimer: I'm a firm believer in using the "best tool for the job", whether it's free software or commercial. The simple fact is that in my job, commercial software often wins out despite the cost because companies want someone to look to when things go wrong and are willing to pay for the privilege.
I'd sort of agree, but I'd say that this misses the point that probably a significant portion of the users on the Internet today are on cellphones.
Have you ever been to China, Japan and the like? I have, and let me tell you it's an eye opening experience. People use their cellphones all the time on the Internet. They surf, they look things up, they communicate, they even get entertainment. Quite simply, I'd say that 85% of the people I saw in Japan (and that's a number I pulled out of the same place Adobe got their percentage) were using cellphones not as phones, but as Internet connected devices.
Want to guess how many of these actually had Flash on them?
The problem is that a sample size is only useful if it's representative of the point you're trying to make. If Adobe is trying to say "99% of all Internet users are using Flash", then I'd say that's blatantly false even just in my experience.
Now, if Adobe were to say "99% of our skewed and biased sample of Internet users run Flash, but only in North America" then I'd be more inclined to agree. They're falling into that same old trap that so many companies and individuals do; America is NOT the world.
It's also a shame that Adobe STILL doesn't have 64-bit support for their precious Flash... which ignores a statistically significant portion of the user community these days.
I myself run 64-bit Vista on my work laptop, as do many of my developers because of the larger memory space available (plus, I've found x64 Vista to be vastly more stable than x86)
Not that I miss Flash necessarily, but really... 64-bit has been in Windows Desktop OS's since 2005. OK, so the market penetration for XP-x64 was horrible... but that doesn't change the fact that it's taken Adobe 4 years and they STILL don't have Flash for 64-bit. I'd say that skews their numbers just a tad as well.
Oh I'm not arguing that Meigs was a toy of the rich. I have a pilots license, but just mostly I did it to say I have it... I can't afford to own a plane any more than most technology people:D
I just used Meigs as the most public and most easily "google-able" story showing just how much of an ignorant control freak he actually is. There are a number of stories about how these actions were (at the time) detrimental to the people of Chicago, visitors to Chicago and possibly the economy of Chicago.
For those who don't want to Google it, Daley ordered the destruction of an active runway (over 100 flight ops a day on average at the time) at Meigs field, while aircraft sat at the airport with no consideration of getting those aircraft out, or consideration that people may be en-route to the airport at the time and may not have been able to see the huge holes in the ground or the heavy machinery sitting in the middle of the runway. I still think he's quite fortunate no-one was killed or injured because a pilot with "get-there-itis" might land at Meigs without runway lights because he/she had done it a million times before.
The airport was closed without public knowledge, and opinion was sharply against him doing it. He had attempted to close the airport a number of times, and only by resorting to illegal, potentially dangerous actions did he finally succeed.
I'm not saying Meigs was exactly a treasure of Chicago either. The few times I visited I found the surrounding area to be rather trashed and destroyed... I am merely using this as an example of how disconnected Daley is from reality, and why he'll continue to grind Chicago into the ground in his endless quest for more power and control. It's a shame because I LIKE Chicago... or at least I used to.
There are many other examples of the corruption that Daley has wrought upon Chicago... Meigs was just one but there are plenty of other examples of how he's flaunting the law in order to advance only himself and his own agenda. He doesn't consider the people of Chicago at all, only his own advancement. The reason I use it as an example is because it opened my eyes enough that I began to research what Daley has done... and it was in researching those things that I found even more distasteful (though not as huge and visible) actions. Those are the things that turned me off Chicago, not Meigs.
LOL... that's awesome. If his Olympic dreams come true...? Let's get real here shall we? Whether or not those Olympic dreams come true, Mayor Daley will implement the cameras anyway. That level of control is something he's always craved. It's only a matter of time before this surveillance is extended to microphones (at least) in every living room.
Sorry, I frequented Chicago as a tourist for years until Daley killed Meigs airport... then we saw the reality of the control freak he is. The only time I've been there since has been on business... I'll take my tourism dollars somewhere slightly less corrupt. Like Mexico...;)
Daley is the epitome of the corrupt politician, just like his father was. He's one of the primary reasons I never moved to Chicago.
I don't really have enough experience with Ruby on Rails to authoritatively speak on the subject... however it does seem to me that Twitter's problems have been going on for months. In that time, it seems almost inconceivable that they haven't tried to fix it. If they continue to try to fix it and the problem keeps occurring then I can infer that they really don't know where the problem is or how it's occurring.
Now, again I'm neither defending nor slamming their choice of framework, but it does appear as though anything they say about the problem is not authoritative. If they can't fix it, then it's time to consider re-engineering.
Of course, re-engineering it may not be possible without significant work. Their current programmers may also be incapable of improving on their current model because they're inexperienced or are tied to their personal choice of framework... or both. I think that was the GP's point more than RoR being a failure.
Personally, I can think of several different ways that Twitter could be re-engineered easily. It's really a simple app, and scalability should not be a problem. Yes, I've written highly scalable applications that do more complex stuff than Twitter does. While I've never personally dealt with the kind of load they do in production, I've certainly written enough "torture" scripts that are designed to load up my system to the point where they break... sometimes my torture scripts break instead.
Of course, my comments are purely academic. But if Twitter doesn't hurry up and fix their problems, someone else will and they will find themselves with a rapidly dwindling customer base. It's already starting to happen.
I would take issue with your viewpoint, here. Your viewpoint is in fact only valid for people who live in Western cities (meaning Western world)... and more specifically you're probably only really thinking about the US and/or Northern Europe. In fact, I'd go so far as to say you may be focusing more on large coastal cities.
I live in Missouri... there are large swaths of countryside here... the cities make up only a small portion of this state; we have two big ones and that's it. You get out of those cities and into the country and it's like a different world. I have dealt with many of these people as I get out into the wilds of Missouri often... and I'd say less than 10% of them have a computer... and that's not just older people, people younger than me don't necessarily have them, either. Part of the reason is that they're viewed as complex and in some cases completely pointless. They live a different life from us "city folk".
If you're going to comment on the state of society, you need to widen your horizons a bit. The US alone has an incredibly diverse range of people with different lifestyles and ideas of what's "right" and "cool". The people I've referred to are just one example, and they're not "rednecks" and "hicks"... they're mostly good, decent people who just find no use for a computer or are just inexperienced enough with modern technology that they just don't understand our interface paradigms that we hold so dear.
I took a look at this article... and you know what? I think this is a computer that COULD get the attention of people like this because it IS so simple. Despite Apple's pretense to simplicity, this is better (and I'm typing this on a Mac BTW). Now, as for WHY they should have a computer... well, that's a different matter entirely.
Kudos to HP... I think I'm going to get one of these as a show of support for a company willing to make some waves and get Linux "out of the lab".
God I hope not. I remember watching a documentary once about Red Dwarf, and Craig Charles admitted that for most of the first two seasons, he and Danny John Jules were pretty much baked out of their skulls. Those were also the best in my opinion:)
Seriously, does it really matter that much? What my choice of actors does in their spare time is of no concern to me. I like their work and therefore I appreciate their work.
I was never an avid fan of SG-1, but having seen most of the episodes ever made (though not necessarily in order), I think some episodes based on Earth were actually necessary. There were a couple of moments into the 6-7th season where they became so isolated from Earth and even to some extent disenfranchised the viewer. I mean, what's the point of watching this team save the Earth if you have no connection with what it is they're trying to save?
For all their flaws, the Earth episodes almost always filled out the world they came from, and gave you (the viewer) an understanding of their motives.
Remember, SG-1 ran for longer than just about any other series on TV (Dr. Who notwithstanding). Every now and again it's valuable to "prod" the viewer into reconnecting with the characters so that they don't become horribly stale. I think it's a testament to the writers and cast that even over 10 years they had high and low points, but rarely felt very stale. And I think they ended just when they needed to... unfortunately they made that last season with the Ori which I almost consider a completely different series because of the changes. Call it "Stargate SG-1B"
And actually, I enjoyed Continuum... though some of it was ruined for me because I'd seen it before in Bender's Big Score...;)
Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, Aliens and T2 likewise. I also quite like Predator II, despite it having little relevant to Predator.
I agree with all of these... except that in some of those cases those sequels begat Alien:Resurrection, Alien vs. Predator and the Sarah Connor Chronicles. Of course, this just proves your later point...;)
And how much do you think your car ACTUALLY costs per mile when you take into account all the other consumables EXCEPT petrol? You might be surprised.
I installed a program called Autolog on my Windows Mobile phone some time ago and started tracking everything... every oil change, every tire change, every battery... everything. Even when I take petrol out of the equation the cost per mile is surprisingly high for an average sedan... and you can easily rent a car that's the minimum required for your needs. I often rent the cheapest and simplest car I can for trips to Peoria and/or Chicago from St. Louis because the reality is that it saves me money, and reduces the wear and tear on my car which I want to drive until I kill it.
... 'cos we all know that petrol cars never run out.
Seriously... when there's a demand, there'll be charging stations on the same lots as the gas pumps. It's only a matter of a standardized receptacle and then someone actually bothering to break the negative feedback cycle of "I won't buy one until I can charge on the go" and "I won't provide charge on the go until I have customers".
No, it won't provide a full charge... it'll provide a partial. But realistically, I think there'll be more than enough juice you could pump into an EV that could get you home.
And really... we ARE running out of cheap oil. It's GOING to happen. We ARE going to have to change out lifestyles at some point in the future, probably in the lifetime of most of the people on this site. Those who are willing to make sacrifices now are going to be better prepared to deal with it when it happens. No, I'm not a survivalist nut... I don't think civilization is ending... I just think our easy and cheap lifestyles ARE ending.
That's great --- as a second car, unless you want to rent a car every time you need to drive over 100 miles.
And why NOT rent a car every time you need to drive more than 100 miles? I think if I'm honest with myself, this is the definite exception rather than the norm for me. I drive less than 20 miles each way to work, and I think if I were to total up the number of times I've driven more than 100 miles in a day during the last year I might be able to use the fingers of one hand.
Honestly, I've done this anyway... recently. I love my car, and I love driving my car... but last time I took a trip to Peoria (I live in St. Louis) I rented a car because when I figured out the cost per mile of wear and tear, tires and so forth on my own car, renting a cheapo econobox really started to make sense. Oh, and I got better gas mileage in the rental. Sure, it wasn't fast or pretty... but it still had an AUX IN for my iPod and a trunk to carry my stuff.
When Aptera finally manages to get their sales out of California, I'll probably be one of the first in line. The hybrid is a "feel good" stop gap rather than a real solution.
A good friend of mine is part of a group that was signed and quite successful some time ago. They had some pretty decent success, but are no longer active for various reasons.
Anyway, this particular friend still loves to write music, and likes to play with a few friends. Sometimes they record stuff, and actually release it on a few websites and torrent downloads. They give it away for free, and charge nothing because they do it for the love of the music.
Now, and here's the rub... if my friend wanted to make money off this music, he couldn't. The contract he signed with the record company many eons ago actually has a stipulation that he cannot sell his music in any way shape or form... pretty much for the rest of his life. Literally, his only way of getting his music out there is to write "illegal music". The only way he can get out of the contract is to buy the contract from the record company, and he doesn't have the money to do that. It's debatable whether any entity other than another record company or an oil company do. This is, of course, intentional.
All said though, he's quite happy doing that as he has other ventures that are very successful; the music is really just a hobby these days and he just gets a kick out of the fact that (a) other people get to benefit by getting new original music and (b) the record company can't do a thing to him so long as he gives it away and doesn't sell it.
This is how screwed up the ivory tower at the record companies actually is; they have no concept of the reality to which the rest of us subscribe.
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I run ESXi at home. I haven't missed a single one of the advanced for-pay features yet. HA? DRS? Hell, I haven't even missed the Virtual Infrastructure server because I just don't need it.
Now, don't get me wrong... I'm not saying that I don't think the licensing is a little high for what you get... I do think they need to reduce pricing somewhat. However, I also watch what VMware does as a company and I can see that they take the lion's share of the profits and roll it all right back into R&D. Let's just say that I've seen what's coming up, and Xen has leapfrogged the competition in some ways, today... but will be playing catchup again really soon.
Did you consider calling a Citrix sales rep? Or posting on the Citrix XenServer forums?
Yup... and yup. The Citrix sales rep told me he'd get me the support I needed and call me back. An hour later I called again, and he said that he'd call me back. Two hours later than that I gave up.
Same was true on the XenServer forums. I had a few responses, but no-one fixed the problem.
When you're dealing with time-critical infrastructure you can't wait for a salesdroid to get off the green and call you back any more than you can wait for a support forum to respond. Not with Xen, but I've had the CEO, CIO and various other managers hovering in my cube before when we had a failure of a SAN which caused a major outage. If I'd been sitting there telling them that I was hitting REFRESH on Firefox trying to get an answer then I suspect I would've been working at McDonalds right about now. Instead I was on the phone with the vendor refusing to let them hang up on me until they had escalated me to someone who could tell me how to get the SAN back online and worry about fixing the bug later.
Three companies with whom I have never had a support problem are VMware, HP and EMC. That's why we use their products.
The free version of Xenserver does not include HA, which is crucial in our environment.
To be fair, does the free version of VMware include HA?
Oh, does Xenserver have a version that does HA for a price? ;)
I keed, I keed! :D
LOL... thanks. I know, I used to work in consulting as well... these kinds of gigs are the bread and butter of your kind of company... and that's awesome :)
In our case though, it was important to our management that we used people for the trial who knew our environment inside and out... i.e. myself, our Citrix head admin and a few application folks (in their spare time). While I admit a supported trial would've been more efficient, the way we did it allowed us to work within the constraints of our staff schedules (which are incredibly tight right now given the lean model under which we run).
However, I will say for anyone else looking to do a trial of VMware vs. Xen vs. Hyper-V vs. Whatever... give these guys a call! I completely agree that having a supported rollout is important.
Oh I agree, YMMV... as will anyone's. It depends on what you want to do with your infrastructure. VMware still excels in the management of virtual machines, managing as an enterprise rather than a discrete set of virtual hosts.
Part of it is also supportability. VMware is supported by third-party vendors as well to a significant degree. As a result, third-party support and tools are incredibly good (I run a few from Veeam) and finding a solution to a particular problem is usually really easy.
I would advise everyone to do what you and I have both already done; test it and figure out what suits your needs. We figured that (a) we already had a significant investment in VMware and managing two environments would be unnecessary overhead, and (b) my senior management wanted to reduce the number of phone calls we would ever have to make to a vendor... so our last set of host machines were bought from HP, including VMware licenses... so all we need do is call them. (the legacy licenses will be rolled up under an agreement we're penning now).
That kind of support is invaluable when you just want to get the job done. We're in the business of doing business, not trying to place blame so we can fix infrastructure problems.
(sigh)
Amazing what 15 seconds of Google finds, isn't it?
While you're at it, download ESXi to be fair. VMware Server is no comparison with the Enterprise products and comparing it against XenServer would be unfair at best.
Now, in counterpoint, you DO have to pay for the advanced features of ESXi that are free in XenServer, but at least you'll have a fair comparison to work with.
Hmm...
Ask and ye shall receive
The other thing to think about is actual support... as in picking up a phone and calling someone when something breaks.
Sure, with a good admin that's rarely a problem... but that 1% of the time you actually need it, you're 100% glad you've got it!
I've managed VM farms since ESX 1... now I have a rather nice ESX 3.5 farm I manage. We've recently gone into an head-to-head between Xen and VMware running Xenapp servers. You know what? We're still buying VMware. Make of that what you will.
Personally I find the Xen product interesting, but still fundamentally missing the "mainframe-ish-ness" of VMware, even out of the box. I love the fact that I reboot my VM hosts only when I patch them, and even then I haven't lost a guest since ESX 3.0 (as in, it went down unexpectedly). I also love the fact that it's well-supported with a fantastic range of third-party products that make my job easier. I also love the fact that the one time we actually needed someone on the other end of the phone, I was able to get one of the developer leads of ESX on the phone with only about 15 minutes of troubleshooting with lower support and have him help us sort through the issues (which ended up being a bug, BTW).
When I was trying to do the Xen test, I got no support from Citrix since they wanted to charge me for the call (VMware didn't), and even when I had a problem I told them that it was a serious issue that would impact this head-to-head they told me I needed to give them a credit card number before I could get anyone to even listen to the problem. So much for support.
Disclaimer: I'm a firm believer in using the "best tool for the job", whether it's free software or commercial. The simple fact is that in my job, commercial software often wins out despite the cost because companies want someone to look to when things go wrong and are willing to pay for the privilege.
I'd sort of agree, but I'd say that this misses the point that probably a significant portion of the users on the Internet today are on cellphones.
Have you ever been to China, Japan and the like? I have, and let me tell you it's an eye opening experience. People use their cellphones all the time on the Internet. They surf, they look things up, they communicate, they even get entertainment. Quite simply, I'd say that 85% of the people I saw in Japan (and that's a number I pulled out of the same place Adobe got their percentage) were using cellphones not as phones, but as Internet connected devices.
Want to guess how many of these actually had Flash on them?
The problem is that a sample size is only useful if it's representative of the point you're trying to make. If Adobe is trying to say "99% of all Internet users are using Flash", then I'd say that's blatantly false even just in my experience.
Now, if Adobe were to say "99% of our skewed and biased sample of Internet users run Flash, but only in North America" then I'd be more inclined to agree. They're falling into that same old trap that so many companies and individuals do; America is NOT the world.
It's also a shame that Adobe STILL doesn't have 64-bit support for their precious Flash... which ignores a statistically significant portion of the user community these days.
I myself run 64-bit Vista on my work laptop, as do many of my developers because of the larger memory space available (plus, I've found x64 Vista to be vastly more stable than x86)
Not that I miss Flash necessarily, but really... 64-bit has been in Windows Desktop OS's since 2005. OK, so the market penetration for XP-x64 was horrible... but that doesn't change the fact that it's taken Adobe 4 years and they STILL don't have Flash for 64-bit. I'd say that skews their numbers just a tad as well.
Oh I'm not arguing that Meigs was a toy of the rich. I have a pilots license, but just mostly I did it to say I have it... I can't afford to own a plane any more than most technology people :D
I just used Meigs as the most public and most easily "google-able" story showing just how much of an ignorant control freak he actually is. There are a number of stories about how these actions were (at the time) detrimental to the people of Chicago, visitors to Chicago and possibly the economy of Chicago.
For those who don't want to Google it, Daley ordered the destruction of an active runway (over 100 flight ops a day on average at the time) at Meigs field, while aircraft sat at the airport with no consideration of getting those aircraft out, or consideration that people may be en-route to the airport at the time and may not have been able to see the huge holes in the ground or the heavy machinery sitting in the middle of the runway. I still think he's quite fortunate no-one was killed or injured because a pilot with "get-there-itis" might land at Meigs without runway lights because he/she had done it a million times before.
The airport was closed without public knowledge, and opinion was sharply against him doing it. He had attempted to close the airport a number of times, and only by resorting to illegal, potentially dangerous actions did he finally succeed.
I'm not saying Meigs was exactly a treasure of Chicago either. The few times I visited I found the surrounding area to be rather trashed and destroyed... I am merely using this as an example of how disconnected Daley is from reality, and why he'll continue to grind Chicago into the ground in his endless quest for more power and control. It's a shame because I LIKE Chicago... or at least I used to.
There are many other examples of the corruption that Daley has wrought upon Chicago... Meigs was just one but there are plenty of other examples of how he's flaunting the law in order to advance only himself and his own agenda. He doesn't consider the people of Chicago at all, only his own advancement. The reason I use it as an example is because it opened my eyes enough that I began to research what Daley has done... and it was in researching those things that I found even more distasteful (though not as huge and visible) actions. Those are the things that turned me off Chicago, not Meigs.
Sorry... should have been clearer :)
LOL... that's awesome. If his Olympic dreams come true...? Let's get real here shall we? Whether or not those Olympic dreams come true, Mayor Daley will implement the cameras anyway. That level of control is something he's always craved. It's only a matter of time before this surveillance is extended to microphones (at least) in every living room.
Sorry, I frequented Chicago as a tourist for years until Daley killed Meigs airport... then we saw the reality of the control freak he is. The only time I've been there since has been on business... I'll take my tourism dollars somewhere slightly less corrupt. Like Mexico... ;)
Daley is the epitome of the corrupt politician, just like his father was. He's one of the primary reasons I never moved to Chicago.
I don't really have enough experience with Ruby on Rails to authoritatively speak on the subject... however it does seem to me that Twitter's problems have been going on for months. In that time, it seems almost inconceivable that they haven't tried to fix it. If they continue to try to fix it and the problem keeps occurring then I can infer that they really don't know where the problem is or how it's occurring.
Now, again I'm neither defending nor slamming their choice of framework, but it does appear as though anything they say about the problem is not authoritative. If they can't fix it, then it's time to consider re-engineering.
Of course, re-engineering it may not be possible without significant work. Their current programmers may also be incapable of improving on their current model because they're inexperienced or are tied to their personal choice of framework... or both. I think that was the GP's point more than RoR being a failure.
Personally, I can think of several different ways that Twitter could be re-engineered easily. It's really a simple app, and scalability should not be a problem. Yes, I've written highly scalable applications that do more complex stuff than Twitter does. While I've never personally dealt with the kind of load they do in production, I've certainly written enough "torture" scripts that are designed to load up my system to the point where they break... sometimes my torture scripts break instead.
Of course, my comments are purely academic. But if Twitter doesn't hurry up and fix their problems, someone else will and they will find themselves with a rapidly dwindling customer base. It's already starting to happen.
I would take issue with your viewpoint, here. Your viewpoint is in fact only valid for people who live in Western cities (meaning Western world)... and more specifically you're probably only really thinking about the US and/or Northern Europe. In fact, I'd go so far as to say you may be focusing more on large coastal cities.
I live in Missouri... there are large swaths of countryside here... the cities make up only a small portion of this state; we have two big ones and that's it. You get out of those cities and into the country and it's like a different world. I have dealt with many of these people as I get out into the wilds of Missouri often... and I'd say less than 10% of them have a computer... and that's not just older people, people younger than me don't necessarily have them, either. Part of the reason is that they're viewed as complex and in some cases completely pointless. They live a different life from us "city folk".
If you're going to comment on the state of society, you need to widen your horizons a bit. The US alone has an incredibly diverse range of people with different lifestyles and ideas of what's "right" and "cool". The people I've referred to are just one example, and they're not "rednecks" and "hicks"... they're mostly good, decent people who just find no use for a computer or are just inexperienced enough with modern technology that they just don't understand our interface paradigms that we hold so dear.
I took a look at this article... and you know what? I think this is a computer that COULD get the attention of people like this because it IS so simple. Despite Apple's pretense to simplicity, this is better (and I'm typing this on a Mac BTW). Now, as for WHY they should have a computer... well, that's a different matter entirely.
Kudos to HP... I think I'm going to get one of these as a show of support for a company willing to make some waves and get Linux "out of the lab".
God I hope not. I remember watching a documentary once about Red Dwarf, and Craig Charles admitted that for most of the first two seasons, he and Danny John Jules were pretty much baked out of their skulls. Those were also the best in my opinion :)
Seriously, does it really matter that much? What my choice of actors does in their spare time is of no concern to me. I like their work and therefore I appreciate their work.
I was never an avid fan of SG-1, but having seen most of the episodes ever made (though not necessarily in order), I think some episodes based on Earth were actually necessary. There were a couple of moments into the 6-7th season where they became so isolated from Earth and even to some extent disenfranchised the viewer. I mean, what's the point of watching this team save the Earth if you have no connection with what it is they're trying to save?
For all their flaws, the Earth episodes almost always filled out the world they came from, and gave you (the viewer) an understanding of their motives.
Remember, SG-1 ran for longer than just about any other series on TV (Dr. Who notwithstanding). Every now and again it's valuable to "prod" the viewer into reconnecting with the characters so that they don't become horribly stale. I think it's a testament to the writers and cast that even over 10 years they had high and low points, but rarely felt very stale. And I think they ended just when they needed to... unfortunately they made that last season with the Ori which I almost consider a completely different series because of the changes. Call it "Stargate SG-1B"
And actually, I enjoyed Continuum... though some of it was ruined for me because I'd seen it before in Bender's Big Score... ;)
So what you're saying is Dave Lister is Wall-E?
Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, Aliens and T2 likewise. I also quite like Predator II, despite it having little relevant to Predator.
I agree with all of these... except that in some of those cases those sequels begat Alien:Resurrection, Alien vs. Predator and the Sarah Connor Chronicles. Of course, this just proves your later point... ;)
Exactly what would a sequel to Close Encounters of the Third Kind bring us?
Cocoon?
It's inconvenient and expensive.
And how much do you think your car ACTUALLY costs per mile when you take into account all the other consumables EXCEPT petrol? You might be surprised.
I installed a program called Autolog on my Windows Mobile phone some time ago and started tracking everything... every oil change, every tire change, every battery... everything. Even when I take petrol out of the equation the cost per mile is surprisingly high for an average sedan... and you can easily rent a car that's the minimum required for your needs. I often rent the cheapest and simplest car I can for trips to Peoria and/or Chicago from St. Louis because the reality is that it saves me money, and reduces the wear and tear on my car which I want to drive until I kill it.
... 'cos we all know that petrol cars never run out.
Seriously... when there's a demand, there'll be charging stations on the same lots as the gas pumps. It's only a matter of a standardized receptacle and then someone actually bothering to break the negative feedback cycle of "I won't buy one until I can charge on the go" and "I won't provide charge on the go until I have customers".
No, it won't provide a full charge... it'll provide a partial. But realistically, I think there'll be more than enough juice you could pump into an EV that could get you home.
And really... we ARE running out of cheap oil. It's GOING to happen. We ARE going to have to change out lifestyles at some point in the future, probably in the lifetime of most of the people on this site. Those who are willing to make sacrifices now are going to be better prepared to deal with it when it happens. No, I'm not a survivalist nut... I don't think civilization is ending... I just think our easy and cheap lifestyles ARE ending.
That's great --- as a second car, unless you want to rent a car every time you need to drive over 100 miles.
And why NOT rent a car every time you need to drive more than 100 miles? I think if I'm honest with myself, this is the definite exception rather than the norm for me. I drive less than 20 miles each way to work, and I think if I were to total up the number of times I've driven more than 100 miles in a day during the last year I might be able to use the fingers of one hand.
Honestly, I've done this anyway... recently. I love my car, and I love driving my car... but last time I took a trip to Peoria (I live in St. Louis) I rented a car because when I figured out the cost per mile of wear and tear, tires and so forth on my own car, renting a cheapo econobox really started to make sense. Oh, and I got better gas mileage in the rental. Sure, it wasn't fast or pretty... but it still had an AUX IN for my iPod and a trunk to carry my stuff.
When Aptera finally manages to get their sales out of California, I'll probably be one of the first in line. The hybrid is a "feel good" stop gap rather than a real solution.
... Tell the Artist to stop making illegal music.
You joke... but this is actually a REAL problem.
A good friend of mine is part of a group that was signed and quite successful some time ago. They had some pretty decent success, but are no longer active for various reasons.
Anyway, this particular friend still loves to write music, and likes to play with a few friends. Sometimes they record stuff, and actually release it on a few websites and torrent downloads. They give it away for free, and charge nothing because they do it for the love of the music.
Now, and here's the rub... if my friend wanted to make money off this music, he couldn't. The contract he signed with the record company many eons ago actually has a stipulation that he cannot sell his music in any way shape or form... pretty much for the rest of his life. Literally, his only way of getting his music out there is to write "illegal music". The only way he can get out of the contract is to buy the contract from the record company, and he doesn't have the money to do that. It's debatable whether any entity other than another record company or an oil company do. This is, of course, intentional.
All said though, he's quite happy doing that as he has other ventures that are very successful; the music is really just a hobby these days and he just gets a kick out of the fact that (a) other people get to benefit by getting new original music and (b) the record company can't do a thing to him so long as he gives it away and doesn't sell it.
This is how screwed up the ivory tower at the record companies actually is; they have no concept of the reality to which the rest of us subscribe.
... after any SP3 a Microsoft product is as good as it gets.
Ahh, truly spoken like someone who never lived through NT 4 SP4...