I'm afraid you've obviously not worked with more recent version of Citrix; specifically Presentation Server 4. There are a lot o optimizations in the newer versions that weren't there before. Plus you've also got load control; when a user process is chowing down a CPU for too long, it gets reduced in priority automatically so that other users can run the applications.
So long as the apps are relatively well-behaved you can easily expand your servers. We have a homegrown application that runs our core business. This application has a lot of database activity to Oracle databases on the backend, but much of the processing is done "locally" i.e. by the client. In this case, the client is the Citrix server. On a quad-proc server with 2Ghz CPUs and 8Gb of RAM (HP Proliant DL380 G2's and G3's) or thereabouts, we routinely run 50 users per machine... sometimes up to 75. Now, another advantage here is that you can pool your resources, have groups of Citrix servers serving up particular applications until you've got one hell of a nice system.
Plus, especially where your user population is geographically diverse Citrix can actually increase your performance. Few applications work in a "void" where they access no other network resources any more. Be it networked home directories, print servers, database servers and so forth. Quite simply, having your entire infrastructure centralized means that your "workstations" (Citrix sessions) are on the same local network to the resources they're trying to access. As a result, faster response times. We're in the process of migrating a bunch of users in India to Citrix clients because the performance is almost three times what they can get locally... and this is with some pretty fat pipes between here and there.
Your mileage may vary, but Citrix is an incredibly scalable solution IF IT'S DESIGNED CORRECTLY. Be aware that a bad design can cause you to have to trash the entire infrastructure routinely and start again, but if you design it for growth then it will grow. Our Citrix farm today serves up applications to about 11,000 users across the globe. The entire infrastructure is managed by a few different groups, but by only two dedicated Citrix resources... the rest are monitoring and application groups.
I've worked with Citrix since Winframe days... the comments you made really haven't been true since the earliest days of Metaframe XP... even then later versions fixed many of the pitfalls and newer versions quite frankly rock.
As far as the subject is concerned; I think that Citrix is the solution that the original poster needs. The virtual solution is just too clunky and "weird" to really work effectively... and will definitely not scale well. I love virtualization too, but it has its place.
As a side note, there's no reason you can't load-balance your Citrix farm by creating Citrix servers on a VMWare ESX box. You can set processor affinity for each one, give it a certain amount of RAM and you get a lot of control. Plus your hardware is consistent so imaging is easy. Each server will not support as many users, but you can fit probably 20% more users per server by doing it this way... again SO LONG AS IT'S PLANNED PROPERLY.
And the first thing you have to realize is that there isn't a single reason in the world that the admin actually needs to be in the room with the servers.
I've worked on small datacenters about the size you're specifying, and I work on huge datacenters that have up to 10,000 square feet of space filled with racks. In both instances, I've always recommended that it be a "lights out" datacenter; that is that there's noone in there.
Why? Well, first of all there's the noise issues. Real servers make noise, and in most instances it would actually be harmful to you to sit in the room with them for long periods of time. There's also the issue of "kicked cables" that could take down the servers, or a kicked power button. You might think it could never happen, but it can. Thirdly, there's heat. You sitting in that room is actually reducing the efficacy of the air conditioning because the heat you put off is also adding to the heat the AC needs to remove. Finally, there's the fact that we aren't clean animals; where do you think the dust comes from that you have to clean out of desktop systems? Much of it is human skin shed by you. Would you rather have to take down the servers every six months to blow out the dust, or have servers that can run for quite some time without buildup?
As for console access, there are plenty of good KVM solutions that use IP. I use Avocent's solutions myself, but YMMV... but they are pretty damned good for small to enterprise businesses. I've used it in environments with 4 or 5 servers, and I've used it in environments with several hundred servers across multiple sites... still works pretty damned well.
Another solution that works incredibly well is to use out of band management. In one large installation I work with often, we have HP servers with Integrated Lights Out cards. Allow us to power the servers on and off, launch a remote console and even mount CDs remotely to install software. Since it's Java based it also works well under Linux... if you've got a little money to spare then that might be a good solution.
Finally, others have mentioned this; how about one big and meaty server and virtualize? I built an entire R&D lab environment around an 8-processor HP DL760 with 20Gb of hot-swap RAM attached to a Compaq SAN that was going to be disposed of... it now runs daily about 15 VM's with a peak of 25 and has become a really reliable and flexible system. It still runs VMWare ESX 2.0, and I plan to upgrade it to 2.5 soon because it scales a lot better in our tests and I might be able to squeeze a couple more machines out of that machine. Sure, with the SAN only being an older one the boot times are rather pitiful, but I have swap partitions moved off to local storage on the 760 (it has space for 4 72Gb drives, soon to upgrade to 146's) to keep performance up. Even my Windows boxes I create a "local" partition for temp and swap... boot times suck but running performance you can rarely tell the difference between the VM's and physicals.
The key here though is lose the workstation. If you lose a server, take it out of the server room for troubleshooting. It maintains the "clean room ideal" of the datacenter, reduces risk of downtime and even protects you. Plus it looks good on a resume when you say you've dealt with some of these lights out technologies (IP KVM's, iLo's etc.)... believe me it can help a lot if/when you decide to move to a bigger enterprise that may have rules and regs that require lights-out datacenter experience.
An operating system doesn't NEED to take advantage of powerful hardware. An operating system doesn't REQUIRE heavy duty CPU's, craploads of RAM and more hard drive space than was actually in my entire computer not more than 6 years ago. The applications should be the ones taking advantage of dual-core CPU's, taking up the RAM and disk space and generating the data required to get the job done.
An operating system should facilitate this, make it easy and consistent for the applications to access the advanced hardware, not take all the system resources and give the apps what's left. Windows 2000 did this right, Windows XP/2003 do a pretty decent job. Vista sucks at it (though it's still an early beta... but I see no reason why this is going to change).
I run Linux on many of my home systems (some Fedora, recent machines are getting Gentoo) because I can pare it down to an operating system that fulfills my needs. It allows me to launch the apps I need, and then gets the hell out of the way unless it's actually needed by the application or by me. Especially my Gentoo install on my PIII-700 does all I need it to on a regular basis. I check email, I surf the web and I write articles on OpenOffice (source-compiled over the course of a day, but it runs better than the same app on my Fedora box that has an Athlon 64). It gets out of my way, it doesn't "take advantage of the hardware" for eye candy... it just is, and just does.
At work we use Windows extensively. We've tested Vista as a server... and it sucks. Our investment in hardware needs to last longer than that, so right now Windows 2003 is our OS of choice simply because it does what it needs to. Sure, there are some sucky elements that need to be fixed (stripping out unnecessary chaff), but once done we create a "gold image" build and we're off and running.
Sorry for the rant, I just find comments about leveraging future hardware to make the OS somehow magically "better" to be incongruous and misleading. The apps should get better, the OS should enable that.
humornoun: humor, humour, sense of humor, sense of humour. The trait of appreciating (and being able to express) the humorous; "she didn't appreciate my humor"; "you can't survive in the army without a sense of humor"
I myself am an engineer... but I will agree with your comments about programmers and developers, too:)
Stop the presses!!! I had no idea. The world changes and adapts over time. This must be some new, radical train of thought we've picked up on here because I sure as hell hadn't noticed.
Seriously, where's the news here? This is a pitiful opinion piece that really doesn't say anything significant. OK, so someone from the 1920's would be blown away by the modern world. I can grant you that, but what about someone from the 1840's arriving in the world of the 1920's? Or any other ~80 year gap in history? It's not that special, not that surprising and really the article's not that interesting.
And I posted a rebuttal. He's a troll... can't justify his comments. I actually disprove his comments by playing Eve Online from thousands of miles away from the servers. Go figure:)
Well that's a bunch of crap. The servers are in Europe, I play Eve from St. Louis, Missouri about 3 nights a week. I've never had a problem with lag that wasn't caused by my own local network (I had a DSL "modem" go bad recently). I also played it on my laptop from a hotel room in Tucson, AZ and Denver, CO recently while traveling on business... never had a problem.
If you're having a lag problem the first place to look is probably your own local configuration. Are you playing using wireless? Do you have a good signal? The quality of your own local connection makes a huge difference.
Also, if you're running a local home network check your switch/hub. Are you sure you're not causing collisions because your PC is at 100/Half and your switch expects 100/full?
See this is why I think home networking (done right at least) is still beyond Joe Public... that's why they pay me to do it right for them:)
I implemented Vonage a few months ago on my home phone. Now, granted since my wife and I both got cell phones we rarely use the home phone except as a voicemail box... but my wife still likes having a "land line". So be it, I don't use it much.
Now, when I implemented I had a 600/128 ADSL connection from Speakeasy. Worked OK at first, but I was hit quickly by the fact that I host my own email and web server... so that every time I received an email or someone hit my website I was suddenly struck with breaking up of the connection. This happened quite a lot as my web site is actually hit frequently. The whole setup was behind a rather aged but effective D-Link DWL-6xx router. I started to research and realized that QOS was probably what I needed.
Went by Best Buy after a little research and made a point of buying a Linksys WRT54GS... one that I could put Linux on. As a test, I hooked it up when I got home, configured it all similar to the D-Link. Better, but still not 100%. At the same time I also upgraded my DSL connection to 1.5/512 (cheaper... go figure), but I still had dropping problems. I put DD-WRT on the router and after a little playing I set up my BitTorrent (for Linux ISO's, silly!), FTP and other serious download protocols as a "Bulk" rate, set Vonage ports as "Premium" and generally did some load balancing (SMTP became bulk as well now I think about it) to set up what I thought was important. Plus I reduced my total speed on the QoS to 90% of my advertised connection speed. Voila, problem fixed.
Now, a couple of months later I'm VERY happy with Vonage. My call quality is as good or better than my land-line phone... I have a Belfast phone number as well as my US phone number so my mum and brothers (and anyone else from my family) can call me at local rate to a local number... my connection barely suffers and everything works great. Well, the only problem I have now is that my cordless phone interferes with my wireless internet connection when I'm using my laptop... I'm working on that.
So is this a total success? Not really. I'm not an average consumer. I'm Cisco, Microsoft, Novell and Redhat certified, I work with technology for a living and have servers and stuff at home. The average consumer running the same DSL connection and router as I had originally would have given up in disgust... me I took it as a challenge to get things working normally.
Nowadays, I can have a download running (BitTorrent), pick up the phone and still be surfing the web... and despite the obvious drop of BT traffic, I barely notice that the line's being used. Would the average consumer have the time or energy to do any of this? No, of course not. Vonage is a nice idea, but the implementation needs some work. If your VoIP connection (not just Vonage) isn't managed at the router or in front of the router then you'll never get what you want from it. At least at the router level, traffic can be controlled. If you're behind the router then you're relying on another piece of equipment to manage traffic properly for your VoIP connection... not something that's going to really work well.
I think once we have routers that prioritize VoIP by default (many of them do these days) then the problems will be lessened... but a lot of whether you can use Vonage or any other VoIP service depends a lot on the quality of your Internet connection and infrastructure you've implemented to support it. I wouldn't recommend it to the non-technical.
Actually, I've used Palm repeatedly and have been severely underwhelmed. I was provided a Treo 650 by my work and it languished due to instability and just general problems (granted, some of them were hardware rather than software problems).
Sorry, I'm not a Microsoft apologist... I don't like their desktop or server OS's. They pay the bills, but every PC in my house runs some flavor of Linux or MacOS. Oh, except my laptop... but that's also provided by work. I don't think PocketPC is particularly fabulous either, but the simple fact is that it has met and even exceeded my needs for several years.
My comment about the IIIc was just to point out when I think Palm lost their way. This is, of course IMHO and you are entitled to your own. No need to become insulting just because you happen to disagree.
Earlier on it was a link to nothing even resembling confirmation, 10 minutes later it's Slashdotted. Lovely.
Sorry, I'm not terribly excited about this to be honest, the Palm OS has become as bloated and annoying an operating system as earlier versions of Windows CE. I run a SmartPhone device (MPX220) and despite its flaws I find it superior to recent versions of Palm. I'm not a Microsoft apologist... I just have used Palms since my old PalmPilot Pro, but lost interest when they went to color without the proper CPU support to make it usable. Recent versions just seem to have become "feature rich" without really fixing its problems.
Wake me up when there's a GSM version of the 700w, now THAT I'll be interested in to replace my MPx220 and Ipaq.
Why do you think politicians were so up on the H-1B visa thing a few years back? It was a way to increase the number of their constituents without increasing the number of people who actually had a vote or a voice. Get the ratio just right and given the general apathy about politics that most Americans have they can turn around and say "Well, I got some feedback about the issue, but only about 5% of my constituents really seemed to care."
There's a lot of comments on this story, and my comments will probably get buried under the load of other comments... but I feel I have to comment as a British citizen living in the US for the last 11 years.
My unscientific view is that there may be something in upbringing, or there may be something genetic that's not being taken into account in this study. Despite the fact that the study made a point of the fact that it excluded certain races the simple fact that the US is a literal melting pot of cultures throws a variable into the mix that I don't think has been considered. We don't know historically how healthy the Native American people were. Today's native Americans aren't "pure", but neither are the "White" Americans. Almost everyone I know (this is living in the midwest) can trace some native American heritage in their genetic makeup, whereas I'd hazard to guess that most British people wouldn't. This does throw in a genetic possibility in the occurrences of cancer for example. We don't know how prevalent cancer was in old native populations... we just don't have that data.
I know my example is not very scientific, but I have lived in America for 11 years now. That means that I've had enough time now to "go native" and live a lifestyle that isn't very different from that of my peers (though does sometimes seem a little different in subtle ways because of ingrained ideals that I can trace to my childhood). I don't think I eat significantly differently from my peers, though I do often eat less. I don't drink any more or less than most of my peers, and I live in the same areas, drive the same roads... hell I even eat the same Mississippi river catfish that we catch on a Saturday afternoon on occasion.
What do I observe? Despite living a very similar lifestyle, I am a lot healthier than my peers. Most people my age are overweight. While I'm not thin either, I have only once in my life gotten to the point I considered myself obese (but my doctor said I was just overweight)... and I put myself on a strict diet. A cultural thing? Perhaps. Most of my peers also are losing their hair (I'm 33 and still have a full head of hair) or going grey. Is this a symptom of a diet/exercise problem... or something different in their genetic makeup? I noted when I returned to England last year for a vacation, my friends I met up with were mostly in much the same condition as me. Compared to my American friends we would all have been considered significantly healthier.
Now, please note that I don't make any special efforts to stay fit. Oh, I go out to the gym once or twice a week but sometimes it will be weeks between visits because of my work or home life. I eat at the same places as my peers and colleagues, and don't necessarily order anything different. I probably do cook at home on the weekends more than most of my peers, but that's just because I enjoy making good dinners completely from scratch (something few people do; they usually buy pre-packaged goods at the store and call that "home cooking").
To extend my unscientific viewpoint further I have two children. My eldest is my step-daughter... her parents are both American. I also have a son who's mine. The health differences between my two children couldn't be greater. While they both eat the same, and my daughter is not fat (actually she's very slim), she has bad teeth and frequent health problems she's had her entire life. Maybe she was just unlucky, but my son couldn't be more different. He's healthy as a horse... strong and active. The only time I can remember ever having to take him to the emergency room was when he decided that since he had managed to lock himself in his room and couldn't open the door, a second floor window would make an appropriate exit. Now again, there's no difference in diet between both kids... and they do share at least 50% of the genes (my wife), but something in there is very different which results in both of them having significantly different health.
I know none of this is very scientific, but I feel th
I've been in this exact situation... and while it's not a fantastic solution there actually is one;
Bring in a third party. Ask them to invest a little if desired... create three CxO positions; a CEO, CFO and CTO. Pick the role you want and create 100 "shares of the company". This third party, give them 2 shares... just 2% of the company. That means that the two "head honchos" have equal voting rights at 49% each, but there's a third party that has a "stalemate breaking" 2% share that can result in a 51% vote in the event of a disagreement. The investors should go for that.
I did the exact same thing... I chose to become CTO as I didn't want the CEO position... as it turned out the CEO and I both had 49% and the CFO ended up with the 2%. I also agree with other posters that you'll never have enough time in your day to do all the work involved in running a company between two of you, especially as the company grows. It's quite possible for a CEO to have 2% and for both of you to become CFO and CTO respectively.
Of course, my business failed... but it wasn't the business structure so much as the fact that the market died (we incorporated in 1999, did 10mill in 2000, 22mill in 2001... then came September 11th and we did less than 5mill in 2002. We closed our doors in 2003 due to lack of business and a generally crappy economy for tech stuff. The CEO still does some business under the old company name, but it's not the same company at all and serves a slightly different market. However, the 2% owner became the "breaking vote" on more than one occasion... sometimes with me, sometimes against me... but it (a) kept the investors happy and (b) meant that between the three of us we could always reach some kind of decision.
These bags all seem extremely "College Student Cool" in both form and function, none of them meet my personal needs and desires.
My needs for a laptop bag were simple when I went shopping; (a) Must be resilient, (b) must be weatherproof, (c) must provide reasonable storage for things other than my laptop (papers, pens, power supply, cordless mouse) and (d) be unobtrusive when worn.
Although my final choice of the http://www.axio-usa.com/Axio Tekno backpack was not cheap, it has met all of the above requirements and then some. Understand that through 9 months of the year I ride a motorcycle. That's the source of at least two of the requirements I specified. As such, the Axio does brilliantly; it puts most of the weight evenly distributed through the my torso so I don't feel any pressure points and I'm pretty evenly balanced. It also swallows a surprising amount of stuff as well as my laptop... and it's taken quite a beating. I even travelled through England with it last year on a motorcycle... over 1200 miles of riding in two weeks with that on my back, not to mention the significant amount of walking I did during the trip. That in itself told me the backpack was a good investment.
It's also outlasted my last laptop, ironically. My old Dell Latitude bit the dust a few weeks back (though when I was on my trip I had a slower but lighter Toshiba Portege that is my Linux laptop at home) and I've replaced it with a newer D610 that has the same dimensions but thankfully weighs less! The case is still almost pristine, except for scratches and nicks on the hard shell. It may not be "cool" in the sense this article is trying to push the idea... but it's cool for me because it meets my needs.
So how about it? A review of laptops bags from a few different perspectives? The college student, the businessman, the outdoor type, the motorcyclist... I'm sure others spring to mind easily and quickly and they all have different requirements.
I would say the best way to proceed would be to involve the developers of MythTV. A plugin could be easily made to manage a subscription to your service to download the unencrypted video. Yes, this would somewhat meet the desire here... but having more current stuff might be nice too.
One solution that I could see would be to digitally "watermark" a file using a method that is invisible to the user (say like the way subtitles are added outside the viewable scanlines). This watermark would be unique to a subscriber of yours and thus every file they buy would be tagged with it. It could also conceivably be embedded in the video if necessary in ways that are invisible to the naked eye (there is significant research into this type of digital watermarking scheme).
Though this would not prevent piracy and file sharing, it would allow the diligent company to track down the source of a file. Sure, it might be a little bit of "locking the gate after the horse has bolted", but (a) piracy and sharing is not as big a problem as the **AA's would have you believe, and (b) it would at least discourage the casual file sharer from giving away his purchases.
I know, people would argue a lot regarding (a), but to be honest I don't think it is a big problem. The demand for a service that integrates well with current technologies but provides a huge leap in functionality is pretty high... more so than just the geek crowd you get around Slashdot. Those that would purchase your shows for the express purposes of sharing would realistically only make up less than one tenth of one percent of your audience, and the number of illegal downloaders out there would maybe push 5% of your total market base at absolute maximum. These numbers are, of course just my opinion... but they're based on what I perceive to be the market conditions.
The keys to making your service work for everyone are to make it simple, make it affordable and market it to the right people. Marketing somewhere like Slashdot is probably asking for trouble as more than likely those who would want to freely distribute your files are here. Not trying to tar everyone with the same brush here... just making a point:)
I'm primarily concerned that your custom player would cut out a huge potential market; the MythTV crowd. I myself use MythTV on my primary family TV... my kids record their TV shows, I record mine... and I can watch on my own schedule. A custom player (unless it's written for Linux with some hooks into Myth) would cut me out of your customer base.
At the moment, I'll admit I rip DVD's... but only those I've already bought. I don't share files, I store them so I can watch the files instead of (a) having to dig up the DVD's every time I want to watch them and (b) potentially damaging them while putting them in and out of my DVD player.
While I'm concerned with the recent DRM directions and so forth, I'm not overly so. We don't watch much TV... and in fact we're much more selective since I installed Myth over a year ago... but the ability to legally download movies and TV in a decent format that I can store on my Mythbox, play when I want and so forth would be an incredible boost to the Myth project. Hell, it's almost custom-designed for a system like this that would allow semi-impulse on-demand purchases that are downloaded to the machine itself for playback. If this were available, I might stop Satellite TV entirely and switch to a download-capable system... hell with the amount I'd save on my satellite bill I could afford the faster DSL connection I'd like to have for this system AND afford a couple of new movies a month.
My philosophy with my kids is to include them in things that I do... not necessarily computer related. I fix my own cars... so I include them. They come out to the garage and help me work on them... hand me tools... ask questions. I'm also starting to build a plane (Van's RV-7A), and I'm including them both on that.
May not be "technology" so to speak, but I am a technologist for a living. My feeling is that giving them a broader base of experience allows them to be more well-rounded individuals. My parents did the same thing with me, and though I work in computers for a living I have the skills at-hand to pretty much do whatever I want for a living. I've been an EMT, a bartender, and now in technology I've worked consulting and corporate jobs both. I've been a technical writer, administrator and engineer... and now I'm going into technical management.
I've been able to do well in any challenge I have been handed (or given myself) because I have a wide ranging base of experience and abilities, mostly thanks to my parents (and uncles, and aunts) who included me into whatever it was they were working on. They never forced me into a particular career path, or limited me when I showed curiosity about anything. As a result, I'm a pretty well adjusted and adaptable person who can work in computers during the week, go fly at the weekend, and raise my kids to be well rounded individuals.
Oh, and I also cook...
YMMV, but don't sell your kids short by forcing them down a technology path. The technology you have at home (I presume, given your questions) will give them the experience they'll need to use a computer in the modern world... pushing other technology onto them will just start leading them down a narrow path. Let them explore their own creativity and curiosity... and include them wherever you can in what you're working on. You'll be surprised how quickly they learn this stuff.
I had this exact thought when I switched from regular land-line to VoIP a few months back. It occurred to me that since I use a cordless phone and don't have a corded phone in the house, I'd be just as SOL whether I went VoIP or not.
Of course, the other alternative is a UPS... one that provides power for my DSL modem, router, VoIP box and wireless base station. However, I've also got a cell phone for that... and so does my SO.
And I'm afraid your stripes as an Apple apologist are showing. Why is it when files an obviously ridiculous patent, many of the slashbots here suddenly get up in arms... but if "Golden Child Apple" does the same thing, the apologists come out of the woodwork?
This is just like the pantenting of the scroll wheel; there's an obvious case of prior art (the radio dial in my old 1972 Dodge Charger for example) where a wheel moves a linear guide, but people think the patent is "new and valid" because it applies to an electronic device.
Sorry... I did read the patent... and I still don't make the distinction. It's a gesture-based interface using a touch screen. Like it or not, the prior art exists and is valid. This is a patent that would be unenforceable in a court of law.
Actually, I fail to see how. The touch screen reacts the same whether I use one finger or two. The patent is vague (pretty typical for these kind of things), and to be honest probably worthless.
Besides, what's Apple going to do then? Sue the priest at my local Catholic church because he happens to mark the stations on the cross with two fingers during service????
... Black & White with a touch screen. If you've got it set up to emulate a mouse then it's actually quite fun to play with a touch screen. I did it more than once... and yes, gestures are an integral part of that game (performing miracles).
Actually, I'll go out on a limb here and say that I think Guards, Guards would actually make the best "first movie" in a Terry Pratchett set. Here's why;
1. The narrative is strong, and although not everyone loves an action movie, Guards Guards is probably the most "action-oriented" of the earlier books. A lot of the others tend to be more cerebral, and later in the series the comedy becomes subtler.
2. Dragons! Come on, how can you go far wrong with Dragons? OK, I'll grant you Dragonheart...;)
3. Characters. Many of the characters introduced in this book either occur later in the series or are referred to (sometimes obliquely) in later books. GG is where Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler is introduced... adn while he's a minor character here he becomes a major character later.
4. Theres a love story. Movie studios love that stuff...
5. Ankh Morpork. To me, AM was bought to life in GG in ways it hadn't been before. You got to see the REAL city, and not from a distance. Even later books often focused on specific aspects of the city (the university for example), rather than on the city which is itself a character in the books.
Unlike the poster I replied to, I started with The Colour of Magic and just continued reading. I got away from the books for many years but returned to them recently and started reading them all again. So far I'm up as far as Small Gods and I'm working on it... but I definitely see how the narrative of a movie series would benefit from starting with Guards, Guards. While it wasn't my favorite of the series, it was definitely the one I think is most "movie-like" and most likely to appeal to a wide audience.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm afraid you've obviously not worked with more recent version of Citrix; specifically Presentation Server 4. There are a lot o optimizations in the newer versions that weren't there before. Plus you've also got load control; when a user process is chowing down a CPU for too long, it gets reduced in priority automatically so that other users can run the applications.
So long as the apps are relatively well-behaved you can easily expand your servers. We have a homegrown application that runs our core business. This application has a lot of database activity to Oracle databases on the backend, but much of the processing is done "locally" i.e. by the client. In this case, the client is the Citrix server. On a quad-proc server with 2Ghz CPUs and 8Gb of RAM (HP Proliant DL380 G2's and G3's) or thereabouts, we routinely run 50 users per machine... sometimes up to 75. Now, another advantage here is that you can pool your resources, have groups of Citrix servers serving up particular applications until you've got one hell of a nice system.
Plus, especially where your user population is geographically diverse Citrix can actually increase your performance. Few applications work in a "void" where they access no other network resources any more. Be it networked home directories, print servers, database servers and so forth. Quite simply, having your entire infrastructure centralized means that your "workstations" (Citrix sessions) are on the same local network to the resources they're trying to access. As a result, faster response times. We're in the process of migrating a bunch of users in India to Citrix clients because the performance is almost three times what they can get locally... and this is with some pretty fat pipes between here and there.
Your mileage may vary, but Citrix is an incredibly scalable solution IF IT'S DESIGNED CORRECTLY. Be aware that a bad design can cause you to have to trash the entire infrastructure routinely and start again, but if you design it for growth then it will grow. Our Citrix farm today serves up applications to about 11,000 users across the globe. The entire infrastructure is managed by a few different groups, but by only two dedicated Citrix resources... the rest are monitoring and application groups.
I've worked with Citrix since Winframe days... the comments you made really haven't been true since the earliest days of Metaframe XP... even then later versions fixed many of the pitfalls and newer versions quite frankly rock.
As far as the subject is concerned; I think that Citrix is the solution that the original poster needs. The virtual solution is just too clunky and "weird" to really work effectively... and will definitely not scale well. I love virtualization too, but it has its place.
As a side note, there's no reason you can't load-balance your Citrix farm by creating Citrix servers on a VMWare ESX box. You can set processor affinity for each one, give it a certain amount of RAM and you get a lot of control. Plus your hardware is consistent so imaging is easy. Each server will not support as many users, but you can fit probably 20% more users per server by doing it this way... again SO LONG AS IT'S PLANNED PROPERLY.
And the first thing you have to realize is that there isn't a single reason in the world that the admin actually needs to be in the room with the servers.
I've worked on small datacenters about the size you're specifying, and I work on huge datacenters that have up to 10,000 square feet of space filled with racks. In both instances, I've always recommended that it be a "lights out" datacenter; that is that there's noone in there.
Why? Well, first of all there's the noise issues. Real servers make noise, and in most instances it would actually be harmful to you to sit in the room with them for long periods of time. There's also the issue of "kicked cables" that could take down the servers, or a kicked power button. You might think it could never happen, but it can. Thirdly, there's heat. You sitting in that room is actually reducing the efficacy of the air conditioning because the heat you put off is also adding to the heat the AC needs to remove. Finally, there's the fact that we aren't clean animals; where do you think the dust comes from that you have to clean out of desktop systems? Much of it is human skin shed by you. Would you rather have to take down the servers every six months to blow out the dust, or have servers that can run for quite some time without buildup?
As for console access, there are plenty of good KVM solutions that use IP. I use Avocent's solutions myself, but YMMV... but they are pretty damned good for small to enterprise businesses. I've used it in environments with 4 or 5 servers, and I've used it in environments with several hundred servers across multiple sites... still works pretty damned well.
Another solution that works incredibly well is to use out of band management. In one large installation I work with often, we have HP servers with Integrated Lights Out cards. Allow us to power the servers on and off, launch a remote console and even mount CDs remotely to install software. Since it's Java based it also works well under Linux... if you've got a little money to spare then that might be a good solution.
Finally, others have mentioned this; how about one big and meaty server and virtualize? I built an entire R&D lab environment around an 8-processor HP DL760 with 20Gb of hot-swap RAM attached to a Compaq SAN that was going to be disposed of... it now runs daily about 15 VM's with a peak of 25 and has become a really reliable and flexible system. It still runs VMWare ESX 2.0, and I plan to upgrade it to 2.5 soon because it scales a lot better in our tests and I might be able to squeeze a couple more machines out of that machine. Sure, with the SAN only being an older one the boot times are rather pitiful, but I have swap partitions moved off to local storage on the 760 (it has space for 4 72Gb drives, soon to upgrade to 146's) to keep performance up. Even my Windows boxes I create a "local" partition for temp and swap... boot times suck but running performance you can rarely tell the difference between the VM's and physicals.
The key here though is lose the workstation. If you lose a server, take it out of the server room for troubleshooting. It maintains the "clean room ideal" of the datacenter, reduces risk of downtime and even protects you. Plus it looks good on a resume when you say you've dealt with some of these lights out technologies (IP KVM's, iLo's etc.)... believe me it can help a lot if/when you decide to move to a bigger enterprise that may have rules and regs that require lights-out datacenter experience.
An operating system doesn't NEED to take advantage of powerful hardware. An operating system doesn't REQUIRE heavy duty CPU's, craploads of RAM and more hard drive space than was actually in my entire computer not more than 6 years ago. The applications should be the ones taking advantage of dual-core CPU's, taking up the RAM and disk space and generating the data required to get the job done.
An operating system should facilitate this, make it easy and consistent for the applications to access the advanced hardware, not take all the system resources and give the apps what's left. Windows 2000 did this right, Windows XP/2003 do a pretty decent job. Vista sucks at it (though it's still an early beta... but I see no reason why this is going to change).
I run Linux on many of my home systems (some Fedora, recent machines are getting Gentoo) because I can pare it down to an operating system that fulfills my needs. It allows me to launch the apps I need, and then gets the hell out of the way unless it's actually needed by the application or by me. Especially my Gentoo install on my PIII-700 does all I need it to on a regular basis. I check email, I surf the web and I write articles on OpenOffice (source-compiled over the course of a day, but it runs better than the same app on my Fedora box that has an Athlon 64). It gets out of my way, it doesn't "take advantage of the hardware" for eye candy... it just is, and just does.
At work we use Windows extensively. We've tested Vista as a server... and it sucks. Our investment in hardware needs to last longer than that, so right now Windows 2003 is our OS of choice simply because it does what it needs to. Sure, there are some sucky elements that need to be fixed (stripping out unnecessary chaff), but once done we create a "gold image" build and we're off and running.
Sorry for the rant, I just find comments about leveraging future hardware to make the OS somehow magically "better" to be incongruous and misleading. The apps should get better, the OS should enable that.
humor noun: humor, humour, sense of humor, sense of humour. The trait of appreciating (and being able to express) the humorous; "she didn't appreciate my humor"; "you can't survive in the army without a sense of humor"
:)
I myself am an engineer... but I will agree with your comments about programmers and developers, too
Let me guess, you downloaded Fedora Core 5 as well, huh? :)
Have you ever in your life seen an engineer who would actually document his work? Therefore, it must be art.
Stop the presses!!! I had no idea. The world changes and adapts over time. This must be some new, radical train of thought we've picked up on here because I sure as hell hadn't noticed.
Seriously, where's the news here? This is a pitiful opinion piece that really doesn't say anything significant. OK, so someone from the 1920's would be blown away by the modern world. I can grant you that, but what about someone from the 1840's arriving in the world of the 1920's? Or any other ~80 year gap in history? It's not that special, not that surprising and really the article's not that interesting.
Can we mod -1 (Boring)?
And I posted a rebuttal. He's a troll... can't justify his comments. I actually disprove his comments by playing Eve Online from thousands of miles away from the servers. Go figure :)
Well that's a bunch of crap. The servers are in Europe, I play Eve from St. Louis, Missouri about 3 nights a week. I've never had a problem with lag that wasn't caused by my own local network (I had a DSL "modem" go bad recently). I also played it on my laptop from a hotel room in Tucson, AZ and Denver, CO recently while traveling on business... never had a problem.
:)
If you're having a lag problem the first place to look is probably your own local configuration. Are you playing using wireless? Do you have a good signal? The quality of your own local connection makes a huge difference.
Also, if you're running a local home network check your switch/hub. Are you sure you're not causing collisions because your PC is at 100/Half and your switch expects 100/full?
See this is why I think home networking (done right at least) is still beyond Joe Public... that's why they pay me to do it right for them
I implemented Vonage a few months ago on my home phone. Now, granted since my wife and I both got cell phones we rarely use the home phone except as a voicemail box... but my wife still likes having a "land line". So be it, I don't use it much.
Now, when I implemented I had a 600/128 ADSL connection from Speakeasy. Worked OK at first, but I was hit quickly by the fact that I host my own email and web server... so that every time I received an email or someone hit my website I was suddenly struck with breaking up of the connection. This happened quite a lot as my web site is actually hit frequently. The whole setup was behind a rather aged but effective D-Link DWL-6xx router. I started to research and realized that QOS was probably what I needed.
Went by Best Buy after a little research and made a point of buying a Linksys WRT54GS... one that I could put Linux on. As a test, I hooked it up when I got home, configured it all similar to the D-Link. Better, but still not 100%. At the same time I also upgraded my DSL connection to 1.5/512 (cheaper... go figure), but I still had dropping problems. I put DD-WRT on the router and after a little playing I set up my BitTorrent (for Linux ISO's, silly!), FTP and other serious download protocols as a "Bulk" rate, set Vonage ports as "Premium" and generally did some load balancing (SMTP became bulk as well now I think about it) to set up what I thought was important. Plus I reduced my total speed on the QoS to 90% of my advertised connection speed. Voila, problem fixed.
Now, a couple of months later I'm VERY happy with Vonage. My call quality is as good or better than my land-line phone... I have a Belfast phone number as well as my US phone number so my mum and brothers (and anyone else from my family) can call me at local rate to a local number... my connection barely suffers and everything works great. Well, the only problem I have now is that my cordless phone interferes with my wireless internet connection when I'm using my laptop... I'm working on that.
So is this a total success? Not really. I'm not an average consumer. I'm Cisco, Microsoft, Novell and Redhat certified, I work with technology for a living and have servers and stuff at home. The average consumer running the same DSL connection and router as I had originally would have given up in disgust... me I took it as a challenge to get things working normally.
Nowadays, I can have a download running (BitTorrent), pick up the phone and still be surfing the web... and despite the obvious drop of BT traffic, I barely notice that the line's being used. Would the average consumer have the time or energy to do any of this? No, of course not. Vonage is a nice idea, but the implementation needs some work. If your VoIP connection (not just Vonage) isn't managed at the router or in front of the router then you'll never get what you want from it. At least at the router level, traffic can be controlled. If you're behind the router then you're relying on another piece of equipment to manage traffic properly for your VoIP connection... not something that's going to really work well.
I think once we have routers that prioritize VoIP by default (many of them do these days) then the problems will be lessened... but a lot of whether you can use Vonage or any other VoIP service depends a lot on the quality of your Internet connection and infrastructure you've implemented to support it. I wouldn't recommend it to the non-technical.
Actually, I've used Palm repeatedly and have been severely underwhelmed. I was provided a Treo 650 by my work and it languished due to instability and just general problems (granted, some of them were hardware rather than software problems).
Sorry, I'm not a Microsoft apologist... I don't like their desktop or server OS's. They pay the bills, but every PC in my house runs some flavor of Linux or MacOS. Oh, except my laptop... but that's also provided by work. I don't think PocketPC is particularly fabulous either, but the simple fact is that it has met and even exceeded my needs for several years.
My comment about the IIIc was just to point out when I think Palm lost their way. This is, of course IMHO and you are entitled to your own. No need to become insulting just because you happen to disagree.
Earlier on it was a link to nothing even resembling confirmation, 10 minutes later it's Slashdotted. Lovely.
Sorry, I'm not terribly excited about this to be honest, the Palm OS has become as bloated and annoying an operating system as earlier versions of Windows CE. I run a SmartPhone device (MPX220) and despite its flaws I find it superior to recent versions of Palm. I'm not a Microsoft apologist... I just have used Palms since my old PalmPilot Pro, but lost interest when they went to color without the proper CPU support to make it usable. Recent versions just seem to have become "feature rich" without really fixing its problems.
Wake me up when there's a GSM version of the 700w, now THAT I'll be interested in to replace my MPx220 and Ipaq.
Why do you think politicians were so up on the H-1B visa thing a few years back? It was a way to increase the number of their constituents without increasing the number of people who actually had a vote or a voice. Get the ratio just right and given the general apathy about politics that most Americans have they can turn around and say "Well, I got some feedback about the issue, but only about 5% of my constituents really seemed to care."
:)
Hear me now, believe me later
There's a lot of comments on this story, and my comments will probably get buried under the load of other comments... but I feel I have to comment as a British citizen living in the US for the last 11 years.
My unscientific view is that there may be something in upbringing, or there may be something genetic that's not being taken into account in this study. Despite the fact that the study made a point of the fact that it excluded certain races the simple fact that the US is a literal melting pot of cultures throws a variable into the mix that I don't think has been considered. We don't know historically how healthy the Native American people were. Today's native Americans aren't "pure", but neither are the "White" Americans. Almost everyone I know (this is living in the midwest) can trace some native American heritage in their genetic makeup, whereas I'd hazard to guess that most British people wouldn't. This does throw in a genetic possibility in the occurrences of cancer for example. We don't know how prevalent cancer was in old native populations... we just don't have that data.
I know my example is not very scientific, but I have lived in America for 11 years now. That means that I've had enough time now to "go native" and live a lifestyle that isn't very different from that of my peers (though does sometimes seem a little different in subtle ways because of ingrained ideals that I can trace to my childhood). I don't think I eat significantly differently from my peers, though I do often eat less. I don't drink any more or less than most of my peers, and I live in the same areas, drive the same roads... hell I even eat the same Mississippi river catfish that we catch on a Saturday afternoon on occasion.
What do I observe? Despite living a very similar lifestyle, I am a lot healthier than my peers. Most people my age are overweight. While I'm not thin either, I have only once in my life gotten to the point I considered myself obese (but my doctor said I was just overweight)... and I put myself on a strict diet. A cultural thing? Perhaps. Most of my peers also are losing their hair (I'm 33 and still have a full head of hair) or going grey. Is this a symptom of a diet/exercise problem... or something different in their genetic makeup? I noted when I returned to England last year for a vacation, my friends I met up with were mostly in much the same condition as me. Compared to my American friends we would all have been considered significantly healthier.
Now, please note that I don't make any special efforts to stay fit. Oh, I go out to the gym once or twice a week but sometimes it will be weeks between visits because of my work or home life. I eat at the same places as my peers and colleagues, and don't necessarily order anything different. I probably do cook at home on the weekends more than most of my peers, but that's just because I enjoy making good dinners completely from scratch (something few people do; they usually buy pre-packaged goods at the store and call that "home cooking").
To extend my unscientific viewpoint further I have two children. My eldest is my step-daughter... her parents are both American. I also have a son who's mine. The health differences between my two children couldn't be greater. While they both eat the same, and my daughter is not fat (actually she's very slim), she has bad teeth and frequent health problems she's had her entire life. Maybe she was just unlucky, but my son couldn't be more different. He's healthy as a horse... strong and active. The only time I can remember ever having to take him to the emergency room was when he decided that since he had managed to lock himself in his room and couldn't open the door, a second floor window would make an appropriate exit. Now again, there's no difference in diet between both kids... and they do share at least 50% of the genes (my wife), but something in there is very different which results in both of them having significantly different health.
I know none of this is very scientific, but I feel th
I've been in this exact situation... and while it's not a fantastic solution there actually is one;
Bring in a third party. Ask them to invest a little if desired... create three CxO positions; a CEO, CFO and CTO. Pick the role you want and create 100 "shares of the company". This third party, give them 2 shares... just 2% of the company. That means that the two "head honchos" have equal voting rights at 49% each, but there's a third party that has a "stalemate breaking" 2% share that can result in a 51% vote in the event of a disagreement. The investors should go for that.
I did the exact same thing... I chose to become CTO as I didn't want the CEO position... as it turned out the CEO and I both had 49% and the CFO ended up with the 2%. I also agree with other posters that you'll never have enough time in your day to do all the work involved in running a company between two of you, especially as the company grows. It's quite possible for a CEO to have 2% and for both of you to become CFO and CTO respectively.
Of course, my business failed... but it wasn't the business structure so much as the fact that the market died (we incorporated in 1999, did 10mill in 2000, 22mill in 2001... then came September 11th and we did less than 5mill in 2002. We closed our doors in 2003 due to lack of business and a generally crappy economy for tech stuff. The CEO still does some business under the old company name, but it's not the same company at all and serves a slightly different market. However, the 2% owner became the "breaking vote" on more than one occasion... sometimes with me, sometimes against me... but it (a) kept the investors happy and (b) meant that between the three of us we could always reach some kind of decision.
These bags all seem extremely "College Student Cool" in both form and function, none of them meet my personal needs and desires.
My needs for a laptop bag were simple when I went shopping; (a) Must be resilient, (b) must be weatherproof, (c) must provide reasonable storage for things other than my laptop (papers, pens, power supply, cordless mouse) and (d) be unobtrusive when worn.
Although my final choice of the http://www.axio-usa.com/Axio Tekno backpack was not cheap, it has met all of the above requirements and then some. Understand that through 9 months of the year I ride a motorcycle. That's the source of at least two of the requirements I specified. As such, the Axio does brilliantly; it puts most of the weight evenly distributed through the my torso so I don't feel any pressure points and I'm pretty evenly balanced. It also swallows a surprising amount of stuff as well as my laptop... and it's taken quite a beating. I even travelled through England with it last year on a motorcycle... over 1200 miles of riding in two weeks with that on my back, not to mention the significant amount of walking I did during the trip. That in itself told me the backpack was a good investment.
It's also outlasted my last laptop, ironically. My old Dell Latitude bit the dust a few weeks back (though when I was on my trip I had a slower but lighter Toshiba Portege that is my Linux laptop at home) and I've replaced it with a newer D610 that has the same dimensions but thankfully weighs less! The case is still almost pristine, except for scratches and nicks on the hard shell. It may not be "cool" in the sense this article is trying to push the idea... but it's cool for me because it meets my needs.
So how about it? A review of laptops bags from a few different perspectives? The college student, the businessman, the outdoor type, the motorcyclist... I'm sure others spring to mind easily and quickly and they all have different requirements.
I would say the best way to proceed would be to involve the developers of MythTV. A plugin could be easily made to manage a subscription to your service to download the unencrypted video. Yes, this would somewhat meet the desire here... but having more current stuff might be nice too.
:)
One solution that I could see would be to digitally "watermark" a file using a method that is invisible to the user (say like the way subtitles are added outside the viewable scanlines). This watermark would be unique to a subscriber of yours and thus every file they buy would be tagged with it. It could also conceivably be embedded in the video if necessary in ways that are invisible to the naked eye (there is significant research into this type of digital watermarking scheme).
Though this would not prevent piracy and file sharing, it would allow the diligent company to track down the source of a file. Sure, it might be a little bit of "locking the gate after the horse has bolted", but (a) piracy and sharing is not as big a problem as the **AA's would have you believe, and (b) it would at least discourage the casual file sharer from giving away his purchases.
I know, people would argue a lot regarding (a), but to be honest I don't think it is a big problem. The demand for a service that integrates well with current technologies but provides a huge leap in functionality is pretty high... more so than just the geek crowd you get around Slashdot. Those that would purchase your shows for the express purposes of sharing would realistically only make up less than one tenth of one percent of your audience, and the number of illegal downloaders out there would maybe push 5% of your total market base at absolute maximum. These numbers are, of course just my opinion... but they're based on what I perceive to be the market conditions.
The keys to making your service work for everyone are to make it simple, make it affordable and market it to the right people. Marketing somewhere like Slashdot is probably asking for trouble as more than likely those who would want to freely distribute your files are here. Not trying to tar everyone with the same brush here... just making a point
I'm primarily concerned that your custom player would cut out a huge potential market; the MythTV crowd. I myself use MythTV on my primary family TV... my kids record their TV shows, I record mine... and I can watch on my own schedule. A custom player (unless it's written for Linux with some hooks into Myth) would cut me out of your customer base.
At the moment, I'll admit I rip DVD's... but only those I've already bought. I don't share files, I store them so I can watch the files instead of (a) having to dig up the DVD's every time I want to watch them and (b) potentially damaging them while putting them in and out of my DVD player.
While I'm concerned with the recent DRM directions and so forth, I'm not overly so. We don't watch much TV... and in fact we're much more selective since I installed Myth over a year ago... but the ability to legally download movies and TV in a decent format that I can store on my Mythbox, play when I want and so forth would be an incredible boost to the Myth project. Hell, it's almost custom-designed for a system like this that would allow semi-impulse on-demand purchases that are downloaded to the machine itself for playback. If this were available, I might stop Satellite TV entirely and switch to a download-capable system... hell with the amount I'd save on my satellite bill I could afford the faster DSL connection I'd like to have for this system AND afford a couple of new movies a month.
So how about it, what about a system like that?
My philosophy with my kids is to include them in things that I do... not necessarily computer related. I fix my own cars... so I include them. They come out to the garage and help me work on them... hand me tools... ask questions. I'm also starting to build a plane (Van's RV-7A), and I'm including them both on that.
May not be "technology" so to speak, but I am a technologist for a living. My feeling is that giving them a broader base of experience allows them to be more well-rounded individuals. My parents did the same thing with me, and though I work in computers for a living I have the skills at-hand to pretty much do whatever I want for a living. I've been an EMT, a bartender, and now in technology I've worked consulting and corporate jobs both. I've been a technical writer, administrator and engineer... and now I'm going into technical management.
I've been able to do well in any challenge I have been handed (or given myself) because I have a wide ranging base of experience and abilities, mostly thanks to my parents (and uncles, and aunts) who included me into whatever it was they were working on. They never forced me into a particular career path, or limited me when I showed curiosity about anything. As a result, I'm a pretty well adjusted and adaptable person who can work in computers during the week, go fly at the weekend, and raise my kids to be well rounded individuals.
Oh, and I also cook...
YMMV, but don't sell your kids short by forcing them down a technology path. The technology you have at home (I presume, given your questions) will give them the experience they'll need to use a computer in the modern world... pushing other technology onto them will just start leading them down a narrow path. Let them explore their own creativity and curiosity... and include them wherever you can in what you're working on. You'll be surprised how quickly they learn this stuff.
The Outer Limits did it pretty darned well. Twice.
I had this exact thought when I switched from regular land-line to VoIP a few months back. It occurred to me that since I use a cordless phone and don't have a corded phone in the house, I'd be just as SOL whether I went VoIP or not.
Of course, the other alternative is a UPS... one that provides power for my DSL modem, router, VoIP box and wireless base station. However, I've also got a cell phone for that... and so does my SO.
And I'm afraid your stripes as an Apple apologist are showing. Why is it when files an obviously ridiculous patent, many of the slashbots here suddenly get up in arms... but if "Golden Child Apple" does the same thing, the apologists come out of the woodwork?
This is just like the pantenting of the scroll wheel; there's an obvious case of prior art (the radio dial in my old 1972 Dodge Charger for example) where a wheel moves a linear guide, but people think the patent is "new and valid" because it applies to an electronic device.
Sorry... I did read the patent... and I still don't make the distinction. It's a gesture-based interface using a touch screen. Like it or not, the prior art exists and is valid. This is a patent that would be unenforceable in a court of law.
Actually, I fail to see how. The touch screen reacts the same whether I use one finger or two. The patent is vague (pretty typical for these kind of things), and to be honest probably worthless.
Besides, what's Apple going to do then? Sue the priest at my local Catholic church because he happens to mark the stations on the cross with two fingers during service????
... Black & White with a touch screen. If you've got it set up to emulate a mouse then it's actually quite fun to play with a touch screen. I did it more than once... and yes, gestures are an integral part of that game (performing miracles).
Sorry Apple... try again.
Actually, I'll go out on a limb here and say that I think Guards, Guards would actually make the best "first movie" in a Terry Pratchett set. Here's why;
;)
1. The narrative is strong, and although not everyone loves an action movie, Guards Guards is probably the most "action-oriented" of the earlier books. A lot of the others tend to be more cerebral, and later in the series the comedy becomes subtler.
2. Dragons! Come on, how can you go far wrong with Dragons? OK, I'll grant you Dragonheart...
3. Characters. Many of the characters introduced in this book either occur later in the series or are referred to (sometimes obliquely) in later books. GG is where Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler is introduced... adn while he's a minor character here he becomes a major character later.
4. Theres a love story. Movie studios love that stuff...
5. Ankh Morpork. To me, AM was bought to life in GG in ways it hadn't been before. You got to see the REAL city, and not from a distance. Even later books often focused on specific aspects of the city (the university for example), rather than on the city which is itself a character in the books.
Unlike the poster I replied to, I started with The Colour of Magic and just continued reading. I got away from the books for many years but returned to them recently and started reading them all again. So far I'm up as far as Small Gods and I'm working on it... but I definitely see how the narrative of a movie series would benefit from starting with Guards, Guards. While it wasn't my favorite of the series, it was definitely the one I think is most "movie-like" and most likely to appeal to a wide audience.