Script Kiddies of Web Applications
on
Software Fashion
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In the software world, some examples of inappropriate usage are: EJB for a small ecommerce app; extreme programming for a short-term project with stable requirements; Struts for a web project where plain old JSP + JavaBeans would do the job handsomely; taglibs where adding a new meta-language rewards the team with nothing but confusion; or Model 2, design pattern mania where someone on the team has read GOF and hence decided to shoehorn as many design patterns as possible into their design.
Struts is model 2. Duh. JSP scriptlets? Come on. EJB is not a JavaBean? What does the B stand for? This is so clearly not an informed piece when it comes to Java web apps. Just like a Microsoft dork to act like they everything when they know nothing. The script kiddies of web application design and development have nothing to say, as usual.
Spam assassin is not practical for high volume service. I've seen it take 75% of the CPU on a fairly new Intel box. Of course, this was with a stupid out-of-the-box configuration. Setup with defaults, it's an enormous strain on resources and is just begging for a DoS attack. I think of Spam Assassin as spam blocking for script kiddies. Now kids, let's actually read the script before we use this.
One day I got a call toward the end of the day from a sales rep in Chicago who couldn't get his computer to boot up. We went round and round for about two hours -- nothing worked. I was ready to pull my hair out, but I don't like losing. To lighten the tension of the moment, I started chitchatting with him as we're waiting to see if the machine will restart. He has an IBM ThinkPad, and I told him how much I like mine.
Him: "Yeah, they're ok, but I travel a lot, and I got tired of the darn thing being so heavy, so I installed Windows CE to make it lighter."
Is made up. I think a lot of these are. Not even very funny, really.
If I was starting a company from butt scratch, I would choose a language such as C, C++, or Java for doing application programming. For sys admin type of things I would definitely choose Perl, regardless if every machine was Windows, Linux or whatever.
I have built applications in Perl that are consumed by many to this day. I like it. I know Perl very well and very quickly tap out what I think is very good code. Even so, I am disappointed in the flexibility of these apps. Perl sage say: learn an OO approach in Perl. But once I started to learn Perl OO, I wanted to use something like C++ or Java... something OO by design... something that forced me to think OO, not translate to OO. FTR, I HAVE learned Perl OO. I have jumped to Java. My flirtation with it has become an all out interest. It might take me longer to get rolling with Java on a project, but I have already saved a bunch of time reusing code.
Anyway, if I built apps in Java in my company, I would also design a framework that, if at all possible, would apply to ALL projects. Given that, you have people speaking the same language at design time. You have people using the same style for coding (and you don't even have to make them use the same coding environment or IDE). You have a large number of people to choose from out in the world that would not find it difficult to jump in, feet on the ground, running. You have a product built on concepts that are easy to sell, such as J2EE. And so on.
On the Perl side. I can't imagine why I wouldn't use it for sys admin work. I know of a company that has a scheduler that launches VB, Perl, DOS, Korn, and all varieties of scripts. No surprise, there is no handle AT ALL on messaging. Did it succeed? Did it fail? Why did it fail? Well, good luck answering those questions. Sys admin sage says: standardize message handling in these scripts. No-one wants to mess with a script that works, especially when it's dealing with millions of dollars worth of transactions. Anyone here know who made this Korn script? DOS? *gag* With Perl you can run all of the other stuff anyway. You can hook up to a database to run a stored procedure, check the drive space, move a file from disk to disk, move a file from host to host. And so on.
That's how I break these down in my world. Perl is very important in my world. Java is as well. I have a place for both of them in my ideal company. -Slo
I've got an idea for revenge. Since we could easily find where he lives, we could print out copies of all the penis enlargement and free money spams we have to wade through every morning. Take about 30 flyers down to his car every morning and affix them to his car: under the windshield wipers, curled up in his door handles, stuffed into the seals of the windows. So every morning he'll have to take the time to remove them all before he is able to do what he really wants: to drive his damn car.
I suppose it's tough if you're new... just like anything. JSP gets converted to a regular.java file. When an error comes up, it tells you exactly where in this.java the error has occured. Furthermore, looking at this.java file can explain relationships between classes that you perhaps were not aware of. It's kinda nice actually.
Tarnish Unix? Nah. NT gets ruled out quickly when you are talking about huge implementations. Which makes Microsoft look really stupid when it comes to the question of porting their framework to Unix. They would certainly clean up. But instead they wait, along with the IT world, for NT to become something a lot better.
Aint it funny how y'all think your all so smart acting when you can't spell a word and can't form a good sentence when its just so easy to know English and it's syntax too?
I have created and supported numerous web site and web site applications over the years. Once I started to focus on standards a few years ago, I quickly found adherence is not the panacea. Netscape 4 and below has TERRIBLE support of CSS. Why anyone would argue otherwise, I can only conclude that they don't know what they are talking about. The problems range from mangled pages to forms that do not submit when the submit button is clicked. You can get it to work, but then it does not work on Macs. It's hopeless. So what do you do? You back away from standards such as CSS. If you do not back away, then you have some rabid puke like the many found here who accuse you of favoring Explorer. Explorer happens to have excellent (no, not perfect) support of CSS. But no, I am not favoring Explorer. I am using emacs to build them and if anything, I favor Unix.
I have a feeling that claiming a lack of support for anything but Explorer is misleading. Of course, Opera has perfect support of CSS too. But when the rabidly misinformed and militantly challenged load up a page in their hopelessly awful Netscape 4 (anything above 6.0 is fine), they erroneously conclude MS bias. Then they use standards as a rhetorical weapon when THEY OBVIOUSLY DO NOT KNOW WHAT THE HELL THEY ARE TALKING ABOUT.
I had this guy on one of my sites arguing this way. When I finally convinced him that Netscape 4 should be shat into/dev/null for all eternity, he started arguing that standards were not important.
Let's make sure we have all the issues on the table when we talk about this. Shouldn't posters to Slashdot offer their sage input in addition to links? We are all supposed to be here because we are in the know and want to stay that way. But I guess I'm not surprised that some of us are striking poses. I guess it just bothers me when these losers are the favored ones on this conformityware site.
Lindows' premise: All the power (and hype) of Linux AND you can run all your Windows apps on it. People will choose Lindows if it offers just about all Windows can offer for less, while opening them up to even more apps.
Your premise: You don't need Windows apps... therefore, WINE is fluff... therefore, Lindows is not viable.
Real people just might buy their premise. Slashdot hot air couriers probably will not, but they'll buy yours.
And since you like anecdotes: I was feeling rich for a couple of months so I set up my Mom with a computer. I built her a machine, installed Windows on it. I chose Windows because I live 300 miles away from her. I knew she would go down to Best Buy and buy stuff like a scanner and so on and would be surprised if nothing worked. Linux(or other) was not an option. BUT, I wanted her machine to be legit and did not want to buy MS Office, so I put Star Office on it since it was free at the time.
Star Office is much closer to MS Office than anything I have seen. OpenOffice is not even close. I figured she would have no problems even if she had to open an Excel file or two. I figured she didn't even need that much power. Over a year, she began demanding more. Star Office began to be a real problem. It cost me my time. It caused frustration. It's just plain inferior to MS Office. So I finally switched her to MS Office.
Since the purchase of the machine, without my consultation, she went out and bought a printer, scanner, a CDRW and a couple of applications. It is likely that none of this would have worked had I installed Linux (or other). And if it could work on Linux, it would cost ME my time to get it working.
So the point of my little tale is that this particular average user, my Mom, could not have used Linux. In fact, she couldn't even use an open source program compiled for Windows.
The ideals are good. But the product is inferior in a lot of cases in the eyes and experience of real users, the ones that make our world go 'round.
Get more "real users" on Linux (or other) and the quality of end-user apps will increase steadily. I say, get there at any price even if it means accomodating these users on the way, as Lindows intends to do (they may have failed, I don't know).
Now that WINE has matured, I might reconsider this. I might even choose Lindows for someone since an over-the-phone reinstall to factory default is VERY appealing when you're playing support for your less technical friends and family (yes I know you could use Ghost or equiv but I don't really have time to play OEM). (The point of a restore CD was lost on the questionable newsforge reviewer. Compaq innovated this concept and was rewarded for it, early on. Rewards in business are a good thing.)
You seem like a reasonable enough person. Maybe you should move even further away from this Slashdot negation banter and conformity. It's useless. Slashdot is almost completely useless. What the hell am I even doing here? ugh.
Most Windows programs? This is not true. Not even close. Windows programs are owned in quantity by many as well as on the shelves in astounding quantities. Lindows obviously is attempting to offer access to these while also offering access to the open source applications. This is a valid business plan. I think it's brilliant, actually. Not original, not perfect in execution, but good for them for going ahead with it.
The fact that you do not agree does not make Lindows a bad idea. The fact that the appeal is not aimed at and does not reach you, does not mean it will be and should be lost on others.
So the point of your post and this followup is that you are capable of dealing with Linux as a desktop machine. You can set it up all by yourself and you don't even want to use Windows apps. And again, good for you.
Excuse, me if I get annoyed by meaningless posts such as yours that simply aim to advertise your apparent competence that apparently exceeds others. I'm glad you have confidence. Good for you. Great job!
Also, Linux is not UNIX. It is a UNIX clone. And to be sure your rabid slashdot reinforced attitude does not mislead you, I am a UNIX admin and am familiar with the issues at hand in great detail.
I think it's your coolness that is getting in the way. OBVIOUSLY Lindows is attempting to address the "but will my programs run on it" factor. OBVIOUSLY the idea is that Joe Blow (who is not as cool as you apparently are) goes down to Best Buy and picks up a Tax program for himself and a death and destruction game for his son, and hey freaking PRESTO it works!
If this is not a factor for you, good for you. You're a special person and deserve credit. But, for a lot of people these issues will matter.
I live about 300 miles away from where all my business happens. So, for 2 years now, I have been a telecommuter requiring that connectivity at all times. I can certainly relate to your situation.
Early on, I did not have any option but, agg, @home. Everything was fine, but one week the thing was down. I was making a lot of money in the middle of a project when this happened. I lost considerable money. To resolve, I actually drove to the client and worked in office.
Eventually Qwest finally provided DSL to my town. As soon as this happened, I got DSL service. And I kept the cable modem for redundancy.
I should add at this point, I found the cable to be more reliable over the long run. The install was quicker and uptime was excellent, though occasionally slow. As far as tech support, cable was perfect while Qwest made me want to commit murder. Qwest's response to Code Red was pathetic and if anyone had a class action suit, I'll sign on.
So, that said, once I had two networks coming in, I had to resolve some technical issues. Not willing to spend too much time on this, I took a fairly simple approach. I bought 2 ethernet cards, of course, one for each service. I set up each card with the right network numbers for the given service. I defaulted the route to the DSL. When that service went dead, I switched it to the cable and made the service call at my leisure.
This actually came in handy many times. This means it actually saved me money.
Recently, while using my cable for months as the main route out, a city worker dug out the cable with his Bobcat, shutting that service down. It took me 10 minutes to be back up again. (Incidently, the stellar cable service here, Mediacom, had it fixed the next morning.)
I did this with a FreeBSD box acting as a NAT router. But you could also do it very easily while having it directly connected to Windows or whatever it is you use. Nice thing about doing with the NAT router is that the machines behind the server do not have to change a single thing, except re-establish things like IPSEC and ssh connections.
I think yor analogy isn't quite right. It might be perfectly sensible to do it the way they did it. I wasn't. But it could have been. A more accurate analogy would be if you bought a house geared for an electric range. "What kind of moron uses anything but gas stoves?" would be the equivalent of the wise-ass network enginer. "I don't do it that way, so you are a big fucking moron."
This network engineer anectdote is a tale of all too typical techy arrogance. I regret that so many people in the field in which I work have no interpersonal skills and act like tech knowledge is like a super-power posessed amongst mortals. Dumb fucking immature pricks abound. Regretful. /Slonob
I simply grabbed the ip they wanted to give me using DHCP and configured static. This actually worked for almost a year. Now what was the point of DHCP, client IDs and tied-in billing (the apparent ability to disconnect via DHCP)? It was all smoke and mirrors.
I got the impression that they gave up on the implementation of DHCP as originally designed at some point and simply made it work any way they could.
BTW, @home for the past 2 years had okay phone support. Especially when compared to the dismal, hopeless Qwest phone support. I still recommend cable over DSL to any non-techy that asks me about high speed internet.
I thought this article was just the same old open source gospel. But it IS an interesting premise. Thinking of the PalmOS vs. PocketPC (WinCE) as low-end vs. high end makes you wonder if that explains the purchase of BeOS. Do you think they have an idea that people will be seeking a 2 dollar OS to run on their $200 computer? Never thought this before, but maybe. And maybe this is an excellent idea.
I have built numerous PCs for family members. You pay $400 or so for a fairly decent, complete PC. Then you pay, oh what did I pay now, over a hundred for Windows ME or XP or FU or whatever is out there. And I have to keep supporting this garbage. The users are often lost or make drastic mistakes. These operating systems do not do what these users need well AND they try to do A LOT of crap that these users don't need or even want. And the feature frenzy of Windows (and Linux if you ask me) seems to be the focus of the whole damn thing. Not stability. Not compatibility. Not security. Not, ugh, intuitive GUI design.
I've never been a BeOS bigot nor an MS basher (not all out, anyway). I never imagined how BeOS or an alternative OS could take off. Until now. Imagine going down to one of those cool places that sell all the guts for computer building and getting the OS, and a great OS, for the price of a floppy drive (sure you can get free OSes but imagine you are not a guru, fanatical freak for just one second). That could really change everything. And if this OS does not have all those never needed, never used "features" it could really change the whole equation.
People don't need XP. They don't need a machine and OS that is built to network on a corporate WAN. They don't need *nix either (too much of a learning curve and exactly the same sore thumb as windows is in the ->AVERAGE<- users' home). They need a solid OS that runs the scanner software, runs the digital camera, hooks up to the network so they can go to eBay, keep track of their taxes, does not drive them up the wall, etc.
So, get all the best games and software running on BeOS or some similar bare-bones and yet awesome OS, and you've got the biggest threat to Windows home market dominance we have ever seen.
How did it ever happen in the first place? why take a business machine home? Do you have a business printer at home? Do you drive dump truck for the family car if you drive a dump truck for a living? It happened because it was cheap as hell. The Mac was better, but the Wintel was cheaper and eventually had more software.
This is really fascinating to think about. What WILL happen when the PC is like buying a radio? What will it be like when that metaphoric radio is no longer treated like a precious piece of furniture, but instead as a simple disposable appliance? It WILL change everything, no doubt. Perhaps that's why windows pretends to care about hand-helds. Thankfully they just don't get it and perhaps ARE leaving a big hole for someone to move into. The hole is the low-end OS on the low-end but perfectly practical device.
Slashdot Mirror
Struts is model 2. Duh. JSP scriptlets? Come on. EJB is not a JavaBean? What does the B stand for? This is so clearly not an informed piece when it comes to Java web apps. Just like a Microsoft dork to act like they everything when they know nothing. The script kiddies of web application design and development have nothing to say, as usual.
Tomcat is not an application server. It is a servlet container. WebSphere, JBoss and WebLogic are application servers.
-Slonob
Spam assassin is not practical for high volume service. I've seen it take 75% of the CPU on a fairly new Intel box. Of course, this was with a stupid out-of-the-box configuration. Setup with defaults, it's an enormous strain on resources and is just begging for a DoS attack. I think of Spam Assassin as spam blocking for script kiddies. Now kids, let's actually read the script before we use this.
Is made up. I think a lot of these are. Not even very funny, really.
If I was starting a company from butt scratch, I would choose a language such as C, C++, or Java for doing application programming. For sys admin type of things I would definitely choose Perl, regardless if every machine was Windows, Linux or whatever.
I have built applications in Perl that are consumed by many to this day. I like it. I know Perl very well and very quickly tap out what I think is very good code. Even so, I am disappointed in the flexibility of these apps. Perl sage say: learn an OO approach in Perl. But once I started to learn Perl OO, I wanted to use something like C++ or Java... something OO by design... something that forced me to think OO, not translate to OO. FTR, I HAVE learned Perl OO. I have jumped to Java. My flirtation with it has become an all out interest. It might take me longer to get rolling with Java on a project, but I have already saved a bunch of time reusing code.
Anyway, if I built apps in Java in my company, I would also design a framework that, if at all possible, would apply to ALL projects. Given that, you have people speaking the same language at design time. You have people using the same style for coding (and you don't even have to make them use the same coding environment or IDE). You have a large number of people to choose from out in the world that would not find it difficult to jump in, feet on the ground, running. You have a product built on concepts that are easy to sell, such as J2EE. And so on.
On the Perl side. I can't imagine why I wouldn't use it for sys admin work. I know of a company that has a scheduler that launches VB, Perl, DOS, Korn, and all varieties of scripts. No surprise, there is no handle AT ALL on messaging. Did it succeed? Did it fail? Why did it fail? Well, good luck answering those questions. Sys admin sage says: standardize message handling in these scripts. No-one wants to mess with a script that works, especially when it's dealing with millions of dollars worth of transactions. Anyone here know who made this Korn script? DOS? *gag* With Perl you can run all of the other stuff anyway. You can hook up to a database to run a stored procedure, check the drive space, move a file from disk to disk, move a file from host to host. And so on.
That's how I break these down in my world. Perl is very important in my world. Java is as well. I have a place for both of them in my ideal company.
-Slo
I've got an idea for revenge. Since we could easily find where he lives, we could print out copies of all the penis enlargement and free money spams we have to wade through every morning. Take about 30 flyers down to his car every morning and affix them to his car: under the windshield wipers, curled up in his door handles, stuffed into the seals of the windows. So every morning he'll have to take the time to remove them all before he is able to do what he really wants: to drive his damn car.
I'm from St. Paul, so I could pull it off.
-Slo
Damn, this place is really turning into a huge pile of conformity-ware shit. Average age? 17? 16?
Sorry for saying something true in response to something that was only FUD: the idea that this fake memo thing will tarnish Unix. Duh.
Tarnish Unix? Nah. NT gets ruled out quickly when you are talking about huge implementations. Which makes Microsoft look really stupid when it comes to the question of porting their framework to Unix. They would certainly clean up. But instead they wait, along with the IT world, for NT to become something a lot better.
Aint it funny how y'all think your all so smart acting when you can't spell a word and can't form a good sentence when its just so easy to know English and it's syntax too?
It's called a yarn.
Yuck, yuck.
You put the ass in asinine. :)
I have created and supported numerous web site and web site applications over the years. Once I started to focus on standards a few years ago, I quickly found adherence is not the panacea. Netscape 4 and below has TERRIBLE support of CSS. Why anyone would argue otherwise, I can only conclude that they don't know what they are talking about. The problems range from mangled pages to forms that do not submit when the submit button is clicked. You can get it to work, but then it does not work on Macs. It's hopeless. So what do you do? You back away from standards such as CSS. If you do not back away, then you have some rabid puke like the many found here who accuse you of favoring Explorer. Explorer happens to have excellent (no, not perfect) support of CSS. But no, I am not favoring Explorer. I am using emacs to build them and if anything, I favor Unix.
/dev/null for all eternity, he started arguing that standards were not important.
I have a feeling that claiming a lack of support for anything but Explorer is misleading. Of course, Opera has perfect support of CSS too. But when the rabidly misinformed and militantly challenged load up a page in their hopelessly awful Netscape 4 (anything above 6.0 is fine), they erroneously conclude MS bias. Then they use standards as a rhetorical weapon when THEY OBVIOUSLY DO NOT KNOW WHAT THE HELL THEY ARE TALKING ABOUT.
I had this guy on one of my sites arguing this way. When I finally convinced him that Netscape 4 should be shat into
Let's make sure we have all the issues on the table when we talk about this. Shouldn't posters to Slashdot offer their sage input in addition to links? We are all supposed to be here because we are in the know and want to stay that way. But I guess I'm not surprised that some of us are striking poses. I guess it just bothers me when these losers are the favored ones on this conformityware site.
Lindows' premise:
All the power (and hype) of Linux AND you can run all your Windows apps on it. People will choose Lindows if it offers just about all Windows can offer for less, while opening them up to even more apps.
Your premise:
You don't need Windows apps... therefore, WINE is fluff... therefore, Lindows is not viable.
Real people just might buy their premise. Slashdot hot air couriers probably will not, but they'll buy yours.
And since you like anecdotes:
I was feeling rich for a couple of months so I set up my Mom with a computer. I built her a machine, installed Windows on it. I chose Windows because I live 300 miles away from her. I knew she would go down to Best Buy and buy stuff like a scanner and so on and would be surprised if nothing worked. Linux(or other) was not an option. BUT, I wanted her machine to be legit and did not want to buy MS Office, so I put Star Office on it since it was free at the time.
Star Office is much closer to MS Office than anything I have seen. OpenOffice is not even close. I figured she would have no problems even if she had to open an Excel file or two. I figured she didn't even need that much power. Over a year, she began demanding more. Star Office began to be a real problem. It cost me my time. It caused frustration. It's just plain inferior to MS Office. So I finally switched her to MS Office.
Since the purchase of the machine, without my consultation, she went out and bought a printer, scanner, a CDRW and a couple of applications. It is likely that none of this would have worked had I installed Linux (or other). And if it could work on Linux, it would cost ME my time to get it working.
So the point of my little tale is that this particular average user, my Mom, could not have used Linux. In fact, she couldn't even use an open source program compiled for Windows.
The ideals are good. But the product is inferior in a lot of cases in the eyes and experience of real users, the ones that make our world go 'round.
Get more "real users" on Linux (or other) and the quality of end-user apps will increase steadily. I say, get there at any price even if it means accomodating these users on the way, as Lindows intends to do (they may have failed, I don't know).
Now that WINE has matured, I might reconsider this. I might even choose Lindows for someone since an over-the-phone reinstall to factory default is VERY appealing when you're playing support for your less technical friends and family (yes I know you could use Ghost or equiv but I don't really have time to play OEM). (The point of a restore CD was lost on the questionable newsforge reviewer. Compaq innovated this concept and was rewarded for it, early on. Rewards in business are a good thing.)
You seem like a reasonable enough person. Maybe you should move even further away from this Slashdot negation banter and conformity. It's useless. Slashdot is almost completely useless. What the hell am I even doing here? ugh.
Most Windows programs? This is not true. Not even close. Windows programs are owned in quantity by many as well as on the shelves in astounding quantities. Lindows obviously is attempting to offer access to these while also offering access to the open source applications. This is a valid business plan. I think it's brilliant, actually. Not original, not perfect in execution, but good for them for going ahead with it.
The fact that you do not agree does not make Lindows a bad idea. The fact that the appeal is not aimed at and does not reach you, does not mean it will be and should be lost on others.
So the point of your post and this followup is that you are capable of dealing with Linux as a desktop machine. You can set it up all by yourself and you don't even want to use Windows apps. And again, good for you.
Excuse, me if I get annoyed by meaningless posts such as yours that simply aim to advertise your apparent competence that apparently exceeds others. I'm glad you have confidence. Good for you. Great job!
Also, Linux is not UNIX. It is a UNIX clone. And to be sure your rabid slashdot reinforced attitude does not mislead you, I am a UNIX admin and am familiar with the issues at hand in great detail.
Way to go, Champ!
That's it! You are no longer a member of our club. You apparently just don't get it. Conform or be gone!
I think it's your coolness that is getting in the way. OBVIOUSLY Lindows is attempting to address the "but will my programs run on it" factor. OBVIOUSLY the idea is that Joe Blow (who is not as cool as you apparently are) goes down to Best Buy and picks up a Tax program for himself and a death and destruction game for his son, and hey freaking PRESTO it works!
If this is not a factor for you, good for you. You're a special person and deserve credit. But, for a lot of people these issues will matter.
Funny?
I call it stupid. Or typical would work too.
They have to buy this commodity called bandwidth to get it to the customer. Who will pay for that? Fanatical anti-anti-ism?
Yeah. I was thinking the guy was nuts since he seemed to both like it and hate it.
I live about 300 miles away from where all my business happens. So, for 2 years now, I have been a telecommuter requiring that connectivity at all times. I can certainly relate to your situation.
Early on, I did not have any option but, agg, @home. Everything was fine, but one week the thing was down. I was making a lot of money in the middle of a project when this happened. I lost considerable money. To resolve, I actually drove to the client and worked in office.
Eventually Qwest finally provided DSL to my town. As soon as this happened, I got DSL service. And I kept the cable modem for redundancy.
I should add at this point, I found the cable to be more reliable over the long run. The install was quicker and uptime was excellent, though occasionally slow. As far as tech support, cable was perfect while Qwest made me want to commit murder. Qwest's response to Code Red was pathetic and if anyone had a class action suit, I'll sign on.
So, that said, once I had two networks coming in, I had to resolve some technical issues. Not willing to spend too much time on this, I took a fairly simple approach. I bought 2 ethernet cards, of course, one for each service. I set up each card with the right network numbers for the given service. I defaulted the route to the DSL. When that service went dead, I switched it to the cable and made the service call at my leisure.
This actually came in handy many times. This means it actually saved me money.
Recently, while using my cable for months as the main route out, a city worker dug out the cable with his Bobcat, shutting that service down. It took me 10 minutes to be back up again. (Incidently, the stellar cable service here, Mediacom, had it fixed the next morning.)
I did this with a FreeBSD box acting as a NAT router. But you could also do it very easily while having it directly connected to Windows or whatever it is you use. Nice thing about doing with the NAT router is that the machines behind the server do not have to change a single thing, except re-establish things like IPSEC and ssh connections.
Hope you find this helpful.
-Slonob
Sorry, I can't resist. You are so fucking cool! How did you get so cool?
I think yor analogy isn't quite right. It might be perfectly sensible to do it the way they did it. I wasn't. But it could have been. A more accurate analogy would be if you bought a house geared for an electric range. "What kind of moron uses anything but gas stoves?" would be the equivalent of the wise-ass network enginer. "I don't do it that way, so you are a big fucking moron."
This network engineer anectdote is a tale of all too typical techy arrogance. I regret that so many people in the field in which I work have no interpersonal skills and act like tech knowledge is like a super-power posessed amongst mortals. Dumb fucking immature pricks abound. Regretful.
/Slonob
I simply grabbed the ip they wanted to give me using DHCP and configured static. This actually worked for almost a year. Now what was the point of DHCP, client IDs and tied-in billing (the apparent ability to disconnect via DHCP)? It was all smoke and mirrors.
I got the impression that they gave up on the implementation of DHCP as originally designed at some point and simply made it work any way they could.
BTW, @home for the past 2 years had okay phone support. Especially when compared to the dismal, hopeless Qwest phone support. I still recommend cable over DSL to any non-techy that asks me about high speed internet.
I thought this article was just the same old open source gospel. But it IS an interesting premise. Thinking of the PalmOS vs. PocketPC (WinCE) as low-end vs. high end makes you wonder if that explains the purchase of BeOS. Do you think they have an idea that people will be seeking a 2 dollar OS to run on their $200 computer? Never thought this before, but maybe. And maybe this is an excellent idea.
I have built numerous PCs for family members. You pay $400 or so for a fairly decent, complete PC. Then you pay, oh what did I pay now, over a hundred for Windows ME or XP or FU or whatever is out there. And I have to keep supporting this garbage. The users are often lost or make drastic mistakes. These operating systems do not do what these users need well AND they try to do A LOT of crap that these users don't need or even want. And the feature frenzy of Windows (and Linux if you ask me) seems to be the focus of the whole damn thing. Not stability. Not compatibility. Not security. Not, ugh, intuitive GUI design.
I've never been a BeOS bigot nor an MS basher (not all out, anyway). I never imagined how BeOS or an alternative OS could take off. Until now. Imagine going down to one of those cool places that sell all the guts for computer building and getting the OS, and a great OS, for the price of a floppy drive (sure you can get free OSes but imagine you are not a guru, fanatical freak for just one second). That could really change everything. And if this OS does not have all those never needed, never used "features" it could really change the whole equation.
People don't need XP. They don't need a machine and OS that is built to network on a corporate WAN. They don't need *nix either (too much of a learning curve and exactly the same sore thumb as windows is in the ->AVERAGE<- users' home). They need a solid OS that runs the scanner software, runs the digital camera, hooks up to the network so they can go to eBay, keep track of their taxes, does not drive them up the wall, etc.
So, get all the best games and software running on BeOS or some similar bare-bones and yet awesome OS, and you've got the biggest threat to Windows home market dominance we have ever seen.
How did it ever happen in the first place? why take a business machine home? Do you have a business printer at home? Do you drive dump truck for the family car if you drive a dump truck for a living? It happened because it was cheap as hell. The Mac was better, but the Wintel was cheaper and eventually had more software.
This is really fascinating to think about. What WILL happen when the PC is like buying a radio? What will it be like when that metaphoric radio is no longer treated like a precious piece of furniture, but instead as a simple disposable appliance? It WILL change everything, no doubt. Perhaps that's why windows pretends to care about hand-helds. Thankfully they just don't get it and perhaps ARE leaving a big hole for someone to move into. The hole is the low-end OS on the low-end but perfectly practical device.
-Slonob