Despite the (inevitable) flood of naysayer in this thread who will of course say that's impossible for a company to run without the expected overpaid stuffed shirt figureheads, there is in fact at least one very successful example of a democratically run company. The company is called Semco.
Huh? You ran a benchmark on two different hardware systems and you're using *that* to compare the difference in *software* configuration? Do you really need someone to explain to you why that makes no sense?
The big advantage it has over Wiki's.... NO F***ing stupid wiki markup! I've tried several times to setup internal Wiki's at work. Wiki markup has always been a big show stopper for user acceptance.
I'd suggest collecting magazine clippings and/or URL's about other major companies that have successfully switched to Linux and Open Source. Here's a few links to get you started.
Use Bacula. It's a GPL'd client/server enterprise backup software. It includes clients for most versions of Unix, OSX, and Windows.
Although the clients do not have built in support for encryption, according to the manual you can run the clients through stunnel to encrypt the traffic between the clients and the backup server. Future versions are supposed to support encryption built into the client.
In order to get the Mac feel down pat, you'd have to make the directory structure much more browse-friendly than it is. You can't expect grandma to navigate to usr, bin, and then select from a long list of programs what she wants.
How long has it been since you've used a Mac? Mac OSX has a/usr directory, a/etc directory,/bin, etc. just like any other unix. These unix directories are hidden from the Finder, but you can get to them from the command line.
These Unix directories are supplimented by some additional directories such as/Applications. The/Applications directory for example holds GUI programs the user can click on to run.
Sometimes, just sometimes, I get the feeling that Linux distributions are being released too fast for ordinary users to keep up.
In case you hadn't noticed, Fedora isn't *supposed* to be for average users. The very first paragraph of the fedora.redhat.com web site says:
The Fedora Project is a Red-Hat-sponsored and community-supported open source project. It is also a proving ground for new technology that may eventually make its way into Red Hat products. It is not a supported product of Red Hat, Inc.
I think the phrase "proving ground for new technology" should make it clear that this is not for ordinary home users. It's for developers and technology geeks.
If you want a distro with a slower, more stable development cycle you should probably look into the commercially supported version of Redhat, or one of the other many fine distro's mentioned elsewhere in this thread (Debian for example).
Your out of your mind if you think a RAID 5 array and/or a remote backup site is a realistic alternative to tape backup for an enterprise server. RAID 5 is for increased uptime. It's not a data recovery solution.
The problem can be summed up in one word: Retention.
Consider what would happen if you find out that an important data file (or set of data files) has become corrupt. You need to restore to the last known good version of the files. The problem? The application has been having problems for weeks!
If you have a decent tape retention policy you can confidently go get a backup tape (from off site storage perhaps) from the before the application began mis-behaving.
Another reason for long term tape retention: Publicly traded companies are *required* by law to retain documents for a specific period. Holding on to some of your tapes (monthly's perhaps), is a good way to make sure you have all the word docs, excel spreadsheets, emails, etc you'll need if you get audited, subjected to an FTC investigation, etc.
Here's links with some more info on 802.11i, also called WPA2.
This PDF http://www.wi-fi.org/opensection/pdf/whitepaper_wi -fi_security4-29-03.pdf from the WIFI alliance talks about WPA2 near the very end of the document. According to this, WPA2 will use the same 802.1x authentication current used by WPA in enterprise deployments or the PSK mode currently used in home deployments of WPA.
Unfortunately, it looks like the actual 802.11i specification isn't publically available yet. According to this page http://standards.ieee.org/getieee802/ IEEE 802 drafts are publicly available 6 months after they are first published in PDF. I'm assuming this means that the 802.11i standard will be publicly available in 6 months?
Richard Stallman is a large part of why all of this great software exists for FREE and why we all have so much FREEDOM with regards to how we use and develop it.
No to mention of course that if your "CIO" friends aren't familiar with the conficts and "ego" involved with *any* product development (free software or proprietary), they must be highly sheltered indeed from the realities within their own organizations.
Perhaps you and your "clients" should go play elsewhere?
Actually, I already own an Xbox. But I would like to play some of my Xbox games on my laptop when I travel. When this emulator becomes more stable I will *definately* be installing it.
Sounds like a good application for Kerberos. From the RedHat Kerberos docs:
"Kerberos is a network authentication protocol created by MIT which uses symmetric key cryptography to authenticate users to network services -- eliminating the need to send passwords over the network. When users authenticate to network services using Kerberos, unauthorized users attempting to gather passwords by monitoring network traffic are effectively thwarted."
Just find yourself an FTP client and server that both support Kerberos. Here's a few links to get you started:
Kerberos section of the RedHat 9 manual: http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/linux/ RHL-9-Man ual/ref-guide/ch-kerberos.html
Actually, OSX does not copy the memory to hard disk when it sleep. Instead, the system goes into a very low power mode that preserves the memory (and on Powerbooks and Ibooks a small LED pulses gently to remind you it's in sleep mode). The benefit to this approach is that waking from sleep is instant. I open my Powerbook, hit a key to wake the system up, then start working. The downside is that the computer *is* using some battery life. Not much though. I frequently put my Powerbook to sleep when I leave work on Friday and don't wake it again until Monday morning.
Theoretically any OS should be able to do this. Your laptop would just need a good low power sleep mode.
> X11 in OSX is harder to install than even in Cygwin and it works worse than in Cygwin.
You're on crack. I've install X11 in both OSX and Cygwin. The OSX install is basically download the package, double click on it, done. (admittedly the Cygwin install is also fairly easy).
More importantly rootless X in Cygwin is still experimental. rootless X in OSX is quite stable and seamless.
Isn't Slashdot generally considered a weblog (blog)?
Re:THANK YOU
on
0wnz0red
·
· Score: 3, Informative
I'd like to thank the submitter of the story for calling it a "weblog" instead of some lame-ass made-up-for-the-sake-of-making-a-name-up name like a "blog" or a "wiki".:)
Actually, wiki isn't a made up word. "Wiki wiki" means quick in hawaiian.
That's what databases are for. We keep track of the location, lock number, OS, authorized users, and hardware for all our machines.
That's a damn good solution. Alternatively if someone absolutely *must* have that information in DNS, they can use HINFO or TXT records to hold detailed per-host information. I like your solution better though. Use DNS for what it's best for, naming. A database is much more appropriate for keeping detailed records of other information about the box itself.
Personally I'd encode them using one or two characters to denote the platform ( i = intel, s = sun, h = hp, blah blah). Then use the additional characters to denote room, rack, etc etc. If you're allowed to use sub domains that makes your life much easier.
That's stupid. Now if I move the server from one rack space to another, or upgrade it to a different platform then all my users have to change the config on any applications that reference the server? Not a long term scalable solution.
Keep location and platform information in a seperate document or database. Or create HINFO records in DNS.
However you can have multiple "A" records for the same host. Assign the hosts "real" name (norm, etc) in on A record. Create another A record for smtp.yourdomain.org.
Slashdot Mirror
Despite the (inevitable) flood of naysayer in this thread who will of course say that's impossible for a company to run without the expected overpaid stuffed shirt figureheads, there is in fact at least one very successful example of a democratically run company. The company is called Semco.
o de=nested&commentsort=3&sid=193884&op=Reply
You can read an interview with the man responsible for the companies transformation (Ricardo Semler) on CNN here: http://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?threshold=1&m
Or amazon has a couple of books written by Mr. Semler.
Huh? You ran a benchmark on two different hardware systems and you're using *that* to compare the difference in *software* configuration? Do you really need someone to explain to you why that makes no sense?
The big advantage it has over Wiki's.... NO F***ing stupid wiki markup! I've tried several times to setup internal Wiki's at work. Wiki markup has always been a big show stopper for user acceptance.
I'd suggest collecting magazine clippings and/or URL's about other major companies that have successfully switched to Linux and Open Source. Here's a few links to get you started.
s p
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2 ,00.asp
Etrade:
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1916119,00.a
Amazon, Ebay, Wal-Mart, Dell, American Greetings:
http://www.forbes.com/2002/10/08/1008linux.html
Cendant:
http://www.cio.com/archive/070105/cendant.html
Merril Lynch and Credit Suisse First Boston:
http://www.forbes.com/2002/03/27/0327linux.html
Boscov's
http://www.forbes.com/2002/07/17/0717casestudy.ht
The Chicago Mercantile Exchange:
http://www.baselinemag.com/article2/0,1397,182800
Use WPA. WPA enterprise (uses a radius server) is very secure. WPA-PSK (pre shared key) can be very secure if you use a long, semirandom key.
WPA *does* work on 802.11b, in fact there is no difference in security configurations between 802.11b,g and a.
If your AP won't do WPA, you should replace it.
Although the clients do not have built in support for encryption, according to the manual you can run the clients through stunnel to encrypt the traffic between the clients and the backup server. Future versions are supposed to support encryption built into the client.
In case you hadn't noticed, Fedora isn't *supposed* to be for average users. The very first paragraph of the fedora.redhat.com web site says:
I think the phrase "proving ground for new technology" should make it clear that this is not for ordinary home users. It's for developers and technology geeks.
If you want a distro with a slower, more stable development cycle you should probably look into the commercially supported version of Redhat, or one of the other many fine distro's mentioned elsewhere in this thread (Debian for example).
Your out of your mind if you think a RAID 5 array and/or a remote backup site is a realistic alternative to tape backup for an enterprise server. RAID 5 is for increased uptime. It's not a data recovery solution.
The problem can be summed up in one word: Retention.
Consider what would happen if you find out that an important data file (or set of data files) has become corrupt. You need to restore to the last known good version of the files. The problem? The application has been having problems for weeks!
If you have a decent tape retention policy you can confidently go get a backup tape (from off site storage perhaps) from the before the application began mis-behaving.
Another reason for long term tape retention: Publicly traded companies are *required* by law to retain documents for a specific period. Holding on to some of your tapes (monthly's perhaps), is a good way to make sure you have all the word docs, excel spreadsheets, emails, etc you'll need if you get audited, subjected to an FTC investigation, etc.
This PDF http://www.wi-fi.org/opensection/pdf/whitepaper_wi -fi_security4-29-03.pdf from the WIFI alliance talks about WPA2 near the very end of the document. According to this, WPA2 will use the same 802.1x authentication current used by WPA in enterprise deployments or the PSK mode currently used in home deployments of WPA.
This PDF http://jcbserver.uwaterloo.ca/cs436/handouts/misce llaneous/Intel_Wireless_3.pdf has some interesting technical details about how the AES encryption in 802.11i works.
Unfortunately, it looks like the actual 802.11i specification isn't publically available yet. According to this page http://standards.ieee.org/getieee802/ IEEE 802 drafts are publicly available 6 months after they are first published in PDF. I'm assuming this means that the 802.11i standard will be publicly available in 6 months?
802.11i includes the 802.1x (ie. EAP) authentication and key management included in WPA. It's a superset of WPA.
Then perhaps freesoftware isn't for you?
Richard Stallman is a large part of why all of this great software exists for FREE and why we all have so much FREEDOM with regards to how we use and develop it.
No to mention of course that if your "CIO" friends aren't familiar with the conficts and "ego" involved with *any* product development (free software or proprietary), they must be highly sheltered indeed from the realities within their own organizations.
Perhaps you and your "clients" should go play elsewhere?
Actually, I already own an Xbox. But I would like to play some of my Xbox games on my laptop when I travel. When this emulator becomes more stable I will *definately* be installing it.
Sounds like a good application for Kerberos. From the RedHat Kerberos docs:
/ RHL-9-Man ual/ref-guide/ch-kerberos.html
/ kerber os-faq.html
"Kerberos is a network authentication protocol created by MIT which uses symmetric key cryptography to authenticate users to network services -- eliminating the need to send passwords over the network. When users authenticate to network services using Kerberos, unauthorized users attempting to gather passwords by monitoring network traffic are effectively thwarted."
Just find yourself an FTP client and server that both support Kerberos. Here's a few links to get you started:
Kerberos section of the RedHat 9 manual:
http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/linux
Kerberos FAQ:
http://www.cmf.nrl.navy.mil/CCS/people/kenh
MIT Kerberos page:
http://web.mit.edu/kerberos/www/
Actually, OSX does not copy the memory to hard disk when it sleep. Instead, the system goes into a very low power mode that preserves the memory (and on Powerbooks and Ibooks a small LED pulses gently to remind you it's in sleep mode). The benefit to this approach is that waking from sleep is instant. I open my Powerbook, hit a key to wake the system up, then start working. The downside is that the computer *is* using some battery life. Not much though. I frequently put my Powerbook to sleep when I leave work on Friday and don't wake it again until Monday morning.
Theoretically any OS should be able to do this. Your laptop would just need a good low power sleep mode.
> X11 in OSX is harder to install than even in Cygwin and it works worse than in Cygwin.
You're on crack. I've install X11 in both OSX and Cygwin. The OSX install is basically download the package, double click on it, done. (admittedly the Cygwin install is also fairly easy).
More importantly rootless X in Cygwin is still experimental. rootless X in OSX is quite stable and seamless.
The article is actually on xml.com, not xml.net. Here is the url: http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2003/07/09/xmlapis.html
Isn't Slashdot generally considered a weblog (blog)?
Actually, wiki isn't a made up word. "Wiki wiki" means quick in hawaiian.
Repeat after me... The Slashdot editor are not your mother. They are not going to test every little bitty piece of software for you.
Just like any other link found anywhere else on the net you have be a big boy (or girl) and decide for your self if you want to click on it.
That's a damn good solution. Alternatively if someone absolutely *must* have that information in DNS, they can use HINFO or TXT records to hold detailed per-host information. I like your solution better though. Use DNS for what it's best for, naming. A database is much more appropriate for keeping detailed records of other information about the box itself.
If your going to number your hosts, why use DNS at all? aix9385 much easier to remember than 10.140.24.1? No.
Numbering *is* good for clusters if identical systems (think beowulf). Otherwise it's not a good convention.
That's stupid. Now if I move the server from one rack space to another, or upgrade it to a different platform then all my users have to change the config on any applications that reference the server? Not a long term scalable solution.
Keep location and platform information in a seperate document or database. Or create HINFO records in DNS.
However you can have multiple "A" records for the same host. Assign the hosts "real" name (norm, etc) in on A record. Create another A record for smtp.yourdomain.org.
Problem solved.