The new Palimino chips (which these are) have the thermal diodes in them. I'm not 100% sure if the CPUs will auto shut down based on teh diodes reading or if it requires a BIOS intervention, but I doubt it would matter.
Yes AMDs will incinerate themselves if the heatsink alls off - but funny, you don't see many people saying this has happened - yes it has to a few, but honestly - I'd rather get the higher performance for my dollar and risk having to replace the CPU if the heatsink fell off - something very unlikely. But if it did, the replacement CPU would be pretty cheap given how prices on processors fall over just a few months! And total cost would STILL probably be chaeper than an equivalent Pent 4 system (not CPU, system) Hell my 1GHz Athlon has been chugging along for months and the heatsink is still on solid!
I refuse to buy AMD products as long as they use this gimmicky, false labeling. If you think the MHz is no longer a good measure of performance, stop using MHz in the product name. Don't tack on an inflated "Model Number" the most consumers will mistake for a MHz rating.
From your tone I'd expect you woudln't buy AMD anyway. However, if you did any research, you'd find the AMD's new numbering plan is actually conservative. Independant benchmark reviews have shown that the AMD 1800+ is actually more of an equivalent to the Pent 4 2GHz chip. But AMD chose a conservative threshold. Granted, the new Intel cores will boost performance a bit, but even then the AMD numbering plan is expected to be on target. Honestly - who cares what they call the chip - anyone with half a brain can find out the MHz value. But to what end? Me? I want to buy teh system which gives me the most performance for the least $$$ and right now that is an AMD chip hands down when you account for other CPU specific system costs and impacts (chipset, memory type needed, etc)
I honestly think AMD did what it HAD to do - their chips are faster at slower clock speeds and Intel managed to get folks thinking MHz was king. Now AMD has ot try and chance that thinking.
Re:Sweet! Mail is MUCH faster
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Mozilla 0.9.5
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· Score: 2
I'm not as worried about #1 (Mozilla hardly crashes on me anymore) 2 & 3 are valid concerns. #2 is easy - I'd really like to see a mail icon too. #3 - like another poster said - create dummy email accounts - not perfect, but it works fine. I just name them 'ID Holder #x' Note that sigs DO work well with different accounts - in 0.9.4 if you were in account A and hit reply, but changed your from to Account B, the sig changes with it - very nice touch.
Sweet! Mail is MUCH faster
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Mozilla 0.9.5
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· Score: 2
Unlike many I actually prefer the Mozilla Mail client - though I REALY wish it had some sort of GPG integration, but I digress.
I have about 5 or 6 IMAP accounts configured plus a couple news servers. Switching between folders and bringing up an email would lag - sometimes severely. Wow, what a difference 0.0.1 makes!:) I find the mail client to be MUCH faster. VERY nice!
I've been using MultiZilla (the tabs) a lot in 0.9.4 - love them! Glad to see much of it got into the stock 0.9.5!
So the choice is between applying a few timely patches and building a whole 'nother Internet, and the latter is chosen as the cost-effective route??
LOL - a few? Across how many machines? I've worked at large organizations that had 100% firewalled Inranets with minial access from outside and currently work where all machines are direct connected to the internet. We are constantly fighting viruses, hackers, etc here. Its a nightmare - why? Because no matter how hard you try, getting every machine to the right pacth level is impossible unless you shell out millions for something like SMS and thats only for MS machines. You shoudl always worry about security, but in an Intranet environment you cna focus your limited resources where it counts and try to bring everythign else up when you can - sounds slack, but given todays IT bugets you often have no choice. If Intranets work so well for large multi-national corporations, why not hte gov't? Sure it'll probably be bungled like most other large scale govt IT projects, but if they pull it off - it would be nice. Gov't desktops would have some protection from outside attackes on a large scale and they could control what servers got placed OUTSIDE the firewall in a DMZ - makes life much easier for those admins - but requires a culture shift and on the scale of the gov't it might be impossible.
But in the end - this makes sense for them - otherwise we'd have many large scale companies whose machines were on teh Internet vs Intranets.
Are you a tester? Its not an easy job - as they say "You can't test in quality" Its not going to happen. This was an obscure bug that showed up in one application of ONE distribution, etc.
And remember - while some vendors drag out beta testing with sub-par software (the rest of the bugs will get flushed out in beat they say), MOST of the time the Linux kernels are usable the day they come out.
But be realistic - anyone who downloads, builds, and installs a new Linux kernel within 30 days of its release is a defacto beta tester. No sysadmin in their right mind would install a new kernel on a production server until its been run for a bit. SO all of us who love to grab the kernel and put it on desktops, small non mission critical servers that can go down, etc are flushing out any remaining bugs so that mission criticla server admins can sit back and see which kernels to move to (plus other factors like existing bug fixes, new device support, etc)
So those of you faulting Linus for releasing this kernel with this bug - give it a rest. It was an obscure bug that only cropped up if the software did something it really shouldn't have (ie bad design). I can't imagine a commercial vendor would have caught this bug in testing either - they'd have found it in beta just like Linus did. After all, I bet 99.9% of you who are already running 2.4.11 thought it was great till you read/. this morning:)
I for one think the current system works well. Yes, Linus may put stuff in faster than Alan and there are pros/cons to both - for all the folks saying Linus was putting too much in others would say AC is waiting too long. But step back and think about how great we Linux users have it. Stable kernels with many fixes coming out monthly from Linus with bigger more feature rich kernels available from -ac How awesome is that?
Because it's going to take our tax money, to pay for this
Well, considering how many of your tax dollars are wasted when folks hack into their systems and mess them up... Makes sense.
I think this is a great idea. If its thought out well. Heck many large companies do this - you have a set # of firewalsl controlled by ONE group of security professionals. They can link the major sites with some of the tons of dark fiber out there. Smaller sites - use VPN with high encryption over the Internet. That gives you a good cost point since its the small offices that can kill you for an Intranet. Link the large locations with private links. The next step would be to place all their public webservers under the auspices one a single web team to ensure the damn servers are setup properly and securly. But that'll never happen:) Isn't bureaucracy grand?:)
Exactly what I've seen - 2 mirrors, 2 different systems (one v2.2 one v2.4), one root mirror, one not. Same thing - SeekComplete Unrecov error and my mirror drops. Freaking nightmare. DFT - doesn't show bad sectors that I can find. Grrr. RMA time!
And then many people (myself included) have them in dedicated drive trays with dual fans pulling air through the tray to keep them cooled with outside air - I still have 2 systems whose mirrors drop almost weekly due to errors (and yes I've done everything from switch to 3ware from SW raid in linux, swapped interfaces (ie IDE Primary & Secondary) during replacements to see if that was the cause. No deal. The drives suck and thats that. I'll stick with Seagate - I've had soem trustly 9GB cheetahs, 10K RPMs - the originals which will burn you if you touch them during operation - each in drive trays pulling whatever air possible trhough them - the drive tower fan spits out REALLY hot air - these drives have run reliably since 1998 or so - can't complain a bit!
I bought 4 75GXP drives to upgrade my servers a fw months ago. I bought 2 15GB and 2 60GB drives to create mirrors. The 15GB drives replaced 2 6GB drives currently in use in a Linux 2.2 SW mirror. After upgrading, I've had the mirror drop out of sync at least 5 times. One time after the mirror dropped - teh remaining drive ALSO experieinced an error like an hour later and hte system froze - first time its every gone down unscheduled. Never happened before with the old Quantums. I installed the 60GB drives in a new server - Linux 2.4 sw mirror - these aren't the root disks (I use SCSIs from IBM for these) I store large amounts of data on them - anyway - they dropped sync constantly.
I thought maybe SW raid was having troubles though I knew my old disks worked OK. But to give IBM the benefit of the doubt,I bought a new 3ware 6200 raid card. Tossed the IBM 60GB drives onto it - mirror dropped within 2 hours. I installed the new 3ware firmware for their cad with ECC bit checking. Once I did this, the mirror stayed up but I get an ECC bit error off the same drive at least every other day - thats what was taking the array down before. Errors are always on the same drive.
Needless to say I have a 2nd 3ware card that just arrived to put in my older server whose root disks keep dropping out of sync. WE'll see if the HW raid controlelr cna handle the IBM bit errors that always pop up.
I knwo there are people out there who SWEAR 75GXPs are OK and theres no problem - but I've seen WAY too many complaints about them. I'll never buy them again given the trouble I've had. As a note - I just had to swap out my IBM drive in my laptop after 9 months - it died a horrific death (but not before I got a ghost image thank goodness)
Funyn thing? The SCSI mirror on my new server works great - IBM UltraStars - not a peep out of them. Go figure. I honestly believe the 75GXPs are having seriosu trouble. Once I get both servers going on HW raid I'll be RMAing the two drives that always have bit errors - I just hope I don't go into a vicious cycle of returns as refab drives die
because why buy a $20,000 workstation, when a $1500 Linux workstation can do 'all that and more"?
Which is funny coming from HP since, well, they made a lot of money on HP-UX and PA-RISC machines:) NORTEL used to have high end HP-UX boxen all over hte place as normal development workstations (coding workstations, not graphical/CAD type stuff) So it'll be interesting to see if/how HP makes money as HP-UX dies off and instead of being replaced by NT (the original plan) it ends up being Linux. Hmmmmm.... Itanium power boxes anyone?:)
I just set up NFS on the home network basical by doing exactaly what the HOWTO said, there is noway I think I'm qualified to do this Professionaly.
Actually, by doing exactly that, you're more qualified than many. I'd much rather have one of my system admins be able to admit they don't know how to do something, know where to look to learn, and then have the overall computing background to understand an implement the steps of a HOWTO, etc. Heck, even the best system admin doesn't know everything. Most tend to specialize in certain areas (filesystems, I/O, Raid/LVM, applications, etc) By that I mean they REALLY understand how to setup certain types of things, but in other areas they need to look stuff up. I've been administering systems for years - and you still hit situations where you have to research some stuff.
Sysadmins, no matter how good, don't know how to do everything off the top of their head. THose that think they do are dangerous because you risk having them screw up something major. A good sys admin is one who is savvy enough to be dropped in front of a system they have never used before and using their overall computing experieince and available reference material - figure out how to set it up or enable some feature while at the same time knowing their limits and knowing if they are treading in an area of the system where they can do real damage - at that point someone who takes the time to research what their about to do online or by asking for help is much better than the person who just lows ahead and screws up.
So gon't sell yourself short. If you think passing a test would qualify you to deploy stuff on a network securely, you're dangerous. A good sysadmin may knwo how to deploy a system in a fairly secure manner, but a great sysadmin will know how to test for anything he/she missed and know where to look to make sure they didn't miss anything.
I've been adminsitering systems since I graduated from college both at work and at home - and I learn something almost ever day. Stuff keep schanging so fast you can't possibly stay current just studying for a test:)
Even if face recognition doesn't 'fly' you can bet we'll see more and more of this stuff at airports and elsewhere.
For example - would you agree to putting your thumb on a fingerprint scanner at teh jetway entrance before you got on the plane? Retinal scan? The idea of the airlines having fingerprints for every passenger is pretty scary - but banks and many stores fingerprint when you use/cash checks. What level of this type of stuff will we accept? At what cost?
But then - the best biometric system in the world wouldn't have stopped the WTC attack - the hijackers were passengers with tickets and many used their real names anyway so.... I fear we'll find many liberties and the like given up in the name of security that really won't help that much.
The story seems to imply that the works spread faster because of BGP instability when the paper seems to be saying the BGP instability is being CAUSED by the worms.
In this online note, we summarize our preliminary analysis of the surprisingly strong impact of the Internet propagation of Microsoft worms (such as Code Red and Nimda) on the stability of the global routing system.
Even better - maybe charge them a fee per transponder or even tax the data flow. Give a politician 5 minutes to think about it and he'll come up with a way to tax anything.
Course here in NC we're going to start paying Sales Tax on DISH/DirectTV - not the same but I guess its fair since cable customer pay the same thing.
They also need shipping materials and other stuff if you don't have any CDs. From their FAQ:
Q: I like what you are doing and want to contribute. But I don't have any CDs. How else can I contribute.
A: We are willing to pay for the shipping of these FREE CDs as long as we can. So, you can donate shipping material, stamps and the like. Please contact us for the details.
In fact, apache.org [apache.org] was compromised this year due to a security hole
Well yes Apache.org did get compromised but NOT due to an Apache server problem. It was a complicated hack and took advantage of a configuration problem (mainly Apache had their incoming FTP tree viewable in their web space among others) Or perhaps you're referring to another event.
Yes, Apache is not all nice point and click, but there ARE tools out there (Webmin's Apache module is NICE) to make administration easier. Yes Apache has had vulnerabilities in teh past, but considering its widespread use and installed base, I'm extremely impressed with how secure its been - upgrades to Apache are rare which reduces TCO.
Yes, all systems and software have problems. But overall, I'll stick with OSS where appropriate and regarding your issues with MySQL and Apache, a few simple posts to mailing lists or news groups related to the software will often get your problem fixed faster than most 3rd party setups.
It's as if some sheep genes are implanted into I.T. managers when they are hired.
Well, as an IT manager at a big corporation a few years ago, I can tell you that decisions like these (lagre scale licensing issues and software standards) are made MUCH higher up - the CIOs and their direct reports. The poor IT manager way on down trying to save $$$ in his budget for his small facility often has little choice. Been there, done that. 'Standardization' is a huge buzzword and Microsoft utilizes it to the hilt. If you decide to branch out and go with something different to save money in your budget (that would otehrwise have gone to the central site license group and then straight to Microsoft) you often are viewed as going against the grain, troublemaker, whatever. So unless you BEEN THERE, don't make such foolish statements. Yes, there are PLENTY of Microsoft sheep out there who rather than choosing Microsoft because they BELIEVE it to be better for their situation, choose because its what everyone else does. But also realize that often an IT managers' hands are tied from on high.
In the future, Windows XXXP (the pr0n version) will be $1000 and the hardware will be around $200.
No kidding - even though you're joking - you're closer to the truth than you think. This quote from teh article sent a chill down my spine:
"People should expect more of this," MacDonald said. "Our guidelines to our clients are that at least for 2002, they can look at their budget for Microsoft software and add 40 percent per year compounded."
That is HUGE. IT budgets already get squeezed to the hilt because execs don't see direct 'added value' But I'd hate to be the CIO having to tell teh CFO his budget just for Microsoft will increase 40% a year compunded on top of normal budget outlays (hardware, staff, etc) Ouch
I used to handle desktop support at a large company and dealt with the issue of rolling out new and replacement PCs. We used Symantec Ghost to blast our custom images onto machines so they arrived on a user's desk ready to go with all teh site licensed software, etc. It made deployments fairly easier and resulted in happier customers.
With XP's new registration process - how is that going to work? Will you still be ABLE to ghost XP machines? WIll users have to handle the registration process on their own after the machine is delivered? God forbid they lose that license certifcate in the process. With previous versions of Windows you simply used Ghostwalker to update the settings and such. But this adds yet another step to an already tedious process.
So does anyone who uses ghost to roll out systems have a plan or idea how they'll handle the onslaught of XP? Symantec has an article that basically says XP is Beta (not anymore!) and they'll have more info after release (none I cqan find) They say they were able to use ghost and ghost walker to clone an XP machine - but again, cloning (ie backing up) a system is one thing, making corporate images you can toss onto new systems is something else entirely... It'll be too bad if Microsofts zeal for $$$ trashes a program that saved countless IT depts thousands of hours in deployment time.
It's a new product. They can set whatever price (and price policy) they want.
True, but they also are bundling Office XP - pretty much requiring people to buy new Office licenses to even PARTICIPATE in the new OS license program - which is their right but as a monopoly, its an unfair practice. I mean seriously - how many of you out there think moving from Office 2K to Office XP is worth teh cost? Hell Office 97 to 2K wasn't much of an improvement. But to require Office purchases to participate in the OS volume license is borderlne criminal. This quote was most chilling:
Several recounted similar stories about Microsoft pressuring them to upgrade Office versions more frequently.
"They kept bringing up the BSA (Business Software Alliance) and insinuating about software audits," said one technology manager. "We got the message, all right: Upgrade to Office XP or else."
Microsoft has finally decided to use their monopoly to try and boost earnings in a crashing economy and at some point they push too far and FORCE people to look elsewhere and possibly TRY to move to other platforms. It'll hurt them.
For example, if you have Office licenses for ALL yoru PCs (many companies do) but realize that your coders don't really NEED Office - its just for browsing stuff sent from mgmt - you may start looking into alternatives, either StarOffice or even simple doc readers and then cut your licensing WAY back - this who fiasco will either vastly increase IT costs for companies (and thus costs to us the consumers) or will blow up in Microsofts face as companies finally throw up their hands and tell MS to GTH.
Just ask McGlen.com - they informed me yesterday that 'an unidentified individual
gained access to certain protected files maintained by Mcglen.com
through a security breach in Microsoft Internet Information Server.' and thus may have my credit card # - how comforting. Funny that they don't also take some of the blame for not keeping their servers patched current. Course serves me right for ordering from a site that uses IIS:) Cept, well, it wasn't me - it was my wife:)
Re:Mozilla Project Success; Mozilla Browser Failur
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Mozilla Relicensing
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Which browser renders pages faster?
Answer: Mozilla
Amen! I could not BELIEVE how fast 0.9.4 rendered pages. I've got the latest IE 6 and I thought the latency was network related - my friend - an MS freak, thought I was kidding when I told him Mozilla was rendering pages MUCH faster than IE 6 - he took control (Pent III 700MHz w/ 512MB RAM), browsed like crazy and had to admit it was true! Congrats to the Mozilla performance team!
Slashdot Mirror
Yes AMDs will incinerate themselves if the heatsink alls off - but funny, you don't see many people saying this has happened - yes it has to a few, but honestly - I'd rather get the higher performance for my dollar and risk having to replace the CPU if the heatsink fell off - something very unlikely. But if it did, the replacement CPU would be pretty cheap given how prices on processors fall over just a few months! And total cost would STILL probably be chaeper than an equivalent Pent 4 system (not CPU, system) Hell my 1GHz Athlon has been chugging along for months and the heatsink is still on solid!
From your tone I'd expect you woudln't buy AMD anyway. However, if you did any research, you'd find the AMD's new numbering plan is actually conservative. Independant benchmark reviews have shown that the AMD 1800+ is actually more of an equivalent to the Pent 4 2GHz chip. But AMD chose a conservative threshold. Granted, the new Intel cores will boost performance a bit, but even then the AMD numbering plan is expected to be on target. Honestly - who cares what they call the chip - anyone with half a brain can find out the MHz value. But to what end? Me? I want to buy teh system which gives me the most performance for the least $$$ and right now that is an AMD chip hands down when you account for other CPU specific system costs and impacts (chipset, memory type needed, etc)
I honestly think AMD did what it HAD to do - their chips are faster at slower clock speeds and Intel managed to get folks thinking MHz was king. Now AMD has ot try and chance that thinking.
I'm not as worried about #1 (Mozilla hardly crashes on me anymore) 2 & 3 are valid concerns. #2 is easy - I'd really like to see a mail icon too. #3 - like another poster said - create dummy email accounts - not perfect, but it works fine. I just name them 'ID Holder #x' Note that sigs DO work well with different accounts - in 0.9.4 if you were in account A and hit reply, but changed your from to Account B, the sig changes with it - very nice touch.
I have about 5 or 6 IMAP accounts configured plus a couple news servers. Switching between folders and bringing up an email would lag - sometimes severely. Wow, what a difference 0.0.1 makes! :) I find the mail client to be MUCH faster. VERY nice!
I've been using MultiZilla (the tabs) a lot in 0.9.4 - love them! Glad to see much of it got into the stock 0.9.5!
LOL - a few? Across how many machines? I've worked at large organizations that had 100% firewalled Inranets with minial access from outside and currently work where all machines are direct connected to the internet. We are constantly fighting viruses, hackers, etc here. Its a nightmare - why? Because no matter how hard you try, getting every machine to the right pacth level is impossible unless you shell out millions for something like SMS and thats only for MS machines. You shoudl always worry about security, but in an Intranet environment you cna focus your limited resources where it counts and try to bring everythign else up when you can - sounds slack, but given todays IT bugets you often have no choice. If Intranets work so well for large multi-national corporations, why not hte gov't? Sure it'll probably be bungled like most other large scale govt IT projects, but if they pull it off - it would be nice. Gov't desktops would have some protection from outside attackes on a large scale and they could control what servers got placed OUTSIDE the firewall in a DMZ - makes life much easier for those admins - but requires a culture shift and on the scale of the gov't it might be impossible.
But in the end - this makes sense for them - otherwise we'd have many large scale companies whose machines were on teh Internet vs Intranets.
And remember - while some vendors drag out beta testing with sub-par software (the rest of the bugs will get flushed out in beat they say), MOST of the time the Linux kernels are usable the day they come out.
But be realistic - anyone who downloads, builds, and installs a new Linux kernel within 30 days of its release is a defacto beta tester. No sysadmin in their right mind would install a new kernel on a production server until its been run for a bit. SO all of us who love to grab the kernel and put it on desktops, small non mission critical servers that can go down, etc are flushing out any remaining bugs so that mission criticla server admins can sit back and see which kernels to move to (plus other factors like existing bug fixes, new device support, etc)
So those of you faulting Linus for releasing this kernel with this bug - give it a rest. It was an obscure bug that only cropped up if the software did something it really shouldn't have (ie bad design). I can't imagine a commercial vendor would have caught this bug in testing either - they'd have found it in beta just like Linus did. After all, I bet 99.9% of you who are already running 2.4.11 thought it was great till you read /. this morning :)
I for one think the current system works well. Yes, Linus may put stuff in faster than Alan and there are pros/cons to both - for all the folks saying Linus was putting too much in others would say AC is waiting too long. But step back and think about how great we Linux users have it. Stable kernels with many fixes coming out monthly from Linus with bigger more feature rich kernels available from -ac How awesome is that?
Well, considering how many of your tax dollars are wasted when folks hack into their systems and mess them up... Makes sense.
I think this is a great idea. If its thought out well. Heck many large companies do this - you have a set # of firewalsl controlled by ONE group of security professionals. They can link the major sites with some of the tons of dark fiber out there. Smaller sites - use VPN with high encryption over the Internet. That gives you a good cost point since its the small offices that can kill you for an Intranet. Link the large locations with private links. The next step would be to place all their public webservers under the auspices one a single web team to ensure the damn servers are setup properly and securly. But that'll never happen :) Isn't bureaucracy grand? :)
Exactly what I've seen - 2 mirrors, 2 different systems (one v2.2 one v2.4), one root mirror, one not. Same thing - SeekComplete Unrecov error and my mirror drops. Freaking nightmare. DFT - doesn't show bad sectors that I can find. Grrr. RMA time!
And then many people (myself included) have them in dedicated drive trays with dual fans pulling air through the tray to keep them cooled with outside air - I still have 2 systems whose mirrors drop almost weekly due to errors (and yes I've done everything from switch to 3ware from SW raid in linux, swapped interfaces (ie IDE Primary & Secondary) during replacements to see if that was the cause. No deal. The drives suck and thats that. I'll stick with Seagate - I've had soem trustly 9GB cheetahs, 10K RPMs - the originals which will burn you if you touch them during operation - each in drive trays pulling whatever air possible trhough them - the drive tower fan spits out REALLY hot air - these drives have run reliably since 1998 or so - can't complain a bit!
I do this with every new system I build - you can get nice IDE trays for like $40 with dual fans.
Both my main servers have Deskstar RAIDs and ALL are in trays with dual fans 300W PS or better. Still having troubles with them.
I'll never buy Deskstars again - but the Ultrastars have been great.
I thought maybe SW raid was having troubles though I knew my old disks worked OK. But to give IBM the benefit of the doubt ,I bought a new 3ware 6200 raid card. Tossed the IBM 60GB drives onto it - mirror dropped within 2 hours. I installed the new 3ware firmware for their cad with ECC bit checking. Once I did this, the mirror stayed up but I get an ECC bit error off the same drive at least every other day - thats what was taking the array down before. Errors are always on the same drive.
Needless to say I have a 2nd 3ware card that just arrived to put in my older server whose root disks keep dropping out of sync. WE'll see if the HW raid controlelr cna handle the IBM bit errors that always pop up.
I knwo there are people out there who SWEAR 75GXPs are OK and theres no problem - but I've seen WAY too many complaints about them. I'll never buy them again given the trouble I've had. As a note - I just had to swap out my IBM drive in my laptop after 9 months - it died a horrific death (but not before I got a ghost image thank goodness)
Funyn thing? The SCSI mirror on my new server works great - IBM UltraStars - not a peep out of them. Go figure. I honestly believe the 75GXPs are having seriosu trouble. Once I get both servers going on HW raid I'll be RMAing the two drives that always have bit errors - I just hope I don't go into a vicious cycle of returns as refab drives die
Which is funny coming from HP since, well, they made a lot of money on HP-UX and PA-RISC machines :) NORTEL used to have high end HP-UX boxen all over hte place as normal development workstations (coding workstations, not graphical/CAD type stuff) So it'll be interesting to see if/how HP makes money as HP-UX dies off and instead of being replaced by NT (the original plan) it ends up being Linux. Hmmmmm.... Itanium power boxes anyone? :)
Actually, by doing exactly that, you're more qualified than many. I'd much rather have one of my system admins be able to admit they don't know how to do something, know where to look to learn, and then have the overall computing background to understand an implement the steps of a HOWTO, etc. Heck, even the best system admin doesn't know everything. Most tend to specialize in certain areas (filesystems, I/O, Raid/LVM, applications, etc) By that I mean they REALLY understand how to setup certain types of things, but in other areas they need to look stuff up. I've been administering systems for years - and you still hit situations where you have to research some stuff.
Sysadmins, no matter how good, don't know how to do everything off the top of their head. THose that think they do are dangerous because you risk having them screw up something major. A good sys admin is one who is savvy enough to be dropped in front of a system they have never used before and using their overall computing experieince and available reference material - figure out how to set it up or enable some feature while at the same time knowing their limits and knowing if they are treading in an area of the system where they can do real damage - at that point someone who takes the time to research what their about to do online or by asking for help is much better than the person who just lows ahead and screws up.
So gon't sell yourself short. If you think passing a test would qualify you to deploy stuff on a network securely, you're dangerous. A good sysadmin may knwo how to deploy a system in a fairly secure manner, but a great sysadmin will know how to test for anything he/she missed and know where to look to make sure they didn't miss anything.
I've been adminsitering systems since I graduated from college both at work and at home - and I learn something almost ever day. Stuff keep schanging so fast you can't possibly stay current just studying for a test :)
For example - would you agree to putting your thumb on a fingerprint scanner at teh jetway entrance before you got on the plane? Retinal scan? The idea of the airlines having fingerprints for every passenger is pretty scary - but banks and many stores fingerprint when you use/cash checks. What level of this type of stuff will we accept? At what cost?
But then - the best biometric system in the world wouldn't have stopped the WTC attack - the hijackers were passengers with tickets and many used their real names anyway so.... I fear we'll find many liberties and the like given up in the name of security that really won't help that much.
Yeah well it was early and the caffinne IV wasn't in yet :)
Course here in NC we're going to start paying Sales Tax on DISH/DirectTV - not the same but I guess its fair since cable customer pay the same thing.
Well yes Apache.org did get compromised but NOT due to an Apache server problem. It was a complicated hack and took advantage of a configuration problem (mainly Apache had their incoming FTP tree viewable in their web space among others) Or perhaps you're referring to another event.
Yes, Apache is not all nice point and click, but there ARE tools out there (Webmin's Apache module is NICE) to make administration easier. Yes Apache has had vulnerabilities in teh past, but considering its widespread use and installed base, I'm extremely impressed with how secure its been - upgrades to Apache are rare which reduces TCO.
Yes, all systems and software have problems. But overall, I'll stick with OSS where appropriate and regarding your issues with MySQL and Apache, a few simple posts to mailing lists or news groups related to the software will often get your problem fixed faster than most 3rd party setups.
Well, as an IT manager at a big corporation a few years ago, I can tell you that decisions like these (lagre scale licensing issues and software standards) are made MUCH higher up - the CIOs and their direct reports. The poor IT manager way on down trying to save $$$ in his budget for his small facility often has little choice. Been there, done that. 'Standardization' is a huge buzzword and Microsoft utilizes it to the hilt. If you decide to branch out and go with something different to save money in your budget (that would otehrwise have gone to the central site license group and then straight to Microsoft) you often are viewed as going against the grain, troublemaker, whatever. So unless you BEEN THERE, don't make such foolish statements. Yes, there are PLENTY of Microsoft sheep out there who rather than choosing Microsoft because they BELIEVE it to be better for their situation, choose because its what everyone else does. But also realize that often an IT managers' hands are tied from on high.
That is HUGE. IT budgets already get squeezed to the hilt because execs don't see direct 'added value' But I'd hate to be the CIO having to tell teh CFO his budget just for Microsoft will increase 40% a year compunded on top of normal budget outlays (hardware, staff, etc) Ouch
With XP's new registration process - how is that going to work? Will you still be ABLE to ghost XP machines? WIll users have to handle the registration process on their own after the machine is delivered? God forbid they lose that license certifcate in the process. With previous versions of Windows you simply used Ghostwalker to update the settings and such. But this adds yet another step to an already tedious process.
So does anyone who uses ghost to roll out systems have a plan or idea how they'll handle the onslaught of XP? Symantec has an article that basically says XP is Beta (not anymore!) and they'll have more info after release (none I cqan find) They say they were able to use ghost and ghost walker to clone an XP machine - but again, cloning (ie backing up) a system is one thing, making corporate images you can toss onto new systems is something else entirely... It'll be too bad if Microsofts zeal for $$$ trashes a program that saved countless IT depts thousands of hours in deployment time.
True, but they also are bundling Office XP - pretty much requiring people to buy new Office licenses to even PARTICIPATE in the new OS license program - which is their right but as a monopoly, its an unfair practice. I mean seriously - how many of you out there think moving from Office 2K to Office XP is worth teh cost? Hell Office 97 to 2K wasn't much of an improvement. But to require Office purchases to participate in the OS volume license is borderlne criminal. This quote was most chilling:
Microsoft has finally decided to use their monopoly to try and boost earnings in a crashing economy and at some point they push too far and FORCE people to look elsewhere and possibly TRY to move to other platforms. It'll hurt them.
For example, if you have Office licenses for ALL yoru PCs (many companies do) but realize that your coders don't really NEED Office - its just for browsing stuff sent from mgmt - you may start looking into alternatives, either StarOffice or even simple doc readers and then cut your licensing WAY back - this who fiasco will either vastly increase IT costs for companies (and thus costs to us the consumers) or will blow up in Microsofts face as companies finally throw up their hands and tell MS to GTH.
Just ask McGlen.com - they informed me yesterday that 'an unidentified individual gained access to certain protected files maintained by Mcglen.com through a security breach in Microsoft Internet Information Server.' and thus may have my credit card # - how comforting. Funny that they don't also take some of the blame for not keeping their servers patched current. Course serves me right for ordering from a site that uses IIS :) Cept, well, it wasn't me - it was my wife :)
Answer: Mozilla
Amen! I could not BELIEVE how fast 0.9.4 rendered pages. I've got the latest IE 6 and I thought the latency was network related - my friend - an MS freak, thought I was kidding when I told him Mozilla was rendering pages MUCH faster than IE 6 - he took control (Pent III 700MHz w/ 512MB RAM), browsed like crazy and had to admit it was true! Congrats to the Mozilla performance team!