I see a few people have already mentioned Robert Jordan, so you might want to consider Timothy Zahn's stuff. It's Sci-Fi, not Fantasy like the others mentioned, but still very good. His Star Wars books are the best out there (hey George, Thrawn would make a cooler villain than these Darth idiots) and what I've read of the Conquerer's series is good too.
The best way to do it is to plug the network connection into a single Linux/BSD machine, and run IPTraf to monitor the traffic (you can grab the URL from FreshMeat.) Then start up MULTIPLE (5+) transfers using things like wget, curl, ab and ncftpget to generate traffic. You should get a sustained transfer rate between 150KB/s-190KB/s (bytes, not bits) Just remember to be a good netizen and don't try to do all those downloads from one site.
Actually, you can use objects with an RDBMS if you are using PHP4. The Serialize command will encode an object for storing in the database as a text string. The only problem is that you can't do any queries on the data in that form. Combines well with sessions though, I believe.
Personally, I find that there are very few things that actually work better as objects than as straight procedural code, but that's probably just a matter of coding style and language preference.
I'd just like to say that I'll swear off computers and get a job raking pig shit with my bare hands before I ever use a Macintosh without a gun to my head. BSD with an X knock-off and a big price tag doesn't really compare with Linux or BSD and the choice of the 3 or 4 nice GUI systems that are already available, and it certainly doesn't excuse the garbage that has been the MacOS interface I've had the misfortune to have to deal with so far.
I hope MEtallica and re wins the suit against Napster for a simple reason: think of whatr a great legal prceident (sp?) it would be! Making something illeagal because it CAN be used to commit a crime (theaft.) No more guns, because guns can be used to kill (which is a much worse crime than theft.) No more cars, because they can break the speed limit and commit property damage (car accidents.) No more beer, because underage people might get a hold of it.
Won't life be perfect if Napster loses: A world without products that can have any chance of being used for anything immoral in the hands of a degenerate. I feel safer already.:)
There is replication code available for Postgres at ftp://ftp.sdc.com.au/pub/repl/ I've never used it myself, but they mentioned it on the general list a while ago.
I dunno if someone else posted this (too lazy to read all of the comments) but I think the Microsoft "Linux Myths" page should smell like rotten apples, or whatever the smell of defeat actually is...:)
Oh please, get a clue. People don't break into systems because of the kernel, most break-ins are via the system daemons and other user-space programs. You want a secure system, run nmap on your box and then close down/firewall any service you aren't actually using. Common "insecure" services are sendmail and FTP.
Considerring all the crap Disney has been stirring up to keep their pattents on things like "Steamboat Mickey" around for over 50 years, I'm glad they finally got bitten. I just wish that they were fined enough so that they could no longer afford to buy the votes needed to extend copyright limits.:)
I'd recommend PHP over PERL for the programming language if you do convert, PHP4 looks like it's going to blow both PERL and ASP away in terms of performance, and you'll probably be able to convert most of your current ssytem over to PHP easier than to PERL (there is an ASP->PHP converter available if you are using ASP at the moment.)
For the database server, I'd recommend PostgresSQL over MySQL (transactions are nice), or you could just keep the database on the NT box and use ODBC (although I'd recommend upgrading to a database server like Oracle or MS SQL 7, MS Access is NOT meant for what you are using it for.)
Wow, that's real helpful. Let me summarize your post: "Linux sucks, Windows rules!!! Especially the version coming out in 3 months that's been delayed for over 2 years! It will be the greatest OS ever!"
Linux, BSD, and NT are all scalable and reliable OS's as long as you have the right equipment and a competant SysAdmin, but it's not eh best solution for everything. Hell, even Microsoft uses UNIX over NT when it's better for the job (like in Hotmail)
Babylon5 and DS9 had one remarkable thing in common: They both sucked until the wars started (the war with the Dominion in DS9 and the Shadow War in B5.)
Of course, when they go good, they were MUCH better than any but the best episodes of the other Star Trek series'. B5 was even better because it didn't stop every few episodes to do some stupid human interest/secondary-character character growth episode.
I haven't done a lot of team development, but in my experience, there is no way you are going to be able to think of ALL the possible functions/problems in a large project at the start. The "get around a whiteboard for a few hours/days" suggestion was a good one, then write out the plan you come up with. As you make changes, keep a changelog file somewhere, and then when you are all done, draw straws to see who the unlucky bastard is who has to go back and write the new documentation based on the original document and the changelog.:)
Anyways, just a suggestion. There are companies out there who sell system design philosophies and the tools to keep to them, you might want to do a search on "CASE tools".
I hate to be morally insensitive (actually, I don't, but no need to be rude...) but has anyone considered that it might just be very hard to draw different skin tones in a black and white comic strip?
Not EVERYTHING has some deep, sinister, overtone, unless it comes out of Microsoft.
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I see a few people have already mentioned Robert Jordan, so you might want to consider Timothy Zahn's stuff. It's Sci-Fi, not Fantasy like the others mentioned, but still very good. His Star Wars books are the best out there (hey George, Thrawn would make a cooler villain than these Darth idiots) and what I've read of the Conquerer's series is good too.
The best way to do it is to plug the network connection into a single Linux/BSD machine, and run IPTraf to monitor the traffic (you can grab the URL from FreshMeat.) Then start up MULTIPLE (5+) transfers using things like wget, curl, ab and ncftpget to generate traffic. You should get a sustained transfer rate between 150KB/s-190KB/s (bytes, not bits) Just remember to be a good netizen and don't try to do all those downloads from one site.
Actually, you can use objects with an RDBMS if you are using PHP4. The Serialize command will encode an object for storing in the database as a text string. The only problem is that you can't do any queries on the data in that form. Combines well with sessions though, I believe.
Personally, I find that there are very few things that actually work better as objects than as straight procedural code, but that's probably just a matter of coding style and language preference.
Forget all these political and open soruce names, here' what's really important:
:-)
Al Gore is only 49% in love with Natalie Portman!!!
Luckily he's 86% in love with Sarah Michelle Gellar so all is not lost.
I'd just like to say that I'll swear off computers and get a job raking pig shit with my bare hands before I ever use a Macintosh without a gun to my head. BSD with an X knock-off and a big price tag doesn't really compare with Linux or BSD and the choice of the 3 or 4 nice GUI systems that are already available, and it certainly doesn't excuse the garbage that has been the MacOS interface I've had the misfortune to have to deal with so far.
From a command prompt (at least on any Linux box with named installed) type:
whois domain@whois.networksolutions.net
I hope MEtallica and re wins the suit against Napster for a simple reason: think of whatr a great legal prceident (sp?) it would be! Making something illeagal because it CAN be used to commit a crime (theaft.) No more guns, because guns can be used to kill (which is a much worse crime than theft.) No more cars, because they can break the speed limit and commit property damage (car accidents.) No more beer, because underage people might get a hold of it.
:)
Won't life be perfect if Napster loses: A world without products that can have any chance of being used for anything immoral in the hands of a degenerate. I feel safer already.
There is replication code available for Postgres at ftp://ftp.sdc.com.au/pub/repl/ I've never used it myself, but they mentioned it on the general list a while ago.
I dunno if someone else posted this (too lazy to read all of the comments) but I think the Microsoft "Linux Myths" page should smell like rotten apples, or whatever the smell of defeat actually is... :)
Oh please, get a clue. People don't break into systems because of the kernel, most break-ins are via the system daemons and other user-space programs. You want a secure system, run nmap on your box and then close down/firewall any service you aren't actually using. Common "insecure" services are sendmail and FTP.
Considerring all the crap Disney has been stirring up to keep their pattents on things like "Steamboat Mickey" around for over 50 years, I'm glad they finally got bitten. I just wish that they were fined enough so that they could no longer afford to buy the votes needed to extend copyright limits. :)
I'd recommend PHP over PERL for the programming language if you do convert, PHP4 looks like it's going to blow both PERL and ASP away in terms of performance, and you'll probably be able to convert most of your current ssytem over to PHP easier than to PERL (there is an ASP->PHP converter available if you are using ASP at the moment.)
For the database server, I'd recommend PostgresSQL over MySQL (transactions are nice), or you could just keep the database on the NT box and use ODBC (although I'd recommend upgrading to a database server like Oracle or MS SQL 7, MS Access is NOT meant for what you are using it for.)
Wow, that's real helpful. Let me summarize your post:
"Linux sucks, Windows rules!!! Especially the version coming out in 3 months that's been delayed for over 2 years! It will be the greatest OS ever!"
Linux, BSD, and NT are all scalable and reliable OS's as long as you have the right equipment and a competant SysAdmin, but it's not eh best solution for everything. Hell, even Microsoft uses UNIX over NT when it's better for the job (like in Hotmail)
Babylon5 and DS9 had one remarkable thing in common: They both sucked until the wars started (the war with the Dominion in DS9 and the Shadow War in B5.)
Of course, when they go good, they were MUCH better than any but the best episodes of the other Star Trek series'. B5 was even better because it didn't stop every few episodes to do some stupid human interest/secondary-character character growth episode.
I haven't done a lot of team development, but in my experience, there is no way you are going to be able to think of ALL the possible functions/problems in a large project at the start. The "get around a whiteboard for a few hours/days" suggestion was a good one, then write out the plan you come up with. As you make changes, keep a changelog file somewhere, and then when you are all done, draw straws to see who the unlucky bastard is who has to go back and write the new documentation based on the original document and the changelog. :)
Anyways, just a suggestion. There are companies out there who sell system design philosophies and the tools to keep to them, you might want to do a search on "CASE tools".
I hate to be morally insensitive (actually, I don't, but no need to be rude...) but has anyone considered that it might just be very hard to draw different skin tones in a black and white comic strip?
Not EVERYTHING has some deep, sinister, overtone, unless it comes out of Microsoft.