With MM bought by Adobe, Adobe is the de-facto monopoly in design packages right now. Now if competition grows, Adobe/MM might just come clear with improved developement tools that run on Linux aswell.
Then again, MS will either release a product that is so uber-shitty that only the most hardcore MS Developers will use it or it probably will build a product that hat "proprietary lock-in" written all over it. So Adbe won't have any competition in the first place.
.. eventhough I never remembered what was what with sinus and tangens. The simple trick is to allways have the Unit circle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_Circle) aka 'Einheitskreis' (german, http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einheitskreis) handy before your "inner eye". With that finding out which tangens and sinus is which and which needs to be applied in a certain situation is a piece of cake. Draw yourself a nice unit circle, memorize it and you'll allways know which relation to use. Trig math can be real fun. I actually considered becoming a surveyor after our surveying project in 10th grade. A friend and I went to the local surveyors office and even did a little on site trip with the surveying team. That was real cool - and we both got an A for the project in school. Little portable computers (Sharp PC 1402 back then, mid 80s), lot's of intelligent stuff to do, pratical math and your outside at the fresh air all day. Very cool job for a geek actually...
Box: For the Plattform independent stuff you're doing you'll want anything that's powerfull and quiet. If you don't hate towers you'll want a PC in the Zalman TN 500a Towercase, a complete fanless case for PCs. The entire case is one big heatsink with countless heatpipes, coolers and HDD coolcasings inside. The only way to go for a PC box you're going to sit at all day. The case cost 950 Euros, but I'd say it's worth it. Put anything inside thats big and fast. Some multi opteron setup (cooling noise isn't an issue, remember?) with 8 GB of fast RAM. Consider adding a Rocketdrive or solid state HDD. 60 nanoseconds access to your drive have something going for it when you're doing Java and Server Side Web stuff. Linux (custom Kernel Debian or Gentoo) plus Win2k running on VMWare should do it for the OS. Consider a WM instead of a desktop. It's less distraction from work. Allthough current KDE is cool, I still like to use Windowmaker, E or Fluxbox. Try those out.
The cheaper alternative for long hours of programming is a 20" iMac. Minimum noise, minimum space, top level working enviroment. OS X is good. It's not as good and fitting than a well configured and installed Linux/VM+Win2k setup on a box like the one I described above, but therefore it's like 6 times cheaper.
Screen: If you're getting the PC take the 23" Apple display with it. If you want multi screen, take a Panoramtech, they are the ticket. Pricey, but the only real way to go for multicreen.
Chair: You're sitting at it all day, so pay. The german Swopper is the Mercedes Benz of desk stools and ideal for computer desk jobs. Don't get the one with the pointless backrest though, that's just a gimmick. If the swopper isn't for you, I recommend something from the Stokke line of chairs. The Actulum or Pendulum look fitting for desk jobs and still are flexible enough for keeping your back alive.
Desk and room: Don't have anything special for this. Apply common sense and a sense for quality. For your working room you want to consider setting it up by some Feng Shui principles. Feng Shui isn't all legend and has some interessting insights that help you set up your living space. I followed some Feng Shui rules in my room, and it feels good and enables me to work more concentrated. For instance I'm sitting in the opposite corner from the door with the door at 2:30. I can handle my daughter or my spouse interrupting my work much better that way.
Cinelerra is for sure the BEST video editor on Linux.
Wrong. You obviously don't know what you're talking about. First of all there is MainActor - a commercial 'Home User' NLE. With all the features you'll ever need and much less resource hungry I presume.
Then there is Shake (http://www.apple.com/shake/). A compositing tool, not a NLE, yes, but I'd guess the built in NLE capabilities pound every OSS NLE into the ground.
Then there is the discreet/Autodesk Line of Tools. Smoke and the High End Effect Kit "Flint" both run on Linux. Flint even exclusively (http://www.autodesk.com/flint).
Then there is Blender, which has a sort-of NLE built in that's called 'Video Sequencer'. That's an OSS tool I trust to be usable without requireing a quad opteron -allthough I've never tested it.
I could go on, but I guess the point is driven Home: Cinelerra may be fine, but it is not the best Video NLE for Linux.
From my list of requirements for the ideal PCbench
on
What's On Your Tech Bench?
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
standardised personal tool harness for everybody. Power Screwdriver, small wrenches, bits, e-meter and maybe a headlamp/MiniMag with headstrap.
Bench Bays with rounded corners. Bench surface should be as high as your lower rib when standing (ca. 130cm)
1 or 2 barchairs for those occasions when you want to sit down
adjustible LED-driven spotlight armlamps down from the ceiling
named part components at the wall end of each Benchbay
named screw components!
lists of SOPs between the bays
fixed bolted-on open and caseless PC setup for quicktesting hardware between bays
ready harddrives with all standard installs of you shop
small parts grabber handy
remotely switchable vacuum in other room with a thin hose to every workplace
optional: remote compressor with dentist air nozzle at every workplace
anti-static grounding at every workplace + anti-static armring installed
telefone/intercom at every workplace, maybe with headset
wooden working surface, thick and well waxed, oiled and polished
enough room for supplies/finished product trolleys
customer waiting zone inside the shop with coffee and magazine rack - especially if your shop is impressive and well kept
And before people start yapping, yes, there is MySQL and PostgreSQL. They're both good for small to medium sized projects. But if you're talking terabytes or petabytes of data -- you're going to want one of the big guys, which offer things that those don't yet.
The upper limit for a single MySQL Database is 64 Terabyte. (Or was it a single MySQL table?) That plus the fact that most DBs of this size usually do nothing more but more or less serial reads and writes makes MySQL actually one of the most feasable DB engines for large databases. Because it is one of the fastest DBs out there. And I doubt that Oracle is any more scalable than Firebird or MaxDB/SAP DB.
You're running a million email accounts on exchange? You didn't say that, but still I'm asking. 'Cause I'd say that would be impossible.... But if your company plans to scale to 1 million live and running mail accounts these are the things that come to my mind:
1st: You need serious Iron for this. Either up to a few hundred beefed rack pc's (depends on how the mean usage of those 1 million accounts is) for load balancing, admin, fault tolerance, data and automation or some uber-special sun server solution for this. PCs are probably better. Scaling/maintaining is cheaper in the end.
2nd: I only know my way about things the size of a beercase so here goes my 2 cents for the PC solution: Something stable (Linux or BSD) and an MTA that doesn't get in the way. Maintainability goes over speed at this point - I'd guess Postfix or Exim would be the ticket.
3rd: Consider a DB setup for storage. Also here I'd go OSS all the way. Postgres and Firebird scale very well, but even MySQL could pull this if set up correctly. You have no big relational stuff, just a 'give data, take data and shut up' scenario here. And MySQL is fast. As in f*cking fast. If you have a good admin policy and automate that you're going to have zero fuss, zero slowpoking in your storage. MySQL might even be the best way.
4th: Process automation/admining. Pick a good PL and/or appserver for this. This should be scalable in itself and also shouldn't get in the way (again: maintainability over speed). I recommend checking out Python and Zope. Zope loadbalancing is a piece of cake and allthough it's a slowpoke unsuitable for the grunt work, it's object relational DB is like sex with Claudia Schiffer when working with it. You could set up a handfull of boxes with that and have your backend covered (no pun intended:-) ). Zope could maybe even do parts of the webfrontend. But you'd have to test that for speed. Python alone is perfect for frontend though. The PL doesn't matter that much, but you should stick to one for all what you're doing. You're starting with a clean slate, you might aswell honor that without building a messy bloat of 10 technologies.
5th: Your team. You need a team for this. A handfull of people who help you build the system and document it and know whats going on. The "OSS expert but no-foam-around-mouth" type is good for this. All should use the same PL for automation and generally know whats going on, even if they specialize (storage, automation, web-frontend, etc).
6th: Facilities. This is the ballpark where you think about that aswell. Fire safety, spare power with large UPS and maybe even generators. Fat lines. Do the math, add 40% and then build it. Same 40% rule goes for cost and final rollout schedule.
7th: Offsite backup for internal accounts. Check your requirements. If the company is large you'll need a remote backup site and some overturning backup policy. Backup could also be done with two or three suitcases of external encrypted HDDs that are carried around if you want to save bandwidth for account access. Few think of a solution like this, but it acutally is feasable, safe and cheap. And spare HDDs for replacement aren't a problem either.
8th: Politics. External Contracts: Get nice-like with your ISP(s). You wanna have had a few beers with the guy you're explaining that you've missjudged your requirements and need an extra 4 lines. Now. Or like to switch of a few for the time being. You Boss and his superiours: Keep them informed but do the decisions yourself. Don't pester them with techno babble. They wanna know you can do it yourself. At this scale they are more your partners than your superiours. You need to be up to it. Naturally. Rethink that matter before you give your people a thumbs up. Nothing bad about coming to the conclusion that external contractors would be the better solution. Be a professional, not a jerk.
Very funny quote indeed. I should mention though that I am a former american citizen (yes, I know, even few germans believe that) but there actually are a lot of germans that are just as good a writing (RPG player and computer geeks - lots of english book to read) and quite a lot at speaking. I'm in the fortunate position of being able to speak accent free german and accent free english (well, it's actually texican/american english). A nice asset I'm gratefull for.
There is a simular joke in Germany: What is the difference between a Turk and a Nazi? A Turk speaks correct german, works for his money and pays taxes.
I don't by games very often lately - I used to. But WoW definitely is a innovation. It's like many HL2 (railroad storytelling) spread out over a large pane (MMORPG questing), playable by absolute n00bs with sloth reflexes. Add in Blizzards ultra extreme focus on playtesting (remember StarCraft and the 3 factions and how well they played? 2 *years* of playtesting that was!) their experience in "Hamstering Games" (Diablo anyone?) that fact that their games run smooth a easy on old hardware (I'm using a Geforce 4 and WoW looks cooool) which is purpose but also is due to the long playtesting. On top of that comes an interface that my grandma can operate with ease.
Bottom Line: WoW was the last push MMORPS and online video gaming needed. This is the real thing. When tablets and wifi become a household comodity, this type of entertainment will take over large portions of mainstream. That's the simple truth.
Germany in general is a mess. We've got 5 million unemployed, an advanced federal election coming up because of that and no relief in sight. The politicians just don't 'get it' and population is generally fed up of it. I choose to go freelance two years ago. As, amongst other things, a web developer, with a thourough focus on OSS. Which is a growing market and closing in on critical mass here in germany. Everybody (and I mean everybody) and his brother is using Typo3, people consider Linux as an alternative and demand for OSS consulting is growing. My partners are in with pharmaceutical corporations - which, naturally, have licences to print money. I'm building myself a reputation and even have a small business contract with a small agency in Florida im doing CRM for. I'm flying under the radar, earning barely over minimum wage, making any comparion with those popular 'yellow press' salary lists utterly pointless. But I have liberties fulltime jobbers can only dream of and don't have to fuss around with superiours who don't take me for granted. I've learned to trust no one but myself (learned the hard way) and feel fairly safe even though I've currently got zero finacial backup and the german federal pension will be a joke when I'm old. IT is growing with 5% aprox. and OSS is growing a little faster. I can bill aprox. 60$ an hour and have 2-3 hours a day that I can bill. It just covers my expenses. The upside being that I can spend a notable portion of my time at my favourite lounge sipping Latte and studying O'Reillys. In a nice indian summer these days. Oh, and, btw, how was your work day, my fellow slashdotter? *wide grin* The downside being the tax Uber-paperwork, which is beyond insane in Germany.
Bottom line: I don't earn very much, but I'm surviving on my own. Which means I can't complain. If I keep on track and gain in efficiency (my main focus at the time) I might even have a small company with a handfull of employees some day. Who knows...
Stallman himself might not be a Communist, but to me there's a fair amount of evidence to suggest that a number of European Linux users in particular are.
Sorry, but that's nonsense. Just because there are opinions that are considered 'leftifst' in the US doesn't mean that the rest of the world has commies for Linux users. On the contrary. And allthough I think of Stallman as notably unsympathetic, his positions aren't plain political inclinations. He can argue on his every statement with rock solid reasoning. That's why his statements have such an impact.
I am a consultant and head of a small team of freelance IT experts with a focus on small business ERP, CRM and Web solutions. Just now I have read about your companies new partnership with SCO, a company who's policy is commonly regarded as extremly questionable throughout the international IT industry. I fail to see the advantage for such a reputable company like MySQL AB joining a partnership with a company such as SCO, that has abused and disrespected open source software, open source licences and open source concepts and the even the smallest amount of common decency whilst executing their business in the last 3 years. (I do presume you have heard about the lawsuits SCO is involved in)
A considerable amount of my customers uses the MySQL Database for ERP and SCM services and products my company (based in germany) deploys, and more than once have I, as a consultant, recommended MySQL as a relyable and well documented database software. It has never failed me, and the MySQL Database has gained my trust as a professional.
Please note that I am more than irritated by the business decicision your company has made regarding this partnership with SCO and the trust I have held in MySQL AB is severely tainted. For me and my partners this may very well be a reason to more quickly and thoroughly evaluate the feasability or alternative db products and their vendors. Please be so kind to pass this on to your superiours.
MySQL AB is working on MaxDB, the successor to SAP DP that will be 100% MySQL compliant and be on par with the most advanced of DB technology. They have a lot of irons in the fire and the SAP DB move was considered extremely smart. SAP handed the code over to them. Pulling a thing like this is stupid imho, and will spoil the image they gained the last 3 years significantly. I really don't know what to make of it. Time to look at Firebird (http://firebird.sourceforge.net/) and PostrgreSQL. I guess monopolys are never good.
I had a list of names posted. It was the first suggestion in the forums that had more than one entry. (I'm good at making names - better than most nerds that is). One guy did a summary of all names posted and completely ignored/overlooked mine. Half of those had some sort of branding quality, as at least a third in the forums were very good.
The problem with Joomla! is the lack of speech rythym. If you have a chance to use a fantasy name - and most OSS projects couldn't care less if the name is known and speakable in most countries - such as the name "Diesel" which became a well know clothing brand (very smart pick for a name, just like "amazon").
Take for instance "Rivett" or "Engine" (Engine was one of my suggestions), or even a silly name like "TittyTwister". All of these have at least one vowel at all sylable borders, which makes them easier to memorize, speak, pronounce and spell. With "Engine" being an exeption because it's pronouced different from it's spelling. A good tradeoff if you like the associations the name causes.
Bottom line: Nothing agains a complete fantasy name - on the contrary. In the end you have better brand recognition. But you should let people who have experience at naming do it. Especially when so many marketing experts offer their help as they did with Joomla!. Joomla! looks cool, that why lots of people in the marketing industry use it. Many would've like to pay back by helping out with branding and such. It's a shame the core team didn't go along.
Then again, I've seen crappier names than Joomla! in the OSS world, so I guess I should be glad.
Slow fork is why I use x86 Linux for server stuff.
HW/SW inconsistency and the mass of problems that come along with it is why I use Apple/Mac OS X for all other stuff.
And even comparing Attention-warning-prototype do-not-touch-or-use-for-mission-critical reiserFS with HFS is being silly. You might want to pitch HFS against ext3 and have a nice academic discussion over wether HFS overdoeses the journals and triple checksums, but ReiserFS is not even in their league.
Allthoug Reiser does have some very cool ideas it will take another few years before they're solid enough for the real world.
... and what can be done to prevent and/or lessen such disasters in the future?
Well, let's start with number one:
Have that Airhead that is in charge over there at your place finally sign the Kyoto protocol and reduce greenhouse reason nummero uno, which is CO2. I'd like to add that the US has the highest per capita output of CO2. Y'know, global warming, change of climate, stronger storms and all that... rings a bell?
On goes it with
Don't build below sea level. Maybe? No?
Then: Don't build with egg-carton but with real bricks.
Jeebus, you do have some nerve. Outing yourself as an MM employee amongst a crowd of slashdot insaniacs. Your standard uninformed FUDers are cueing posts allready. I'l get some Popcorn and watch the show:-) .
Aside from that: As someone who makes a living developing RIAs (mostly with Flash) I have some things to say - maybe you can pass them on to the right places?
1) Cudos to the actionscript 2 team. AS2 finally is a solid PL and does good work.
2) The IDE (I'm currently using MX 2k4 Pro) is bad. Really bad. Almost as bad as director. -I cant delete workplace layouts, the menu just gets larger. No renaming aswell. -no matter what window has the focus, the stage is allways in the back -the editor sucks. Take it out or replace it with homesite or something -when I open a file and look at it hard, the star pops up. I'd actually like that to pop up when I've actually changed something on that file. It's called "undo-stack". Maybe the IDE Team want's to check out the concept? It's been almost 10 years now. They could go and ask the AS2 team. They seem to be on top of things. - Either memorize workplace layout by file or by selected layout. But don't do a half-assed mix of both. Workspace management in general is really bad. Especially on a Mac. For a tool that costs 800$ this is very bad performance. Pass it on.
I could go on for a while but those are the most pressing. Thanks.
EULAs are full of this BS that noone complies with - or could comply with. They are just backdoors for the companies. If MS would go by and start enforcing their EULAs 100% they'd lose huge amounts of popularity within week.
This EULA part is all about having a crowbar against the Flash Player spreading on to mobile devices. MM want's to make money selling the plattform to providers. I actually managed to install Flash 6 on to a PDA. Together with the Pocket Windows help system, of which Flash Player 6 is a part. They want to be able to go after people who do this large scale. That's all.
Oh, and btw, those EULAs are unenforcable in most countries.
... than it's GBA Cousin. I read a review of Advance Wars for DS... and bought a second GBA SP. After thoroughly checking out all current protable consoles I have access too (PSP, DS, GBA SP) I've come to following conclusion:
PSP Upsides: Tres Cool. Looks extremly sexy - also with the power off. Moreso with power on. Grafics simply rock. Has MP3 and memorystick + little PDA apps - nice for non-palm owners (I have one). Wireless. PSP Downsides: Price. Price/can-be-dropped ratio is bad. Game prices. Load time. Disk based media (vulnerable).
DS upsides: Has a close-cover. Touchscreen is what everyone was waiting for. Chip based media. Media small. Downwards compatible 'drives'. DS downsides: Ugly. Screen(s) too small/device to big (pick one). Buttons flimsy. Touchscreen use is implemented so badly in the line of games I wanna chop of heads over at nintendo *all* the time. I mean what are these people thinking. They've got a frigging TOUCHSCREEN and the thing is more complicated to operate than my Palm? Give me a break! The way Nintendo has nearly neglected the possibilities of the touchscreen up til now is a pure insult to customers. DS Need for Speed Underground for instance just screems for being shoved into the developers rectum. Hard. Same with Advance Wars Dual Strike. AW2 GBA with two screens. Great. How long to port? 15 minutes? These Developers deserve a clobbering for this crappy implementation of games. Sorry, but I'm NOT buying. If there ever was a product where Nintendo did a fuckup that they deserved to go broke over, it's this one. Get some developers and built games that actually use the touchscreen, add downward conectivity and a smaller case that doesn't look entirely like some shitty MC Donalds toy. Then come back. Games to expensive (especially for that... well y'know what I mean...) DS games barely better than GBA counterparts (see above) Doesn't lan-connect to GBA line or lower (that was the final turn off for me).
GBA SP Upsides: Small (A whole LAN party kit is still very small). Fairly cheap. Looks cool. (All colors you'd whish for. And then some.) Ten bazillion games that use the entire device. Concole controls difficult for complex games but bearable and actually put to good use - not like that DS Touchscreen fuckup Nintendo has been doing up till now.... ok I'll calm down. Links to GBC and lower. GBA SP Downsides: Lacking Schoolyard 'new toy' value for sad and sorry wannabees. No real headphone jack. (To be fixed with the Micro)
Bottom line: A GBA SP. Or two. Doen't make you look silly in public, is affordable and is a seasoned product. Maybe a DS SP will do it. Untill then I've got two SPs and a set of games to have fun with my friends or daughter everywhere. And I'm still cheaper off than with any other.
Good heavens. Modded -1 flamebait. I can't believe it. What is this? Idiot day at slashdot? Had the same class of tread just an hour ago (http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=160244&cid=13 415812/)... Did I say slashdot? Never mind...
Warning: This one comes across as a flame, but I'm to mad at this Win2k Server Bullcrap I have to deal with every odd week to contain my anger caused by parent post. Please excuse.
For regular server use (eg. file server, web server, etc for a small to mid-sized company) Windows 2003 is pretty solid.
"Win2k is pretty solid?" As in "sort of stable"? Or "Kinda so-so not to totally viri and exploit ridden?" Or do you mean "Nice if you've been lured into this.Net Joke, have allready spent a fortune on MS IDEs and a Win2K licence and don't have anything mission critical your working on"? Or "Nice if you like a clean one-server-per-webapp policy to keep things in order?" Give me a f*ckin' break. And whatever you're smoking, don't offer anything of that to me, please. Contrary to what the clueless and ill-"informed" think: The only reason professionals are still dealing with utter morons (read: Consultants) who still consider MS as a server alternative is because MS is spending massive amounts of money to push Win2k server into hosting providers and their kin. Everywhere you can see "Now with special ultra professional Win2K Server option" and such. MS is paying hard cash for these adds to be presented on hosting homepages. That's why their all over the place.
Little Tidbit: 5 years ago a guy I knew wanted me to join a project on a content syndication system built in.Net Beta. The Windows experts were laughing their heads of on BG renaming.obj to.net and making a big marketing boohey about it and this guy was thinking he was cream of the crop cause he was following the MS call. I asked for 80k$ anual income, he said no (what I'd hoped for). Now he's the cook at my favourite lounge (good at cooking - just made me a nice ciabatta this noon) and the only thing they've managed to build is a hideously overpriced, under-performing Win2K-server-only content management system (http://www.q-affairs.de/index.htm) that doesn't even do HTML Umlaute correctly (despite being a german project). Due to it's Win2K-only restraint they can't even guarantee 99% uptime.
Bottom line: Win2K is a server-side joke. Just as.obj recycled as.net is little more than an expensive hype. Nothing less. The nice Win-Only IDEs aside maybe. If it prevails then only because hardware vendors are happy to sell one box per server-app ("otherwise win2k crashes, you know") and MS is shelling out a few hundred million from their office-coffee-piggybank to push Win2k Server into the market against all sane reasoning. Money allways beats reason, y'know?
Yes, my friend, you're just outed yourself as someone who goes for the buzz and not the hard facts. Show me something with the power, flexebility and stability of Zope, RoR or even that PHP-mess called Typo3 in the Win2K server world and I'll make an opinial u-turn. Until then I recommend you check Linux/OSS out properly AND do a hard facts comparsion of both Linux* and Win2K before you get to close to bullshitting territory. Zope is a good start. It has both my dual-MS-certifed friends converted to the light side of the force. And it even runs on Win2K. With it's own Webserver and all.
.Net zealots please cue flames below. Thank you.
* You may substitute Linux with BSD or even Mac OS X if you like.
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With MM bought by Adobe, Adobe is the de-facto monopoly in design packages right now. Now if competition grows, Adobe/MM might just come clear with improved developement tools that run on Linux aswell.
Then again, MS will either release a product that is so uber-shitty that only the most hardcore MS Developers will use it or it probably will build a product that hat "proprietary lock-in" written all over it. So Adbe won't have any competition in the first place.
.. eventhough I never remembered what was what with sinus and tangens. The simple trick is to allways have the Unit circle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_Circle) aka 'Einheitskreis' (german, http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einheitskreis) handy before your "inner eye". With that finding out which tangens and sinus is which and which needs to be applied in a certain situation is a piece of cake.
Draw yourself a nice unit circle, memorize it and you'll allways know which relation to use.
Trig math can be real fun. I actually considered becoming a surveyor after our surveying project in 10th grade. A friend and I went to the local surveyors office and even did a little on site trip with the surveying team. That was real cool - and we both got an A for the project in school.
Little portable computers (Sharp PC 1402 back then, mid 80s), lot's of intelligent stuff to do, pratical math and your outside at the fresh air all day. Very cool job for a geek actually...
Box:
For the Plattform independent stuff you're doing you'll want anything that's powerfull and quiet. If you don't hate towers you'll want a PC in the Zalman TN 500a Towercase, a complete fanless case for PCs. The entire case is one big heatsink with countless heatpipes, coolers and HDD coolcasings inside. The only way to go for a PC box you're going to sit at all day. The case cost 950 Euros, but I'd say it's worth it. Put anything inside thats big and fast. Some multi opteron setup (cooling noise isn't an issue, remember?) with 8 GB of fast RAM. Consider adding a Rocketdrive or solid state HDD. 60 nanoseconds access to your drive have something going for it when you're doing Java and Server Side Web stuff. Linux (custom Kernel Debian or Gentoo) plus Win2k running on VMWare should do it for the OS. Consider a WM instead of a desktop. It's less distraction from work. Allthough current KDE is cool, I still like to use Windowmaker, E or Fluxbox. Try those out.
The cheaper alternative for long hours of programming is a 20" iMac. Minimum noise, minimum space, top level working enviroment. OS X is good. It's not as good and fitting than a well configured and installed Linux/VM+Win2k setup on a box like the one I described above, but therefore it's like 6 times cheaper.
Screen:
If you're getting the PC take the 23" Apple display with it. If you want multi screen, take a Panoramtech, they are the ticket. Pricey, but the only real way to go for multicreen.
Chair:
You're sitting at it all day, so pay. The german Swopper is the Mercedes Benz of desk stools and ideal for computer desk jobs. Don't get the one with the pointless backrest though, that's just a gimmick. If the swopper isn't for you, I recommend something from the Stokke line of chairs. The Actulum or Pendulum look fitting for desk jobs and still are flexible enough for keeping your back alive.
Desk and room:
Don't have anything special for this. Apply common sense and a sense for quality. For your working room you want to consider setting it up by some Feng Shui principles. Feng Shui isn't all legend and has some interessting insights that help you set up your living space. I followed some Feng Shui rules in my room, and it feels good and enables me to work more concentrated. For instance I'm sitting in the opposite corner from the door with the door at 2:30. I can handle my daughter or my spouse interrupting my work much better that way.
Cinelerra is for sure the BEST video editor on Linux.
Wrong.
You obviously don't know what you're talking about.
First of all there is MainActor - a commercial 'Home User' NLE. With all the features you'll ever need and much less resource hungry I presume.
Then there is Shake (http://www.apple.com/shake/). A compositing tool, not a NLE, yes, but I'd guess the built in NLE capabilities pound every OSS NLE into the ground.
Then there is the discreet/Autodesk Line of Tools. Smoke and the High End Effect Kit "Flint" both run on Linux. Flint even exclusively (http://www.autodesk.com/flint).
Then there is Blender, which has a sort-of NLE built in that's called 'Video Sequencer'. That's an OSS tool I trust to be usable without requireing a quad opteron -allthough I've never tested it.
I could go on, but I guess the point is driven Home: Cinelerra may be fine, but it is not the best Video NLE for Linux.
That's all that comes to mind just now.
And before people start yapping, yes, there is MySQL and PostgreSQL. They're both good for small to medium sized projects. But if you're talking terabytes or petabytes of data -- you're going to want one of the big guys, which offer things that those don't yet.
The upper limit for a single MySQL Database is 64 Terabyte. (Or was it a single MySQL table?)
That plus the fact that most DBs of this size usually do nothing more but more or less serial reads and writes makes MySQL actually one of the most feasable DB engines for large databases. Because it is one of the fastest DBs out there. And I doubt that Oracle is any more scalable than Firebird or MaxDB/SAP DB.
You're running a million email accounts on exchange? You didn't say that, but still I'm asking. 'Cause I'd say that would be impossible. ...
:-) ). Zope could maybe even do parts of the webfrontend. But you'd have to test that for speed. Python alone is perfect for frontend though. The PL doesn't matter that much, but you should stick to one for all what you're doing. You're starting with a clean slate, you might aswell honor that without building a messy bloat of 10 technologies.
But if your company plans to scale to 1 million live and running mail accounts these are the things that come to my mind:
1st: You need serious Iron for this.
Either up to a few hundred beefed rack pc's (depends on how the mean usage of those 1 million accounts is) for load balancing, admin, fault tolerance, data and automation or some uber-special sun server solution for this. PCs are probably better. Scaling/maintaining is cheaper in the end.
2nd: I only know my way about things the size of a beercase so here goes my 2 cents for the PC solution:
Something stable (Linux or BSD) and an MTA that doesn't get in the way. Maintainability goes over speed at this point - I'd guess Postfix or Exim would be the ticket.
3rd: Consider a DB setup for storage. Also here I'd go OSS all the way. Postgres and Firebird scale very well, but even MySQL could pull this if set up correctly. You have no big relational stuff, just a 'give data, take data and shut up' scenario here. And MySQL is fast. As in f*cking fast. If you have a good admin policy and automate that you're going to have zero fuss, zero slowpoking in your storage. MySQL might even be the best way.
4th: Process automation/admining. Pick a good PL and/or appserver for this. This should be scalable in itself and also shouldn't get in the way (again: maintainability over speed). I recommend checking out Python and Zope. Zope loadbalancing is a piece of cake and allthough it's a slowpoke unsuitable for the grunt work, it's object relational DB is like sex with Claudia Schiffer when working with it. You could set up a handfull of boxes with that and have your backend covered (no pun intended
5th: Your team. You need a team for this. A handfull of people who help you build the system and document it and know whats going on. The "OSS expert but no-foam-around-mouth" type is good for this. All should use the same PL for automation and generally know whats going on, even if they specialize (storage, automation, web-frontend, etc).
6th: Facilities. This is the ballpark where you think about that aswell. Fire safety, spare power with large UPS and maybe even generators. Fat lines. Do the math, add 40% and then build it. Same 40% rule goes for cost and final rollout schedule.
7th: Offsite backup for internal accounts. Check your requirements. If the company is large you'll need a remote backup site and some overturning backup policy.
Backup could also be done with two or three suitcases of external encrypted HDDs that are carried around if you want to save bandwidth for account access. Few think of a solution like this, but it acutally is feasable, safe and cheap. And spare HDDs for replacement aren't a problem either.
8th: Politics.
External Contracts: Get nice-like with your ISP(s). You wanna have had a few beers with the guy you're explaining that you've missjudged your requirements and need an extra 4 lines. Now. Or like to switch of a few for the time being.
You Boss and his superiours: Keep them informed but do the decisions yourself. Don't pester them with techno babble. They wanna know you can do it yourself. At this scale they are more your partners than your superiours. You need to be up to it. Naturally. Rethink that matter before you give your people a thumbs up. Nothing bad about coming to the conclusion that external contractors would be the better solution. Be a professional, not a jerk.
Good luck.
Dunno, that HDD looks a lot like a CF card with a fancy sticker on it.
Sticker? Maybe.
Fancy? No.
Gosh are these people dumb. My standards for a rippoff are much higher. What kind of poor sob falls for this?
Very funny quote indeed. I should mention though that I am a former american citizen (yes, I know, even few germans believe that) but there actually are a lot of germans that are just as good a writing (RPG player and computer geeks - lots of english book to read) and quite a lot at speaking. I'm in the fortunate position of being able to speak accent free german and accent free english (well, it's actually texican/american english). A nice asset I'm gratefull for.
There is a simular joke in Germany:
What is the difference between a Turk and a Nazi?
A Turk speaks correct german, works for his money and pays taxes.
I don't by games very often lately - I used to.
But WoW definitely is a innovation. It's like many HL2 (railroad storytelling) spread out over a large pane (MMORPG questing), playable by absolute n00bs with sloth reflexes. Add in Blizzards ultra extreme focus on playtesting (remember StarCraft and the 3 factions and how well they played? 2 *years* of playtesting that was!) their experience in "Hamstering Games" (Diablo anyone?) that fact that their games run smooth a easy on old hardware (I'm using a Geforce 4 and WoW looks cooool) which is purpose but also is due to the long playtesting. On top of that comes an interface that my grandma can operate with ease.
Bottom Line:
WoW was the last push MMORPS and online video gaming needed. This is the real thing.
When tablets and wifi become a household comodity, this type of entertainment will take over large portions of mainstream. That's the simple truth.
Germany in general is a mess. We've got 5 million unemployed, an advanced federal election coming up because of that and no relief in sight. The politicians just don't 'get it' and population is generally fed up of it.
I choose to go freelance two years ago. As, amongst other things, a web developer, with a thourough focus on OSS. Which is a growing market and closing in on critical mass here in germany. Everybody (and I mean everybody ) and his brother is using Typo3, people consider Linux as an alternative and demand for OSS consulting is growing. My partners are in with pharmaceutical corporations - which, naturally, have licences to print money. I'm building myself a reputation and even have a small business contract with a small agency in Florida im doing CRM for.
I'm flying under the radar, earning barely over minimum wage, making any comparion with those popular 'yellow press' salary lists utterly pointless. But I have liberties fulltime jobbers can only dream of and don't have to fuss around with superiours who don't take me for granted. I've learned to trust no one but myself (learned the hard way) and feel fairly safe even though I've currently got zero finacial backup and the german federal pension will be a joke when I'm old.
IT is growing with 5% aprox. and OSS is growing a little faster. I can bill aprox. 60$ an hour and have 2-3 hours a day that I can bill. It just covers my expenses. The upside being that I can spend a notable portion of my time at my favourite lounge sipping Latte and studying O'Reillys. In a nice indian summer these days. Oh, and, btw, how was your work day, my fellow slashdotter? *wide grin*
The downside being the tax Uber-paperwork, which is beyond insane in Germany.
Bottom line: I don't earn very much, but I'm surviving on my own. Which means I can't complain. If I keep on track and gain in efficiency (my main focus at the time) I might even have a small company with a handfull of employees some day. Who knows...
Stallman himself might not be a Communist, but to me there's a fair amount of evidence to suggest that a number of European Linux users in particular are.
Sorry, but that's nonsense. Just because there are opinions that are considered 'leftifst' in the US doesn't mean that the rest of the world has commies for Linux users. On the contrary. And allthough I think of Stallman as notably unsympathetic, his positions aren't plain political inclinations. He can argue on his every statement with rock solid reasoning. That's why his statements have such an impact.
Dear MySQL AB Represantative
I am a consultant and head of a small team of freelance IT experts with a focus on small business ERP, CRM and Web solutions.
Just now I have read about your companies new partnership with SCO, a company who's policy is commonly regarded as extremly questionable throughout the international IT industry. I fail to see the advantage for such a reputable company like MySQL AB joining a partnership with a company such as SCO, that has abused and disrespected open source software, open source licences and open source concepts and the even the smallest amount of common decency whilst executing their business in the last 3 years. (I do presume you have heard about the lawsuits SCO is involved in)
A considerable amount of my customers uses the MySQL Database for ERP and SCM services and products my company (based in germany) deploys, and more than once have I, as a consultant, recommended MySQL as a relyable and well documented database software. It has never failed me, and the MySQL Database has gained my trust as a professional.
Please note that I am more than irritated by the business decicision your company has made regarding this partnership with SCO and the trust I have held in MySQL AB is severely tainted. For me and my partners this may very well be a reason to more quickly and thoroughly evaluate the feasability or alternative db products and their vendors.
Please be so kind to pass this on to your superiours.
Thank you very much.
Kind regards
xxx
MySQL AB is working on MaxDB, the successor to SAP DP that will be 100% MySQL compliant and be on par with the most advanced of DB technology. They have a lot of irons in the fire and the SAP DB move was considered extremely smart. SAP handed the code over to them.
Pulling a thing like this is stupid imho, and will spoil the image they gained the last 3 years significantly. I really don't know what to make of it.
Time to look at Firebird (http://firebird.sourceforge.net/) and PostrgreSQL.
I guess monopolys are never good.
I had a list of names posted. It was the first suggestion in the forums that had more than one entry. (I'm good at making names - better than most nerds that is). One guy did a summary of all names posted and completely ignored/overlooked mine. Half of those had some sort of branding quality, as at least a third in the forums were very good.
The problem with Joomla! is the lack of speech rythym. If you have a chance to use a fantasy name - and most OSS projects couldn't care less if the name is known and speakable in most countries - such as the name "Diesel" which became a well know clothing brand (very smart pick for a name, just like "amazon").
Take for instance "Rivett" or "Engine" (Engine was one of my suggestions), or even a silly name like "TittyTwister". All of these have at least one vowel at all sylable borders, which makes them easier to memorize, speak, pronounce and spell. With "Engine" being an exeption because it's pronouced different from it's spelling. A good tradeoff if you like the associations the name causes.
Bottom line:
Nothing agains a complete fantasy name - on the contrary. In the end you have better brand recognition. But you should let people who have experience at naming do it. Especially when so many marketing experts offer their help as they did with Joomla!. Joomla! looks cool, that why lots of people in the marketing industry use it. Many would've like to pay back by helping out with branding and such. It's a shame the core team didn't go along.
Then again, I've seen crappier names than Joomla! in the OSS world, so I guess I should be glad.
Slow fork is why I use x86 Linux for server stuff.
HW/SW inconsistency and the mass of problems that come along with it is why I use Apple/Mac OS X for all other stuff.
And even comparing Attention-warning-prototype do-not-touch-or-use-for-mission-critical reiserFS with HFS is being silly.
You might want to pitch HFS against ext3 and have a nice academic discussion over wether HFS overdoeses the journals and triple checksums, but ReiserFS is not even in their league.
Allthoug Reiser does have some very cool ideas it will take another few years before they're solid enough for the real world.
Slashdot dupe posts with virus.
To late, folks.
... and what can be done to prevent and/or lessen such disasters in the future?
... rings a bell?
Well, let's start with number one:
Have that Airhead that is in charge over there at your place finally sign the Kyoto protocol and reduce greenhouse reason nummero uno, which is CO2. I'd like to add that the US has the highest per capita output of CO2. Y'know, global warming, change of climate, stronger storms and all that
On goes it with
Don't build below sea level. Maybe? No?
Then:
Don't build with egg-carton but with real bricks.
I could go on, but those are the most pressing.
Jeebus, you do have some nerve. Outing yourself as an MM employee amongst a crowd of slashdot insaniacs. Your standard uninformed FUDers are cueing posts allready. I'l get some Popcorn and watch the show :-) .
Aside from that:
As someone who makes a living developing RIAs (mostly with Flash) I have some things to say - maybe you can pass them on to the right places?
1) Cudos to the actionscript 2 team. AS2 finally is a solid PL and does good work.
2) The IDE (I'm currently using MX 2k4 Pro) is bad. Really bad. Almost as bad as director.
-I cant delete workplace layouts, the menu just gets larger. No renaming aswell.
-no matter what window has the focus, the stage is allways in the back
-the editor sucks. Take it out or replace it with homesite or something
-when I open a file and look at it hard, the star pops up. I'd actually like that to pop up when I've actually changed something on that file. It's called "undo-stack". Maybe the IDE Team want's to check out the concept? It's been almost 10 years now. They could go and ask the AS2 team. They seem to be on top of things.
- Either memorize workplace layout by file or by selected layout. But don't do a half-assed mix of both. Workspace management in general is really bad. Especially on a Mac. For a tool that costs 800$ this is very bad performance. Pass it on.
I could go on for a while but those are the most pressing.
Thanks.
Kyrie and Amen, Brother! /. Couldn't have done it better. Nice work.
No mod points, sorry.
A nice, gritty riposte to the usual Flash FUD on
EULAs are full of this BS that noone complies with - or could comply with. They are just backdoors for the companies. If MS would go by and start enforcing their EULAs 100% they'd lose huge amounts of popularity within week.
This EULA part is all about having a crowbar against the Flash Player spreading on to mobile devices. MM want's to make money selling the plattform to providers. I actually managed to install Flash 6 on to a PDA. Together with the Pocket Windows help system, of which Flash Player 6 is a part. They want to be able to go after people who do this large scale. That's all.
Oh, and btw, those EULAs are unenforcable in most countries.
... than it's GBA Cousin. I read a review of Advance Wars for DS ... and bought a second GBA SP.
... well y'know what I mean ...)
.... ok I'll calm down. Links to GBC and lower.
After thoroughly checking out all current protable consoles I have access too (PSP, DS, GBA SP) I've come to following conclusion:
PSP Upsides: Tres Cool. Looks extremly sexy - also with the power off. Moreso with power on. Grafics simply rock. Has MP3 and memorystick + little PDA apps - nice for non-palm owners (I have one). Wireless.
PSP Downsides: Price. Price/can-be-dropped ratio is bad. Game prices. Load time. Disk based media (vulnerable).
DS upsides: Has a close-cover. Touchscreen is what everyone was waiting for. Chip based media. Media small. Downwards compatible 'drives'.
DS downsides: Ugly. Screen(s) too small/device to big (pick one). Buttons flimsy.
Touchscreen use is implemented so badly in the line of games I wanna chop of heads over at nintendo *all* the time. I mean what are these people thinking. They've got a frigging TOUCHSCREEN and the thing is more complicated to operate than my Palm? Give me a break!
The way Nintendo has nearly neglected the possibilities of the touchscreen up til now is a pure insult to customers. DS Need for Speed Underground for instance just screems for being shoved into the developers rectum. Hard. Same with Advance Wars Dual Strike. AW2 GBA with two screens. Great. How long to port? 15 minutes? These Developers deserve a clobbering for this crappy implementation of games. Sorry, but I'm NOT buying. If there ever was a product where Nintendo did a fuckup that they deserved to go broke over, it's this one. Get some developers and built games that actually use the touchscreen, add downward conectivity and a smaller case that doesn't look entirely like some shitty MC Donalds toy. Then come back.
Games to expensive (especially for that
DS games barely better than GBA counterparts (see above)
Doesn't lan-connect to GBA line or lower (that was the final turn off for me).
GBA SP Upsides: Small (A whole LAN party kit is still very small). Fairly cheap. Looks cool. (All colors you'd whish for. And then some.) Ten bazillion games that use the entire device. Concole controls difficult for complex games but bearable and actually put to good use - not like that DS Touchscreen fuckup Nintendo has been doing up till now
GBA SP Downsides: Lacking Schoolyard 'new toy' value for sad and sorry wannabees. No real headphone jack. (To be fixed with the Micro)
Bottom line:
A GBA SP. Or two. Doen't make you look silly in public, is affordable and is a seasoned product. Maybe a DS SP will do it. Untill then I've got two SPs and a set of games to have fun with my friends or daughter everywhere. And I'm still cheaper off than with any other.
Good heavens. Modded -1 flamebait. I can't believe it. What is this? Idiot day at slashdot? Had the same class of tread just an hour ago (http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=160244&cid=13 415812/) ... Did I say slashdot? Never mind...
Calling Gimp "extremely powerfulll" is like calling WordPad a strong layout tool.
Warning: This one comes across as a flame, but I'm to mad at this Win2k Server Bullcrap I have to deal with every odd week to contain my anger caused by parent post. Please excuse.
.Net Joke, have allready spent a fortune on MS IDEs and a Win2K licence and don't have anything mission critical your working on"? Or "Nice if you like a clean one-server-per-webapp policy to keep things in order?"
.Net Beta. The Windows experts were laughing their heads of on BG renaming .obj to .net and making a big marketing boohey about it and this guy was thinking he was cream of the crop cause he was following the MS call. I asked for 80k$ anual income, he said no (what I'd hoped for). Now he's the cook at my favourite lounge (good at cooking - just made me a nice ciabatta this noon) and the only thing they've managed to build is a hideously overpriced, under-performing Win2K-server-only content management system (http://www.q-affairs.de/index.htm) that doesn't even do HTML Umlaute correctly (despite being a german project). Due to it's Win2K-only restraint they can't even guarantee 99% uptime.
.obj recycled as .net is little more than an expensive hype. Nothing less. The nice Win-Only IDEs aside maybe. If it prevails then only because hardware vendors are happy to sell one box per server-app ("otherwise win2k crashes, you know") and MS is shelling out a few hundred million from their office-coffee-piggybank to push Win2k Server into the market against all sane reasoning. Money allways beats reason, y'know?
.Net zealots please cue flames below. Thank you.
For regular server use (eg. file server, web server, etc for a small to mid-sized company) Windows 2003 is pretty solid.
"Win2k is pretty solid?" As in "sort of stable"? Or "Kinda so-so not to totally viri and exploit ridden?" Or do you mean "Nice if you've been lured into this
Give me a f*ckin' break. And whatever you're smoking, don't offer anything of that to me, please.
Contrary to what the clueless and ill-"informed" think: The only reason professionals are still dealing with utter morons (read: Consultants) who still consider MS as a server alternative is because MS is spending massive amounts of money to push Win2k server into hosting providers and their kin.
Everywhere you can see "Now with special ultra professional Win2K Server option" and such. MS is paying hard cash for these adds to be presented on hosting homepages. That's why their all over the place.
Little Tidbit:
5 years ago a guy I knew wanted me to join a project on a content syndication system built in
Bottom line:
Win2K is a server-side joke. Just as
Yes, my friend, you're just outed yourself as someone who goes for the buzz and not the hard facts. Show me something with the power, flexebility and stability of Zope, RoR or even that PHP-mess called Typo3 in the Win2K server world and I'll make an opinial u-turn. Until then I recommend you check Linux/OSS out properly AND do a hard facts comparsion of both Linux* and Win2K before you get to close to bullshitting territory. Zope is a good start. It has both my dual-MS-certifed friends converted to the light side of the force. And it even runs on Win2K. With it's own Webserver and all.
* You may substitute Linux with BSD or even Mac OS X if you like.