One key concept people overlook: when the site goes down at 3 AM how bad will the drive over suck? When the site goes down right in the middle of rush hour, how long will it take to fight your way there? This WILL happen, and you need to make sure your hands-on people have good access.
The other thing to try out is doing some traceroutes to sites you know are already hosted in the facility. Some of these places are a REAL MESS due to the speed they had to grow the internal network to keep up with business. If you see 7 hops from their front door to the customer router, be very scared.
Another trick is to check out how professionally done the customer cages look. Slick wiring jobs? Beautiful rack mount setups? If the other IT monkeys at the place look professional, they problably didn't pick a looser to host their site.
As far as site security, power backup, etc all of these places will be selling you the same thing.
Heh, very naive. Dream on, but try this one on and tell me it doesn't feel closer to the truth. Money says their already buying the champaign to celebrate step 3. Steps 1 and 2 are already complete...
Alternate Theory
Network Solutions cements their control of the domain name process while increasing their brand power through advertising. They own the majority of dot com names.
Network Solutions cements their control of the certificate process via newly aquired Verisign and Thawte. They own virtually all SSL certificates and personal certificates.
They are aquired by America Online in four months.
I recently bought a DC290 and it's been amazing to use. It can take TIFFs and timelapse photos. Its exposure settings let you take pics in near darkness. The built-in scripting language is kick ass - someone even wrote a script which lets you use the focus-laser as a rangefinder. When I view the pics it takes I'm reminded of the scene in Bladerunner when he spends an hour zooming in and out of tiny details in a picture. To download pictures you just plug it in via USB and it appears as an additional HD on your Windows PC. I've heard that you can access it using Unix freeware as well. Also, the first thing everyone says when they see it is, "Wow, it's much smaller than it looked in the ad!"
I scored mine for $560, AFTER tax and shipping. Here's how:
Go to iVillage and sign up for an account there, using fake info if you want.
They send you a confirmation email that has a link to promotional deals. Go to that page, and find the link to MobShop.
Follow their link to MobShop, which sets a cookie. Buy the camera at MobShop, type in the code that iVillage gave you (LIONLAMB when I did it) for your 20% discount, and wait for camera to arrive!
I also picked up a 128Mb CompactFlash card. This lets me take 160 pics at max resolution, or something like 1400 pics at 640X480.:)
This is a great "perspective" book, but if you're looking for pragmatic advice this is not it. He has a lot of information on his favorite setup (AOLServer/HP/Tcl) but has little to say about anything else, besides, "This sucks, that sucks, you're an idiot if you do that..." etc.
If you're gonna buy this book, buy it for the photos and the excellent writing.
To be honest, I've never seen a book on efficient web programming. For better or worse, web engineering is all about rapid development and deployment. If it takes you twice as long to make something, someone else will beat you to it. If you look at the way some of the truly massive sites (like eBay) are put together, it's staggering that they can support 100 users, much less millions, but with money to burn it just hasn't mattered much.
Go pick up a copy of Advanced Programming in the Unix Environment and Unix Network Programing, V1 by Stevens and write your own perfect solution, or run mod_perl and be aware that each of your Apache children are sucking down 30+ MB of RAM. You decide.:)
A Very Special Message from IIS
on
Pay Lars
·
· Score: 1
Was surfing around the site and I got this message when I tried the donation process. God, you've got to love NT Server. As if rebooting your server farm daily isn't bad enough...
=========================
The page cannot be displayed There are too many people accessing the Web site at this time.
Click the Refresh button, or try again later. Open the 216.46.253.226 home page, and then look for links to the information you want. HTTP 403.15 - Forbidden: Client Access Licenses exceeded Internet Information Services
If you look at the HTML on their "Secure Order" page they're not using SSL to transmit the credit card ordering data. Furthermore, that data is just posted to a form-to-email ASP which presumably stuffs your credit card into an e-mail and zips it off to a POP3 accessable mailbox for their sales person somewhere. Ack! I was very closing to buying, but now I think I'll pass.
On the other hand, it migth be that the method uses Javascript, but at which point this nulls and voids any statement on "working on all existing browsers".
From freashmeat you can see that the appropriate file for it is called Robust.jar, so I think you're probably correct there:)
JavaScript has nothing to do with Java. The fact that the file ends in.jar implies that the system was implemented in Java. So, it probably uses Servlets which can quite easily produce content which will work on all browsers.
My house has had 416k/sec DSL for a year now through Concentric/Northpoint and we've been very satisfied with it. I telnet home from work for hours every day and rarely run into latency problems. I'm also certain that I'm getting the speed I signed up for.
Setup was cake. A guy came by from the phone company and ran a line to our wall. Another guy came buy and dropped off the modem/router. You either plug that into a hub or a computer and you're done. This all happened within two weeks or so of ordering. We got 8 IPs with it, but we immediately setup a FreeBSD/nat server and now we've got 16 computers running behind it.:)
I really only have two problems with this service. First, as has been pointed out in another post, the communication between Concentric and Northpoint is horrible. If Concentric can't solve your problem, you've got a long wait ahead of you before anything will be done. Concentric will just keep saying, "We left a message with so and so at Northpoint, you should hear from him," and nothing will happen. Luckily, I haven't had any major problems since the first month I had the service.
Second, the whole issue of your distance to the CO is a pain. When you ask, "What's the fastest line I can get from you in my area?" you get a different answer from each sales person you talk to. Also, prices vary wildly. I'm paying way more than I should for my line, because Pacific Bell doesn't offer the same high speed service in my area and Concentric/Northpoint pricing isn't that competitive.
What I want to know is, who uses this? And how easy is it to learn?
I tried it, and the main problem that I had was that it was very very awkward to hold and type on. It was exactly the same feeling as trying to play a particularly tricky chord on a guitar. It comes with a wacky strap that you use to tie it to your hand, but it didn't help me much. You feel like you have to balance it in place with your thumb, but you also need that thumb to type with. I'd love to use a keyboard-alternative, but this wasn't it for me...
Slashdot Mirror
One key concept people overlook: when the site goes down at 3 AM how bad will the drive over suck? When the site goes down right in the middle of rush hour, how long will it take to fight your way there? This WILL happen, and you need to make sure your hands-on people have good access.
The other thing to try out is doing some traceroutes to sites you know are already hosted in the facility. Some of these places are a REAL MESS due to the speed they had to grow the internal network to keep up with business. If you see 7 hops from their front door to the customer router, be very scared.
Another trick is to check out how professionally done the customer cages look. Slick wiring jobs? Beautiful rack mount setups? If the other IT monkeys at the place look professional, they problably didn't pick a looser to host their site.
As far as site security, power backup, etc all of these places will be selling you the same thing.
Good luck!
Alternate Theory
The End.
I recently bought a DC290 and it's been amazing to use. It can take TIFFs and timelapse photos. Its exposure settings let you take pics in near darkness. The built-in scripting language is kick ass - someone even wrote a script which lets you use the focus-laser as a rangefinder. When I view the pics it takes I'm reminded of the scene in Bladerunner when he spends an hour zooming in and out of tiny details in a picture. To download pictures you just plug it in via USB and it appears as an additional HD on your Windows PC. I've heard that you can access it using Unix freeware as well. Also, the first thing everyone says when they see it is, "Wow, it's much smaller than it looked in the ad!"
I scored mine for $560, AFTER tax and shipping. Here's how:
- Go to iVillage and sign up for an account there, using fake info if you want.
- They send you a confirmation email that has a link to promotional deals. Go to that page, and find the link to MobShop.
- Follow their link to MobShop, which sets a cookie. Buy the camera at MobShop, type in the code that iVillage gave you (LIONLAMB when I did it) for your 20% discount, and wait for camera to arrive!
I also picked up a 128Mb CompactFlash card. This lets me take 160 pics at max resolution, or something like 1400 pics at 640X480.This is a great "perspective" book, but if you're looking for pragmatic advice this is not it. He has a lot of information on his favorite setup (AOLServer/HP/Tcl) but has little to say about anything else, besides, "This sucks, that sucks, you're an idiot if you do that..." etc.
If you're gonna buy this book, buy it for the photos and the excellent writing.
To be honest, I've never seen a book on efficient web programming. For better or worse, web engineering is all about rapid development and deployment. If it takes you twice as long to make something, someone else will beat you to it. If you look at the way some of the truly massive sites (like eBay) are put together, it's staggering that they can support 100 users, much less millions, but with money to burn it just hasn't mattered much.
Go pick up a copy of Advanced Programming in the Unix Environment and Unix Network Programing, V1 by Stevens and write your own perfect solution, or run mod_perl and be aware that each of your Apache children are sucking down 30+ MB of RAM. You decide. :)
Was surfing around the site and I got this message when I tried the donation process. God, you've got to love NT Server. As if rebooting your server farm daily isn't bad enough...
- --------------------------------
- --------------------------------
=========================
The page cannot be displayed
There are too many people accessing the Web site at this time.
-----------------------------------------------
Please try the following:
Click the Refresh button, or try again later.
Open the 216.46.253.226 home page, and then look for links to the information you want.
HTTP 403.15 - Forbidden: Client Access Licenses exceeded
Internet Information Services
-----------------------------------------------
Technical Information (for support personnel)
Background:
The server you are attempting to access has exceeded its Client Access License limit.
More information:
Microsoft Support
If you look at the HTML on their "Secure Order" page they're not using SSL to transmit the credit card ordering data. Furthermore, that data is just posted to a form-to-email ASP which presumably stuffs your credit card into an e-mail and zips it off to a POP3 accessable mailbox for their sales person somewhere. Ack! I was very closing to buying, but now I think I'll pass.
The order page
The insecure url they post that to
On the other hand, it migth be that the method uses Javascript, but at which point this nulls and voids any statement on "working on all existing browsers".
From freashmeat you can see that the appropriate file for it is called Robust.jar, so I think you're probably correct there :)
JavaScript has nothing to do with Java. The fact that the file ends inMy house has had 416k/sec DSL for a year now through Concentric/Northpoint and we've been very satisfied with it. I telnet home from work for hours every day and rarely run into latency problems. I'm also certain that I'm getting the speed I signed up for.
:)
Setup was cake. A guy came by from the phone company and ran a line to our wall. Another guy came buy and dropped off the modem/router. You either plug that into a hub or a computer and you're done. This all happened within two weeks or so of ordering. We got 8 IPs with it, but we immediately setup a FreeBSD/nat server and now we've got 16 computers running behind it.
I really only have two problems with this service. First, as has been pointed out in another post, the communication between Concentric and Northpoint is horrible. If Concentric can't solve your problem, you've got a long wait ahead of you before anything will be done. Concentric will just keep saying, "We left a message with so and so at Northpoint, you should hear from him," and nothing will happen. Luckily, I haven't had any major problems since the first month I had the service.
Second, the whole issue of your distance to the CO is a pain. When you ask, "What's the fastest line I can get from you in my area?" you get a different answer from each sales person you talk to. Also, prices vary wildly. I'm paying way more than I should for my line, because Pacific Bell doesn't offer the same high speed service in my area and Concentric/Northpoint pricing isn't that competitive.
What I want to know is, who uses this? And how easy is it to learn?
I tried it, and the main problem that I had was that it was very very awkward to hold and type on. It was exactly the same feeling as trying to play a particularly tricky chord on a guitar. It comes with a wacky strap that you use to tie it to your hand, but it didn't help me much. You feel like you have to balance it in place with your thumb, but you also need that thumb to type with. I'd love to use a keyboard-alternative, but this wasn't it for me...
Why do revolutions always inspire counter-revolutions in which the leaders of the previous revolution are immediately placed against a wall and shot?