My oldest actively used machine is my firewall. It's a Cyrix 486DX2-66 on some oddball VESA mobo. 1.2GB drive, 48MB RAM, Mach32 VESA video card, two ISA NICs. The 2X Sony CDU-31A CD-ROM drive died just a couple months ago. The floppy still works OK. Never had a single hardware failure in the beast since I got it in 1994.
It has been my firewall for many years now but alas, I am finally getting ready to "upgrade" it to a Pentium 200 MMX. With increasing DSL speeds RP-PPPOE is really starting to peg the CPU, and I can't get the bandwidth I should be getting.
I also get my Commodore 64 out once in a while to play Bruce Lee. My daughter loves it.
This is becoming very common in the tech book industry. All the tech book publishers are trying to foist all kinds of reall bad crap on us. Northcut's "Network Intrusion Detection" and the Solaris 9 exam cram book I started reading (and quickly dropped... don't remember the author, some Prof.) both suffer from the same sort of issues.
Terrible writing style, bad use of language (not that mine is great, but I am not writing books), spelling mistakes, blatantly wrong information, "Technical Reviewers" who must be sleeping at the wheel... I would be embarrassed(sp) to be one of those technical reviewers.
Not that this is a tech book industry issue. My wife rented "Atlantis 2" for my daughter... wow, what an unbelievable piece of crap! But heck, the people producing this stuff aren't dumb... they rest on their laurels while we keep buying their trash!
I have no formal *nix education. "Everything I learned, I learned from Slashdot..." Well OK, that is an exageration.
I started working on UNIX boxen in 1991 for school, and then Linux in 1993. Been "doing" *nix ever since. Sounds to me like you already have a good skill set.
But anyway, I started out in an "IT Technician" role... basically joe-boy for whatever tasks the boss did not want to do. But fortunately I was an "IT Technician" that ran combat simulators running on UNIX boxen. So even though I got all the mundane tasks, they were mundane tasks on UNIX systems.
Then I moved on to a University, an intermediate position in UNIX Admin, and from there to my current job.
In every case, I got my jobs because I was able to sell my skills despite the lack of a stick of paper that annointed me 'edcated...
Case studies on ibm.com that favourably argue the use of Linux and DB2 on S/390? I'm going to buy one right away! If IBM sez it is good for me to buy their stuff then who am I to argue!
You need to get into real computer science. In it's effort to become a Real Science, CS diverged wildly from it's roots. Think Algorithm Analysis is real CS? Wrong. Protocols and semaphores and mutexes and... ? Wrong again. These are the things that the founders of todays CS introduced so they could have their own little piece of the pie. To make themselves legit. So they could have a BSc in CS.
Real Computer Science is found when you go, er, way back. Time was, all "computer scientists" were not computer scientists at all but rather physicists, econonomists, chemists, shrinks etc etc who got into computing to help them solve their problems. Those were the last, IMHO, real computer scientists... even if they were not called that.
And that is where the fun is, using computer technology to help solve problems. Most schools offer computer oriented classes in the other sciences where you are able to apply computing to the science in question. Most schools offer combined programs where you might take a medial in each of CS and some other discipline.
Sure there is a requirement for some people to take "pure" CS, but most of todays pure CS students would be much better off taking a mixed bag of courses. This gives you the chance to apply computing technology to practical problems in other areas, something much more valuable.
If you're selling a higher-price product you can't compete by matching the lower priced product, you have to be better.
But it is better. You can run 99% of all the so called "Linux Software"* with a simple recompile and you get "hot-swap anything"... and not just on really high end hardware but midrange stuff as well. (our definitions of high end may differ here).
*of course, this is not Linux software. What would we call it? POSIX software? Anyway, it'll generally run on any *nix platform with no modifiction.
Sun limits the number of these cards which are supported in each system type, due to bandwidth limitations, but obeying the supported rule is up to you. I wouldn't put more than 2 in a desktop box (U5/10,SB100) and I think only 1 is supported. IIRC, Sun supports up to 6 in an E450.
The current model is a 733MHz Celeron with 128MB RAM base, going up to 1GB RAM, onboard Rage something or other graphics. Supports all versions from Windows from 95 to 2K Adv Server.
You can do some interesting things with these. Since Windows is 'installed' in an image file on the UFS filesystem, you can copy them, easily back them up, and bring differant images up on differant cards at differant times. You could have the office apps images running during the day and the Quake servers running at night...;-) They are also cheap enough to have a spare in the server should one go tits up.
They won't run Linux unfortunately. They would have to add support for that to the SunPCi software.
Could it, just possibly, that the reason the music industry is pushing WMA is because it allows them to protect copyrighted material and is widely available?
This is probably just what Billy G told them. Of course the Real Plan is to ensure that the defacto digital media standard is owned by Microsoft so they can:
use their control of the format to force software upgrades by introducing new features onto the music industries CDs (which won't work with your now 2 weeks out of date WMA player)
start renting your music to you for an annual fee (.Net). Microsoft has realised that they cannot live on licensing renewals alone so by eliminating all sense of ownership they can now rent your files and applications to you for a regular monthly/annual fee... this means continuous revenue for Bill.
... I am sure other inventive/.ers can come up with more... I must go home, for the life of me I cannot get gnutella to work through my firewall.
i blame poor promotion, shitty bands, and the industry changing from music-based to money-based. selling cookie cutter bands that imitate another successful band. this is what i believe caused the
music world to suffer the past 5 years.
Hear hear! Go Punk and tell the BigCo Music Makers to start licking mosh sweat from betwixt your balls!
If _I_ lived in a Perfect World... Billy G would be my Bitch, and I'd invite all my friends over to stone him with shrinkwrapped boxes of Windows XP... that would be an XPerience.
Now if you will excuse me, I am meeting the Boyz on the Flats for some way cool desk drags.
Well I would certainly love to solve all the world's problems but I am usually pretty busy with my own little corner of the continuum.
That one has an idea, concern or interest but no solution does not mean one should not voice one's opinion.
I also would have absolutely nothing useful to offer such an effort, having no experience with the development of such things.
I have a better idea, let the Industry define an open standard, free for all to use, thereby establishing and equal playing field for fair competition. Of course, Billy G would just use his monopoly on the desktop to fsck up the defined standard with his usual range of 'useful extensions'.
You may well be correct! It certainly would not be surprising... Bill: "Have I got a deal for you!"
But the end result is the same. The Industry should not be able to dictate vendor specific solutions. Turn the WMA spec over to a standards body or make it an RFC, or release it under some free license.
The issue is not having to acquire another device, the issue here is that the music industry is dictating who I must buy the device from.
Since these are proprietary M$ WMA files, I must either be using M$ Windows, or some other M$ licensed WMA player. The music industry is dictating the Microsoft will be the sole purveyor of digital music.
This is something like the major car manufacturers getting together and deciding that they are all only going to buy, ahem, bridgestone tires. *Poof* All the other tire vendors tank because the car makers made Bridgestone a monoploy.
In this case, the music makers are handing monopoly control of the industry standard digital music media format to Microsoft on the proverbial silver platter.
Your analogy is not quite correct. Of course I need a CD player, but there is no specification of who I must buy that CD player from. Pick your vendor... build your own if you want and have the means.
To play WMA files, I must be using M$ Windows, or at least an M$ licensed WMA player (are there any WMA players for other platforms?). We have here a 3rd party (the music makers) dictating which computer OS I must use. We have a 3rd party that is dictating which software vendor I must deal with. _That_ is the problem.
My car dealer does not stipulate which mechanic I must got to, my barber does not stipulate which shampoo I must use, my dentist (ignoring the ORAL-B/Crest monopoly) does not dictate which toothpaste or toothbrush I must use, and my herbalist does not specify where I must buy my weed...
I don't use illegal MP3s, or go beyond my 'fair use' rights, but preventing me from exercising my fair use rights via such controls is in direct contrevention of copyright laws.
Go ahead and introduce copyright protection mechanisms, but those controls must function entirely within the realm of copyright law, and they must be cross platform and based on open standards that everyone has free and unrestricted access to.
You may want to brush up on your history. Christians are guilty of murders as atrocious, perhaps even more so, as any other god-based religion. Hell, to this day Christian preachers are porking choir boys behind the alter...
Granted, today Christians aren't slaughtering heathens anymore, but make no mistake, Christians believe their way, their bible, and their god is the one true way. Check out the Bible Belt sometime, or listen to the shmucks preaching on TV. They believe that Christianity is the only way to eternal happiness as much as Islamics believe Islam is the only way to eternal happiness.
All god-based religions are corrupt, because they are run by regular people, and there are always regular people who succumb to corruption.
They are not selling hardware, or at least not processing power. Intel chips are way ahead of anything from SUN, IBM, whatever. Only Alpha CPUs are better.
Correction: Intel CPUs have higher clock rates. That is all. They can theoretically execute more instructions per clock tick than other CPUs (numbers of pipelines ignored for sake of argument). That is all higher clock rates give you. Whether those ticks are actually used or not is another story. RISC based CPUs are generally better capable of keeping those pipes full.
Sure, there are marginal improvements in total system performance from things like cache, bus speed and so on. They are marginal.
Marginal? Is that why non-intel systems continue to post the best real world benchmarks? You can't possibly have any experience with real-world systems (which does not inlcude desktops) because fast CPUs only matter in CPU bound systems. Most real world systems are IO bound, not CPU bound. Yes, fast CPUs do well in d.nets trivial tasks, because d.net tasks are CPU bound. Small data sets, being crunched in memory. Desktop systems and the software they run are usually CPU bound, which is why morons like you think fast CPUs are the shit!
For anything up to 8 CPU's, Intel hardware will be better most of the time. That covers
all small servers, departmental servers, web servers, small/medium database servers and
a stack of other stuff. Sure, 8 CPU intel machine's aren't great, but then 4 CPU ones go as
fast as 8 CPU Suns.
Wrong. Intel hardware does not provide near the level of reliability, availability and serviceability that high end UNIX systems provide. Again you make the mistake of assuming that MegaHurts(sic) is where it is. Wrong.
Look at distributed.net CPU speed tables. The fasted risc CPU of any kind (UltrasparcIII @
800Mhz) is less than half the speed of a Pentium III doing 1.2Ghz (for RC5 cracking).
There aren't any 800MHz US-III CPUs. 600, 750, 900, but no 800.
No, what Sun et al. provide is not good hardware. They have operating systems
marginally better than linux (better disk stuff (filesystems, software raid and volume
management etc), better threading, and a few other things). But, what they do provide is
support and service. Lots and lots and lots of it. And they provide guarantees.
Not good hardware? Show me one Intel box that has the same level of RAS features seen Sun's Sun Fire line of boxes? Show me one Intel box that allows you to partition a system, swap the CPUs on the fly, yank out a broken system interconnect and replace it without taking the box down.
Now show me the OS that can actually take advantage of those features.
Well for one: routers and end systems can all support multiple protocols. M$ makes a critical update that contains the new protocol now, while everyone is still talking TCP/IP. You download and install the update which installs, and enables, the new protocols. Voila, it is there, ready to go when M$ takes over the net with its new protocols. M$ writes the update so that the new protocols don't actually show up in the list of protocols in settings.
Of course I'm also pissed now Sun is saying Openwin support will end soon.
So the what, 5 years or so warning that Openwin was going away was to fast for you?
SPARC is dead? Someone better tell SPARC International; they might want to look into this.
You are confusing Sun marketing names with SPARC International architecture names. SPARC is the name of a chip architecture, which is currently available as SPARC v9. Previous versions included v8, and v7. v9 is 64bit. v7 was 32bit, v8, can't remember but I think it was also 32bit. Check www.sparc.org.
"UltraSPARC" is Sun's marketing name for their implementation of the SPARC v9 architecture. MicroSPARC, SuperSPARC... marketing names...
32bit SPARC systems are all End-of-Life'd, and probably beyond End-of-Service-Life as well, though you can still by refurbished SS5's direct from Sun.
I saw a case at a local PC shop... best case I have ever seen. The box actually belonged to a customer so the guy behind the counter did not know the case's manufacturer.
It had 6 fans built into it... one on either side of the drive bays (with vents punched into the siding), one in the front bottom (standard), another mounted to blow directly on the cards... and more! All steel construction, very modular. I want two of them! But alas... I have not been able to find out who makes 'em.
Slashdot Mirror
My oldest actively used machine is my firewall. It's a Cyrix 486DX2-66 on some oddball VESA mobo. 1.2GB drive, 48MB RAM, Mach32 VESA video card, two ISA NICs. The 2X Sony CDU-31A CD-ROM drive died just a couple months ago. The floppy still works OK. Never had a single hardware failure in the beast since I got it in 1994.
It has been my firewall for many years now but alas, I am finally getting ready to "upgrade" it to a Pentium 200 MMX. With increasing DSL speeds RP-PPPOE is really starting to peg the CPU, and I can't get the bandwidth I should be getting.
I also get my Commodore 64 out once in a while to play Bruce Lee. My daughter loves it.
Mark
This is becoming very common in the tech book industry. All the tech book publishers are trying to foist all kinds of reall bad crap on us. Northcut's "Network Intrusion Detection" and the Solaris 9 exam cram book I started reading (and quickly dropped ... don't remember the author, some Prof.) both suffer from the same sort of issues.
... I would be embarrassed(sp) to be one of those technical reviewers.
... wow, what an unbelievable piece of crap! But heck, the people producing this stuff aren't dumb ... they rest on their laurels while we keep buying their trash!
Terrible writing style, bad use of language (not that mine is great, but I am not writing books), spelling mistakes, blatantly wrong information, "Technical Reviewers" who must be sleeping at the wheel
Not that this is a tech book industry issue. My wife rented "Atlantis 2" for my daughter
Mark
while true; do wget -b --output-document=/dev/null http://www.baytsp.com/; done
... someone want to improve on that?
You might want to CTRL-C it after a bit before you run out of VM
I have no formal *nix education. "Everything I learned, I learned from Slashdot ..." Well OK, that is an exageration.
... basically joe-boy for whatever tasks the boss did not want to do. But fortunately I was an "IT Technician" that ran combat simulators running on UNIX boxen. So even though I got all the mundane tasks, they were mundane tasks on UNIX systems.
...
I started working on UNIX boxen in 1991 for school, and then Linux in 1993. Been "doing" *nix ever since. Sounds to me like you already have a good skill set.
But anyway, I started out in an "IT Technician" role
Then I moved on to a University, an intermediate position in UNIX Admin, and from there to my current job.
In every case, I got my jobs because I was able to sell my skills despite the lack of a stick of paper that annointed me 'edcated
- Mark
Case studies on ibm.com that favourably argue the use of Linux and DB2 on S/390? I'm going to buy one right away! If IBM sez it is good for me to buy their stuff then who am I to argue!
;-)
</FLAMEOFF>
Real Computer Science is found when you go, er, way back. Time was, all "computer scientists" were not computer scientists at all but rather physicists, econonomists, chemists, shrinks etc etc who got into computing to help them solve their problems. Those were the last, IMHO, real computer scientists ... even if they were not called that.
And that is where the fun is, using computer technology to help solve problems. Most schools offer computer oriented classes in the other sciences where you are able to apply computing to the science in question. Most schools offer combined programs where you might take a medial in each of CS and some other discipline.
Sure there is a requirement for some people to take "pure" CS, but most of todays pure CS students would be much better off taking a mixed bag of courses. This gives you the chance to apply computing technology to practical problems in other areas, something much more valuable.
- Mark
But it is better. You can run 99% of all the so called "Linux Software"* with a simple recompile and you get "hot-swap anything" ... and not just on really high end hardware but midrange stuff as well. (our definitions of high end may differ here).
*of course, this is not Linux software. What would we call it? POSIX software? Anyway, it'll generally run on any *nix platform with no modifiction.
- Mark
Sun limits the number of these cards which are supported in each system type, due to bandwidth limitations, but obeying the supported rule is up to you. I wouldn't put more than 2 in a desktop box (U5/10,SB100) and I think only 1 is supported. IIRC, Sun supports up to 6 in an E450.
... ;-) They are also cheap enough to have a spare in the server should one go tits up.
The current model is a 733MHz Celeron with 128MB RAM base, going up to 1GB RAM, onboard Rage something or other graphics. Supports all versions from Windows from 95 to 2K Adv Server.
You can do some interesting things with these. Since Windows is 'installed' in an image file on the UFS filesystem, you can copy them, easily back them up, and bring differant images up on differant cards at differant times. You could have the office apps images running during the day and the Quake servers running at night
They won't run Linux unfortunately. They would have to add support for that to the SunPCi software.
- Mark
This is probably just what Billy G told them. Of course the Real Plan is to ensure that the defacto digital media standard is owned by Microsoft so they can:
i blame poor promotion, shitty bands, and the industry changing from music-based to money-based. selling cookie cutter bands that imitate another successful band. this is what i believe caused the
... Billy G would be my Bitch, and I'd invite all my friends over to stone him with shrinkwrapped boxes of Windows XP ... that would be an XPerience.
music world to suffer the past 5 years.
Hear hear! Go Punk and tell the BigCo Music Makers to start licking mosh sweat from betwixt your balls!
If _I_ lived in a Perfect World
Now if you will excuse me, I am meeting the Boyz on the Flats for some way cool desk drags.
Well I would certainly love to solve all the world's problems but I am usually pretty busy with my own little corner of the continuum.
That one has an idea, concern or interest but no solution does not mean one should not voice one's opinion.
I also would have absolutely nothing useful to offer such an effort, having no experience with the development of such things.
I have a better idea, let the Industry define an open standard, free for all to use, thereby establishing and equal playing field for fair competition. Of course, Billy G would just use his monopoly on the desktop to fsck up the defined standard with his usual range of 'useful extensions'.
ooooooOOOOWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!
You may well be correct! It certainly would not be surprising ... Bill: "Have I got a deal for you!"
But the end result is the same. The Industry should not be able to dictate vendor specific solutions. Turn the WMA spec over to a standards body or make it an RFC, or release it under some free license.
The issue is not having to acquire another device, the issue here is that the music industry is dictating who I must buy the device from.
Since these are proprietary M$ WMA files, I must either be using M$ Windows, or some other M$ licensed WMA player. The music industry is dictating the Microsoft will be the sole purveyor of digital music.
This is something like the major car manufacturers getting together and deciding that they are all only going to buy, ahem, bridgestone tires. *Poof* All the other tire vendors tank because the car makers made Bridgestone a monoploy.
In this case, the music makers are handing monopoly control of the industry standard digital music media format to Microsoft on the proverbial silver platter.
- Mark
Your analogy is not quite correct. Of course I need a CD player, but there is no specification of who I must buy that CD player from. Pick your vendor ... build your own if you want and have the means.
...
To play WMA files, I must be using M$ Windows, or at least an M$ licensed WMA player (are there any WMA players for other platforms?). We have here a 3rd party (the music makers) dictating which computer OS I must use. We have a 3rd party that is dictating which software vendor I must deal with. _That_ is the problem.
My car dealer does not stipulate which mechanic I must got to, my barber does not stipulate which shampoo I must use, my dentist (ignoring the ORAL-B/Crest monopoly) does not dictate which toothpaste or toothbrush I must use, and my herbalist does not specify where I must buy my weed
I don't use illegal MP3s, or go beyond my 'fair use' rights, but preventing me from exercising my fair use rights via such controls is in direct contrevention of copyright laws.
Go ahead and introduce copyright protection mechanisms, but those controls must function entirely within the realm of copyright law, and they must be cross platform and based on open standards that everyone has free and unrestricted access to.
- Mark
You may want to brush up on your history. Christians are guilty of murders as atrocious, perhaps even more so, as any other god-based religion. Hell, to this day Christian preachers are porking choir boys behind the alter ...
Granted, today Christians aren't slaughtering heathens anymore, but make no mistake, Christians believe their way, their bible, and their god is the one true way. Check out the Bible Belt sometime, or listen to the shmucks preaching on TV. They believe that Christianity is the only way to eternal happiness as much as Islamics believe Islam is the only way to eternal happiness.
All god-based religions are corrupt, because they are run by regular people, and there are always regular people who succumb to corruption.
They are not selling hardware, or at least not processing power. Intel chips are way ahead of anything from SUN, IBM, whatever. Only Alpha CPUs are better.
Correction: Intel CPUs have higher clock rates. That is all. They can theoretically execute more instructions per clock tick than other CPUs (numbers of pipelines ignored for sake of argument). That is all higher clock rates give you. Whether those ticks are actually used or not is another story. RISC based CPUs are generally better capable of keeping those pipes full.
Sure, there are marginal improvements in total system performance from things like cache, bus speed and so on. They are marginal.
Marginal? Is that why non-intel systems continue to post the best real world benchmarks? You can't possibly have any experience with real-world systems (which does not inlcude desktops) because fast CPUs only matter in CPU bound systems. Most real world systems are IO bound, not CPU bound. Yes, fast CPUs do well in d.nets trivial tasks, because d.net tasks are CPU bound. Small data sets, being crunched in memory. Desktop systems and the software they run are usually CPU bound, which is why morons like you think fast CPUs are the shit!
For anything up to 8 CPU's, Intel hardware will be better most of the time. That covers all small servers, departmental servers, web servers, small/medium database servers and a stack of other stuff. Sure, 8 CPU intel machine's aren't great, but then 4 CPU ones go as fast as 8 CPU Suns.
Wrong. Intel hardware does not provide near the level of reliability, availability and serviceability that high end UNIX systems provide. Again you make the mistake of assuming that MegaHurts(sic) is where it is. Wrong.
Look at distributed.net CPU speed tables. The fasted risc CPU of any kind (UltrasparcIII @ 800Mhz) is less than half the speed of a Pentium III doing 1.2Ghz (for RC5 cracking).
There aren't any 800MHz US-III CPUs. 600, 750, 900, but no 800.
No, what Sun et al. provide is not good hardware. They have operating systems marginally better than linux (better disk stuff (filesystems, software raid and volume management etc), better threading, and a few other things). But, what they do provide is support and service. Lots and lots and lots of it. And they provide guarantees.
Not good hardware? Show me one Intel box that has the same level of RAS features seen Sun's Sun Fire line of boxes? Show me one Intel box that allows you to partition a system, swap the CPUs on the fly, yank out a broken system interconnect and replace it without taking the box down.
Now show me the OS that can actually take advantage of those features.
Good luck.
Well for one: routers and end systems can all support multiple protocols. M$ makes a critical update that contains the new protocol now, while everyone is still talking TCP/IP. You download and install the update which installs, and enables, the new protocols. Voila, it is there, ready to go when M$ takes over the net with its new protocols. M$ writes the update so that the new protocols don't actually show up in the list of protocols in settings.
Hear, hear! Who would trust a storage system made from a terabyte worth of IDE disks? Can you spell catastrophic system failures?
Perhaps the poster is a Sun employee. I have been playing with 1.4 since February.
Of course I'm also pissed now Sun is saying Openwin support will end soon. So the what, 5 years or so warning that Openwin was going away was to fast for you?
Is there any easier way to access the consoles of multiple Sun boxes than telnetting to a terminal server?
SPARC is dead? Someone better tell SPARC International; they might want to look into this.
... marketing names ...
You are confusing Sun marketing names with SPARC International architecture names. SPARC is the name of a chip architecture, which is currently available as SPARC v9. Previous versions included v8, and v7. v9 is 64bit. v7 was 32bit, v8, can't remember but I think it was also 32bit. Check www.sparc.org.
"UltraSPARC" is Sun's marketing name for their implementation of the SPARC v9 architecture. MicroSPARC, SuperSPARC
32bit SPARC systems are all End-of-Life'd, and probably beyond End-of-Service-Life as well, though you can still by refurbished SS5's direct from Sun.
I think that is it! When I saw it the front panel was off so it's hard to say for sure but the interior looks familiar. Thanks for the link!
I saw a case at a local PC shop ... best case I have ever seen. The box actually belonged to a customer so the guy behind the counter did not know the case's manufacturer.
... one on either side of the drive bays (with vents punched into the siding), one in the front bottom (standard), another mounted to blow directly on the cards ... and more! All steel construction, very modular. I want two of them! But alas ... I have not been able to find out who makes 'em.
It had 6 fans built into it