I'm not hosting Xen i'm using a hosted solution that offers Xen based virtual servers. It only takes a couple of minutes to set up a xen server too if you are running the Xen host yourself - you can play with it yourself in the Xen live CD. The time lag i was referring to was dealing with a hosting company.
I have been using a few Xen based virtual servers from a commercial company recently - I used to manage physical machines. Here are some of my thoughts:
Advantages: * Low performance overhead of Xen compared to other virtual solutions, and full OS level access as if it was a normal server. * The cost of a hosted Xen solution is very low given that the hardware is usually managed. * Reduced/No trips to the data center to replace hard disks etc, * From the provider i use you can also reinstall the OS, snapshot and restore snapshots over a web interface and get access to the console. These are features you can set up in your own data center but most people never get round to. * Quicker turn around if you need new servers, since normally they already have the spare hardware it's 1 or 2 days to get a new server set up rather than 1 to 2 weeks to order, install and configure it. * You could do loadbalancing over several Xen Virtual hosts on physically separate machines very cost effectively. This would also mitigate against the variable performance on different Xen hosts if you used a dynamic weighting loadbalancer.
Disadvantages: * Sometimes other users on the Xen system cause problems, or the server is restarted due to Xen related problems. This hasn't happened that often but you wouldn't currently run a system that needed 99.999% availability on a XEN virtual host if the system is vulnerable to a single server going down. * You never know quite what your worst case performance is going to be like. * If your system doesn't scale laterally (more servers) but only by buying a more powerful single server (some databases for example) then the Xen virtual hosting is not cost efficient.
I have a suggestion for geeks having problems sleeping. Stop watching that DVD or playing poker, close the laptop, lie back and think about the best way to solve a tricky computer problem (maybe for work).
For example last night, I tried to work out whether it was better to generate a thread in a threaded comments system (like slashdots) mainly in the data access layer or whether to order the comments in the applications layer. Doing it in the data access layer could be neat, but then if you did it in the application layer you could quite cleanly reattach all the child/parent comments by putting them all into a hashtable and re-attaching them by iterating over the items adding child nodes by doing comment.getParent().addChild(this) Zzzzzzz
Not that i condone locking in the developing world to proprietary technologies by a company convicted of abusing it's monopoly to hold back fair competition.
Why has Apple signed up to this - to ensure microsoft continues MS Office for mac support?
I can't say i'm too worried about Intel and Toshiba supporting the format.
That is unless intel or toshiba make "Open-DRM" hardware chips to stop "secure" MS Office files from being read by non-trusted programs like OpenOffice.
Sorry, but this thread is still short on anti-microsoft conspiracy stories!
Thanks, I think it is rendering in strict mode or things would be a lot worse (www.eatmyhamster.com) We set a few more paddings and margins to 0 and it seems a bit better now.
I'm glad that Microsoft is fixing these things even if it is mainly because of Firefox. Fingers crossed the min-width/max-width/auto stuff will also make it into IE7. I wonder if there is any chances they will roll out these CSS fixes in an IE6 update.
Hmm, interesting I'm using strict mode and getting different box height calculations in IE - it must be being caused by something different then.
Still, at the moment that's not much to worry about compared to the fact that IE6 is making the txt in some random DIVs dissapear when I use "float"...
Last thing i read on slashdot they'd fixed the CSS bugs that many people were using to work around the broken box model in IE6 but hadn't fixed the broken box model itself. Clearly that is not good.
Also, explorer.exe doesn't really qualify as userland.
Actually I thought Iexplorer.exe/explorer.exe and related libraries was software that would most benefit from the.NET security model. Surely, in the same way NT stopped direct hardware access eventually all programs that users interact with directly should run under.NET?
Also, I would have thought that it would be the.NET runtime that would enforce DRM restrictions since it already has a suitable security model, if that were the case then it would seem inevitable that explorer would sit ontop of the.NET runtime.
I was actually being sarcastic but since you seem to have taken me seriously...
It all depends on your web serving requirements, if you are big then the 8ways are better. You probably wouldn't actually remove older machines, but starting to use 8 way machines in a 1U slot does actually make sense if you are doing mass web serving. You want to cram in as much as possible since you are then maintaining less machines and have more cost effective use of space + more req/sec peak load handling per $$$. (of course this particular motherboard might overheat your datacenter or blow your APCs but i'm talking generally... )
If you are doing mass web serving and are scaling laterally you have everything in RAM you wouldn't be doing much disk IO on a web server, which is for a later tier or for asyncronous processing/updating (syncronous disk IO cripples web servers). a cheap dell server(750) serving from ram can manage over a thousand requests a second doing minimal processing or using a reverse proxy cache in Java. A dual core opteron I tested on friday can do well over 5000Req/sec in a similar situation i'm sure this can be made faster in C, but i'd rather spend more on servers than learn C;)
Web serving pretty much scales with CPU speed once you've fixed anything that could cause disk IO (if you think the you have too much data to fit in ram, then maybe aren't spreading the data over the machines in the best way).
Other than the Mhz rating the onchip cache size also makes a massive difference to performance.
This will allow for much better use of space in data center racks.
For example I could take out 8x 1U Intel based Dell web servers and replace it with 1 8way supermicro Opteron machine.
The Opteron server couple probably serve content faster than the 8 Intel based Dells plus with the additional 7u space I'll easily have enough space to put a saucepan on top to boil water for tea, thereby saving myself the 80p I normally spend in the data center vending machine.
I'm not so sure. I agree we are in a throw-away society but I still think people will generally not be happy re-purchasing *the same* music every 5-10years.
Games are quite different since there are not that many people who desperately want to play old BBC Micro or MegaDrive games on a PS2/xbox2. I happen to be one of those of people, but I never completed the Elite missions and am quite sad;)
The problem is that for various well known reasons "we" (the technical community) have decided that most applications will be deployed over the web these days. As new users come onto the internet for the first time they access these applications and they quite naturally expect them to behave like other applications. Whether an application was accessed via the "Blue E" or by the start button they expect them to behave in similar ways. Internet users in the old days used to be looking at research papers and the users got used to expecting websites to look like pages of static text.
Like it or not since we've bastardised the web in this way with forms, cookies, javascript, DHTML, AJAX, Tagging, etc, we have changed users understanding of what the web is. It's a shame that a standardised technology for deploying applications over the internet never took off and that we ended up having to use the mass of hacks that has resulted today in AJAX.
On an unrelated note, Categories and Tags are not really the same thing.
Normally there are a fixed number of categories and/or hierarchy of categories and items belong to one low level category only, categories are normally but not always defined by the site. Tags are arbitrary user defined keywords that are applied to items to help users search through items. Tags are always defined by users.
Also outside of the web2 community most people understand categories and do not understand tags. My mum for example.
Sorry, use of the word "controls" was misleading. I meant "owns".
With regard to the DRM I was not referring to *now* I was referring to the obvious end game for DRM as far as the music and software monopolies are concerned. It's not as much of a quantum leap as you might think though. Already DRM'd music is claimed to be the majority of online music transfers. By not releasing ANY mainstream music without DRM the RIAA has done a pretty good job of making the majority of non-DRM'd music transfer either questionable (allofmp3.com) or just illegal.
End-to-end DRM'd hardware to run a managed/secure version of Windows is going to be sold as an advantage that windows has over Linux because it allows things to be done more "securely", stop untrusted software from running and allow playback of RIAA media. Also the DRM is going to work it's way back gradually, from the media player to a trusted version of windows back eventually to trust hardware it won't need to be a quantum leap.
I'd also put money on the next standard Music Disc format having DRM too they've wanted a reason to get rid of the open non-DRM'd redbook standard for quite some time.
The consumer market wants cheap and hassle free solutions
The solutions will be entirely hassle free. Since Microsoft controls the PC market and the MPAA/RIAA cartels control almost all popular media they will make if very simple indeed.
You won't have to make any choices at all:
To play any mainstream media you need the DRM MediaPlayer. The DRM Media Player is signed and only runs on Windows. Windows is signed and only runs on a Complete DRM PC.
Infact 99.5% of all PCs will play the media hassle free the other PCs will not play mainstream Media won't be able to read mainstream office documents and won't run mainstream Software since it will all be signed.
Users will at last no longer have to even think about running Linux. And developers won't have to worry about writing better office suites, email or media software since these open source programs won't run in the secure mode neccessary for them to interoperate with the 99.5% of the population.
And finally should anyone try to break the DRM cartel to produce non-price-fixed software or allow fair usage rights on media they will be locked up for breaking the DMCA.
The answer is purely economic -- don't buy a trusted platform based machine. Don't buy an OS that supports trusted platforms (Vista.) Don't allow friends, families or your business to buy trusted platform machines. If you're in a position to purchase hardware, get "no hardware enforcement of digital signatures" written as a requirement into your RFQs.
For every 1 person like you there are 100 people like my mum.
You try and explain to my mum that she can't buy any of the PCs in the shop because it's important she buys a system that won't play "normal" music and videos.
Could this possibly be related to the $100 laptop project that google is involved in.
Contrary to many people who have laughed at the idea of google getting involved in an OS project, the $100 laptop project could result in a fairly large install base of Goobuntu. No doubt it will also involve the installation of a lot of google desktop stuff(crap?) and the viewing of the odd Adwords advert...
Although Google is no longer looked on quite so favourably I'm still quite excited at the prospect of a major Linux push in developing countries. So I say Go Go Google!:)
I'll be honest I haven't read the GPL3 in that much detail.
I am aware the IBM Public License does try to offer some level of patent protection and presume GPLv3 is trying to do the same. For example with the IBM public license you are specifically granting rights to use any relevant patents you own. The fact that this line is included may be a belts-and-braces clause but I'd feel safer that there was a specific clause rather than having to try arguing that royalty free useage of all relevant patents was implicitly granted.
Some level of 3rd party patent protection for contributors is also included under the IBM public license although I am doubtful about it's effectiveness.
As I said I haven't looked at the GPLv3 in detail but my understanding is that they have tried to include some of the protections that the IBM Public License already grants - to at least guarantee that your rights under the license are revoked if you start annoying patent lawsuits.
By secretly patented code, I mean't code/stuff that i have myself patented without telling you.
Or more probably, I am a major contributor to an open source project and am involved in high-level discussions about plans for future API implementations, I then rush off and patent the obvious implementations to such APIs. The software is then developed and used by many people and i suddenly announce that actually you all owe me royalties because i patented the idea 2 years ago.
Since I can be involved in discusions and contribute code to a BSD or GPLv2 project without granting you royalty free permission to use any relavent patents I can appear to be "helping" you but actually ambush you with a lawsuite further down the line.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not hosting Xen i'm using a hosted solution that offers Xen based virtual servers. It only takes a couple of minutes to set up a xen server too if you are running the Xen host yourself - you can play with it yourself in the Xen live CD. The time lag i was referring to was dealing with a hosting company.
I have been using a few Xen based virtual servers from a commercial company recently - I used to manage physical machines. Here are some of my thoughts:
Advantages:
* Low performance overhead of Xen compared to other virtual solutions, and full OS level access as if it was a normal server.
* The cost of a hosted Xen solution is very low given that the hardware is usually managed.
* Reduced/No trips to the data center to replace hard disks etc,
* From the provider i use you can also reinstall the OS, snapshot and restore snapshots over a web interface and get access to the console. These are features you can set up in your own data center but most people never get round to.
* Quicker turn around if you need new servers, since normally they already have the spare hardware it's 1 or 2 days to get a new server set up rather than 1 to 2 weeks to order, install and configure it.
* You could do loadbalancing over several Xen Virtual hosts on physically separate machines very cost effectively. This would also mitigate against the variable performance on different Xen hosts if you used a dynamic weighting loadbalancer.
Disadvantages:
* Sometimes other users on the Xen system cause problems, or the server is restarted due to Xen related problems. This hasn't happened that often but you wouldn't currently run a system that needed 99.999% availability on a XEN virtual host if the system is vulnerable to a single server going down.
* You never know quite what your worst case performance is going to be like.
* If your system doesn't scale laterally (more servers) but only by buying a more powerful single server (some databases for example) then the Xen virtual hosting is not cost efficient.
so he doesn't realise that software is supposed to be obtuse to learn, frustrating to maintain
t ml
Well, he most have used the OSX dock.
http://www.asktog.com/columns/044top10docksucks.h
Gmail does have it's advantages and if it offered IMAP support rather than POP then I would use it.
Of course i'd access it through Pine, not a web browser.
I have a suggestion for geeks having problems sleeping. Stop watching that DVD or playing poker, close the laptop, lie back and think about the best way to solve a tricky computer problem (maybe for work).
For example last night, I tried to work out whether it was better to generate a thread in a threaded comments system (like slashdots) mainly in the data access layer or whether to order the comments in the applications layer. Doing it in the data access layer could be neat, but then if you did it in the application layer you could quite cleanly reattach all the child/parent comments by putting them all into a hashtable and re-attaching them by iterating over the items adding child nodes by doing comment.getParent().addChild(this) Zzzzzzz
One suspects they might drop the price more.
a id_international_profile/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/02/28/computer_
Not that i condone locking in the developing world to proprietary technologies by a company convicted of abusing it's monopoly to hold back fair competition.
Why has Apple signed up to this - to ensure microsoft continues MS Office for mac support?
I can't say i'm too worried about Intel and Toshiba supporting the format.
That is unless intel or toshiba make "Open-DRM" hardware chips to stop "secure" MS Office files from being read by non-trusted programs like OpenOffice.
Sorry, but this thread is still short on anti-microsoft conspiracy stories!
Thanks, I think it is rendering in strict mode or things would be a lot worse (www.eatmyhamster.com) We set a few more paddings and margins to 0 and it seems a bit better now.
I'm glad that Microsoft is fixing these things even if it is mainly because of Firefox. Fingers crossed the min-width/max-width/auto stuff will also make it into IE7. I wonder if there is any chances they will roll out these CSS fixes in an IE6 update.
Hmm, interesting I'm using strict mode and getting different box height calculations in IE - it must be being caused by something different then.
Still, at the moment that's not much to worry about compared to the fact that IE6 is making the txt in some random DIVs dissapear when I use "float"...
Have things really improved?
Last thing i read on slashdot they'd fixed the CSS bugs that many people were using to work around the broken box model in IE6 but hadn't fixed the broken box model itself. Clearly that is not good.
Also, explorer.exe doesn't really qualify as userland.
.NET security model. Surely, in the same way NT stopped direct hardware access eventually all programs that users interact with directly should run under .NET?
.NET runtime that would enforce DRM restrictions since it already has a suitable security model, if that were the case then it would seem inevitable that explorer would sit ontop of the .NET runtime.
Actually I thought Iexplorer.exe/explorer.exe and related libraries was software that would most benefit from the
Also, I would have thought that it would be the
I was actually being sarcastic but since you seem to have taken me seriously...
;)
It all depends on your web serving requirements, if you are big then the 8ways are better. You probably wouldn't actually remove older machines, but starting to use 8 way machines in a 1U slot does actually make sense if you are doing mass web serving. You want to cram in as much as possible since you are then maintaining less machines and have more cost effective use of space + more req/sec peak load handling per $$$. (of course this particular motherboard might overheat your datacenter or blow your APCs but i'm talking generally... )
If you are doing mass web serving and are scaling laterally you have everything in RAM you wouldn't be doing much disk IO on a web server, which is for a later tier or for asyncronous processing/updating (syncronous disk IO cripples web servers). a cheap dell server(750) serving from ram can manage over a thousand requests a second doing minimal processing or using a reverse proxy cache in Java. A dual core opteron I tested on friday can do well over 5000Req/sec in a similar situation i'm sure this can be made faster in C, but i'd rather spend more on servers than learn C
Web serving pretty much scales with CPU speed once you've fixed anything that could cause disk IO (if you think the you have too much data to fit in ram, then maybe aren't spreading the data over the machines in the best way).
Other than the Mhz rating the onchip cache size also makes a massive difference to performance.
This will allow for much better use of space in data center racks.
For example I could take out 8x 1U Intel based Dell web servers and replace it with 1 8way supermicro Opteron machine.
The Opteron server couple probably serve content faster than the 8 Intel based Dells plus with the additional 7u space I'll easily have enough space to put a saucepan on top to boil water for tea, thereby saving myself the 80p I normally spend in the data center vending machine.
I'm not so sure. I agree we are in a throw-away society but I still think people will generally not be happy re-purchasing *the same* music every 5-10years.
;)
_ info.php?products_id=684%5D.
Games are quite different since there are not that many people who desperately want to play old BBC Micro or MegaDrive games on a PS2/xbox2. I happen to be one of those of people, but I never completed the Elite missions and am quite sad
As an aside I just 5minutes ago purchased an OGG compatible, linux friendly HD based audio player. [http://www.advancedmp3players.co.uk/shop/product
Matt.
The problem is that for various well known reasons "we" (the technical community) have decided that most applications will be deployed over the web these days. As new users come onto the internet for the first time they access these applications and they quite naturally expect them to behave like other applications. Whether an application was accessed via the "Blue E" or by the start button they expect them to behave in similar ways. Internet users in the old days used to be looking at research papers and the users got used to expecting websites to look like pages of static text.
Like it or not since we've bastardised the web in this way with forms, cookies, javascript, DHTML, AJAX, Tagging, etc, we have changed users understanding of what the web is. It's a shame that a standardised technology for deploying applications over the internet never took off and that we ended up having to use the mass of hacks that has resulted today in AJAX.
On an unrelated note, Categories and Tags are not really the same thing.
Normally there are a fixed number of categories and/or hierarchy of categories and items belong to one low level category only, categories are normally but not always defined by the site.
Tags are arbitrary user defined keywords that are applied to items to help users search through items. Tags are always defined by users.
Also outside of the web2 community most people understand categories and do not understand tags. My mum for example.
It's dark and there is the sound of rattling change.
Good luck with this one.
Sorry, use of the word "controls" was misleading. I meant "owns".
With regard to the DRM I was not referring to *now* I was referring to the obvious end game for DRM as far as the music and software monopolies are concerned. It's not as much of a quantum leap as you might think though. Already DRM'd music is claimed to be the majority of online music transfers. By not releasing ANY mainstream music without DRM the RIAA has done a pretty good job of making the majority of non-DRM'd music transfer either questionable (allofmp3.com) or just illegal.
End-to-end DRM'd hardware to run a managed/secure version of Windows is going to be sold as an advantage that windows has over Linux because it allows things to be done more "securely", stop untrusted software from running and allow playback of RIAA media. Also the DRM is going to work it's way back gradually, from the media player to a trusted version of windows back eventually to trust hardware it won't need to be a quantum leap.
I'd also put money on the next standard Music Disc format having DRM too they've wanted a reason to get rid of the open non-DRM'd redbook standard for quite some time.
The consumer market wants cheap and hassle free solutions
The solutions will be entirely hassle free.
Since Microsoft controls the PC market and the MPAA/RIAA cartels control almost all popular media they will make if very simple indeed.
You won't have to make any choices at all:
To play any mainstream media you need the DRM MediaPlayer.
The DRM Media Player is signed and only runs on Windows.
Windows is signed and only runs on a Complete DRM PC.
Infact 99.5% of all PCs will play the media hassle free the other PCs will not play mainstream Media won't be able to read mainstream office documents and won't run mainstream Software since it will all be signed.
Users will at last no longer have to even think about running Linux. And developers won't have to worry about writing better office suites, email or media software since these open source programs won't run in the secure mode neccessary for them to interoperate with the 99.5% of the population.
And finally should anyone try to break the DRM cartel to produce non-price-fixed software or allow fair usage rights on media they will be locked up for breaking the DMCA.
The answer is purely economic -- don't buy a trusted platform based machine. Don't buy an OS that supports trusted platforms (Vista.) Don't allow friends, families or your business to buy trusted platform machines. If you're in a position to purchase hardware, get "no hardware enforcement of digital signatures" written as a requirement into your RFQs.
For every 1 person like you there are 100 people like my mum.
You try and explain to my mum that she can't buy any of the PCs in the shop because it's important she buys a system that won't play "normal" music and videos.
Yeah my dad, when he went to complain to his bank the bank manager groaned and said "oh AOL always do this".
Could this possibly be related to the $100 laptop project that google is involved in.
:)
Contrary to many people who have laughed at the idea of google getting involved in an OS project, the $100 laptop project could result in a fairly large install base of Goobuntu. No doubt it will also involve the installation of a lot of google desktop stuff(crap?) and the viewing of the odd Adwords advert...
Although Google is no longer looked on quite so favourably I'm still quite excited at the prospect of a major Linux push in developing countries. So I say Go Go Google!
Matt.
Depends if you consider the additional terms "restrictions" or granting/enforcing users "rights" and ensuring the software remains "free" and "open".
I'll be honest I haven't read the GPL3 in that much detail.
I am aware the IBM Public License does try to offer some level of patent protection and presume GPLv3 is trying to do the same. For example with the IBM public license you are specifically granting rights to use any relevant patents you own. The fact that this line is included may be a belts-and-braces clause but I'd feel safer that there was a specific clause rather than having to try arguing that royalty free useage of all relevant patents was implicitly granted.
Some level of 3rd party patent protection for contributors is also included under the IBM public license although I am doubtful about it's effectiveness.
As I said I haven't looked at the GPLv3 in detail but my understanding is that they have tried to include some of the protections that the IBM Public License already grants - to at least guarantee that your rights under the license are revoked if you start annoying patent lawsuits.
Perhaps someone at Google saw MIT's SiteAdvisor http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/0 1/15/0141236&from=rss with Google integration and like me thought:
"hmm, google should really have this built in"
By secretly patented code, I mean't code/stuff that i have myself patented without telling you.
Or more probably, I am a major contributor to an open source project and am involved in high-level discussions about plans for future API implementations, I then rush off and patent the obvious implementations to such APIs. The software is then developed and used by many people and i suddenly announce that actually you all owe me royalties because i patented the idea 2 years ago.
Since I can be involved in discusions and contribute code to a BSD or GPLv2 project without granting you royalty free permission to use any relavent patents I can appear to be "helping" you but actually ambush you with a lawsuite further down the line.