** This is a plug, I admit it, I love Rackspace **
Rackspace rules them all. We've been with them for over two years now and I don't believe we will ever leave them. We've done our shopping, but compare Rackspace to any of the others and you'll realize something - these guys REALLY know what they're doing.
We will be at 9 servers with them in a couple of days (just added 3 more). We use just under 1.5TB of bandwidth every month. At this level of usage, we get it for $2/GB. That is certainly not bad. Given that their network has never had an unexpected outage (not that I can remember at least) I feel it's very justified.
The folks there _really_ know what they're doing. The sales guys don't try to be technical guys, the sales engineers are on the ball. The tech support folks can solve a lot of the problems right there but when the shit hits the fan they'll send you straight to the guy in the data-center. I've spoken to one of the founders (something technical, don't remember what) and I didn't even ask for him, they just conferenced him in.
We've been in some pretty bad spots before (lost most of a RAID 5 array once) and they've pulled us out of the gutters.
I've had security folks tell me the Rackspace network is very secure. But I cannot personally confirm this.
We're not a big customer of theirs by no means. We're TINY. I know they've got some very large contracts but they really do care about us. The little guys.
I could easily go on for hours here so I will stop now. If you can afford it, get Rackspace. You will not be sorry.
That is simply not true. I received four job offers thanks to Monster.com not that long ago. Somehow, I turned them all down in favor of a (lower-paying) job I found in the paper. But that's a different story.
From what I've seen being on the other side (the hiring side) of the desk, it's clear that most geeks simply have no idea how to interview or even talk to people really.
When you go through a place like Monster, you rarely talk to technical folk on the first layer, or second or sometimes even the third. To get anywhere, you need to communicate with people who cannot appreciate our fine 31337 speak. My assistant wants to know that you have built a P2P, multi-dimensional media streaming application. But she care not HOW you did it.
When you are asked the "How", be quite thorough. Spare no detail. Turns out that simple little things you would not normally mention may be brilliant to your employer.
Also, little things matter. If I'm doing a phone interview and your voice is muffled by all your CPU fans, your screaming wife / kids, counter-strike or background noise of any kind. I will have a less than enjoyable time - and you don't want that. If you're meeting me in person, get a haircut and wear a suit. Your appearance matters, even at Burger King.
Usually, their is only one correct answer to an interview question. Anything else is wrong. Don't point out the flaws in the question, don't give an absurd answer, and most importantly don't be afraid to say "I do not know."
When you're asked if you've used XYZ before, and you haven't but have used DEF and HIJ which are similar, point that out. "Have you used Perforce before?" "No, I have not used Perforce before. However, I've used CVS and BitKeeper extensively with various teams over the last 4 years." (That saved my ass once)
To many, these are common-sense. Unfortunitly, common-sense aint so common these days. Google is your friend folks. Today, it's the buyer's market so act accordingly!
I don't think you can "wrap" dhcpd. The protocol is a connectionless / stateless broadcasting system. I suppose you could listen for the packets, but by the time you launched dhcpd they would already be gone.
A quick google search reveals DHCP Turbo might do what you need. A Linux or Win32 based DHCP server running against a DB. But it seems to use it's own DB, not very flexible.
Of course, you could write your own DHCP server too. It's standardized. (See the RFC)
Nah dude, I get those feelings too. Every time I wanna get reamed and told to "RTFM idiot" I *always* go to the BSD community. Boy, that's when I even get an answer at all!
Better yet, I'll go to #linux and get r00ted and 0wnz0red. Whatever that means.
Computer enthusiasts, would drop $4-$6k on an SGI if they could (and were into that type of computing)
Street Rod'ers, would drop $4-$6k (easy) on their cars.
RC Airplace / Car / Boat enthusiasts could drop $4k on their piece.
Oil Painting (classes, supplies, frames, etc.) can run $4k for those interested.
Gun collectors, no prob.
None of the above are "Professionals" but are above the average "consumer" so they are "pro-sumer." I hope this helps.
It's all a matter of perception.
Re:At what point does MySQL stop scaling?
on
IBM, MS Critique MySQL
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Can't speak for the world but our Quad Xeon 700, 4gb ram, 60gb DB works really well. Averages 300 queries per second.
We've recently ran into a problem when we hit ~420 connections. Plenty of ram but MySQL reports errno 11 (Resource unavailable) and new connections fail. This is with the MySQL-max binary release that is rated to 1,500 connections. It's bizarre, and low-level. But since we use replication, we just shifted some connections to the slave and all is good.
MySQL will last us just long enough to finish our Postgres migration.
Just so you know, some things should be done client side. Some things like OpenGL presentations, video conferencing apps, any kind of dynamically updated / interactive graphical interface. Even the sorting / limiting of a large dataset. These are all better to be done on the client. Why don't you become a real programmer and learn what the client / server architecture is all about?
I suppose when you get down to it we're all nothing more than electrical pulses running down organic "wires" anyway. That is, if you can ignore the support systems (cardio, and the like). It seems possible that this could be represented by the extremely logic nature of a computer.
The problem is they're not really simulating life since they pre-program the genome anyway. They are, in effect, telling it how a "complex web of neurons" (aka. brain) should look and operate.
The article claims they've created creatures with very primitive mobility and senses. Going from there to sentience, wants, needs, emotions, reproduction etc. will be very difficult to simulate in an environment where chaos does not exist.
OTOH, sounds like they've found a really clever compression scheme.
Here's a clue for people who think college makes you a better employee.
College (and High School even) prove nothing more than your ability to put up with 4 - 6 years of crap. Most of which you will never need to know. Of course, a Java monkey is fine and good but a programmer who brings not only ability but experience and knowledge about my business is worth so much more to me.
College is important. Books are, IMO, only useful for reference material. Experience is most crucial to your success.
Actually, the game never crashes for me. The toolset did back when I had an ATI but w/ a GeForce 4 it runs very very well.
I have managed to screw the scripting up in the single player campaign though. Just one area in Act I.
I do find it very difficult to play the game as a character that relies upon ranged attacks. But it's a "I can't see far enough away but the character can" thing.
The only downside I can think of is that the author appears to be some sort of Christian evangelist, which just rubs me up the wrong way, of course this has no technical impact on the program
You too? I registered my copy over a year ago. But a friend of mine, who uses it for ALL his editing needs, refuses to buy it due to that one page on his site.
Ohh well, to each their own. UE32 is hands down the best Win32 editor out there IMO.
It lacks only one thing, better project managment. If it had a built-in Bitkeeper or CVS client I'd be totally hooked.
I'm in the same spot. I was the sole developer for a big Perl app for a year. Then we started hiring on programmers to ease the burdon off of me. In the beginning it's really rough. They're almost useless for a month or two while they "learn the ropes." (We all telecommute 100% so that's more difficult than you may think)
I've had some really good guys (ok, one) who learned the ropes really quickly and they're now my right hand. I've been through 5 other programmers trying to find my left hand but haven't had much luck.
I will say this though, unlike the problem you're facing I've never had anyone who can't program from a spec. However finding a programmer who can CONTRIBUTE to the spec is a whole different animal.
I think a big part of it is asking for help. A lot of programmers don't. They'll sit there and read through 100,000 lines of code when a 5 minute phone call was all they really needed. And they'll even gripe about doing it when it's their own fault to begin with.
Now, training too isn't a cut and dry process. I've got two programmers at OSCON right now. One is LOVING it. The other has found only two classes to be of any value. OTOH, he will completely devour a thick book and walk away a master of the subject. Some people learn differently, you just have to find their sweet spot.
Honestly though, and I know it doesn't apply to your situation, I'd get rid of them and find others. A good programmer (the only kind you want working for you right?) will not have these problems. They will tell you how they'd prefer to learn. And most importantly, they can write good code from a spec.
I've never dialed 911, but my two year old has. The odds of a child (who cannot read) dialing "Send" and 9-1-1 may SEEM low, but they're not!:(
The 911 operator called me back saying they had just received a hang-up phone call from here (my house). After a pretty short (and very embarassing) phone conversation explaining how my two year old had called she told me she would stand down the police. As expected, they came anyway. Ohh well, sure did make for an interesting evening. (No fine yet, but I'd gladly pay it if asked)
Everyone wants it. Everyone would like it in huge quantities. Just some people are willing to do a lot more to get it.
This is a HOT business idea! I'll sell money for money! I can even do red-tag sales! $5.00 for $3.00! I bet I can get some VC for this, well at least two or three years ago I could have.
200 meg? What did you do? I can seem to get XP under a gig or two!
It might be worth noting that a comparable installation of RedHat 7.3 requires about 1.4 gigs of drive space. Though, obviously, you could easily make it smaller.
Slashdot Mirror
** This is a plug, I admit it, I love Rackspace **
Rackspace rules them all. We've been with them for over two years now and I don't believe we will ever leave them. We've done our shopping, but compare Rackspace to any of the others and you'll realize something - these guys REALLY know what they're doing.
We will be at 9 servers with them in a couple of days (just added 3 more). We use just under 1.5TB of bandwidth every month. At this level of usage, we get it for $2/GB. That is certainly not bad. Given that their network has never had an unexpected outage (not that I can remember at least) I feel it's very justified.
The folks there _really_ know what they're doing. The sales guys don't try to be technical guys, the sales engineers are on the ball. The tech support folks can solve a lot of the problems right there but when the shit hits the fan they'll send you straight to the guy in the data-center. I've spoken to one of the founders (something technical, don't remember what) and I didn't even ask for him, they just conferenced him in.
We've been in some pretty bad spots before (lost most of a RAID 5 array once) and they've pulled us out of the gutters.
I've had security folks tell me the Rackspace network is very secure. But I cannot personally confirm this.
We're not a big customer of theirs by no means. We're TINY. I know they've got some very large contracts but they really do care about us. The
little guys.
I could easily go on for hours here so I will stop now. If you can afford it, get Rackspace. You will not be sorry.
Wow, didn't anyone see this coming? Sorry we can't ship an OSS system with a computer (thanks Microsoft) but we can ship it on an HD?
Of course, Aunt Em is gunna be pissed when she upgrades and looses everything on her machine and now has to log in to it...
'What's this root crap? I just want my Yahoo!'
That is simply not true. I received four job offers thanks to Monster.com not that long ago. Somehow, I turned them all down in favor of a (lower-paying) job I found in the paper. But that's a different story.
From what I've seen being on the other side (the hiring side) of the desk, it's clear that most geeks simply have no idea how to interview or even talk to people really.
When you go through a place like Monster, you rarely talk to technical folk on the first layer, or second or sometimes even the third. To get anywhere, you need to communicate with people who cannot appreciate our fine 31337 speak. My assistant wants to know that you have built a P2P, multi-dimensional media streaming application. But she care not HOW you did it.
When you are asked the "How", be quite thorough. Spare no detail. Turns out that simple little things you would not normally mention may be brilliant to your employer.
Also, little things matter. If I'm doing a phone interview and your voice is muffled by all your CPU fans, your screaming wife / kids, counter-strike or background noise of any kind. I will have a less than enjoyable time - and you don't want that. If you're meeting me in person, get a haircut and wear a suit. Your appearance matters, even at Burger King.
Usually, their is only one correct answer to an interview question. Anything else is wrong. Don't point out the flaws in the question, don't give an absurd answer, and most importantly don't be afraid to say "I do not know."
When you're asked if you've used XYZ before, and you haven't but have used DEF and HIJ which are similar, point that out. "Have you used Perforce before?" "No, I have not used Perforce before. However, I've used CVS and BitKeeper extensively with various teams over the last 4 years." (That saved my ass once)
To many, these are common-sense. Unfortunitly, common-sense aint so common these days. Google is your friend folks. Today, it's the buyer's market so act accordingly!
I don't think you can "wrap" dhcpd. The protocol is a connectionless / stateless broadcasting system. I suppose you could listen for the packets, but by the time you launched dhcpd they would already be gone.
A quick google search reveals DHCP Turbo might do what you need. A Linux or Win32 based DHCP server running against a DB. But it seems to use it's own DB, not very flexible.
Of course, you could write your own DHCP server too. It's standardized. (See the RFC)
Nah dude, I get those feelings too. Every time I wanna get reamed and told to "RTFM idiot" I *always* go to the BSD community. Boy, that's when I even get an answer at all!
Better yet, I'll go to #linux and get r00ted and 0wnz0red. Whatever that means.
The truly sad thing is, after reading your post, I refreshed the story 20 times looking for the ad.
Computer enthusiasts, would drop $4-$6k on an SGI if they could (and were into that type of computing)
Street Rod'ers, would drop $4-$6k (easy) on their cars.
RC Airplace / Car / Boat enthusiasts could drop $4k on their piece.
Oil Painting (classes, supplies, frames, etc.) can run $4k for those interested.
Gun collectors, no prob.
None of the above are "Professionals" but are above the average "consumer" so they are "pro-sumer." I hope this helps.
It's all a matter of perception.
Can't speak for the world but our Quad Xeon 700, 4gb ram, 60gb DB works really well. Averages 300 queries per second.
We've recently ran into a problem when we hit ~420 connections. Plenty of ram but MySQL reports errno 11 (Resource unavailable) and new connections fail. This is with the MySQL-max binary release that is rated to 1,500 connections. It's bizarre, and low-level. But since we use replication, we just shifted some connections to the slave and all is good.
MySQL will last us just long enough to finish our Postgres migration.
...from parts over a period of time.
As opposed to never assembling? Or perhaps instantaneously assembling?
Just so you know, some things should be done client side. Some things like OpenGL presentations, video conferencing apps, any kind of dynamically updated / interactive graphical interface. Even the sorting / limiting of a large dataset. These are all better to be done on the client. Why don't you become a real programmer and learn what the client / server architecture is all about?
What do you need that Mozilla doesn't do?
:)
;)
Render pages correctly?
Filly support DOM?
Load quickly?
Support Active-X?
Feel solid and dependable?
Of course, I'm picky.
That's funny as hell.
I suppose when you get down to it we're all nothing more than electrical pulses running down organic "wires" anyway. That is, if you can ignore the support systems (cardio, and the like). It seems possible that this could be represented by the extremely logic nature of a computer.
The problem is they're not really simulating life since they pre-program the genome anyway. They are, in effect, telling it how a "complex web of neurons" (aka. brain) should look and operate.
The article claims they've created creatures with very primitive mobility and senses. Going from there to sentience, wants, needs, emotions, reproduction etc. will be very difficult to simulate in an environment where chaos does not exist.
OTOH, sounds like they've found a really clever compression scheme.
How about TeleArena? Where'd that thing go?
That was one of the very few games that I would still play today if I could. Of course, it was all about the other players too.
Same experience w/ my 8500 DV. While I was able to upgrade the drivers somewhat, and I did eventaully get opengl working, it still crashed.
I upgraded to a Gf4 4600 (128). I'm very very pleased. My old Gf2 Ultra left a bad taste in my mouth but this is certainly a rock solid product.
Here's a clue for people who think college makes you a better employee.
College (and High School even) prove nothing more than your ability to put up with 4 - 6 years of crap. Most of which you will never need to know. Of course, a Java monkey is fine and good but a programmer who brings not only ability but experience and knowledge about my business is worth so much more to me.
College is important. Books are, IMO, only useful for reference material. Experience is most crucial to your success.
Actually, the game never crashes for me. The toolset did back when I had an ATI but w/ a GeForce 4 it runs very very well.
I have managed to screw the scripting up in the single player campaign though. Just one area in Act I.
I do find it very difficult to play the game as a character that relies upon ranged attacks. But it's a "I can't see far enough away but the character can" thing.
The only downside I can think of is that the author appears to be some sort of Christian evangelist, which just rubs me up the wrong way, of course this has no technical impact on the program
You too? I registered my copy over a year ago. But a friend of mine, who uses it for ALL his editing needs, refuses to buy it due to that one page on his site.
Ohh well, to each their own. UE32 is hands down the best Win32 editor out there IMO.
It lacks only one thing, better project managment. If it had a built-in Bitkeeper or CVS client I'd be totally hooked.
I'm in the same spot. I was the sole developer for a big Perl app for a year. Then we started hiring on programmers to ease the burdon off of me. In the beginning it's really rough. They're almost useless for a month or two while they "learn the ropes." (We all telecommute 100% so that's more difficult than you may think)
I've had some really good guys (ok, one) who learned the ropes really quickly and they're now my right hand. I've been through 5 other programmers trying to find my left hand but haven't had much luck.
I will say this though, unlike the problem you're facing I've never had anyone who can't program from a spec. However finding a programmer who can CONTRIBUTE to the spec is a whole different animal.
I think a big part of it is asking for help. A lot of programmers don't. They'll sit there and read through 100,000 lines of code when a 5 minute phone call was all they really needed. And they'll even gripe about doing it when it's their own fault to begin with.
Now, training too isn't a cut and dry process. I've got two programmers at OSCON right now. One is LOVING it. The other has found only two classes to be of any value. OTOH, he will completely devour a thick book and walk away a master of the subject. Some people learn differently, you just have to find their sweet spot.
Honestly though, and I know it doesn't apply to your situation, I'd get rid of them and find others. A good programmer (the only kind you want working for you right?) will not have these problems. They will tell you how they'd prefer to learn. And most importantly, they can write good code from a spec.
I've never dialed 911, but my two year old has. The odds of a child (who cannot read) dialing "Send" and 9-1-1 may SEEM low, but they're not! :(
The 911 operator called me back saying they had just received a hang-up phone call from here (my house). After a pretty short (and very embarassing) phone conversation explaining how my two year old had called she told me she would stand down the police. As expected, they came anyway. Ohh well, sure did make for an interesting evening. (No fine yet, but I'd gladly pay it if asked)
JSYK, the 'Switch' module has been around for quite some time now. You should visit CPAN more often.
Faster? Damn bro, what's the hurry? Life is too short, drive 30.. Enjoy nature.
(15 Minutes later)
"John, I am one with my car."
...sigh... The good ol' days.
Believe it or not, it is _actually_ funny.
Everyone wants it. Everyone would like it in huge quantities. Just some people are willing to do a lot more to get it.
This is a HOT business idea! I'll sell money for money! I can even do red-tag sales! $5.00 for $3.00! I bet I can get some VC for this, well at least two or three years ago I could have.
200 meg? What did you do? I can seem to get XP under a gig or two!
It might be worth noting that a comparable installation of RedHat 7.3 requires about 1.4 gigs of drive space. Though, obviously, you could easily make it smaller.