I think you're partly wrong. Here why: I can see the difference between a LCD panel hooked up with a VGA adapter, and with a digital hookup. It does look better with the digital hookup. I have not looked at the output from a DVD movie to compare and contrast quality. I will when the flat panel comes in for the G4 here at work. Now, your statement does point out how what they're doing should be the same as a PC to LCD with digital connector, and that is true (and valid)
this is the reason i am happy beyond belief that biometric devices are below $100 now.
password policies are always a bone of contention, no matter what level of security you implement.
I personally think 3 tries before lockout is too few on a windows system, first, especially if you're dealing with windows 95/nt combinations, since you can have multiple, different passwords. throw in a connection to a legacy system, and it's chaos.
Also, reusing passwords shouldn't be set to a high value, but perhaps only to a 10 use value. We required passwords to be changed once a month.*
The most important thing is to teach people how to create passwords that are long and sufficiently complex, yet follow a system that can be cycled through.
Example: you're a baseball fan. Use team names, and insert random numbers in the middle. i.e.: atlanta58braves and shorten as needed. Next month you can switch to the (hated) Yankees, for example.
We required 10 digits at least, with numbers. People freaked out at first, but once you showed them how to do it, we had fewer problems. Well, once we fixed a dll problem that wouldn't allow you to change both 95 and NT passwords simultaneously. But that's another issue...
* The worst disaster we ever had was when the power went out at our central office 5 minutes after we implemented the policy and 2 minutes after we sent out the email telling people how to do it. When their systems came up, they of course had to change their passwords, and boy howdy, that was NOT a fun day since most did it wrong, since this was pre-DLL fix.
I'm about as libertarian as they come. I find filters noxious for both technical and moral reasons, and see no possible excuse for their use with adults in libraries*. But for schoolchildren there are issues that need to be raised. 1) There are sites that simply have no educational value. What possible reason could a child have for looking at Danni's hotbox? 2) They can prevent bait-and-switch sites, or even accidental typing. To wit, whitehouse.com and hotboy.com - a teacher cannot monitor everybody in a lab at the same time, and I'd hate to have to explain to a 4th grader why there's a site like hotboy- and he/she would be old enough to be curious. A teenager looking up items at a school where I worked was terribly traumatized when a site advertising support for sexual abuse issues turned out be really selling porn involving rape fantasies. 3) There is no way you're going to be able to convince a school board not to have filtering. Period. If the issue comes up, you will have to have it, regardless of cost. If anybody has examples to the contrary, I'd love to hear of them.
Bearing all these things in mind, and bearing in mind that having such a plugin for Apache or Squid could further the use of open source software, a project similar to dmoz needs to be started. This one could err on the side of not filtering stuff, too. This issue is too important to leave to the vagaries of corporatism.
*Although the comment, I think i saw it on www.librarian.net, to the effect of a librarian saying that she drew the line on free speech when a patron next to her was viewing bestiality websites, does make a point about the unfortunate (but necessary) price of free speech.
While I applaud them for being forward thinking, I hope that's a 10/100 port, or there could be problems. A lot of DSL and Cable modems only have a 10mbit port. Now, by the time this finally comes out, that may not be the case, but for now...
aside from their very cool purple color, they have 2 big advantages: a) they have nice, durable, steel cases, just perfect for bumping around and surviving. b) they're made by nortel. very nice equipment. they do get a wee bit warm, but they've held up nicely over the years...
they pay performance royalties to the song's publishers, usually an agent such as ascap or bmi. so do tv stations. mtv doesn't, because it claims it's doing promotion for the song, even when they use it in something like 'the real world.' when you're an 800 pound gorilla, you can get away with that.
i admit to not knowing all the answers, though: i don't think they pay royalties to the record company. do web broadcasters pay ascap/bmi royalties in addition to the record company?
Because it'll make it easier to add wires such as fiber in the future. Just leave a spare nylon strip in the conduit, and you'll be golden.
Also, you can put raceways/conduit in existing locations. One neat trick (as used apparently first in the Playboy mansion in Chicago, or so said one of the old home journals) is to remove the molding, then put down your conduit along the wall edge, then put the molding above it, hiding the conduit with quarter round molding. You then cut out space for an outlet in the molding board.
In my case, this works great, since I cut a hole in the floor for the conduit to go into the cellar from, and because I already had quarter round molding in place anyway. Voila, no need to cut holes in my (inch thick) plaster walls!
Of course, with the price of wireless dropping as per earlier slashpost, this may be only necessary for fiber in the future anyway...
It'd be nice to play non-MP3 audio from my BSD music server... Of course, (heresy alert) I really want Microsoft's player released more- their client seems not as concerned about bandwidth as realaudio's, and as a result looks and sounds better over a higher bandwidth connection.
can get you prepared to be ready for the millennium. i resolve to throw crap away and not be a packrat (except on my hard drives.) i also resolve to ignore their/there/they're mistakes, but not its/it's errors.
not much help for the questioner, but...
on
Quieting those Fans
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· Score: 2
rackmount is i'm convinced the way to go. it's easier to keep the noise down that way, and it makes things look much tidier. unfortunately, it is more expensive. first, you have to buy or make a rack box, then you have to pay more for cases and hubs and everything, etc. etc. Couple of hints, though: a) buy the premade rack rails, and use them to make a wooden rack, as was mentioned earlier. it's not that expensive, and you can make a really cool looking rack that way- use old beams from houses and such. i found some really beautiful poplar beams that were leftovers from railcars. i personally used knockdown hardware to hold the rack mount screws, but i'm a sucker for cool brass hardware, too. b) i love the antec cases, but they're $200 bucks at a minimum. Instead, scout ebay- there's lots of the first generation of rackmount pc's becoming available, especially nice compaq boxes. you'll have to do LOTS of refitting, but it's a better case anyway. Wish i could afford a netfinity... c) use it to hold your stereo too. nowadays, you have to have a pc near your stereo/tv anyway for streaming video etc., and you can kill two birds with one stone. another reason to make a nice case, and plus you can hide the cords easier too. making 'ears' and brackets for your stereo equipment is a pain, but it looks nice once you're done. put your tv and turntable up top and voila, instant newmedia center. then you can get the wireless kb and mouse... d) see if you can find an older case that is 19" wide (or a little less.) if you don't have to get into it often, it's really convenient just to bolt brackets onto it and mount it that way. (as you can tell, i'm morally opposed to shelves in a rackmount rack.) e) get parts and stuff from musician catalogs rather than pc catalogs- it's usually cheaper, and the stuff sometimes is better.
plus, let's face it, a patch panel and hub next to your stereo just looks too cool. gets oohs and ahhs from your geek friends. i actually am going to move my hub to the back of the rack, though, so that cables don't have to pass through the front.
Microsoft was in on the ground floor, but BZZZT. It wasn't Microsoft that started it. It was the muscle of IBM, creating a desktop PC, that legitimized the market. Before then you had the various startups such as Apple, Commodore, etc., and their use in businesses was spotty at best. Microsoft was merely along for the ride- yes, they had created basic for almost every PC, but it wasn't their presence that made the IBM PC successful. To be fair, I should have said Intel PC Revolution. Conspired to create the clone market? Compaq might have something to say about that. But yes, Microsoft has made many advantageous deals over the years, and used those to build on.
I don't know how many people on here are over 30 and remember the introduction of the IBM PC, but it was not Microsoft that got the PC revolution started- it was IBM. Microsoft didn't really get started on their road until the clone market started. Up til then, it was all IBM. Nobody really thought much about Microsoft until, say, 1985, except for when 123 broke after every new DOS release. What Microsoft did was to use every bit of leverage they had to leverage themselves up another notch. Up until Windows 2, the market was fairly even- programming in DOS was simple enough that the barriers to entry were tiny, and MS didn't really have any way of hiding anything from programmers. Using the advantages they had (and continue to have, of course) courtesy of being the producer of Windows lead to their position today. This all gets back to Bill's ambition. Attempting a little bit of cheap analysis, I think that derives from being a son and grandson of people who made something of themselves- Bill's grandfather being a banker, and Bill's father being a lawyer. Bill is pushing himself because he's got to prove he's up to the challenge, which I think he has done. I'm neither pro nor anti Microsoft- I am an MCSE, but I also prefer *nix for many things. Windows 95 was a remarkable piece of software for being able to deal with the varied software and hardware in existence at the time, and I really happen to like IE5, although its speed may be surpassed by Mozilla when it comes out. What I would really like to see would be for Microsoft to compete on even terms, using open file formats for everything. No chance this will happen, because it takes too long for Microsoft to code to the point of elegance as compared to others, and their inadequacies would show. Look how long it took for them to come up with a browser that loads pages quickly. So we're stuck with comparing oranges and apples instead of apples and apples.
What slashdot really needs is an NT ombudsman and/or category. It does no good to have so many people so ignorant of NT (and other MS packages) and where it is strong and where it is weak.
I agree that for most people a 1g tape is plentiful, and that for most WinOS users reinstalling would be best anyway- clears out the cruft, after all. However, would I want to go to the trouble of reinstalling a linux system from scratch? Not likely. Once I get that baby up and running, I want to be able to restore it whole. But the data picture will be changing as more people use digital video cameras. I'd want to be able to back up all those precious memories. There are many potential applications of online video, but if you can't back it up, it's moot. RAID solves this to some degree. Tb backups are expensive, though- a 35/70 DLT drive is about $4k, and the multi-tape units are about $20k. Again, multiple hard drives seem to be the solution.
It's great that we could very easily have terabyte RAID5 arrays within, say, $10k soon. I'll be able to copy ALL my CDs up to my hard drives without converting them into mp3s. BUT until more people start buying tape backup units and driving down their price/gb, this is a scary trend. One of two things need to happen, preferably both: 1) RAID 5 arrays need to get affordable, perhaps in the scenario one person posted about the microdrives. The ability to not have to worry because you have an affordable redundant drive waiting to be used is a tremendous thing. Mirroring is nice, but it just doesn't give that warm'n'fuzzy feeling. Unfortunately, I don't see affordability happening anytime soon. RAID5 technology just hasn't saturated enough yet to get prices down. Also, the standards wars that are occurring w/r/t EIDE, SCSI, USB+, Firewire, etc. are hampering things, too. Maybe IBM can come up with a 5 platter hard drive that has RAID as a function per-platter, with one platter set for failover. 2) Tape drives need to drop in price, and increase in storage capacity. A great deal. This has become apparent this week as I search for a backup solution at work. The best bargain is the Onstream unit, with SCSI 50g backup for about $550, with cartridges at about $50 (i think.) 50g won't make a dent in the drives that are coming soon. And the unit only has a 2mb/s transfer rate. The best tape drives are DLT, which just work, period, but the 35/70g units are way out of the reach of the average consumer at over $2k, with cartridges at about $90. I don't keep up with backup technology, but I can't imagine there are any streaming tape breakthroughs coming anytime soon. I think the fact that DLT units are still priced in the stratosphere points out that there's a lot of unprotected data out there.
Long term analysis: I think tape backup will die off, and RAID arrays will become ubiquitous. There's no other way to protect data easily. In the meantime, I continue to be scared.
first, that should be 'without testing it' in the last sentence.
thinking on it more, i think nt's problem isn't the myriad ways it can screw up- it's the lack of ability beyond a full reinstall to fix things sometimes. Linux can break in so many more ways, it's not even funny. However, you don't have hidden DLLs, cryptic (and undocumented, usually) registry entries, or unknown Microsoft-only APIs that bugger up some other program, and you do have nice lovely text files. Which is of course why it's important to install it right the first time it's deployed, not to touch it unless it's necessary, and to test any potential updates on a dupe of the machine.
For me, the great benefit of Sendmail on NT (and while is this strictly speaking from experience with the MetaInfo owned version, after trying out 3.0 at Networld it appears to be just as valid) was twofold: 1) it just works. period. At a previous job, we had to use NT because of a state project, and I didn't want to have exchange doing direct mail transfers. So, we got SendMail/NT, and it works like a champ. As a gateway, it's unbeatable. The new version is even nicer, and it fixes a lot of the inabilities of 2.5 to customize setups. Frankly, I don't understand the person who talked about its instability- ours was on a pII/350 (256 megs ram, 8 gigs hd) that was running IIS and Proxy 2, and that was a box that never hiccuped*. At last check, there were over 4 gigs of mail sent and 11 gigs of mail received on that box, with but 2 messages hiccuping. It doesn't interfere with other services, and it starts and stops quickly. Now, I don't really know about its robustness for POP purposes. We didn't use it that way. The only account was mine for mail list reading. I have heard that the new version makes performance quite effective, as the previous one did apparently suffer with more than 500 pop accounts. 2) It finances sendmail's continued existence. When they bought out MetaInfo's product, Sendmail Inc. raised prices and removed the unlimited POP option, causing some grumbling. Before, it cost $250 for schools, with unlimited users. Still, for nonprofits, it's still a bargain (if you have to use NT), and the effective cost per user is less than exchange's.
*The big problem with NT is the myriad ways that it can screw up. But at root I think is people who think that making a production NT server requires less planning than a *nix box. I wouldn't dream of taking a by-the-server-wizard installation of Redhat directly to use, and similarly, it's foolish to expect the same of NT in spite of Microsoft's portrayal. Plus, the other things that get added (like HP's print tools) can complicate matters unnecessarily. Nor would I put it in use with testing it, and then rebuilding it from scratch, if it was my first such setup.
Banky (and great url, btw) wrote: If we would just install NT, and only NT, then leave the box sitting in the corner, we'd be OK and have stability problems? Uh, ok.
So, some clarifications to my point about NT server apps w/r/t stability.
a) NT file and print services work remarkably well.
It is easier and quicker to set up a stable file and print sharing box for a common lan having win95 clients with NT than to do the same thing with Linux and Win95 clients, especially for Joe Q. Public. It may not be better, but it is surprisingly stable. At a former job, we had 20 plus machines (IBM Netfinity- thumbs up from me. I'd like to put Linux on one of those and see how many years it could stay up.) that were up for periods of over three straight months. One was up for over 7 months! We also had a server running Exchange and IIS (for Outlook Web Access, for Mac clients) that was similarly bulletproof. *however* we also had exchange and SNA server running on one box, and it was the devil's own. SNA server on its own box? No problem. All of these machines were loaded, too, with plenty of ram and storage and processors.
Is it reasonable to expect to have to use a box (or two, for redundancy) everytime you want to implement an app, with two for exchange, two for sms, two for sql, rather than two mongo servers running all three apps? No, but I guess if you're a corporation it's only a drop in the bucket of IT costs.
b) Machine origin, and additions to base NT drivers, plays a part in NT success.
In spite of the fact that those IBM servers are fantastic, the extra software IBM throws in to manage them is horridly flawed security-wise. One of the factors relating to their stability may be the minimal amount of whizzy stuff I allowed on them. Too many people when installing NT belong to the 'oh, why not?' school of installing. It is easy to let it get crowded with useless bells, and those cause problems at startup etc. (NT bootup and shutdown does work uncomfortably like a horserace, and sometimes the services break their legs coming out of the gate. Exchange has been notorious for gumming up the works at shutdown, too.)
Also, let's not forget that awful thing, the HCL. It is unreasonable to expect NT to run on anything with that giant caveat sitting there. I don't think it's unreasonable, since Linux runs on anything up to pocket watches now it seems, but apparently Microsoft does. Would I trust Linux for a commerce server built on a clone? Sure. NT? Ha. The fact that you can't get under the hood to solve problems when by all rights NT should be working is why linux will win.
Base rule: (and it's the same as with any other server, even Linux) don't have on there what you don't use. I wish there was a way I could have my NT servers running CLI only. I managed exchange remotely anyway.
Also, there are also machines that are just plain ornery. It is easy to forget that RAM still has errors, that heat problems are occurring, that the new NIC drivers are buggy, etc. and to blame it on NT instead.
(On a totally unrelated note, is anybody else interested in taking up a collection to get the 'Dave' banner taken out of circulation? That guy gives me the creeps.)
As was pointed out earlier, the first thing everybody should do (if they're interested in the subject, of course) is to go find a copy of 'Showstopper,' written about the birth of NT. I found mine remaindered. You do get the anecdotes about Cutler's boorishness, but you also get a balanced look at the development of a modern operating system.
Now, I'm not enough of a kernel guy to argue about design specs, capabilities, etc., but after re-reading the book there are many things that pop to mind about Linux/NT: 0) Cutler's goals are/were initially very unix-like. When you get right down to it, NT in its initial design sounded (again, to unqualified ears) remarkably similar, with its ways of isolating the kernel, etc. I cannot imagine HOW much fun they have had working DirectX into NT, and I can't even begin to imagine how much Cutler hated it (based on his vision as seen in the interview and in showstopper.) 1) Cutler was adamant about getting rid of bugs. The surprising stability of W2k beta3 was frankly shocking to me, until I remembered that he was back in the fold. Yes, we are talking about a prime example of bloatware, but even so. Unfortunately, since the code is only reviewed by a limited number of people, they're always going to be behind the curve. Furthermore, Cutler is (probably) not responsible for the behavior of other programs from Microsoft, such as Exchange, SQL, etc., and I think that is from my experience the primary starting point for failure on NT boxes. Add to this the fact that there was again undoubtedly tremendous pressure on Cutler from Marketing to do those whizzy things that would compromise kernel stability, and I'm glad I don't have his job (or that of a programmer on Exchange.) I honestly don't see how bugs can be eradicated from the enduser experience. NT is much more stable than is posited here IF you can keep the number of Microsoft server apps to a minimum, preferably one. But things like Back Office pretend that you can have Exchange, SQL, and SMS all running on the same box- hell, I can't even get through installing such a combination without a crash. As long as Cutler is left alone and has sufficient authority, that *might* happen, but frankly I doubt it. 2) Portability is gone now for NT. I never did quite understand how Microsoft wouldn't pony up the money to keep NT alive on PPC chips, and I'm even more confused about Compaq shutting down Alpha NT support and development. Isn't having a valid counterweight to Intel more important than, say, 250 million to keep NT alive on those 2 platforms? Does Microsoft trust AMD to survive? In contrast, Linux is ported to gosh-knows how many machines already, and will continue to be. Seems to me keeping it alive on multiple platforms would be an investment for the future. 3) Graphics. The bane of Cutler's existence. I think had his crew been left alone to create a text mode only NT for v1, we would be looking at a totally different situation. Novell did just fine with text only screens, and Linux did too in the beginning. Trying to force NT to run before it was stable enough to walk was a mistake. It would have been better to layer it on later AFTER stability was worked out.
Ultimately, I think NT is doomed to failure against Linux- there are simply too many people using Linux now. But more, I think anything manmade is either made for money or art. And things made for art (or love, if you will) endure. Cutler has the artist in him, but his painting keeps getting smeared by people above him. Gates doesn't have art in him and never will- he may be a nerd, but he's no geek.
unless you have a need for groupware type features, don't mess with either exchange or notes. exchange does handle larger installations better than has been reported here- go to http://www.swynk.com for details on such things. we run 250 users on a quad p-pro 200 box, and it could easily handle 1500 users without blinking. the key is not trying to do anything else with that box. there's also a version that can have a store bigger than 16gb. notes is just goofy in my opinion- the clients are slow, and if you want to use something other than the clients, be prepared for even more slowness, as well as quirkiness. IMAP doesn't work well with it, for example. The Georgia state govt. went to notes for everything, and it's just as much of a consultants feast as exchange. unless you have a firm commitment to groupware and changing your enterprise, don't mess with notes. the real reason to go with open source is the plain jane messaging formats, plus users have lots of choices for clients. sendmail is a must for relaying in and out, but beyond that i can't specify.
Okay, besides the fact that there's turmoil in Iran, the Chinese have a neutron bomb, Taiwan decides to be agressive, the stock market is absurdly high, Russia has gone to hell in a handbasket and probably has lost fissionable materials, and the rain forests are still being wiped out, now we have to worry about the *complete* destruction of the earth? Can everybody just wait until after the millennium arrives? It's not like the experiments can't wait, and there's enough pre-millennial jitters going already. Let's let all the Y2K stuff get done, and let all the prophecy predictions prove baseless, and *then* we can try making black holes on the surface of the earth.
Slashdot Mirror
I think you're partly wrong.
Here why: I can see the difference between a LCD panel hooked up with a VGA adapter, and with a digital hookup. It does look better with the digital hookup.
I have not looked at the output from a DVD movie to compare and contrast quality. I will when the flat panel comes in for the G4 here at work.
Now, your statement does point out how what they're doing should be the same as a PC to LCD with digital connector, and that is true (and valid)
here
A quick search of yahoo didn't turn up anything; somebody out there must know.
this is the reason i am happy beyond belief that biometric devices are below $100 now.
password policies are always a bone of contention, no matter what level of security you implement.
I personally think 3 tries before lockout is too few on a windows system, first, especially if you're dealing with windows 95/nt combinations, since you can have multiple, different passwords. throw in a connection to a legacy system, and it's chaos.
Also, reusing passwords shouldn't be set to a high value, but perhaps only to a 10 use value.
We required passwords to be changed once a month.*
The most important thing is to teach people how to create passwords that are long and sufficiently complex, yet follow a system that can be cycled through.
Example: you're a baseball fan. Use team names, and insert random numbers in the middle. i.e.:
atlanta58braves
and shorten as needed. Next month you can switch to the (hated) Yankees, for example.
We required 10 digits at least, with numbers. People freaked out at first, but once you showed them how to do it, we had fewer problems. Well, once we fixed a dll problem that wouldn't allow you to change both 95 and NT passwords simultaneously. But that's another issue...
* The worst disaster we ever had was when the power went out at our central office 5 minutes after we implemented the policy and 2 minutes after we sent out the email telling people how to do it. When their systems came up, they of course had to change their passwords, and boy howdy, that was NOT a fun day since most did it wrong, since this was pre-DLL fix.
I'm about as libertarian as they come. I find filters noxious for both technical and moral reasons, and see no possible excuse for their use with adults in libraries*. But for schoolchildren there are issues that need to be raised.
1) There are sites that simply have no educational value. What possible reason could a child have for looking at Danni's hotbox?
2) They can prevent bait-and-switch sites, or even accidental typing. To wit, whitehouse.com and hotboy.com - a teacher cannot monitor everybody in a lab at the same time, and I'd hate to have to explain to a 4th grader why there's a site like hotboy- and he/she would be old enough to be curious.
A teenager looking up items at a school where I worked was terribly traumatized when a site advertising support for sexual abuse issues turned out be really selling porn involving rape fantasies.
3) There is no way you're going to be able to convince a school board not to have filtering. Period. If the issue comes up, you will have to have it, regardless of cost. If anybody has examples to the contrary, I'd love to hear of them.
Bearing all these things in mind, and bearing in mind that having such a plugin for Apache or Squid could further the use of open source software, a project similar to dmoz needs to be started. This one could err on the side of not filtering stuff, too. This issue is too important to leave to the vagaries of corporatism.
*Although the comment, I think i saw it on www.librarian.net, to the effect of a librarian saying that she drew the line on free speech when a patron next to her was viewing bestiality websites, does make a point about the unfortunate (but necessary) price of free speech.
the Unix System Administration Handbook, 3rd edition, soon to be published. Here's the link to it at fatbrain
It covers system admin from a multi-os perspective- linux, as well as freeBSD, and a couple of others, too, which I don't remember.
I've been a fan since the first edition, and can't wait for this one.
While I applaud them for being forward thinking, I hope that's a 10/100 port, or there could be problems. A lot of DSL and Cable modems only have a 10mbit port. Now, by the time this finally comes out, that may not be the case, but for now...
aside from their very cool purple color, they have 2 big advantages:
a) they have nice, durable, steel cases, just perfect for bumping around and surviving.
b) they're made by nortel. very nice equipment.
they do get a wee bit warm, but they've held up nicely over the years...
they pay performance royalties to the song's publishers, usually an agent such as ascap or bmi. so do tv stations.
mtv doesn't, because it claims it's doing promotion for the song, even when they use it in something like 'the real world.' when you're an 800 pound gorilla, you can get away with that.
i admit to not knowing all the answers, though: i don't think they pay royalties to the record company.
do web broadcasters pay ascap/bmi royalties in addition to the record company?
Because it'll make it easier to add wires such as fiber in the future. Just leave a spare nylon strip in the conduit, and you'll be golden.
Also, you can put raceways/conduit in existing locations. One neat trick (as used apparently first in the Playboy mansion in Chicago, or so said one of the old home journals) is to remove the molding, then put down your conduit along the wall edge, then put the molding above it, hiding the conduit with quarter round molding. You then cut out space for an outlet in the molding board.
In my case, this works great, since I cut a hole in the floor for the conduit to go into the cellar from, and because I already had quarter round molding in place anyway. Voila, no need to cut holes in my (inch thick) plaster walls!
Of course, with the price of wireless dropping as per earlier slashpost, this may be only necessary for fiber in the future anyway...
It'd be nice to play non-MP3 audio from my BSD music server...
Of course, (heresy alert) I really want Microsoft's player released more- their client seems not as concerned about bandwidth as realaudio's, and as a result looks and sounds better over a higher bandwidth connection.
I hate to brag, but:
Cooling Fans
I mentioned some solutions here, under the subject "not much help for the questioner"
It's the best magazine out there on the subject. Cinefex. They finally have a website too.
can get you prepared to be ready for the millennium. i resolve to throw crap away and not be a packrat (except on my hard drives.)
i also resolve to ignore their/there/they're mistakes, but not its/it's errors.
rackmount is i'm convinced the way to go. it's easier to keep the noise down that way, and it makes things look much tidier.
unfortunately, it is more expensive. first, you have to buy or make a rack box, then you have to pay more for cases and hubs and everything, etc. etc. Couple of hints, though:
a) buy the premade rack rails, and use them to make a wooden rack, as was mentioned earlier. it's not that expensive, and you can make a really cool looking rack that way- use old beams from houses and such. i found some really beautiful poplar beams that were leftovers from railcars.
i personally used knockdown hardware to hold the rack mount screws, but i'm a sucker for cool brass hardware, too.
b) i love the antec cases, but they're $200 bucks at a minimum. Instead, scout ebay- there's lots of the first generation of rackmount pc's becoming available, especially nice compaq boxes. you'll have to do LOTS of refitting, but it's a better case anyway. Wish i could afford a netfinity...
c) use it to hold your stereo too. nowadays, you have to have a pc near your stereo/tv anyway for streaming video etc., and you can kill two birds with one stone. another reason to make a nice case, and plus you can hide the cords easier too. making 'ears' and brackets for your stereo equipment is a pain, but it looks nice once you're done. put your tv and turntable up top and voila, instant newmedia center. then you can get the wireless kb and mouse...
d) see if you can find an older case that is 19" wide (or a little less.) if you don't have to get into it often, it's really convenient just to bolt brackets onto it and mount it that way. (as you can tell, i'm morally opposed to shelves in a rackmount rack.)
e) get parts and stuff from musician catalogs rather than pc catalogs- it's usually cheaper, and the stuff sometimes is better.
plus, let's face it, a patch panel and hub next to your stereo just looks too cool. gets oohs and ahhs from your geek friends. i actually am going to move my hub to the back of the rack, though, so that cables don't have to pass through the front.
Microsoft was in on the ground floor, but
BZZZT.
It wasn't Microsoft that started it. It was the muscle of IBM, creating a desktop PC, that legitimized the market. Before then you had the various startups such as Apple, Commodore, etc., and their use in businesses was spotty at best. Microsoft was merely along for the ride- yes, they had created basic for almost every PC, but it wasn't their presence that made the IBM PC successful.
To be fair, I should have said Intel PC Revolution.
Conspired to create the clone market? Compaq might have something to say about that. But yes, Microsoft has made many advantageous deals over the years, and used those to build on.
I don't know how many people on here are over 30 and remember the introduction of the IBM PC, but it was not Microsoft that got the PC revolution started- it was IBM. Microsoft didn't really get started on their road until the clone market started. Up til then, it was all IBM. Nobody really thought much about Microsoft until, say, 1985, except for when 123 broke after every new DOS release.
What Microsoft did was to use every bit of leverage they had to leverage themselves up another notch. Up until Windows 2, the market was fairly even- programming in DOS was simple enough that the barriers to entry were tiny, and MS didn't really have any way of hiding anything from programmers. Using the advantages they had (and continue to have, of course) courtesy of being the producer of Windows lead to their position today.
This all gets back to Bill's ambition. Attempting a little bit of cheap analysis, I think that derives from being a son and grandson of people who made something of themselves- Bill's grandfather being a banker, and Bill's father being a lawyer. Bill is pushing himself because he's got to prove he's up to the challenge, which I think he has done.
I'm neither pro nor anti Microsoft- I am an MCSE, but I also prefer *nix for many things. Windows 95 was a remarkable piece of software for being able to deal with the varied software and hardware in existence at the time, and I really happen to like IE5, although its speed may be surpassed by Mozilla when it comes out.
What I would really like to see would be for Microsoft to compete on even terms, using open file formats for everything. No chance this will happen, because it takes too long for Microsoft to code to the point of elegance as compared to others, and their inadequacies would show. Look how long it took for them to come up with a browser that loads pages quickly. So we're stuck with comparing oranges and apples instead of apples and apples.
What slashdot really needs is an NT ombudsman and/or category. It does no good to have so many people so ignorant of NT (and other MS packages) and where it is strong and where it is weak.
I agree that for most people a 1g tape is plentiful, and that for most WinOS users reinstalling would be best anyway- clears out the cruft, after all.
However, would I want to go to the trouble of reinstalling a linux system from scratch? Not likely. Once I get that baby up and running, I want to be able to restore it whole.
But the data picture will be changing as more people use digital video cameras. I'd want to be able to back up all those precious memories.
There are many potential applications of online video, but if you can't back it up, it's moot. RAID solves this to some degree.
Tb backups are expensive, though- a 35/70 DLT drive is about $4k, and the multi-tape units are about $20k. Again, multiple hard drives seem to be the solution.
It's great that we could very easily have terabyte RAID5 arrays within, say, $10k soon. I'll be able to copy ALL my CDs up to my hard drives without converting them into mp3s.
BUT
until more people start buying tape backup units and driving down their price/gb, this is a scary trend.
One of two things need to happen, preferably both:
1) RAID 5 arrays need to get affordable, perhaps in the scenario one person posted about the microdrives. The ability to not have to worry because you have an affordable redundant drive waiting to be used is a tremendous thing. Mirroring is nice, but it just doesn't give that warm'n'fuzzy feeling.
Unfortunately, I don't see affordability happening anytime soon. RAID5 technology just hasn't saturated enough yet to get prices down. Also, the standards wars that are occurring w/r/t EIDE, SCSI, USB+, Firewire, etc. are hampering things, too.
Maybe IBM can come up with a 5 platter hard drive that has RAID as a function per-platter, with one platter set for failover.
2) Tape drives need to drop in price, and increase in storage capacity. A great deal. This has become apparent this week as I search for a backup solution at work. The best bargain is the Onstream unit, with SCSI 50g backup for about $550, with cartridges at about $50 (i think.) 50g won't make a dent in the drives that are coming soon. And the unit only has a 2mb/s transfer rate. The best tape drives are DLT, which just work, period, but the 35/70g units are way out of the reach of the average consumer at over $2k, with cartridges at about $90. I don't keep up with backup technology, but I can't imagine there are any streaming tape breakthroughs coming anytime soon. I think the fact that DLT units are still priced in the stratosphere points out that there's a lot of unprotected data out there.
Long term analysis: I think tape backup will die off, and RAID arrays will become ubiquitous. There's no other way to protect data easily. In the meantime, I continue to be scared.
first, that should be 'without testing it' in the last sentence.
thinking on it more, i think nt's problem isn't the myriad ways it can screw up- it's the lack of ability beyond a full reinstall to fix things sometimes.
Linux can break in so many more ways, it's not even funny. However, you don't have hidden DLLs, cryptic (and undocumented, usually) registry entries, or unknown Microsoft-only APIs that bugger up some other program, and you do have nice lovely text files.
Which is of course why it's important to install it right the first time it's deployed, not to touch it unless it's necessary, and to test any potential updates on a dupe of the machine.
For me, the great benefit of Sendmail on NT (and while is this strictly speaking from experience with the MetaInfo owned version, after trying out 3.0 at Networld it appears to be just as valid) was twofold:
1) it just works. period. At a previous job, we had to use NT because of a state project, and I didn't want to have exchange doing direct mail transfers. So, we got SendMail/NT, and it works like a champ. As a gateway, it's unbeatable.
The new version is even nicer, and it fixes a lot of the inabilities of 2.5 to customize setups.
Frankly, I don't understand the person who talked about its instability- ours was on a pII/350 (256 megs ram, 8 gigs hd) that was running IIS and Proxy 2, and that was a box that never hiccuped*. At last check, there were over 4 gigs of mail sent and 11 gigs of mail received on that box, with but 2 messages hiccuping. It doesn't interfere with other services, and it starts and stops quickly.
Now, I don't really know about its robustness for POP purposes. We didn't use it that way. The only account was mine for mail list reading. I have heard that the new version makes performance quite effective, as the previous one did apparently suffer with more than 500 pop accounts.
2) It finances sendmail's continued existence. When they bought out MetaInfo's product, Sendmail Inc. raised prices and removed the unlimited POP option, causing some grumbling. Before, it cost $250 for schools, with unlimited users. Still, for nonprofits, it's still a bargain (if you have to use NT), and the effective cost per user is less than exchange's.
*The big problem with NT is the myriad ways that it can screw up. But at root I think is people who think that making a production NT server requires less planning than a *nix box.
I wouldn't dream of taking a by-the-server-wizard installation of Redhat directly to use, and similarly, it's foolish to expect the same of NT in spite of Microsoft's portrayal. Plus, the other things that get added (like HP's print tools) can complicate matters unnecessarily.
Nor would I put it in use with testing it, and then rebuilding it from scratch, if it was my first such setup.
Banky (and great url, btw) wrote:
If we would just install NT, and only NT, then leave the box sitting in the corner, we'd be OK and have stability problems? Uh, ok.
So, some clarifications to my point about NT server apps w/r/t stability.
a) NT file and print services work remarkably well.
It is easier and quicker to set up a stable file and print sharing box for a common lan having win95 clients with NT than to do the same thing with Linux and Win95 clients, especially for Joe Q. Public. It may not be better, but it is surprisingly stable. At a former job, we had 20 plus machines (IBM Netfinity- thumbs up from me. I'd like to put Linux on one of those and see how many years it could stay up.) that were up for periods of over three straight months. One was up for over 7 months! We also had a server running Exchange and IIS (for Outlook Web Access, for Mac clients) that was similarly bulletproof.
*however*
we also had exchange and SNA server running on one box, and it was the devil's own. SNA server on its own box? No problem. All of these machines were loaded, too, with plenty of ram and storage and processors.
Is it reasonable to expect to have to use a box (or two, for redundancy) everytime you want to implement an app, with two for exchange, two for sms, two for sql, rather than two mongo servers running all three apps? No, but I guess if you're a corporation it's only a drop in the bucket of IT costs.
b) Machine origin, and additions to base NT drivers, plays a part in NT success.
In spite of the fact that those IBM servers are fantastic, the extra software IBM throws in to manage them is horridly flawed security-wise. One of the factors relating to their stability may be the minimal amount of whizzy stuff I allowed on them. Too many people when installing NT belong to the 'oh, why not?' school of installing. It is easy to let it get crowded with useless bells, and those cause problems at startup etc. (NT bootup and shutdown does work uncomfortably like a horserace, and sometimes the services break their legs coming out of the gate. Exchange has been notorious for gumming up the works at shutdown, too.)
Also, let's not forget that awful thing, the HCL. It is unreasonable to expect NT to run on anything with that giant caveat sitting there. I don't think it's unreasonable, since Linux runs on anything up to pocket watches now it seems, but apparently Microsoft does. Would I trust Linux for a commerce server built on a clone? Sure. NT? Ha. The fact that you can't get under the hood to solve problems when by all rights NT should be working is why linux will win.
Base rule: (and it's the same as with any other server, even Linux) don't have on there what you don't use. I wish there was a way I could have my NT servers running CLI only. I managed exchange remotely anyway.
Also, there are also machines that are just plain ornery. It is easy to forget that RAM still has errors, that heat problems are occurring, that the new NIC drivers are buggy, etc. and to blame it on NT instead.
(On a totally unrelated note, is anybody else interested in taking up a collection to get the 'Dave' banner taken out of circulation? That guy gives me the creeps.)
As was pointed out earlier, the first thing everybody should do (if they're interested in the subject, of course) is to go find a copy of 'Showstopper,' written about the birth of NT. I found mine remaindered. You do get the anecdotes about Cutler's boorishness, but you also get a balanced look at the development of a modern operating system.
Now, I'm not enough of a kernel guy to argue about design specs, capabilities, etc., but after re-reading the book there are many things that pop to mind about Linux/NT:
0) Cutler's goals are/were initially very unix-like. When you get right down to it, NT in its initial design sounded (again, to unqualified ears) remarkably similar, with its ways of isolating the kernel, etc. I cannot imagine HOW much fun they have had working DirectX into NT, and I can't even begin to imagine how much Cutler hated it (based on his vision as seen in the interview and in showstopper.)
1) Cutler was adamant about getting rid of bugs. The surprising stability of W2k beta3 was frankly shocking to me, until I remembered that he was back in the fold. Yes, we are talking about a prime example of bloatware, but even so. Unfortunately, since the code is only reviewed by a limited number of people, they're always going to be behind the curve. Furthermore, Cutler is (probably) not responsible for the behavior of other programs from Microsoft, such as Exchange, SQL, etc., and I think that is from my experience the primary starting point for failure on NT boxes. Add to this the fact that there was again undoubtedly tremendous pressure on Cutler from Marketing to do those whizzy things that would compromise kernel stability, and I'm glad I don't have his job (or that of a programmer on Exchange.) I honestly don't see how bugs can be eradicated from the enduser experience. NT is much more stable than is posited here IF you can keep the number of Microsoft server apps to a minimum, preferably one. But things like Back Office pretend that you can have Exchange, SQL, and SMS all running on the same box- hell, I can't even get through installing such a combination without a crash. As long as Cutler is left alone and has sufficient authority, that *might* happen, but frankly I doubt it.
2) Portability is gone now for NT. I never did quite understand how Microsoft wouldn't pony up the money to keep NT alive on PPC chips, and I'm even more confused about Compaq shutting down Alpha NT support and development. Isn't having a valid counterweight to Intel more important than, say, 250 million to keep NT alive on those 2 platforms? Does Microsoft trust AMD to survive? In contrast, Linux is ported to gosh-knows how many machines already, and will continue to be. Seems to me keeping it alive on multiple platforms would be an investment for the future.
3) Graphics. The bane of Cutler's existence. I think had his crew been left alone to create a text mode only NT for v1, we would be looking at a totally different situation. Novell did just fine with text only screens, and Linux did too in the beginning. Trying to force NT to run before it was stable enough to walk was a mistake. It would have been better to layer it on later AFTER stability was worked out.
Ultimately, I think NT is doomed to failure against Linux- there are simply too many people using Linux now. But more, I think anything manmade is either made for money or art. And things made for art (or love, if you will) endure. Cutler has the artist in him, but his painting keeps getting smeared by people above him. Gates doesn't have art in him and never will- he may be a nerd, but he's no geek.
unless you have a need for groupware type features, don't mess with either exchange or notes. exchange does handle larger installations better than has been reported here- go to http://www.swynk.com for details on such things. we run 250 users on a quad p-pro 200 box, and it could easily handle 1500 users without blinking. the key is not trying to do anything else with that box. there's also a version that can have a store bigger than 16gb. notes is just goofy in my opinion- the clients are slow, and if you want to use something other than the clients, be prepared for even more slowness, as well as quirkiness. IMAP doesn't work well with it, for example. The Georgia state govt. went to notes for everything, and it's just as much of a consultants feast as exchange. unless you have a firm commitment to groupware and changing your enterprise, don't mess with notes. the real reason to go with open source is the plain jane messaging formats, plus users have lots of choices for clients. sendmail is a must for relaying in and out, but beyond that i can't specify.
Okay, besides the fact that there's turmoil in Iran, the Chinese have a neutron bomb, Taiwan decides to be agressive, the stock market is absurdly high, Russia has gone to hell in a handbasket and probably has lost fissionable materials, and the rain forests are still being wiped out, now we have to worry about the *complete* destruction of the earth?
Can everybody just wait until after the millennium arrives? It's not like the experiments can't wait, and there's enough pre-millennial jitters going already. Let's let all the Y2K stuff get done, and let all the prophecy predictions prove baseless, and *then* we can try making black holes on the surface of the earth.