Dunno... most local PC repair shops (from my admittedly limited experience with 'em) seem pretty much the same way - they hire kids who happen to be taking classes/courses in CS/CIS/IS, and throw 'em at it. Not like Best Buy does much different IMHO.
Then again, I build/maintain my own stuff - the local shops are great for the occasional used part, some have some excellent geek types in them, but otherwise I wouldn't trust most local PC shops with repairing a games console, let alone machinery that I actually give a damn about.
Hell, as a Sysadmin, I'd like to carry that motion... if the box-jockeys get $350.00/hr for working on a home user's rig, then all you motherfuckers at the Enterprise level best be prepared to have your A/R department brace for impact... (evil grin).
(and while I'm dreaming of writing up an invoice big enough to make a DoD contract agent drop his jaw in fear... well, I'd like a pony while I'm at it.)
Not everyone has the resources to build/rent a studio and make masters.
Says who? Okay... not everyone, but in an area where the local music scene is large enough, what would stop someone from setting up a small indie studio, and charging local/regional bands some dough to use it (or perhaps a cut of the sales if the band is that good)?
Take my area ferinstance - The Portland/Seattle region is pretty large for local bands of nearly every type. The two towns are only 3 hours' drive apart, which means some guy can set up in one town, and yet still get steady business from both.
Sure, it won't be one of those posh NYC or LA rig-ups with 40-foot-wide soundboards, walls full of recording gear, cocaine and hookers on standby in the lounge, etc... But it can be a fairly solidly built studio for a reasonable sum, and produce quality sound in the process.
As a bonus, a band wouldn't have to sign with a big label to get time in it if the proprietor has any decent business sense.
And spam is spam precisely because of the negative connotations.
Well... not exactly. Spam email got its tag from Monty Python's Spam skit*, not from someone's recollection of how SPAM tastes (At least not directly).
*(if you are a true geek, you would know exactly why that would be an apt application).
FWIW, SPAM (the potted meat) is still considered a tasty thing along the left-hand side of the Pacific Rim.
We were kinda missing a fully-committed competitor for prestige and bragging rights, like we had when we were pushing to the Moon in competition w/ Russia.
Also, nothing (aside from a metric assload of money to go with the initiative) is stopping private interests from giving space a shot. Although there is a lot of work being done in that direction (Scaled Composites, Armadillo Aerospace, etc), I fear that most will stop cold or die off before they really get things going full-time, and some appear to be stopping short just on what they've done - e.g. Scaled Composites may become just a neat-o space tourista thingy to get into sub-orbit, but otherwise won't bother any further.
But then, I'm prepared to be pleasantly surprised and proven wrong when it comes to this ideal.
(Hell, the only reason NASA appears to be getting back into the manned-mission-to-space thing again is because the Chinese got one of their own into space, and Russia+India want to put folks on the Moon... kinda sad that it takes ego just to get people working towards what should be a solid ideal in the first place).
All that said - someone call me when an average guy can get into space without spending a shitload of cash or his whole career kissing bureaucratic arse.
'course, the TFA is right - self-sufficiency is going to be a primary skill. OTOH, I didn't see any mention of Zubric(sp?) and the Mars Society -- and more importantly, the work they did (along w/ NASA) in helping to establish some of the techniques and simulations, let alone the concepts and work put into helping establish a lot of that self-sufficiency.
But hey - as long as someone makes it there and back sometime before I die, cool.
People like PJ feel that they need to cheerlead. But, if you objectively examine the facts, I think you will find that in most respects, scox has already won.
Actually, only certain members of SCOX "won", and you could likely count them on one hand with fingers to spare. The rest of SCOX' employee roster lost... hard. At level best they managed to make it through the dot-bust (and I do agree that they would've likely died in 2004 otherwise), but with 'SCO-Under-Darl's-reign' on the resume? It has to be damned tough to get an interview in the tech industry... and Utah isn't exactly a hotbed of tech hiring (unless you're shooting for, say, call-center work). Remove the higher-ups, and SCOX came out of this in a sorry state indeed.
MSFT didn't get too much out of it, as they're still too busy fighting mass defections to Linux in the server space (where that FUD would've counted the most), and now they've got increasing defections to Apple in the home user space. I will submit that MSFT possibly delayed what now seems to be inevitable, but not by much... the SCOX FUD lost its potency by ~ mid-2004 at best.
Also, MSFT's warning is largely falling on deaf ears, judging by their inaction beyond SCOX and with the likes of Dell, HP(?), and Wal-Mart selling Linux pre-load consumer computers nowadays (something which would've been completely unheard of in 1998...)
IBM spent $100m, yes... but I'm willing to wager that, to date, they've made at least 30x as much dough off of utilizing Linux ever since they plunged in back in 2001 or so. Spending 1/30th (or less, prolly less) of your profits-to-date (amortized) to insure their continuity makes sense. IBM sent one hell of a message to boot: 'Fuck with us, and your corp will die.' I'm willing to wager that even MSFT got that message loud and clear, at least judging by Steve Ballmer's recent mumbling about Linux and software patents, but fearing outright to name any specifics.
As for Darl... if I were him I'd worry about former employees filing a group lawsuit, followed closely by pissed-off stockholders doing the same. While a lot of folks made some hellish bank off of SCOX during its ride, those who bought in late (or still have some) will likely be dying to rake McBride over the coals.
Fair enough, but this leads to another question: Who is to say that Negroponte's vision and hypotheses are the only, correct means by which to accomplish the goal of education in the Third World? I'm not bagging on Negroponte's ideal, but I do question why he took the 'attack' route instead of the 'our product is better because it's cheaper, more effective, and does it here, here, and here...' approach.
To be honest, lumping MSFT and INTL together are a bit of an over-simplification. Recently, Intel and Mandriva sold a lot of Classmate PC's to Nigeria, yes? This would indicate that Intel's goals are not the same as MSFT's, especially considering that MSFT actively tried to bribe Nigerian OEM's (or whoever is handling it) into replacing Mandriva Linux with Windows.
IMHO, Intel is in it to sell Classmate PC's and get some good PR out of it over AMD. MSFT is in it to try to make sure that Windows eventually dominates in emerging markets. But there, the similarities end. Intel can always sell new computers to the same countries' citizenry as they expand and grow - this is nothing more than a tactical move for them. Microsoft on the other hand cannot afford to lose this one, especially if the population gets used to and comfortable with free and open software. For Microsoft, this is a strategic threat.
IOW, Intel has and sees no long-term threat from XO... hardware is hardware, and any OS will pretty much run on either Intel or AMD chips - they just want a piece of the action. Microsoft on the other hand stands a very real chance of being kicked to a niche position (at best) within a whole lot of emerging markets, both now and in the future.
From your.sig...
A happy Windows user and developer, And PROUD of it!
This pretty much says it all. You're tied to Windows as if you were spot-welded to it, and a look through your posts confirms this.
The guy you replied to is right... if you haven't already, you will very likely have to expand your skillset just to survive, because Windows is in decline. You may not see it now (at this time it's simply a matter of Apple and Linux installations growing faster than Windows by orders of magnitude), and it may even be turned around, but I sure as Hell wouldn't tie my livelihood to any one OS or technology. Your reaction to his post is way too defensive to be a simple casual dismissal.
BTW, it's spelled "Apple" - I certainly hope that you don't use the same level of disgust with it in your day job. I mean, Hell... I can't stand Windows (and pretty much abolished it from my house), but I certainly won't refrain from using (or even recommending) it if that's the only solution at hand.
I'm not a Windows MCSE "and PROUD of it", I'm not a *nix sysadmin "and PROUD of it"... I'm just a sysadmin who enjoys what I do for a living. I have my preferences and prides, but I keep them at home. And yes, I have an MCSE in my pile of job-mandatory certs, in spite of preferring *nix (and having the majority of my career centered around *nix).
Who would have thought some primitive hominids could be so destructive? To shorten the life of the universe just by looking at it?
Hey - if we can destroy the Earth just by driving SUV's and using plastic shopping bags...
Let's face it: we're just one bad-assed mofo of a species. I personally pity any aliens that try to screw with us. Oh, and forget the nuclear weapons and all that Area 51 shit... we'll just stare their scrawny grey big-headed asses into oblivion! Bring it on you saucer-jockeys! You may have mastered inter-galactic travel, but we got the Eyeballs of Death, foo...
*(note to the Global-Warming folks, pro or con: it's a joke, damnit!)
Of course, most of the work is done by RHEL, and they're losing revenue because people don't buy RHEL due to the fact that they can get it for free as CentOS.
You oughta talk to a CIO some time...
SysAdmin: "Sir, We don't need to buy RHEL subs. We can just use CentOS instead."
CIO: "Okay, and what happens a couple years down the road if the CentOS project goes 'splat' and all our mission-critical stuff is still on it? And how do we know it's exact RHEL code? And what about the apps and bits that only RedHat makes (like certificate tools for instance)? What happens when you're out on vacation or leave for another job, and we gotta get tech support on this thing?"
SysAdmin: "Umm, err, umm..."
CIO: "Who do we rely on if something isn't quite working on the hardware side? You do know that Dell and HP won't even touch an OS or software issue if you're not using an OS that they support, right? And if our Oracle RAC servers starts goofing up, how do we explain to their tech support that we're using an RHEL variant that they simply don't support?"
Sysadmin: "... "
...you get the idea. It isn't for lack of tech know-how to run the day-to-day stuff that keeps most corporations buying RHEL in spite of CentOS, it's all those nasty little side issues that keep cropping up.
Sure, with a bit of forethought, you can actually get around all the hypotheticals I put up there. Problem is, it'll eat more time and energy to do so than to simply use something that the hardware and app makers support - and invalidating support (either by warranty or contract) is going to be seen as wasteful by the PHB's - cost savings in subs-not-bought be damned.
Personally and professionally, I like CentOS. I squeeze it in wherever there's a need for a non-mission-critical Linux server, and the hardware isn't still under warranty or service contract. This way I save the beancounters some dough but still fill the needs as they arise.
OTOH, there are perfectly real reasons why RH makes so much dough off of RHEL (same with SuSE).
By the by - RedHat has had the same stance: you trademark the name and logos, no problem. That protects your name.
Otherwise... protect it from what? If somebody swipes the code and locks it down under proprietary license, you can go after them for violating copyright terms. Otherwise, the whole stinkin' point of Open Source is to share the code. Can the author of TFA say "duh" for us?
If what you're licensing as open source code is covered by software patents (blecch), then it's already covered under patent law.
If you're that worried about distribution, do what RH and nearly every other distro maker does - have official mirrors. Anything outside of that and you don't have to take responsibility for it.
Otherwise, unless you fully grok what it is you're getting into by doing so, maybe you shouldn't open the license on your source code? This ain't rocket science here...
I've run it in the enterprise. All it takes is a bit of agility and a bit of planning. Compared to NetBackup (where you have to dance in circles just to get an idea of what files are sitting on what tape, and don't get me started on all the BS required to do a restore somewhere other than the original client)...? Bacula does its job, and IMHO does it well. My last position (as Department of Defense contractor) uses it w/o a hitch - by way of comparison, their production site has a catalog that's larger than Amazon's.
/P
Re:Linux is actually cheaper here.
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Best Home Network NAS
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Dunno about all of them, but most of them are very easily addressed:
Ubuntu does not come with client software for windows machines to automatically back up the windows box nightly onto the Ubuntu server. WHS does.
Task Scheduler to copy files from client to a network share? Can't be all that complex to set up a basic data backup routine...
Ubuntu requires you to install Samba. WHS uses windows shares / web server interface.
Samba has a pretty easy GUI setup, even in Ubuntu. It's also already installed, I believe.
Ubuntu requires raid hardware or software.
Software RAID is already built-in. If you use Fedora instead of Ubuntu, you can use LVM's GUI tools to do all of the dynamic partition sizing goodness.
Ubuntu would not give you Remote Desktop access to your windows machines without configuring Wine, I think.
Use the Package manager to install rdesktop, which allows remote desktop access to any Windows box. Done.
Ubuntu requires you to install CVS to get versioning of files, which requires you to actively commit files. WHS automatically saves changes between versions and allows you to step back, all through the nightly automatic backup.
Ah, now there's one that you've gotten perfectly correct (IIRC), and why I use Bacula on my home network (which is admittedly not something for the casual user).
You'd have to write your own web service to access the machines from outside the network. You'd also have to configure the router yourself. WHS automatically configures routers (if supported) and has an IIS app that lets you access all machines and WHS content from the internet.
I'm not so sure I'd want any un-hardened machine to be accessible from the Internet; esp. a Windows one that both streams media and holds all of my personal data in one easy-to-reach location. That's just begging for a first-class arse-pounding from the first script kiddie to see that you've done that.
This is just a handful. I thought this through, I run a small business (20 hours a week of development) and did my homework before making the decision to buy WHS.
I'm sure you probably have... but I don't think you had all the facts at hand when you did. Now know that I'm not knocking your choice at all - if you use something as a beta and like it, and it works for you, cool... but I think that you haven't really looked all too deeply into the alternatives, you know?
Personally, I find that spending $169 for just the OS (when I can get at least an extra hard disk with change left over at that price) to be a bit much. There is also the headaches specific to Windows - the high probability of being targeted, the EULA that says I do it MSFT's way or no way at all, the 'phoning home', the DRM, the extra overhead (I stick with runlevel 3 on my home servers), and the fact that there really isn't much I can tweak on it (at least by comparison)... But then, I do the sysadmin thang for a living - so my needs, skillset, and priorities are a lot different from that of the average home user.
I have an old Celeron box with four 500GB hard drives in it running Fedora Core 7. It has RAID 5 (software RAID), two network cards (I get one NIC, and my wife gets the other one), Samba, and NFS (for my Mac and Linux machines - much faster than Windows sharing). The whole wad was made from spare parts, and the biggest cost was the drives (but w/ ~1.5 TB of storage space, no problemo).
I run Bacula (it's not just for the enterprise, folks) and back up all the important data to the disk array.
I think I peek in there once a month or so, mostly to check disk space and see to patching. The box has zero Internet connectivity, so no probs there.
$25 is not "comparable" to $30-40 per month. The $30-$40 prices represent a 20% to ~60% mark-up over Vonage, and you end up with less features (and according to some, less reliability).
VoIP for the masses was not a "saturated" market when Vonage first hit the scene - at least not to Joe and Jane Sixpack.
IMHO, this little patent spat was Verizon's way of fucking-over a competitor without actually having to compete on merit to do so. (IIRC, the patent is basically a bogus "On teh Intarwebs!" rig-up of existing tech, folks).
Also, up until this lawsuit, Vonage was actually beginning to turn a profit. Not anymore.
That said, I honestly doubt that anyone saw it coming, up until Verizon decided they didn't like the competition anymore.
If they had some sort of clue as to how to accurately and correctly identify illegal filesharers (you know, instead of issuing blanket subpoenas, suing dead people and obvious technophobes, et al)... most of us wouldn't have much problem with it. If they actually used some common sense in choosing folks who passed around pirated files...that weren't children, there would be even less of a problem. If they finally restricted their targets to people who were obviously making money from it (you know, like the real physical media bootleggers do), there would've be zero problems at all.
Instead they got all ego-happy and power-hungry. They began doing blatantly stupid things.
I wouldn't be so quick to blame those who made the (very cogent) argument of going only after the actual pirates, you know? There's always at least one right way and numerous wrong ways to implement any given task.
but your China & Saudi examples are red herrings...
One phrase that is relevant (and easily Google-able): "Great Firewall of China". Not so sure I'd want the same folks deciding what and how the root servers are running, y'know?
As for the rest? Just jingoism on their part, one way or the other. The thing simply runs...
IMHO, I'd have zero problems with a modification of DNS that translates readily between charsets in DNS, then simply assign root servers according to region and charset groups (e.g. Japan can run the Asian charsets, The EU (one of 'em) can handle their specific group of charsets, The US can handle the Western Hemisphere, Russia can do all the Cryllic lookups for the planet, Saudi Arabia (or perhaps Jordan) the Farsi/Arabic charsets, Israel can do the Hebrew ones, etc etc. Policy can then be decided by a committee of representatives from each region, with a rotating leader imported from a place like Iceland or something. Sort of like the UN, but with zero UN control - and keep it small, as well as transparent.
That way nobody gets their panties in a bunch. (well, almost nobody).
I mean that Russian guy is just being paranoid isn't he?
No, he's viewing it from his perspective, which likely includes more than just a little proselytizing from his own government when he was younger, and further from having popped into it (most likely) during the middle of the Cold War.
You've never studied history, have you? Because there's a great big ocean of isolationism among the US populace (and even its government) that takes up the majority of the 20th century. It would have likely settled back to that if not for the whole series of events that followed the first Soviet A-Bomb.
In that case, please post publicly your name, date of birth, credit card numbers, banking info, SSN (or similar national tax/benefits ID numbers), and any PIN numbers that may be attached to any of them.
I'm almost willing to bet that the reality (assuming this is actually the real document) is going to let down a lot of people - Some folks of a certain ideological bent prolly read the summary and went "a-ha! now we can uncover all those BUSH crimes!" (Of course, to be fair, a lot of folks on the other side of that ideological fence will point to it and try and say the opposite... go figure).
No matter what the ideological slant you may take, I strongly suspect that the truth is going to be a lot more mundane - again, assuming this thing is not a fabrication in either one direction or the other.
(speakin' of which, how do you tell for certain that it's not just a fabrication, either for or against? It's something I've always wondered when it comes to public wikis - unless you can verify who submitted it --or it can be independently verified-- you'll never be quite sure of its veracity.)
That's the thing - I sincerely doubt that anyone in the US Government would have bothered, even if we were still the only ones with The Bomb.
Up until WW2, and for a long time thereafter (at least until Vietnam*), the United States was nice and isolationist - we simply didn't want to have anything to do with affairs outside of the North/South American continent. We were more or less dragged into WW1, WW2 by world events, and into Korea by a combination of treaties and the UN.
Having more than one superpower with nuclear capabilities, coupled with expansion by Stalin and Khruschev into the Eastern European Bloc, was part of what brought on the full-on Cold War. It just got uglier from there (and IMHO, if Stalin nor Khruschev had atomic/nuclear weaponry, neither would have even tried to assert such actions as they had).
These people broke laws, laws that they fully knew about and laws that have been enforced strongly for quite some time.
Really? Please define "hooliganism" for us, if you would.
No, really - you said they knew up-front what the laws were. So please define for us, exactly, what a law based on a subjective and ever-changing term would be. Incidentally, China has thousands of such laws, its citizens have no real right to a decent trial, and "subversives" can be detained for the rest of their natural lives without so much as being read anything approaching a Miranda statement, let alone get a trial.
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Then again, I build/maintain my own stuff - the local shops are great for the occasional used part, some have some excellent geek types in them, but otherwise I wouldn't trust most local PC shops with repairing a games console, let alone machinery that I actually give a damn about.
(and while I'm dreaming of writing up an invoice big enough to make a DoD contract agent drop his jaw in fear... well, I'd like a pony while I'm at it.)
Says who? Okay... not everyone, but in an area where the local music scene is large enough, what would stop someone from setting up a small indie studio, and charging local/regional bands some dough to use it (or perhaps a cut of the sales if the band is that good)?
Take my area ferinstance - The Portland/Seattle region is pretty large for local bands of nearly every type. The two towns are only 3 hours' drive apart, which means some guy can set up in one town, and yet still get steady business from both.
Sure, it won't be one of those posh NYC or LA rig-ups with 40-foot-wide soundboards, walls full of recording gear, cocaine and hookers on standby in the lounge, etc... But it can be a fairly solidly built studio for a reasonable sum, and produce quality sound in the process.
As a bonus, a band wouldn't have to sign with a big label to get time in it if the proprietor has any decent business sense.
Well... not exactly. Spam email got its tag from Monty Python's Spam skit*, not from someone's recollection of how SPAM tastes (At least not directly).
*(if you are a true geek, you would know exactly why that would be an apt application).
FWIW, SPAM (the potted meat) is still considered a tasty thing along the left-hand side of the Pacific Rim.
We were kinda missing a fully-committed competitor for prestige and bragging rights, like we had when we were pushing to the Moon in competition w/ Russia.
Also, nothing (aside from a metric assload of money to go with the initiative) is stopping private interests from giving space a shot. Although there is a lot of work being done in that direction (Scaled Composites, Armadillo Aerospace, etc), I fear that most will stop cold or die off before they really get things going full-time, and some appear to be stopping short just on what they've done - e.g. Scaled Composites may become just a neat-o space tourista thingy to get into sub-orbit, but otherwise won't bother any further.
But then, I'm prepared to be pleasantly surprised and proven wrong when it comes to this ideal.
(Hell, the only reason NASA appears to be getting back into the manned-mission-to-space thing again is because the Chinese got one of their own into space, and Russia+India want to put folks on the Moon... kinda sad that it takes ego just to get people working towards what should be a solid ideal in the first place).
All that said - someone call me when an average guy can get into space without spending a shitload of cash or his whole career kissing bureaucratic arse.
But hey - as long as someone makes it there and back sometime before I die, cool.
Actually, only certain members of SCOX "won", and you could likely count them on one hand with fingers to spare. The rest of SCOX' employee roster lost... hard. At level best they managed to make it through the dot-bust (and I do agree that they would've likely died in 2004 otherwise), but with 'SCO-Under-Darl's-reign' on the resume? It has to be damned tough to get an interview in the tech industry... and Utah isn't exactly a hotbed of tech hiring (unless you're shooting for, say, call-center work). Remove the higher-ups, and SCOX came out of this in a sorry state indeed.
MSFT didn't get too much out of it, as they're still too busy fighting mass defections to Linux in the server space (where that FUD would've counted the most), and now they've got increasing defections to Apple in the home user space. I will submit that MSFT possibly delayed what now seems to be inevitable, but not by much... the SCOX FUD lost its potency by ~ mid-2004 at best.
Also, MSFT's warning is largely falling on deaf ears, judging by their inaction beyond SCOX and with the likes of Dell, HP(?), and Wal-Mart selling Linux pre-load consumer computers nowadays (something which would've been completely unheard of in 1998...)
IBM spent $100m, yes... but I'm willing to wager that, to date, they've made at least 30x as much dough off of utilizing Linux ever since they plunged in back in 2001 or so. Spending 1/30th (or less, prolly less) of your profits-to-date (amortized) to insure their continuity makes sense. IBM sent one hell of a message to boot: 'Fuck with us, and your corp will die.' I'm willing to wager that even MSFT got that message loud and clear, at least judging by Steve Ballmer's recent mumbling about Linux and software patents, but fearing outright to name any specifics.
As for Darl... if I were him I'd worry about former employees filing a group lawsuit, followed closely by pissed-off stockholders doing the same. While a lot of folks made some hellish bank off of SCOX during its ride, those who bought in late (or still have some) will likely be dying to rake McBride over the coals.
To be honest, lumping MSFT and INTL together are a bit of an over-simplification. Recently, Intel and Mandriva sold a lot of Classmate PC's to Nigeria, yes? This would indicate that Intel's goals are not the same as MSFT's, especially considering that MSFT actively tried to bribe Nigerian OEM's (or whoever is handling it) into replacing Mandriva Linux with Windows.
IMHO, Intel is in it to sell Classmate PC's and get some good PR out of it over AMD. MSFT is in it to try to make sure that Windows eventually dominates in emerging markets. But there, the similarities end. Intel can always sell new computers to the same countries' citizenry as they expand and grow - this is nothing more than a tactical move for them. Microsoft on the other hand cannot afford to lose this one, especially if the population gets used to and comfortable with free and open software. For Microsoft, this is a strategic threat.
IOW, Intel has and sees no long-term threat from XO... hardware is hardware, and any OS will pretty much run on either Intel or AMD chips - they just want a piece of the action. Microsoft on the other hand stands a very real chance of being kicked to a niche position (at best) within a whole lot of emerging markets, both now and in the future.
This pretty much says it all. You're tied to Windows as if you were spot-welded to it, and a look through your posts confirms this.
The guy you replied to is right... if you haven't already, you will very likely have to expand your skillset just to survive, because Windows is in decline. You may not see it now (at this time it's simply a matter of Apple and Linux installations growing faster than Windows by orders of magnitude), and it may even be turned around, but I sure as Hell wouldn't tie my livelihood to any one OS or technology. Your reaction to his post is way too defensive to be a simple casual dismissal.
BTW, it's spelled "Apple" - I certainly hope that you don't use the same level of disgust with it in your day job. I mean, Hell... I can't stand Windows (and pretty much abolished it from my house), but I certainly won't refrain from using (or even recommending) it if that's the only solution at hand.
I'm not a Windows MCSE "and PROUD of it", I'm not a *nix sysadmin "and PROUD of it"... I'm just a sysadmin who enjoys what I do for a living. I have my preferences and prides, but I keep them at home. And yes, I have an MCSE in my pile of job-mandatory certs, in spite of preferring *nix (and having the majority of my career centered around *nix).
Hey - if we can destroy the Earth just by driving SUV's and using plastic shopping bags...
Let's face it: we're just one bad-assed mofo of a species. I personally pity any aliens that try to screw with us. Oh, and forget the nuclear weapons and all that Area 51 shit... we'll just stare their scrawny grey big-headed asses into oblivion! Bring it on you saucer-jockeys! You may have mastered inter-galactic travel, but we got the Eyeballs of Death, foo...
*(note to the Global-Warming folks, pro or con: it's a joke, damnit!)
You oughta talk to a CIO some time...
SysAdmin: "Sir, We don't need to buy RHEL subs. We can just use CentOS instead." ... "
CIO: "Okay, and what happens a couple years down the road if the CentOS project goes 'splat' and all our mission-critical stuff is still on it? And how do we know it's exact RHEL code? And what about the apps and bits that only RedHat makes (like certificate tools for instance)? What happens when you're out on vacation or leave for another job, and we gotta get tech support on this thing?"
SysAdmin: "Umm, err, umm..."
CIO: "Who do we rely on if something isn't quite working on the hardware side? You do know that Dell and HP won't even touch an OS or software issue if you're not using an OS that they support, right? And if our Oracle RAC servers starts goofing up, how do we explain to their tech support that we're using an RHEL variant that they simply don't support?"
Sysadmin: "
Sure, with a bit of forethought, you can actually get around all the hypotheticals I put up there. Problem is, it'll eat more time and energy to do so than to simply use something that the hardware and app makers support - and invalidating support (either by warranty or contract) is going to be seen as wasteful by the PHB's - cost savings in subs-not-bought be damned.
Personally and professionally, I like CentOS. I squeeze it in wherever there's a need for a non-mission-critical Linux server, and the hardware isn't still under warranty or service contract. This way I save the beancounters some dough but still fill the needs as they arise.
OTOH, there are perfectly real reasons why RH makes so much dough off of RHEL (same with SuSE).
Otherwise... protect it from what? If somebody swipes the code and locks it down under proprietary license, you can go after them for violating copyright terms. Otherwise, the whole stinkin' point of Open Source is to share the code. Can the author of TFA say "duh" for us?
If what you're licensing as open source code is covered by software patents (blecch), then it's already covered under patent law.
If you're that worried about distribution, do what RH and nearly every other distro maker does - have official mirrors. Anything outside of that and you don't have to take responsibility for it.
Otherwise, unless you fully grok what it is you're getting into by doing so, maybe you shouldn't open the license on your source code? This ain't rocket science here...
Task Scheduler to copy files from client to a network share? Can't be all that complex to set up a basic data backup routine...
Ubuntu requires you to install Samba. WHS uses windows shares / web server interface.Samba has a pretty easy GUI setup, even in Ubuntu. It's also already installed, I believe.
Ubuntu requires raid hardware or software.Software RAID is already built-in. If you use Fedora instead of Ubuntu, you can use LVM's GUI tools to do all of the dynamic partition sizing goodness.
Ubuntu would not give you Remote Desktop access to your windows machines without configuring Wine, I think.Use the Package manager to install rdesktop, which allows remote desktop access to any Windows box. Done.
Ubuntu requires you to install CVS to get versioning of files, which requires you to actively commit files. WHS automatically saves changes between versions and allows you to step back, all through the nightly automatic backup.Ah, now there's one that you've gotten perfectly correct (IIRC), and why I use Bacula on my home network (which is admittedly not something for the casual user).
You'd have to write your own web service to access the machines from outside the network. You'd also have to configure the router yourself. WHS automatically configures routers (if supported) and has an IIS app that lets you access all machines and WHS content from the internet.I'm not so sure I'd want any un-hardened machine to be accessible from the Internet; esp. a Windows one that both streams media and holds all of my personal data in one easy-to-reach location. That's just begging for a first-class arse-pounding from the first script kiddie to see that you've done that.
This is just a handful. I thought this through, I run a small business (20 hours a week of development) and did my homework before making the decision to buy WHS.I'm sure you probably have... but I don't think you had all the facts at hand when you did. Now know that I'm not knocking your choice at all - if you use something as a beta and like it, and it works for you, cool... but I think that you haven't really looked all too deeply into the alternatives, you know?
Personally, I find that spending $169 for just the OS (when I can get at least an extra hard disk with change left over at that price) to be a bit much. There is also the headaches specific to Windows - the high probability of being targeted, the EULA that says I do it MSFT's way or no way at all, the 'phoning home', the DRM, the extra overhead (I stick with runlevel 3 on my home servers), and the fact that there really isn't much I can tweak on it (at least by comparison)... But then, I do the sysadmin thang for a living - so my needs, skillset, and priorities are a lot different from that of the average home user.
And so it goes... :)
I run Bacula (it's not just for the enterprise, folks) and back up all the important data to the disk array.
I think I peek in there once a month or so, mostly to check disk space and see to patching. The box has zero Internet connectivity, so no probs there.
(of course, it would be a first for 'em... even if it's the "wrong" Vista we're talking here).
IMHO, this little patent spat was Verizon's way of fucking-over a competitor without actually having to compete on merit to do so. (IIRC, the patent is basically a bogus "On teh Intarwebs!" rig-up of existing tech, folks).
Also, up until this lawsuit, Vonage was actually beginning to turn a profit. Not anymore.
That said, I honestly doubt that anyone saw it coming, up until Verizon decided they didn't like the competition anymore.
Instead they got all ego-happy and power-hungry. They began doing blatantly stupid things.
I wouldn't be so quick to blame those who made the (very cogent) argument of going only after the actual pirates, you know? There's always at least one right way and numerous wrong ways to implement any given task.
One phrase that is relevant (and easily Google-able): "Great Firewall of China". Not so sure I'd want the same folks deciding what and how the root servers are running, y'know?
As for the rest? Just jingoism on their part, one way or the other. The thing simply runs...
IMHO, I'd have zero problems with a modification of DNS that translates readily between charsets in DNS, then simply assign root servers according to region and charset groups (e.g. Japan can run the Asian charsets, The EU (one of 'em) can handle their specific group of charsets, The US can handle the Western Hemisphere, Russia can do all the Cryllic lookups for the planet, Saudi Arabia (or perhaps Jordan) the Farsi/Arabic charsets, Israel can do the Hebrew ones, etc etc. Policy can then be decided by a committee of representatives from each region, with a rotating leader imported from a place like Iceland or something. Sort of like the UN, but with zero UN control - and keep it small, as well as transparent.
That way nobody gets their panties in a bunch. (well, almost nobody).
No, he's viewing it from his perspective, which likely includes more than just a little proselytizing from his own government when he was younger, and further from having popped into it (most likely) during the middle of the Cold War.
You've never studied history, have you? Because there's a great big ocean of isolationism among the US populace (and even its government) that takes up the majority of the 20th century. It would have likely settled back to that if not for the whole series of events that followed the first Soviet A-Bomb.
In that case, please post publicly your name, date of birth, credit card numbers, banking info, SSN (or similar national tax/benefits ID numbers), and any PIN numbers that may be attached to any of them.
Thx in advance,
No matter what the ideological slant you may take, I strongly suspect that the truth is going to be a lot more mundane - again, assuming this thing is not a fabrication in either one direction or the other.
(speakin' of which, how do you tell for certain that it's not just a fabrication, either for or against? It's something I've always wondered when it comes to public wikis - unless you can verify who submitted it --or it can be independently verified-- you'll never be quite sure of its veracity.)
Up until WW2, and for a long time thereafter (at least until Vietnam*), the United States was nice and isolationist - we simply didn't want to have anything to do with affairs outside of the North/South American continent. We were more or less dragged into WW1, WW2 by world events, and into Korea by a combination of treaties and the UN.
Having more than one superpower with nuclear capabilities, coupled with expansion by Stalin and Khruschev into the Eastern European Bloc, was part of what brought on the full-on Cold War. It just got uglier from there (and IMHO, if Stalin nor Khruschev had atomic/nuclear weaponry, neither would have even tried to assert such actions as they had).
Really? Please define "hooliganism" for us, if you would.
No, really - you said they knew up-front what the laws were. So please define for us, exactly, what a law based on a subjective and ever-changing term would be. Incidentally, China has thousands of such laws, its citizens have no real right to a decent trial, and "subversives" can be detained for the rest of their natural lives without so much as being read anything approaching a Miranda statement, let alone get a trial.
Idiot.