"they will tell you that the oceanic population is not even 1% lower than it was hundreds of years ago..."
This certainly doesn't take into account the fish that we consume. Many fisheries have been wiped out or nearly wiped out. Chilean sea bass are the most recent example. I don't know any "REAL" marine biologists (I roomed with an undergrad in college, but the last I heard, he was selling office furniture). However, I have talked with more than a few fishing guides and here in Florida, they will tell you that the fishing is not nearly as good as it was in previous decades.
Now I'm not a rocket surgeon or brain scientist, but it seems pretty obvious that particular species of fish populations have decreased much more than 1%. Maybe these fish have been offset by gains in plankton or brine shrimp, so the net change is less than 1%. However, I'm not too interested in an "all you can eat" brine shrimp special down at Red Lobster or an old-fashioned New England plankton bake.
I'm a big fan of the free market. Under normal pressures, it can adapt to handle supply/demand fluctuations. However, the free market doesn't deal well with extremely tight supply. As an example, every Christmas there's the hot new toy that everyone's gotta have but nobody can find through the regular outlets. People lie, cheat, counterfeit, steal, and even assault each other to make thier kids happy. Now, imagine what these same people would do (myself included) if the shortage is food or water or land or energy. As a consumer, I would rather compete with 6 billion other people than 9 billion other people.
For a good example of the environmental impacts of overpopulation (and piss-poor government), check out Haiti.
As a foster parent, I happen to be part of the "'think of the children' bunch". As a quasi-libertarian, I also strongly disagree with government interference with on-line gambling and many other government interferences. The irony is that taking a child from his/her biological parent is a much greater government interference than restricting potentially self-destructive behavior. For the whole personal responsibility and less government mantra to work, we must either accept the fact that many children will live a childhood of abuse and neglect because it's not the government's problem, or we must have effective non-governmental measures for dealing with the fallout of free will.
The real problem today is that there aren't enough foster parents to provide meaningful and effective transitory care and there certainly aren't enough people willing to adopt 6 year old children of parents with gambling problems. In my state, Florida, there are literally thousands of children and teens stuck permanently in overcrowded foster care or group homes with no chance of being adopted. Anyone who casually suggests that the answer is to simply take children from bad parents and give them to good parents needs to put up or shut up.
I have been using OpenVPN for three years with no problems at the small business I work for. I set up the two owners with access, along with myself. We can all access the work LAN from our home PCs or our laptops. We map network drives, access the intranet, check IMAP email, use VNC, and do just about anything else we would do at the office. I also set OpenVPN up for a friend's small business. He is a road warrior and uses OpenVPN from the road with no problem to use Quickbooks, print to the office, check office email, etc.
OpenVPN has a bit of a learning curve if you aren't familiar with security products or Linux. It took me about a day to get it working the way I wanted back in 2003, but OpenVPN and it's documentation have improved since then. I can't imagine wasting time or money on any other VPN solution.
As for the charging process, I suspect the best way to safely accomplish recharging would be by trading out the entire capacitor array. Arrays would be standardized, much the way that propane tanks work for fork lifts. This would allow the arrays to be charged offline in a safer environment.
Theoretically, empty arrays could be transferred to large regional charging sites (adjecent to power plants) and then returned to retail outlets. By changing the arrays instead of charging them, the five minutes could be reduced to less than a minute. Picture a process similar to an automated car wash. You drive up, make your payment, and you roll into a changeout station where arrays are automatically replaced. This would also take care of the problem of wear/age of the arrays. As arrays wear out, they would be replaced by the retailer, who would spread replacement costs across all transactions.
Edubuntu has LTSP built in. The only requirement would be the ability to boot over the net via PXE by the client PCs. The server should be a newer system with RAM sized to support the client load. Last week I installed Edubuntu on an old Dell 4100 P3 933 MHz with 512 RAM. I then set the BIOS of a few identical Dell systems to use PXE to boot over the net. They booted off of the first system with no problem. I was able to log into them and run apps with no significant latency versus the initial system. I'm delivering seven of these PCs to our church later this week to be used in their children's ministries.
We use key FOBs for our time tracking. We have a reader on the inside and outside of the door. When arriving, the outside reader registers, and when leaving, the inside reader registers. The data stream is dumped via RS-232 serial to a serial port on a linux box where a simple PHP script listens. The script parses the data stream to determine the key FOB and card reader and loads the results into a MySQL database. It also dumps the raw data to a daily log file. I use the computer's time as opposed to the controller's, as it is more accurate and easier to keep synced. The information is made available via a web front end. Using the web front end, the office manager generates PDF time sheets each week. This system has been working just fine for the last 4 years.
One thing I am currently changing is the emergency egress. We have a bypass button located near the exit doors, but the button goes back to the controller. If the contoller is down but the mag locks are still energized, it is possible to be locked in. This isn't a threat, since we have double doors. One side is kept locked but has no mag lock, so if the system goes down, you simply unlock the other door and exit. However, in an emergency, someone may not think of that. I am in the process of getting crashbars installed on the doors with mag locks. Hitting the crashbar will physically interrupt the flow of electricity going to the mag lock. This eliminates the controller from the process and keeps everything local to the door and very simple from a wiring perspective.
I prefer the prone position as opposed to standing or sitting. Laying horizontal while working takes pressure off of my back, knees, AND feet. It also improves the quality of my sleep, allowing for more free time outside of work. Famous people that prefer working in the prone position include George Kastanza, many in the adult entertainment industry, and... well, that's about it.
I played around with the beta VMware server and found the disk I/O was very slow on a reasonably equipped Dell server running CentOS 4.2. I used dd to do some timing tests and then compared to native dd. There was a roughly 80% performance hit. I then loaded Xen and ran the same tests. The performance hit was only around 4%. However, from a simplicity standpoint, VMware was much easier to install. In fact, I was hoping to use Zimbra on top of Xen, but I have been having a lot of problems finding compatible Zen/Zimbra builds. I may end up using VMware and take the I/O hit just so I can complete this project.
I also am the sole IT guy working for a small company (25 heads). I set up Jabber on a linux server several years ago, along with Just Another Jabber Client on the Windows PCs. It has works great and is used daily by everyone within our office. The real value came when I added some PHP scripts using class.jabber.php. Using this class I have written scripts to quickly add/delete users. More important to our company, I have integrated scripts with some of our business processes so that the users get automated messages when certain events happen (invoices and purchase orders created, faxes sent or failed to send, etc.) Once you learn how to write one script, it's easy to create new ones.
The only thing I haven't been able to do is enable easy logging. I even went so far as to use tcpdump to grab messages. We a couple of guys that were caught sending suggestive messages to a girl and needed to make sure they had cleaned up their act. Other than that, Jabber rocks.
I am migrating our small business (25 users) to OO from MS. I recently switched our power user, who is open-minded and a quick study. She has been pulling her hair out over what would seem to be a couple of trivial details. She even came in to work early the other day because she was behind on some commission spreadsheets due the switch to OO. The rest of the users are doing OK with the switch. I'm afraid the owners are going to scuttle my migration to OO, even though I have shown a $10K savings. It's not that OO is less capable than MS, the problem is that it is different in subtle but apparantly very annoying ways to experienced MS users. For anyone doing a switch, prepare your power users in advance to expect short-term grief from the small things as they recondition.
For the record, the "biggest" problem my power user faces is how the Enter key behaves after entering data across several horizontal cells. In MS, Enter will move the cursor down on row and back to the first column that data was entered. For example, B3 -> B4 -> B5 Enter C3. OO does not have this behavior. The Enter key can be customized, but only to go one cell down (default), up, left, or right. Searching the forums confirmed that other MS users are also frustrated by this missing behavior. I tried a quick macro, but no luck.
While I would be reluctant to fly on a plane that used wireless as the primary control system, I think it would be an excellent backup system.
I designed inspection tooling for the Boeing 777 control system, including the cockpit controls. While the 777 is fly-by-wire, there is a backup mechanical cable system that interfaces with hydraulic actuaters at the control surfaces. The hydraulics are powered by localized power sources. As I recall, there is just enough local reserve to get a plane on the ground. Using wireless would do away with all of the cables, pulleys, fittings, access holes, etc. required for the backup system. The wireless system itself could be redundant, working on two or more widely separated frequencies using different protocols, power sources, etc. I'm sure the military has already developed/deployed hardened wireless systems that can deal with interference and jamming.
When you think about it, any kind of mechanical damage to a fly-by-wire system has a pretty good chance of taking out the backup cable system as well. Wireless would eliminate this risk.
The more I think about this, the more I like it. If wireless is successful as a backup system, it could eventually evolve into a primary control system. Failsafe wireless is going to be necessary to support the cars and highways of the future so we might as well get busy using it.
Over the past couple of years, I have purchased eight Dell 1600n laser printers (multi-function) to replace some older network printers in our small business. They have scanning capabilities, including autofeed of multiple docs (but not duplex scanning). These are stand-alone printers (no attending PC), so I needed a network scanning solution. Google revealed an open-source Perl script, dell1600n-net-scan.pl.
The script attaches to a printer via TCP/IP. From the printer, the user selects the Start Scan button, then from the printer's LCD, choose the server to send the scan to (multiple servers can simultaneously run the script and attach to the same printer). Presto, the scan is sent to the server. The Perl script has numerous options for processing the scanned doc, and could easily be hacked to include custom options such as post-processing, delivery, etc. This is a platform independent solution. It doesn't rely on a pile of Windows-only software and an attending PC to accomplish a scan.
The obvious catch is that this solution only works with Dell 1600n printers. The upside is that they are fairly cheap. I paid ~$300 including tax/shipping. They also provide copy and fax in addition to print and scan, so they simplified my office equipment management (1 machine and 1 toner cartridge per station versus multiple machines and toner cartridges).
For me, the biggest advantage to this solution is that I don't have to have a PC directly attached to the printer. I can drop a printer anywhere in our building and have network scanning capability.
I usually overlook such remarks, but I couldn't pass on this one. I worked with aircraft mechanics and machinists at Boeing for 10 years. I also have a friend who is a mechanic for a major airline. As a group, these people are great trouble shooters and problem solvers. They are skilled in their profession. They build and repair airplanes, as opposed to clearing paper jams, waiting for the phone to ring, playing Mine Sweeper, etc. My friend is living an upper-middle class lifestyle and is the sole provider for his wife/children. He doesn't fit into the category "not the brightest bunch". Some of the best IT guys I have met transistioned from fields requiring mechanical or engineering aptitude. Don't sell them short just because they don't have computer skills. I wouldn't appear too bright if I had to try to find and repair a micro-crack in a bulkhead, knowing that if I failed, hundreds of people would be instantly and violently tossed into eternity.
Linux can be a differentiator between your company and your competitors. If mgmt is not interested in leveraging IT (buzzword), then stick with Windows and run with the pack. On the other hand, Linux could be the difference, especially if your industry runs tight margins and/or is highly standardized (retail, for example). At the very least, your company should be doing Linux R&D, just in case one of their competitors runs with Linux.
On a slightly more emotional tack, pitch Linux as the lone carnivore and the status quo as the herd of herbivores. Are your managers predators or prey? Are they risk takers or are they content to split the pot with their competitors.
I'm not big on business books, but one book that impacted me is Thriving on Chaos by Tom Peters. It's an old book, from the late eighties, but the concepts apply today. One of the key concepts is to use innovation to differentiate your company from your competitors.
I too must support QB, actually QB Pro with multiple concurrent users. It sucks.
Does anyone have experience with QB Enterprise Edition? It uses remote windowing (rdesktop) as opposed to multiple clients trying to share the QBW file over the network. In a linux migration strategy, one windows server could be maintained for QB while linux clients would use rdesktop to access QB. Since the QBW file never leaves the server, performance should increase. I haven't tried this, but would like to know if others have had any success with it.
On a separate note, there is a screaming need for an accounting package that sits between QB/Peachtree and Great Plains/Oracle/SAP. The package needs to be web-enabled, needs a true SQL backend, and preferrably not be tied to a specific OS. I haven't done any serious research in a couple of years, so maybe something has emerged (ala Salesforce.com).
OK, I was just using sex to advertise my less-than-sexy post.
There are two ways of improving the bottom line. The most obvious is to increase sales. The second is to reduce costs. Unless you are directly involved in sales, it is difficult to influence sales, and even harder to convince management to pay you a commission for those sales. On the other hand, anyone can reduce costs through improving the operational efficiency of the company. So, how does a company reward cost reduction? Just as with sales, they pay a commission for cost reduction.
My first real job was working as a tool designer at Boeing. They had an Employee Suggestion program that allowed anyone to submit a suggestion for saving the company money. The suggestor had to include a basic ROI with the suggestion. Management evaluated the suggestion and if it could be implemented, the suggestor received 10% of the savings. I had a nice little revenue stream from submitting suggestions, many of which had to do with creating custom macros for our CAD system. In a nut shell, I got a "commission" for improving Boeing's bottom line.
One of the fringe benefits of this program was that employees were constantly analyzing every aspect of every business process, looking for opportunities to improve efficiency, even if it wasn't in their core area of expertise. One guy won big for submitting a suggestion that the company switch from standard toilet paper rolls to giant rolls. Seems kind of stupid, but when you have 100,000 people wiping their asses 250 days a year, it adds up. Estimate: 2 feet of toilet paper per employee per day = 50,000,000 million feet per year. Cost per foot for standard roll = $.010 Cost per foot for giant roll = $.008 Savings per year =.002 * 50,000,000 = $100,000. A 10% commission on $100,000 = $10,000. Obviously there would be additional costs and savings to calculate, such as cost of converting to larger carriers, savings by having to change rolls less frequently, etc.
Employee suggestion programs are generally viewed as cheap management tricks, but if they have a financial kick to them, they can be effective tools for rewarding employees. If they are pitched as commission for non-sales employees, they will have a better chance of taking off.
If your company purchases volume quantities of electronic components, or depends on suppliers that do, you need to be aware of what is happening in the Shenzen area of China. It has become a hotbed of counterfeit components and other criminal activity. Guangdong is another region of China where this is happening. The Chinese government appears to be doing little or nothing to interfere. Many companies pop up just long enough to do a couple of shady deals and then vanish.
Our company buys wholesale quantities of electronic components, occasionally (but warily) from the Shenzen region of China. We have received re-marked and counterfeit parts which are accurate enough to get by our modest QA process. In one instance, a military customer of ours discovered a very expensive counterfeit part via industrial X-Ray before mounting it on their boards. As a result, we lost face with a good customer and had to take legal action to get our money back from our stateside supplier. Our supplier was stuck with the bill, as they purchased/imported the parts from Shenzen.
What ever you do, never pay up front. This sounds like a no brainer, but these people will feed on the buyer's desperation. If they won't accept NET 1 terms, then run away. Once a deal goes bad, you have no legal recourse. Buyer Beware.
Another vote for webcalendar. I installed it several years ago for our small company of 25 people. Because it is open-source, I was able to easily integrate it into our homegrown PHP-based contact management system. This allows our 15 sales people to develop detailed customer contact schedules where they can drill down from the calendar to the company/contact. Because the backend is a simple MySQL DB, I was able to quickly write a simple cron-based script that sends people a jabber pop-up reminder when calendar events occur.
Every time a MySQL post appears on/., the DB purists gleefully dump cold water (or boiling oil) all over the uninformed masses who continue to use MySQL despite the sage advice of the technical elite. I am the sole IS guy for a small wholesale business (25 heads, $10M sales). I have used homegrown LAMP apps for the bulk of our business processes since arriving at the company 5 years ago. MySQL has been the backend since day one, and has performed flawlessly.
"But you only have a few GB of data" the purists decry. To them I reply, "That insignificant amount of data fuels $10 million a year for the economy and makes a paycheck for 25 families, all for the low cost of nothing".
Your customer doesn't care what DB you use. The only thing they care about is the cost/delivery/quality of your company's end product. Yes, MySQL is the bicycle of DBs, but if all you need is a bicycle, why force your company to buy a car. If your requirements grow... get a fleet of bicycles.
The moral of the story is that the bottom line IS the bottom line.
If a 100bT switch doesn't do the trick as mentioned by other posters, how about installing a separate set of NICs and switch dedicated to the streaming content. That would guarantee bandwidth. The cost would be a little higher, and involve more setup, but you would also be in a much better position for future expansion/capabilities. BTW, I haven't run Win98 for years. I don't remember how hard it is to set up Win98 with multiple NICs.
I helped out through our church immediately after hurricane Charley. Much of what we did was clear debris (mainly pine/oak trees, same as MS) from damaged but recoverable homes. This required chainsaws, but also lots of hand-operated tree saws (sharp blades), as chain saws aren't practical when you are working off of the ground. Extension ladders are also extremely useful. Lots of hand tools for dismembering piles of debris (crowbars, nail pullers, shears for cutting sheet metal, hand-held sledges, etc.) will be needed. Twine and rope for lashing/hauling debris is nice to have. Plastic tarps and roofing nails for temporarily patching roofs are also extremely useful. We also took down some plywood and roofing paper, so we were able to do a fairly decent repair job on a few roofs. Metal rakes are useful to clear safe paths for homeowners. You will be amazed and the amount of dangerous litter covering the ground.
Regarding personal supplies, you will want plenty of liquids when you are on the job, but you will probably find that there is more than enough bottled water, food, etc. at the staging areas, so maybe don't waste space hauling in too many supplies. You would be better off hauling in construction material as it is in much shorter supply than food/water. Leather work gloves and wrap-around sunglasses or safety goggles are a must. Stuff will be flying everywhere, especially around the chainsaws. You will without a doubt get cut, scraped, bruised, etc. so make sure you have some basic first-aid supplies, aspirin, and a current tetanus shot.
The city or county will probably be picking up debris at the street, so generally you would only need to haul the debris a short distance. After Charley, the debris was separated so that vegatative matter could be chipped/mulched, and aluminum could be recycled.
Regarding the whole evangalism thing, lead by example. The people you are helping are smart enough to know who you are and why you are there.
This is an introductory course for high school students. I'm picturing a bunch of kids who don't want to take wood shop. They probably can't even name a programming language. The kids who are truly interested in programming are probably already running the computer lab.
PHP introduces the basics of programming without alot of the overhead that other languages require. It can easily interface with DBs, can be executed from the command line, has hooks into all sorts of interesting libs, and it is freely available outside of the classroom. Furthermore, there are a plethora of projects that use PHP, providing source code examples.
Kids in an introductory course want results, not theory or complexity. If they are interested, they will learn the theory and take on the more complex languages. Keep It Simple, Stupid!!!
I have a similar scenario. We have a T1 for our primary Internet access and I purchased business-class cable as backup. Both routes come into NICs on the same linux iptables firewall server. I have a VERY simple script that I use to manually switch the gateway when problems happen. It's not automated, and it doesn't address load balancing, but it's quick and it works.
Obviously I have my DNS records set up to use the secondary route if the primary is unavailable. It wouldn't be too hard to add a watchdog script to switch the route when the primary is down for more than a minute or two. Load balancing could probably be addressed in my iptables config, but so far I haven't found the need.
route del default route add default gw nnn.nnn.nnn.nnn netstat -rn
So has anybody hacked together a way to dump non-video data back to miniDV? This would be a handy little method for low-end users to back up their critical data. It would also help me justify the purchase of a new camcorder.
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"they will tell you that the oceanic population is not even 1% lower than it was hundreds of years ago..."
This certainly doesn't take into account the fish that we consume. Many fisheries have been wiped out or nearly wiped out. Chilean sea bass are the most recent example. I don't know any "REAL" marine biologists (I roomed with an undergrad in college, but the last I heard, he was selling office furniture). However, I have talked with more than a few fishing guides and here in Florida, they will tell you that the fishing is not nearly as good as it was in previous decades.
Now I'm not a rocket surgeon or brain scientist, but it seems pretty obvious that particular species of fish populations have decreased much more than 1%. Maybe these fish have been offset by gains in plankton or brine shrimp, so the net change is less than 1%. However, I'm not too interested in an "all you can eat" brine shrimp special down at Red Lobster or an old-fashioned New England plankton bake.
I'm a big fan of the free market. Under normal pressures, it can adapt to handle supply/demand fluctuations. However, the free market doesn't deal well with extremely tight supply. As an example, every Christmas there's the hot new toy that everyone's gotta have but nobody can find through the regular outlets. People lie, cheat, counterfeit, steal, and even assault each other to make thier kids happy. Now, imagine what these same people would do (myself included) if the shortage is food or water or land or energy. As a consumer, I would rather compete with 6 billion other people than 9 billion other people.
For a good example of the environmental impacts of overpopulation (and piss-poor government), check out Haiti.
As a foster parent, I happen to be part of the "'think of the children' bunch". As a quasi-libertarian, I also strongly disagree with government interference with on-line gambling and many other government interferences. The irony is that taking a child from his/her biological parent is a much greater government interference than restricting potentially self-destructive behavior. For the whole personal responsibility and less government mantra to work, we must either accept the fact that many children will live a childhood of abuse and neglect because it's not the government's problem, or we must have effective non-governmental measures for dealing with the fallout of free will.
The real problem today is that there aren't enough foster parents to provide meaningful and effective transitory care and there certainly aren't enough people willing to adopt 6 year old children of parents with gambling problems. In my state, Florida, there are literally thousands of children and teens stuck permanently in overcrowded foster care or group homes with no chance of being adopted. Anyone who casually suggests that the answer is to simply take children from bad parents and give them to good parents needs to put up or shut up.
I have been using OpenVPN for three years with no problems at the small business I work for. I set up the two owners with access, along with myself. We can all access the work LAN from our home PCs or our laptops. We map network drives, access the intranet, check IMAP email, use VNC, and do just about anything else we would do at the office. I also set OpenVPN up for a friend's small business. He is a road warrior and uses OpenVPN from the road with no problem to use Quickbooks, print to the office, check office email, etc.
OpenVPN has a bit of a learning curve if you aren't familiar with security products or Linux. It took me about a day to get it working the way I wanted back in 2003, but OpenVPN and it's documentation have improved since then. I can't imagine wasting time or money on any other VPN solution.
As for the charging process, I suspect the best way to safely accomplish recharging would be by trading out the entire capacitor array. Arrays would be standardized, much the way that propane tanks work for fork lifts. This would allow the arrays to be charged offline in a safer environment.
Theoretically, empty arrays could be transferred to large regional charging sites (adjecent to power plants) and then returned to retail outlets. By changing the arrays instead of charging them, the five minutes could be reduced to less than a minute. Picture a process similar to an automated car wash. You drive up, make your payment, and you roll into a changeout station where arrays are automatically replaced. This would also take care of the problem of wear/age of the arrays. As arrays wear out, they would be replaced by the retailer, who would spread replacement costs across all transactions.
Edubuntu has LTSP built in. The only requirement would be the ability to boot over the net via PXE by the client PCs. The server should be a newer system with RAM sized to support the client load. Last week I installed Edubuntu on an old Dell 4100 P3 933 MHz with 512 RAM. I then set the BIOS of a few identical Dell systems to use PXE to boot over the net. They booted off of the first system with no problem. I was able to log into them and run apps with no significant latency versus the initial system. I'm delivering seven of these PCs to our church later this week to be used in their children's ministries.
We use key FOBs for our time tracking. We have a reader on the inside and outside of the door. When arriving, the outside reader registers, and when leaving, the inside reader registers. The data stream is dumped via RS-232 serial to a serial port on a linux box where a simple PHP script listens. The script parses the data stream to determine the key FOB and card reader and loads the results into a MySQL database. It also dumps the raw data to a daily log file. I use the computer's time as opposed to the controller's, as it is more accurate and easier to keep synced. The information is made available via a web front end. Using the web front end, the office manager generates PDF time sheets each week. This system has been working just fine for the last 4 years.
One thing I am currently changing is the emergency egress. We have a bypass button located near the exit doors, but the button goes back to the controller. If the contoller is down but the mag locks are still energized, it is possible to be locked in. This isn't a threat, since we have double doors. One side is kept locked but has no mag lock, so if the system goes down, you simply unlock the other door and exit. However, in an emergency, someone may not think of that. I am in the process of getting crashbars installed on the doors with mag locks. Hitting the crashbar will physically interrupt the flow of electricity going to the mag lock. This eliminates the controller from the process and keeps everything local to the door and very simple from a wiring perspective.
I prefer the prone position as opposed to standing or sitting. Laying horizontal while working takes pressure off of my back, knees, AND feet. It also improves the quality of my sleep, allowing for more free time outside of work. Famous people that prefer working in the prone position include George Kastanza, many in the adult entertainment industry, and... well, that's about it.
I played around with the beta VMware server and found the disk I/O was very slow on a reasonably equipped Dell server running CentOS 4.2. I used dd to do some timing tests and then compared to native dd. There was a roughly 80% performance hit. I then loaded Xen and ran the same tests. The performance hit was only around 4%. However, from a simplicity standpoint, VMware was much easier to install. In fact, I was hoping to use Zimbra on top of Xen, but I have been having a lot of problems finding compatible Zen/Zimbra builds. I may end up using VMware and take the I/O hit just so I can complete this project.
I also am the sole IT guy working for a small company (25 heads). I set up Jabber on a linux server several years ago, along with Just Another Jabber Client on the Windows PCs. It has works great and is used daily by everyone within our office. The real value came when I added some PHP scripts using class.jabber.php. Using this class I have written scripts to quickly add/delete users. More important to our company, I have integrated scripts with some of our business processes so that the users get automated messages when certain events happen (invoices and purchase orders created, faxes sent or failed to send, etc.) Once you learn how to write one script, it's easy to create new ones.
The only thing I haven't been able to do is enable easy logging. I even went so far as to use tcpdump to grab messages. We a couple of guys that were caught sending suggestive messages to a girl and needed to make sure they had cleaned up their act. Other than that, Jabber rocks.
I am migrating our small business (25 users) to OO from MS. I recently switched our power user, who is open-minded and a quick study. She has been pulling her hair out over what would seem to be a couple of trivial details. She even came in to work early the other day because she was behind on some commission spreadsheets due the switch to OO. The rest of the users are doing OK with the switch. I'm afraid the owners are going to scuttle my migration to OO, even though I have shown a $10K savings. It's not that OO is less capable than MS, the problem is that it is different in subtle but apparantly very annoying ways to experienced MS users. For anyone doing a switch, prepare your power users in advance to expect short-term grief from the small things as they recondition.
For the record, the "biggest" problem my power user faces is how the Enter key behaves after entering data across several horizontal cells. In MS, Enter will move the cursor down on row and back to the first column that data was entered. For example, B3 -> B4 -> B5 Enter C3. OO does not have this behavior. The Enter key can be customized, but only to go one cell down (default), up, left, or right. Searching the forums confirmed that other MS users are also frustrated by this missing behavior. I tried a quick macro, but no luck.
While I would be reluctant to fly on a plane that used wireless as the primary control system, I think it would be an excellent backup system.
I designed inspection tooling for the Boeing 777 control system, including the cockpit controls. While the 777 is fly-by-wire, there is a backup mechanical cable system that interfaces with hydraulic actuaters at the control surfaces. The hydraulics are powered by localized power sources. As I recall, there is just enough local reserve to get a plane on the ground. Using wireless would do away with all of the cables, pulleys, fittings, access holes, etc. required for the backup system. The wireless system itself could be redundant, working on two or more widely separated frequencies using different protocols, power sources, etc. I'm sure the military has already developed/deployed hardened wireless systems that can deal with interference and jamming.
When you think about it, any kind of mechanical damage to a fly-by-wire system has a pretty good chance of taking out the backup cable system as well. Wireless would eliminate this risk.
The more I think about this, the more I like it. If wireless is successful as a backup system, it could eventually evolve into a primary control system. Failsafe wireless is going to be necessary to support the cars and highways of the future so we might as well get busy using it.
Over the past couple of years, I have purchased eight Dell 1600n laser printers (multi-function) to replace some older network printers in our small business. They have scanning capabilities, including autofeed of multiple docs (but not duplex scanning). These are stand-alone printers (no attending PC), so I needed a network scanning solution. Google revealed an open-source Perl script, dell1600n-net-scan.pl.
The script attaches to a printer via TCP/IP. From the printer, the user selects the Start Scan button, then from the printer's LCD, choose the server to send the scan to (multiple servers can simultaneously run the script and attach to the same printer). Presto, the scan is sent to the server. The Perl script has numerous options for processing the scanned doc, and could easily be hacked to include custom options such as post-processing, delivery, etc. This is a platform independent solution. It doesn't rely on a pile of Windows-only software and an attending PC to accomplish a scan.
The obvious catch is that this solution only works with Dell 1600n printers. The upside is that they are fairly cheap. I paid ~$300 including tax/shipping. They also provide copy and fax in addition to print and scan, so they simplified my office equipment management (1 machine and 1 toner cartridge per station versus multiple machines and toner cartridges).
For me, the biggest advantage to this solution is that I don't have to have a PC directly attached to the printer. I can drop a printer anywhere in our building and have network scanning capability.
I usually overlook such remarks, but I couldn't pass on this one. I worked with aircraft mechanics and machinists at Boeing for 10 years. I also have a friend who is a mechanic for a major airline. As a group, these people are great trouble shooters and problem solvers. They are skilled in their profession. They build and repair airplanes, as opposed to clearing paper jams, waiting for the phone to ring, playing Mine Sweeper, etc. My friend is living an upper-middle class lifestyle and is the sole provider for his wife/children. He doesn't fit into the category "not the brightest bunch". Some of the best IT guys I have met transistioned from fields requiring mechanical or engineering aptitude. Don't sell them short just because they don't have computer skills. I wouldn't appear too bright if I had to try to find and repair a micro-crack in a bulkhead, knowing that if I failed, hundreds of people would be instantly and violently tossed into eternity.
Linux can be a differentiator between your company and your competitors. If mgmt is not interested in leveraging IT (buzzword), then stick with Windows and run with the pack. On the other hand, Linux could be the difference, especially if your industry runs tight margins and/or is highly standardized (retail, for example). At the very least, your company should be doing Linux R&D, just in case one of their competitors runs with Linux.
On a slightly more emotional tack, pitch Linux as the lone carnivore and the status quo as the herd of herbivores. Are your managers predators or prey? Are they risk takers or are they content to split the pot with their competitors.
I'm not big on business books, but one book that impacted me is Thriving on Chaos by Tom Peters. It's an old book, from the late eighties, but the concepts apply today. One of the key concepts is to use innovation to differentiate your company from your competitors.
I too must support QB, actually QB Pro with multiple concurrent users. It sucks.
Does anyone have experience with QB Enterprise Edition? It uses remote windowing (rdesktop) as opposed to multiple clients trying to share the QBW file over the network. In a linux migration strategy, one windows server could be maintained for QB while linux clients would use rdesktop to access QB. Since the QBW file never leaves the server, performance should increase. I haven't tried this, but would like to know if others have had any success with it.
On a separate note, there is a screaming need for an accounting package that sits between QB/Peachtree and Great Plains/Oracle/SAP. The package needs to be web-enabled, needs a true SQL backend, and preferrably not be tied to a specific OS. I haven't done any serious research in a couple of years, so maybe something has emerged (ala Salesforce.com).
OK, I was just using sex to advertise my less-than-sexy post.
.002 * 50,000,000 = $100,000. A 10% commission on $100,000 = $10,000. Obviously there would be additional costs and savings to calculate, such as cost of converting to larger carriers, savings by having to change rolls less frequently, etc.
There are two ways of improving the bottom line. The most obvious is to increase sales. The second is to reduce costs. Unless you are directly involved in sales, it is difficult to influence sales, and even harder to convince management to pay you a commission for those sales. On the other hand, anyone can reduce costs through improving the operational efficiency of the company. So, how does a company reward cost reduction? Just as with sales, they pay a commission for cost reduction.
My first real job was working as a tool designer at Boeing. They had an Employee Suggestion program that allowed anyone to submit a suggestion for saving the company money. The suggestor had to include a basic ROI with the suggestion. Management evaluated the suggestion and if it could be implemented, the suggestor received 10% of the savings. I had a nice little revenue stream from submitting suggestions, many of which had to do with creating custom macros for our CAD system. In a nut shell, I got a "commission" for improving Boeing's bottom line.
One of the fringe benefits of this program was that employees were constantly analyzing every aspect of every business process, looking for opportunities to improve efficiency, even if it wasn't in their core area of expertise. One guy won big for submitting a suggestion that the company switch from standard toilet paper rolls to giant rolls. Seems kind of stupid, but when you have 100,000 people wiping their asses 250 days a year, it adds up. Estimate: 2 feet of toilet paper per employee per day = 50,000,000 million feet per year. Cost per foot for standard roll = $.010 Cost per foot for giant roll = $.008 Savings per year =
Employee suggestion programs are generally viewed as cheap management tricks, but if they have a financial kick to them, they can be effective tools for rewarding employees. If they are pitched as commission for non-sales employees, they will have a better chance of taking off.
If your company purchases volume quantities of electronic components, or depends on suppliers that do, you need to be aware of what is happening in the Shenzen area of China. It has become a hotbed of counterfeit components and other criminal activity. Guangdong is another region of China where this is happening. The Chinese government appears to be doing little or nothing to interfere. Many companies pop up just long enough to do a couple of shady deals and then vanish.
Our company buys wholesale quantities of electronic components, occasionally (but warily) from the Shenzen region of China. We have received re-marked and counterfeit parts which are accurate enough to get by our modest QA process. In one instance, a military customer of ours discovered a very expensive counterfeit part via industrial X-Ray before mounting it on their boards. As a result, we lost face with a good customer and had to take legal action to get our money back from our stateside supplier. Our supplier was stuck with the bill, as they purchased/imported the parts from Shenzen.
What ever you do, never pay up front. This sounds like a no brainer, but these people will feed on the buyer's desperation. If they won't accept NET 1 terms, then run away. Once a deal goes bad, you have no legal recourse. Buyer Beware.
Another vote for webcalendar. I installed it several years ago for our small company of 25 people. Because it is open-source, I was able to easily integrate it into our homegrown PHP-based contact management system. This allows our 15 sales people to develop detailed customer contact schedules where they can drill down from the calendar to the company/contact. Because the backend is a simple MySQL DB, I was able to quickly write a simple cron-based script that sends people a jabber pop-up reminder when calendar events occur.
Every time a MySQL post appears on /., the DB purists gleefully dump cold water (or boiling oil) all over the uninformed masses who continue to use MySQL despite the sage advice of the technical elite. I am the sole IS guy for a small wholesale business (25 heads, $10M sales). I have used homegrown LAMP apps for the bulk of our business processes since arriving at the company 5 years ago. MySQL has been the backend since day one, and has performed flawlessly.
"But you only have a few GB of data" the purists decry. To them I reply, "That insignificant amount of data fuels $10 million a year for the economy and makes a paycheck for 25 families, all for the low cost of nothing".
Your customer doesn't care what DB you use. The only thing they care about is the cost/delivery/quality of your company's end product. Yes, MySQL is the bicycle of DBs, but if all you need is a bicycle, why force your company to buy a car. If your requirements grow... get a fleet of bicycles.
The moral of the story is that the bottom line IS the bottom line.
If a 100bT switch doesn't do the trick as mentioned by other posters, how about installing a separate set of NICs and switch dedicated to the streaming content. That would guarantee bandwidth. The cost would be a little higher, and involve more setup, but you would also be in a much better position for future expansion/capabilities. BTW, I haven't run Win98 for years. I don't remember how hard it is to set up Win98 with multiple NICs.
I helped out through our church immediately after hurricane Charley. Much of what we did was clear debris (mainly pine/oak trees, same as MS) from damaged but recoverable homes. This required chainsaws, but also lots of hand-operated tree saws (sharp blades), as chain saws aren't practical when you are working off of the ground. Extension ladders are also extremely useful. Lots of hand tools for dismembering piles of debris (crowbars, nail pullers, shears for cutting sheet metal, hand-held sledges, etc.) will be needed. Twine and rope for lashing/hauling debris is nice to have. Plastic tarps and roofing nails for temporarily patching roofs are also extremely useful. We also took down some plywood and roofing paper, so we were able to do a fairly decent repair job on a few roofs. Metal rakes are useful to clear safe paths for homeowners. You will be amazed and the amount of dangerous litter covering the ground.
Regarding personal supplies, you will want plenty of liquids when you are on the job, but you will probably find that there is more than enough bottled water, food, etc. at the staging areas, so maybe don't waste space hauling in too many supplies. You would be better off hauling in construction material as it is in much shorter supply than food/water. Leather work gloves and wrap-around sunglasses or safety goggles are a must. Stuff will be flying everywhere, especially around the chainsaws. You will without a doubt get cut, scraped, bruised, etc. so make sure you have some basic first-aid supplies, aspirin, and a current tetanus shot.
The city or county will probably be picking up debris at the street, so generally you would only need to haul the debris a short distance. After Charley, the debris was separated so that vegatative matter could be chipped/mulched, and aluminum could be recycled.
Regarding the whole evangalism thing, lead by example. The people you are helping are smart enough to know who you are and why you are there.
This is an introductory course for high school students. I'm picturing a bunch of kids who don't want to take wood shop. They probably can't even name a programming language. The kids who are truly interested in programming are probably already running the computer lab.
PHP introduces the basics of programming without alot of the overhead that other languages require. It can easily interface with DBs, can be executed from the command line, has hooks into all sorts of interesting libs, and it is freely available outside of the classroom. Furthermore, there are a plethora of projects that use PHP, providing source code examples.
Kids in an introductory course want results, not theory or complexity. If they are interested, they will learn the theory and take on the more complex languages. Keep It Simple, Stupid!!!
I have a similar scenario. We have a T1 for our primary Internet access and I purchased business-class cable as backup. Both routes come into NICs on the same linux iptables firewall server. I have a VERY simple script that I use to manually switch the gateway when problems happen. It's not automated, and it doesn't address load balancing, but it's quick and it works.
Obviously I have my DNS records set up to use the secondary route if the primary is unavailable. It wouldn't be too hard to add a watchdog script to switch the route when the primary is down for more than a minute or two. Load balancing could probably be addressed in my iptables config, but so far I haven't found the need.
route del default
route add default gw nnn.nnn.nnn.nnn
netstat -rn
Thanks for the info. I might just have to download dvbackup & friends and play around with it a little bit.
So has anybody hacked together a way to dump non-video data back to miniDV? This would be a handy little method for low-end users to back up their critical data. It would also help me justify the purchase of a new camcorder.