I could not agree more with this post. I help admin about 60 servers, and a large number of them run Plesk. I have ONE windows server that has Plesk on it.
WE HATE PLESK
WE LOVE CPANEL
Customers on the other hand seem to prefer Plesks pretty interface, but that is where the prettiness ends. Their QA is nonexistant. We hand to rebuild our windows server *from scratch* and migrate the users data *manually* because their scripts did not work. Heck THEY tried to do it and couldn't get it. We lost many clients on that machine.
I have told Plesk that if they continue to put out such bad software that I will badmouth them and recommend Cpanel to everyone I know.
And here I am doing it.
DO NOT BUY PLESK.
Their upgrades generally break more than they fix, and cause more support issues than they solved.
To those of you saying how bad this is because you could basically DoS your competitor by spamvertising their site, here is a basic explanation of how it should work.
Complaints start rolling in. If its not caught soon, dsbl lists will start blocking the ISP. Is the spam legit? Lets contact the owner of the site. Not legit? Prove it. Usually, it IS legit. We investigate thoroughly and determine the source of said spam, and if its truly not legit spam, done by someone else (this *has* happened with us) then we notify spamcop or whatever list needed that an investigation has been done and its taken care of.
So, with due diligence when it comes to enforcing policies such as this, and not a "shoot first ask questions later" attitude toward shutting off sites, then it becomes a reasonable policy.
The Web Hosting company I work for has been doing this for years. You spam, you lose. Simple. From our AUP: # UBE ("spam"): sending unsolicited bulk e-mail, using UBE, even if not sent from American Internet, to advertise (spamvertise) your site, providing any service to spammers such as mailboxes or Web sites.
Hey! That's what I did! How dare you take my idea!:p
I got that book from the library, and built the light following bot that uses an LM386 op-amp as its 'brain'. It works well and I am happy to have done the project.
Shrek: What happen ? Donkey: Somebody set up us the bomb. Fiona: We get signal. Shrek: What ! Fiona: Main screen turn on. Shrek: It's You !! Farquad: How are you gentlemen !! Farquad: All your base are belong to us. Farquad: You are on the way to destruction. Shrek: What you say !! Farquad: You have no chance to survive make your time.
I'll set up a cluster of old Pentium 200MMX's and put 128MB of ram on them... they'll be rockin! When people see my garage full of cables and ancient hardware and ask "WTF are you doing with all this crap?" I'll be able to say "rendering Shrek 3".
Distributed computing for rendering a movie? I think they have enough hardware problems without getting the worm infected masses into the mix.
Yeah, I know its lo-tech but I had the same dilemma, and discussed it with a very technology-minded friend. I considered a Tandy 100, and all sorts of things when I eventually decided a microcassette recorder would do the trick. Doctors, journalists, and many other professionals have used them for so long, its a standard practically. Oh, and did I mention cheap? You can buy a decent one for $20-30 at wal-mart, and a few tapes.
As a sysadmin at a small to midsized web hosting firm, I find that dialup is all I need. I have tried time and time again to justify broadband at my house but as a single income household with 2 kids and my disabled wife, I can't afford it and do not really need it. If I need something that's broadband only (Latest distro ISO or something) I login to my server here at the NOC (45MB DS3) and download it there. Then I grab it on my laptop the next day at work. NO BIG DEAL. Even if I did not have 45mb/sec here at work I would still be OK with dialup. Heck most of us just check mail right?
Seriously though, the most I do is check mail, a few forums, and some web publishing. All low bandwidth stuff. So, I agree with the story. Broadband is nice but not necessary.
I currently work for a web hosting firm where we run our own DNS of course. Its not without its problems, for sure. But as long as you know what you're doing, or know where to go for help, its pretty easy and worth doing.
I run my own DNS for my personal server, so that I can make changes and they are instant to me, since I configured my Winders XP box to reference my server for DNS.
There are lots of neat things you can do by running your own but personally I like it because you can run hundreds of domains off of one small box that has some decent memory in it, and it won't go down unless there is hardware failure.
So, in my opinion, if you have the resources, then there is no reason NOT to. Go for it!
Hey if you're gonna die soon (no I'm no trying to be morbid) and you have wishes to be cremated, why not do it this way? You'd be "craterated". Or just have your ashes sent up. "Yep, my dear old Dad, he's moon dust by now..."
Oh goody, can't wait to go waste more time running linux on useless hardwdare... Wait, are they going to port Super Mario Brothers to Linux now? OOOOooh Tux Racer on GBA!
Gotta get coding, if I can port DOS 3.3 to my 8bit NES, I'll be able to play QBasic Snake on my TV. Oh yeah...
Excersize control: imagine your DVD playing the workout tape, and a machine monitoring your muscles as you work out. The DVD says "You need to work harder on your abs, the muscles aren't working hard enough". THAT would be cool. I know I could use it.
Well, When I was 17 y/o I went and got a job at an office supply store. Staples #134 in Palm Springs, CA. I was the snot nosed kid who worked the computer section at the time. After I was there a few months, I started getting a good reputation with customers and staff, and got LOTS of side business doing things like:
- installing parts I sold - setting up peoples new computers - migrating peoples data to new computers - teaching them how to USE their computers - general tech work
Of course I had to make sure that the general manager was OK with that, and he was cool with it as long as I wasn't constantly pimping myself. I usually let people ASK if I knew anybody who could do such and such and I'd say "I know *just* the guy". I'd ask for THEIR contact info, and I'd call them after hours (or before if I was working 1-9 like I did often.)
I charged $25/hr, with a 1hr minimum. I'd go through their computers and make sure they were running good, THEN I'd start teaching them. I made thousands and thousands of dollars this way. It could be hard work but I'd take the stuff that other area consultants wanted $75/hr to work on, or just plain wouldn't do.
It gave me a good base, and you know, I STILL do lots of that stuff on the side, but these days I charge $45/hr and most of the work is web design work that I bid per job, flat rate. Yeah, I'm cheap, but I'm not out to make a killing. I'm out to make a *living*.
The OTHER thing I used to do alot was to find a computer shop online that would wholesale parts to me, and I'd price out uber-cheap computers that were custom built. Then, I'd advertise it in the paper at a really good price, cheaper than most places. Very little profit margin, if any. If they ordered, I'd buy the parts, build it, and deliver. Then if they wanted extra help with it, no problem. $25/hr.
If you want to figure out how to get customers to spend money, go to a pet shop. See those cute fish for 10 cents? Bowl, $5. Pump, $10. Food, $3, rocks, $2. There, now you just made $20 on a 10 cent fish.
The moral of my story? People are sheeple. You need to learn how to lead them into buying from you, but it has to be their idea. Wanna sell $20 of fish supplies? Find the cutest 10 cent fish you can, and sell the heck out of them.
So far SCO has been basically saying "You need to buy a license from us to use Linux commercially." Now a well known company actually BUYS the license.
What does this do for their case? Are they going to come forward and say "See, EV1 bought a license. Now YOU need to buy a license!" or what? Really, what does this do for them legally? Anything. I sure hope not.
There are tons of Perl, PHP, and other packages out there for creating PDF files from some sort of input.
I found everything you'd need here at http://sourceforge.net/search/. Just do a search for "PDF" like I did. I *know* you'll find something there.
Sourceforge.net and google.com are your friends!
Hope this helps!
Slashdot Mirror
I understood just enough to realize that I wouldn't have to pass the Knights who say "Ni!" on this one.
That naughty naughty Zoot, leaving the grail shaped beacon on again!
I could not agree more with this post. I help admin about 60 servers, and a large number of them run Plesk. I have ONE windows server that has Plesk on it.
WE HATE PLESK
WE LOVE CPANEL
Customers on the other hand seem to prefer Plesks pretty interface, but that is where the prettiness ends. Their QA is nonexistant. We hand to rebuild our windows server *from scratch* and migrate the users data *manually* because their scripts did not work. Heck THEY tried to do it and couldn't get it. We lost many clients on that machine.
I have told Plesk that if they continue to put out such bad software that I will badmouth them and recommend Cpanel to everyone I know.
And here I am doing it.
DO NOT BUY PLESK.
Their upgrades generally break more than they fix, and cause more support issues than they solved.
GO CPANEL! Yeah its more $pendy but it WORKS.
INCONCEIVIBLE!
Hmmm, they must be running Windows.
To those of you saying how bad this is because you could basically DoS your competitor by spamvertising their site, here is a basic explanation of how it should work.
Complaints start rolling in. If its not caught soon, dsbl lists will start blocking the ISP. Is the spam legit? Lets contact the owner of the site. Not legit? Prove it. Usually, it IS legit. We investigate thoroughly and determine the source of said spam, and if its truly not legit spam, done by someone else (this *has* happened with us) then we notify spamcop or whatever list needed that an investigation has been done and its taken care of.
So, with due diligence when it comes to enforcing policies such as this, and not a "shoot first ask questions later" attitude toward shutting off sites, then it becomes a reasonable policy.
The Web Hosting company I work for has been doing this for years. You spam, you lose. Simple. From our AUP:
# UBE ("spam"): sending unsolicited bulk e-mail, using UBE, even if not sent from American Internet, to advertise (spamvertise) your site, providing any service to spammers such as mailboxes or Web sites.
Is this just now catching on? Shocking.
Another network for SBC to get blacklisted at dsbl. They need to learn to administer their network before they expand it.
Hey! That's what I did! How dare you take my idea! :p
I got that book from the library, and built the light following bot that uses an LM386 op-amp as its 'brain'. It works well and I am happy to have done the project.
First First Post!
Base Jump!
Shrek: What happen ?
Donkey: Somebody set up us the bomb.
Fiona: We get signal.
Shrek: What !
Fiona: Main screen turn on.
Shrek: It's You !!
Farquad: How are you gentlemen !!
Farquad: All your base are belong to us.
Farquad: You are on the way to destruction.
Shrek: What you say !!
Farquad: You have no chance to survive make your time.
I'll set up a cluster of old Pentium 200MMX's and put 128MB of ram on them... they'll be rockin! When people see my garage full of cables and ancient hardware and ask "WTF are you doing with all this crap?" I'll be able to say "rendering Shrek 3".
Distributed computing for rendering a movie? I think they have enough hardware problems without getting the worm infected masses into the mix.
Yeah, I know its lo-tech but I had the same dilemma, and discussed it with a very technology-minded friend. I considered a Tandy 100, and all sorts of things when I eventually decided a microcassette recorder would do the trick. Doctors, journalists, and many other professionals have used them for so long, its a standard practically. Oh, and did I mention cheap? You can buy a decent one for $20-30 at wal-mart, and a few tapes.
As a sysadmin at a small to midsized web hosting firm, I find that dialup is all I need. I have tried time and time again to justify broadband at my house but as a single income household with 2 kids and my disabled wife, I can't afford it and do not really need it. If I need something that's broadband only (Latest distro ISO or something) I login to my server here at the NOC (45MB DS3) and download it there. Then I grab it on my laptop the next day at work. NO BIG DEAL. Even if I did not have 45mb/sec here at work I would still be OK with dialup. Heck most of us just check mail right?
Seriously though, the most I do is check mail, a few forums, and some web publishing. All low bandwidth stuff. So, I agree with the story. Broadband is nice but not necessary.
No I'm not a ST nerd but I think this is pretty hilarious:
"Spock, the women on your planet are logical. No other planet in the galaxy can make that claim."
This story proves it!
I currently work for a web hosting firm where we run our own DNS of course. Its not without its problems, for sure. But as long as you know what you're doing, or know where to go for help, its pretty easy and worth doing.
I run my own DNS for my personal server, so that I can make changes and they are instant to me, since I configured my Winders XP box to reference my server for DNS.
There are lots of neat things you can do by running your own but personally I like it because you can run hundreds of domains off of one small box that has some decent memory in it, and it won't go down unless there is hardware failure.
So, in my opinion, if you have the resources, then there is no reason NOT to. Go for it!
Hey if you're gonna die soon (no I'm no trying to be morbid) and you have wishes to be cremated, why not do it this way? You'd be "craterated". Or just have your ashes sent up. "Yep, my dear old Dad, he's moon dust by now..."
Oh goody, can't wait to go waste more time running linux on useless hardwdare... Wait, are they going to port Super Mario Brothers to Linux now? OOOOooh Tux Racer on GBA!
Gotta get coding, if I can port DOS 3.3 to my 8bit NES, I'll be able to play QBasic Snake on my TV. Oh yeah...
"Mayo the force be with you?"
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
Simple as that.
Excersize control: imagine your DVD playing the workout tape, and a machine monitoring your muscles as you work out. The DVD says "You need to work harder on your abs, the muscles aren't working hard enough". THAT would be cool. I know I could use it.
Well, When I was 17 y/o I went and got a job at an office supply store. Staples #134 in Palm Springs, CA. I was the snot nosed kid who worked the computer section at the time. After I was there a few months, I started getting a good reputation with customers and staff, and got LOTS of side business doing things like:
- installing parts I sold
- setting up peoples new computers
- migrating peoples data to new computers
- teaching them how to USE their computers
- general tech work
Of course I had to make sure that the general manager was OK with that, and he was cool with it as long as I wasn't constantly pimping myself. I usually let people ASK if I knew anybody who could do such and such and I'd say "I know *just* the guy". I'd ask for THEIR contact info, and I'd call them after hours (or before if I was working 1-9 like I did often.)
I charged $25/hr, with a 1hr minimum. I'd go through their computers and make sure they were running good, THEN I'd start teaching them. I made thousands and thousands of dollars this way. It could be hard work but I'd take the stuff that other area consultants wanted $75/hr to work on, or just plain wouldn't do.
It gave me a good base, and you know, I STILL do lots of that stuff on the side, but these days I charge $45/hr and most of the work is web design work that I bid per job, flat rate. Yeah, I'm cheap, but I'm not out to make a killing. I'm out to make a *living*.
The OTHER thing I used to do alot was to find a computer shop online that would wholesale parts to me, and I'd price out uber-cheap computers that were custom built. Then, I'd advertise it in the paper at a really good price, cheaper than most places. Very little profit margin, if any. If they ordered, I'd buy the parts, build it, and deliver. Then if they wanted extra help with it, no problem. $25/hr.
If you want to figure out how to get customers to spend money, go to a pet shop. See those cute fish for 10 cents? Bowl, $5. Pump, $10. Food, $3, rocks, $2. There, now you just made $20 on a 10 cent fish.
The moral of my story? People are sheeple. You need to learn how to lead them into buying from you, but it has to be their idea. Wanna sell $20 of fish supplies? Find the cutest 10 cent fish you can, and sell the heck out of them.
So far SCO has been basically saying "You need to buy a license from us to use Linux commercially." Now a well known company actually BUYS the license.
What does this do for their case? Are they going to come forward and say "See, EV1 bought a license. Now YOU need to buy a license!" or what? Really, what does this do for them legally? Anything. I sure hope not.
Man Rover? What does this article have to do with Richard Simmons?
There are tons of Perl, PHP, and other packages out there for creating PDF files from some sort of input. I found everything you'd need here at http://sourceforge.net/search/. Just do a search for "PDF" like I did. I *know* you'll find something there. Sourceforge.net and google.com are your friends! Hope this helps!