You have a point to a degree. I am still using an AMD K6-2 350MHz at home - and it is OK. But I use a 1.5GHz p4 at work and the home machine is really starting to get on my nerves...:)
I'm sure that some of the childern with newer machines at home will be yelling about how slow the ones at school are 3 years from now. That and the wear and tear those machines will recieve from the students using them day after day.
Three years from now they will want to upgrade. Someone posted that they are leased machines - very good idea in this situation.
Everyone here seems to think that you should stick with RAID. I would agree with them. But one thing that I didn't really see anyone point out was the number of drives that you use.
Your best solution for this setup would be one of the better SCSI cards or a RAID controller if you can afford it and get AS MANY drives as you can stuff into the box that is going to house this. Go with 9Gig drives if you dont need the space. 18Gig 15K would be best and setup a RAID 0 or 0+1 if you can. The more spindles in the setup the better off you'll be.
Taco - I'll take your word for it. Because I can't see it... And no, "I'm not blind you insensitive clod" - its./'d... Imagine that - gheesh why cant we cache this stuff - at least the pics??? eh????
Honestly, when I read your post - I thought Bull Shit...:) But I went out and looked for the DMP-100 and BOOM $35.00. It has 32MB of RAM and looks like a neat little unit. I work out for about 45 min - so this should be about right for several upbeat songs.
No kidding. This is great and all - but good lord. All the MP3 players are big $$$$ IMHO.
They have about $12 worth of parts in them if that much and they are all over $150.00... I want one to work out with at the gym - but I'm not paying that much for one when I can have a CD walkman for $20 bucks....
The North East - Boston, NY, NJ, PA, all the way down to NC or around CALF/Nevada. You will find the most geeks, shops, eq etc in those areas.
Pretty much pick the type of weather and culture you want and setup shop. I don't really know much about e-com laws and such - but they can't be that different... The only thing that I think you will run into is state sales tax - and they are ALL trying to get people to pay sales tax on internet purchased items anyway - sooner or later we will have to pay no matter where you live.
I have never heard of it either. Never seen it - never seen anyone with one - etc...
But I'm not really sorry to hear they couldn't make it. Not trolling here - I just think that most geek rags are a joke. 2600 is they way geeks communicate - not wired, or shift etc...
I been doing this for almost 20 years. Magazines? I read car craft, rider, network computing, popular science, scientific america, and packet. Sometimes browse thru comp world, info week etc... But NEVER looked at a wired or the like - never. Geeks don't care about the social aspects of tech. They only want to know how it works and how to fix it when it breaks. These wannabe geek mags should just give it up or start doing something real...
A lot of good points here about security and pipe etc...
But, you will never make backups "cheap" - because you can not get away from a tape backup.
And tape backups will never become cheap because the don't have to make tape drives, librarys, and media cheap. Period.
This would be neat for a "hot" backup - as many of us already do. But you go tell the boss that you are shutting down the backup server (the one with the AIT3 - 180 slot - 6 drive library attached to it) because you setup a server at your house and one at your friends and will be doing backup to those now... They won't think of security, location, or how slow it would be - right away. The boss will think MY GOD you can't just quit making backup tapes - are you crazy - what happens if the server crashes??? Thats what they will think:)
It would be hard to replace a backup tape system that keeps 3 + months of history, lasts a very long time, is fairly fast and can be stored off site. Thats why backups will never be cheap.
I will be checking out Stephenson, Gaiman, Hogan, Wolfe, Vinge, Williams, Banks and a few others. They sound like wonderful authors. Also getting a subscription to Analog sounds like a good idea. The Top 100 was cool also - don't recall a few people on there. Good information!!! I can put down the Cisco/perl/BSD/etc books for a while and actually enjoy reading something:)
I really do want to say thanks. I might even stray outside the box and pick up a few of the non-scifi items that were recommended.
Im a biker besides being a geek - I have a black tshirt (imagine that) with "Give me freedom or give me death" on the back of it... and a bike on the front of course:)
Actually, I would believe that a lot of people on/., and in this country in general, would quote the phrase "Give me freedom or give me death".
This is touchy - I know that the gov is trying to look out for us - I know that this is the greatest country to live in - I know that I LOVE my freedom. I don't want terrorists in my country - nobody does. But what does it cost me to keep them out?
I don't want anyone to have to live with a microscope stuck up their ass - but I dont want anyone to have to live in fear of being bombed everyday.
The only thing that scares me is that the gov will push this security stuff to the edge. I believe that some of them think that they are doing the right thing, some of them have no clue whats going on, and some of them are looking for power. We need to keep this in check, its scary - did I mention that I LOVE my freedom a lot.
Its kind of like getting old - do you want to "live" with tubes in your arms, a piss bag tied to your leg and a 12 pill a day diet. Not me. Shoot me full of some pain killer and let me die quietly with my dignity in tack, thank you very much.
This log issue is not really a big deal, maybe not yet, but it might be. Some of the new laws that have been passed could really help to protect us - some are just CRAZY (DMCA ETC...).
"Shouldn't we as true Americans be ready to assist in every way we can to prevent future 9/11's?", yes within reason. But keeping track of my emails, credit card purchases, medical records etc... is not assisting anyone with "keeping the terrorists out", is it?
Sorry - but in some cases - "Give me freedom or give me death" works pretty well.
I have worked for three different companies that have been bought out.
I quit and got another job before any of the buy outs were finalized and have never regretted it.
Things might work out - things will be OK - things will be better - BULL SHIT. Each time I would have HATED it if I would have stayed. You work for a company because A: you want to - B: you have to. If your in the B section - then it might be OK for you stick around and see what happens. But if you choose to work at the company that your at - then you won't like the buy out one bit.
The buy out process is painful and stupid and frustrating and several other things - its not worth the bull shit to me to see if I will still have a job at the end of the day. My advice is look elsewhere before everyone else is looking.
This is like the helmet laws and such. Pretty soon it will be required to wear one of these everytime you go riding... YEA...
Let me explain something to you - If you wreck a bike going more than 60 miles an hour - your either going to be dead, very injured or very very lucky. And it won't make a shit bit of difference if your wearing ARMOR or jeans and a leather jacket.
You can say what you want - but I wear a helmet when I ride - BECAUSE it is required by law. I would wear it most of the time anyway. But for short trips into town - it would be nice to not have to wear it. I always wear jeans, boots and a leather jacket - even on the hottest day of summer - but I would go with a helmet once in a while - if the choice was mine to make.
But even so - if you wreck a bike at 90+, its not going to be pretty no matter what you have on. I think that this seems like a pretty stupid idea that some ass will make into a law - WHO DOESNT RIDE A BIKE... IMHO.
I worked at a place where there was a lot of bikers. One of the gals where I worked at was um, larger than most. A bunch of us were getting on our bikes to go for an afternoon spin one day and "hooters" was getting on her bike accross the parking lot from me and the big boss. After seeing her I looked over at him and smiled and he said "Man, that must be the only Harley in town with built in dual air bags."
It was pretty funny. And she laughed about it later when we told her what was said.
Educate your users a bit and show them how nice it is and how fast it is and your problem is solved.
We use Imail here (about 150 users) and it works great. The web mail works from anywhere, is fairly quick and easy to use. I get like 0 calls about web access.
Hmmm... I might have to break my Vic out of the attic and see if I can still buy some of the software for it - or get a book and the casset tape drive out and write some of them for her:)
I agree to a point. My daughter is 4 and she "plays" on the computer several times a week. But, I let her use the math, reading, and matching games, etc.. only. The grandparents bought quite a bit of junk for her to use on the computer and I won't let her use it.
The web, not yet. I might let the 11 yr old on but not the little ones.
As far as an OS goes, who cares. An OS is like religion. When they get old enough they will pick what they want to use, even if you hate it.
Think of it this way - we all started on something - are you still using a Vic 20??:)
Actually that would be "typical Dell". Their web site sucks for the configs. Well it is nice that you can config it on the web site - but a lot of the times some of the parts are wrong and the price is never right during the config.
Save it to a cart and you'll see the rebates - then call Dell and give the rep the cart number and have him/her send you a quote - its ALWAYS cheaper that way.
Couldn't have said it better myself. Actually we go thru a reorg here about every 6 months. And of course every six months I have new and different reports that need done - and all my projects change. And they just keep on "talking" about security and not really doing anything about it. As soon as I get to a level that something is about to be done - they switch bosses on me and change my job. I have worked here 2+ years and have been the data center manager 3 times:)
Your right. It is policy. And that really is the problem.
"If that means leaving everything open so the hackers can walk in, that's what you should do." Yea - nice try...
But when we do get hacked. And you will if you do that - then I'm the poor bastard that has to come in for 20+ hours straight and reload all the boxes and restore everything from backup.
And I will not force them to come up with cheesy hacks to do everything thru port 80 - thats not the way to do it. If they need something open - I'll open it in the firewall - but only for the box that they need it for and only for the customers address range that will use it. Keep it simple - remember.
But stupid shit like having access open to the inside network from the DMZ is just that - stupid. And they cry becuase they cant surf to thier dev boxes and install stuff if I shut that down. You know what - burn a fucking CD and bring it to the DC and install it. Simple.
Unfortunately, I do know what my job is - and it is very hard to do...
Gods - what a line. I liked the suckass developers bit too - but hey, I'm a hardware guy:)
Programmers need to follow the KISS method of coding. I love this - RFC1925 - Fundamental Truth #12 - "In protocol design, perfection has been reached not when there is nothing left to add. but when there is nothing left to take away." You can not really say it any better. It is supposed to be funny - but it is really very true.
Being the hardware/network guy - I deal with this everyday. My place is getting crazy - everytime you pick up a dirty rug around here to shake it out you find another programmer... And they are all killin me. I try to lock something down - they cry "But my code won't work if you do that!!". I try to clean something up and they cry. I SUGGEST that we do something a different way - and they CRY!!!!!
OK - breathe.... It is really very hard to do my job. And it sucks. Mgmt doesn't understand why we need an IDS, or tighter VPN encryption, or NO access to the inside network from the DMZ and on and on and on...
Keep it simple, stupid. Words I try to live by - but you should see the code these guys write. This guy had hit it right on the head. This article is nothing special - it isn't rocket science - its FACTS. But try and teach it to a bunch of crying coders and a room full of suits. You can't - period. So I keep coming in on Sundays (salaried employee, thank you very much) and patching systems and go thru my logs everyday and sneak stuff past them when I can and just do what I can to keep us secure. Some of the really really stupid stuff they try to do I just tell them no - no one really fights with me about it - but if I try and change ANYTHING to make it more secure that would involve writting ONE line of code to fix - I get beat down till I just quit fighting it.
I love this stuff - but sometimes you can really hate doing it.
But hes right - WE have to do it. WE have to make things more secure - WE have to keep it simple. For the love of all that is holy - if you are a coder - please keep it simple and do your fucking job. Don't add shit you don't need - stop when you can't take anything else out. And don't worry about the OS patches or the firewall or the router - My end is already being taken care. See ya Sunday morning....
Actually i am not a big fan of the 24 hours/7 days/dummys book. The idiot and dummy books just insult you right on the cover - i refuse to buy any of those. But some of the others can be pretty good.
I taught a network troubleshooting class once and had to pick between a $75 book and a $20 book. the $20 one was Teach Yourself Network Troubleshooting in 24 hours. I picked it because of price mostly (thinking of the students) and it looked pretty good. Not as much material as the $75 book - but still had a good bit in it.
It worked out very well and the students actually liked it a lot becuase it was a little funny and had good basic concepts in it.
Not trying to be an ass or anything. But you might want to hope that you sys admin is reading this book - along with others im sure - becuase if he isnt - some fellow employee in the company could be surfing thru your files right now....
actually it was longer than that - i had the other two installed and went to lunch after I ran make install for Mozilla.;)
But the point was that I can now use X on my BSD box. I also have an older Compaq sitting on my desk that I have FreeBSD installed on - and am learning things with it too... But X won't work on it becuase the old S3 Trio is not supported. I know its not a big deal - but the geeky Linux intern that works for me - starts an install and half hour later RH is up and running with X and pretty much on any box that he has tried it on - and he really doesn't have to do anything to it.
I'm not saying that BSD should be exactly like that - becuase if it was I wouldn't want to use it for servers because it does everything for you - kinda scares me the way a NT box does with a default install.
But it could be easier to get X running on the BSD's - I think it would help to get more ppl using it, and not just for servers.
Oh and my box is a new Dell GX400 with all the bells and whistles and we have a 4 meg SMDS line - so it was still pretty fast:)
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I'm sure that some of the childern with newer machines at home will be yelling about how slow the ones at school are 3 years from now. That and the wear and tear those machines will recieve from the students using them day after day.
Three years from now they will want to upgrade. Someone posted that they are leased machines - very good idea in this situation.
duke
Your best solution for this setup would be one of the better SCSI cards or a RAID controller if you can afford it and get AS MANY drives as you can stuff into the box that is going to house this. Go with 9Gig drives if you dont need the space. 18Gig 15K would be best and setup a RAID 0 or 0+1 if you can. The more spindles in the setup the better off you'll be.
Duke
Taco - I'll take your word for it. Because I can't see it... And no, "I'm not blind you insensitive clod" - its ./'d... Imagine that - gheesh why cant we cache this stuff - at least the pics??? eh????
Duke
Honestly, when I read your post - I thought Bull Shit... :) But I went out and looked for the DMP-100 and BOOM $35.00. It has 32MB of RAM and looks like a neat little unit. I work out for about 45 min - so this should be about right for several upbeat songs.
Thanks for the info - can't beat /. eh :)
Duke
They have about $12 worth of parts in them if that much and they are all over $150.00... I want one to work out with at the gym - but I'm not paying that much for one when I can have a CD walkman for $20 bucks....
Pretty much pick the type of weather and culture you want and setup shop. I don't really know much about e-com laws and such - but they can't be that different... The only thing that I think you will run into is state sales tax - and they are ALL trying to get people to pay sales tax on internet purchased items anyway - sooner or later we will have to pay no matter where you live.
Good luck in whatever you do,
Duke
But I'm not really sorry to hear they couldn't make it. Not trolling here - I just think that most geek rags are a joke. 2600 is they way geeks communicate - not wired, or shift etc...
I been doing this for almost 20 years. Magazines? I read car craft, rider, network computing, popular science, scientific america, and packet. Sometimes browse thru comp world, info week etc... But NEVER looked at a wired or the like - never. Geeks don't care about the social aspects of tech. They only want to know how it works and how to fix it when it breaks. These wannabe geek mags should just give it up or start doing something real...
IMHO
Duke
But, you will never make backups "cheap" - because you can not get away from a tape backup.
And tape backups will never become cheap because the don't have to make tape drives, librarys, and media cheap. Period.
This would be neat for a "hot" backup - as many of us already do. But you go tell the boss that you are shutting down the backup server (the one with the AIT3 - 180 slot - 6 drive library attached to it) because you setup a server at your house and one at your friends and will be doing backup to those now... They won't think of security, location, or how slow it would be - right away. The boss will think MY GOD you can't just quit making backup tapes - are you crazy - what happens if the server crashes??? Thats what they will think :)
It would be hard to replace a backup tape system that keeps 3 + months of history, lasts a very long time, is fairly fast and can be stored off site. Thats why backups will never be cheap.
Duke
I will be checking out Stephenson, Gaiman, Hogan, Wolfe, Vinge, Williams, Banks and a few others. They sound like wonderful authors. Also getting a subscription to Analog sounds like a good idea. The Top 100 was cool also - don't recall a few people on there. Good information!!! I can put down the Cisco/perl/BSD/etc books for a while and actually enjoy reading something :)
I really do want to say thanks. I might even stray outside the box and pick up a few of the non-scifi items that were recommended.
Hopefully this was helpful to more than just me.
Duke
And the school owns the code and the site and etc...
This has happened before. Sounds like you have a good idea here - don't let someone else own it before you get a chance to start it.
Duke
Im a biker besides being a geek - I have a black tshirt (imagine that) with "Give me freedom or give me death" on the back of it... and a bike on the front of course :)
Duke
This is touchy - I know that the gov is trying to look out for us - I know that this is the greatest country to live in - I know that I LOVE my freedom. I don't want terrorists in my country - nobody does. But what does it cost me to keep them out?
I don't want anyone to have to live with a microscope stuck up their ass - but I dont want anyone to have to live in fear of being bombed everyday.
The only thing that scares me is that the gov will push this security stuff to the edge. I believe that some of them think that they are doing the right thing, some of them have no clue whats going on, and some of them are looking for power. We need to keep this in check, its scary - did I mention that I LOVE my freedom a lot.
Its kind of like getting old - do you want to "live" with tubes in your arms, a piss bag tied to your leg and a 12 pill a day diet. Not me. Shoot me full of some pain killer and let me die quietly with my dignity in tack, thank you very much.
This log issue is not really a big deal, maybe not yet, but it might be. Some of the new laws that have been passed could really help to protect us - some are just CRAZY (DMCA ETC...).
"Shouldn't we as true Americans be ready to assist in every way we can to prevent future 9/11's?", yes within reason. But keeping track of my emails, credit card purchases, medical records etc... is not assisting anyone with "keeping the terrorists out", is it?
Sorry - but in some cases - "Give me freedom or give me death" works pretty well.
Duke
I quit and got another job before any of the buy outs were finalized and have never regretted it.
Things might work out - things will be OK - things will be better - BULL SHIT. Each time I would have HATED it if I would have stayed. You work for a company because A: you want to - B: you have to. If your in the B section - then it might be OK for you stick around and see what happens. But if you choose to work at the company that your at - then you won't like the buy out one bit.
The buy out process is painful and stupid and frustrating and several other things - its not worth the bull shit to me to see if I will still have a job at the end of the day. My advice is look elsewhere before everyone else is looking.
Duke
Let me explain something to you - If you wreck a bike going more than 60 miles an hour - your either going to be dead, very injured or very very lucky. And it won't make a shit bit of difference if your wearing ARMOR or jeans and a leather jacket.
You can say what you want - but I wear a helmet when I ride - BECAUSE it is required by law. I would wear it most of the time anyway. But for short trips into town - it would be nice to not have to wear it. I always wear jeans, boots and a leather jacket - even on the hottest day of summer - but I would go with a helmet once in a while - if the choice was mine to make.
But even so - if you wreck a bike at 90+, its not going to be pretty no matter what you have on. I think that this seems like a pretty stupid idea that some ass will make into a law - WHO DOESNT RIDE A BIKE... IMHO.
Duke
I worked at a place where there was a lot of bikers. One of the gals where I worked at was um, larger than most. A bunch of us were getting on our bikes to go for an afternoon spin one day and "hooters" was getting on her bike accross the parking lot from me and the big boss. After seeing her I looked over at him and smiled and he said "Man, that must be the only Harley in town with built in dual air bags."
It was pretty funny. And she laughed about it later when we told her what was said.
Who needs a vest - just ride behind "hooters" ;)
Duke
*** Web email ***
Educate your users a bit and show them how nice it is and how fast it is and your problem is solved.
We use Imail here (about 150 users) and it works great. The web mail works from anywhere, is fairly quick and easy to use. I get like 0 calls about web access.
Duke
Good point.
Duke
The web, not yet. I might let the 11 yr old on but not the little ones.
As far as an OS goes, who cares. An OS is like religion. When they get old enough they will pick what they want to use, even if you hate it.
Think of it this way - we all started on something - are you still using a Vic 20?? :)
Duke
Save it to a cart and you'll see the rebates - then call Dell and give the rep the cart number and have him/her send you a quote - its ALWAYS cheaper that way.
Duke
Couldn't have said it better myself. Actually we go thru a reorg here about every 6 months. And of course every six months I have new and different reports that need done - and all my projects change. And they just keep on "talking" about security and not really doing anything about it. As soon as I get to a level that something is about to be done - they switch bosses on me and change my job. I have worked here 2+ years and have been the data center manager 3 times :)
Your right. It is policy. And that really is the problem.
Still - it seems like my job is hard :)
Duke
"If that means leaving everything open so the hackers can walk in, that's what you should do." Yea - nice try...
But when we do get hacked. And you will if you do that - then I'm the poor bastard that has to come in for 20+ hours straight and reload all the boxes and restore everything from backup.
And I will not force them to come up with cheesy hacks to do everything thru port 80 - thats not the way to do it. If they need something open - I'll open it in the firewall - but only for the box that they need it for and only for the customers address range that will use it. Keep it simple - remember.
But stupid shit like having access open to the inside network from the DMZ is just that - stupid. And they cry becuase they cant surf to thier dev boxes and install stuff if I shut that down. You know what - burn a fucking CD and bring it to the DC and install it. Simple.
Unfortunately, I do know what my job is - and it is very hard to do...
Duke
Programmers need to follow the KISS method of coding. I love this - RFC1925 - Fundamental Truth #12 - "In protocol design, perfection has been reached not when there is nothing left to add. but when there is nothing left to take away." You can not really say it any better. It is supposed to be funny - but it is really very true.
Being the hardware/network guy - I deal with this everyday. My place is getting crazy - everytime you pick up a dirty rug around here to shake it out you find another programmer... And they are all killin me. I try to lock something down - they cry "But my code won't work if you do that!!". I try to clean something up and they cry. I SUGGEST that we do something a different way - and they CRY!!!!!
OK - breathe.... It is really very hard to do my job. And it sucks. Mgmt doesn't understand why we need an IDS, or tighter VPN encryption, or NO access to the inside network from the DMZ and on and on and on...
Keep it simple, stupid. Words I try to live by - but you should see the code these guys write. This guy had hit it right on the head. This article is nothing special - it isn't rocket science - its FACTS. But try and teach it to a bunch of crying coders and a room full of suits. You can't - period. So I keep coming in on Sundays (salaried employee, thank you very much) and patching systems and go thru my logs everyday and sneak stuff past them when I can and just do what I can to keep us secure. Some of the really really stupid stuff they try to do I just tell them no - no one really fights with me about it - but if I try and change ANYTHING to make it more secure that would involve writting ONE line of code to fix - I get beat down till I just quit fighting it.
I love this stuff - but sometimes you can really hate doing it.
But hes right - WE have to do it. WE have to make things more secure - WE have to keep it simple. For the love of all that is holy - if you are a coder - please keep it simple and do your fucking job. Don't add shit you don't need - stop when you can't take anything else out. And don't worry about the OS patches or the firewall or the router - My end is already being taken care. See ya Sunday morning....
Duke
I taught a network troubleshooting class once and had to pick between a $75 book and a $20 book. the $20 one was Teach Yourself Network Troubleshooting in 24 hours. I picked it because of price mostly (thinking of the students) and it looked pretty good. Not as much material as the $75 book - but still had a good bit in it.
It worked out very well and the students actually liked it a lot becuase it was a little funny and had good basic concepts in it.
Not trying to be an ass or anything. But you might want to hope that you sys admin is reading this book - along with others im sure - becuase if he isnt - some fellow employee in the company could be surfing thru your files right now....
Duke
Now if they just had a beowulf cluster of those blue mice...
Duke
But the point was that I can now use X on my BSD box. I also have an older Compaq sitting on my desk that I have FreeBSD installed on - and am learning things with it too... But X won't work on it becuase the old S3 Trio is not supported. I know its not a big deal - but the geeky Linux intern that works for me - starts an install and half hour later RH is up and running with X and pretty much on any box that he has tried it on - and he really doesn't have to do anything to it.
I'm not saying that BSD should be exactly like that - becuase if it was I wouldn't want to use it for servers because it does everything for you - kinda scares me the way a NT box does with a default install.
But it could be easier to get X running on the BSD's - I think it would help to get more ppl using it, and not just for servers.
Oh and my box is a new Dell GX400 with all the bells and whistles and we have a 4 meg SMDS line - so it was still pretty fast :)
Duke