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User: NeonSpirit

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Comments · 57

  1. Re:One word: PIX on VPN Solutions for Small/Medium Businesses? · · Score: 2, Informative
    Be carefull with any Cisco PIX devices, whilst they work well and run the same code accross the product range (mostly) licensing and maintenance can be a pain. Funtionality is also dependant upon product, i.e. Failover is not available at the bottom end.

    Maintenance is especcaly irritating when it comes to the Cisco VPN client, you cannot obtain a legitimate copy from the Cisco website, without a maintenence agreement. And there are fairly frequent updates.

  2. Re:Why would anyone think this would happen? on If Windows Came to PPC, Would You Switch? · · Score: 1
    When I was working for IBM, in the RS6000 market there was a version of Windows NT. I never got to see it and the rumour was that IBM pulled support because if licencing issues.

    Apparently, to continue supporting the port Microsoft demanded a licence fee for each machine capable of running the port, even if AIX was acutaly installed.

  3. Mr Billy G is NOT a Sir on Proof of Concept PocketPC Virus Created · · Score: 3, Informative

    I know it's being predantic, but Bill G has an honorary knighthood. Only citizens of countries which reconise the queen as head of state can have full or substantive awards.

    The rules are explained a little better here

  4. Re:Yeah... and? on Oxford Students Hack University Network · · Score: 2, Interesting

    When I was at University, some time ago now we had two computing facilities, and therefore two policies.

    Computing services was used by the entire campus, maths, engineering, chemestry etc. The security policy here was quite tight, you could do what you wanted, but if you found a hole report it. If you do any dammage you will be expelled. We have a very good relationship with the sysadmin, to the extent that he let us use and explore new systems before they were given to the general population. In this way we could find holes and expoits before any reliance was placed on the new facilities.

    Comuter science had a much more slak security policy, only compter science based students had access. Here you could again do what you like, but if you caused any damage the syadmin would make it public and let your peers deal with you. This was incentive enough, believe me.

  5. Re:Second hand Psion? on Portable Word Processors? · · Score: 1

    I can second this suggestion, If it was good enough for Douglas Adams then it should be good enough for anybody.

  6. Change your pen on Improving Terrible Handwriting? · · Score: 2, Interesting

    In order to slow down my writing, and therfore improve it's legibility I have changed to a Fountain Pen. Obviously this will not make a diference with the stylus input on a PDA but one mediam often translates to another.

  7. Re:No way in hell. on Syncing Options for Computer Lab Machines? · · Score: 1

    The machines have XP pro and Office XP installed, plus a few other minor apps. I may not have made myself clear, thge entire imagiung process takes this time. With Altiris there are a fair number of re-boots in the imaging cycle, to NI with the associated DHCP and PXE downloads. Also Altiris boots to DOS with a generic network device driver which is probaly not the most efficient and may not negotiate correctly to 1000Gb full-duplex.

  8. Re-Imaging on Syncing Options for Computer Lab Machines? · · Score: 3, Informative

    If I understand the situation correctly then you want to re-image each machine on boot. I have looked at this and a complete XP Pro image on a Gb network takes anything from 20 - 45 mins. This is using a product called Altiris Deployment Server which uses PXE under the covers. If this is acceptable then I'm sure you could do your own PXE solution with a Linux DHCP and TFTP server. You can download a free 30 day eval to see how it works and "clone" the procedure.

  9. Re:Computing Power per cubic cm??? on New Nano-ITX 12cm Motherboards · · Score: 1

    If you want server density the current crop of blade systems is hard to beat. The Compaq/HP BL10e class can get 20 servers in the same space as 3 1U boxes, and at significantly reduced cost and power consumption. You do loose external connections. No permenant USB or KVM and no serial at all.

  10. Re:Slightly OT - Samba Clustering on Samba 3.0.0 Released · · Score: 1

    steeleye lists samba as a supported appliaction for failover clustering. I haven't used it myself but have heard good things.

  11. Thin Client Farms on Would You Move to Windows Thin Clients? · · Score: 1
    As other posters have suggested I think the quoted nubers are out. For the sort of user numbers you are talking a farm of 10-15 servers should perform adequately, with redundancy etc.

    In my experiance the big catch with this sort of migration is software compatability. There are a lot of Windows application where only one copy can be run at a time, shared memory conflicts etc. To get round this people are starting to look at a 1:1 client server ratio, using blades or virtual machines. In this way user A cannot effect user B and if the server gets junked it is relatively easy and rapid to re-image. With W2K3 Remote Desktop you don't need a server version of the OS on the server, potential saving licence cost.

    Oh and be carefull with printer drivers, our Citrix support staff are forever having issues with non Citrix supported drivers craching the whole server.

  12. Re:TAX / VISA / Permits on Teleworking in the UK? · · Score: 1
    This implies that you set up a company, which in turn is contracted by the US company to perform a task. This company would then be liable for income tax, NI contributions etc as you say.

    However if you try do do the same as an individual IMHO it will be a lot more complicated. Like I said there are ways and means to make it work, but is it worth the trouble to eihter the party? Especialy the empolyer in the current market where there are probably sufficient local people available and looking for work.

  13. TAX / VISA / Permits on Teleworking in the UK? · · Score: 1
    Whilst it may be technicaly possible to work from anywhere ( if the job allows ) there are numerous TAX / VISA etc reasons why an employer may not want cross border working.

    For example: you are a UK citizen working for a US company remotely, who pays you? Who do you pay income tax to? Who is responsible for paying NI? Do you need a work permit / VISA? Also with the time difference between the UK and the US the woking day overlap may be as little as a few hours, this makes scheduling a pain.

    All these issues can be resolved, but you will have to be an exceptional emloyee to make it worth the employers time and/or effort.

    Within the EU things will be easier, but maybe not easy enough, and then there is the potential language barrier :-)

  14. Re:Discs in a hand held? on Sony's PSP Handheld Storage Media Pictured · · Score: 2, Informative
    I would assume that Sony will build on the MiniDisc technologies. The MZR-900 has a specified 66 hours playback. With music continuous read is required ( with anti-skip buffer ). With games I would assume there would be burst read into RAM of some sort, when you get to a new level or whatever.

    I am wondering how save games will be handled, with Sonys history I would guess a limited internal memory with memory stick for transfer.

  15. Re:Grabbed by the Ghoulies - Painfull on Rare's Official Site Previews New Xbox Titles · · Score: 2, Funny

    I don't think that our cousins across the pond get the reference, especially since the write-up for the game refers to the hero's girlfriend being spirited away or "grabbed by the ghoulies". If this happened to my other half I would take a serious look at the relationship, BEFORE seeking to rescue them.

  16. Re:Battery Life on Sony To Release PSP Handheld Console In 2004 · · Score: 1
    I'm assuming sony will make use of MiniDisc technologies. My MZR900 has a huge battery life, the specs say up to 66 hours. This is spinning and continuouly reading the disk into an ani-job buffer. A game machine would read in bursts into some sort of RAM, this would somewhat compensate for the screen and backlight ower drain. Hopefully it will be possible to adjust/turn off the backlight to conserve power.

    IMHO it would be possible to match, if not improve on the GBA SP battery life of 10 hours.

  17. LED Booklight on LED Book-Light Suggestions? · · Score: 1

    This looks good, but personaly I find a white page like that very hard on the eyes, it would be nice with a red filter option. As others have stated, this helps night vision.

    Considering the recent breakage, something available now not in over two moths might be nice as well :-)

  18. Unintentional DDOS on Other Sources of the "Slashdot Effect"? · · Score: 1

    IMHO the /. effect is an unintentional DDOS, where there are many attempted connections to a web site simultaniously. The greatest instance of this that I can recall is the 9/11 attack, where all the online news services were flooded, BBC, CNN, ananova etc.

  19. Re:Does linux support hypertrheading? on Linux SMP Round-Up · · Score: 1
    Support for hyperthreading is in the latest kernels for certain. However the perfcormance increase you get, if any depends on the workload.

    I had occasion to install a beowulf style cluster a while back, and performance was worse with hyperthreading on than off. What seemed to be happening was that two jobs dispatched to a single node, ran on the same CPU, leaving one idle.

    We may have got better performance if we had configured the dispatched to schedule 4 jobs per node, but didn't have the time to test.

    As I said, this was a while back, the linux kernel scheduler may be better now.

  20. Re:Initial impression - Eval on SuSE's OpenExchange and Windows Integration? · · Score: 1


    Evaluation version available for order ( no download ) here at a cost of $19.95

  21. Re:Perhaps... on You Gonna Eat That? It Could Become Plastic · · Score: 1

    You call Mikky D's edible!! There is more flavour in the cardboard casing.

  22. Re:But... on Phoenix To Change Name · · Score: 1

    VMware does indeed use a Pheonix BIOS derivative.. I also have an ancient Micron laptop which uses PheonixBIOS which at the time had a very advanced save-to-disk funcytion for suspending and resuming the Windows OS.
    Spirit

  23. Re:Do standards cost to much for the open source? on New International Standard: ISO/IEC 9945:2002 · · Score: 1

    This may be because the common unix specification was goiing to be called SPEC1170, until it went well over 1170 API's when they gave up :-(

  24. Charging for Linux software on How Do You Sell Linux Software? · · Score: 1
    As pointed out previously there is already a reasonable market for chargable Linux desktop products VMware workstation and CodeWeavers CrossOver spring to mind.

    On the sever side the market is much more mature, you can get Oracle on Linux and DB2 for Linux if you want a database. For mail and workflow Lotus Domino is available amongst many others.

    IMHO these are either recognised mature products or fulfill a new and/or unique function. A new IM tool does niether of these.

  25. Re:Who's ultimately in charge? on UnitedLinux Ready for Official Launch · · Score: 1

    UnitedLinux is actualy a seperate company. Each of the four consortium members have places on the board, I dont know what the proportions are but the UnitedLinux board is in charge, not any particular consortium member.