I have run both. I like NOT having to mortgage everything to buy the software, then finding out that to run it right, you need to sell your firstborn for the hardware to run it on. For the price of the Sun hardware you need to run OV, you could buy the x86 hardware to monitor and manage a LARGE network.
I used to work as an SE for Cisco, ran a mid-sized ISP's network, owned a computer store, and have run a couple of corporate networks(not bragging, just qualifying my experience, Cisco SE's are highly technical salespeople, some very good some bad). I was an Open Source advocate before I went in, and nothing I saw there changed my opinion. Open View, Cisco Works, etc can all be easily replaced by Open Source tools. These tools do the job as well or better for the cost of a few x86 boxes and your time.
The time factor is still there in the proprietary systems, as you have to learn, configure and maintain them just like the OS tools. There *are* situations where something like Open View is the solution. Probably 99% of the time, you're better off (or at least as good) using the OS tools and contributing back to the community.
I use Nagios, Netdisco, RANCID, and MRTG/RRDTool. I love these articles on Slashdot because I'm always finding links to new tools to try.
All the game console companies do this. There's HUGE money in the software. That's the rub - you can sell tons of content, but a limited number of players.
They can make money for only so long with this model. They will only get a percentage of the player market anyway, as there are other platforms to compete with.
The system they've come up with is self limiting from a profit perspective, unless they work a better deal with the RIAA.
I am in charge of the network and internet connectivity at a medium sized hospital. We block ads at the firewall (SurfControl - I'm working on a better solution).
Way too many web bugs, spyware, etc. You have no idea the trouble that a clueless end user can cause by hitting "OK" when some ad pops up "Install me". Any of our web frontend applications can have unpredictable results when Gator or some similar app sticks itself in the middle of things. It would be great if we could turn up the security settings on IE (thanks vendors for requiring IE if we want support) without breaking the applications.
If advertisers could be trusted, it wouldn't be a problem. Unfortunately most companies want to use the whores that can give them the most intrusive ads possible.
HIPPA is a nightmare, and anything that can remotely be considered a security problem has to go. PERIOD.
As opposed to the half of the story you get from CNN/MSNBC/etc?
My experience is that the "Liberal" outlets (CNN/MSNBC/NPR) have gotten really bad about only providing the information that fits their agenda.
How is this different from what you get on FNC? At least on FNC I don't have to listen to the RABID anti-Republican/Bush/anything-psuedo-conservative news that they'll piece together. I don't agree with everything the current administration is doing, but they aren't as bad as they make them out to be either.
It's not so much what they put in their stories, it's what they're leaving out. Listen to ANY news source with a healthy dose of skepticism. Listen to different sources. If you listen for it, you'll find the slant, left or right. The truth is usually in between, or not there at all.
The VA Linux graph looks like EVERY OTHER TECH STOCK from the same time period. Had absolutely nothing to do with VA and everything to do with idiot investors buying ANYTHING. All you had to do was plunk down a business plan with a swag at $PROFIT somewhere in it, and it sold.
All that the SCO's stock price rise proves is, once again, idiot investors will buy ANYTHING.
No, Microsoft isn't necessarily the puppet master. Their track record speaks for itself, though. And, it's more fun to have them to blame...
Of course you could also look at the Bible (New Testament in particular - lots of contradictions) and it's history as nothing more than a clever piece of fiction put together by a bunch of old men.
This is a Troll, but less so than the original post.
I'm replacing my '96 Dodge Intrepid with a 2000 New Beetle TDI tomorrow. Have been doing my homework. I'm driving 85 miles round trip to work now, and need the mileage.
Intrepid: 26mpg, regular unleaded @ $1.59/gal
NB TDI: 50 mpg+, diesel @ $1.37/gal
Cost to drive to work:
Intrepid: $1351
NB TDI: $ 605
Annual savings: $746
With regular maintenance, this car should go 200K miles. I let someone else take the new car depreciation. Less than $12K for a fully loaded car in pristine condition. I'm getting the 5 speed. Hate automatics. Plus, the auto drops your mileage by 10%.
Bio Diesel requires that your source vegetable oils be converted to a useable fuel. Not quite as simple as just dumping a bottle of Crisco in the tank. You can run a mix of petro+bio diesel also. Check the biodiesel.org FAQ for more info.
I have to agree. I've been dealing with ATI for about 10 yrs (owned a small computer shop for a while). If the hardware was the engine in your car, and the drivers were the tires, you'd have a beefy V-8 with bicycle tires.
ATI has never written drivers that were worth a damn.
My point was that Apple has a LONG history of "sales" before a REAL price drop. What you see is not a good deal, it's a way to sucker people into buying at a price that will be significantly lower in 30 days.
I'm more than aware of the "wait for better prices" rule on PC's in general.
Yes, Apple typically offers what *LOOK* like good deals. They usually have some sort of expiration date on the deal.
I fell victim to this over 10 yrs ago. Apple had a deal for students - Get a deal on an SE/30 (yes, long time ago) and an Applewriter (9 pin dot matrix). But get it in the next 30 days or the deal goes away. We got it. Went back about a month or so later to buy another printer ribbon. Was looking at the price list. If I had waited, I could have bought the same SE/30 + a LASERWRITER for the same money. I was UNHAPPY. I have never looked at Apple the same way again. Nor have I ever trusted them again. Guess I got more than one kind of education in college.
Lesson is - If Apple offers you a good deal, ignore it for a month or 2.
YES - users SHOULD be trained to compress them first. Think about it. You save bandwidth sending the attachment. At the other end, you never know what the OTHER sysadmins are blocking, so you have a higher chance of the attachment getting through. When it arrives, the other user has to make an EFFORT to run the executeable, and it signals that that executable was actually MEANT to be there. You ADD security.
Educating your users is a GOOD thing. They do go home eventually. Any good habits we force them to at work will (hopefully) find their way home. This in itself can help make our long-term jobs easier by avoiding at least some of the idiotic spreading of the virii in the first place.
Users will adapt to work within any *reasonable* ruleset you hand them. We have 750+ users at the hospital I work at. We do not allow any kind of executeable/macro/etc as an attachment. ZERO complaints.
1) Getting data in is a bitch if T-Mobile can't get your account setup right. Read the post. I could never select my phone as the SideKick, therefore I could never access the web interface for my SideKick.
2) *You* didn't have battery problems, but *I* DID. As I'm sure a LOT of others do. These things are plagued with problems. *I* would have to manually re-enter my data if I sent it in for replacement because I have no way to sync it with the website. That may not be the case, it may sync fine even though I don't have access to that portion of the T-Mobile website.
3) Most of the T-Mobile reps didn't even know what it was when I got it. I was told it could take a week to activate it, but they activated it for me that day anyway.
4) Better carrying case (stock one sucks IMO) for one. Maybe some better ear peices. I don't know, I was just used to having lotsa options for phones. (no biggie)
5) You are one of the lucky ones then. Data service routinely went out for 48+ hrs at a time for me, even though I could make phone calls no problem.
I bought a Sidekick in October 2002. I quit using it by January '03. Reasons:
1 - As the prior poster said, getting data in and out is a complete bitch.
2 - The battery life approached ZERO in one hell of a hurry. This is not a user replaceable option(AFAIK). Send back to T-Mobile for replacement, re-enter all of your contact info BY HAND.
3 - Good F'ing luck getting T-mobile to setup your account properly. I NEVER could select a sidekick as my phone to import contacts through the website. One month after buying the $39.95 plan, the system had me back on the $49.95 (Powertel) plan I had had for years.
4 - I haven't looked recently, but accessories for the Sidekick were few and expensive. Granted it was brand new, so things are probably better now.
5 - Lastly, data access is spotty. It goes out frequently, and for days at a time. You'd better live/work/use the sidekick in an area that has great coverage, as signal strength really affects your data throughput. Anywhere I would sit down to use it seemed to have a marginal signal (YMMV).
-snip-
Also, some die-hard *nix geeks get pissed because they can't stand the fact that Apple - in only a few years has taken a *nix variant and gone further with it than the entire Open Source community could in 10 years.
-snip-
Who's pissed? I like OSX. I like the concept, execution (in general). I have not used it on a day-to-day basis. I'd like to. Maybe if they fix the X11 color palette inversion on x86 I'll even install it to play with.
What could the open source community do if someone wealthy formed a company with (more or less) unlimited resources whose charter was to build a great desktop OS with *nix underpinnings and release it as free/open source software? How fast do you think we'd end up with an OSX comparable OS?
What takes so long for open source is that it's a VOLUNTEER effort. People have to eat.
Re:The supreme court interprets the constitution..
on
HomeSec In the News
·
· Score: 1
And why not? 8 yrs of Democratic government has us where we are now.
No sitting administration can have much of a direct effect on the economy in the short term. Clinton inherited an economy on the upswing. Bush inherited an economy in a nose dive.
A large part of the blame for the current economic woes lies in how Wall Street works. There is no long-term thinking. Sales and earnings forecasts must be made or beaten, or there's hell to pay. There is NO WAY to predict accurately (to the penny) how much money you're going to make in a given quarter/year without cooking the books. You can get close by being involved with your customers. If a company misses their number by a penny, but still makes a lot of money, Wall Street will still crucify them. Folks, that's stupid.
We are now paying back-bills on security that got ignored/dismantled during the Clinton administration. Deal with it.
We have political diversity. If the Dems have balls, and really object to some piece of legislation, they filibuster. If not, they lose what little respect they have, and are toast long-term.
Less Government is a GOOD THING (TM). In general, Democrats want more gov't, Republicans less. I don't particularly subscribe to either side heavily. I vote the candidate, not the party. I have voted for Democrats, Republicans, and Libertarians. I rarely vote to send a Democrat to Washington, though.
*THIS* post gets an "insightful" rating? This is a Troll of the first degree.
Enron's accounting practices are a child of the Clinton presidency if any president can be blamed for that kind of stupidity.
Guess what? I'd be surprised if this was much politics. It's called ACCOUNTING. EVERY corporation that can afford accounting staff and investor PR does this. Properly cooked books will not leave anything for the SEC to investigate.
Most of the bad (or good) stuff that happens during a given President's term can be credited to a prior administration(s) work. Clinton reaped the benefits of business building that the Republicans usually do, until the crash last year. Bush won't be able to undo all the enviornmental and domestic good that Clinton did.
The only thing a President can do is push this barge we call a country sort of in the direction he wants to go. It takes longer than his 4 years in office to see it get there.
Wish they'd started with Exchange 5.5. I would guess that there are FAR more Exchange 5.5 installs out there than Exchange 2000. (At least in my neck of the woods, everyone runs 5.5)
Have been using Evolution with IMAP successfully for about 4 months now. The lack of calendaring has been a thorn in my side.
Add to this that corporations were given the rights of individuals. So a company gets to benefit from these rights, and not contribute like EVERY other individual.
I owned a small business for 8 yrs. I know how hard it is to face all of the various government institutions that show up on your doorstep with their hands out every day. It is infuriating to see a company make HUGE money and not pay their share.
The rules need changing. Plain numbers and fair share taxation would be a good start.
Don't count on it making quite that big a difference. The major vendors have negotiated (or been beaten into) contracts that get them pretty steep discounts on the OS. Remember that they don't provide the physical media that you get with the boxed version you would buy. Nor is the license the same (transferrable to another PC).
I would seriously doubt that they pay more than $30-40 per PC (if that much) for an XP Home Edition license.
I still won't pay the MS tax, so I continue to build my own.
Slashdot Mirror
I have run both. I like NOT having to mortgage everything to buy the software, then finding out that to run it right, you need to sell your firstborn for the hardware to run it on. For the price of the Sun hardware you need to run OV, you could buy the x86 hardware to monitor and manage a LARGE network.
I used to work as an SE for Cisco, ran a mid-sized ISP's network, owned a computer store, and have run a couple of corporate networks(not bragging, just qualifying my experience, Cisco SE's are highly technical salespeople, some very good some bad). I was an Open Source advocate before I went in, and nothing I saw there changed my opinion. Open View, Cisco Works, etc can all be easily replaced by Open Source tools. These tools do the job as well or better for the cost of a few x86 boxes and your time.
The time factor is still there in the proprietary systems, as you have to learn, configure and maintain them just like the OS tools. There *are* situations where something like Open View is the solution. Probably 99% of the time, you're better off (or at least as good) using the OS tools and contributing back to the community.
I use Nagios, Netdisco, RANCID, and MRTG/RRDTool. I love these articles on Slashdot because I'm always finding links to new tools to try.
All the game console companies do this. There's HUGE money in the software. That's the rub - you can sell tons of content, but a limited number of players.
They can make money for only so long with this model. They will only get a percentage of the player market anyway, as there are other platforms to compete with.
The system they've come up with is self limiting from a profit perspective, unless they work a better deal with the RIAA.
I am in charge of the network and internet connectivity at a medium sized hospital. We block ads at the firewall (SurfControl - I'm working on a better solution).
Way too many web bugs, spyware, etc. You have no idea the trouble that a clueless end user can cause by hitting "OK" when some ad pops up "Install me". Any of our web frontend applications can have unpredictable results when Gator or some similar app sticks itself in the middle of things. It would be great if we could turn up the security settings on IE (thanks vendors for requiring IE if we want support) without breaking the applications.
If advertisers could be trusted, it wouldn't be a problem. Unfortunately most companies want to use the whores that can give them the most intrusive ads possible.
HIPPA is a nightmare, and anything that can remotely be considered a security problem has to go. PERIOD.
As opposed to the half of the story you get from CNN/MSNBC/etc?
My experience is that the "Liberal" outlets (CNN/MSNBC/NPR) have gotten really bad about only providing the information that fits their agenda.
How is this different from what you get on FNC? At least on FNC I don't have to listen to the RABID anti-Republican/Bush/anything-psuedo-conservative news that they'll piece together. I don't agree with everything the current administration is doing, but they aren't as bad as they make them out to be either.
It's not so much what they put in their stories, it's what they're leaving out. Listen to ANY news source with a healthy dose of skepticism. Listen to different sources. If you listen for it, you'll find the slant, left or right. The truth is usually in between, or not there at all.
The VA Linux graph looks like EVERY OTHER TECH STOCK from the same time period. Had absolutely nothing to do with VA and everything to do with idiot investors buying ANYTHING. All you had to do was plunk down a business plan with a swag at $PROFIT somewhere in it, and it sold.
All that the SCO's stock price rise proves is, once again, idiot investors will buy ANYTHING.
No, Microsoft isn't necessarily the puppet master. Their track record speaks for itself, though. And, it's more fun to have them to blame...
Of course you could also look at the Bible (New Testament in particular - lots of contradictions) and it's history as nothing more than a clever piece of fiction put together by a bunch of old men.
This is a Troll, but less so than the original post.
Get a life. You take things WAY to seriosly.
I'm replacing my '96 Dodge Intrepid with a 2000 New Beetle TDI tomorrow. Have been doing my homework. I'm driving 85 miles round trip to work now, and need the mileage.
Intrepid: 26mpg, regular unleaded @ $1.59/gal
NB TDI: 50 mpg+, diesel @ $1.37/gal
Cost to drive to work:
Intrepid: $1351
NB TDI: $ 605
Annual savings: $746
With regular maintenance, this car should go 200K miles. I let someone else take the new car depreciation. Less than $12K for a fully loaded car in pristine condition. I'm getting the 5 speed. Hate automatics. Plus, the auto drops your mileage by 10%.
Bio Diesel requires that your source vegetable oils be converted to a useable fuel. Not quite as simple as just dumping a bottle of Crisco in the tank. You can run a mix of petro+bio diesel also. Check the biodiesel.org FAQ for more info.
I have to agree. I've been dealing with ATI for about 10 yrs (owned a small computer shop for a while). If the hardware was the engine in your car, and the drivers were the tires, you'd have a beefy V-8 with bicycle tires.
ATI has never written drivers that were worth a damn.
My $.02
My point was that Apple has a LONG history of "sales" before a REAL price drop. What you see is not a good deal, it's a way to sucker people into buying at a price that will be significantly lower in 30 days.
I'm more than aware of the "wait for better prices" rule on PC's in general.
Yes, Apple typically offers what *LOOK* like good deals. They usually have some sort of expiration date on the deal.
I fell victim to this over 10 yrs ago. Apple had a deal for students - Get a deal on an SE/30 (yes, long time ago) and an Applewriter (9 pin dot matrix). But get it in the next 30 days or the deal goes away. We got it. Went back about a month or so later to buy another printer ribbon. Was looking at the price list. If I had waited, I could have bought the same SE/30 + a LASERWRITER for the same money. I was UNHAPPY. I have never looked at Apple the same way again. Nor have I ever trusted them again. Guess I got more than one kind of education in college.
Lesson is - If Apple offers you a good deal, ignore it for a month or 2.
My $.02
YES - users SHOULD be trained to compress them first. Think about it. You save bandwidth sending the attachment. At the other end, you never know what the OTHER sysadmins are blocking, so you have a higher chance of the attachment getting through. When it arrives, the other user has to make an EFFORT to run the executeable, and it signals that that executable was actually MEANT to be there. You ADD security.
Educating your users is a GOOD thing. They do go home eventually. Any good habits we force them to at work will (hopefully) find their way home. This in itself can help make our long-term jobs easier by avoiding at least some of the idiotic spreading of the virii in the first place.
Users will adapt to work within any *reasonable* ruleset you hand them. We have 750+ users at the hospital I work at. We do not allow any kind of executeable/macro/etc as an attachment. ZERO complaints.
1) Getting data in is a bitch if T-Mobile can't get your account setup right. Read the post. I could never select my phone as the SideKick, therefore I could never access the web interface for my SideKick.
2) *You* didn't have battery problems, but *I* DID. As I'm sure a LOT of others do. These things are plagued with problems. *I* would have to manually re-enter my data if I sent it in for replacement because I have no way to sync it with the website. That may not be the case, it may sync fine even though I don't have access to that portion of the T-Mobile website.
3) Most of the T-Mobile reps didn't even know what it was when I got it. I was told it could take a week to activate it, but they activated it for me that day anyway.
4) Better carrying case (stock one sucks IMO) for one. Maybe some better ear peices. I don't know, I was just used to having lotsa options for phones. (no biggie)
5) You are one of the lucky ones then. Data service routinely went out for 48+ hrs at a time for me, even though I could make phone calls no problem.
I bought a Sidekick in October 2002. I quit using it by January '03. Reasons: 1 - As the prior poster said, getting data in and out is a complete bitch. 2 - The battery life approached ZERO in one hell of a hurry. This is not a user replaceable option(AFAIK). Send back to T-Mobile for replacement, re-enter all of your contact info BY HAND. 3 - Good F'ing luck getting T-mobile to setup your account properly. I NEVER could select a sidekick as my phone to import contacts through the website. One month after buying the $39.95 plan, the system had me back on the $49.95 (Powertel) plan I had had for years. 4 - I haven't looked recently, but accessories for the Sidekick were few and expensive. Granted it was brand new, so things are probably better now. 5 - Lastly, data access is spotty. It goes out frequently, and for days at a time. You'd better live/work/use the sidekick in an area that has great coverage, as signal strength really affects your data throughput. Anywhere I would sit down to use it seemed to have a marginal signal (YMMV).
True - but the word "UNIX" has become genericized to a great degree. Guess this wouldn't be /. if people weren't nitpicking.
For general purposes, if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, quacks like a duck...
--Rico
-snip- Also, some die-hard *nix geeks get pissed because they can't stand the fact that Apple - in only a few years has taken a *nix variant and gone further with it than the entire Open Source community could in 10 years. -snip-
Who's pissed? I like OSX. I like the concept, execution (in general). I have not used it on a day-to-day basis. I'd like to. Maybe if they fix the X11 color palette inversion on x86 I'll even install it to play with.
What could the open source community do if someone wealthy formed a company with (more or less) unlimited resources whose charter was to build a great desktop OS with *nix underpinnings and release it as free/open source software? How fast do you think we'd end up with an OSX comparable OS?
What takes so long for open source is that it's a VOLUNTEER effort. People have to eat.
And why not? 8 yrs of Democratic government has us where we are now.
No sitting administration can have much of a direct effect on the economy in the short term. Clinton inherited an economy on the upswing. Bush inherited an economy in a nose dive.
A large part of the blame for the current economic woes lies in how Wall Street works. There is no long-term thinking. Sales and earnings forecasts must be made or beaten, or there's hell to pay. There is NO WAY to predict accurately (to the penny) how much money you're going to make in a given quarter/year without cooking the books. You can get close by being involved with your customers. If a company misses their number by a penny, but still makes a lot of money, Wall Street will still crucify them. Folks, that's stupid.
We are now paying back-bills on security that got ignored/dismantled during the Clinton administration. Deal with it.
We have political diversity. If the Dems have balls, and really object to some piece of legislation, they filibuster. If not, they lose what little respect they have, and are toast long-term.
Less Government is a GOOD THING (TM). In general, Democrats want more gov't, Republicans less. I don't particularly subscribe to either side heavily. I vote the candidate, not the party. I have voted for Democrats, Republicans, and Libertarians. I rarely vote to send a Democrat to Washington, though.
If they take the example of the Luau pig-roasters, put a couple HOT rocks inside the bird. Bet that speeds things up considerably.
*THIS* post gets an "insightful" rating? This is a Troll of the first degree. Enron's accounting practices are a child of the Clinton presidency if any president can be blamed for that kind of stupidity. Guess what? I'd be surprised if this was much politics. It's called ACCOUNTING. EVERY corporation that can afford accounting staff and investor PR does this. Properly cooked books will not leave anything for the SEC to investigate. Most of the bad (or good) stuff that happens during a given President's term can be credited to a prior administration(s) work. Clinton reaped the benefits of business building that the Republicans usually do, until the crash last year. Bush won't be able to undo all the enviornmental and domestic good that Clinton did. The only thing a President can do is push this barge we call a country sort of in the direction he wants to go. It takes longer than his 4 years in office to see it get there.
Wish they'd started with Exchange 5.5. I would guess that there are FAR more Exchange 5.5 installs out there than Exchange 2000. (At least in my neck of the woods, everyone runs 5.5)
Have been using Evolution with IMAP successfully for about 4 months now. The lack of calendaring has been a thorn in my side.
If you are annoyed by someone who needs help, STFU. Posting crap like this is totally unproductive and fosters ill-will.
Add to this that corporations were given the rights of individuals. So a company gets to benefit from these rights, and not contribute like EVERY other individual. I owned a small business for 8 yrs. I know how hard it is to face all of the various government institutions that show up on your doorstep with their hands out every day. It is infuriating to see a company make HUGE money and not pay their share. The rules need changing. Plain numbers and fair share taxation would be a good start.
Don't count on it making quite that big a difference. The major vendors have negotiated (or been beaten into) contracts that get them pretty steep discounts on the OS. Remember that they don't provide the physical media that you get with the boxed version you would buy. Nor is the license the same (transferrable to another PC). I would seriously doubt that they pay more than $30-40 per PC (if that much) for an XP Home Edition license. I still won't pay the MS tax, so I continue to build my own.