Exactly. Many companies follow the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" philosophy, especially where big bucks are involved. Heck, I discovered a 386 in our computer suite handling one of the business critical applications (well, a small part of it); the system isn't even y2k compliant (it has a little red sticker to that effect!). However, I assume it's been left chugging away because it works and doesn't need changing.
Companies will view token ring in much the same way (ok, you can say it is broken, but ethernet can be flaky too), especially if their vital server is hooked up via TR. Many old(er) systems only have AUI or 10b2 connections for ethernet, neither of which I would like to rely on (OK, you can get AUI->TP connecters, but that's a kludge).
Just because nobody's doing new installations of an old technology doesn't mean that it's not in use somewhere; didn't somewhere recently retire a PDP-11 or similar?
Linux dosen't handle running out of memory gracefully.
Does anything? I've seen Solaris machines out of memory (and swap, actually) where I couldn't do anything to fix them as I couldn't track down the process(es) using all the RAM as I couldn't even start a program like top!
Like he said, it's good to have that "comfort factor", even if you never use it. However, there are some uses for swap like:
Crash dumps; some OS's (eg, Solaris) put kernel dumps in the swap space. Reasoning being, if you don't want to save them, it gets cleared up quickly after boot
tmpfs. Again, Solaris uses virtual memory (ie, RAM + swap) as tmpfs and mounts this on/tmp (and/var/run on Solaris 8). As tmpfs is faster than normal disk (there's less need for consistency), it can be faster than using a ufs volume.
Unless you have a very good reason not to have swap, enable it. As another poster says, will you really miss 512MB in a 50+ GB hard drive?
...Stuff that matters. What happened on Tuesday was news for everyone, nerd or not, and it most certainly mattered.
Thanks to the team for keeping the site up (just, but better than most news sites), even if I did have trouble getting logged in that afternoon. However, I put that down to the load you must have had and shrugged. I guess I must have been hitting the static servers.
Finally, the obligatory sympathies to all involved, in whatever way. Personally, I'm surprised it was only 5,000 missing given that the WTC could hold 50,000. 5,000 deaths is still a tragedy, but it could have been much, much more, so we have to thank the small mercies.
Isn't this similar to how Unix does things? Instead of monolithic applications (*cough* MS *cough*), we have a number of smaller apps that can be linked to do something else (i.e. awk, sed, grep, find etc).
America has made a permanent enemy of Iraq. I can't imagine how that will ever be changed.:-(
Think back a mere 15 years to our view on the USSR; half the country was afraid of a nuclear holocaust as USA and USSR blew each other up, but now they are allies, albeit not very close ones. Given the religous views prevalent in Iraq, it makes such a transformation unlikely (USSR was Communist, but religous views are, IMHO, harder to change). However, it's still possible but likely to require the removal of Saddam Hussein from power. Things change, sometimes faster than you can imagine.
In any event, I think it most likely that some religous group perpetrated this terrible act as religous fundamentals are the most likely to be willing to die for their cause.
...the dangers of someone willing to die for a cause...
This kind of thing is, unfortunately, nigh on impossible to stop; given that the US has now barred all internal flights shows how seriously they take this.
I'm pretty sure that the SS10's could only support single CPU MBus modules, while the SS20 could support dual CPU MBus modules, but I can't remember where I read it. docs.sun.com is a bit hazy on the subject, unfortunately.
Well, here's a quick rundown on what you should think about:
LX/ELC/Sparcstation 1/2: Very old, not worth looking at if you want any kind of decent performance, especially with Solaris 7/8; indeed, some aren't supported under Solaris 8.
Sparcstation 4/5: Vaguely reasonable systems, but quite slow. Processor speeds vary from 70MHz to 170MHz, so check what you get.
SparcStation/Server 10/20: Nice enough systems; they support up to 4 CPU's (10 only supports 2). CPU speeds vary from 60 to 200, but don't let the clock speed fool you; the 100+ clock speed CPUs are Ross Hypersparcs, and even the 150MHz models are only about as fast as the 60MHz Supersparcs. Ideally, try to get one with the VSIMM which gives you 24bit colour.
Ultra 1/2: This is what you should seriously try to get hold of as these have acceptable performance; they come with CPUs ranging from 140 up to 200MHz, although some newer Ultra 2's have faster CPUs. Try to get a Creator model, as this has (a) a better graphics card and (b) an onboard fast ethernet (the earlier models only had 10Mbit). These systems can run 64 bit Solaris, with the proviso that carefully crafted Assembly code can crash the system. Oh, and the Ultra 2 can have 2 CPUs.
Ultra 5/10: Sun's first try at cheap workstations, using IDE disks. Reasonable systems and worth looking at if you can get cheaply, but make sure you get enough RAM so it doesn't swap to the slow disks!
Sunblade 100: The new cheapo model; haven't seen one, but they seem nice enough on paper, although they only run Solaris 8.
For frame buffers, try to get one with an Elite or Creator card ideally; failing that, try for a Raptor (NB: main feature of this card is ability to have 8 and 24 bit colour depth simultaneously, but newer versions of Solaris support this in software) or at least a PGX24. Most of the other cards are only capable of 8 bit colour.
As with all systems, make sure you get enough RAM! An absolute minimum is 64MB, but you really want 128 or more. Bear in mind Sun RAM is expensive, and normal EDO/DIMM's won't cut it, although some people have had luck with normal DIMMs on the Sunblade 100. Check the Sun FAQ's and usenet archives for what is required.
I'd recommend trying for an Ultra 1/2, especially as these are beginning to show their age in some places (certainly, where I work the users are complaining they are too slow, but these are people trying to do 3d seismic imaging). As always, eBay is a good place to look.
Finally, try to make sure you get a monitor with the system, as they tend not to support VGA monitors (exceptions are the Raptor cards and the new Sunblade 100's).
Like or love Microsoft, this kind of technology is what has been talked about for a while, but no-one has ever managed to implement. Perhaps MS with their easy accessability (for the user) might make the dream a reality with this kind of box; imagine it; listen to your favourite music anywhere in the house, all served from your home entertainment centre (MS's box, in this case).
Possibly an unpopular view, but isn't this what home networks were made for (except for gaming, of course!)?
Why do I have the sneaking suspicion that this is going to be limited to Windows? It will, unfortunately, limit their audience as I would have thought that Mac's would be good for this kind of thing. Oh, well...
Until the time he putzes about in root and causes the printer to run out of paper:)
However, it is a valid method of logging to have syslog print to a printer; it means that if a cracker breaks into your system, you still have a log even if he deletes/modifies the log files.
Because they'd still be using their employer's network, at a cost to them.
Basically, I have no problem with staff of any organisation at any level being disciplined for inapproriate use of computers, whether that be porn, MP3 or whatever. The firm puts the computers there so the employee can do their job, not so they can see tits and ass (and whatever else!).
If an individual wants to look at porn or listen to MP3, do it at home on your own PC using your own network/modem.
Different architecture; the blade 100 uses 500MHz US2i chips, these are US3. They're unlikely to release a blade 100 with these chips in the near future. Longer term, I'd imagine a successor to the Ultra 5 type systems will be forthcoming at some point in the next 6 months or so, but it would almost certainly be more expensive.
Unfortunately, this is what a lot of managers will see: "Here, this Intel system runs at 1.8 GHz! Why are we buying this slow system which runs at half the speed?" People who understand systems see this is patently crap, but it's what the non-techies see. Even IBM systems are only just getting up to 750MHz, but they still kick a lot of Intel systems into touch as far as performance goes.
People often say things like that, but my experience is that you may get something like a 50% boost in an equivalent clock speed USII chip.
Where the real advantages come in is with things like memory architectures (eg, memory interleaving) and bus speeds (where the system bandwidth is more than an x86 solution) which is relevant in databases. Added to that, you can scale these up much more (the E6800 can have 24 900MHz CPU's, for instance; Fujitsu have recently released a 128 CPU system based on their USII clone at 500+MHz).
If you want a measure of raw CPU performance, check www.spec.org; currently, the fastest single CPU systems are Intel P4's (although some alphas come damn close). The Sun 280R doesn't come close to that, although it is faster than its clock speed would suggest...
The backup copy argument is best. Personally, I don't have original CD's in my car, I prefer to make a copy on my computer and listen to the copy. This way, I save having fragile CD cases in my car (which take up room; I have a CD holder which holds 20+CD's in the same space as 3 jewel cases) and if the hostile environment of the car (dust, dropping CD's while changing etc) damages a CD, I just make another copy. --
I will give the Internet Explorer team credit. With IE versions 3.0 and 4.0 they probably created software about ten times faster than the industry norm. This had nothing to do with the Internet and everything to do with the fact that they had a fantastic, war-hardened team that benefited from 15 years of collective experience creating commercial software at Microsoft.
Personally, I'd put a lot of it down to them nicking the Mosaic source and using it. That effectively makes the time of development something more like 6 or 7 years rather than the 2 or 3 MS worked on it.
Also, I'd agree with others who have posted that this counts for things like OS's, DBMS's and the like. To create a simple application (eg, a text editor) should take less time. --
1. It depends on the coloc company, but I would imagine quite a few of them wouldn't be that helpful. I guess shopping around is the solution for that.
2. colo near by? Depends where you live. I live in Aberdeen, Scotland, and I don't know if there are any facilities here (haven't looked to be honest). If I lived at my parents' house I'd be 60 miles from the nearest big city which would have colo facilities. Nearby isn't always an option.
3. Well, you can have that, but it costs extra:) An obvious solution is 2 Sun boxes with serial cables between them so each can act as the other's console and you can connect to them via the internet. --
Slashdot Mirror
Companies will view token ring in much the same way (ok, you can say it is broken, but ethernet can be flaky too), especially if their vital server is hooked up via TR. Many old(er) systems only have AUI or 10b2 connections for ethernet, neither of which I would like to rely on (OK, you can get AUI->TP connecters, but that's a kludge).
Just because nobody's doing new installations of an old technology doesn't mean that it's not in use somewhere; didn't somewhere recently retire a PDP-11 or similar?
Especially if $RANDOM==1, although I don't know if that qualifies as 'fixing' the problem!
Like he said, it's good to have that "comfort factor", even if you never use it. However, there are some uses for swap like:
- Crash dumps; some OS's (eg, Solaris) put kernel dumps in the swap space. Reasoning being, if you don't want to save them, it gets cleared up quickly after boot
- tmpfs. Again, Solaris uses virtual memory (ie, RAM + swap) as tmpfs and mounts this on
/tmp (and /var/run on Solaris 8). As tmpfs is faster than normal disk (there's less need for consistency), it can be faster than using a ufs volume.
Unless you have a very good reason not to have swap, enable it. As another poster says, will you really miss 512MB in a 50+ GB hard drive?Thanks to the team for keeping the site up (just, but better than most news sites), even if I did have trouble getting logged in that afternoon. However, I put that down to the load you must have had and shrugged. I guess I must have been hitting the static servers.
Finally, the obligatory sympathies to all involved, in whatever way. Personally, I'm surprised it was only 5,000 missing given that the WTC could hold 50,000. 5,000 deaths is still a tragedy, but it could have been much, much more, so we have to thank the small mercies.
Isn't this similar to how Unix does things? Instead of monolithic applications (*cough* MS *cough*), we have a number of smaller apps that can be linked to do something else (i.e. awk, sed, grep, find etc).
In any event, I think it most likely that some religous group perpetrated this terrible act as religous fundamentals are the most likely to be willing to die for their cause.
This kind of thing is, unfortunately, nigh on impossible to stop; given that the US has now barred all internal flights shows how seriously they take this.
I'm pretty sure that the SS10's could only support single CPU MBus modules, while the SS20 could support dual CPU MBus modules, but I can't remember where I read it. docs.sun.com is a bit hazy on the subject, unfortunately.
- LX/ELC/Sparcstation 1/2: Very old, not worth looking at if you want any kind of decent performance, especially with Solaris 7/8; indeed, some aren't supported under Solaris 8.
- Sparcstation 4/5: Vaguely reasonable systems, but quite slow. Processor speeds vary from 70MHz to 170MHz, so check what you get.
- SparcStation/Server 10/20: Nice enough systems; they support up to 4 CPU's (10 only supports 2). CPU speeds vary from 60 to 200, but don't let the clock speed fool you; the 100+ clock speed CPUs are Ross Hypersparcs, and even the 150MHz models are only about as fast as the 60MHz Supersparcs. Ideally, try to get one with the VSIMM which gives you 24bit colour.
- Ultra 1/2: This is what you should seriously try to get hold of as these have acceptable performance; they come with CPUs ranging from 140 up to 200MHz, although some newer Ultra 2's have faster CPUs. Try to get a Creator model, as this has (a) a better graphics card and (b) an onboard fast ethernet (the earlier models only had 10Mbit). These systems can run 64 bit Solaris, with the proviso that carefully crafted Assembly code can crash the system. Oh, and the Ultra 2 can have 2 CPUs.
- Ultra 5/10: Sun's first try at cheap workstations, using IDE disks. Reasonable systems and worth looking at if you can get cheaply, but make sure you get enough RAM so it doesn't swap to the slow disks!
- Sunblade 100: The new cheapo model; haven't seen one, but they seem nice enough on paper, although they only run Solaris 8.
For frame buffers, try to get one with an Elite or Creator card ideally; failing that, try for a Raptor (NB: main feature of this card is ability to have 8 and 24 bit colour depth simultaneously, but newer versions of Solaris support this in software) or at least a PGX24. Most of the other cards are only capable of 8 bit colour.As with all systems, make sure you get enough RAM! An absolute minimum is 64MB, but you really want 128 or more. Bear in mind Sun RAM is expensive, and normal EDO/DIMM's won't cut it, although some people have had luck with normal DIMMs on the Sunblade 100. Check the Sun FAQ's and usenet archives for what is required.
I'd recommend trying for an Ultra 1/2, especially as these are beginning to show their age in some places (certainly, where I work the users are complaining they are too slow, but these are people trying to do 3d seismic imaging). As always, eBay is a good place to look.
Finally, try to make sure you get a monitor with the system, as they tend not to support VGA monitors (exceptions are the Raptor cards and the new Sunblade 100's).
Possibly an unpopular view, but isn't this what home networks were made for (except for gaming, of course!)?
And this would be different from the FBI how, exactly? :)
Why do I have the sneaking suspicion that this is going to be limited to Windows? It will, unfortunately, limit their audience as I would have thought that Mac's would be good for this kind of thing. Oh, well...
However, it is a valid method of logging to have syslog print to a printer; it means that if a cracker breaks into your system, you still have a log even if he deletes/modifies the log files.
Basically, I have no problem with staff of any organisation at any level being disciplined for inapproriate use of computers, whether that be porn, MP3 or whatever. The firm puts the computers there so the employee can do their job, not so they can see tits and ass (and whatever else!).
If an individual wants to look at porn or listen to MP3, do it at home on your own PC using your own network/modem.
Different architecture; the blade 100 uses 500MHz US2i chips, these are US3. They're unlikely to release a blade 100 with these chips in the near future. Longer term, I'd imagine a successor to the Ultra 5 type systems will be forthcoming at some point in the next 6 months or so, but it would almost certainly be more expensive.
Unfortunately, this is what a lot of managers will see: "Here, this Intel system runs at 1.8 GHz! Why are we buying this slow system which runs at half the speed?" People who understand systems see this is patently crap, but it's what the non-techies see. Even IBM systems are only just getting up to 750MHz, but they still kick a lot of Intel systems into touch as far as performance goes.
Where the real advantages come in is with things like memory architectures (eg, memory interleaving) and bus speeds (where the system bandwidth is more than an x86 solution) which is relevant in databases. Added to that, you can scale these up much more (the E6800 can have 24 900MHz CPU's, for instance; Fujitsu have recently released a 128 CPU system based on their USII clone at 500+MHz).
If you want a measure of raw CPU performance, check www.spec.org; currently, the fastest single CPU systems are Intel P4's (although some alphas come damn close). The Sun 280R doesn't come close to that, although it is faster than its clock speed would suggest...
I did think about 'mpeg at 11' but I'd posted before I thought of it. Oh, well...
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And in other news, Netiquette has passed away after a prolonged fight against idiocy on the net. GIF at 11.
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The backup copy argument is best. Personally, I don't have original CD's in my car, I prefer to make a copy on my computer and listen to the copy. This way, I save having fragile CD cases in my car (which take up room; I have a CD holder which holds 20+CD's in the same space as 3 jewel cases) and if the hostile environment of the car (dust, dropping CD's while changing etc) damages a CD, I just make another copy.
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Also, I'd agree with others who have posted that this counts for things like OS's, DBMS's and the like. To create a simple application (eg, a text editor) should take less time.
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1. It depends on the coloc company, but I would imagine quite a few of them wouldn't be that helpful. I guess shopping around is the solution for that. 2. colo near by? Depends where you live. I live in Aberdeen, Scotland, and I don't know if there are any facilities here (haven't looked to be honest). If I lived at my parents' house I'd be 60 miles from the nearest big city which would have colo facilities. Nearby isn't always an option. 3. Well, you can have that, but it costs extra :) An obvious solution is 2 Sun boxes with serial cables between them so each can act as the other's console and you can connect to them via the internet.
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Nice idea, but the infrastructure required would be pretty hefty, I'd imagine.
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