The real benefit of cli over other tools for me is in the troubleshooting of issues. Think of it this way, to have an interface means to put several processes between you and the system or service performing the function you need. Using CLI gives you that extra edge of not having a filter on your product. The filter is great for day to day use and for people who do not find comfort in remembering 49,000 text based options. When you hit enter on a CLI it does something, when you hit enter on an interface other than CLI, you have to wait for two to three (or more) other services to function properly and do something. These days, nothing requires CLI on the consumer side. If your work load is greatly reduced by the use of CLI in setting up, support, monitor, or any other and you don't want to be hampered by the behind the scene actions of a GUI then stick with CLI. It all comes down to CLI in the end.
This is an interesting article, a bit inflammatory and quite lacking in valid details, seems more of a rant than not. While this seems to be just someone complaining it also illuminates a serious issue. IT is always treated as outside the business process and business is seen more of as an adversary to IT than a companion. Try busting these notions and you will have a healthy situation where your business personnel desire to work with it and IT desire to work with business. It can be done.
A: IT Personnel need to realize that no matter how bad things get, it is a customer service situation. You want people to understand your IT hurdles but at the same time tend to miss the details that it took years for us to get to understand those details ourselves. Your business sales people are good at what they do, your good at what you do, care for them. It does work I have done/seen/developed this.
B: Business personel, Remember when you get mad, that your IT personnel will respond when you yell with yelling. It is human nature to go bull and in any business relationship you should never accept a meek persons response or the yes mans IT values. They will yield few to no results in your goals. Bring your IT into the fold, include them in your business meetings so they can be aware of your needs. Most often, IT personnel can find solutions you might miss.
C: IT, you are all NERD!! or should be, a solution is always available. It might take a long time it might take a zeeeeeelion dollars but they do exist. Look at your options before declaring a project dead. Actually never declare an idea dead, Build the case for your yes or no and let the business people put their stamp on it. After all it is more work and that can be a good thing.
I applaud you for an attempt at breaking down the differences and coming to the rescue of Microsoft (who has indeed gotten better with Server 2008 and WIn7). However you sound quite informed unless the person reading it knows about what your talking about. I have run into this type of verbiage often in my career which usually ends up mis-educating some would be entrepreneur into thinking they are more aware than their IT team. Frankly you have mis-represented quite a few points and they need to be cleared up before totally contaminating the understanding of the untrained.
a: In the linux world, services do not always run as root, most do not run in the same group as root. Only custom apps will have the user root utilized when the developer needs to get something to work, then figure out what happened to permissions. Some times the dev will fail to complete that part of the project, opting to show a quick running version. Security in Linux is very good though not foolproof, there are 9 steps to make an application run automatically on a server, (Download, compile/execute, Meet dependancies, Find dependent Libraries, ModKernel, Load modified Kernel, Cron/init, and finally maintain the open port). Each stage requires more than a simple entrance via exploitable web code, which can compromise the web server easily resulting in off running services such as PHP Mail agents for spam lists or partial TCP requests nestled in a complete TCP packet for DOS/Overflow attempts.
b: The concept of Windows running services in protected separate running Kernels is great. However even Vista still runs a serial application stack which means non related applications can bring each other down. Services are all based on a single run process engine. While the engine can instantiate itself, this is the result of the system loosing access to the original running engine. Now with MS Windows there is protected memory space, which is designed to render data non readable in an overflow/dump attack. Linux has that to, it is called a best practice policy for operating systems.
To summarize, please do some research on current technologies and advertising dogma before you use them in policy, project, or posting a response. Companies usually have two options when fixing problems with their products. 1. Fix them, (remember it is technology nothing is perfect). 2. Produce deceptively similar terminology to downgrade the alarm of the issue to the point of non existence. Unfortunately in the long run, option 1 is the cheapest and best practice, while option 2 is the most used.
Because you did not sign a contract concerning the code or project then it would seem the following scenario best fits you. Any code produced prior to employment can be applied under any license you wish it is owned by you and protected by lack of contractual agreement, this also forces code written afterwords to be GPL'd as part of the project.
Remember it is true that any work produced while getting paid is the product of the payer unless otherwise noted, they cannot simply assume the body of work as their own. They may attempt to argue legal custody so keep this in mind (and maintain your documentation). You own any code produced prior to employment (as long as you were accurate in your story): You can counter argue that they attempted to use employment as a means to acquire the project sans contract and thus have no legal right to it. You can also argue that they hired you for coding but not the specific code and because you have a prior body of work that goes into the project in deed like a book, you own the code (all of it) and they are licensed to use it for the duration of employment at the cost of employment. A more liberal interpretation may also take you to copy write. Code is writing for a computer to interpret and should fall under the copy write category. As an author is hired to produce a book you are hired to produce a program. Because the core code and in deed original versions of this application fall under a private enterprise you can argue ownership; now that said, this can effect your employment opportunities negatively.
A good idea might be to engage in contract talks for the employer to purchase ownership or license with a limit to duration the right to keep your original code from GPL. While I am a giant fan of GPL, I do recognize the needs of employment and if they are wishing to in truth own the code, make sure you get a solid of what it is worth now and with possible future earnings in mind. Having them agree to contract with term limits allows you to give them decision rights on licensing for the duration of your contract (do not make it indefinite) and gives them time to have the original base code or ideas replaced by their own closed source work. Your work is worth something, get a lawyer (of your own not the company/employers) to write out an equitable contract.
I can see why this type of question would come up. If I cannot view something why can the governing team view something similar.
A few explanations are:
IT and support related people are not massive centers of knowledge on technical issues to often complex technical issues, access to other tech resources (even slashdot) are searchable resources.
Allot of sites that are blocked at companies I support, are due to an abuse of them or common fear of them. Sites such as Facebook, or even Google Groups might have already been abused by others within your environment and made it on the list of blocked sites.
Some services use automated complaint metrics to determine the eligibility of a site to be blocked or unblocked. A boss or coworker complains to an email address or web site that keeps a tally of what sites are causing the most issues and blocks them based on the level of complaint. As an example, someone in the office likes to listen to Andrew Dice Clay on You Toober and do so loudly. This individual might have been above reproach (specialized hard to find skill set) so a number of complaints are made to the automated system and soon You Toober becomes unavailable.
These are just possibilities and not the exact reasons. I thought it best since I do not have any measure of control over your environment.
hesperant
As most of the posters have indicated 1,000 unique visitors are easily accommodated, it is still nothing to sneeze at when it comes to supporting a business critical resource. When things go well then you can easily multiply the number of unique users.
Option 1. Using a predefined load balance solution such as HA Proxy is nice but still leaves you with a single point of failure (the Proxy), distribution tools and resources are abundant. Common ones are via virtual addressing (cisco IOS functions) but these still leave you with a single point of failure.
Option 2. DNS based HA, remote servers etc. With such a small load your capabilities could easily be supported by two servers and using a DNS based failover. Many DNS Sources have just such an option, look at your DNS provider for the specific options. Since most DNS sources have some hardening, the options are fairly solid and the single source of failure is mitigated.
Option 3. Virtual environments. Using a virtual environment you have a great flexibility with both service and failover. Resources such as The Grid (http://www.gogrid.com/) or Amazon Elastic Cloud Computing service (http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/). The benefit of cloud computing is uptime. Expecting failures is a good practice, and cloud computing allows you to expect the failure and if one occurs then the cloud can be programmed to automatically spawn a new instance or using metrics at a predefined load the cloud can be programmed to spawn a new instance and start forwarding unique requests to the new instance.
It is easy for us Linux loving types to be very fond of the home grown solutions. There are nice boxed solutions out there that solve your issues. In the end it all comes down to time and money. Since in many cases time is money, then money and money are your issues. You either pay for it up front or on the back side. While you can do just about anything with an open-source solution, your biggest factor is going to be expertise. There is allot of expertise available to help you with that need. In the case of closed source solutions, it may seem like an out of the box success but always be leery of the difference between how much work you have to do and how much the package costs.
An opinion given to me goes as follows. "Find something you would do for free, and find the fool who will pay you to do it."
I added, Dare, but dont kill yourself. You have to look at your situation, if you just bought a house, just had a kid, just got married, just got hired... then give it a little bit in your current job. A good situation would be to have more control over how droll or boring your job is by inserting yourself into the biz with ideas. Spice it up. break new ground.. Some times this doesnt work; thats another story.
Please excuse my gramatical errors. (aplenty)
The gist is, do what you can, and try to do more but never throw yourself off a bridge without a parachute, just cus "it's fun"
There is quite a few options that have good pro's and cons.
Here is a few suggestions and my personal experiences.
For a desktop environment here are a few suggestions.
SuSE Pro Linux,
This desktop environment comes complete with a nice interface for installation. This includes the ability to use a domain for authentication information.
Pros: Good installer, Easy to configure, abundance of applications.
Cons: SMB configuration for Printer sharing is not simple nor easy but required to browse a windows network. Requires Lisa to browse windows base network. Apps list is weighty and can confuse. Will not play DVD's *(due to the DVD Consortiums direct actions.) The equipment and software is capable of it but disabled. While video games are not a plus for the Linux Desktop system you can get around this with Codega. Novell Linux Desktop,
This seems to be a great alternative to the full weight of SuSE Pro. This environment comes with far fewer applications that the full beast of SuSE Pro and might need a few applications installed or compiled.
I would give both of them a go and see what you think.
The Novell Linux server is also a good beast but will not always play with within a previous AD environment. Mind you this has nothing to do with Novell's server product.
Here are a few options that will save money over a long time.
For equipment and hardware issues, Do not turn off systems over night. The only time you age hardware is when you change it's state. That being said, having the machine "Restarted" at the end of a day will give you the benefits of a restart without the actual aging of your equipment. Add to this, keep a constant temperature in the office. A good insulation can go a long way in saving money. You would be surprised at how many hidden costs the liberal use of an air conditioner can have.
For support. When you can have a support team also engage in other activities such as development and user education it is a winning combination. Give your support staff the ability to help work the common issues out of the system and you reduce the number of times this problem can hurl boulders at you. In essence you solve 3 very difficult to handle issues. The first solution is to provide the IT support staff a method to keep on the ball for the technologies you as a company use. This will reduce call or issue time and increase productivity. Having them institute training will also help you greatly. They have the ability to work with people individually and over a phone in a teacher-student kind of way already. Your just giving them the opportunity to reduce the chances of support need preemptively and allowing all staff to benefit from there abilities. This training will also increase the productivity of other non technical staff tremendously. Most companies use less than half the utilities of the software they spend allot of money on. Allowing your support members the ability to be part of the IT process and not the bumper of the IT process will increase their effectiveness.
Licenses: You can reduce the number of proprietary licenses. In many cases using an in house solution or open source solution for your needs will also have the added benefit of allowing you to tailor the application to your needs. Nothing reduces productivity/profit like being slave to an application that is not well built or has more features than you need. Keep in mind what applications you use and why. Do not allow constant sweeping changes to your IT department by non IT personnel. This includes you very well meaning and intelligent company owners. Every time you change one aspect of your IT infrastructure that equates to at least 1 hour of extra support time per three people and 1 hour of downtime per 1 people. Every time you get a new sales jockey or developer, Make them use your tools and not you use there tools. Having 6 different applications that do the same thing is a terrible waste of resources. You could also reduce the number of applications used with the addition of training. A groupware client for instance can go a long way in managing your project/messaging/incident/sales/anti-virus/contac t needs without having 6 separate utilities. Reducing the number of utilities a company needs also reduces the system requirements for your staff and allows older machines to perform well.
There are allot of ways to reduce cost without loosing people. Get past the ego's and commercial induced projects and you will find a smooth running machine can keep your bottom line looking quite pretty indeed.
When you made contract with the outsourcing firm was it clear that "Finished package" = "Final Payment"?
If so than it is clear, the package is not finished, the payment should not be forthcoming.
In the future remember to test drive it before you dish out the big bucks and say thank you.
I would suggest hiring a typist or two. Often you can get 7 cents a page (side) of typed document in digital format, although offering upto 50 cents per page is the real way to go. Hire a school kid or the like who types fast and well and bam, your set. The added benefit of helping someone out is just cool.
Proof of prior art would easly be found in eTerm, wTerm, and aTerm. This does not include the use of Translucensy in gaim, KDE, and for windows users the Windows mod system.
I have been running a virtual office with linux and windows based on a large variety of technologies that are available.
My methods are fairly primitive, but they do work. IM is a good medium for messages. TeamSpeak or Ventrilo for voice communication. and of coarse E-Mail.
What I have been going after is eGroupware. This web based application is very very nice and clean. A pain to install but worth the frustration. I have quite a few ideas and how to put them together. Not impossible and usefull to say the least. Anyone got a project going that would be interested in some idea's?
You have a few good points. The big question is what can we consider as belonging to a nation and what is not. When you use a nations name, are you responsible for the proceeds to the country? There is such issue with this type of problem in copy write law and infringement.
At issue, the holder of.NU might have received rights to the name under false pretenses and in this case, the country does indeed have a right to dispute a claim on the naming. Regardless of who started the process by using the name you imply ownership of the resource.
Many poor schmoe's lost out because of this very concept. Work hard to build your name then have it taken away because someone else has a similar name and more money to sue with. I digress.
The big key is how far can something like this go? I personal get angry when a subculture is exploited even in a minor way, and feel that duplicitous acts such as the start of this thread should have consequences.
Why doest the owner of the.nu just sue the country for the name because they aren't really using it. Now this is an extreme, but not out of the realm of possibility.
So, Let me see if I get this right.
You actualy don't have a point on the subject in this post, a single actualy disagreement or opposing position. You merely decided to push the attack on the poster rather than the content of the post.
Point proven, thank you for your assistance.
Hesperant
As much as my love of democracy goes and the capabilities of commerce are strong, This type of ideal is the reason many people hate capitalism.
What you fail to pay attention to is the fact that Niue is a sovereign country and it's laws differ from ours. This includes it's methods of commerce. If you walk into another country and demand they live by your laws then your the criminal not them. Do they have the right to take back there own Domain? Yes. You have to live by their standards not them by yours. When the net became something for everyone it didn't mean something for everyone who wants to exploit.
Our own history is rife with these types of exploits, and every single one is considered in an after the fact fashion as callous, cruel, and criminal. So with all politics aside, history has proven this method to be wrong.
The original poster of this article shows a concern for the state of the country rather than a desire to make a profit, however if this is duplicitous than there is a greater issue at stake and the current plight of this situation would be best served in a court.
Now, All i see in retaliation is an attack of posters beliefs. By using terms such as liberal and left-wing radicals, in a goal to discredit the poster and not the subject of a post tells me that your more afraid of what the poster represents than the post itself. People who disagree with your form of exploiting economy are considered enemies. Your attack is an effort to keep their views from being heard by reducing the value of them as a person. This is the first rule of debate broken. Never attack a person who disagrees with you, attack their argument. Attacking the person will give you a very temporary victory and damage your whole strategy. If you believe in something than please try to stand on the grounds of your faith in the righteousness of your argument and not on the body of your opponent.
This being said, what arguments have you other than I am some pink-o, freaky San Francisco marching, anti American, ignoramus, of a (pick some wing) who doesn't see right? To the allegations that this issue needs to come under the scrutiny of a criminal system capable of handling the claim fairly and impartially?
A countries wealth should benefit the people of the country it is in and not only a national or citizen of a more economically powerful nation. If you want to make a million on a countries resources, then bring the country in question into your profitable position and live by their standards and rules.
And for Pete's sake. (sorry Pete)Try to have an argument that doesn't make you look like someone who can't defend themselves
Of all the responses this one is the best, I've seen. It addresses all the relevant points.
I to have been in such a connundrum. Flatly denieing the request was enough to almost find me looking for another project. Even though protecting the client from their own idiocy was paramount IMHO, I must agree that if they want it, beyond education, protection is the best method.
Hey.
Honestly. After reading this post I'm surprised.
What is stated in this rolling tirade is one persons misery and not the general populus's experiance.
What EQ is, is a playground where you dont have to worry about getting pushed down just because your short. It is a game pure and simple and forgetting this fact in any way is not the company who makes the "game"'s fault. Nobody is to blame but yourself. This game has been running pretty good but every time a technical glich occures (it happens. It is man made after all), We get to listen to people like this who forget all the good times they had.
This game isnt full of people who want to "win" above all else and it certainly is not the "evil" corporate ignorance spouted in the farce this tirade shows.
Plane and simple we are all responsible for our own futures and our own lives. Everquest is nothing more than a game with alot of other people who play it. In my experiance the coolness of this game is the willingness for people to reach out and help others with no benefit to themselves other than knowing you helped someone.
Winning? How can you win a game that never ends.
There is however a dark side to Everquest. If you at any time forget that your playing a game or ignore the pleas of the people who exist in your Real Life then you will do as I did once. You will loose those that are dear to you and one day wake up with an email telling you how damn stupid you realy are. The key however is not to abstain. This is yet another form of giving in and believing the ugly beast is some dumb arse game that got the best of you. Make a decision play or not to make the people who exist in real life take precidence over your gaming.
In my experiance if I am in a game or planning something, and a friend or my own fiance wants to spend time with me. The people who are my friends in the game understand and give me no guff when my absence is felt. The game is about that. Having fun, if you cant have fun playing a game then your a) playing the wrong game or b) not suited to playing games at all.
I worn you to be wary of this adventure but not let it ruin your desire to try it. Just never loose the understanding that your real life is more important and should always take precidence.
Any time you blame some company or service you buy for your own mistakes or lack of strength, then your just passing the ignorance on without reguard to the damage it can do.
Everquest players have a life because most of them realize it is just a game.
Rauq Waylander of Brells Serrillis
and realy silly dude.
And the formatting was done incorrectly. For an easier read please see below.
WHAT? Wood is to a fruit.. Yummy and nutritious. (so go the rantings of a mad man). Sorry I had to say that. Your comment was a great analogy IMHO. I think there are three sides to this coin that intregue me. The first is a blatant need to have or respond to an outside influence making waves within the community. So many people seem to need a bad guy in order to define the good.
Our Second side is: I personaly have not felt comfortable with some of the security based decisions RH has made in the past and that puts them in the suspect list at this time, however I do feel they are still a Linux distrobution. Maby Red Hat is not the uber distrobution so many media personalities tout, but they are just as any distrobution, contributors in great mass to the open source community.
The third side to this oddly shaped coin is a lack of definition. What truely constitutes Linux? For so many people it is an open free market, an oportunity to jump into development without fear of reprisal, or a chance to use a realy cool looking extremely customizable interface on top of a common set of functional core tools. Either way the point im making is that an opinion is very relative. While you "correct" another person, perhaps we should more consider a debate on the spacific point you wish to correct in order to allow the "lesson" to unfold. I know this sounds contrary or argumentative and even though I personaly aggree with your assessment of Red Hat as a proven Linux Distrobution. I feel your design to correct the original poster did not come from an understanding of what context the poster was coming from.
Sorry bout the heavy wordage. I do believe to much thought went into my response.. Where is my ritalin. Hesperant J ieger The Rainworks Project
WHAT?
Wood is to a fruit.. Yummy and nutritious. (so go the rantings of a mad man).
Sorry I had to say that. Your comment was a great analogy IMHO.
I think there are three sides to this coin however that intregue me.
The first is a blatant need to have or respond to an outside influence making waves within the community. So many people seem to need a bad guy in order to define the good.
Our Second side is:
I personaly have not felt comfortable with some of the security based decisions RH has made in the past and that puts them in the suspect list at this time, however I do feel they are still a Linux distrobution. Maby Red Hat is not the uber distrobution so many media personalities tout, but they are just as any distrobution, contributors in great mass to the open source community.
The third side to this oddly shaped coin is a lack of definition. What truely constitutes Linux? For so many people it is an open free market, an oportunity to jump into development without fear of reprisal, or a chance to use a realy cool looking extremely customizable interface on top of a common set of functional core tools. Either way the point im making is that an opinion is very relative. While you "correct" another person, perhaps we should more consider a debate on the spacific point you wish to correct in order to allow the "lesson" to unfold. I know this sounds contrary or argumentative and even though I personaly aggree with your assessment of Red Hat as a proven Linux Distrobution. I feel your design to correct the original poster did not come from an understanding of what context the poster was coming from.
Sorry bout the heavy wordage. I do believe to much thought went into my response.. Where is my ritalin.
Hesperant J ieger
The Rainworks Project
Will KDE be offering this groupware version as a sellable product?
For a common desktiop environment, I find KDE is nice and neat. I do have issues with wanting to get funky and not having the tools to do so without being a wiz at programming qt.
One of the bigest issues I find is the issue with Client need, want, and perception. Since Windows is such a common name they are willing to trust it more often than not. I've been keeping my eye on Lycoris linux. It is a common users Linux. Realy nice.
Resources:
http://www.lycoris.com
and
http://www.kde.org
http://www.kde.com
http://www.SuSE.com , http://www.SuSE.de/en/
While it is true Sun seemes to have pioneered many of the technological advances in Mainfraim computing. They have not gone far enough.
You dont stop and say.. There.. i'm Done when you have doubled the abilities and then bash on the competition hoping to create doubt with ill concieved references and incomplete information.
That is what almost landed IBM in the doghouse and sent Digital to visit the briny depths.
Who cares what they "Did" it's what they are "Doing" that counts. The 64 bit architecture cannot stand up to todays base 32 bit architecture in business applications unless you use a proprietary OS and maintinance is maintained through a costly contract.
IMHO Sun put together the idea of sticking an off the shelf Distrobution into a mainfraim service and found it wanting. The best part is the fact that they did this.. it demonstrates the versatility of Linux and the concept of open source, by proving that it can be done without proprietary equipment.
Lets also add. that In a hands down test The linux based Beowulf Clustering system witch can be labeled "mainfraim" as the concept of mainfraim verses super computer is a matter of orgonizing the equipment has been able to best most of SUN products in the big race for computation and these systems use a combination of older 32 bit based machines.
IMHO Sun stopped.. they have run into a wall and are not looking for a way over it.. they are looking to add the same wall to someone elses landscape and dont realize how Ironic that is.
Slashdot Mirror
The real benefit of cli over other tools for me is in the troubleshooting of issues.
Think of it this way, to have an interface means to put several processes between you and the system or service performing the function you need. Using CLI gives you that extra edge of not having a filter on your product. The filter is great for day to day use and for people who do not find comfort in remembering 49,000 text based options. When you hit enter on a CLI it does something, when you hit enter on an interface other than CLI, you have to wait for two to three (or more) other services to function properly and do something. These days, nothing requires CLI on the consumer side. If your work load is greatly reduced by the use of CLI in setting up, support, monitor, or any other and you don't want to be hampered by the behind the scene actions of a GUI then stick with CLI. It all comes down to CLI in the end.
Hesperant
This is an interesting article, a bit inflammatory and quite lacking in valid details, seems more of a rant than not. While this seems to be just someone complaining it also illuminates a serious issue. IT is always treated as outside the business process and business is seen more of as an adversary to IT than a companion. Try busting these notions and you will have a healthy situation where your business personnel desire to work with it and IT desire to work with business. It can be done.
A: IT Personnel need to realize that no matter how bad things get, it is a customer service situation. You want people to understand your IT hurdles but at the same time tend to miss the details that it took years for us to get to understand those details ourselves. Your business sales people are good at what they do, your good at what you do, care for them. It does work I have done/seen/developed this.
B: Business personel, Remember when you get mad, that your IT personnel will respond when you yell with yelling. It is human nature to go bull and in any business relationship you should never accept a meek persons response or the yes mans IT values. They will yield few to no results in your goals. Bring your IT into the fold, include them in your business meetings so they can be aware of your needs. Most often, IT personnel can find solutions you might miss.
C: IT, you are all NERD!! or should be, a solution is always available. It might take a long time it might take a zeeeeeelion dollars but they do exist. Look at your options before declaring a project dead. Actually never declare an idea dead, Build the case for your yes or no and let the business people put their stamp on it. After all it is more work and that can be a good thing.
I am Nerd, Life is Nerd...
To Friendly neighborhood Linux Guy,
I applaud you for an attempt at breaking down the differences and coming to the rescue of Microsoft (who has indeed gotten better with Server 2008 and WIn7). However you sound quite informed unless the person reading it knows about what your talking about. I have run into this type of verbiage often in my career which usually ends up mis-educating some would be entrepreneur into thinking they are more aware than their IT team. Frankly you have mis-represented quite a few points and they need to be cleared up before totally contaminating the understanding of the untrained.
a: In the linux world, services do not always run as root, most do not run in the same group as root. Only custom apps will have the user root utilized when the developer needs to get something to work, then figure out what happened to permissions. Some times the dev will fail to complete that part of the project, opting to show a quick running version. Security in Linux is very good though not foolproof, there are 9 steps to make an application run automatically on a server, (Download, compile/execute, Meet dependancies, Find dependent Libraries, ModKernel, Load modified Kernel, Cron/init, and finally maintain the open port). Each stage requires more than a simple entrance via exploitable web code, which can compromise the web server easily resulting in off running services such as PHP Mail agents for spam lists or partial TCP requests nestled in a complete TCP packet for DOS/Overflow attempts.
b: The concept of Windows running services in protected separate running Kernels is great. However even Vista still runs a serial application stack which means non related applications can bring each other down. Services are all based on a single run process engine. While the engine can instantiate itself, this is the result of the system loosing access to the original running engine. Now with MS Windows there is protected memory space, which is designed to render data non readable in an overflow/dump attack. Linux has that to, it is called a best practice policy for operating systems.
To summarize, please do some research on current technologies and advertising dogma before you use them in policy, project, or posting a response. Companies usually have two options when fixing problems with their products. 1. Fix them, (remember it is technology nothing is perfect). 2. Produce deceptively similar terminology to downgrade the alarm of the issue to the point of non existence. Unfortunately in the long run, option 1 is the cheapest and best practice, while option 2 is the most used.
Because you did not sign a contract concerning the code or project then it would seem the following scenario best fits you.
Any code produced prior to employment can be applied under any license you wish it is owned by you and protected by lack of contractual agreement, this also forces code written afterwords to be GPL'd as part of the project.
Remember it is true that any work produced while getting paid is the product of the payer unless otherwise noted, they cannot simply assume the body of work as their own. They may attempt to argue legal custody so keep this in mind (and maintain your documentation). You own any code produced prior to employment (as long as you were accurate in your story): You can counter argue that they attempted to use employment as a means to acquire the project sans contract and thus have no legal right to it. You can also argue that they hired you for coding but not the specific code and because you have a prior body of work that goes into the project in deed like a book, you own the code (all of it) and they are licensed to use it for the duration of employment at the cost of employment. A more liberal interpretation may also take you to copy write. Code is writing for a computer to interpret and should fall under the copy write category. As an author is hired to produce a book you are hired to produce a program. Because the core code and in deed original versions of this application fall under a private enterprise you can argue ownership; now that said, this can effect your employment opportunities negatively.
A good idea might be to engage in contract talks for the employer to purchase ownership or license with a limit to duration the right to keep your original code from GPL. While I am a giant fan of GPL, I do recognize the needs of employment and if they are wishing to in truth own the code, make sure you get a solid of what it is worth now and with possible future earnings in mind. Having them agree to contract with term limits allows you to give them decision rights on licensing for the duration of your contract (do not make it indefinite) and gives them time to have the original base code or ideas replaced by their own closed source work. Your work is worth something, get a lawyer (of your own not the company/employers) to write out an equitable contract.
I can see why this type of question would come up. If I cannot view something why can the governing team view something similar. A few explanations are: IT and support related people are not massive centers of knowledge on technical issues to often complex technical issues, access to other tech resources (even slashdot) are searchable resources. Allot of sites that are blocked at companies I support, are due to an abuse of them or common fear of them. Sites such as Facebook, or even Google Groups might have already been abused by others within your environment and made it on the list of blocked sites. Some services use automated complaint metrics to determine the eligibility of a site to be blocked or unblocked. A boss or coworker complains to an email address or web site that keeps a tally of what sites are causing the most issues and blocks them based on the level of complaint. As an example, someone in the office likes to listen to Andrew Dice Clay on You Toober and do so loudly. This individual might have been above reproach (specialized hard to find skill set) so a number of complaints are made to the automated system and soon You Toober becomes unavailable. These are just possibilities and not the exact reasons. I thought it best since I do not have any measure of control over your environment. hesperant
As most of the posters have indicated 1,000 unique visitors are easily accommodated, it is still nothing to sneeze at when it comes to supporting a business critical resource. When things go well then you can easily multiply the number of unique users.
Option 1. Using a predefined load balance solution such as HA Proxy is nice but still leaves you with a single point of failure (the Proxy), distribution tools and resources are abundant. Common ones are via virtual addressing (cisco IOS functions) but these still leave you with a single point of failure.
Option 2. DNS based HA, remote servers etc. With such a small load your capabilities could easily be supported by two servers and using a DNS based failover. Many DNS Sources have just such an option, look at your DNS provider for the specific options. Since most DNS sources have some hardening, the options are fairly solid and the single source of failure is mitigated.
Option 3. Virtual environments. Using a virtual environment you have a great flexibility with both service and failover. Resources such as The Grid (http://www.gogrid.com/) or Amazon Elastic Cloud Computing service (http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/). The benefit of cloud computing is uptime. Expecting failures is a good practice, and cloud computing allows you to expect the failure and if one occurs then the cloud can be programmed to automatically spawn a new instance or using metrics at a predefined load the cloud can be programmed to spawn a new instance and start forwarding unique requests to the new instance.
It is easy for us Linux loving types to be very fond of the home grown solutions. There are nice boxed solutions out there that solve your issues. In the end it all comes down to time and money. Since in many cases time is money, then money and money are your issues. You either pay for it up front or on the back side. While you can do just about anything with an open-source solution, your biggest factor is going to be expertise. There is allot of expertise available to help you with that need. In the case of closed source solutions, it may seem like an out of the box success but always be leery of the difference between how much work you have to do and how much the package costs.
An opinion given to me goes as follows.
"Find something you would do for free, and find the fool who will pay you to do it."
I added, Dare, but dont kill yourself. You have to look at your situation, if you just bought a house, just had a kid, just got married, just got hired... then give it a little bit in your current job. A good situation would be to have more control over how droll or boring your job is by inserting yourself into the biz with ideas. Spice it up. break new ground.. Some times this doesnt work; thats another story.
Please excuse my gramatical errors. (aplenty)
The gist is, do what you can, and try to do more but never throw yourself off a bridge without a parachute, just cus "it's fun"
hesperant
There is quite a few options that have good pro's and cons. Here is a few suggestions and my personal experiences. For a desktop environment here are a few suggestions. SuSE Pro Linux,
This desktop environment comes complete with a nice interface for installation. This includes the ability to use a domain for authentication information.
Pros: Good installer, Easy to configure, abundance of applications.
Cons: SMB configuration for Printer sharing is not simple nor easy but required to browse a windows network. Requires Lisa to browse windows base network. Apps list is weighty and can confuse. Will not play DVD's *(due to the DVD Consortiums direct actions.) The equipment and software is capable of it but disabled. While video games are not a plus for the Linux Desktop system you can get around this with Codega.
Novell Linux Desktop,
This seems to be a great alternative to the full weight of SuSE Pro. This environment comes with far fewer applications that the full beast of SuSE Pro and might need a few applications installed or compiled.
I would give both of them a go and see what you think.
The Novell Linux server is also a good beast but will not always play with within a previous AD environment. Mind you this has nothing to do with Novell's server product.
Hesperant
The Rainworks Project
Here are a few options that will save money over a long time.
c t needs without having 6 separate utilities. Reducing the number of utilities a company needs also reduces the system requirements for your staff and allows older machines to perform well.
For equipment and hardware issues, Do not turn off systems over night. The only time you age hardware is when you change it's state. That being said, having the machine "Restarted" at the end of a day will give you the benefits of a restart without the actual aging of your equipment. Add to this, keep a constant temperature in the office. A good insulation can go a long way in saving money. You would be surprised at how many hidden costs the liberal use of an air conditioner can have.
For support.
When you can have a support team also engage in other activities such as development and user education it is a winning combination. Give your support staff the ability to help work the common issues out of the system and you reduce the number of times this problem can hurl boulders at you. In essence you solve 3 very difficult to handle issues. The first solution is to provide the IT support staff a method to keep on the ball for the technologies you as a company use. This will reduce call or issue time and increase productivity. Having them institute training will also help you greatly. They have the ability to work with people individually and over a phone in a teacher-student kind of way already. Your just giving them the opportunity to reduce the chances of support need preemptively and allowing all staff to benefit from there abilities. This training will also increase the productivity of other non technical staff tremendously. Most companies use less than half the utilities of the software they spend allot of money on. Allowing your support members the ability to be part of the IT process and not the bumper of the IT process will increase their effectiveness.
Licenses: You can reduce the number of proprietary licenses. In many cases using an in house solution or open source solution for your needs will also have the added benefit of allowing you to tailor the application to your needs. Nothing reduces productivity/profit like being slave to an application that is not well built or has more features than you need.
Keep in mind what applications you use and why. Do not allow constant sweeping changes to your IT department by non IT personnel. This includes you very well meaning and intelligent company owners. Every time you change one aspect of your IT infrastructure that equates to at least 1 hour of extra support time per three people and 1 hour of downtime per 1 people. Every time you get a new sales jockey or developer, Make them use your tools and not you use there tools. Having 6 different applications that do the same thing is a terrible waste of resources. You could also reduce the number of applications used with the addition of training. A groupware client for instance can go a long way in managing your project/messaging/incident/sales/anti-virus/conta
There are allot of ways to reduce cost without loosing people. Get past the ego's and commercial induced projects and you will find a smooth running machine can keep your bottom line looking quite pretty indeed.
When you made contract with the outsourcing firm was it clear that "Finished package" = "Final Payment"? If so than it is clear, the package is not finished, the payment should not be forthcoming. In the future remember to test drive it before you dish out the big bucks and say thank you.
I would suggest hiring a typist or two. Often you can get 7 cents a page (side) of typed document in digital format, although offering upto 50 cents per page is the real way to go. Hire a school kid or the like who types fast and well and bam, your set. The added benefit of helping someone out is just cool.
Proof of prior art would easly be found in eTerm, wTerm, and aTerm. This does not include the use of Translucensy in gaim, KDE, and for windows users the Windows mod system.
Hesperant.
I have been running a virtual office with linux and windows based on a large variety of technologies that are available.
My methods are fairly primitive, but they do work.
IM is a good medium for messages.
TeamSpeak or Ventrilo for voice communication.
and of coarse E-Mail.
What I have been going after is eGroupware. This web based application is very very nice and clean. A pain to install but worth the frustration.
I have quite a few ideas and how to put them together. Not impossible and usefull to say the least. Anyone got a project going that would be interested in some idea's?
Hesperant
You have a few good points.
.NU might have received rights to the name under false pretenses and in this case, the country does indeed have a right to dispute a claim on the naming. Regardless of who started the process by using the name you imply ownership of the resource.
.nu just sue the country for the name because they aren't really using it. Now this is an extreme, but not out of the realm of possibility.
The big question is what can we consider as belonging to a nation and what is not. When you use a nations name, are you responsible for the proceeds to the country? There is such issue with this type of problem in copy write law and infringement.
At issue, the holder of
Many poor schmoe's lost out because of this very concept. Work hard to build your name then have it taken away because someone else has a similar name and more money to sue with. I digress.
The big key is how far can something like this go?
I personal get angry when a subculture is exploited even in a minor way, and feel that duplicitous acts such as the start of this thread should have consequences.
Why doest the owner of the
Hesperant
So, Let me see if I get this right. You actualy don't have a point on the subject in this post, a single actualy disagreement or opposing position. You merely decided to push the attack on the poster rather than the content of the post. Point proven, thank you for your assistance. Hesperant
As much as my love of democracy goes and the capabilities of commerce are strong, This type of ideal is the reason many people hate capitalism.
What you fail to pay attention to is the fact that Niue is a sovereign country and it's laws differ from ours. This includes it's methods of commerce. If you walk into another country and demand they live by your laws then your the criminal not them. Do they have the right to take back there own Domain? Yes. You have to live by their standards not them by yours. When the net became something for everyone it didn't mean something for everyone who wants to exploit.
Our own history is rife with these types of exploits, and every single one is considered in an after the fact fashion as callous, cruel, and criminal. So with all politics aside, history has proven this method to be wrong.
The original poster of this article shows a concern for the state of the country rather than a desire to make a profit, however if this is duplicitous than there is a greater issue at stake and the current plight of this situation would be best served in a court.
Now, All i see in retaliation is an attack of posters beliefs. By using terms such as liberal and left-wing radicals, in a goal to discredit the poster and not the subject of a post tells me that your more afraid of what the poster represents than the post itself. People who disagree with your form of exploiting economy are considered enemies. Your attack is an effort to keep their views from being heard by reducing the value of them as a person. This is the first rule of debate broken. Never attack a person who disagrees with you, attack their argument. Attacking the person will give you a very temporary victory and damage your whole strategy. If you believe in something than please try to stand on the grounds of your faith in the righteousness of your argument and not on the body of your opponent.
This being said, what arguments have you other than I am some pink-o, freaky San Francisco marching, anti American, ignoramus, of a (pick some wing) who doesn't see right? To the allegations that this issue needs to come under the scrutiny of a criminal system capable of handling the claim fairly and impartially?
A countries wealth should benefit the people of the country it is in and not only a national or citizen of a more economically powerful nation. If you want to make a million on a countries resources, then bring the country in question into your profitable position and live by their standards and rules.
And for Pete's sake. (sorry Pete)Try to have an argument that doesn't make you look like someone who can't defend themselves
Hesperant
Of all the responses this one is the best, I've seen. It addresses all the relevant points.
I to have been in such a connundrum. Flatly denieing the request was enough to almost find me looking for another project. Even though protecting the client from their own idiocy was paramount IMHO, I must agree that if they want it, beyond education, protection is the best method.
Hesp
Hey. Honestly. After reading this post I'm surprised. What is stated in this rolling tirade is one persons misery and not the general populus's experiance. What EQ is, is a playground where you dont have to worry about getting pushed down just because your short. It is a game pure and simple and forgetting this fact in any way is not the company who makes the "game"'s fault. Nobody is to blame but yourself. This game has been running pretty good but every time a technical glich occures (it happens. It is man made after all), We get to listen to people like this who forget all the good times they had. This game isnt full of people who want to "win" above all else and it certainly is not the "evil" corporate ignorance spouted in the farce this tirade shows. Plane and simple we are all responsible for our own futures and our own lives. Everquest is nothing more than a game with alot of other people who play it. In my experiance the coolness of this game is the willingness for people to reach out and help others with no benefit to themselves other than knowing you helped someone. Winning? How can you win a game that never ends. There is however a dark side to Everquest. If you at any time forget that your playing a game or ignore the pleas of the people who exist in your Real Life then you will do as I did once. You will loose those that are dear to you and one day wake up with an email telling you how damn stupid you realy are. The key however is not to abstain. This is yet another form of giving in and believing the ugly beast is some dumb arse game that got the best of you. Make a decision play or not to make the people who exist in real life take precidence over your gaming. In my experiance if I am in a game or planning something, and a friend or my own fiance wants to spend time with me. The people who are my friends in the game understand and give me no guff when my absence is felt. The game is about that. Having fun, if you cant have fun playing a game then your a) playing the wrong game or b) not suited to playing games at all. I worn you to be wary of this adventure but not let it ruin your desire to try it. Just never loose the understanding that your real life is more important and should always take precidence. Any time you blame some company or service you buy for your own mistakes or lack of strength, then your just passing the ignorance on without reguard to the damage it can do. Everquest players have a life because most of them realize it is just a game. Rauq Waylander of Brells Serrillis and realy silly dude.
And the formatting was done incorrectly.
For an easier read please see below.
WHAT? Wood is to a fruit.. Yummy and nutritious.
(so go the rantings of a mad man).
Sorry I had to say that. Your comment was a great analogy IMHO.
I think there are three sides to this coin that intregue me.
The first is a blatant need to have or respond to an outside influence making waves within the community. So many people seem to need a bad guy in order to define the good.
Our Second side is: I personaly have not felt comfortable with some of the security based decisions RH has made in the past and that puts them in the suspect list at this time, however I do feel they are still a Linux distrobution. Maby Red Hat is not the uber distrobution so many media personalities tout, but they are just as any distrobution, contributors in great mass to the open source community.
The third side to this oddly shaped coin is a lack of definition. What truely constitutes Linux? For so many people it is an open free market, an oportunity to jump into development without fear of reprisal, or a chance to use a realy cool looking extremely customizable interface on top of a common set of functional core tools. Either way the point im making is that an opinion is very relative. While you "correct" another person, perhaps we should more consider a debate on the spacific point you wish to correct in order to allow the "lesson" to unfold. I know this sounds contrary or argumentative and even though I personaly aggree with your assessment of Red Hat as a proven Linux Distrobution. I feel your design to correct the original poster did not come from an understanding of what context the poster was coming from.
Sorry bout the heavy wordage. I do believe to much thought went into my response.. Where is my ritalin.
Hesperant J ieger
The Rainworks Project
WHAT? Wood is to a fruit.. Yummy and nutritious. (so go the rantings of a mad man). Sorry I had to say that. Your comment was a great analogy IMHO. I think there are three sides to this coin however that intregue me. The first is a blatant need to have or respond to an outside influence making waves within the community. So many people seem to need a bad guy in order to define the good. Our Second side is: I personaly have not felt comfortable with some of the security based decisions RH has made in the past and that puts them in the suspect list at this time, however I do feel they are still a Linux distrobution. Maby Red Hat is not the uber distrobution so many media personalities tout, but they are just as any distrobution, contributors in great mass to the open source community. The third side to this oddly shaped coin is a lack of definition. What truely constitutes Linux? For so many people it is an open free market, an oportunity to jump into development without fear of reprisal, or a chance to use a realy cool looking extremely customizable interface on top of a common set of functional core tools. Either way the point im making is that an opinion is very relative. While you "correct" another person, perhaps we should more consider a debate on the spacific point you wish to correct in order to allow the "lesson" to unfold. I know this sounds contrary or argumentative and even though I personaly aggree with your assessment of Red Hat as a proven Linux Distrobution. I feel your design to correct the original poster did not come from an understanding of what context the poster was coming from. Sorry bout the heavy wordage. I do believe to much thought went into my response.. Where is my ritalin. Hesperant J ieger The Rainworks Project
Will KDE be offering this groupware version as a sellable product? For a common desktiop environment, I find KDE is nice and neat. I do have issues with wanting to get funky and not having the tools to do so without being a wiz at programming qt. One of the bigest issues I find is the issue with Client need, want, and perception. Since Windows is such a common name they are willing to trust it more often than not. I've been keeping my eye on Lycoris linux. It is a common users Linux. Realy nice. Resources: http://www.lycoris.com and http://www.kde.org http://www.kde.com http://www.SuSE.com , http://www.SuSE.de/en/
While it is true Sun seemes to have pioneered many of the technological advances in Mainfraim computing. They have not gone far enough. You dont stop and say.. There .. i'm Done when you have doubled the abilities and then bash on the competition hoping to create doubt with ill concieved references and incomplete information.
That is what almost landed IBM in the doghouse and sent Digital to visit the briny depths.
Who cares what they "Did" it's what they are "Doing" that counts. The 64 bit architecture cannot stand up to todays base 32 bit architecture in business applications unless you use a proprietary OS and maintinance is maintained through a costly contract.
IMHO Sun put together the idea of sticking an off the shelf Distrobution into a mainfraim service and found it wanting. The best part is the fact that they did this.. it demonstrates the versatility of Linux and the concept of open source, by proving that it can be done without proprietary equipment.
Lets also add. that In a hands down test The linux based Beowulf Clustering system witch can be labeled "mainfraim" as the concept of mainfraim verses super computer is a matter of orgonizing the equipment has been able to best most of SUN products in the big race for computation and these systems use a combination of older 32 bit based machines.
IMHO Sun stopped.. they have run into a wall and are not looking for a way over it.. they are looking to add the same wall to someone elses landscape and dont realize how Ironic that is.