I have also deployed LTSP and PXES at call centers. We deployed using Gnome and CentOS 4 to over 40 desktops.
We ran into a few problems with the inital rollout with LTSP which prompted a switch to PXES in one case. Namely, LTSP depends on NFS to load the kernel. For some reason, we couldn't get NFS to work on the network in one office... and we still haven't figured it out, because it works fine at two other installs. It was a headache and a half. Terminals would freeze halfway through the day when they lost the drive their kernel was on, terminals would never load, etc. etc. etc. PXES was much easier to deploy due to clients loading their kernel via a tftp on boot after PXE.
The other struggle we ran into was that clients needed more RAM than we initially thought. To run several instances of OpenOffice, Firefox, and other daily-use applications, clients quickly ran out of memory... at which point all of the windows in Gnome closed suddenly on the user. I thought it was great... "Wow, a kernel that protects it's own memory resources, and just shuts things down if it needs more!"... but users didn't. This could be solved two ways -- by using a buggy NFS mount to the server as swap space, or by cramming more RAM in the box. We found that 256 was the minimum that a user that kept a lot of windows open would need. A locked down machine that only allowed firefox could probably get by with less, and recompiling things like the kernel, gnome, firefox, etc. with patches eyeing memory consumption would also allow less.
We used LDAP as our authentication and password store method, which had a lot of advantages as far as single sign on and global authentication went. Unfortunately, the LDAP admin client that we chose was never implemented properly, so the advantages went unrealized in a lot of ways. We should've written our own admin client.
The server hummed right along. OpenOffice by far will be your most intensive application; with 40-50 users running openoffice, you'd see almost 100% memory and processer utilization... but would not yet start to see lag. We were running on a dual Opteron server in 32-bit mode (due to the need for the Flash plugin, which was not available in 64 bit for firefox/linux at the time we were fscking with it), with 4 gb of RAM and SATA2 drives in 3 RAID1 arrays; one of user homes, one for system and applications, and one very small array hanging off of the 2nd bus for swap for performance. Be sure to include applications in your dimensioning and think through your hardware. Don't buy a vendor bill of goods and note that using extensive NAS or fibre-channel drive arrays, while fancy, might slow things down badly for your users.
We ran NX for remote desktop purposes and had several users that worked from home.
the constitution's "ban on state discrimination against interstate commerce.'"
Interesting. Does that mean that gun control laws that ban interstate sale of firearms or requires exchange only by licensed dealers are also unconstitutional?
How do spreadsheets cost companies money? Just about everything in many companies is tracked on spreadsheets. Expenses, costs, estimates, budgets, projects, etcetera so on so forth.
Often times, employees will use spreadsheets when a database (even Access) should've bene used. As soon as the spreadsheet becomes 'mission-critical' and contains information that is used to run the business and cannot be lost, you'll start to see employees whose sole job is to feed, maintain, and munge that spreadsheet. When data's in a format like Excel that can be shakey, you can see data errors start to build up when one page is dependent on another page which is dependent on another page which is dependent on some figure buried back in cell DA256 on Page 5 of the workbook... which is dependent on some other figure... which gets munged or erased due to a And the worst part is that it's usually impossible to trace these errors back because there's no way to take a step away from it or a debug tool.
(How do I know this? I write custom software for small businesses that realize that they can't continue doing business the way they're doing it.)
Warning! The slashdot is bright. Don't look at the slashdot or you will damage your eyes. Anything that focuses the slashdot will only make it more dangerous. The Slashdot.org is dangerous. Don't build one. I'm surprised I haven't burnt or blinded myself yet. The fumes from molten trolls can't be good either. Don't play with flames.
(And he thinks that 120,000 pageviews is a lot...)
Um. Obviously you've never been there, but I still don't understand why you posted that. There really aren't that many trees in The Dalles. It's mostly prarie-type high plateu... halfway between grassland and desert, and very dry.
Your post was flamebait, but I'll answer it anyway.
If an entire business runs their operations on it and I have a 99.9% or greater SLA on it, then it's enterprise-class. The systems I generally build integrate all of the operations of a business... from the external customer service integration with the internet website to email handling to lead generation to the sales & billing & commission / affiliate payouts processes... it's all web-based, everyone in the company uses it constantly, there's very little training required because everyone's familiar with the way the web works, and it's never slow or down.
It's funny, one of my clients is opening a 2nd office halfway across the city, and we sat down today with their telecom provider to talk about connectivity. They thought my client was using something like GoldMine or Act, and said they'd need to do a dedicated T1 haul. When we told them what we were actually using and gave them the bandwidth figures, they almost freaked out because they couldn't believe my client had something that ran their whole business and could work effectively over a 56k line...
I've written a bunch of enterprise-class stuff on MySQL.
The first and second answers are inertia. All of my tools work with MySQL and I'd have to spend a week or two re-writing them for PostgresSQL, and I can't shake loose that kind of time right now.
Also, I have a set of redundant, mirrored MySQL servers in my colo box that run all of the websites I've built, and I'd have to get more rack space or convert everything over to Postgres at the same time. Neither of which are cost effective when what I have... works.
The third answer is that MySQL is blazingly fast at doing simple things. Where Oracle (The other RDBMS that I'm familiar with) can return simple select queries or complex insert or joined select queries in.5 to 1.0 seconds each, MySQL can return simple queries in.01 seconds and stupidly complex queries in 5-10 seconds. Since 100% of what I'm doing is simple selects or can be hacked very quickly to seem like simple selects, there's no reason to use anything more powerful for what I'm doing.
I don't need to have "good habits"... I don't need to have nth degree optimized queries. I don't use 99.99% of the features that MySQL has, not to mention all the features that Postgres has that I wouldn't use. (And don't get me started on Oracle.) It's also faster for me, in both database query return and programmer time, to execute 5 simple, general, fast queries that are part of a code library (and when the database structure changes, edit that one code library) than it is for me to write one really complex query for each code module (and have to edit every module when the database structure changes).
What it comes down to is that it works well as a lightweight database for websites and web apps, and there's a ton of community support and literature. It's not Oracle. It never will be. It's not useful for everything. But when you need a lightweight database to handle a ton of simple select queries without melting down,.... MySQL fits the bill. Why swat a fly with a sledgehammer?
I'm essentially *the* IT department for several small to medium sized businesses. This would be a great solution for me... currently, I carry around an old 15" LCD monitor and an assortment of hardware (keyboards with various connectors, various mice) as a "crash cart" to diagnise the... menagerie... of hardware I find at client locations.
You obviously work in a large IT department where you have the resources or authority to purchase actual server hardware. In smaller businesses, and for the technicians that keep small businesses that need IT services running but can't afford to drop $10k per file server, an "all in one" diagnostic tool would be great.
I would say J2ee due to portability, but I think for your purposes, J2ee is going to be too structured. Stay with me here for a sec.
You don't know much about the vertical and your dev team's split. You're going to have a lot of design changes. In my experience, J2ee has a lot of problems handling design and code structure changes, while.Net in various flavors has an easier time because it allows for a looser design.
But yeah, keep your resume dusted unless the company you're working for has deeeep pockets.
WalMart's music store tends to have a wider selection of music than iTunes does (There's a lot of really new, albiet obscure stuff that WalMart has that iTunes doesn't.), and it's cheaper per track to buy stuff at WalMart online. The Virgin player would be capable of playing songs from WalMart's music store where iTunes and the iPod isn't.
There are good reasons to discount microsoft's media products as useless, but "they don't have the market share" is *not* one of them!
Re:Youwant dual mode transportation?
on
By Road and Rail?
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Actually, this *has* already been done for freight. I can't find links at the moment, but Swift has trailers that they tie together with rail "dollys"... you can recognize these trailers because they've got smaller wheels mounted on them than the standard trailers and they have locking points on the rear deck.
Unfortunately, BNSF is the only rail line that'll run them right now because there's a significant risk of derailing. There's a lot of side-to-side flex put on any rail car, and most rail cars are stiff enough to take it -- but making a road/rail car stiff enough would end up making the trailer too heavy for the tractor to pull it. The road/rail cars that Swift uses have a tendency to twist while in motion, and things can break or snap and cause a derailment.
Neat idea, but knowing what I know about those swift trucks, I wouldn't ride in a rail/road passenger vehicle... no way, no how.
I manage the creation and customization of project management and other type of web-based software.
One of the core features of every program is the 'logging' function -- every time a change is made to a record - whether it be a product, project, customer, or ticket status, it's logged and/or diff'ed, timestamped, and recorded. Logs are available below the main information area. Email messages that are passed through the system's mail relay are also recorded and timestamped, and a user can provide a comment at any point (i.e. recording the results or minutes of a meeting that was held earlier.) Users also are required to provide information on what was completed whenever they clock time towards a task or item. So basically, it's mandatory blogging... or plogging, but that's such an unfortunate term...
What will be the next concatenated word to take the blogging world by storm? I know! Blogging about snails, snakes, snow, or snarkiness will be referred to as "snogging"...
Isn't this just a tad premature? I mean, we haven't managed to get people to Mars yet. We're probably not going to find life there until we do, and since we've landed craft there already, there's a good chance that any life that is there has been infected already by terrestrial strains of whatever.
Let's revisit this debate in about ten years when we've got some evidence and when we have some sort of space capacity that will allow us to get people back and forth to Mars. Until then, this and other articles like it are more than useless wanking that reminds me of the homegrown human-apologist "earth first" eco-wackos.
Actually, I like PHP better than 'designed' languages like Java or C#. It's simple, it's easy to find functions, and you can do almost anything youd need to by stringing the functions together or by installing a library and using the then-built-in functions (Instead of having to find one of three hundred million methods IN THE MAIN MODULES TREE on how to draw a graph... *cough* perl *cough* java *cough, hack*...
Rewrites are 'bad' from a management point of view (at least, a manager that isn't familiar with software development), which looks at return on investment (ROI).
However, from a developer's point of view, a partial or complete rewrite is sometimes the only way to FIX certain bugs. While it may introduce new, small ones, usually developers are smart enough to read the old code and learn from it's mistakes before the do a rewrite.
A partial or complete rewrite is ALSO sometimes the only way to fix 'spaghetti code' -- code that's become so tangled from patch upon patch being applied to it that it's now impossible to trace and fix a bug. If spaghetti code isn't pursued and rewritten on a regular basis (this is 'constant improvement' -- a management buzzword from the past few years that actually works), new bugs can be inadvertantly introduced -- and it can sometimes take weeks to hunt down an intermittant bug by tracing spaghetti code. Ladies and gents, WEEKS of programmer time is expensive compared to one programmer spending 8-10 hours per week tracking down bad code in the codebase and rewriting it.
Really, there's a case for doing rewrites on a constant basis. The author should have instead addressed adequate testing in software development environments...
Only those who haven't ridden call them 'donorcycles' or wonder about the speed at which a rider's helmet touches ground during a wreck. Seriously, that was the lamest comment I've seen yet at./... and that's saying something. I wish I had mod points today. Do me a favor -- if you even thought about making a comment like that, go take a motorcycle class. The MSF (Motorcycle Safety Foundation) or your local equivalent (i.e. TeamOregon in, uh, Oregon) offers them in every state. Taking that class is guaranteed to make you a better cage driver, and you could walk out of it with a motorcycle endorsement and an appreciation for the lifestyle and risks that motorcyclists accept in exchange for being able to bomb down that perfect canyon.
As for the HUD... I don't need any other distractions. Riding a motorcycle, by itself, requires 3 times the concentration that driving a car does. Add in the fact that everybody else on the road is quite literally trying to kill us... and then add in some serious distractions from a HUD, and you've got a recipe for disaster.
HUDs in cars are a good idea, but motorcyclists are already at their information saturation limit.
I'm really curious why Cable hasn't been available. I have relatives that live a few miles away, in Cypress, and they have no problem getting cable internet.
Cerritos is one town over from the Orange County/LA County border, and is right at the junction of the 605 and 91 freeways. It's about twenty/thirty minutes from the beach down Katella Ave... nice place to live if it wasn't so close to Hawaiian Gardens, which is the carjacking capital of LA.
The book, like this review, is a collection of cliches that aren't necessarily true?
Sheesh. Oh, and the reason that the Honor Harrington story is told the way it is -- it's a retelling of Horatio Hornblower, which is written the same way. Not everything is sci-fi...
Slashdot Mirror
I have also deployed LTSP and PXES at call centers. We deployed using Gnome and CentOS 4 to over 40 desktops. We ran into a few problems with the inital rollout with LTSP which prompted a switch to PXES in one case. Namely, LTSP depends on NFS to load the kernel. For some reason, we couldn't get NFS to work on the network in one office... and we still haven't figured it out, because it works fine at two other installs. It was a headache and a half. Terminals would freeze halfway through the day when they lost the drive their kernel was on, terminals would never load, etc. etc. etc. PXES was much easier to deploy due to clients loading their kernel via a tftp on boot after PXE. The other struggle we ran into was that clients needed more RAM than we initially thought. To run several instances of OpenOffice, Firefox, and other daily-use applications, clients quickly ran out of memory... at which point all of the windows in Gnome closed suddenly on the user. I thought it was great ... "Wow, a kernel that protects it's own memory resources, and just shuts things down if it needs more!" ... but users didn't. This could be solved two ways -- by using a buggy NFS mount to the server as swap space, or by cramming more RAM in the box. We found that 256 was the minimum that a user that kept a lot of windows open would need. A locked down machine that only allowed firefox could probably get by with less, and recompiling things like the kernel, gnome, firefox, etc. with patches eyeing memory consumption would also allow less.
We used LDAP as our authentication and password store method, which had a lot of advantages as far as single sign on and global authentication went. Unfortunately, the LDAP admin client that we chose was never implemented properly, so the advantages went unrealized in a lot of ways. We should've written our own admin client.
The server hummed right along. OpenOffice by far will be your most intensive application; with 40-50 users running openoffice, you'd see almost 100% memory and processer utilization... but would not yet start to see lag. We were running on a dual Opteron server in 32-bit mode (due to the need for the Flash plugin, which was not available in 64 bit for firefox/linux at the time we were fscking with it), with 4 gb of RAM and SATA2 drives in 3 RAID1 arrays; one of user homes, one for system and applications, and one very small array hanging off of the 2nd bus for swap for performance. Be sure to include applications in your dimensioning and think through your hardware. Don't buy a vendor bill of goods and note that using extensive NAS or fibre-channel drive arrays, while fancy, might slow things down badly for your users.
We ran NX for remote desktop purposes and had several users that worked from home.
the constitution's "ban on state discrimination against interstate commerce.'" Interesting. Does that mean that gun control laws that ban interstate sale of firearms or requires exchange only by licensed dealers are also unconstitutional?
(Bah. ... gets munged or erased due to an error with something else, a data source, or a wayard macro.)
How do spreadsheets cost companies money?
... which gets munged or erased due to a
Just about everything in many companies is tracked on spreadsheets. Expenses, costs, estimates, budgets, projects, etcetera so on so forth.
Often times, employees will use spreadsheets when a database (even Access) should've bene used. As soon as the spreadsheet becomes 'mission-critical' and contains information that is used to run the business and cannot be lost, you'll start to see employees whose sole job is to feed, maintain, and munge that spreadsheet. When data's in a format like Excel that can be shakey, you can see data errors start to build up when one page is dependent on another page which is dependent on another page which is dependent on some figure buried back in cell DA256 on Page 5 of the workbook... which is dependent on some other figure
And the worst part is that it's usually impossible to trace these errors back because there's no way to take a step away from it or a debug tool.
(How do I know this? I write custom software for small businesses that realize that they can't continue doing business the way they're doing it.)
Warning!
The slashdot is bright. Don't look at the slashdot or you will damage your eyes. Anything that focuses the slashdot will only make it more dangerous. The Slashdot.org is dangerous. Don't build one.
I'm surprised I haven't burnt or blinded myself yet. The fumes from molten trolls can't be good either. Don't play with flames.
(And he thinks that 120,000 pageviews is a lot...)
Um. Obviously you've never been there, but I still don't understand why you posted that. There really aren't that many trees in The Dalles. It's mostly prarie-type high plateu... halfway between grassland and desert, and very dry.
Your post was flamebait, but I'll answer it anyway. If an entire business runs their operations on it and I have a 99.9% or greater SLA on it, then it's enterprise-class. The systems I generally build integrate all of the operations of a business ... from the external customer service integration with the internet website to email handling to lead generation to the sales & billing & commission / affiliate payouts processes... it's all web-based, everyone in the company uses it constantly, there's very little training required because everyone's familiar with the way the web works, and it's never slow or down.
It's funny, one of my clients is opening a 2nd office halfway across the city, and we sat down today with their telecom provider to talk about connectivity. They thought my client was using something like GoldMine or Act, and said they'd need to do a dedicated T1 haul. When we told them what we were actually using and gave them the bandwidth figures, they almost freaked out because they couldn't believe my client had something that ran their whole business and could work effectively over a 56k line...
I've written a bunch of enterprise-class stuff on MySQL.
... works.
.5 to 1.0 seconds each, MySQL can return simple queries in .01 seconds and stupidly complex queries in 5-10 seconds. Since 100% of what I'm doing is simple selects or can be hacked very quickly to seem like simple selects, there's no reason to use anything more powerful for what I'm doing.
... I don't need to have nth degree optimized queries. I don't use 99.99% of the features that MySQL has, not to mention all the features that Postgres has that I wouldn't use. (And don't get me started on Oracle.) It's also faster for me, in both database query return and programmer time, to execute 5 simple, general, fast queries that are part of a code library (and when the database structure changes, edit that one code library) than it is for me to write one really complex query for each code module (and have to edit every module when the database structure changes).
.... MySQL fits the bill. Why swat a fly with a sledgehammer?
The first and second answers are inertia. All of my tools work with MySQL and I'd have to spend a week or two re-writing them for PostgresSQL, and I can't shake loose that kind of time right now.
Also, I have a set of redundant, mirrored MySQL servers in my colo box that run all of the websites I've built, and I'd have to get more rack space or convert everything over to Postgres at the same time. Neither of which are cost effective when what I have
The third answer is that MySQL is blazingly fast at doing simple things. Where Oracle (The other RDBMS that I'm familiar with) can return simple select queries or complex insert or joined select queries in
I don't need to have "good habits"
What it comes down to is that it works well as a lightweight database for websites and web apps, and there's a ton of community support and literature. It's not Oracle. It never will be. It's not useful for everything. But when you need a lightweight database to handle a ton of simple select queries without melting down,
I'm essentially *the* IT department for several small to medium sized businesses. This would be a great solution for me ... currently, I carry around an old 15" LCD monitor and an assortment of hardware (keyboards with various connectors, various mice) as a "crash cart" to diagnise the ... menagerie ... of hardware I find at client locations.
You obviously work in a large IT department where you have the resources or authority to purchase actual server hardware. In smaller businesses, and for the technicians that keep small businesses that need IT services running but can't afford to drop $10k per file server, an "all in one" diagnostic tool would be great.
I would say J2ee due to portability, but I think for your purposes, J2ee is going to be too structured. Stay with me here for a sec.
.Net in various flavors has an easier time because it allows for a looser design.
You don't know much about the vertical and your dev team's split. You're going to have a lot of design changes. In my experience, J2ee has a lot of problems handling design and code structure changes, while
But yeah, keep your resume dusted unless the company you're working for has deeeep pockets.
There are good reasons to discount microsoft's media products as useless, but "they don't have the market share" is *not* one of them!
Actually, this *has* already been done for freight. I can't find links at the moment, but Swift has trailers that they tie together with rail "dollys" ... you can recognize these trailers because they've got smaller wheels mounted on them than the standard trailers and they have locking points on the rear deck.
Unfortunately, BNSF is the only rail line that'll run them right now because there's a significant risk of derailing. There's a lot of side-to-side flex put on any rail car, and most rail cars are stiff enough to take it -- but making a road/rail car stiff enough would end up making the trailer too heavy for the tractor to pull it. The road/rail cars that Swift uses have a tendency to twist while in motion, and things can break or snap and cause a derailment.
Neat idea, but knowing what I know about those swift trucks, I wouldn't ride in a rail/road passenger vehicle ... no way, no how.
There IS a ten million dollar prize offered. But they've already spent twenty million. So what?
I manage the creation and customization of project management and other type of web-based software.
One of the core features of every program is the 'logging' function -- every time a change is made to a record - whether it be a product, project, customer, or ticket status, it's logged and/or diff'ed, timestamped, and recorded. Logs are available below the main information area. Email messages that are passed through the system's mail relay are also recorded and timestamped, and a user can provide a comment at any point (i.e. recording the results or minutes of a meeting that was held earlier.) Users also are required to provide information on what was completed whenever they clock time towards a task or item. So basically, it's mandatory blogging ... or plogging, but that's such an unfortunate term...
What will be the next concatenated word to take the blogging world by storm? I know! Blogging about snails, snakes, snow, or snarkiness will be referred to as "snogging"...
Isn't this just a tad premature? I mean, we haven't managed to get people to Mars yet. We're probably not going to find life there until we do, and since we've landed craft there already, there's a good chance that any life that is there has been infected already by terrestrial strains of whatever. Let's revisit this debate in about ten years when we've got some evidence and when we have some sort of space capacity that will allow us to get people back and forth to Mars. Until then, this and other articles like it are more than useless wanking that reminds me of the homegrown human-apologist "earth first" eco-wackos.
Actually, I like PHP better than 'designed' languages like Java or C#. It's simple, it's easy to find functions, and you can do almost anything youd need to by stringing the functions together or by installing a library and using the then-built-in functions (Instead of having to find one of three hundred million methods IN THE MAIN MODULES TREE on how to draw a graph ... *cough* perl *cough* java *cough, hack*...
Rewrites are 'bad' from a management point of view (at least, a manager that isn't familiar with software development), which looks at return on investment (ROI).
However, from a developer's point of view, a partial or complete rewrite is sometimes the only way to FIX certain bugs. While it may introduce new, small ones, usually developers are smart enough to read the old code and learn from it's mistakes before the do a rewrite.
A partial or complete rewrite is ALSO sometimes the only way to fix 'spaghetti code' -- code that's become so tangled from patch upon patch being applied to it that it's now impossible to trace and fix a bug. If spaghetti code isn't pursued and rewritten on a regular basis (this is 'constant improvement' -- a management buzzword from the past few years that actually works), new bugs can be inadvertantly introduced -- and it can sometimes take weeks to hunt down an intermittant bug by tracing spaghetti code. Ladies and gents, WEEKS of programmer time is expensive compared to one programmer spending 8-10 hours per week tracking down bad code in the codebase and rewriting it.
Really, there's a case for doing rewrites on a constant basis. The author should have instead addressed adequate testing in software development environments...
I wonder if this would work backwards? Is this the gateway to using the human brain as a computer? (After all, we only use a portion of it...)
Oh, I don't live there, I didn't say I was crazy...
Only those who haven't ridden call them 'donorcycles' or wonder about the speed at which a rider's helmet touches ground during a wreck. Seriously, that was the lamest comment I've seen yet at ./ ... and that's saying something. I wish I had mod points today. Do me a favor -- if you even thought about making a comment like that, go take a motorcycle class. The MSF (Motorcycle Safety Foundation) or your local equivalent (i.e. TeamOregon in, uh, Oregon) offers them in every state. Taking that class is guaranteed to make you a better cage driver, and you could walk out of it with a motorcycle endorsement and an appreciation for the lifestyle and risks that motorcyclists accept in exchange for being able to bomb down that perfect canyon.
As for the HUD ... I don't need any other distractions. Riding a motorcycle, by itself, requires 3 times the concentration that driving a car does. Add in the fact that everybody else on the road is quite literally trying to kill us ... and then add in some serious distractions from a HUD, and you've got a recipe for disaster.
HUDs in cars are a good idea, but motorcyclists are already at their information saturation limit.
I'm really curious why Cable hasn't been available. I have relatives that live a few miles away, in Cypress, and they have no problem getting cable internet. Cerritos is one town over from the Orange County/LA County border, and is right at the junction of the 605 and 91 freeways. It's about twenty/thirty minutes from the beach down Katella Ave... nice place to live if it wasn't so close to Hawaiian Gardens, which is the carjacking capital of LA.
The book, like this review, is a collection of cliches that aren't necessarily true?
Sheesh.
Oh, and the reason that the Honor Harrington story is told the way it is -- it's a retelling of Horatio Hornblower, which is written the same way. Not everything is sci-fi...
Dan Brown recently published a book that featured a robot the size of a mosquito with a camera on it... when we've got that, *then* I'll be excited!
...a glutton for punishment!!! Either that, or they want to test it some more. Do your worst, slashdotters!
What do you do when your airplane says, "I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that."