At the place I jsut started working, they have a machine that stocks regular plastic bottles, so technically, this isn't appropriate, but....
The machine stocks them vertically, but they don't drop. Instead, a conveyer belt on an arm moves up to just underneath the particular shelf, the bottle drops onto it, the belt moves down to the outport, and rolls the bottle over to the side, where it falls about 4 inches, into the receptacle.
So it isn't something you need to have built - they are out there, you just need to get your supplier to get one in your market.
"Going Gold" means the Master CD's (which are, or at least used to be, gold in color) have been shipped to the publisher, who will begin to mass-produce them, along with the manuals, and stuff everything in boxes.
It has nothing to do with any particular retail outlet, other than the outlets can probably expect shipments to start arriving in 7-10 business days.
TaxAct works ok if you work, get paid, and spend your money.
Their calculations when it comes to mortgage appreciation, stock divestiture, exempt expenses, and the like....well, they suck.
I plugged my numbers that I could into both TaxAct and TaxCut last year, and TaxAct missed something like $1500 that I would have had to pay in addition to the bit of tax I already owed.
So if your income model is pretty basic, it might work fine, but if you do any serious money moving, go for one of the ones you buy.
They didn't destabilize the while economy, but this is a more far-reaching legislative act that it appears.
As a fledgling country with a not-very-stable economy, they are obviously investing in the technology to produce items such as CD Blanks and Recorders. This technology has, it would seem, already been invested in, since without the capability to create non-conforming CD's, there would be no reason for this legislation.
Were they able to produce such items cheap enough, it might have been to the US consumer's advantage to purchase them from the Ukraine, instead of Taiwan, or China, or wherever. If for no other reason than Ukraine wouldn't be as susceptible to regional economy scales. And multiple source markets are always good leveraging tools in our economy.
However, the RIAA has spurred this legislation into being, effectively shutting down the chance for the Ukraine to export their goods to the US. After they apparently invested in the technology. Which means any money spent is now pretty much wasted.
Their fledgling new economy has had it's legs cut out from under it by the RIAA and the recently elected US Government. Never let it be said we didn't warn you about how this cabinet would end up being pro-big-business. Microsoft, RIAA, Verisign, it just keeps coming.
As much crap as LookOut/Exchange does, there is no other piece of software that seamlessly integrates the groupware automated scheduling functionality that Exchange does. From a New Event window, I can create the event, add users from the Exchange domain, verify their schedules, move the event, confirm it, have a mail sent that shows up to each person with the information and 3 buttons (Accept, Decline, and Accept Conditionally). After I send the Email, I can then track who has opened the Email, who has replied, who is coming, and who isn't.
Evolution is a nice client, but it's a client. All of that work is on the serverside.
Notes is OK, but I need a bigger machien to run it on than I run my data warehouses on. And when it crashes (when, not if), it's gonna be seriously borked.
This is why companies use Exchange/LookOut. Not because it's a great mail client, but because it integrates all of the possible messageing functions a business needs, and talks to additional software like Project to plot out Project Management information.
OpenMail is the only other server-side enterprise messaging system out there that fulfills these needs. It's a decent program, it's not MS, it's significantly cheaper (if for no other reason then you only need 10% of the servers to run it on), and it runs on a more stable OS.
I wouldn't reply to an AC post, but since people who don't play EQ don't know what I'm talking about....
Each "server", and there are 30 of them, is actually a virtual server, comprised of a cluster of 40 systems. Some provide character database services, some world persistence, and most host a number of the zones in the game.
You bought a game that requires Win98 or later, and DirectX 8, latest version of which as of the game release is Dx8.1. If your system doesn't meet those requirements, directly or indirectly, then that's your fault for not fully investigating the listed requirements on the box and just buying it when you saw it.
-----
current model compaq armada e500 with an ati rage mobility pro 8meg video card
-----
Um, an 8 meg video card? You're barely supported under the OLD requirements, let alone the new ones. And Verant has never officially supported laptops.
The only thing the forced patch did was require DirectX8.1. This is the latest supported DirectX, and the only people this inconveniences is people who A) Run a no-longer-supported-OS (Win95) by a third party (third party to the develpoers and the players). B) Run a no-longer-supported video card from a now-defunct company.
Consider this a favor from Verant. You run non-supported OS's with non-supported video cards, and this is Verant's fault? Wah.
The Expansion is optional. No one is required to install it to continue playing. If you cna't run it, then that's not Verant's problem. Your old install will run fine once you get rid of that now-obsolete OS and video card.
The whiners started up 2 weeks before, complaining that Verant/Sony said, back when EQ was released, that you'd never have to replace your computer to continue playing. Well, the new requirement of DirectX8.1 (not Dx8 as the review says, but 8.1) forced a bunch of people to have to upgrade theor video cards. You know what though? Suck it up, your Voodoo3 hasn't been supported for almost a year and nas no company behind it any more, why would you expect Microsoft to support it in Dx8?
And then the revised Luclin specs were released about 2 weeks before launch. Suggested specs went from 256M to 512M. Hardware T&L recommended, required if you're not running a P-III or better. And the new install requires an additional 1G (yes, 1 gig) of disk space to install all of the new textures and character models to. Oh, and you can't play Luclin on Win95 any more.
What people fail to grasp is that Luclin is an expansion, and a complete revamping of the original game at that. No one is required to buy Luclin to keep playing. You will still see the new characters and new equipment without it, you just can't BE one of the new characters, or go to the new locations. Loading character models, which is where the memory hit comes, is configurable - you can load all, none, or any combination in between. Many people are reporting very acecptable performance with 256M. And DirectX8.1, while bleeding-edge, is a FAR improvement over 8.0a - bug fixes, performance boosts, the whole lot. We covered the video card already. And as far as Win95 no longer being supported (it's still supported for the OLD version), well, check out Microsoft's home page people - 95 was end-of-lifed on November 30, 2001. That was last week.
The servers _always_ suffer after an outage when everyone is trying to reconnect every 30 seconds, waiting for them to come back up. And as far as the patch running long, most of you numbnuts can't even run Windows Update and keep your own computer running right, let alone manage the patching of a 1,200-computer server farm within 8 hours.
You claim Verant should have done more testing before release. You have no idea now many variations of motherboards, chipsets, video cards, sound cards, network connections, and whatnot there are. It is physically IMPOSSIBLE for a company in today's technology world to be able to anticipate every software interaction on every hardware platform. It always amazes me when Verant stages a patch that doesn't cause lots of problems, adds lots of new features, and frankly, only inconveniences you. If not being able to play for a day is such a big loss for you, drop me an E-mail, and I'll refund the $0.33 cents you lost for that day because you're too lazy to get off your butt and go outside to see the sun (AAA MY EYES). Just leave me a credit card number for me to run the refund onto:-P
For what Verant is doing, they manage to do it really well. You claim the release of Luclin was a failure. Perhaps you forget the 2 recent MMORPG releases. Remember Anarchy Online? That was gonna be an EQ killer. So was World War II online. I don't htink I've heard anyone mention them in months now. THAT was a botched release.
Considering what you're getting, IMO Verant is doing a great job. If it's that much of an inconvenience to you, maybe you should take a break and watch TV for a few days, talk to some RL 'toons', go to the mall, clean off your desk, say hi to your parents for the first time in months.
Yes, the patch doesn't support hardware dedication. But my SUN background makes me ponder a line of thought.
In Solaris, there are the psr* family of commands for processor administration. psradmin -f 0 will turn off processor 0. As long as this isn't physical powering down of processors, and simply instructions to the scheduler to disregard p0, you could, on the above vm, do something like:
Leaving procs 0-3 for Prod, 4-5 for Test, and 6-7 for Dev.
Along the same lines, at boot time you can explicitly state memory ranges to the kernel, if linux can't detect your memory right, or you have known bad memory you want to avoid. With the same thought, the Prod, Test, and Dev kernels can be brought up explicitly stating the 0-2G, 2-3G, and 3-4G ranges as usable memory addresses.
You run into more problems when it comes to peripherals in the box, but how many serial ports do you really need? Just specify ttyS0 in the VM with the addresses of ttyS0,1,2 of the physical server.
Am I smoking crack, or should I just stick with my much-more-hardware-flexible Sparc architecture:)
Realize that having a CS degree will at least get you in the door at places for more than just programming. I burnt out while I was in school, too, and dropped out in my last year, because I was tired of all the FSCKING programming. I mean, if I wanted to be a programmer, that's all fine and good, but I wanted to be, at the time, a systems analyst, and later changed my mind, and now I'm a systems admin.
Finish it out. I wish I had - but I got into the job market before the dot-com bubble started or burst, so I was lucky enough to not have to depend on my degree to get me just in the door. Now I'm going the night school here at an in-town unoiversity.
You're going to need the degree, coming in with minimal experience. I know, it sucks, but finish it out, then get out of the programming. I still go back to it for fun when I wanna do something, but hell, it's surely not what I want to do for the rest of my life.
When compiling an RFP, not only are you usually looking for a product, but support of that product. For example, companies don't just buy SUN servers, they buy the support that goes with them (which is very nice, but off topic:). Unless you are looking simply to buy the product and, under normal business cases, let the vendor cut you loose, you're going to need to find a company that can offer you the support for your product.
For example, you could contact NuSphere for MySQL, ISC for Sendmail, and so forth.
Not also, that in doing so, you will not necessarily get comparable quotes unless you specify in the RFP that SUPPORT COSTS are to be included in the quotes. In the case of SUN above - the support contracts, while good, are not included with the system. Make sure your commercial vendors include figures for support equivalent to what you would get with the Open Source company supporting their product.
You may have to take the support policies from the OS Company, and then import them into your RFP to come up with reasonable figures. Be careful about this though, as some vendors may recognize your source, and claim you're already biased toward one of the people you're sending the RFP to.
Bah, the only reason my wife gets mad at me for looking at porn is when I don't share and show her some of the wierd crap that shows up in those popups:)
Try changing your zip code to the same city as sone of us who is telling you that we're allowed to run servers - the help pages change based on where your service is coming from.
Try 32225 - Jacksonville, Florida. Formerly MediaOne Roadrunner. Then go look at the service agreements.
We're allowed to run servers, we just can't have AT&T support them.
Veritas issued an alert that the indexing on it's backup files was broken - don't remember what it said, but basically everything would show as Jan 1, 1970 00:00:00. The datestamps were right, but the conversion routine for displaying the dates was broken. A patch that fixed the display routine fixed things up.
1) MTBF almost identical. But not exactly identical. Therefore, one drive will die first, at which time you get yourself to CompUSA or something and get a replacement, because it's a sign that your drive are about to go. Besides, that's dumb math, the MTBF for 2 same-model SCSI drives are identical too, does that mean I shouldn't use my SSI drives as mirrors either?
2) One controller. Yeah, but hey, at least if you drop a controller, your data is still there. Then you drop in a new controller.
Redundancy is expensive - if you can't afford it, then make redundant the most vulnerable link - the data storage. If he wanted mega super redundancy, he'd have two servers in 2 physical locations with two network connections between them using multiple controllers to mirror data across multiple disks on each controller. Is this scenario getting ridiculous enough for home use yet?
My understanding of the episode where Worf saw the ST:TOS Klingons was that, for some reason, the Klingons back then altered themselves to appear less inhuman than they were.
To me this reads, if you're going to use your work (that you had to give to us) to make a buck, we want some of that money.
No, it reads "We're glad you put our work to use for you. Please make your check payable to..."
Not if that free software is also commercial software. Linux distributions are definitely a "product offered and resold for revenues", so they'd have to pay a license fee, too.
No, Most linux distributions are downloadable. SuSE is the major exception that I know of. You pay for the convenience of the media, and the support. RedHat makes a grand total of $0.00 on every ISO download (and probably technically loses money, because i take their bandwidth to get it).
How do you know that WinXP isn't the cheaper of the parts that's coming out? Maybe the expensive part was getting all of the applications fixed so that they wouldn't crash under XP. They are shipping 1 OS and, from what I understand, 10-15 applications. Even at cheap prices, 10-15 applications that I buy on the bargain shelf for 10 bucks a piece will still run my $100-$150. If that's the case, then the OS is worth between $0-$150 bucks, depending on whether you're buying the home upgrade, or the Pro full version. We have no idea how much the OS costs, because no one has been able to figure out what the market would pay for Windows if it had the choice, and the usual Free Market effects forced MS to sell Win at whatever it could compete for.
And I'm not pissed because I wanna play my CD's on an 8-track, or on the $199 Sony player. But I'd be just as happy having to drive across town to puck up that $100 Technics player, because, frankly, I've like the buttons and interface on it better than Sony's. (Not really, I have all Sony audio stuff, but I had to continue the analogy:).
I like the way Compaq used to have their servers set up. When you bought them, they had every software setup you could use on the hard drive, encoded and packed up. Booting started the install procedure, where you picked which software packages you wanted installed. The restore CD blew away your HD, and put that boot image back on the disk, and once you had your software setup picked, you got the opportunity to build restore floppies for the different software packages.
Why can't we do this? Computers ship with 30G hard drives at the low end today, I can put Netscape, IE, Opera, Mosaic, and umpteen other browsers on the disk to install on first boot. Same with Word/Wordperfect/Wordstar/whatever or Quicken/Money or Realplayer/WMP.
The fact is, people just don't care. We care, but we are the minority voicing concerns in a way that the affected majority don't associate with. Until your Aunt Martha understand that she should be able to use whatever she wants, then MS will go about their business unscathed, because not enough people are pushing for them to get their arm ripped off instead of their hand slapped.
What's sad, is that Microsoft is the industry standard, not because their products are that much better, but because their marketing machine is better.
I'll admit that, any more, Word seems to be better for what I do than other WP's, but that's mainly because I'm used to it. But Exchange is far from the best mail system out there. Oh, wonder of all wonders, it's integrated with a calendaring system. Who would have guessed that MS would do that.
MS is the standard because people are lazy. And that's just sad.
I can uninstall Warp. And I can uninstall HatJava. But I can't uninstall IE. And the majority of the people out there are lazy apathetic people who are thinking "Well, it's fre, and it's already installed, and even if I install something else, it'll still be taking up space, so I'll just use this [browser|encoder|player|...]".
The issue isn't that other applications can be installed with Windows. The issue is that other applications _have_ to be installed with Windows. Not only that, but that for Windows to even work correctly, some of those applications have to be present. If you don't see the problem with this, let me try this. You can buy these CD's, but in order to do that, you have to buy this CD player. And this CD case. And this CD labeling system. You may never use these tools, but that's how the CD's come - bundled with all this other stuff.
You forget that you are a technical person probably with a broadband connection. 90% of the US, at last count, was still on 56K or slower dialup connections, and 98% of them run Windows. Sure then can download Netscape and RealPlayer and Quicktime, but they aren't going to, because it's inconvenient, and Cousin Betty got a virus the last time she installed software from the internet, or it may not work right, and then they will get pissed off, run their restore CD, and not put Netscape, Realplay, or Quicktime back on the new install.
The typical PC user is _dumb_ when it comes to how computers work and what they do. Even the non-typical ones are pretty dumb. My wife knows a good deal about computers, just from me, but when it comes down to it, she just wants her computer to work. She complained last night because she had to reboot after updating the DAT file for McAfee. Of course you have to reboot, but it was an inconvenience, and she wanted to go play EverQuest.
This case isn't about defending the rights of the Geeks to get Opera and Cygnus WinTools and stuff pre-instlaled on our computer from Dell, it's about defending the apathetic Joe Average computer user from having their entire computing experience controlled by a single company.
Slashdot Mirror
Call your local Coke machine distributor.
At the place I jsut started working, they have a machine that stocks regular plastic bottles, so technically, this isn't appropriate, but....
The machine stocks them vertically, but they don't drop. Instead, a conveyer belt on an arm moves up to just underneath the particular shelf, the bottle drops onto it, the belt moves down to the outport, and rolls the bottle over to the side, where it falls about 4 inches, into the receptacle.
So it isn't something you need to have built - they are out there, you just need to get your supplier to get one in your market.
"Going Gold" means the Master CD's (which are, or at least used to be, gold in color) have been shipped to the publisher, who will begin to mass-produce them, along with the manuals, and stuff everything in boxes.
It has nothing to do with any particular retail outlet, other than the outlets can probably expect shipments to start arriving in 7-10 business days.
TaxAct works ok if you work, get paid, and spend your money.
Their calculations when it comes to mortgage appreciation, stock divestiture, exempt expenses, and the like....well, they suck.
I plugged my numbers that I could into both TaxAct and TaxCut last year, and TaxAct missed something like $1500 that I would have had to pay in addition to the bit of tax I already owed.
So if your income model is pretty basic, it might work fine, but if you do any serious money moving, go for one of the ones you buy.
They didn't destabilize the while economy, but this is a more far-reaching legislative act that it appears.
As a fledgling country with a not-very-stable economy, they are obviously investing in the technology to produce items such as CD Blanks and Recorders. This technology has, it would seem, already been invested in, since without the capability to create non-conforming CD's, there would be no reason for this legislation.
Were they able to produce such items cheap enough, it might have been to the US consumer's advantage to purchase them from the Ukraine, instead of Taiwan, or China, or wherever. If for no other reason than Ukraine wouldn't be as susceptible to regional economy scales. And multiple source markets are always good leveraging tools in our economy.
However, the RIAA has spurred this legislation into being, effectively shutting down the chance for the Ukraine to export their goods to the US. After they apparently invested in the technology. Which means any money spent is now pretty much wasted.
We won't be now.
Their fledgling new economy has had it's legs cut out from under it by the RIAA and the recently elected US Government. Never let it be said we didn't warn you about how this cabinet would end up being pro-big-business. Microsoft, RIAA, Verisign, it just keeps coming.
One word: Calendaring.
As much crap as LookOut/Exchange does, there is no other piece of software that seamlessly integrates the groupware automated scheduling functionality that Exchange does. From a New Event window, I can create the event, add users from the Exchange domain, verify their schedules, move the event, confirm it, have a mail sent that shows up to each person with the information and 3 buttons (Accept, Decline, and Accept Conditionally). After I send the Email, I can then track who has opened the Email, who has replied, who is coming, and who isn't.
Evolution is a nice client, but it's a client. All of that work is on the serverside.
Notes is OK, but I need a bigger machien to run it on than I run my data warehouses on. And when it crashes (when, not if), it's gonna be seriously borked.
This is why companies use Exchange/LookOut. Not because it's a great mail client, but because it integrates all of the possible messageing functions a business needs, and talks to additional software like Project to plot out Project Management information.
OpenMail is the only other server-side enterprise messaging system out there that fulfills these needs. It's a decent program, it's not MS, it's significantly cheaper (if for no other reason then you only need 10% of the servers to run it on), and it runs on a more stable OS.
I wouldn't reply to an AC post, but since people who don't play EQ don't know what I'm talking about....
Each "server", and there are 30 of them, is actually a virtual server, comprised of a cluster of 40 systems. Some provide character database services, some world persistence, and most host a number of the zones in the game.
Go away troll
You bought a game that requires Win98 or later, and DirectX 8, latest version of which as of the game release is Dx8.1. If your system doesn't meet those requirements, directly or indirectly, then that's your fault for not fully investigating the listed requirements on the box and just buying it when you saw it.
-----
current model compaq armada e500 with an ati rage mobility pro 8meg video card
-----
Um, an 8 meg video card? You're barely supported under the OLD requirements, let alone the new ones. And Verant has never officially supported laptops.
To clarify...
The only thing the forced patch did was require DirectX8.1. This is the latest supported DirectX, and the only people this inconveniences is people who A) Run a no-longer-supported-OS (Win95) by a third party (third party to the develpoers and the players). B) Run a no-longer-supported video card from a now-defunct company.
Consider this a favor from Verant. You run non-supported OS's with non-supported video cards, and this is Verant's fault? Wah.
The Expansion is optional. No one is required to install it to continue playing. If you cna't run it, then that's not Verant's problem. Your old install will run fine once you get rid of that now-obsolete OS and video card.
The whiners started up 2 weeks before, complaining that Verant/Sony said, back when EQ was released, that you'd never have to replace your computer to continue playing. Well, the new requirement of DirectX8.1 (not Dx8 as the review says, but 8.1) forced a bunch of people to have to upgrade theor video cards. You know what though? Suck it up, your Voodoo3 hasn't been supported for almost a year and nas no company behind it any more, why would you expect Microsoft to support it in Dx8?
And then the revised Luclin specs were released about 2 weeks before launch. Suggested specs went from 256M to 512M. Hardware T&L recommended, required if you're not running a P-III or better. And the new install requires an additional 1G (yes, 1 gig) of disk space to install all of the new textures and character models to. Oh, and you can't play Luclin on Win95 any more.
What people fail to grasp is that Luclin is an expansion, and a complete revamping of the original game at that. No one is required to buy Luclin to keep playing. You will still see the new characters and new equipment without it, you just can't BE one of the new characters, or go to the new locations. Loading character models, which is where the memory hit comes, is configurable - you can load all, none, or any combination in between. Many people are reporting very acecptable performance with 256M. And DirectX8.1, while bleeding-edge, is a FAR improvement over 8.0a - bug fixes, performance boosts, the whole lot. We covered the video card already. And as far as Win95 no longer being supported (it's still supported for the OLD version), well, check out Microsoft's home page people - 95 was end-of-lifed on November 30, 2001. That was last week.
The servers _always_ suffer after an outage when everyone is trying to reconnect every 30 seconds, waiting for them to come back up. And as far as the patch running long, most of you numbnuts can't even run Windows Update and keep your own computer running right, let alone manage the patching of a 1,200-computer server farm within 8 hours.
You claim Verant should have done more testing before release. You have no idea now many variations of motherboards, chipsets, video cards, sound cards, network connections, and whatnot there are. It is physically IMPOSSIBLE for a company in today's technology world to be able to anticipate every software interaction on every hardware platform. It always amazes me when Verant stages a patch that doesn't cause lots of problems, adds lots of new features, and frankly, only inconveniences you. If not being able to play for a day is such a big loss for you, drop me an E-mail, and I'll refund the $0.33 cents you lost for that day because you're too lazy to get off your butt and go outside to see the sun (AAA MY EYES). Just leave me a credit card number for me to run the refund onto :-P
For what Verant is doing, they manage to do it really well. You claim the release of Luclin was a failure. Perhaps you forget the 2 recent MMORPG releases. Remember Anarchy Online? That was gonna be an EQ killer. So was World War II online. I don't htink I've heard anyone mention them in months now. THAT was a botched release.
Considering what you're getting, IMO Verant is doing a great job. If it's that much of an inconvenience to you, maybe you should take a break and watch TV for a few days, talk to some RL 'toons', go to the mall, clean off your desk, say hi to your parents for the first time in months.
Yes, the patch doesn't support hardware dedication. But my SUN background makes me ponder a line of thought.
:)
In Solaris, there are the psr* family of commands for processor administration. psradmin -f 0 will turn off processor 0. As long as this isn't physical powering down of processors, and simply instructions to the scheduler to disregard p0, you could, on the above vm, do something like:
Prod: psradm -f 4,5,6,7
Test: psradm -f 0,1,2,3,6,7
Dev: psradm -f 0,1,2,3,4,5
Leaving procs 0-3 for Prod, 4-5 for Test, and 6-7 for Dev.
Along the same lines, at boot time you can explicitly state memory ranges to the kernel, if linux can't detect your memory right, or you have known bad memory you want to avoid. With the same thought, the Prod, Test, and Dev kernels can be brought up explicitly stating the 0-2G, 2-3G, and 3-4G ranges as usable memory addresses.
You run into more problems when it comes to peripherals in the box, but how many serial ports do you really need? Just specify ttyS0 in the VM with the addresses of ttyS0,1,2 of the physical server.
Am I smoking crack, or should I just stick with my much-more-hardware-flexible Sparc architecture
Yeah, and IBM went through a 13 year antitrust case which eventually found them not guilty.
In the end, their business practices did not change, and IBM screwed themselves, lost much market cap, and had to rebuild their company over.
Realize that having a CS degree will at least get you in the door at places for more than just programming. I burnt out while I was in school, too, and dropped out in my last year, because I was tired of all the FSCKING programming. I mean, if I wanted to be a programmer, that's all fine and good, but I wanted to be, at the time, a systems analyst, and later changed my mind, and now I'm a systems admin.
Finish it out. I wish I had - but I got into the job market before the dot-com bubble started or burst, so I was lucky enough to not have to depend on my degree to get me just in the door. Now I'm going the night school here at an in-town unoiversity.
You're going to need the degree, coming in with minimal experience. I know, it sucks, but finish it out, then get out of the programming. I still go back to it for fun when I wanna do something, but hell, it's surely not what I want to do for the rest of my life.
As an owner with access to the owner's manual...
What's the towing capacity on one of these things?
When compiling an RFP, not only are you usually looking for a product, but support of that product. For example, companies don't just buy SUN servers, they buy the support that goes with them (which is very nice, but off topic :). Unless you are looking simply to buy the product and, under normal business cases, let the vendor cut you loose, you're going to need to find a company that can offer you the support for your product.
For example, you could contact NuSphere for MySQL, ISC for Sendmail, and so forth.
Not also, that in doing so, you will not necessarily get comparable quotes unless you specify in the RFP that SUPPORT COSTS are to be included in the quotes. In the case of SUN above - the support contracts, while good, are not included with the system. Make sure your commercial vendors include figures for support equivalent to what you would get with the Open Source company supporting their product.
You may have to take the support policies from the OS Company, and then import them into your RFP to come up with reasonable figures. Be careful about this though, as some vendors may recognize your source, and claim you're already biased toward one of the people you're sending the RFP to.
Bah, the only reason my wife gets mad at me for looking at porn is when I don't share and show her some of the wierd crap that shows up in those popups :)
Try changing your zip code to the same city as sone of us who is telling you that we're allowed to run servers - the help pages change based on where your service is coming from.
Try 32225 - Jacksonville, Florida. Formerly MediaOne Roadrunner. Then go look at the service agreements.
We're allowed to run servers, we just can't have AT&T support them.
Veritas issued an alert that the indexing on it's backup files was broken - don't remember what it said, but basically everything would show as Jan 1, 1970 00:00:00. The datestamps were right, but the conversion routine for displaying the dates was broken. A patch that fixed the display routine fixed things up.
1) MTBF almost identical. But not exactly identical. Therefore, one drive will die first, at which time you get yourself to CompUSA or something and get a replacement, because it's a sign that your drive are about to go. Besides, that's dumb math, the MTBF for 2 same-model SCSI drives are identical too, does that mean I shouldn't use my SSI drives as mirrors either?
2) One controller. Yeah, but hey, at least if you drop a controller, your data is still there. Then you drop in a new controller.
Redundancy is expensive - if you can't afford it, then make redundant the most vulnerable link - the data storage. If he wanted mega super redundancy, he'd have two servers in 2 physical locations with two network connections between them using multiple controllers to mirror data across multiple disks on each controller. Is this scenario getting ridiculous enough for home use yet?
My understanding of the episode where Worf saw the ST:TOS Klingons was that, for some reason, the Klingons back then altered themselves to appear less inhuman than they were.
To me this reads, if you're going to use your work (that you had to give to us) to make a buck, we want some of that money.
No, it reads "We're glad you put our work to use for you. Please make your check payable to..."
Not if that free software is also commercial software. Linux distributions are definitely a "product offered and resold for revenues", so they'd have to pay a license fee, too.
No, Most linux distributions are downloadable. SuSE is the major exception that I know of. You pay for the convenience of the media, and the support. RedHat makes a grand total of $0.00 on every ISO download (and probably technically loses money, because i take their bandwidth to get it).
How do you know that WinXP isn't the cheaper of the parts that's coming out? Maybe the expensive part was getting all of the applications fixed so that they wouldn't crash under XP. They are shipping 1 OS and, from what I understand, 10-15 applications. Even at cheap prices, 10-15 applications that I buy on the bargain shelf for 10 bucks a piece will still run my $100-$150. If that's the case, then the OS is worth between $0-$150 bucks, depending on whether you're buying the home upgrade, or the Pro full version. We have no idea how much the OS costs, because no one has been able to figure out what the market would pay for Windows if it had the choice, and the usual Free Market effects forced MS to sell Win at whatever it could compete for.
And I'm not pissed because I wanna play my CD's on an 8-track, or on the $199 Sony player. But I'd be just as happy having to drive across town to puck up that $100 Technics player, because, frankly, I've like the buttons and interface on it better than Sony's. (Not really, I have all Sony audio stuff, but I had to continue the analogy :).
I like the way Compaq used to have their servers set up. When you bought them, they had every software setup you could use on the hard drive, encoded and packed up. Booting started the install procedure, where you picked which software packages you wanted installed. The restore CD blew away your HD, and put that boot image back on the disk, and once you had your software setup picked, you got the opportunity to build restore floppies for the different software packages.
Why can't we do this? Computers ship with 30G hard drives at the low end today, I can put Netscape, IE, Opera, Mosaic, and umpteen other browsers on the disk to install on first boot. Same with Word/Wordperfect/Wordstar/whatever or Quicken/Money or Realplayer/WMP.
The fact is, people just don't care. We care, but we are the minority voicing concerns in a way that the affected majority don't associate with. Until your Aunt Martha understand that she should be able to use whatever she wants, then MS will go about their business unscathed, because not enough people are pushing for them to get their arm ripped off instead of their hand slapped.
What's sad, is that Microsoft is the industry standard, not because their products are that much better, but because their marketing machine is better.
I'll admit that, any more, Word seems to be better for what I do than other WP's, but that's mainly because I'm used to it. But Exchange is far from the best mail system out there. Oh, wonder of all wonders, it's integrated with a calendaring system. Who would have guessed that MS would do that.
MS is the standard because people are lazy. And that's just sad.
The problem is....
I can uninstall Warp. And I can uninstall HatJava. But I can't uninstall IE. And the majority of the people out there are lazy apathetic people who are thinking "Well, it's fre, and it's already installed, and even if I install something else, it'll still be taking up space, so I'll just use this [browser|encoder|player|...]".
The issue isn't that other applications can be installed with Windows. The issue is that other applications _have_ to be installed with Windows. Not only that, but that for Windows to even work correctly, some of those applications have to be present. If you don't see the problem with this, let me try this. You can buy these CD's, but in order to do that, you have to buy this CD player. And this CD case. And this CD labeling system. You may never use these tools, but that's how the CD's come - bundled with all this other stuff.
You forget that you are a technical person probably with a broadband connection. 90% of the US, at last count, was still on 56K or slower dialup connections, and 98% of them run Windows. Sure then can download Netscape and RealPlayer and Quicktime, but they aren't going to, because it's inconvenient, and Cousin Betty got a virus the last time she installed software from the internet, or it may not work right, and then they will get pissed off, run their restore CD, and not put Netscape, Realplay, or Quicktime back on the new install.
The typical PC user is _dumb_ when it comes to how computers work and what they do. Even the non-typical ones are pretty dumb. My wife knows a good deal about computers, just from me, but when it comes down to it, she just wants her computer to work. She complained last night because she had to reboot after updating the DAT file for McAfee. Of course you have to reboot, but it was an inconvenience, and she wanted to go play EverQuest.
This case isn't about defending the rights of the Geeks to get Opera and Cygnus WinTools and stuff pre-instlaled on our computer from Dell, it's about defending the apathetic Joe Average computer user from having their entire computing experience controlled by a single company.