Who do you bank with? My bank provides instant rollbacks on unauthorized transactions on my debit card, just as the credit card companies. I get all the benefits, they take all the risk. And yes, I have had to test this. Some clown in Texas used my debit card to charge $400 in DSL fees. Called the bank and had the money back in my account in 15 minutes.
Not to mention Blackboard has some serious performance issues. Last version I played with was running all perl cgis for EVERYTHING "not that there is anything wrong with that". We had about 100 users on the system at any given time and it was slower than Christmas.
I haven't used this too much personally (we're a Mercury shop), but this is definitely the way to go. Mercury Load Runner would be about $100K for what you are trying to do. OpenSTA can do what you need. Load testing software is probably the least of your concerns tho. You need to set up valid use cases modeled accurately after what your real users will be doing. You need to set valid exit criteria for what a successful test outcome would be. The fact that you are actually looking into doing load testing is a good sign. Good luck with it. My group of 12 people only does performance testing and code optimization. It is a lot harder to do right than most people think.
Not to mention the fact that 99.9% of books suck ass anyway. It's not like he can be all high and mighty when most of the paper lining the shelves at his library have no redeeming value. The same is true with information on blogs. At least most of the people reading blogs do so with a slightly suspicious eye. I'm not anti-library, I have thousands of books at home, but get over yourself dude.
ssh tunnel home from work on port open through firewall (80/443/etc). run nfs over ssh tunnel. No need for vpn tunnel. Not that I have done this. No sirree.
I wonder how many other banks are doing this, but don't shout it from the rooftops?
Speaking from direct experience, not that much. They are starting to look into it seriously, and I say go for it, but they are starting really small. I suspect in the next few years many of their mission critical apps will be running on linux, but not many of them are today. Oracle has really been pushing RAC/10g on linux, with mixed results. A few of my clients have gone to marketing seminars with Oracle and come out preaching, but once their dbas go through the actual classes they have completely bailed on the idea. I don't think that speaks negatively on linux, just the whole RAC solution in general. It's a big bet and the reasoning is simpler than you would think. It doesn't come down to whether the solution actually works. It comes down to not wanting to be the infrastructure manager when the press release goes out saying your RAC/Linux database went down for several hours in the middle of the day. No one wants that Computerworld interview. I'm a huge fan of linux, and I think it is ready for prime time, but don't look to financial institutions to set the pace. They are in the business of making money, not trying to be bleeding edge on technology. The savings honestly is not that great in the scheme of things. Consider saving a couple hundred grand on going with a linux solution with an hour of downtime that costs 500K. This does not mean linux is less reliable, but the suits are going to question your motives for going with this "linooks" thing.
Have you looked and any of the benchmarks lately for Unix based hardware? IBM is the fastest out there and has been for a while. Sun is one of the slowest platforms you can buy, and comparative pricewise to IBM. While Linux on Intel is pretty fast, and definitely the best bang for your buck, most banks are not betting on it yet. There is a lot that goes with that, like a lot of banking software does not run on Linux. Sun is no longer a competitor in the hardware arena, as much as it pains me to say it. Five years ago I was the biggest Sun biggot you could find. Now all of my clients only use Sun to beat up IBM on price, and they typically get a better price with IBM than Sun and much better performance. Don't underestimate IBM performance and pricing, it's not 1987. I price out multi-million dollar infrastructures for my banking clients every day of the week, and trust me, they are looking at cost/performance, not names. The new pSeries server rock in an unbelieveable fashion (and I don't work for them).
You guys obviously have a lot more time on your hands than I do. Granted, if it was a unix box, I would probably do that. The term "sysadmin" does not apply to my boxes at home, I just don't care that much. So, you seriously go into event viewer once a week?
Yeah, and don't rely on Windows smart detection. After my 99% full 250 GB drive failed last week, I was able to resurrect some of the data. Included in this was the event logs, with about 500 warnings over two weeks that my drive was on the way out. Okay, so in order to figure out if my drive is going south I need to check the event log every day? WTF?
No, it's obvious it is all working. We haven't had any terrorist attacks since 9/11, so the logical conclusion is that all of this invasion of privacy is working. Oh wait...
I'm sure their devils, I mean lawyers, have looked into this quite a bit. Besides, courts have already upheld in some cases that it is not the P2P software's liability if someone shares something illegal.
IANAA(udiophile), but I do prefer the sound of my old tube and solid state gear and speakers (all Marantz, circa '79). I like the sound much better than my digital system downstairs. Does it objectively sound better? Don't know, but it comes down to preference. The old analog gear has a "warmth" to it that the digital equipment does not possess. Now, most people I know attribute that warmth to the pops and hisses, but I only get that from records. Playing mp3s through that Marantz sounds much better (to me) than anything I play through my other system. It's all about preference, and anyone telling you differently is probably an asshat.
Except for the 1.6 consoles (if course). Unfortunately I had one of those and it was a BITCH to solder. That being said, the Xenium kicks some serious ass.
It takes all of 20-30 minutes to grab a 700MB game. Yeah, maybe for you Swedes with your fat net connections, but for most of us poor bastards in the states it takes over an hour;) That being said, DC++ rocks...
I switched the other day (yeah, I'm going to get my geek card revoked), and firefox kicks some serious ass. I didn't switch in the past because I need some of the features of IE for our app at work, but now I only use IE for that. Anyone using IE should just switch, no questions asked.
I thought it looked cool. And whoever said it has 80s styling was obviously not conscious during the 80s. The knobs probably don't even make a chunk noise when you turn them.
How is this the ISP's problem? The courts, judge or anyone else? That's like suing the government in 1999 to make sure the calendar never says 2000 because you had shitty programmers. I really do not see a difference. Have these people never heard of source escrow? They should be firing the person in charge of this operation, not suing their ISP for a net block.
Agreed. I have seen this especially on AOL. I guess that is the price you have to pay for having probably the worst ISP out there. I also noticed this from people running OLD versions of Microsoft proxy server. You would think after all of these years AOL would get a clue about how DNS really works. I can understand caching it for a day or two, but weeks? One solution would be to leave a server or two at the old address, and that is what I have done in the past. Not feasible for everyone, but if you are worried about the few...
And why on earth does someone need to take their IPs with them? Crap, re-IP your stuff, change your dns and be done with it. Only thing I can think of is bad/lazy admins. I have had to do this on internet sites that make > $1 billion a year with no disruption. Set your DNS TTL low and make the switch. Within 15 minutes all traffic should go to the new IPs. It's not like someone you knew ten years ago is going to try to contact you on that IP...
I don't get it either. From his page: It's too noisy: This is just wrong. When booting the machine is quite noisy, but this settles to a re-assuring hum once the Solaris platform management code kicks in to monitor the system.
Bullshit. I have an E250 in my server room at home and I can barely stand to be in the same room with it. Sounds like an airplane taking off. Not to mention the fact that I'm thinking of getting rid of it just for the power bill. Those things don't exactly have 250 Watt power supplies in them. And for the size/performance, he could sell that thing on ebay and put a terabyte of storage in his car on a dual P4 and damn near fit it under the seat. Those things have like, what, 400 Mhz Sparc procs in them? Max? My 250 at home does fine, but not exactly designed for encoding/decoding audio. But then again, I'm going to get my geek card taken away for saying all of that.
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Who do you bank with? My bank provides instant rollbacks on unauthorized transactions on my debit card, just as the credit card companies. I get all the benefits, they take all the risk. And yes, I have had to test this. Some clown in Texas used my debit card to charge $400 in DSL fees. Called the bank and had the money back in my account in 15 minutes.
Not to mention Blackboard has some serious performance issues. Last version I played with was running all perl cgis for EVERYTHING "not that there is anything wrong with that". We had about 100 users on the system at any given time and it was slower than Christmas.
I haven't used this too much personally (we're a Mercury shop), but this is definitely the way to go. Mercury Load Runner would be about $100K for what you are trying to do. OpenSTA can do what you need. Load testing software is probably the least of your concerns tho. You need to set up valid use cases modeled accurately after what your real users will be doing. You need to set valid exit criteria for what a successful test outcome would be. The fact that you are actually looking into doing load testing is a good sign. Good luck with it. My group of 12 people only does performance testing and code optimization. It is a lot harder to do right than most people think.
Like I always say, our application won't give you five nines, but it can give you nine fives.
Not to mention the fact that 99.9% of books suck ass anyway. It's not like he can be all high and mighty when most of the paper lining the shelves at his library have no redeeming value. The same is true with information on blogs. At least most of the people reading blogs do so with a slightly suspicious eye. I'm not anti-library, I have thousands of books at home, but get over yourself dude.
ssh tunnel home from work on port open through firewall (80/443/etc). run nfs over ssh tunnel. No need for vpn tunnel. Not that I have done this. No sirree.
I wonder how many other banks are doing this, but don't shout it from the rooftops?
Speaking from direct experience, not that much. They are starting to look into it seriously, and I say go for it, but they are starting really small. I suspect in the next few years many of their mission critical apps will be running on linux, but not many of them are today. Oracle has really been pushing RAC/10g on linux, with mixed results. A few of my clients have gone to marketing seminars with Oracle and come out preaching, but once their dbas go through the actual classes they have completely bailed on the idea. I don't think that speaks negatively on linux, just the whole RAC solution in general. It's a big bet and the reasoning is simpler than you would think. It doesn't come down to whether the solution actually works. It comes down to not wanting to be the infrastructure manager when the press release goes out saying your RAC/Linux database went down for several hours in the middle of the day. No one wants that Computerworld interview. I'm a huge fan of linux, and I think it is ready for prime time, but don't look to financial institutions to set the pace. They are in the business of making money, not trying to be bleeding edge on technology. The savings honestly is not that great in the scheme of things. Consider saving a couple hundred grand on going with a linux solution with an hour of downtime that costs 500K. This does not mean linux is less reliable, but the suits are going to question your motives for going with this "linooks" thing.
Have you looked and any of the benchmarks lately for Unix based hardware? IBM is the fastest out there and has been for a while. Sun is one of the slowest platforms you can buy, and comparative pricewise to IBM. While Linux on Intel is pretty fast, and definitely the best bang for your buck, most banks are not betting on it yet. There is a lot that goes with that, like a lot of banking software does not run on Linux. Sun is no longer a competitor in the hardware arena, as much as it pains me to say it. Five years ago I was the biggest Sun biggot you could find. Now all of my clients only use Sun to beat up IBM on price, and they typically get a better price with IBM than Sun and much better performance. Don't underestimate IBM performance and pricing, it's not 1987. I price out multi-million dollar infrastructures for my banking clients every day of the week, and trust me, they are looking at cost/performance, not names. The new pSeries server rock in an unbelieveable fashion (and I don't work for them).
You guys obviously have a lot more time on your hands than I do. Granted, if it was a unix box, I would probably do that. The term "sysadmin" does not apply to my boxes at home, I just don't care that much. So, you seriously go into event viewer once a week?
Yeah, and don't rely on Windows smart detection. After my 99% full 250 GB drive failed last week, I was able to resurrect some of the data. Included in this was the event logs, with about 500 warnings over two weeks that my drive was on the way out. Okay, so in order to figure out if my drive is going south I need to check the event log every day? WTF?
No, it's obvious it is all working. We haven't had any terrorist attacks since 9/11, so the logical conclusion is that all of this invasion of privacy is working. Oh wait...
AFAIK, lock picking tools are generally LEGAL, but using them in the commission of a crime gets you a serious penalty.
I'm sure their devils, I mean lawyers, have looked into this quite a bit. Besides, courts have already upheld in some cases that it is not the P2P software's liability if someone shares something illegal.
IANAA(udiophile), but I do prefer the sound of my old tube and solid state gear and speakers (all Marantz, circa '79). I like the sound much better than my digital system downstairs. Does it objectively sound better? Don't know, but it comes down to preference. The old analog gear has a "warmth" to it that the digital equipment does not possess. Now, most people I know attribute that warmth to the pops and hisses, but I only get that from records. Playing mp3s through that Marantz sounds much better (to me) than anything I play through my other system. It's all about preference, and anyone telling you differently is probably an asshat.
Except for the 1.6 consoles (if course). Unfortunately I had one of those and it was a BITCH to solder. That being said, the Xenium kicks some serious ass.
It takes all of 20-30 minutes to grab a 700MB game. Yeah, maybe for you Swedes with your fat net connections, but for most of us poor bastards in the states it takes over an hour ;) That being said, DC++ rocks...
This is why the modded xbox is the shiznit. You can copy all of the games to the HD and the kids will never touch them again.
I switched the other day (yeah, I'm going to get my geek card revoked), and firefox kicks some serious ass. I didn't switch in the past because I need some of the features of IE for our app at work, but now I only use IE for that. Anyone using IE should just switch, no questions asked.
I thought it looked cool. And whoever said it has 80s styling was obviously not conscious during the 80s. The knobs probably don't even make a chunk noise when you turn them.
Uh, tell that to qcast. I've been using it for almost two years and it rocks.
How is this the ISP's problem? The courts, judge or anyone else? That's like suing the government in 1999 to make sure the calendar never says 2000 because you had shitty programmers. I really do not see a difference. Have these people never heard of source escrow? They should be firing the person in charge of this operation, not suing their ISP for a net block.
Agreed. I have seen this especially on AOL. I guess that is the price you have to pay for having probably the worst ISP out there. I also noticed this from people running OLD versions of Microsoft proxy server. You would think after all of these years AOL would get a clue about how DNS really works. I can understand caching it for a day or two, but weeks? One solution would be to leave a server or two at the old address, and that is what I have done in the past. Not feasible for everyone, but if you are worried about the few...
And why on earth does someone need to take their IPs with them? Crap, re-IP your stuff, change your dns and be done with it. Only thing I can think of is bad/lazy admins. I have had to do this on internet sites that make > $1 billion a year with no disruption. Set your DNS TTL low and make the switch. Within 15 minutes all traffic should go to the new IPs. It's not like someone you knew ten years ago is going to try to contact you on that IP...
I don't get it either. From his page:
It's too noisy: This is just wrong. When booting the machine is quite noisy, but this settles to a re-assuring hum once the Solaris platform management code kicks in to monitor the system.
Bullshit. I have an E250 in my server room at home and I can barely stand to be in the same room with it. Sounds like an airplane taking off. Not to mention the fact that I'm thinking of getting rid of it just for the power bill. Those things don't exactly have 250 Watt power supplies in them. And for the size/performance, he could sell that thing on ebay and put a terabyte of storage in his car on a dual P4 and damn near fit it under the seat. Those things have like, what, 400 Mhz Sparc procs in them? Max? My 250 at home does fine, but not exactly designed for encoding/decoding audio. But then again, I'm going to get my geek card taken away for saying all of that.
Where Have All the Venture Capitalists Gone?
Non-extradition countries?