I did this a few years ago, for a 40th anniversary for my in-laws. It was great to see a man in his 60s get all choked up from seeing the photos of their youth. This from a generation that believes "men don't cry":-)
My approach was thus: I created a presentation, using slides of about 80 photos, on a windoze computer with Lotus Freelance (better than Powerpoint, if you ask me, but either will work). The screen transitions were random, but I made sure they were fast. The photos were the show, not the transitions!
I put this presentation on a box that had a TV-out card (ASUS TNT v3400), and ran that into a VCR, which recorded a 40-minute show.
End result was a VHS tape that we could copy for relatives.
I put the presentation, with the digital pix, on a CD-ROM. I could reproduce it, even today.
Of course, if I were doing it today, it would be a DVD, not a tape. Perhaps that would get around the requirement that I set the screen resolution to something nasty like 800x480 (I don't remember the actual resolution) for the TV-out to work.
There are two ways of constructing a software design. One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies and the other is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies.
- C.A.R. Hoare
As most tech-savvy trade-rag readers will already know, some comments placed into article text represent the actual thoughts and need/desire for clarification on the part of the editors [N.B. "tech-savvy" can be perceived to be pejorative by those to whom the attribution cannot be described as being accurate, nor even of the same order - Ed.]
In light of this fact, I find it mildly amusing to see Ed Hall (nom de plume?-Ed.) sign this condemnation of attribution by editors as if he were an editor himself.
If intentional, that's a fine turn of phrase, and an excellent example of the kettle calling the pot black - nice job! <8^)
If there are truly serious, egregious security flaws in the code, this is one way to find them. And, if enough media outlets find out and carry the 'news', they will fix the problem(s).
Has anyone else tried to download with several different browsers and always gotten "unauthorized" errors only after submitting your email address?????
> It seems trustworthiness is only asymptotic and not absolute.
Congratulations. You're now officially a security geek (if you weren't already!). Sleep will be difficult, some nights, but you've swallowed the red pill. There's no going back...if I could go back, I'm not even sure I would...
Does anyone think it's really going to be that many years before hotels that currently provide broadband for $10/night give it away for free? The up front installation may be expensive, but once it's paid for itself the service is really cheap.
I've been staying at Wingate hotels in the US for a few years now. I'm writing this over that same high-speed network.
They've had free high-speed internet in the rooms all that time.
Right next door, there's a Hilton that charged (last time I stayed) $10.95 a night. On the other side, there's a Staybridge Suites, really wonderful kitchen & efficiency, but their high-speed is also $10 or so a night, OR a real deal at $30 for the week! WOW.
That's ok. I have a mini-fridge, a microwave, a wee coffee pot, and a big "table" (not desk) that holds two laptops. I'm happy as can be...when you're on the road, that is.
Keetchens? We don't need no steenkeeng keetchens! Vamonos!
Man goes to doctor - he has a DEEP VOICE, and he really wants help.
The doctor, after examining the man, explains that it's the inordinate length of his manhood that is causing the problem - it's pulling on his vocal chords, it's so large and heavy.
Two weeks after the surgery removed some of the man's manhood, he calls the doctor to heap praise on him for saving the man's life.
He asked the doctor, "By the way, what did you do with that section of my penis?"
Sorry, wrong. There are several messages in this thread that mention REJECT (response to packet) instead of DROP (total silence). With this scheme in place, you need not listen on *any* ports, and you need not respond in any way. You can have a totally silent box, even with 10 or 20 services "listening". Nothing gets through until your iptables/ipchains software allows the traffic through.
Admittedly, if you're running a public site, you're mixing two kinds of solution --- publicly available vs secured, but analogous statements can be made here - you can't tell a public site using port knocking for some special services from a public site that doesn't support same.
This is like a void fn() in C (no return status). You knock on the 5, 10, or 25 ports in the right sequence to "send your message". You get nothing back. You then try to open the port that is your ultimate destination - if it's open, you're fine, if it's not, you have issues. This isn't a full-duplex kind of protocol, folks. I love it:-)
Thus, it is impossible to distinguish a totally silent box (listening on no ports, dropping all packets) that has implemented port knocking from a box that is merely totally silent.
As a two-laptop user who attaches to corporate LANs and public high-speed networks in hotels, I just love the idea of having all packets dropped until someone sends "shave & a haircut!" - then letting them in for a bit.
It would certainly be better than my current approach - using ethernet addresses (maclist in Shorewall!:-) to allow ftp and http etc to my linux box.
I'm in a hotel - private, though high-speed, network, on Lodgenet - and I can't get in with Mozilla 1.5, Netscape 4.8, OR MSIE 6.x....
This looks like perhaps they are just being creative in being slashdotted:-)
I would have been more entertained by a message mentioning demonic influences or some such!
Oh, something like
Access to this server is forbidden from all locations where Leaders of the Anglican Church, or any Episcopal church members who elected
openly gay priest Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire, have stayed overnight, traveled through, flew over, or viewed using the unaided eye.
One problem with your portrayal of the situation is that there are others who have positive experiences with "offshore" projects. It is difficult to quantify your experience, as it is with theirs - and my own anecdotal evidence, which I must give the most credence of all.
Second: I have heard from friends & colleagues who swear by the god(s) in which they believe that there are J2EE "programmers" (what a misnomer!) in South America who are presently working for $20K or less. This is astonishing - when not considered in context. Their work, in these cases, was said to have been exemplary.
Another data point: I work for one of the largest I/T corps on the planet, I too have (nearly) 15 years in the business, and one of the big three nearly took a project outside the U.S. - not a LCD project, but something bleeding-edge. It nearly happened. This isn't least common denominator here....and it happened in the last month.
Another data point: Another one of the big three is considering a big outsource arrangement - of I/T operations. Wanna bet it won't be american meat sitting in a chair at $30/hr? It'll be "foreign", and it'll be half the hourly rate.
Lastly, in my experience, right now,,there is probably a ratio of 6:4 or even 7:3 among I/T workers (not management) in Detroit, MI -- in favor of "non-US". I have spoken with some folks who were hired, brought into the U.S., and put on a contract in just a few weeks. So, saying it's "there" vs "here" is not entirely accurate.
To wrap up, I'll say this --->>> I plan to not be one of those "certified fools" (1 or 12 certificates, it won't matter), but one of the "visionary few", who are recognized as having perspective (breadth), "broad expertise" (depth in multiple areas), and that vision of which I spoke:-)
I am being very earnest here. This is a deadly serious subject, and it's been out there for a few years now. It's odd that only now, in the last month, have I seen the intensity of the debate suddenly rise to unheard-of levels - and it will seem even more odd when it hits the mainstream media and starts to be discussed as (hopefully!) elections approach...
I've posted, in a separate message [Subject - "Macro Economics / migration of white collar jobs"] on the macro economic effects that I personally feel we're going to be living through, if anyone is interested (sheesh, this is page 8 of this thread, and I use 'large pages' in my prefs...I wonder if anyone is even still reading the thread?!).
In short, not disagreeing with you; rather, highlighting the fact that there is much room for interpretation - which translates into room for "doubt", which is how it would be sold to Joe Q. Public, if need be (such as if the ridiculous "movement" toward unionization of I/T ever gains a foothold in mainstream media - jesus wept!).
Live long and prosper, Slashdotters!
All right, reality check time - let's go back to macro economics.
I'm in technology, and it's been quite a while since I really studied
macro/micro (no, economics, you dolt!!! NOT design!!!:-))) Anyone
who can put a fine point on this perspective -- please do.
Like John Houseman (to misquote), "I seek clarity."
We have Millions of employed americans;
Some hundreds of thousands (over a year or two...pick
your period) of I/T "white collar" jobs migrate to a collective "seller's
market" that consists of, oh, perhaps 200 countries;
Unemployment claims rise in the U.S. by some fraction of the
number of jobs that migrated;
Corporate expenses in the U.S. decline; however, the gains
(less labor costs as % of operating costs) are
realized in other countries, not here - tax hit for government
Salaries decline across not only "I/T industries", but
upstream and downstream industries (in a ripple effect reminiscent
of the auto industry's plight in the early 1970's when "the oil
crisis" occurred);
The reduction in corporate expenses, combined with the
decline in U.S. jobs and the lowered (aggregate) salary paid, results in a
"significant" drop in U.S. tax revenues (local, state, federal);
Government gets smaller, direct result from previous point;
Government-funded efforts (from Social Security to Medicare to
unemployment to SBA to funded research) are all cut back - further
damping the "growth" of the U.S. economy;
(this is my "leap" - I can not perceive the intermediate
steps) --- the U.S. economy faces a "spiral" effect that might resemble
the effects of the great depression, and which would only be
mildly affected by the sudden and forceful collection of
outstanding foreign debt (owed to the U.S. from other countries,
previously poor, but not yet "wealthy");
(final outcome, "far" future???) the U.S. goes the way of Rome, and a new country/economy/political system takes its place [Sigh! There's not time to really expand on this thought - read Heinlein's "Future History" series, there is much there to chew on]
Having read much in the genre of political treatise (I admire Machiavelli, he was right so damn often!), some philosophy, and "modern day polemic" [everything is polemic, today:-/ ] I understand the argument as far as I have taken it, and I can understand how big business can manipulate events to cause this to happen - but I wonder about:
Other factors, like government "manipulation" [what would the U.S.
government do if faced with dissolution? What would you do? I'm
not sure what I'd do, at this point, but I'm working on it, and it
involves a change of careers...
further consequences to those events I list above - "domino
effects"
significant events outside of those I list above - directly
related or not - what would another terrorist act in NYC do to this
"future history"????
I say significant events, as the baby boomer generation (I missed it
by about 8 years:-) retiring is going to put such a load on us as a
society that I don't think there will be that much benefit in the
(believed/perceived) sudden influx of available positions - if
anything, I worry that this will be the springboard needed by those
who'd ship our entire economy to someplace where more money could be
made.
So, yes, I'm a bit worried. I'm preparing, and you're here reading this, so you're far ahead of the rest of the U.S. population, but that should be small comfort to you (and to the rest of us...).
And, to firmly plant both feet on either side of the fence, check out The Artemis Project.
We'll get there. We need a D.D. Harriman, and exceptional circumstances, or simple, inevitable time, and someone (or some people) less well-placed than D.D. will get the human race there.
Yep, I'm a security expert who is an optimist - but only about things other than security.
And here, ladies and gentlemen, we find one of those rare areas where "proprietary UNIX" truly excels.
The reason you buy a Sequent isn't because of ptx/Dynix (...of that I'm sure). You don't buy an RS/6000 for AIX (well, not entirely). Same goes for Data General, HP, AT&T (nee NCR), Sun, Encore, etc etc.
These boxes have storage management that ranges from just adequate (sun "software raid" == solstice anyone?:-) to mind-boggling (Data General running CLARiiON). LVM, duplexed controllers, redundant Host Bus Adapters, MPIO (Multi-Path I/O), and of course redundant power supplies (not "N+1" which is not the same...). I haven't found a way to have all these together and eat my cake too, when it comes to X86/PC hardware.
In short, you simply can't buy "COTS" hardware to do the same job - though IBM (Shark etc), EMC (Symmetrix and now CLARiiON), and StorageTek will sell you "turn-key" solutions that will have your wallet dripping blood - but you'll never lose a drop of data.
Just my $0.02. Linux rocks, but it has a way to go before it can support "commodity enterprise hardware"; you see, that's a contradiction in terms and a dream that may never become fully realized --- the trend with enterprise hardware is away from commoditization, while more and more often, some or all of the software is free (and supported). The margin has to be there, whether it's hardware, software, or services, for vendors to be willing to play in this space.
I'm not speaking of least-common denominator hardware, here, but of high-availability platforms with 7x24 support and 4-hour response times, guaranteed by the seller/manufacturer. There has already been great progress in devising low-ball/open-source approaches to availability across the enterprise, and that will continue, but there will always be a market at the high-end.
Hey, what'd you post anon for? I would have missed this if I hadn't changed my filter settings for this thread. Sigh...
Poster is dead on. At the risk of regurgitating that which has been opined upon so much in the past, EJB is not a high-performance solution. EJB is not a "load-balancing" solution, intrinsically. It is a bringing together of data/function --- and a way of making that data/function available "anywhere" (i.e., from multiple disparate data sources or processors, to multiple disparate data sinks or processors).
A good, fast, universally-available (in a communications sense) RDBMS will kick the legs out from under EJB in a performance test nearly every time.
And, boy, does it provide bolshoyeh failover! Persistence without the horrible baggage that is "serialization". Don't get me started on that one:-/
Mod this parent anon post up, someone, so everyone with "no anon posts" filter settings can see it:-)
This is a small performance tuning step only. You cannot presume that you have increased the availability or reliability of your site by using sticky sessions or session affinity or any other means of sending same-transaction/same-session traffic to the same set of servers.
If you ignore the remaining layers of an N-tier architecture, then when a server/node goes down, your user session/transaction is...gone.
This is usually unacceptable to users. And thus to site owners.
I'm not saying implement "in your code" the measures needed to provide performance, availability, and reliability services --- but your servers had better damn well provide and/or support them.
Unless, of course, you're running a "Britney Rocks!" or elementary school web site, that is...
Sorry, this is horribly off the mark in the general case. If you're talking about some particular software, you should be more precise. Someone following your "advice" (rated informative, no less, by an Esteemed Moderator) might be led to believe many doors were closed, when in fact the field is wide open. Use many little servers, or get a few "big iron" boxes, but, geez, pairing will demand a much larger investment in infrastructure and ongoing administrative effort than having, say, 6, or even 12 instances!!
In no appserver technology I've ever worked with have I come across limitations such as you suggest. This problem you describe is, I suspect, either infrastructure design flaw related, or application design/implementation related.
For example, I've worked with 24 "instances" across 4 enterprise servers for a while now, and there are no problems with performance, availability, or reliability...this is vertical and horizontal "clustering", while you imply only horizontal.
More to the point - and I've checked but not found it - how do you pronounce 'reiserfs'?
riser fs
razor fs
none of the above (please fill in blank): _______
Re:Itsn't it a moot point?
on
TiVo Basic
·
· Score: 1
Me and Vinny and de rest of da boyz might be in that neighborhood round two or tree A M --- you want we should take care of da problem? - Luigi
[Leave a potted plant at the end of your driveway with a yellow daisy leaning to the North between 10pm and 10:15pm, and we'll do the job - at the usual rate - Vinny]
And of course I'll receive my customary 9% for bringing the two parties together - Bill.
Perhaps if you post this suggestion on the AVS forums, one of the developers will pick up on it and suggest the change to marketing to get the permission to implement it in the product.
You know, I was going to suggest that you recommend that they suggest it to the developers, who'd then recommend it to marketing, who'd get permission, and then it could show up in the product!!
But, you went ahead and did it, before I could ask you. And after someone recommended that I do this, no less 8-D
<sarcasm> Yep, this has a hell of a chance of succeeding! Yes, friends, a hell of a chance!</sarcasm>
Eterm is a better terminal, IMHO, but even *it* changed its argument processing between 0.8 and 0.9 (yep, there's that low-version-number open source thingy again).
I have a shell script that "randomizes" the background for each new Eterm I launch, and plays an equally "random" sound file at the same time. I had to change the script when tiling vs centering changed.
It's irritating, but come on, you don't actually type in that stuff from the command line, do you? I changed my shell script once, and it worked after that [um, except for the fact that I then had to upgrade all the Eterm software on my linux boxen, as the script was mirrored on them all!;-]
And, of course, at the other end of the spectrum is Java and MS-DOS, which acts in a deprecating fashion and never drops any baggage, respectively...
Slashdot Mirror
I did this a few years ago, for a 40th anniversary for my in-laws. It was great to see a man in his 60s get all choked up from seeing the photos of their youth. This from a generation that believes "men don't cry" :-)
My approach was thus: I created a presentation, using slides of about 80 photos, on a windoze computer with Lotus Freelance (better than Powerpoint, if you ask me, but either will work). The screen transitions were random, but I made sure they were fast. The photos were the show, not the transitions!
I put this presentation on a box that had a TV-out card (ASUS TNT v3400), and ran that into a VCR, which recorded a 40-minute show.
End result was a VHS tape that we could copy for relatives.
I put the presentation, with the digital pix, on a CD-ROM. I could reproduce it, even today.
Of course, if I were doing it today, it would be a DVD, not a tape. Perhaps that would get around the requirement that I set the screen resolution to something nasty like 800x480 (I don't remember the actual resolution) for the TV-out to work.
Just another point of view...
I'll let someone far more erudite say it for me:
'nuff said.
As most tech-savvy trade-rag readers will already know, some comments placed into article text represent the actual thoughts and need/desire for clarification on the part of the editors [N.B. "tech-savvy" can be perceived to be pejorative by those to whom the attribution cannot be described as being accurate, nor even of the same order - Ed.]
In light of this fact, I find it mildly amusing to see Ed Hall (nom de plume?-Ed.) sign this condemnation of attribution by editors as if he were an editor himself.
If intentional, that's a fine turn of phrase, and an excellent example of the kettle calling the pot black - nice job! <8^)
I'll give them credit for as far as they've gone.
If there are truly serious, egregious security flaws in the code, this is one way to find them. And, if enough media outlets find out and carry the 'news', they will fix the problem(s).
Has anyone else tried to download with several different browsers and always gotten "unauthorized" errors only after submitting your email address?????
Congratulations. You're now officially a security geek (if you weren't already!). Sleep will be difficult, some nights, but you've swallowed the red pill. There's no going back...if I could go back, I'm not even sure I would...
Did anyone else read the subject line and 'see' what I did? :-D
Ahem - here in the United States, even judges don't wear black robes with "Judge" embroidered on it :-b
However, a few judges do wear orange jumpsuits with the word
on itThe dead-tree version is in third edition. I'm nearly done with it - I enjoy paper more than pixels for such subject matter.
See O'Reilly if you're interested..
If it was pr0n, someone should lose their job....that's a work machine!
Even if it was SouthernCharms!
They've had free high-speed internet in the rooms all that time.
Right next door, there's a Hilton that charged (last time I stayed) $10.95 a night. On the other side, there's a Staybridge Suites, really wonderful kitchen & efficiency, but their high-speed is also $10 or so a night, OR a real deal at $30 for the week! WOW.
That's ok. I have a mini-fridge, a microwave, a wee coffee pot, and a big "table" (not desk) that holds two laptops. I'm happy as can be...when you're on the road, that is.
Keetchens? We don't need no steenkeeng keetchens! Vamonos!
My obligatory bigness joke.
Man goes to doctor - he has a DEEP VOICE, and he really wants help.
The doctor, after examining the man, explains that it's the inordinate length of his manhood that is causing the problem - it's pulling on his vocal chords, it's so large and heavy.
Two weeks after the surgery removed some of the man's manhood, he calls the doctor to heap praise on him for saving the man's life.
He asked the doctor, "By the way, what did you do with that section of my penis?"
"I THREW IT AWAY" said the doctor.
8-D
Sorry, wrong. There are several messages in this thread that mention REJECT (response to packet) instead of DROP (total silence). With this scheme in place, you need not listen on *any* ports, and you need not respond in any way. You can have a totally silent box, even with 10 or 20 services "listening". Nothing gets through until your iptables/ipchains software allows the traffic through.
Admittedly, if you're running a public site, you're mixing two kinds of solution --- publicly available vs secured, but analogous statements can be made here - you can't tell a public site using port knocking for some special services from a public site that doesn't support same.
This is like a void fn() in C (no return status). You knock on the 5, 10, or 25 ports in the right sequence to "send your message". You get nothing back. You then try to open the port that is your ultimate destination - if it's open, you're fine, if it's not, you have issues. This isn't a full-duplex kind of protocol, folks. I love it :-)
Thus, it is impossible to distinguish a totally silent box (listening on no ports, dropping all packets) that has implemented port knocking from a box that is merely totally silent.
As a two-laptop user who attaches to corporate LANs and public high-speed networks in hotels, I just love the idea of having all packets dropped until someone sends "shave & a haircut!" - then letting them in for a bit.
It would certainly be better than my current approach - using ethernet addresses (maclist in Shorewall! :-) to allow ftp and http etc to my linux box.
I'm in a hotel - private, though high-speed, network, on Lodgenet - and I can't get in with Mozilla 1.5, Netscape 4.8, OR MSIE 6.x....
This looks like perhaps they are just being creative in being slashdotted :-)
I would have been more entertained by a message mentioning demonic influences or some such!
Oh, something like
I feel a kindred soul here :-}
One problem with your portrayal of the situation is that there are others who have positive experiences with "offshore" projects. It is difficult to quantify your experience, as it is with theirs - and my own anecdotal evidence, which I must give the most credence of all.
Second: I have heard from friends & colleagues who swear by the god(s) in which they believe that there are J2EE "programmers" (what a misnomer!) in South America who are presently working for $20K or less. This is astonishing - when not considered in context. Their work, in these cases, was said to have been exemplary.
Another data point: I work for one of the largest I/T corps on the planet, I too have (nearly) 15 years in the business, and one of the big three nearly took a project outside the U.S. - not a LCD project, but something bleeding-edge. It nearly happened. This isn't least common denominator here....and it happened in the last month.
Another data point: Another one of the big three is considering a big outsource arrangement - of I/T operations. Wanna bet it won't be american meat sitting in a chair at $30/hr? It'll be "foreign", and it'll be half the hourly rate.
Lastly, in my experience, right now, ,there is probably a ratio of 6:4 or even 7:3 among I/T workers (not management) in Detroit, MI -- in favor of "non-US". I have spoken with some folks who were hired, brought into the U.S., and put on a contract in just a few weeks. So, saying it's "there" vs "here" is not entirely accurate.
To wrap up, I'll say this --->>> I plan to not be one of those "certified fools" (1 or 12 certificates, it won't matter), but one of the "visionary few", who are recognized as having perspective (breadth), "broad expertise" (depth in multiple areas), and that vision of which I spoke :-)
I am being very earnest here. This is a deadly serious subject, and it's been out there for a few years now. It's odd that only now, in the last month, have I seen the intensity of the debate suddenly rise to unheard-of levels - and it will seem even more odd when it hits the mainstream media and starts to be discussed as (hopefully!) elections approach...
I've posted, in a separate message [Subject - "Macro Economics / migration of white collar jobs"] on the macro economic effects that I personally feel we're going to be living through, if anyone is interested (sheesh, this is page 8 of this thread, and I use 'large pages' in my prefs...I wonder if anyone is even still reading the thread?!).
In short, not disagreeing with you; rather, highlighting the fact that there is much room for interpretation - which translates into room for "doubt", which is how it would be sold to Joe Q. Public, if need be (such as if the ridiculous "movement" toward unionization of I/T ever gains a foothold in mainstream media - jesus wept!). Live long and prosper, Slashdotters!
All right, reality check time - let's go back to macro economics.
I'm in technology, and it's been quite a while since I really studied macro/micro (no, economics, you dolt!!! NOT design!!! :-))) Anyone
who can put a fine point on this perspective -- please do.
Like John Houseman (to misquote), "I seek clarity."
Having read much in the genre of political treatise (I admire Machiavelli, he was right so damn often!), some philosophy, and "modern day polemic" [everything is polemic, today :-/ ] I understand the argument as far as I have taken it, and I can understand how big business can manipulate events to cause this to happen - but I wonder about:
I say significant events, as the baby boomer generation (I missed it by about 8 years :-) retiring is going to put such a load on us as a
society that I don't think there will be that much benefit in the
(believed/perceived) sudden influx of available positions - if
anything, I worry that this will be the springboard needed by those
who'd ship our entire economy to someplace where more money could be
made.
So, yes, I'm a bit worried. I'm preparing, and you're here reading this, so you're far ahead of the rest of the U.S. population, but that should be small comfort to you (and to the rest of us...).
Live long and prosper.
Check The Man Who Sold the Moon.
And, to firmly plant both feet on either side of the fence, check out The Artemis Project.
We'll get there. We need a D.D. Harriman, and exceptional circumstances, or simple, inevitable time, and someone (or some people) less well-placed than D.D. will get the human race there.
Yep, I'm a security expert who is an optimist - but only about things other than security.
And here, ladies and gentlemen, we find one of those rare areas where "proprietary UNIX" truly excels.
The reason you buy a Sequent isn't because of ptx/Dynix (...of that I'm sure). You don't buy an RS/6000 for AIX (well, not entirely). Same goes for Data General, HP, AT&T (nee NCR), Sun, Encore, etc etc.
These boxes have storage management that ranges from just adequate (sun "software raid" == solstice anyone? :-) to mind-boggling (Data General running CLARiiON). LVM, duplexed controllers, redundant Host Bus Adapters, MPIO (Multi-Path I/O), and of course redundant power supplies (not "N+1" which is not the same...). I haven't found a way to have all these together and eat my cake too, when it comes to X86/PC hardware.
In short, you simply can't buy "COTS" hardware to do the same job - though IBM (Shark etc), EMC (Symmetrix and now CLARiiON), and StorageTek will sell you "turn-key" solutions that will have your wallet dripping blood - but you'll never lose a drop of data.
Just my $0.02. Linux rocks, but it has a way to go before it can support "commodity enterprise hardware"; you see, that's a contradiction in terms and a dream that may never become fully realized --- the trend with enterprise hardware is away from commoditization, while more and more often, some or all of the software is free (and supported). The margin has to be there, whether it's hardware, software, or services, for vendors to be willing to play in this space.
I'm not speaking of least-common denominator hardware, here, but of high-availability platforms with 7x24 support and 4-hour response times, guaranteed by the seller/manufacturer. There has already been great progress in devising low-ball/open-source approaches to availability across the enterprise, and that will continue, but there will always be a market at the high-end.
I'll have to try that, too. I found JS Pager and it works 90% just the way I'd want in XP. Not as nice as enlightenment...but it's very useful.
Wow, choices in windows freeware. Hard to believe.
Poster is dead on. At the risk of regurgitating that which has been opined upon so much in the past, EJB is not a high-performance solution. EJB is not a "load-balancing" solution, intrinsically. It is a bringing together of data/function --- and a way of making that data/function available "anywhere" (i.e., from multiple disparate data sources or processors, to multiple disparate data sinks or processors).
A good, fast, universally-available (in a communications sense) RDBMS will kick the legs out from under EJB in a performance test nearly every time.
And, boy, does it provide bolshoyeh failover! Persistence without the horrible baggage that is "serialization". Don't get me started on that one :-/
Mod this parent anon post up, someone, so everyone with "no anon posts" filter settings can see it :-)
If you ignore the remaining layers of an N-tier architecture, then when a server/node goes down, your user session/transaction is...gone.
This is usually unacceptable to users. And thus to site owners.
I'm not saying implement "in your code" the measures needed to provide performance, availability, and reliability services --- but your servers had better damn well provide and/or support them.
Unless, of course, you're running a "Britney Rocks!" or elementary school web site, that is...
Sorry, this is horribly off the mark in the general case. If you're talking about some particular software, you should be more precise. Someone following your "advice" (rated informative, no less, by an Esteemed Moderator) might be led to believe many doors were closed, when in fact the field is wide open. Use many little servers, or get a few "big iron" boxes, but, geez, pairing will demand a much larger investment in infrastructure and ongoing administrative effort than having, say, 6, or even 12 instances!!
In no appserver technology I've ever worked with have I come across limitations such as you suggest. This problem you describe is, I suspect, either infrastructure design flaw related, or application design/implementation related.
For example, I've worked with 24 "instances" across 4 enterprise servers for a while now, and there are no problems with performance, availability, or reliability...this is vertical and horizontal "clustering", while you imply only horizontal.
More to the point - and I've checked but not found it - how do you pronounce 'reiserfs'?
Me and Vinny and de rest of da boyz might be in that neighborhood round two or tree A M --- you want we should take care of da problem? - Luigi
[Leave a potted plant at the end of your driveway with a yellow daisy leaning to the North between 10pm and 10:15pm, and we'll do the job - at the usual rate - Vinny]
And of course I'll receive my customary 9% for bringing the two parties together - Bill.
But, you went ahead and did it, before I could ask you. And after someone recommended that I do this, no less 8-D
<sarcasm> Yep, this has a hell of a chance of succeeding! Yes, friends, a hell of a chance!</sarcasm>
Sympathy from one who shares growing pains.
Eterm is a better terminal, IMHO, but even *it* changed its argument processing between 0.8 and 0.9 (yep, there's that low-version-number open source thingy again).
I have a shell script that "randomizes" the background for each new Eterm I launch, and plays an equally "random" sound file at the same time. I had to change the script when tiling vs centering changed.
It's irritating, but come on, you don't actually type in that stuff from the command line, do you? I changed my shell script once, and it worked after that [um, except for the fact that I then had to upgrade all the Eterm software on my linux boxen, as the script was mirrored on them all! ;-]
And, of course, at the other end of the spectrum is Java and MS-DOS, which acts in a deprecating fashion and never drops any baggage, respectively...