The RIAA is now guilty of a conspiracy to commit a criminal act. Please notify your local congress critter, hope they aren't a paid lacky of the RIAA, and maybe something will happen.
Remember a few months back when the DDOS attacks happened? Just before that, the FBI and CIA and a whole bunch of other TLA departments sent out huge warnings about "cyber-terrorists". Then *POOF* out of nowhere come these DDOS attacks. However, they aren't aimed at any important infrastructure (like the root name servers, for example!!!), but instead at a few well-known and public e-commerce sites.
OH NO! See, the evil cyber-terrorists have attacked and the TLAs must get their funding to stop it.
Suddenly....*POOF* the attacks _END_. No "bad guys {tm}" were caught, but the problem goes away.
Ooops, here come the FUD and scare tactics again! Time to eliminate some more civil rights to protect us from "cyber-terrorists" and make sure those TLAs charged with fighting this dragon are properly funded!
Maybe this time the feds will attack something on the net that really is meaningful instead of ebay and yahoo. Otherwise, I just ain't buying it.
Recently we convinced our management to take the plunge and allow us to begin a conversion from SUN equipment and SunOS over to Linux.
I chose VA Linux as our vendor of choice because I felt they would be the best at providing both the hardware and the software support we needed. We're not exactly a tiny account, although we're not that large either. Maybe 100 to 150 boxes a year within my department and the potential for another 500 to 700 in other departments if the proper inroads could be made.
Well, the whole process of dealing with VA was one nightmare after another. We had missing orders. We had stuff showing up with incorrect parts installed or missing parts. We had a LOUSY salesman and when we asked for a different one, we were politely but firmly told to deal with him.
One thing that REALLY stuck in my craw was that we needed to put all of our equipment on to a 24/7 4hr support contract for all our deployed equipment. We wanted ONE contract that would include all of our servers and then we'd be able to add/remove as needed depending on their use. Cisco does this. Sun does this. Dell does this. Compaq does this. We asked for this last October. In April I even flew to California (from St. Louis) to sit with a VP of customer service and explain in detail exactly what I needed VA to provide. Well, we still don't have it and our machines will be leaving warranty in a couple months.
In June, I was again in California to meet with vendors regarding deployment of massively huge managed co-location facilities. I wanted to meet with VA for 2 hours to talk with them about what they could provide. Nobody could be made available. I can understand that since our trip was rather last minute, but even our sales guy never followed up after or offered to set up another meeting. Guess they didn't want the business.
In addition, the quality control has some issues. The FullON systems seem to be prone to PCI cards popping out during shipping, for example. This is, IMHO, an engineering defect. We've had several boxes we shipped out with ATM cards that we installed end up with the card loose at the destination. Trying to get a person with no computer knowledge to diagnose a loose card remotely is not pretty!
Finally, we just got tired of EVERY SINGLE ORDER getting screwed up in some way. Missing orders, wrong orders, delays, etc. We finally had to throw up our hands and go with another vendor (Compaq DL360s). We can't run a business otherwise.
I really like VA Linux. I think if they could get their act together they could take the Linux server market. But right now, they gotta get their shit in order. The days of apologizing and saying "Well...we're a growing company" are over. It's time to play with the big boys and offer service like the big boys.
Hell, I was writing supplements to Car Wars back in the mid-80s when I was a wee lad. I did fixed-wing airplanes and a few gadgets before the game quietly folded.
(crotchety old man)I remember when Linux came and ran on just one floppy disk. Back then the only thing you could do was dial in with minicom, which was really just a Telix clone. You youngin's don't know how good you got it!(/crotchety old man)
Unless Compaq is gonna shoot to make their own proprietary distribution, which might actually make sense for them. They could make a super-alpha-optimized beast with all Compaq license code and magically call it "AlphaLinux" or something and quietly phase out the Tru64 line.
Hell, that might even make market sense, especially if there are any old license royalties with the OSF/Tru64 line.
I realize that the geeks of the Internet have been doing distributed processing for years now, but until SETI@Home, it has never been put in terms that the lay person could understand and want to particpate in. I'm glad to see this whole thing happening to move distributed processing into the masses.
As for the specific problems with SETI administration, yea there are some real problems with the adminning of the project, but you know, it's a research project run at (and maybe by) a research institution. Let them work the kinks out and move on. Instead of dwelling on how much fossil fues are wasted (which aren't really wasted since the computers would be otherwise idle), how about we all learn from this?
And maybe you nay-sayers could donate your time and expertise to the project.
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The RIAA is now guilty of a conspiracy to commit a criminal act. Please notify your local congress critter, hope they aren't a paid lacky of the RIAA, and maybe something will happen.
Then again...maybe not.
OH NO! See, the evil cyber-terrorists have attacked and the TLAs must get their funding to stop it.
Suddenly....*POOF* the attacks _END_. No "bad guys {tm}" were caught, but the problem goes away.
Ooops, here come the FUD and scare tactics again! Time to eliminate some more civil rights to protect us from "cyber-terrorists" and make sure those TLAs charged with fighting this dragon are properly funded!
Maybe this time the feds will attack something on the net that really is meaningful instead of ebay and yahoo. Otherwise, I just ain't buying it.
Recently we convinced our management to take the plunge and allow us to begin a conversion from SUN equipment and SunOS over to Linux.
I chose VA Linux as our vendor of choice because I felt they would be the best at providing both the hardware and the software support we needed. We're not exactly a tiny account, although we're not that large either. Maybe 100 to 150 boxes a year within my department and the potential for another 500 to 700 in other departments if the proper inroads could be made.
Well, the whole process of dealing with VA was one nightmare after another. We had missing orders. We had stuff showing up with incorrect parts installed or missing parts. We had a LOUSY salesman and when we asked for a different one, we were politely but firmly told to deal with him.
One thing that REALLY stuck in my craw was that we needed to put all of our equipment on to a 24/7 4hr support contract for all our deployed equipment. We wanted ONE contract that would include all of our servers and then we'd be able to add/remove as needed depending on their use. Cisco does this. Sun does this. Dell does this. Compaq does this. We asked for this last October. In April I even flew to California (from St. Louis) to sit with a VP of customer service and explain in detail exactly what I needed VA to provide. Well, we still don't have it and our machines will be leaving warranty in a couple months.
In June, I was again in California to meet with vendors regarding deployment of massively huge managed co-location facilities. I wanted to meet with VA for 2 hours to talk with them about what they could provide. Nobody could be made available. I can understand that since our trip was rather last minute, but even our sales guy never followed up after or offered to set up another meeting. Guess they didn't want the business.
In addition, the quality control has some issues. The FullON systems seem to be prone to PCI cards popping out during shipping, for example. This is, IMHO, an engineering defect. We've had several boxes we shipped out with ATM cards that we installed end up with the card loose at the destination. Trying to get a person with no computer knowledge to diagnose a loose card remotely is not pretty!
Finally, we just got tired of EVERY SINGLE ORDER getting screwed up in some way. Missing orders, wrong orders, delays, etc. We finally had to throw up our hands and go with another vendor (Compaq DL360s). We can't run a business otherwise.
I really like VA Linux. I think if they could get their act together they could take the Linux server market. But right now, they gotta get their shit in order. The days of apologizing and saying "Well...we're a growing company" are over. It's time to play with the big boys and offer service like the big boys.
I've been looking all over for a list of affiliates that I can transfer my domains to and haven't been very successful. Recommendations?
You agree that we may, in our sole discretion, delete or transfer your domain name at any time.
Um....I don't think so.
It's a parody, which is a valid defense against copyright. Lucas and Cameron have no real chance unless they just wanna scare the person into folding.
*grumble*
Just waiting for my T1 to come up in my townhouse so I can move the box.
Hell, I was writing supplements to Car Wars back in the mid-80s when I was a wee lad. I did fixed-wing airplanes and a few gadgets before the game quietly folded.
Man, it's nice to see how far our kids have come.
Hell, that might even make market sense, especially if there are any old license royalties with the OSF/Tru64 line.
Get about 400 of the 300-CPU Units for a Beowulf...
Get about 400 of them for a Beowulf...
*drool*
Any good prosecutor will nail you to the wall.
As for the specific problems with SETI administration, yea there are some real problems with the adminning of the project, but you know, it's a research project run at (and maybe by) a research institution. Let them work the kinks out and move on. Instead of dwelling on how much fossil fues are wasted (which aren't really wasted since the computers would be otherwise idle), how about we all learn from this?
And maybe you nay-sayers could donate your time and expertise to the project.
-- Robert Hayden aka rhayden@geek.net