I know a local fortune 500 company that tried this at one of their two buildings here at their corporate campus a couple years ago. Well, they are back to a desktop at every cubical now because they found if something happened, like a switch went down, suddenly all 100 - 200 terminals on that floor was down and no one could do anything until it was back up. With desktops, they may not be able answer emails, but they could at least still use office and get something accomplished if the network went down. You take 100 employs making 20/hr sitting and doing nothing for 2 - 3 hours and you've bought yourself the cost of the PC's.
To be honest with you in my office and most offices I work in, if they loose local switching they loose phones, and access to all applications and databases. At this point you should pretty much send everyone home. Citrix,Vmware View, and windows terminal session broker all support HA/Fault-tolerant clustering options on the back in. Throw in a duel controller replicated SAN and you can push 5 9's of fallibility all the way down to the desk.
Get 2 hour replacement support on switching or standardize and keep a spare.
Virtual desktops reduce management, and downtime ins a massive way.
I used to work in a SMB with 60 task workers, who after we went to virtual desktops with no-moving-part thin clients I had so little support work to do that I quit, and recommended that I not be replaced....
Its true RDP sucks for a lot of things, but if you have sufficiently fast storage on the back end and use modern protocals like PCoIP, HDX, or the up and coming remoteFX you can have a true desktop experience (I even played starcraft 2 over RemoteFX).
There's an app for that...
Wyse Pocket Cloud does vmware view (PCoIP) quite well, and we are testing it for a client. They get a thin client that has crazy battery life in a nice touch screen form factor (and it works with keyboards just fine...). As a wireless thin client the iPad beats quite a lot of the competition in terms of ease of management, battery life, form factor and cost.
We are putting them into production for a client and strangely they make sense.
As for the whole USB port/hub/lots of things to go with it, if you need those just use bluetooth but really if you need them you should be deploying a notebook.
BTW, no one uses NX and X11 for a "Business tablet" however i'm certain there are already apps that will speak those.
It is a myth that apple has no inroads in the corperate market, I'm replacing blackberry BES servers for iphone/Exchange active sync left and right. C level execs demand that their iPhone work.
My schools ITS department went after me for using blowfish encryption, and W.A.S.T.E on the network... was fun using the glass house analogy with the schools administration.. fortunetly nothing ever became of it, hmmm now that i remember it, it was my posting on slashdot also that they tried using as "evidence" against me... sigh.... i hope this post dosn't end up getting printed out and stuck in a file of mine somewhere
Just got my first paycheck, from my first Sys admin Job EVER.
Life is good... (I wish i could walk outa the office in slow motion right now with "D*MN it feels good the be a gangster" playing in the background)
The PLF or "penguin liberation Front" urpmi repository, provides all the nice things on linux, that potentialy violate the GPL or mandrakes policies for its mirrors (p2p programs, games, ports of old stuff, Return to castle wolfenstien, Codecs, mplayer)
Its nice being about to go "urpmi mplayer" and get mplayer working! or urpmi et and get emenemy territory working:)
I have every wired from 1.1.
Its interesting to go back and read the old ones, track the rise and fall of the wired index, and look at adds for BLAZEING FAST pentiums 2's!
Get Knopix STD (always a copy in my backpack)
A live linux distro aimed at security with up to date packages for the following areas
(From the Knopix STD site)
http://www.knoppix-std.org/
* authentication
* encryption
* forensics
* firewall
* honeypot
* ids
* network utilities
* password tools
* servers
* packet sniffers
* tcp tools
* tunnels
* vulnerability assessment
* wireless tools
Turn it into a firewall, a web server, an IDS box, a honeypot. Use it to do data recovery on an dead or locked computer, perform a vulnerability assessment, a penetration test, perform an autopsy on a compromised machine, test your incident response team. Listen to your MP3 collection and play gnugo while waiting for that nessus scan to complete.
I actually see this as good/evil marketing. If you go through the site it seems to be a pathetic means of pointing out Lindows as a better distro. By pointing out the fact that Fedora takes WAY TOO F'ING LONG to install, and that mandrake and fedora are "harder to use" and lack things like flash, support, and effective auto device finding (I still can't get my prism2 based wi-fi card to work under mandrake 10)
True things like apt, urmpi are freaking easy to use, but they have to be configured, and lindows is a "newbie" os.
The target market for this is newbies, and press/tech editors who don't know any better.
For a real Shootout may I recomend modified fedora and mandrake distros like
Blag Linux - A live Fedora based distro with the stuff you really need, and is only on 1 cd.
PClinuxOs- a live mandrake distro with synaptic, a front for Apt-get
Knopix- A debian based live cd, that has tons of great stuff, and dosn't use the root acount for everything like linspire (which is debian based)
PS. Someone AIM-daphreak07, icq -17654783 if they can help me get my wi-fi card working so i can be free of winblows XP once again... Help a poor college student:)
Baylor Has simmilar tunnels running under its campus that link all the buildings. They are pretty much for utilities, and maintanence of such. A couple years back they realized that everyone was useing em to sneak around (includeing the secret noze brotherhood) and decided to lock them up. Unless you have a pair of bolt cutters you can't get down there, but then again they are hot nasty, and all the exits are locked so its kinda pointless. If i asked the university about them, they would probebly give me a blank stare also though.
Yah, some of the 2.6 patches are kinda brutal to nvidia drivers. 2.6.3-8mdk seems to like them a lot though (finnaly, i can play Tux racer in all its glory...)
For those of you wounder WTF you need a vid card, Go try Enemy territory, fun game (urmpi, from the PLF repository)
Its still not a "useable" distro, for the home user.
Mandrake 10 is a much better home use/school use distro (besides the major bloat)
and if all you debian fans are so madly in love with apt-get, Its not that hard to setup under mandrake (heck, i used the urpmi to install it, so thats just 2 commands)
Yes, encryption can be blocked, I was recently monitored and charged with criminal conduct for alleged use of encryption, in my mail, IM, and file transfers.
I used to do warez back in the day, but its such a pain, and with the quality of OSource stuff these days I don't see a need....
for those of you who are into games remember that you can play all the quake 3 mods for free (Urban terror, enemy-terrirotry) for free under linux
hmmm, maybe their going to make a Beuwulf cluster of all the fastest computers... and try to get on the top 500 list MUHAHAHAHHAA, wait, hmmmmm..... well maybe with the internet2's bandwidth it might work?
Any connection uses actually, the three channels around it for the connection anyways,
if you've ever tried actually haveing 11 acess points on different channels you'll notice massive interfearence
How about they, PATCH THEIR DAMN SYSTEMS
how about they, STOP USEING OUTLOOK
how about they, stop useing a unsecure operating system (come on, if you like windows back patch to me, most of these virus's don't work on it)
ok time to start out with first post trolling
on
Is Windows Worth $45?
·
· Score: -1, Troll
use linux its free
Wait a minute this is a troll story, Microsoft provides lots of "value added things" like free security updates... No wait thats debian/every other *unix.... they provide amazing support.... No wait...
the 10 gig HD in the origional (well 8 or 10 but only 8 usable) was pretty pathetic, and useless I'd give it back to microsoft if they'd pay me 10bucks over shipping or maybe trade off the HD for the ability to play DVD's without haxoring or buying some 30 dollar damn remote
But my 160 gig drive in my current one is nice for the dorm FTP server:)
Some Xbox stats and ussage: Cluster a bunch of gentoo installs, and have a Beowulf cluster the xbox dosn't have the ability to read more than 137 gigs unless you hack the bios 733 celeron 64megs of shared sdram geforce 3 core video 100tbase eathernet controler port is a modified usb 1.1 plug (I have a converter) VGA output is possible HD signal output is possible double 5.1 (although unessesary is possible)
and if fully hacked has mp3/ogg/divx/streaming media station/shoutcast/RSS newsfeed/autoupdateing dashboard (avalanch)/Gentoo linux/emulate every damn console (n64 down)
you can adress more than 4 gigs of ram with a 32bit prossessor
You just need a cludge (kinda expensive/slow) but itspossible
speaking of lots of ram, anyone seen those Ram Harddrives they had at CES a couple years ago
Slashdot Mirror
I know a local fortune 500 company that tried this at one of their two buildings here at their corporate campus a couple years ago. Well, they are back to a desktop at every cubical now because they found if something happened, like a switch went down, suddenly all 100 - 200 terminals on that floor was down and no one could do anything until it was back up. With desktops, they may not be able answer emails, but they could at least still use office and get something accomplished if the network went down. You take 100 employs making 20/hr sitting and doing nothing for 2 - 3 hours and you've bought yourself the cost of the PC's.
To be honest with you in my office and most offices I work in, if they loose local switching they loose phones, and access to all applications and databases. At this point you should pretty much send everyone home. Citrix,Vmware View, and windows terminal session broker all support HA/Fault-tolerant clustering options on the back in. Throw in a duel controller replicated SAN and you can push 5 9's of fallibility all the way down to the desk. Get 2 hour replacement support on switching or standardize and keep a spare. Virtual desktops reduce management, and downtime ins a massive way. I used to work in a SMB with 60 task workers, who after we went to virtual desktops with no-moving-part thin clients I had so little support work to do that I quit, and recommended that I not be replaced.... Its true RDP sucks for a lot of things, but if you have sufficiently fast storage on the back end and use modern protocals like PCoIP, HDX, or the up and coming remoteFX you can have a true desktop experience (I even played starcraft 2 over RemoteFX).
There's an app for that... Wyse Pocket Cloud does vmware view (PCoIP) quite well, and we are testing it for a client. They get a thin client that has crazy battery life in a nice touch screen form factor (and it works with keyboards just fine...). As a wireless thin client the iPad beats quite a lot of the competition in terms of ease of management, battery life, form factor and cost. We are putting them into production for a client and strangely they make sense. As for the whole USB port/hub/lots of things to go with it, if you need those just use bluetooth but really if you need them you should be deploying a notebook. BTW, no one uses NX and X11 for a "Business tablet" however i'm certain there are already apps that will speak those. It is a myth that apple has no inroads in the corperate market, I'm replacing blackberry BES servers for iphone/Exchange active sync left and right. C level execs demand that their iPhone work.
My schools ITS department went after me for using blowfish encryption, and W.A.S.T.E on the network...
was fun using the glass house analogy with the schools administration.. fortunetly nothing ever became of it, hmmm now that i remember it, it was my posting on slashdot also that they tried using as "evidence" against me... sigh.... i hope this post dosn't end up getting printed out and stuck in a file of mine somewhere
i'm a 133t haX0r d00d, who CAP'd ur F'ing Arse!!!!! I'm sorry sir, thats not a plea....
Just got my first paycheck, from my first Sys admin Job EVER. Life is good... (I wish i could walk outa the office in slow motion right now with "D*MN it feels good the be a gangster" playing in the background)
And suddenly it was as though the screams of millions of Nerds went sillent....
The PLF or "penguin liberation Front" urpmi repository, provides all the nice things on linux, that potentialy violate the GPL or mandrakes policies for its mirrors (p2p programs, games, ports of old stuff, Return to castle wolfenstien, Codecs, mplayer)
:)
Its nice being about to go "urpmi mplayer" and get mplayer working!
or urpmi et and get emenemy territory working
I have every wired from 1.1. Its interesting to go back and read the old ones, track the rise and fall of the wired index, and look at adds for BLAZEING FAST pentiums 2's!
Get Knopix STD (always a copy in my backpack) A live linux distro aimed at security with up to date packages for the following areas (From the Knopix STD site) http://www.knoppix-std.org/ * authentication * encryption * forensics * firewall * honeypot * ids * network utilities * password tools * servers * packet sniffers * tcp tools * tunnels * vulnerability assessment * wireless tools Turn it into a firewall, a web server, an IDS box, a honeypot. Use it to do data recovery on an dead or locked computer, perform a vulnerability assessment, a penetration test, perform an autopsy on a compromised machine, test your incident response team. Listen to your MP3 collection and play gnugo while waiting for that nessus scan to complete.
I actually see this as good/evil marketing.
:)
If you go through the site it seems to be a pathetic means of pointing out Lindows as a better distro.
By pointing out the fact that Fedora takes WAY TOO F'ING LONG to install, and that mandrake and fedora are "harder to use" and lack things like flash, support, and effective auto device finding (I still can't get my prism2 based wi-fi card to work under mandrake 10)
True things like apt, urmpi are freaking easy to use, but they have to be configured, and lindows is a "newbie" os.
The target market for this is newbies, and press/tech editors who don't know any better.
For a real Shootout may I recomend modified fedora and mandrake distros like
Blag Linux - A live Fedora based distro with the stuff you really need, and is only on 1 cd.
PClinuxOs- a live mandrake distro with synaptic, a front for Apt-get
Knopix- A debian based live cd, that has tons of great stuff, and dosn't use the root acount for everything like linspire (which is debian based)
PS. Someone AIM-daphreak07, icq -17654783 if they can help me get my wi-fi card working so i can be free of winblows XP once again... Help a poor college student
Baylor Has simmilar tunnels running under its campus that link all the buildings. They are pretty much for utilities, and maintanence of such. A couple years back they realized that everyone was useing em to sneak around (includeing the secret noze brotherhood) and decided to lock them up. Unless you have a pair of bolt cutters you can't get down there, but then again they are hot nasty, and all the exits are locked so its kinda pointless. If i asked the university about them, they would probebly give me a blank stare also though.
Ok, so this means 50% faster pron?
Yah, some of the 2.6 patches are kinda brutal to nvidia drivers.
2.6.3-8mdk seems to like them a lot though (finnaly, i can play Tux racer in all its glory...)
For those of you wounder WTF you need a vid card, Go try Enemy territory, fun game (urmpi, from the PLF repository)
Its still not a "useable" distro, for the home user. Mandrake 10 is a much better home use/school use distro (besides the major bloat) and if all you debian fans are so madly in love with apt-get, Its not that hard to setup under mandrake (heck, i used the urpmi to install it, so thats just 2 commands)
Yes, encryption can be blocked, I was recently monitored and charged with criminal conduct for alleged use of encryption, in my mail, IM, and file transfers.
I used to do warez back in the day, but its such a pain, and with the quality of OSource stuff these days I don't see a need.... for those of you who are into games remember that you can play all the quake 3 mods for free (Urban terror, enemy-terrirotry) for free under linux
hmmm, maybe their going to make a Beuwulf cluster of all the fastest computers... and try to get on the top 500 list MUHAHAHAHHAA, wait, hmmmmm..... well maybe with the internet2's bandwidth it might work?
Any connection uses actually, the three channels around it for the connection anyways,
if you've ever tried actually haveing 11 acess points on different channels you'll notice massive interfearence
How about they, PATCH THEIR DAMN SYSTEMS how about they, STOP USEING OUTLOOK how about they, stop useing a unsecure operating system (come on, if you like windows back patch to me, most of these virus's don't work on it)
use linux its free
Wait a minute this is a troll story, Microsoft provides lots of "value added things" like free security updates... No wait thats debian/every other *unix....
they provide amazing support.... No wait...
ahh screw it buy a MAC
hmmm wounder how long before the mac zelots turn the xbox 2 into a OS X compatible computer ;P
the 10 gig HD in the origional (well 8 or 10 but only 8 usable) was pretty pathetic, and useless
:)
I'd give it back to microsoft if they'd pay me 10bucks over shipping or maybe trade off the HD for the ability to play DVD's without haxoring or buying some 30 dollar damn remote
But my 160 gig drive in my current one is nice for the dorm FTP server
Some Xbox stats and ussage:
Cluster a bunch of gentoo installs, and have a Beowulf cluster
the xbox dosn't have the ability to read more than 137 gigs unless you hack the bios
733 celeron
64megs of shared sdram
geforce 3 core video
100tbase eathernet
controler port is a modified usb 1.1 plug (I have a converter)
VGA output is possible
HD signal output is possible
double 5.1 (although unessesary is possible)
and if fully hacked has
mp3/ogg/divx/streaming media station/shoutcast/RSS newsfeed/autoupdateing dashboard (avalanch)/Gentoo linux/emulate every damn console (n64 down)
you can adress more than 4 gigs of ram with a 32bit prossessor You just need a cludge (kinda expensive/slow) but itspossible speaking of lots of ram, anyone seen those Ram Harddrives they had at CES a couple years ago
hmmm 4mb's , WOW i know some duel prossesor G5's with that much l3 cache....
reminds me of the days when my mac2 ran on 12 megs of ram that cost me 2k
once again, pron channels will be the most watched thing.. lets be honest Porn is the greatest driver of technology anywhere (VHS, Internet, DVD) ect.