But when you administer dozens, hundreds, thousands of Win boxes and you can't automate installing/configuring/running Spybot, things are a bit different.
Yes, it should be easier. If the machines are locked down like they're supposed to be, spyware is not an issue because the users can't install software, activex is disabled, etc, etc, etc. If they're not locked down, then the problem is with the admin, not the software.
How can this be construed to be a reduction in TCO?
Your math is wrong.
TCO on n Windows machines = (nx) + (ny)
TCO on n Windows machines + 1 SUS server = (x(n+1)) + (z(n+1))
Where n = number of machines, x = price of hardware/software, y = TCO sans SUS and z = TCO with SUS. z will always be significantly lower than y.
Your first part's right only if TCO represents the cost of purchasing the OS and hardware, but that's not the entirety of the TCO of the boxes because hardware/software costs are only a small fraction. There's a difference between the PRICE of the software and the COST of the software. The price is what you pay up front, the cost is the what you pay in the long-term.
You're adding in the price of the SUS machine and assuming that's the only cost involved in TCO. TCO includes the cost of physically touching each machine to update patches. By eliminating that cost, which is the most significant portion of the TCO, you lower the TCO. Patch management is a fact of life no matter what OS you use. We spend just as much time patching our AIX and Linux boxes as we do the Windows boxes. Actually, it's quite a bit more due to the disparate nature of Unix (differing OS versions, multiple distros, etc, etc). At the moment, we're only concerned with 2000 & 2003 on the Windows side, and both are handled with the same patch management system.
If using Windows requires the installation (and maintenance) of a Windows 2000/2003 SUS server then of course that is an added cost burden and the TCO increases.
No, it doesn't. First of all, SUS is free, and its use REDUCES TCO. Yes, installation and maintenance, while minimal, temporarily increases cost, but its continuing use reduces the TCO of all the other machines, thus increasing ROI. As for all the other things, those can (and in my org's case are) be done with open source products. Thus, using both technologies to reduces BOTH'S TCO.
You could just install an SUS server, point all your clients at it and enable auto-update. Test the patches, put on SUS, play golf.
It's things like this that make me wonder if the "TCO of Windows" is more likely the "TCO of having highly unqualified people working in your IT department who know how to spell XP, but nothing more than that". If you have idiots running your network, you're paying to throw money out the window (no pun intended).
dlttape.sys would be common only on backup servers. What is imcide.sys, though? I haven't found any info on it aside from it's one of the three, and can't find it on any of my production machines.
Regardless, if you can show an easy way to test every piece of software with every configuration of hardware and software on the planet, I'd like to know what it is. Too often these things are "If you've got a Plastronic SCSI controller, and your mother's maiden name is Floyd and it's a new moon, you MIGHT lock up your machine by installing this patch."
if there is an XP-home (without "domain" concept) why has this version the netbios open and running (think: if it's for home alone PC's, why oh why open the shared resources???).
It's easy, dumbass: using domains is not the only way to network computers. XP Home is for HOME use, not ALONE use...although, in your house, alone is probably a common theme.
It also raises doubts over the reliability of the administrators of critical systems that haven't secured them enough that they're taken down by a worm. In other words, they've been outsmarted by a script kiddie and their scripts. It's one thing for a home user to have an infected machine, but there's absolutely NO EXCUSE to have one in a corporate environment, I don't care what OS you run. The systems didn't fail because of a worm, the administrators failed and should be fired. Out of a cannon.
How is this news? Microsoft is EXPECTED to recommend is NOT the same as Microsoft HAS recommended. And, is that a server or a workstation? It's also not an "official" recommendation, just from some unnamed source "close" to MS. Uh-huh.
Seeing as the article mentions the first beta being released sometime in the 2005 timeframe means we won't see it RTM until at LEAST 2006. Computing power doubles every 18 months ring a bell to anyone? These are probably the estimated specs of the average shipping OEM PC of the time. Regardless of what OS is shipping on it, the OEMs are going to ship these monsters anyway.
The hardware industry isn't making faster and faster computers because people NEED them, but because they WANT them. My PIII 1Ghz has served me well running XP, and I have no need to upgrade anytime soon, and doubt I will for Longhorn. However, if I were to buy a new PC that comes with Longhorn, I'm sure those are the specs I'd get. Not because I'd want them, but because that's all there is.
Hell, I just put a computer together for my Mom from Dell. I couldn't put less than a 60G hard drive on it! What the hell is my Mom going to use 60G for? I do video editing, and I don't even have a 60G drive!
MS bashing is all well and good, but making up news to do it is just plain, well, wrong.
Depends on the amount of physical ram and the usage of the machine. If I have at least 256M of RAM, I've rarely found need for my home machine to have larger than a 100M swap file. However, at the office, I've found that 1.5X is a better limit. I prefer to start small, and go from there.:) I also tweak down most things from running that I don't need. For example, extraneous services, tray applets, etc. Right now, on XP, running IE and a mail notifier only, I'm only using 76M of ram.
but you didn't mention why
You're right, sorry about that. I tried to document all the other ones, but missed that one. Thanks for clarifying for everyone.
BTW, are you the same dasmegabyte that frequents my site?:)
Wow, I really appreciate that Windows swap control is much more intuitive than doing 'echo 0 >/proc/vm/swappiness' in Linux.;P
The registry tweaks I gave were a "bonus". The "swappiness" feature is in the initial instructions. Regardless, considering how much easier it is to find the information that such things can be changed in Windows, as compared to Linux, then, yes, Windows IS more intuitive.
I have been using Windows for 12 years (and Linux for 10), and this is the first time I have heard of the obscure registry hacks you just listed.
The above hacks aren't for users, they're for administers and geeks. The average user will boot their machine, do what they have to do, and shut it back down. For those who aren't users, we like to leave our machines on for months at a time and these tweaks will help with that. If you were doing tech support, then you'd know them. If you ARE doing tech support and don't know them, please consider another field. These are the basics...IT's already filled up with enough paper MCSEs who can't spell NT unless it's in the 6-week course.
When I just searched for '/proc linux vm swap' in Google,/proc/sys/vm/swappiness was in the fourth hit from the top. There, that wasn't so hard, was it?
No, when you know EXACTLY what you're looking for, it never is. Now, search for +linux +performance +tweaks, and tell me if it shows up. Didn't, did it? Now, search for +windows +performance +tweaks. How many of those pages DIDN'T list the tweaks I just gave? Not many.
I can tell you one thing. I would rather poke around the/proc filesystem than wander through the Windows registry any day.
Because the difference is...? One's a collection of key-value pairs organized in a virtual filesystem analogy and another is a collection of key-value pairs organized on a filesystem? Or, is it because MS puts a warning that if you don't know what you're doing, editing the registry can fuck your system, but the Linux developers fail to give you the same warning?
By the way, if you are not shutting your XP system down often, you must not be rebooting for the security patches, and that can be a problem for everyone.
Could be, but I keep my machines fairly secure to begin with, and few of the security patches issues by MS affect well locked-down machines. They're more for user's PCs, like yours. Also, the last few security updates I've done haven't required a reboot. Unlike the latest kernel updates...
claiming to release within hours versus the weeks they claim FOSS takes
Or, years. How long was that latest flaw in the kernel sources that took down the Debian servers? Years? I thought the "many eyes" theory said something like that wouldn't reach production as there's so many people reviewing the code. I'll give you a clue: just 'cause the code's available doesn't mean many more people outside the development team is looking at it. Most are doing./configure && make && su && make install and trusting it'll all be okay. It must be, right?
Is no more complicated than doing a quick grep on the kernel documentation, or in Google, and finding out about a file in/proc called/proc/sys/vm/swappiness, which has values between 0 and 100?
Lessee...what was it I was supposed to grep for? Swappiness? How 'bout I do a search at Google for +linux +performance +tweaks and on the first page found not ONE useful tip, unless you're a coder..., but a similar search for +windows +performance +tweaks resulted in page after page listing the tweaks I offered, and more...
nobody but the craziest geek or compulsive sysadmin is going to want to play with the swapping settings of their kernel, having an obvious, documented setting placed in an obvious, standard and well-named place must be more simple, surely
If you're not a COMPULSIVE sysadmin, then you're a hack collecting a paycheck you don't deserve. But, that's not the point...actually, I'm not really sure WHAT your point is...Linux has no obvious, well-documented, standard location for such tweaks. Sometimes it's in proc, sometimes a config in/etc or/usr/etc or/usr/local/etc or/opt/{program}/etc or some other place. Good luck finding it. All of the tweaks I listed are well-known (by those who know what they're doing) tweaks, and easily found by a generic search as above. The more obsure voodoo, sure, that can be a quest, but the basics (and these are all basics) are easy enough. I certainly hope you're not administering Windows machines if all this stuff is new to you...
I have never ever seen a Windows-system without a partially swapped kernel
Read my other comment, do what I wrote and you'll see one each time you sit down at your machine.:) Also, see my follow-up comment to my post about the caveat on 16-bit installers.
Don't you hate people who reply to their own posts?:) One caveat for the above. I've been trying to install SameTime for Lotus Notes on my machine, and just figured out why it wouldn't install...the installer's 16-bit. Disabling 8.3 name creation is the problem. Actually, it's not the installer, but the self-extracting exe, so what I did was copy the sametime.exe to another machine started the setup, copied the setup files when they're uncracked back to my machine and ran setup. Yeah, it's a pain, but if people would use 32-bit apps....besides, this is only the second time in 7-8 years I've needed to do this, so I ain't complainin'.
Right-click My Computer -> Advanced -> Performance -> Advanced -> Memory Usage. Set to Programs. Now, click Change under Virtual Memory. Set your cache size small. For 1G of RAM, you prolly don't need a biggun. I usually set it to 100M for Inital and Max and then up it based on how often the machine swaps.
Then, make the following changes to the registry:
HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\ClearPageFileAtShutdown, set to 1. I don't shut my machine down very often, but occasionally XP will increase the size of the pagefile if it absolutely needs to depending on circumstances. This forces it back to the size you want it when you restart.
HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem\N tfsDisable8dot3NameCreation, set to 1 ONLY IF YOU USE NO 16-BIT APPS ON YOUR MACHINE. Speeds up writes.
HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem\N tfsDisableLastAccessUpdate, set to 1 if you don't care when files are accessed. This is rarely needed, and the setting speeds up writes.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\Session Manager\Memory Management\IoPageLockLimit. Little more complex:
Set to 4096 if you've got more than 32M RAM
Set to 8192 if you've got more than 64M RAM
16384, 128M
32768, 160M
65536, 256M
131072, 512M
This changes the maximum number of bytes that can be locked for I/O operations. The default is 512Kb. While the above are the recommendations, I've found stepping down one level to provide the most performance for my needs, YMMV. (For example, I have 256M, but I set my IO limit to 32768.)
HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\DisablePagingExecutive, Set to 1 to disable paging of the kernel.
There, that wasn't so hard, was it? For those who want to flame that statement, keep in mind, that the information above is easier to find than some of the tuning suggestions I've heard for Linux. I've used Linux for 10 years, and only today heard about/proc/sys/vm/swappiness. Oh, and all of the above apply from at least NT4+.
I've tried 'em, and to be honest, I found Mozilla to be slower (and a LOT crashier), both in loading and general usage. Opera is faster, but not enough to warrant the difference in price between it and IE. I haven't tried it in a while, but as I recall, not all plugins and such work properly or at all in Opera, too.
And, while I know it's the fault of the webpage author, most pages are written for IE, and therefore render better on IE. Until other browsers get a clue and at least provide an "IE-compatibility" option to let the pages render right, I'm sticking with the one that works.
Huh, that sounds good, I'll give it a try, thanks. Recent issuances from Avant have been a little flaky, and I've been considering trying something else, but it works for my needs, and hasn't been flaky enough to drive me nuts yet.:)
you could have a qualified admin who can do BOTH. I realize it's a difficult concept for most unix admins to grasp the concept of being proficient in more than one tool, but...there it is...
Check out Avantbrowser. It's a replacement "front end" for IE, supports tabbed browsing, popup blocker, ad blocker, script blocker, flash blocker, etc, etc, etc. Ctrl-N (or middle-mouse click, or mouse gesture, or however you want to open a new tab) works as you'd like it to (and me, too). As for wrong URLs hanging for 10-20 seconds, that's an oddity. I usually just hit Esc to stop loading the page.
It was my understanding that the oil purchased from the Gulf barely makes it to the states as the amount of fuel necessary to get a tanker of oil from the middle east to here would require the ship to burn over half the fuel as propellant. Isn't this correct? I thought fuel purchased from the Gulf by America was used by American military facilities and such in Europe and Asia. For fuel oil in the states, we import most from Canada, Russia and South America. The amount from Middle Eastern countries accounts for less than 20% of our imports.
I think the problem is most people don't pay attention to the amount of tax that's levied on gasoline. Last I heard, in New York state, the tax is something like 65c/gallon.
How can you be overqualified and at the same time inflexible? If you are more than qualified for the job, how could you have been inflexible?
Easy enough: you're over-qualified to do the job you're currently doing and unable to flex into a new field when it becomes necessary...example: Cobol programmers now flipping burgers. They worked with Cobol for years and were probably masters, but as demand for that skill decreased, they either learned new languages and skills (flexible) or learned new languages and skills (flipping burgers while asking "Do you want fries with that?" in Spanish).
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But when you administer dozens, hundreds, thousands of Win boxes and you can't automate installing/configuring/running Spybot, things are a bit different.
Yes, it should be easier. If the machines are locked down like they're supposed to be, spyware is not an issue because the users can't install software, activex is disabled, etc, etc, etc. If they're not locked down, then the problem is with the admin, not the software.
How can this be construed to be a reduction in TCO?
Your math is wrong.
TCO on n Windows machines = (nx) + (ny)
TCO on n Windows machines + 1 SUS server = (x(n+1)) + (z(n+1))
Where n = number of machines, x = price of hardware/software, y = TCO sans SUS and z = TCO with SUS. z will always be significantly lower than y.
Your first part's right only if TCO represents the cost of purchasing the OS and hardware, but that's not the entirety of the TCO of the boxes because hardware/software costs are only a small fraction. There's a difference between the PRICE of the software and the COST of the software. The price is what you pay up front, the cost is the what you pay in the long-term.
You're adding in the price of the SUS machine and assuming that's the only cost involved in TCO. TCO includes the cost of physically touching each machine to update patches. By eliminating that cost, which is the most significant portion of the TCO, you lower the TCO. Patch management is a fact of life no matter what OS you use. We spend just as much time patching our AIX and Linux boxes as we do the Windows boxes. Actually, it's quite a bit more due to the disparate nature of Unix (differing OS versions, multiple distros, etc, etc). At the moment, we're only concerned with 2000 & 2003 on the Windows side, and both are handled with the same patch management system.
If using Windows requires the installation (and maintenance) of a Windows 2000/2003 SUS server then of course that is an added cost burden and the TCO increases.
No, it doesn't. First of all, SUS is free, and its use REDUCES TCO. Yes, installation and maintenance, while minimal, temporarily increases cost, but its continuing use reduces the TCO of all the other machines, thus increasing ROI. As for all the other things, those can (and in my org's case are) be done with open source products. Thus, using both technologies to reduces BOTH'S TCO.
No, you just look grumpy all the time, and disappear for long stretches...."server problem....my waiter was slow at the beach!" LOL
You could just install an SUS server, point all your clients at it and enable auto-update. Test the patches, put on SUS, play golf.
It's things like this that make me wonder if the "TCO of Windows" is more likely the "TCO of having highly unqualified people working in your IT department who know how to spell XP, but nothing more than that". If you have idiots running your network, you're paying to throw money out the window (no pun intended).
dlttape.sys would be common only on backup servers. What is imcide.sys, though? I haven't found any info on it aside from it's one of the three, and can't find it on any of my production machines.
Regardless, if you can show an easy way to test every piece of software with every configuration of hardware and software on the planet, I'd like to know what it is. Too often these things are "If you've got a Plastronic SCSI controller, and your mother's maiden name is Floyd and it's a new moon, you MIGHT lock up your machine by installing this patch."
if there is an XP-home (without "domain" concept) why has this version the netbios open and running (think: if it's for home alone PC's, why oh why open the shared resources???).
It's easy, dumbass: using domains is not the only way to network computers. XP Home is for HOME use, not ALONE use...although, in your house, alone is probably a common theme.
It also raises doubts over the reliability of the administrators of critical systems that haven't secured them enough that they're taken down by a worm. In other words, they've been outsmarted by a script kiddie and their scripts. It's one thing for a home user to have an infected machine, but there's absolutely NO EXCUSE to have one in a corporate environment, I don't care what OS you run. The systems didn't fail because of a worm, the administrators failed and should be fired. Out of a cannon.
How is this news? Microsoft is EXPECTED to recommend is NOT the same as Microsoft HAS recommended. And, is that a server or a workstation? It's also not an "official" recommendation, just from some unnamed source "close" to MS. Uh-huh.
Seeing as the article mentions the first beta being released sometime in the 2005 timeframe means we won't see it RTM until at LEAST 2006. Computing power doubles every 18 months ring a bell to anyone? These are probably the estimated specs of the average shipping OEM PC of the time. Regardless of what OS is shipping on it, the OEMs are going to ship these monsters anyway.
The hardware industry isn't making faster and faster computers because people NEED them, but because they WANT them. My PIII 1Ghz has served me well running XP, and I have no need to upgrade anytime soon, and doubt I will for Longhorn. However, if I were to buy a new PC that comes with Longhorn, I'm sure those are the specs I'd get. Not because I'd want them, but because that's all there is.
Hell, I just put a computer together for my Mom from Dell. I couldn't put less than a 60G hard drive on it! What the hell is my Mom going to use 60G for? I do video editing, and I don't even have a 60G drive!
MS bashing is all well and good, but making up news to do it is just plain, well, wrong.
I always set it to twice the physical ram
:) I also tweak down most things from running that I don't need. For example, extraneous services, tray applets, etc. Right now, on XP, running IE and a mail notifier only, I'm only using 76M of ram.
:)
Depends on the amount of physical ram and the usage of the machine. If I have at least 256M of RAM, I've rarely found need for my home machine to have larger than a 100M swap file. However, at the office, I've found that 1.5X is a better limit. I prefer to start small, and go from there.
but you didn't mention why
You're right, sorry about that. I tried to document all the other ones, but missed that one. Thanks for clarifying for everyone.
BTW, are you the same dasmegabyte that frequents my site?
Wow, I really appreciate that Windows swap control is much more intuitive than doing 'echo 0 > /proc/vm/swappiness' in Linux. ;P
The registry tweaks I gave were a "bonus". The "swappiness" feature is in the initial instructions. Regardless, considering how much easier it is to find the information that such things can be changed in Windows, as compared to Linux, then, yes, Windows IS more intuitive.
I have been using Windows for 12 years (and Linux for 10), and this is the first time I have heard of the obscure registry hacks you just listed.
/proc/sys/vm/swappiness was in the fourth hit from the top. There, that wasn't so hard, was it?
/proc filesystem than wander through the Windows registry any day.
./configure && make && su && make install and trusting it'll all be okay. It must be, right?
The above hacks aren't for users, they're for administers and geeks. The average user will boot their machine, do what they have to do, and shut it back down. For those who aren't users, we like to leave our machines on for months at a time and these tweaks will help with that. If you were doing tech support, then you'd know them. If you ARE doing tech support and don't know them, please consider another field. These are the basics...IT's already filled up with enough paper MCSEs who can't spell NT unless it's in the 6-week course.
When I just searched for '/proc linux vm swap' in Google,
No, when you know EXACTLY what you're looking for, it never is. Now, search for +linux +performance +tweaks, and tell me if it shows up. Didn't, did it? Now, search for +windows +performance +tweaks. How many of those pages DIDN'T list the tweaks I just gave? Not many.
I can tell you one thing. I would rather poke around the
Because the difference is...? One's a collection of key-value pairs organized in a virtual filesystem analogy and another is a collection of key-value pairs organized on a filesystem? Or, is it because MS puts a warning that if you don't know what you're doing, editing the registry can fuck your system, but the Linux developers fail to give you the same warning?
By the way, if you are not shutting your XP system down often, you must not be rebooting for the security patches, and that can be a problem for everyone.
Could be, but I keep my machines fairly secure to begin with, and few of the security patches issues by MS affect well locked-down machines. They're more for user's PCs, like yours. Also, the last few security updates I've done haven't required a reboot. Unlike the latest kernel updates...
claiming to release within hours versus the weeks they claim FOSS takes
Or, years. How long was that latest flaw in the kernel sources that took down the Debian servers? Years? I thought the "many eyes" theory said something like that wouldn't reach production as there's so many people reviewing the code. I'll give you a clue: just 'cause the code's available doesn't mean many more people outside the development team is looking at it. Most are doing
Is no more complicated than doing a quick grep on the kernel documentation, or in Google, and finding out about a file in /proc called /proc/sys/vm/swappiness, which has values between 0 and 100?
/etc or /usr/etc or /usr/local/etc or /opt/{program}/etc or some other place. Good luck finding it. All of the tweaks I listed are well-known (by those who know what they're doing) tweaks, and easily found by a generic search as above. The more obsure voodoo, sure, that can be a quest, but the basics (and these are all basics) are easy enough. I certainly hope you're not administering Windows machines if all this stuff is new to you...
Lessee...what was it I was supposed to grep for? Swappiness? How 'bout I do a search at Google for +linux +performance +tweaks and on the first page found not ONE useful tip, unless you're a coder..., but a similar search for +windows +performance +tweaks resulted in page after page listing the tweaks I offered, and more...
nobody but the craziest geek or compulsive sysadmin is going to want to play with the swapping settings of their kernel, having an obvious, documented setting placed in an obvious, standard and well-named place must be more simple, surely
If you're not a COMPULSIVE sysadmin, then you're a hack collecting a paycheck you don't deserve. But, that's not the point...actually, I'm not really sure WHAT your point is...Linux has no obvious, well-documented, standard location for such tweaks. Sometimes it's in proc, sometimes a config in
I have never ever seen a Windows-system without a partially swapped kernel
:) Also, see my follow-up comment to my post about the caveat on 16-bit installers.
Read my other comment, do what I wrote and you'll see one each time you sit down at your machine.
Don't you hate people who reply to their own posts? :) One caveat for the above. I've been trying to install SameTime for Lotus Notes on my machine, and just figured out why it wouldn't install...the installer's 16-bit. Disabling 8.3 name creation is the problem. Actually, it's not the installer, but the self-extracting exe, so what I did was copy the sametime.exe to another machine started the setup, copied the setup files when they're uncracked back to my machine and ran setup. Yeah, it's a pain, but if people would use 32-bit apps....besides, this is only the second time in 7-8 years I've needed to do this, so I ain't complainin'.
Right-click My Computer -> Advanced -> Performance -> Advanced -> Memory Usage. Set to Programs. Now, click Change under Virtual Memory. Set your cache size small. For 1G of RAM, you prolly don't need a biggun. I usually set it to 100M for Inital and Max and then up it based on how often the machine swaps.
N tfsDisable8dot3NameCreation, set to 1 ONLY IF YOU USE NO 16-BIT APPS ON YOUR MACHINE. Speeds up writes.
N tfsDisableLastAccessUpdate, set to 1 if you don't care when files are accessed. This is rarely needed, and the setting speeds up writes.
o l\Session Manager\Memory Management\IoPageLockLimit. Little more complex:
/proc/sys/vm/swappiness. Oh, and all of the above apply from at least NT4+.
Then, make the following changes to the registry:
HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\ClearPageFileAtShutdown, set to 1. I don't shut my machine down very often, but occasionally XP will increase the size of the pagefile if it absolutely needs to depending on circumstances. This forces it back to the size you want it when you restart.
HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem\
HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem\
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Contr
Set to 4096 if you've got more than 32M RAM
Set to 8192 if you've got more than 64M RAM
16384, 128M
32768, 160M
65536, 256M
131072, 512M
This changes the maximum number of bytes that can be locked for I/O operations. The default is 512Kb. While the above are the recommendations, I've found stepping down one level to provide the most performance for my needs, YMMV. (For example, I have 256M, but I set my IO limit to 32768.)
HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\DisablePagingExecutive, Set to 1 to disable paging of the kernel.
There, that wasn't so hard, was it? For those who want to flame that statement, keep in mind, that the information above is easier to find than some of the tuning suggestions I've heard for Linux. I've used Linux for 10 years, and only today heard about
I've tried 'em, and to be honest, I found Mozilla to be slower (and a LOT crashier), both in loading and general usage. Opera is faster, but not enough to warrant the difference in price between it and IE. I haven't tried it in a while, but as I recall, not all plugins and such work properly or at all in Opera, too.
And, while I know it's the fault of the webpage author, most pages are written for IE, and therefore render better on IE. Until other browsers get a clue and at least provide an "IE-compatibility" option to let the pages render right, I'm sticking with the one that works.
Huh, that sounds good, I'll give it a try, thanks. Recent issuances from Avant have been a little flaky, and I've been considering trying something else, but it works for my needs, and hasn't been flaky enough to drive me nuts yet. :)
Well, my company does it with me...Of course, MS is right, Exchange IS "install and forget", so no, you really don't need a "power sysadmin".
you could have a qualified admin who can do BOTH. I realize it's a difficult concept for most unix admins to grasp the concept of being proficient in more than one tool, but...there it is...
Check out Avantbrowser. It's a replacement "front end" for IE, supports tabbed browsing, popup blocker, ad blocker, script blocker, flash blocker, etc, etc, etc. Ctrl-N (or middle-mouse click, or mouse gesture, or however you want to open a new tab) works as you'd like it to (and me, too). As for wrong URLs hanging for 10-20 seconds, that's an oddity. I usually just hit Esc to stop loading the page.
We'll have more oil coming home from the Gulf
It was my understanding that the oil purchased from the Gulf barely makes it to the states as the amount of fuel necessary to get a tanker of oil from the middle east to here would require the ship to burn over half the fuel as propellant. Isn't this correct? I thought fuel purchased from the Gulf by America was used by American military facilities and such in Europe and Asia. For fuel oil in the states, we import most from Canada, Russia and South America. The amount from Middle Eastern countries accounts for less than 20% of our imports.
I think the problem is most people don't pay attention to the amount of tax that's levied on gasoline. Last I heard, in New York state, the tax is something like 65c/gallon.
How can you be overqualified and at the same time inflexible? If you are more than qualified for the job, how could you have been inflexible?
Easy enough: you're over-qualified to do the job you're currently doing and unable to flex into a new field when it becomes necessary...example: Cobol programmers now flipping burgers. They worked with Cobol for years and were probably masters, but as demand for that skill decreased, they either learned new languages and skills (flexible) or learned new languages and skills (flipping burgers while asking "Do you want fries with that?" in Spanish).
Nor do I like the assumption that the government has the right to know what I'm doing and how I'm driving.
Not trying to start a flame war, but spoken like someone who doesn't get that legally, driving is a privledge, not a right.
would like to welcome our new geek overlords...