Re:Sure but does it require new equipment
on
IEEE Approves 802.11i
·
· Score: 2, Informative
I've answered my own question.
For those wondering what I'm rambling about with WPA and TKIP, you can read this. It explains the relationship between WPA and 802.11i, as well as what TKIP is and why TKIP will work on any processor that can handle RC4.
I'm pretty sure 802.11i also calls for TKIP as an accepted encryption method.
Can anyone comment on the CPU power required for wire speed TKIP, assuming 802.11g (54Mbps). A few people have pointed out that the Linksys gear probably couldn't handle AES at full speed, but would TKIP work on the hardware instead?
Bush probably doesn't know about this yet. If you keep flapping your lips, you're gonna get us all thrown into a prison somewhere, stripped naked, tied up with leashes and then finally piled on to of each other like refuse.
But there is no -mandated- torture/humiliation policy or anything... Rumsfeld said so.
I understand there is a flamebait mod that would provide a "-1"... but is there a mod that would provide "-a million for being a redneck, flamebaiting fsckwit".
It's nice to see they finally were able to teach monkeys to use computers.
Linksys WRT54G routers (as well as their WAP546 access points) already provide AES (and TKIP) encryption if you enable WPA support.
Also, as I understand it, WPA is simply a subset of 802.11i that most access point vendors began adopting as a short term solution between WEP and 802.11i ratification.
That said, it should be trivial for anyone already supporting WPA (the only 11g stations I've used are Linksys and Airport Extreme, both of which do both WPA Personal as well as WPA Enterprise) to support 802.11i via a firmware upgrade. The Airport Extreme hardware currently only provides TKIP encryption, but I don't think that AES would be too much trouble to add.
So, if I'm understanding correctly, you have complete knowledge of the decision making process, know all possible reasons why the college wouldn't want to take your suggested course of action, and ultimately are just dealing with "incompetence"?
I can clearly see what the real problem is here.
Perhaps if you left the cave that is your tunnel vision once in a while, you'd see the other side of the coin.
I wasn't complaining.. I was merely pointing out an annoying little reality...
Like it or not, companies or organizations that have objectives of a non-technical nature generally see the IT department as a support structure for the -real- employees. It doesn't matter to anyone but the lowly chump manning the help desk that Mr. So-and-so can't find his start menu because his resolution got changed. That's IT's problem. They care what IT thinks about as much as they care what the janitor or the FedEx guy thinks... we're a dime a dozen and easily replaced.
Therefore, when we -do- convince them at we can save some money by moving to something other than Windows, we bloody well better take our time and do it right. If the ability to attend to the core objectives of the organization is compromised in the process we can be easily replaced with someone who can get everything back to the way it was before trying to save all that money cost the company a bloody fortune.
In the context of this article, Munch targeting 2008 for Linux on the desktop is still, in my opinion, a highly optimistic goal.
I should preface this by saying that the parent of this thread does indeed smack of a Linux cheerleader baiting flame most aggressively.
And now for something completely different:
As arrogant sounding as you come off, I would have to agree...
When I was an unenlightened chimp and was still using Windows (i abandoned ship before Windows 98 dropped, used Solaris almost exclusively for quite a while, then finally ended up with OS X), I could count on one hand how many viruses I had contracted in a lifetime of being a hard-core nerd, dating back to even before my first copy of Windows... A boxed copy of 2.0 I won at a school computer fair.
Likewise, at work, our tech department is pretty much virus free, whereas the sales and marketing people are a violent pit of bad code and worms running amuck.
That said, the sales/marketing people all have Norton Anti-Virus (which we sadly pay volume licensing for), whereas most of the coders have nothing. Every so often, someone scans the backup cans and finds the sales/marketing people have folder upon folder full of the virulent flavor of the week, whereas the engineers folders are clean. ONCE, our web master had a Word document with a macro virus in it, though the document in questioned had been sent to him from marketing.
Given that most of the coders are connected to the internet 12-16 hours a day (compared to the sales/marketing people, who might do 8), I can honestly say that there is a lot of validity to the suggestion that experience and competence are the best firewall one can have.
Those lacking should stick with SonicWalls, unless you don't need hardware accelerated VPN support and don't want to spend $700.
This is probably why you're not a decision maker at your organization...
The college has to run from day to day, not fail to provide services to students because the trendy new Linux system has some poorly planned features. What if you didn't work there anymore and problems occurred. How long would it take the new person coming in to diagnose and fix the problem?
"Politics and careerism" seems to be just your way of saying "thinking ahead".
I'll just march over to HR and explain that the corporate lawyers who bill out at over $1500/hr are somehow costing us money because they need 10 hours of tech support a week. The support staffer would have to be paid $150.01 dollars an hour for that to cost us money.
I'm sure they'll understand and pink slips will be distributed right away.
Well, taken in context, I wasn't suggesting that you were the smart-ass kid in question.
The real key to my point is this:
You should also consider that a community college/business who depends on their IT infrastructure is very unlikely to give business to... no offense intended... some guy who offers to re-write their mission critical applications using some software they've probably never heard of (PostgreSQL) on an operating system they've probably heard of but likely aren't familiar with (Linux).
That stands true no matter how long you've been in IT and no matter what experience you have. These days more than ever, an organization wants to know that there is someone they can call/visit/sue if something goes wrong.
Even in the university world, where in-house development has classically been most popular, there seems to be a movement towards buying and (only if necessary) modifying something that is already available due to the level of accountability inherent in such a proposition.
You should also consider that a community college/business who depends on their IT infrastructure is very unlikely to give business to... no offense intended... some guy who offers to re-write their mission critical applications using some software they've probably never heard of (PostgreSQL) on an operating system they've probably heard of but likely aren't familiar with (Linux).
When I was 16, I offered to install a LAN at my step-dads engineering shop. They were interested in building a network, and with 10 machines, it was a pretty trivial network to build, even for a 16 year old. I was going to charge them $100 for the labour, plus the parts. They ended up paying TONS more for a company to come in and do it, and I was really offended at the time.
In retrospect, I would have done the same thing.
You have to weigh an unproven ego against your livelihood/productivity. That's no choice at all. Who wants to trust some smart-ass kid who thinks he can do better?
While this may be hard for you to understand, most people (strange as it is) could care less what operating system or browser they use. All they know is how to accomplish their jobs using the tools they've been trained on, and most of them spent hours upon hours learning those tools.
As a result, when they turn on their computer and their icons aren't in the same place, many people assume that the machine is broken and conclude that the best option is to call IT and open a trouble ticket.
That said, "babying" them, as you put it, can never be done enough. Switching to Linux isn't that simple for someone who couldn't tell the difference between Intel and InDesign. You can replace the word "Linux" with any operating system, application, or even desktop theme.
A smart IT plan never doubts the inability of the users to -not understand-, and the CTO/IT staff who remembers this keeps his/her job. On the other hand, the unemployed IT staffer "-just does it-, giving them courses for -maybe an hour a day for a couple months-".
Add to the fact that this is a government we're talking about, and taking 3-5 years to migrate an entire city IT infrastructure into as yet uncharted waters is probably being -too-optimistic.
First off, the G5 XServe's are very fast machines and the cluster node is, of course, designed for just this sort of thing in the minimal amount of space. You should be aware that they are LOUD as hell though... louder than the G4 XServes, which sound like a plane taking off. That said, plan on hiding them away from your workspace because even one of them in the same room with you will drive you nuts. This is no different than a 1U server from Dell/Whoever though.
You'll only really need to buy a single non-cluster-node XServe to make your system work, and even that isn't needed if you have a desktop Mac to admin them from. Make sure you invest in either Apple's Remote Desktop application, or you install a VNC server or something on each of your cluster nodes. You'll want to get access to the desktop, and with those machines sans-video card, a remote desktop application is obviously the only way. For your type of application, sometimes the command prompt can only get you so far.:)
That said, if you do go with the Apple solution, there is not much reason to run Linux on them. Most open source apps you can build for Linux will build on OSX without issue, and keeping OSX on the machines gives you the ability to run Adobe After Effects on the machines and use the After Effects built-in cluster rendering. It's not that I dislike Linux, but it's just not needed here, especially when OSX offers you the addition of a whole host of commercial applications over the usual open source ones. Also, the cluster nodes include OSX Server (5 User). The 5 user licenses are for the filing sharing functionality, so they don't apply to what you're doing and for all intents and purposes, it works and acts largely like the OSX you know and use everyday, so the OS is included in the price of the hardware and you're not paying an extra invoice for it.
As for interconnecting them, the XServe machines all feature dual gigabit ethernet, which you'll want to obviously connect to a gigabit ethernet switch.
That said, you're left with the option of storage. The best bet for a smaller scale cluster (6-12 CPU's, as you mentioned) would be just to dedicate a single non-cluster-node XServe with all 4 disks installed and striped into a single volume. Connect the second gigabit ethernet port of your Xserve cluster machines to a second switch and then use NFS on OS X server to share to your cluster nodes. This will provide plenty of performance over a seperate gigabit ethernet connection, though your mileage may vary depending on what you want to do.
Obviously, for more machines, you'll do well to look into more advanced storage. XSan can do just this once they release it, which I imagine it will be when you're ready to scale up that far.
Hope that helps, at least as far as Apple solutions go.
Before anyone jumps to suggest that Hydra pre-dated this as the first collaborative text editor, I should point out that Hydra became SubEthaEdit, so they are in fact one in the same.
Hydra is a better name, but I digress.
I hate to burst your bubble, but Sun's primary focus is absolutely NOT Linux... Linux doesn't even run properly on most of their bigger hardware and I don't think Sun has plans to change that any time soon. Sun's Linux plans seem about as extensive as just paying lip-service to a buzzword, Java Desktop aside.
As for Solaris being doomed... you're high, right? All of the clueless, self-appointed pundits should get used to hearing about Solaris... it's about as doomed as Apple is. We keep hearing that the heart is about to stop, but more than a decade later, I'm still using a new PowerBook.
The reality is that Solaris is still trusted above all others in many data centers (with good reason)... ours included; switching our 12-way iron to Linux just isn't in the cards, nor would we want to.
The military, almost every fortune 500 company, and thousands upon thousands of smaller companies all depend on Solaris day in, day out. That kind of industry acceptance won't be cast down just because Linux is getting trendier every day.
I have no doubt that Sun's open sourcing of Solaris will be in name only... there will still, in all likelihood, be licensing costs associated with running Solaris on bigger iron.
I have no doubt that people choosing to borrow code from Solaris for use in Linux/BSD/your mom will be unable to do so legally. You may be able to suggest changes to Sun about the code, but using it on your own for anything other than private, non-commercial ventures will probably be forbidden.
We'll all see how this pans out, but don't get to excited. This move to "open source" will probably be about as full-fledged as Sun's commitment to Linux.... or Cobalt, or SunOS, or Interactive UNIX, or... you get the idea.
In one sense, it's always good when a decent book comes out that helps people do their own in-house maintenance. While there will always be a need for people of our (ie, the Slashdot community) talents, I can't tell you how helpful it is to have a client be able to do their own basic troubleshooting before calling us to ask how to plug in an ethernet cable.
On the other hand, a $10,000 a year support budget is a dream come true for most shops with 20 machines. Often, 20 machines of any type generally warrant at least one in-house support person to keep everything running smoothly, and even at part time, you could spend well over $10,000 on such an employee, as the parent pointed out.
I should point out for everyone who is wondering how accurate this is that the Globe and Mail is a really right-leaning, conservative paper that regularly suckles upon the Republican Party's collective wang. Anything to appeal to the fanatical right, they can be alarmists in the strictest sense.
They're heavily eclipsed, circulation wise, by the Toronto Star and are prone to sensationalism to try to get people to buy their paper. They rarely notice real news, and you'd get better information watching CNN then reading the Globe.
Of course, CNN has all the journalistic integrity of a drunken puppet show at a thai whore house.... but that's another story that I'd rather not explain.:)
To say "*BSD", you make it sound like this effort is new to BSD operating systems in general, as opposed to just OpenBSD. Of course, as others have pointed out, other BSD variants already support SMP. OS X, FreeBSD and Tru64 are good examples.
While I agree that it's a little "laggy" of OpenBSD to be finally getting around to adding SMP support, I would also concur with others who suggest that the general application of OpenBSD doesn't often require multiple processors. As a result, SMP support hasn't seemed to be a really been a big priority, and the more direct concentration on security has really paid off for them. That said, SMP support will certainly make OpenBSD more attractive in places where it wouldn't have been previously considered (larger scale databases, for example), so this is obviously a good thing.
As for the concept of BSD setting the standards for other operating systems to follow, I would partially disagree - yet partially agree.:)
It's not that BSD isn't innovating, but it's more that all operating systems, including (*gulp* am ducking already *gulp*) Windows are pushing forwarding in different areas. The sum knowledge and progress from all operating system projects is helping to improve every other operating system in turn, and on it goes.
Despite the overall (IMO) cruddyness of Windows, Microsoft has done some things worth learning from. As has Apple, Sun, DEC (err, Compaq, err, HP) and IBM.
Kalashnikov is now offering an AK-47 complete with 120GB firewire hard disk. Never be caught off guard again! Not only is this weapon the choice of counter-government revolutionaries around the world, but now it stores over 15,000 MP3's.
At the risk of the inevitable flaming, I have to aqree with this posting. I'm not questioning Linux or it's proven abilities, but what so many Windows (and Linux) users fail to understand about Apple's business model is that it's -not- the same as the commodity market that they enjoy. Apple makes their products in a "holistic" manner... they tightly control the hardware, operating system and pre-installed applications in order to deliver a seamless experience to the end user.
Bottom line... if you're the kind of person who feels Apple hardware is overpriced because you can't assemble it yourself and run Linux on it, then you're missing the point and Apple probably doesn't want your business anyways. It's not outright stupidity that has kept Apple out low-end market all these years... it's a market they've intentionally chosen not to enter. Case in point.... Steve Jobs killed the whole Macintosh clone market when he returned to power at Apple. UMAX and PowerComputing were offering faster machines for less money, but were totally clueless when it came to delivering any value-add on the end-user experience.
I'm not saying this is in a "snob" context... it's just the reality of their business model. Apple wants to sell a G5 (or iMac or PowerBook) to somebody who -doesn't- want to assemble their machine. The whole point of the Macintosh is in the fact that you don't need to do any of that.
Take heart though... IBM is apparently going to be (or already is) selling 970 (G5) based systems in some form running some flavor of Linux... so if it's only the bad-ass CPU you're after there will be other ways of getting your little flippers on them.
Already at the gates...
on
WiFi Free-For-All
·
· Score: 2, Informative
This may have been said already, but I think the WiFi is already at the gates. On a recent layover in Pittsburgh, I pulled out my PowerBook while waiting for my flight to Toronto... low and behold, there was access. This was in a US Airways terminal.
Slashdot Mirror
I've answered my own question.
For those wondering what I'm rambling about with WPA and TKIP, you can read this. It explains the relationship between WPA and 802.11i, as well as what TKIP is and why TKIP will work on any processor that can handle RC4.
People still use hubs?
Oh, I forgot to mention...
I'm pretty sure 802.11i also calls for TKIP as an accepted encryption method.
Can anyone comment on the CPU power required for wire speed TKIP, assuming 802.11g (54Mbps). A few people have pointed out that the Linksys gear probably couldn't handle AES at full speed, but would TKIP work on the hardware instead?
SHHHHH!
Bush probably doesn't know about this yet. If you keep flapping your lips, you're gonna get us all thrown into a prison somewhere, stripped naked, tied up with leashes and then finally piled on to of each other like refuse.
But there is no -mandated- torture/humiliation policy or anything... Rumsfeld said so.
I understand there is a flamebait mod that would provide a "-1"... but is there a mod that would provide "-a million for being a redneck, flamebaiting fsckwit".
It's nice to see they finally were able to teach monkeys to use computers.
Linksys WRT54G routers (as well as their WAP546 access points) already provide AES (and TKIP) encryption if you enable WPA support.
Also, as I understand it, WPA is simply a subset of 802.11i that most access point vendors began adopting as a short term solution between WEP and 802.11i ratification.
That said, it should be trivial for anyone already supporting WPA (the only 11g stations I've used are Linksys and Airport Extreme, both of which do both WPA Personal as well as WPA Enterprise) to support 802.11i via a firmware upgrade. The Airport Extreme hardware currently only provides TKIP encryption, but I don't think that AES would be too much trouble to add.
So, if I'm understanding correctly, you have complete knowledge of the decision making process, know all possible reasons why the college wouldn't want to take your suggested course of action, and ultimately are just dealing with "incompetence"?
I can clearly see what the real problem is here.
Perhaps if you left the cave that is your tunnel vision once in a while, you'd see the other side of the coin.
You've missed my point.
I wasn't complaining.. I was merely pointing out an annoying little reality...
Like it or not, companies or organizations that have objectives of a non-technical nature generally see the IT department as a support structure for the -real- employees. It doesn't matter to anyone but the lowly chump manning the help desk that Mr. So-and-so can't find his start menu because his resolution got changed. That's IT's problem. They care what IT thinks about as much as they care what the janitor or the FedEx guy thinks... we're a dime a dozen and easily replaced.
Therefore, when we -do- convince them at we can save some money by moving to something other than Windows, we bloody well better take our time and do it right. If the ability to attend to the core objectives of the organization is compromised in the process we can be easily replaced with someone who can get everything back to the way it was before trying to save all that money cost the company a bloody fortune.
In the context of this article, Munch targeting 2008 for Linux on the desktop is still, in my opinion, a highly optimistic goal.
I should preface this by saying that the parent of this thread does indeed smack of a Linux cheerleader baiting flame most aggressively.
And now for something completely different:
As arrogant sounding as you come off, I would have to agree...
When I was an unenlightened chimp and was still using Windows (i abandoned ship before Windows 98 dropped, used Solaris almost exclusively for quite a while, then finally ended up with OS X), I could count on one hand how many viruses I had contracted in a lifetime of being a hard-core nerd, dating back to even before my first copy of Windows... A boxed copy of 2.0 I won at a school computer fair.
Likewise, at work, our tech department is pretty much virus free, whereas the sales and marketing people are a violent pit of bad code and worms running amuck.
That said, the sales/marketing people all have Norton Anti-Virus (which we sadly pay volume licensing for), whereas most of the coders have nothing. Every so often, someone scans the backup cans and finds the sales/marketing people have folder upon folder full of the virulent flavor of the week, whereas the engineers folders are clean. ONCE, our web master had a Word document with a macro virus in it, though the document in questioned had been sent to him from marketing.
Given that most of the coders are connected to the internet 12-16 hours a day (compared to the sales/marketing people, who might do 8), I can honestly say that there is a lot of validity to the suggestion that experience and competence are the best firewall one can have.
Those lacking should stick with SonicWalls, unless you don't need hardware accelerated VPN support and don't want to spend $700.
At that point, a $50 Linksys is your best bet.
This is probably why you're not a decision maker at your organization...
The college has to run from day to day, not fail to provide services to students because the trendy new Linux system has some poorly planned features. What if you didn't work there anymore and problems occurred. How long would it take the new person coming in to diagnose and fix the problem?
"Politics and careerism" seems to be just your way of saying "thinking ahead".
Hey .. let me know where I can buy your English textbook.
If the only thing you find incorrect about my comment is the grammer, then I'm away ahead as it is.
Oh, that's a very good point.
I'll just march over to HR and explain that the corporate lawyers who bill out at over $1500/hr are somehow costing us money because they need 10 hours of tech support a week. The support staffer would have to be paid $150.01 dollars an hour for that to cost us money.
I'm sure they'll understand and pink slips will be distributed right away.
Well, taken in context, I wasn't suggesting that you were the smart-ass kid in question.
The real key to my point is this:
You should also consider that a community college/business who depends on their IT infrastructure is very unlikely to give business to ... no offense intended ... some guy who offers to re-write their mission critical applications using some software they've probably never heard of (PostgreSQL) on an operating system they've probably heard of but likely aren't familiar with (Linux).
That stands true no matter how long you've been in IT and no matter what experience you have. These days more than ever, an organization wants to know that there is someone they can call/visit/sue if something goes wrong.
Even in the university world, where in-house development has classically been most popular, there seems to be a movement towards buying and (only if necessary) modifying something that is already available due to the level of accountability inherent in such a proposition.
You should also consider that a community college/business who depends on their IT infrastructure is very unlikely to give business to ... no offense intended ... some guy who offers to re-write their mission critical applications using some software they've probably never heard of (PostgreSQL) on an operating system they've probably heard of but likely aren't familiar with (Linux).
When I was 16, I offered to install a LAN at my step-dads engineering shop. They were interested in building a network, and with 10 machines, it was a pretty trivial network to build, even for a 16 year old. I was going to charge them $100 for the labour, plus the parts. They ended up paying TONS more for a company to come in and do it, and I was really offended at the time.
In retrospect, I would have done the same thing.
You have to weigh an unproven ego against your livelihood/productivity. That's no choice at all. Who wants to trust some smart-ass kid who thinks he can do better?
Not me.
While this may be hard for you to understand, most people (strange as it is) could care less what operating system or browser they use. All they know is how to accomplish their jobs using the tools they've been trained on, and most of them spent hours upon hours learning those tools.
As a result, when they turn on their computer and their icons aren't in the same place, many people assume that the machine is broken and conclude that the best option is to call IT and open a trouble ticket.
That said, "babying" them, as you put it, can never be done enough. Switching to Linux isn't that simple for someone who couldn't tell the difference between Intel and InDesign. You can replace the word "Linux" with any operating system, application, or even desktop theme.
A smart IT plan never doubts the inability of the users to -not understand-, and the CTO/IT staff who remembers this keeps his/her job. On the other hand, the unemployed IT staffer "-just does it-, giving them courses for -maybe an hour a day for a couple months-".
Add to the fact that this is a government we're talking about, and taking 3-5 years to migrate an entire city IT infrastructure into as yet uncharted waters is probably being -too-optimistic.
First off, the G5 XServe's are very fast machines and the cluster node is, of course, designed for just this sort of thing in the minimal amount of space. You should be aware that they are LOUD as hell though... louder than the G4 XServes, which sound like a plane taking off. That said, plan on hiding them away from your workspace because even one of them in the same room with you will drive you nuts. This is no different than a 1U server from Dell/Whoever though.
You'll only really need to buy a single non-cluster-node XServe to make your system work, and even that isn't needed if you have a desktop Mac to admin them from. Make sure you invest in either Apple's Remote Desktop application, or you install a VNC server or something on each of your cluster nodes. You'll want to get access to the desktop, and with those machines sans-video card, a remote desktop application is obviously the only way. For your type of application, sometimes the command prompt can only get you so far. :)
That said, if you do go with the Apple solution, there is not much reason to run Linux on them. Most open source apps you can build for Linux will build on OSX without issue, and keeping OSX on the machines gives you the ability to run Adobe After Effects on the machines and use the After Effects built-in cluster rendering. It's not that I dislike Linux, but it's just not needed here, especially when OSX offers you the addition of a whole host of commercial applications over the usual open source ones. Also, the cluster nodes include OSX Server (5 User). The 5 user licenses are for the filing sharing functionality, so they don't apply to what you're doing and for all intents and purposes, it works and acts largely like the OSX you know and use everyday, so the OS is included in the price of the hardware and you're not paying an extra invoice for it.
As for interconnecting them, the XServe machines all feature dual gigabit ethernet, which you'll want to obviously connect to a gigabit ethernet switch.
That said, you're left with the option of storage. The best bet for a smaller scale cluster (6-12 CPU's, as you mentioned) would be just to dedicate a single non-cluster-node XServe with all 4 disks installed and striped into a single volume. Connect the second gigabit ethernet port of your Xserve cluster machines to a second switch and then use NFS on OS X server to share to your cluster nodes. This will provide plenty of performance over a seperate gigabit ethernet connection, though your mileage may vary depending on what you want to do.
Obviously, for more machines, you'll do well to look into more advanced storage. XSan can do just this once they release it, which I imagine it will be when you're ready to scale up that far.
Hope that helps, at least as far as Apple solutions go.Before anyone jumps to suggest that Hydra pre-dated this as the first collaborative text editor, I should point out that Hydra became SubEthaEdit, so they are in fact one in the same. Hydra is a better name, but I digress.
I hate to burst your bubble, but Sun's primary focus is absolutely NOT Linux... Linux doesn't even run properly on most of their bigger hardware and I don't think Sun has plans to change that any time soon. Sun's Linux plans seem about as extensive as just paying lip-service to a buzzword, Java Desktop aside.
... you get the idea.
As for Solaris being doomed... you're high, right? All of the clueless, self-appointed pundits should get used to hearing about Solaris... it's about as doomed as Apple is. We keep hearing that the heart is about to stop, but more than a decade later, I'm still using a new PowerBook.
The reality is that Solaris is still trusted above all others in many data centers (with good reason)... ours included; switching our 12-way iron to Linux just isn't in the cards, nor would we want to.
The military, almost every fortune 500 company, and thousands upon thousands of smaller companies all depend on Solaris day in, day out. That kind of industry acceptance won't be cast down just because Linux is getting trendier every day.
I have no doubt that Sun's open sourcing of Solaris will be in name only... there will still, in all likelihood, be licensing costs associated with running Solaris on bigger iron.
I have no doubt that people choosing to borrow code from Solaris for use in Linux/BSD/your mom will be unable to do so legally. You may be able to suggest changes to Sun about the code, but using it on your own for anything other than private, non-commercial ventures will probably be forbidden.
We'll all see how this pans out, but don't get to excited. This move to "open source" will probably be about as full-fledged as Sun's commitment to Linux.... or Cobalt, or SunOS, or Interactive UNIX, or
In one sense, it's always good when a decent book comes out that helps people do their own in-house maintenance. While there will always be a need for people of our (ie, the Slashdot community) talents, I can't tell you how helpful it is to have a client be able to do their own basic troubleshooting before calling us to ask how to plug in an ethernet cable.
On the other hand, a $10,000 a year support budget is a dream come true for most shops with 20 machines. Often, 20 machines of any type generally warrant at least one in-house support person to keep everything running smoothly, and even at part time, you could spend well over $10,000 on such an employee, as the parent pointed out.
I should point out for everyone who is wondering how accurate this is that the Globe and Mail is a really right-leaning, conservative paper that regularly suckles upon the Republican Party's collective wang. Anything to appeal to the fanatical right, they can be alarmists in the strictest sense.
:)
They're heavily eclipsed, circulation wise, by the Toronto Star and are prone to sensationalism to try to get people to buy their paper. They rarely notice real news, and you'd get better information watching CNN then reading the Globe.
Of course, CNN has all the journalistic integrity of a drunken puppet show at a thai whore house.... but that's another story that I'd rather not explain.
To say "*BSD", you make it sound like this effort is new to BSD operating systems in general, as opposed to just OpenBSD. Of course, as others have pointed out, other BSD variants already support SMP. OS X, FreeBSD and Tru64 are good examples.
:)
While I agree that it's a little "laggy" of OpenBSD to be finally getting around to adding SMP support, I would also concur with others who suggest that the general application of OpenBSD doesn't often require multiple processors. As a result, SMP support hasn't seemed to be a really been a big priority, and the more direct concentration on security has really paid off for them. That said, SMP support will certainly make OpenBSD more attractive in places where it wouldn't have been previously considered (larger scale databases, for example), so this is obviously a good thing.
As for the concept of BSD setting the standards for other operating systems to follow, I would partially disagree - yet partially agree.
It's not that BSD isn't innovating, but it's more that all operating systems, including (*gulp* am ducking already *gulp*) Windows are pushing forwarding in different areas. The sum knowledge and progress from all operating system projects is helping to improve every other operating system in turn, and on it goes.
Despite the overall (IMO) cruddyness of Windows, Microsoft has done some things worth learning from. As has Apple, Sun, DEC (err, Compaq, err, HP) and IBM.
Kalashnikov is now offering an AK-47 complete with 120GB firewire hard disk. Never be caught off guard again! Not only is this weapon the choice of counter-government revolutionaries around the world, but now it stores over 15,000 MP3's.
LOL .. if I had the points, I'd mod this funny right now. Few outside of the true north will get it though, hence the current 1 point. :)
At the risk of the inevitable flaming, I have to aqree with this posting. I'm not questioning Linux or it's proven abilities, but what so many Windows (and Linux) users fail to understand about Apple's business model is that it's -not- the same as the commodity market that they enjoy. Apple makes their products in a "holistic" manner... they tightly control the hardware, operating system and pre-installed applications in order to deliver a seamless experience to the end user.
Bottom line... if you're the kind of person who feels Apple hardware is overpriced because you can't assemble it yourself and run Linux on it, then you're missing the point and Apple probably doesn't want your business anyways. It's not outright stupidity that has kept Apple out low-end market all these years... it's a market they've intentionally chosen not to enter. Case in point.... Steve Jobs killed the whole Macintosh clone market when he returned to power at Apple. UMAX and PowerComputing were offering faster machines for less money, but were totally clueless when it came to delivering any value-add on the end-user experience.
I'm not saying this is in a "snob" context... it's just the reality of their business model. Apple wants to sell a G5 (or iMac or PowerBook) to somebody who -doesn't- want to assemble their machine. The whole point of the Macintosh is in the fact that you don't need to do any of that.
Take heart though... IBM is apparently going to be (or already is) selling 970 (G5) based systems in some form running some flavor of Linux... so if it's only the bad-ass CPU you're after there will be other ways of getting your little flippers on them.
This may have been said already, but I think the WiFi is already at the gates. On a recent layover in Pittsburgh, I pulled out my PowerBook while waiting for my flight to Toronto... low and behold, there was access. This was in a US Airways terminal.
Just though I'd say so.