Re:It takes SIX MONTHS to find a particular MP3?!
on
Easy MP3 Distribution
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· Score: 2
Naw. It only takes this long for the inexperienced. You can start off on audiogalaxy looking for a particular band and then run into sites with hundreds of cds in the same genre. I only do this maybe a couple of hours a month and I have a pretty big collection. I have a 200+ legit cd collection to supplement this as well, though I won't pretend like I'm only downloading mp3's before buying cd's (though I do this frequently). Sometimes there are just one or two good songs on cd's but they aren't worth the 18-22 CDN. It is nice downloading and listening to future releases (usually 3 weeks - 1.5 months before their actual store release).
Note that the recording industry hasn't seen profits tail off as mp3's became popular. I'm not advocating piracy "because I think it doesn't hurt anyone", or "because all those musicians are incredibly overpaid" -- but seriously, they should overstate the effect mp3's has. I have all the cd's of my favorite bands. All my friends who frequently pirate music as well have vast cd collections that are in the hundreds to thousands. ----------
I don't see the problem with software raid at all. Software based raid such as ccd and vinum work very well. Your controller can fail too (or even have a buggy DSP), what's your point?
Don't get me wrong though; I work almost exclusively with DPT fibre channel appliances with multiple servers connected. I just don't see your point that software raid isn't fault tolerant. There's a possibility of such raid data storage appliances failing as well. ----------
How are you bursting my bubble? They do it, my provider doesn't. My provider does offer proxies but they don't force its use, mostly because the amount of users often makes the proxies a heck of a lot slower (even though they have 9 proxies for my area) as well as a centralized possible point of failure.
As far as utilization goes, this has to do with how the provider manages the network. My provider resegments the network as the amount of users grows, preventing terrible transfer rates. Of course utilization makes for variable traffic, but that's just as true on major internet backbones. Just look at sprint. They oversell their bandwidth many times. They often let it come to a point where they are overutilized. It's just a matter of proper management. The same can occur on sympatico.
Rogers IP's are more or less static. I have friends who have had the same IP for 3 years. The only thing that changed for them is the PTR (reverse DNS record). Mine on shaw, on the other hand is dynamic based on DHCP. We have 3 day leases though. I've had the same IP for 1.5 years. I wouldn't mind it changing every couple of years.
As far as the routing of rogers@home goes:
yep, that's true. Rogers was stupid and bought into a nationwide network with a limited number of backbone interconnections with other providers. What doesn't go through a major NAP or MAE ends up going halfway across the country. Shaw on the other hand buys local bandwidth from teleglobe, uunet, sprint -- and they have an @home connection for regional data center and modem to modem communications. It's still managed by @home though (or so I'm told by calgary and richmond hill noc monkeys). Blame rogers:). ----------
Agreed. I REALLY want to strangle unisys. Compuserve freely distributes the format and makes it a standard and then Unisys grabs the patent, but waits until years later to start charging licensing fees. Too bad ie5 and netscape don't fully support png or even animated png.
On a side note, how do I turn off that damn quicktime png viewer? ----------
""It's not our intent to do anything destructive to other companies or to force them out of the business altogether. If they are utilizing our process, we will make our best effort to come to reasonable licensing terms,""
Their director of digital products says it all here. First he states that they aren't out to aggressively enforce it, then he states that they are going to try to force licensing upon their competitors.
It's agreed that this is a big problem. Smaller companies are pretty much screwed once they get sued -- even if there is prior use. I myself was threatened with litigation because one of my software products had a similar data transaction and storage method than theirs and they had a patent. I had never heard of them prior. We were also operating in different market segments. Did that stop them? Nope, they wanted 30% of my profits and an up front 20,000 dollar licensing fee. I instead told them to jump in a lake and quickly offered all my clients a free upgrade with a reworked system (which took about 3 days when they claimed they had perfected their process in years of being in the industry since 1991). ----------
"MS don't have a monopoly in the server market - so it doesn't apply"
This is not what he was arguing about. If company a wants to implement a product that is either:
a) cheaper b) better c) both
then what Microsoft produces, then they should be able to do so. If microsoft effectively changes their licensing schemes to bar competition and only allow a selected few applications enter the market, then that is illegal. It's similar to the Intel case. They were prevented from producing multimedia software and codecs that had perceived benifits to end users and developers. MS doesn't have the right to pick and choose what applications can be developed for their operating system. It's open to anyone with said programming tools to build applications on their platform. the problem, however, is proving that they did so based on netscape's applications, using OS leverage to make sure that their more expensive alternative solution was bought instead.
Now that I think about posters further down. The license seems rather bogus. If windows 98 was stable and fast, then maybe some guy would produce a viable solution for it using his *own* code. Would it be right or even legal for MS to arbitrarily say that he now couldn't? If its MS own product and they want to charge more per processor or user, then I don't see anything wrong with it. If its someone elses product, then they shouldn't have any business doing so. You can't offer a product to developers but include exclusions based on the fact that you have a higher priced product that you want them to buy instead "just because".
If MS decided tommorow that they would outlaw all daemons on windows 98, then I'm sure Oracle, IBM, and any number of small proxy/firewall and ftp server application companies would be very angry. Oh wait, they couldn't. They already include nat gateway software in windows 98 second edition that would classify itself as a server. ----------
This article has nothing to do with linux. This article explains perceived anti-competitive practices by Microsoft. This anti-trust lawsuit affects all people using Microsoft products all around the world (well at least the countries that pay for their software). Joe Sixpack doesn't use linux, yet it still may affect him. I don't use linux but I still read this site. Even if you don't use Microsoft products, the fact that they *may* have been extorting a lot of money from companies which products and services you buy may have caused them to raise prices.
If you find stories of this type tiring, then don't read them. If you really want to stop the blind MS hate and Linux roolz attitude, then just reply to comments that are blatantly so. ----------
The question is, was Microsoft using monopoly OS power to stifle competition in other areas.
That's hard to say. I don't have the knowledge to discern wether it is illegal for Microsoft to charge different prices on identical products depending on use and upheld by a license. If that's true then I believe this to be valid. If not, it's simply a matter of Microsoft offering their product for "free" when netscape was charging for it.
They really are pushing the limit though. There are a number of server based applications that run on even windows98 as well as NT. What if MS just decided to outlaw them as per license because they had competing products on their "server" os and this was causing a revenue leakage? Therefore I'm leaning towards the possibility that this is illegal due to Microsoft using OS leverage to exclude competitition from certain application markets. The problem is proving that they did so based on netscape offering a cheaper solution for consumers -- not just because they just felt like changing the license (because monopoly by itself isn't illegal). ----------
While I like the ease in which I can increase max server connections to speed loading, I think I'll stick to IE (and netscape when I'm in X) for now. I tried loading a number of sites and it chokes on spacing, images behind text, no underlined links, no onmouseover underlines or highlights et al. The download speed in kB/s is nice though. Won't be switching anytime soon. ----------
What was supposed to happen is that other companies would be licensing the ability to set up shop and keep their equipment at the local telco office. I don't know if there just isn't any interest or bell hasn't upgraded the network. It seems they haven't been rolling out much in the past year.
I was waiting for it before, but now that I've heard that it uses a nortel 1 meg modem with a dynamic ip and they even force you to use a proxy for web access; no thanks. I'd rather pay my 39.90 CDN a month for shaw cable. The 3-5.5mbps variable downlink and 320-768kbps variable uplink all of the sudden seem pretty good:). Take a look at my transfer stats if you don't believe me. I haven't been able to find any other provider in the US and canada who offers internet at this speed at such a cheap price. The closest I've seen is some @home cities in the US for 40 USD a month -- but they get to go through the amazingly fast @home backbone connections to other providers(yes I'm being sarcastic). There was this one guy in connecticut on @home that I downloaded off of at 290k/s though.. ----------
Yes and no. Using the threat of coercive power isn't always necessary. Use varies as per managment position (middle and upper management isn't in direct line authority of so called underlings); type of work; hygiene factors; their job market; their pay; their work related knowledge et al.
If you're unable to establish good relationships based on respect and friendliness, company influence, expert knowledge, or power to reward -- then obviously the only alternative left is to exact coercive power and strike fear into your employees by threatening discipline or firings.
The problem is that this is very situational. However, remember that the manager may be just as bad for the job as the employees under him. So if you look at your situation and you see other alternatives -- maybe you should change your management style to do your job well. ----------
"... and most people can usually tell the difference"
Seriously. Have you ever dealt with management in any software or hardware companies? Besides those who were originally cs or engr graduates, I've found very few who actually know their stuff in the companies area of expertise. The good ones will establish good relationships with their "people" as well as sampling the industry using a variety of sources. Do they actually know their stuff? Not usually. They rely on trust and good relationships to keep the gears rolling in the right direction. This is why companies want managment with 5-10 years industry experience. That way discression is used wisely.
Analyst firms have their uses. This is especially true for companies ready to jump on the internet bandwagon. If I was going to, say, rework a companies entire distribution network, I could probably go to an analyst (or two) to point me in the right direction. Of course they will have their biases and buyoffs -- but it's better than blindly testing a bunch of companies, especially if I don't know what prices to expect. Like IBM is going to tell me one of their solutions doesn't exactly fit my business model.
As for market trends though, anyone taking what they say for an absolute is incredibly ignorant. It's like asking an economist how the economy will be in a year. They might be able to provide some insight into what direction your company may take -- but you have to question the motives of someone doing this for money. If an analyst told me to get into such and such industry I might wonder how many other people he or she gave the same advice. I might also wonder where his numbers are that are predicting trends, using numbers that could go either way. It's disconcerting to even think about what's going on in the mind of the group of people running these firms. Could they be receiving kickbacks from companies for shoving clients in their direction? Yes of course these firms live on reputation -- but they aren't going to look out for your best given a number of in company politics and motives (especially if they're backed by certain big businesses). In other words, they aren't directly tied to your success.
So take their advice (if you need it), but tread lightly. Remember, analysts can provide insight, but they can't predict the future (no matter how many industry ties they have):). ----------
Presenting a straight detailed truth and presenting material for mass consumption are two entirely different beasts. CNN is good at what they do -- but they must reach a very wide target market and in so doing must make compromises that may make them seem:
a) stupid b) sweeping stereotypists c) not in the know
Remember, they have to sugar coat their material and present it in such a way that it is accepted by everyone. ----------
Very nice. I'm definitely going to have to install this distro on one of my workstations tommorow. Seems they're actually grinding down the sharp kludgy average end-user problems and turning out something (at least seemingly) polished. Maybe redhat will wake up now and top them:). ----------
I wonder if I'll be able to get that apart from their distro anytime soon. I'm sure their distro is nice, but what about us who already have debian with kde installed... I'm not going to go through all that just to get it.
I think the techrepublic review is correct in pointing out the install problems. The problem with linux is that it will be the second installed OS for the majority of users -- so they will have to refine the partitioning process as well as the initial bootup nuances. I really like how they have the bootup menu that boots directly into kde as well as the vga safe mode. Now all they have to do is design an *intuitive* graphics adapter, resolution and depth as well as a monitor frequency setup. Maybe they could compile a database of monitor types and models just like windows (or auto detect when possible) so that users won't have to worry about such things. Would be a lot of work, but it's probably well within Corels capabilities..
On a side note, their control interface looks exactly like a slightly modded kde one. I didn't really find it that useful except to gather system information. I could be wrong though, we'll have to see after I download it... ----------
4x processor with 4 ethernet cards is within this said market. Of course, these benchmarks are obviously just to point out linux scaling problems (which are valid).
Anyway, if they really wanted to show what NT could do comparable to others in that range, they would have compared IIS with a dell whatever to a compaq alphaserver running zeus. HP (who did the testing) have been able to achieve up to 9000-12000 rps using specWEB on comparable hardware, whereas NT has trouble. Also note that Zeus can handle 10,000+ domains with little degredation, whereas IIS can not (especially if they are IP based).
Some IBM tests have achieved 26,000 requests per second (15,000 higher than IIS could), but that was on zeus/AIX with 12 processors. Also note that in Linux case "This was demonstrated best when the Red Hat engineers ran the Zeus Web server. Zeus performance topped out at about the same place as Apache, using fewer resources". This problem is also evident on FreeBSD using zeus -- though the FreeBSD tcp/ip stack as is the overall system (on a general level) more tuned to higher loads and hence achieves 10-20% better results. The FreeBSD camp has similar problems with SMP performance.
Sun can obviously scale to these levels as well -- but their hardware is incredibly overpriced so they really shouldn't be included in such a case.
Are these benchmarks useful in real-world situations? Well, yes and no. First we must realize that there is a very limited client base for systems serving files over quad 100mbps ethernet adapters (or even gigabit ethernet). Think of how many companies even need this much bandwidth. There are some that do -- but then we realize that there is no major advantage in using a single monster machine to do this task. If a company can afford that much bandwidth, then they can also afford the rack space for a cluster of servers. Even if the bandwidth is in house, it just makes more sense to scale with clusters. The NT camp can argue that at the high end it is more useful -- but a cluster of FreeBSD or Linux machines running apache are a heck of a lot cheaper. As well, try hosting a large amount of IP based domains on IIS. You can't. Then we realize that vbscript (the usual pick with ASP) is only about 60% as fast as mod_perl (yes I know you can use perl on IIS as well). Then there's stability. Duh, how many times have we had to reboot NT servers or restart the IIS service to get it up and running again? I actually have to run a service to restart IIS when it stops responding -- and even then it can cause the machine to crash by running out of resources.
I'm as guilty as the next guy for quoting benchmarks to combat benchmarks -- but seriously, forget them. They are almost always biased. While the mindcraft tests are valid in proving that Linux has some scaling problems, they really don't translate well to the real world. Just ask yahoo or any other company using apache clusters running FreeBSD (which has similar scaling problems than linux). What about amazon.com? They've recently switched to apache. Do they not have a high amount of traffic as well as dynamic web pages? Will the target of these tests ever likely have a chance at building a site of such a size? Not likely. Mindcraft and Microsoft know that they can never include price or stability comparisons because they would always lose. In so doing, they lose any real world application. It's obvious this is just a blatant attack on Linux -- not an Operating Systems real world application. These test results succeed in what they were tailored for: to spread doubt. So even if they raise a valid point as to weaknesses in Linux, I question their validity. ----------
Well you know what it is full of? Textures and graphics. Non-3d games take up a ton of space with art. Granted, it will be 4 times larger than diablo (as claimed by blizzard), but diablo wasn't very large itself. Remember, this game is mindless point and click violence. I doubt there are going to be any difficult puzzles. The possiblity of a large number of redundant levels aside; It's nothing I can't tackle in a weekend.
Hopefully Diablo 2 will have more than three different armor types this time. If they had kept the game in 2d, but made the characters 3d, they would have virtually unlimited armor and weapon possibilities. Unfortunately since they've gone 2d again they will have to render each frame of animation which uses up a lot of space. It really is too bad that they didn't do the 3d because they could have had decent collision detection and monsters actually reacting to attacks instead of point, click, hit with reaction determined randomly. Though static 2d art looks pretty good, this type of engine shows its age. Thank god Warcraft III will be 3d. ----------
To the anonymous coward poster below: I do. Bite me.
You shouldn't need anything more than a p100 to do network address translation and packet filtering. I have a p100 here that has an 11mbps wireless (line of sight) vpn connection to work. It also serves files over samba and collects connection information through snmp. It handles this quite well and the limit is most often the link speed (well that and the crappy weather up here in canada).
I also have a p200 on a cable modem and 96 megs of ram and it runs apache w/mod_perl and php3, qmail, snmp, delegate, ftp, ssh, samba and some remote x applications. Base NT with IIS is so bloated it could barely run (uses 48 megs of ram before even doing anything). Linux or *BSD is perfect for lower end hardware.
Again, I don't see why you can't run the firewall on the same box as the ftp and web box. This is of course unless you're completely out of memory (NT on 32 megs of ram is such a joke btw). As for processor speed, it should be able to take it as long as you dont have a ton of fast ftp sessions going (since most ftp daemons use a lot of processor for some reason). ----------
Don't worry. You can just do what I will do. Start playing it on a friday night and stop only to piss and eat (at the same time mind you). I can guarantee you will be finished by 10am sunday morning. From there you can sleep until 8am monday:). ----------
Wrong. The internet is not limited to just you and friends. People don't just trade files with people they know down the street. You may think you know someone, but be completely wrong.
You're also ignoring the fact that with IP, any system you connect to has to reveal its ip address. If you're just talking about a system of application proxies (which is an incredibly stupid idea since everyone would have to be a t1 or cable/dsl to waste their bandwidth to transfer through each other), all one has to do is get on one box and they will be able to find where the traffic is coming and going. All the feds would have to do is bust one guy, look at the current transfers and go bust the next guy. I'd hardly call that statistically safe. It in fact would decrease security by having more traffic transfer through these hosts which means they can grab more ip addresses.
Now if you were simply talking about simple point to point data transfer, you can always get IP addresses. If a transfer occurs, the IP is known. As well, encryption doesn't help one bit when the authorities are sitting there watching the files transfer over whatever application you have to transfer. It only prevents network sniffing of things such as plain text ftp commands.
In other words, a security system is only as powerful as the people involved. You may only share illegal files with the people you know, but the vast majority are sharing with people all around the world. Again, remember also that anyone can present themself as someone else online -- even your friends. ----------
Of course, if tweaked right, apache + linux (or FreeBSD in my case) will scale to the utmost bandwidth limits. I run apache on a number of servers on 100mbps net links and they scale incredibly well. I/O (and processing power if server a large number of dynamic pages) are the real limits.
Of course, if you really want to push the limit; pick up Zeus webserver. It's multithreaded and has been proven to scale to the same levels IIS can. I've lost the page now, but incredibly high end benchmarks (talking 4-30 processors here) have shown that Zeus can consistently beat IIS. The current champion benchmark is an IBM machine with 12 processors (if i remember correctly). It handles 16,0000 more requests per second than IIS could. With the same amount of processors, the results were similar (but equally out there in terms of real world usability).
Of course, you can always forget that and set up an apache server farm. I run 3 on a 100mbps net link (with mod_perl and php3). This is with stock PII 400 + 512 megs of ram (2 gigs on the db server) and DPT Fibre channel raid.
Oh yeah; try hosting 6000 ip based chrooted user account domains on each box with database, php and perl access on IIS. ----------
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Naw. It only takes this long for the inexperienced. You can start off on audiogalaxy looking for a particular band and then run into sites with hundreds of cds in the same genre. I only do this maybe a couple of hours a month and I have a pretty big collection. I have a 200+ legit cd collection to supplement this as well, though I won't pretend like I'm only downloading mp3's before buying cd's (though I do this frequently). Sometimes there are just one or two good songs on cd's but they aren't worth the 18-22 CDN. It is nice downloading and listening to future releases (usually 3 weeks - 1.5 months before their actual store release).
Note that the recording industry hasn't seen profits tail off as mp3's became popular. I'm not advocating piracy "because I think it doesn't hurt anyone", or "because all those musicians are incredibly overpaid" -- but seriously, they should overstate the effect mp3's has. I have all the cd's of my favorite bands. All my friends who frequently pirate music as well have vast cd collections that are in the hundreds to thousands.
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Sounds kind of cool. However, I'd rather leech hundreds of files off mp3 sites using favorable ratios when the admin is away.
:).
When the RIAA starts busting single users for running sites, then these products may start to become necessary.
50% of my mp3 searching starts off at audiogalaxy though -- so maybe I should try it out
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I don't see the problem with software raid at all. Software based raid such as ccd and vinum work very well. Your controller can fail too (or even have a buggy DSP), what's your point?
Don't get me wrong though; I work almost exclusively with DPT fibre channel appliances with multiple servers connected. I just don't see your point that software raid isn't fault tolerant. There's a possibility of such raid data storage appliances failing as well.
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How are you bursting my bubble? They do it, my provider doesn't. My provider does offer proxies but they don't force its use, mostly because the amount of users often makes the proxies a heck of a lot slower (even though they have 9 proxies for my area) as well as a centralized possible point of failure.
:).
As far as utilization goes, this has to do with how the provider manages the network. My provider resegments the network as the amount of users grows, preventing terrible transfer rates. Of course utilization makes for variable traffic, but that's just as true on major internet backbones. Just look at sprint. They oversell their bandwidth many times. They often let it come to a point where they are overutilized. It's just a matter of proper management. The same can occur on sympatico.
Rogers IP's are more or less static. I have friends who have had the same IP for 3 years. The only thing that changed for them is the PTR (reverse DNS record). Mine on shaw, on the other hand is dynamic based on DHCP. We have 3 day leases though. I've had the same IP for 1.5 years. I wouldn't mind it changing every couple of years.
As far as the routing of rogers@home goes:
yep, that's true. Rogers was stupid and bought into a nationwide network with a limited number of backbone interconnections with other providers. What doesn't go through a major NAP or MAE ends up going halfway across the country. Shaw on the other hand buys local bandwidth from teleglobe, uunet, sprint -- and they have an @home connection for regional data center and modem to modem communications. It's still managed by @home though (or so I'm told by calgary and richmond hill noc monkeys). Blame rogers
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Agreed. I REALLY want to strangle unisys. Compuserve freely distributes the format and makes it a standard and then Unisys grabs the patent, but waits until years later to start charging licensing fees. Too bad ie5 and netscape don't fully support png or even animated png.
On a side note, how do I turn off that damn quicktime png viewer?
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""It's not our intent to do anything destructive to other companies or to force them out of the business altogether. If they are utilizing our process, we will make our best effort to come to reasonable licensing terms,""
Their director of digital products says it all here. First he states that they aren't out to aggressively enforce it, then he states that they are going to try to force licensing upon their competitors.
It's agreed that this is a big problem. Smaller companies are pretty much screwed once they get sued -- even if there is prior use. I myself was threatened with litigation because one of my software products had a similar data transaction and storage method than theirs and they had a patent. I had never heard of them prior. We were also operating in different market segments. Did that stop them? Nope, they wanted 30% of my profits and an up front 20,000 dollar licensing fee. I instead told them to jump in a lake and quickly offered all my clients a free upgrade with a reworked system (which took about 3 days when they claimed they had perfected their process in years of being in the industry since 1991).
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"MS don't have a monopoly in the server market - so it doesn't apply"
This is not what he was arguing about. If company a wants to implement a product that is either:
a) cheaper
b) better
c) both
then what Microsoft produces, then they should be able to do so. If microsoft effectively changes their licensing schemes to bar competition and only allow a selected few applications enter the market, then that is illegal. It's similar to the Intel case. They were prevented from producing multimedia software and codecs that had perceived benifits to end users and developers. MS doesn't have the right to pick and choose what applications can be developed for their operating system. It's open to anyone with said programming tools to build applications on their platform. the problem, however, is proving that they did so based on netscape's applications, using OS leverage to make sure that their more expensive alternative solution was bought instead.
Now that I think about posters further down. The license seems rather bogus. If windows 98 was stable and fast, then maybe some guy would produce a viable solution for it using his *own* code. Would it be right or even legal for MS to arbitrarily say that he now couldn't? If its MS own product and they want to charge more per processor or user, then I don't see anything wrong with it. If its someone elses product, then they shouldn't have any business doing so. You can't offer a product to developers but include exclusions based on the fact that you have a higher priced product that you want them to buy instead "just because".
If MS decided tommorow that they would outlaw all daemons on windows 98, then I'm sure Oracle, IBM, and any number of small proxy/firewall and ftp server application companies would be very angry. Oh wait, they couldn't. They already include nat gateway software in windows 98 second edition that would classify itself as a server.
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This article has nothing to do with linux. This article explains perceived anti-competitive practices by Microsoft. This anti-trust lawsuit affects all people using Microsoft products all around the world (well at least the countries that pay for their software). Joe Sixpack doesn't use linux, yet it still may affect him. I don't use linux but I still read this site. Even if you don't use Microsoft products, the fact that they *may* have been extorting a lot of money from companies which products and services you buy may have caused them to raise prices.
If you find stories of this type tiring, then don't read them. If you really want to stop the blind MS hate and Linux roolz attitude, then just reply to comments that are blatantly so.
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The question is, was Microsoft using monopoly OS power to stifle competition in other areas.
That's hard to say. I don't have the knowledge to discern wether it is illegal for Microsoft to charge different prices on identical products depending on use and upheld by a license. If that's true then I believe this to be valid. If not, it's simply a matter of Microsoft offering their product for "free" when netscape was charging for it.
They really are pushing the limit though. There are a number of server based applications that run on even windows98 as well as NT. What if MS just decided to outlaw them as per license because they had competing products on their "server" os and this was causing a revenue leakage? Therefore I'm leaning towards the possibility that this is illegal due to Microsoft using OS leverage to exclude competitition from certain application markets. The problem is proving that they did so based on netscape offering a cheaper solution for consumers -- not just because they just felt like changing the license (because monopoly by itself isn't illegal).
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While I like the ease in which I can increase max server connections to speed loading, I think I'll stick to IE (and netscape when I'm in X) for now. I tried loading a number of sites and it chokes on spacing, images behind text, no underlined links, no onmouseover underlines or highlights et al. The download speed in kB/s is nice though. Won't be switching anytime soon.
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What was supposed to happen is that other companies would be licensing the ability to set up shop and keep their equipment at the local telco office. I don't know if there just isn't any interest or bell hasn't upgraded the network. It seems they haven't been rolling out much in the past year.
:). Take a look at my transfer stats if you don't believe me. I haven't been able to find any other provider in the US and canada who offers internet at this speed at such a cheap price. The closest I've seen is some @home cities in the US for 40 USD a month -- but they get to go through the amazingly fast @home backbone connections to other providers(yes I'm being sarcastic). There was this one guy in connecticut on @home that I downloaded off of at 290k/s though..
I was waiting for it before, but now that I've heard that it uses a nortel 1 meg modem with a dynamic ip and they even force you to use a proxy for web access; no thanks. I'd rather pay my 39.90 CDN a month for shaw cable. The 3-5.5mbps variable downlink and 320-768kbps variable uplink all of the sudden seem pretty good
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Yes and no. Using the threat of coercive power isn't always necessary. Use varies as per managment position (middle and upper management isn't in direct line authority of so called underlings); type of work; hygiene factors; their job market; their pay; their work related knowledge et al.
If you're unable to establish good relationships based on respect and friendliness, company influence, expert knowledge, or power to reward -- then obviously the only alternative left is to exact coercive power and strike fear into your employees by threatening discipline or firings.
The problem is that this is very situational. However, remember that the manager may be just as bad for the job as the employees under him. So if you look at your situation and you see other alternatives -- maybe you should change your management style to do your job well.
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"... and most people can usually tell the difference"
:).
Seriously. Have you ever dealt with management in any software or hardware companies? Besides those who were originally cs or engr graduates, I've found very few who actually know their stuff in the companies area of expertise. The good ones will establish good relationships with their "people" as well as sampling the industry using a variety of sources. Do they actually know their stuff? Not usually. They rely on trust and good relationships to keep the gears rolling in the right direction. This is why companies want managment with 5-10 years industry experience. That way discression is used wisely.
Analyst firms have their uses. This is especially true for companies ready to jump on the internet bandwagon. If I was going to, say, rework a companies entire distribution network, I could probably go to an analyst (or two) to point me in the right direction. Of course they will have their biases and buyoffs -- but it's better than blindly testing a bunch of companies, especially if I don't know what prices to expect. Like IBM is going to tell me one of their solutions doesn't exactly fit my business model.
As for market trends though, anyone taking what they say for an absolute is incredibly ignorant. It's like asking an economist how the economy will be in a year. They might be able to provide some insight into what direction your company may take -- but you have to question the motives of someone doing this for money. If an analyst told me to get into such and such industry I might wonder how many other people he or she gave the same advice. I might also wonder where his numbers are that are predicting trends, using numbers that could go either way. It's disconcerting to even think about what's going on in the mind of the group of people running these firms. Could they be receiving kickbacks from companies for shoving clients in their direction? Yes of course these firms live on reputation -- but they aren't going to look out for your best given a number of in company politics and motives (especially if they're backed by certain big businesses). In other words, they aren't directly tied to your success.
So take their advice (if you need it), but tread lightly. Remember, analysts can provide insight, but they can't predict the future (no matter how many industry ties they have)
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Laugh. The only analyst material I have ever trusted is PCData; and only because the majority of their information is hard numbers.
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Presenting a straight detailed truth and presenting material for mass consumption are two entirely different beasts. CNN is good at what they do -- but they must reach a very wide target market and in so doing must make compromises that may make them seem:
a) stupid
b) sweeping stereotypists
c) not in the know
Remember, they have to sugar coat their material and present it in such a way that it is accepted by everyone.
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Very nice. I'm definitely going to have to install this distro on one of my workstations tommorow. Seems they're actually grinding down the sharp kludgy average end-user problems and turning out something (at least seemingly) polished. Maybe redhat will wake up now and top them :).
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I wonder if I'll be able to get that apart from their distro anytime soon. I'm sure their distro is nice, but what about us who already have debian with kde installed... I'm not going to go through all that just to get it.
I think the techrepublic review is correct in pointing out the install problems. The problem with linux is that it will be the second installed OS for the majority of users -- so they will have to refine the partitioning process as well as the initial bootup nuances. I really like how they have the bootup menu that boots directly into kde as well as the vga safe mode. Now all they have to do is design an *intuitive* graphics adapter, resolution and depth as well as a monitor frequency setup. Maybe they could compile a database of monitor types and models just like windows (or auto detect when possible) so that users won't have to worry about such things. Would be a lot of work, but it's probably well within Corels capabilities..
On a side note, their control interface looks exactly like a slightly modded kde one. I didn't really find it that useful except to gather system information. I could be wrong though, we'll have to see after I download it...
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4x processor with 4 ethernet cards is within this said market. Of course, these benchmarks are obviously just to point out linux scaling problems (which are valid).
Anyway, if they really wanted to show what NT could do comparable to others in that range, they would have compared IIS with a dell whatever to a compaq alphaserver running zeus. HP (who did the testing) have been able to achieve up to 9000-12000 rps using specWEB on comparable hardware, whereas NT has trouble. Also note that Zeus can handle 10,000+ domains with little degredation, whereas IIS can not (especially if they are IP based).
Some IBM tests have achieved 26,000 requests per second (15,000 higher than IIS could), but that was on zeus/AIX with 12 processors. Also note that in Linux case "This was demonstrated best when the Red Hat engineers ran the Zeus Web server. Zeus performance topped out at about the same place as Apache, using fewer resources". This problem is also evident on FreeBSD using zeus -- though the FreeBSD tcp/ip stack as is the overall system (on a general level) more tuned to higher loads and hence achieves 10-20% better results. The FreeBSD camp has similar problems with SMP performance.
Sun can obviously scale to these levels as well -- but their hardware is incredibly overpriced so they really shouldn't be included in such a case.
Are these benchmarks useful in real-world situations? Well, yes and no. First we must realize that there is a very limited client base for systems serving files over quad 100mbps ethernet adapters (or even gigabit ethernet). Think of how many companies even need this much bandwidth. There are some that do -- but then we realize that there is no major advantage in using a single monster machine to do this task. If a company can afford that much bandwidth, then they can also afford the rack space for a cluster of servers. Even if the bandwidth is in house, it just makes more sense to scale with clusters. The NT camp can argue that at the high end it is more useful -- but a cluster of FreeBSD or Linux machines running apache are a heck of a lot cheaper. As well, try hosting a large amount of IP based domains on IIS. You can't. Then we realize that vbscript (the usual pick with ASP) is only about 60% as fast as mod_perl (yes I know you can use perl on IIS as well). Then there's stability. Duh, how many times have we had to reboot NT servers or restart the IIS service to get it up and running again? I actually have to run a service to restart IIS when it stops responding -- and even then it can cause the machine to crash by running out of resources.
I'm as guilty as the next guy for quoting benchmarks to combat benchmarks -- but seriously, forget them. They are almost always biased. While the mindcraft tests are valid in proving that Linux has some scaling problems, they really don't translate well to the real world. Just ask yahoo or any other company using apache clusters running FreeBSD (which has similar scaling problems than linux). What about amazon.com? They've recently switched to apache. Do they not have a high amount of traffic as well as dynamic web pages? Will the target of these tests ever likely have a chance at building a site of such a size? Not likely. Mindcraft and Microsoft know that they can never include price or stability comparisons because they would always lose. In so doing, they lose any real world application. It's obvious this is just a blatant attack on Linux -- not an Operating Systems real world application. These test results succeed in what they were tailored for: to spread doubt. So even if they raise a valid point as to weaknesses in Linux, I question their validity.
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Well you know what it is full of? Textures and graphics. Non-3d games take up a ton of space with art. Granted, it will be 4 times larger than diablo (as claimed by blizzard), but diablo wasn't very large itself. Remember, this game is mindless point and click violence. I doubt there are going to be any difficult puzzles. The possiblity of a large number of redundant levels aside; It's nothing I can't tackle in a weekend.
Hopefully Diablo 2 will have more than three different armor types this time. If they had kept the game in 2d, but made the characters 3d, they would have virtually unlimited armor and weapon possibilities. Unfortunately since they've gone 2d again they will have to render each frame of animation which uses up a lot of space. It really is too bad that they didn't do the 3d because they could have had decent collision detection and monsters actually reacting to attacks instead of point, click, hit with reaction determined randomly. Though static 2d art looks pretty good, this type of engine shows its age. Thank god Warcraft III will be 3d.
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To the anonymous coward poster below:
I do. Bite me.
You shouldn't need anything more than a p100 to do network address translation and packet filtering. I have a p100 here that has an 11mbps wireless (line of sight) vpn connection to work. It also serves files over samba and collects connection information through snmp. It handles this quite well and the limit is most often the link speed (well that and the crappy weather up here in canada).
I also have a p200 on a cable modem and 96 megs of ram and it runs apache w/mod_perl and php3, qmail, snmp, delegate, ftp, ssh, samba and some remote x applications. Base NT with IIS is so bloated it could barely run (uses 48 megs of ram before even doing anything). Linux or *BSD is perfect for lower end hardware.
Again, I don't see why you can't run the firewall on the same box as the ftp and web box. This is of course unless you're completely out of memory (NT on 32 megs of ram is such a joke btw). As for processor speed, it should be able to take it as long as you dont have a ton of fast ftp sessions going (since most ftp daemons use a lot of processor for some reason).
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Don't worry. You can just do what I will do. Start playing it on a friday night and stop only to piss and eat (at the same time mind you). I can guarantee you will be finished by 10am sunday morning. From there you can sleep until 8am monday :).
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Wrong. The internet is not limited to just you and friends. People don't just trade files with people they know down the street. You may think you know someone, but be completely wrong.
You're also ignoring the fact that with IP, any system you connect to has to reveal its ip address. If you're just talking about a system of application proxies (which is an incredibly stupid idea since everyone would have to be a t1 or cable/dsl to waste their bandwidth to transfer through each other), all one has to do is get on one box and they will be able to find where the traffic is coming and going. All the feds would have to do is bust one guy, look at the current transfers and go bust the next guy. I'd hardly call that statistically safe. It in fact would decrease security by having more traffic transfer through these hosts which means they can grab more ip addresses.
Now if you were simply talking about simple point to point data transfer, you can always get IP addresses. If a transfer occurs, the IP is known. As well, encryption doesn't help one bit when the authorities are sitting there watching the files transfer over whatever application you have to transfer. It only prevents network sniffing of things such as plain text ftp commands.
In other words, a security system is only as powerful as the people involved. You may only share illegal files with the people you know, but the vast majority are sharing with people all around the world. Again, remember also that anyone can present themself as someone else online -- even your friends.
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I have realplayer G2. I run it on my freebsd box in linux emulation. It crashes a ton though (as it is an alpha).
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Of course, if tweaked right, apache + linux (or FreeBSD in my case) will scale to the utmost bandwidth limits. I run apache on a number of servers on 100mbps net links and they scale incredibly well. I/O (and processing power if server a large number of dynamic pages) are the real limits.
Of course, if you really want to push the limit; pick up Zeus webserver. It's multithreaded and has been proven to scale to the same levels IIS can. I've lost the page now, but incredibly high end benchmarks (talking 4-30 processors here) have shown that Zeus can consistently beat IIS. The current champion benchmark is an IBM machine with 12 processors (if i remember correctly). It handles 16,0000 more requests per second than IIS could. With the same amount of processors, the results were similar (but equally out there in terms of real world usability).
Of course, you can always forget that and set up an apache server farm. I run 3 on a 100mbps net link (with mod_perl and php3). This is with stock PII 400 + 512 megs of ram (2 gigs on the db server) and DPT Fibre channel raid.
Oh yeah; try hosting 6000 ip based chrooted user account domains on each box with database, php and perl access on IIS.
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Yes. As well as the fun involved in changing hardware around. Especially when it involves recompiling the kernel.
Video card setup should get better when XFree86 4.0 comes out (it already got better with 3.3.5).
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