At the ACM site Michael Stonebraker wrote an article titled "The "NoSQL" Discussion has Nothing to Do With SQL" where he discusses how the NoSQL group is solving real problems, but using a name.. that well.. really has nothing to do with the problems getting solved.
A few thoughts. I once talked to someone who has written a few computer books and the input I got was that she was not getting much from the books. She mentioned that what the books did help with was stablishing yourself as a subject matter expert so you could get paid more when doing consulting/work in the field you wrote.
To that regard one possibility may be to do nothing about the pirated copies and/or let your publisher deal with it.
I also recall reading recently comments from a couple of publishers (including the owner from stardock) who basically said you loose more trying to fight pirates than by worrying only about paying customers. There will always be people willing to download some material for free that they would never be willing to pay for.
There are companies creating devices using FreeBSD code who does not advertise their use of FreeBSD. I know that some SAN companies and load balancing companies do this.
Because of FreeBSD license they can do this and because of it, they will continue to have engineers work on FreeBSD.
This type of arrangemts almost guarantees that FreeBSD will stay around.. but not be as widely noticed because these companies have absolutely zero interest on anyone knowing that they are using FreeBSD to power their devices.
I have used FreeBSD for many years and it is still my prefered server OS. However, as virtualization usage grows I think FreeBSD will take a hit for not having any virtualization, other than jails, that can use FreeBSD as the host OS.
Large companies that go with a bare metal virtualization like VMware ESX will likely not be impacted, but small to medium businesses that don't want to or can't afford bare metal virtualization will end up having to use windows or Linux to virtualize. Once you start to use another OS, the need to simplify how many OSs you keep may make some simply drop FreeBSD.
Given that the original poster wrote that "reading" about the technologies involved, seems that perhaps he has no experience on doing this setup or he has limited experience, finding an ISP to host the site may be a viable solution.
As others have pointed out, it is not high volume so almost any ISP should be able to handle the work.
This will allow the poster to work on the systems/programs to present the data and not worry about the infrastructure.
http://www.adeptsoftware.com/jetpack Hours, upon hours of fun. Back in the day I paid for it, but it is now free. The download is less than 500KB. and there are many user contributed levels.
As 3/4 of a million of Warhammer Online users will attest, if a company comes out with a solid 1.0 people will buy it. Specially if there is a period of public beta where people can actualy test the product.
If you are getting interviews then the problem is not with the resume, but with the interview.
You may want to check with the school you went to if they have anyone that could help you.
Failing that, you may be able to find resources online with key points to remember on an interview.
Also, many companies do tend to think that anyone that is in tech support for 2 years is because they could not do better, so you may want to look for a small company to work for while you can add some other tittle to the resume.
Specially think of a small ISP, or one where they may let you do other projects in addition to tech support.
In general small companies will have you involved with much more than tech support, even if that is what you are hired for. Larger companies tend to be more specialized so if you get hired for position X, it is little harder to move.
Any small company will, but there may not be as much technology beyond support for you to do. With an ISP there is a higher chance of you getting non tech support tasks.. even on the smallest of ISPs.
Typical case of marketing pushing for something without first confirming with the engineers. The other second common problem is for marketting pushing for a product release before it is up to par.
This most commonly happen on organizations with a formal marketing deparment.
Although I am not clear from the article if they discovered problems with their new NT system during integration or during testing, but I found most it interesint that they decided to go with a system based on "vendor talk".
A number of vendors try to maximize profit by trying to sale the most expensive solution, not the one that is best for it's customers. Sadly, many customers fall for the bigger is better without asking questions about whether all the additional features have been properly tested and for how long they have been in production.
It also seems sarcastic that they chosed the OS version of the product from the OS which is known for not been able to fulfill it's promises.
After having been involved in several major migrations I think an oversimplification of what any migration should have is:
Evaluation of needs
Research what product can satisfy those needs
A parallel production
A way to go running back to the old system in case the new one doesn't work
From the interview I gather they "may" (if they actually used it for production) have overlooked at their "true" needs and gone with what the vendor convinced them they needed.
Compaq makes a big part of their income, if not most, from selling hardware. Software is mostly a means to an end for them. In this regard they try to use software to try help sales of their equipment.
My feeling is that they are probably testing the waters and see how to best use this technology to their advantage. Unless someone shows them how they will sell more computers by making this open source I think it is unlikely they will change the licensing.
It is also very possible that Linux companies (i.e. Red Hat, Caldera..) will eventually approach Compaq and try to license the technology.
We at times forget that companies like compaq are in business to MAXIMISE profit. One way this can be accomplish by companies of the size of compaq is to try to use as much as possible from one's internal resources (i.e. parts) as long as one can produce them at a competitive price.
When Compaq bought Digital some time back it did so with several purposes. Ignoring all the patents, research teams and support infrastructure and concentrating in manufacturing there are a few things worth noting. By having it's own architecture Compaq can have more control on what it can do. Also the Alpha's have been known to have a good architecture. In particular Compaq had little in terms of the Unix market which traditionally has always carried greater margins than PCs.
Digital also had it's own Unix which compaq can borrow code from.
By offering more support to Linux Compaq is simply trying to position itself as a premiere hardware vendor for the platform. It could also be said that perhaps they have a good understanding of the invaluable asset which is mindshare.
Maybe so many years of coding have made me biased, but the few times I have had to help some friends with scheme did not made me appreciate it a bit.
In particular I found the syntax got too much in the way.
From what I gathered in the comments (have not read the article) this is for intro to programming and most likely won't get too much into complex issues. Syntax can aid or be an obstacle. In the case of scheme and the C family of languages for that matter, syntax seems more of a roadblock than an aid.
Given the increase use of computers in most societies it would be helpful for kids to be involved with them.
Athough I have not read this plan I think it misses one important point. There are still many schools with no computers. There should be first and foremost a plan in trying to have computers available to most kids.
After most schools have computers even BEFORE they try to teach programming they should theach the basics of using a computer including some sort of suite, specially now that there are a few free ones, in particular word processing, database and a spreadsheet.
As for programming I agree with others that they should use pseudo code first and teach concepts. Once one knows concepts the rest is just a matter of syntax.
There are a number of reasons why Linux is more popular. I don't have any experience/exposure to Net/Open so I will write based on my FreeBSD experience. A few of the reasons are:
-- Either by choice or by luck FreeBSD was originally seen as a Server OS. Most attention was on making fast and efficient. It was not until relatively recent that any meaninful attempts were made to make it easier to use.
The result of that was that people using it were more concerned with performance than usability. This further pushed the developers in favor of performance over usability since this was what the user base demanded and their reason to use FreeBSD.
-- Because there is a "core" team that either implements new code or reviews it before it makes it to the OS there have not been emphasis on making it easy to contribute code/man pages/documentation.
This is becoming easier and there are "projects" that make contributing easier (i.e. the documentation project), but FreeBSD still has a long way to go in terms of facilitating the work of volunteers.
Many people have been discouraged from trying to help, out of fustration on the hurdless they needed to overcome in order to help. These hurldess were(are?) mostly lack of documentation on how to contribute and lack of tools.
The perfect example is the FreeBSD "Handbook".. the official online manual for FreeBSD. This Handbook is done with SGML and for someone to help with it the would first need to figure out/install the tools and then deal with SGML. Last time I tried to help with documentation there was barely enough info on what tools to get and even less in terms of SGML documentation.
-- Marketting. Walnut Creek, Freebsd Inc, BSDI.. have done limited marketting in traditional media. BSDI probably are the ones that have done the most, yet most people don't even know who they are.
Slashdot Mirror
At the ACM site Michael Stonebraker wrote an article titled "The "NoSQL" Discussion has Nothing to Do With SQL" where he discusses how the NoSQL group is solving real problems, but using a name.. that well.. really has nothing to do with the problems getting solved.
http://cacm.acm.org/blogs/blog-cacm/50678-the-nosql-discussion-has-nothing-to-do-with-sql/fulltext
For anyone not familiar with Stonebreaker..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Stonebraker
Great article from someone who truly knows what he is talking about.
A few thoughts.
I once talked to someone who has written a few computer books and the input I got was that she was not getting much from the books. She mentioned that what the books did help with was stablishing yourself as a subject matter expert so you could get paid more when doing consulting/work in the field you wrote.
To that regard one possibility may be to do nothing about the pirated copies and/or let your publisher deal with it.
I also recall reading recently comments from a couple of publishers (including the owner from stardock) who basically said you loose more trying to fight pirates than by worrying only about paying customers. There will always be people willing to download some material for free that they would never be willing to pay for.
There are companies creating devices using FreeBSD code who does not advertise their use of FreeBSD. I know that some SAN companies and load balancing companies do this.
Because of FreeBSD license they can do this and because of it, they will continue to have engineers work on FreeBSD.
This type of arrangemts almost guarantees that FreeBSD will stay around.. but not be as widely noticed because these companies have absolutely zero interest on anyone knowing that they are using FreeBSD to power their devices.
I have used FreeBSD for many years and it is still my prefered server OS. However, as virtualization usage grows I think FreeBSD will take a hit for not having any virtualization, other than jails, that can use FreeBSD as the host OS.
Large companies that go with a bare metal virtualization like VMware ESX will likely not be impacted, but small to medium businesses that don't want to or can't afford bare metal virtualization will end up having to use windows or Linux to virtualize. Once you start to use another OS, the need to simplify how many OSs you keep may make some simply drop FreeBSD.
Given that the original poster wrote that "reading" about the technologies involved, seems that perhaps he has no experience on doing this setup or he has limited experience, finding an ISP to host the site may be a viable solution.
As others have pointed out, it is not high volume so almost any ISP should be able to handle the work.
This will allow the poster to work on the systems/programs to present the data and not worry about the infrastructure.
http://www.adeptsoftware.com/jetpack
Hours, upon hours of fun.
Back in the day I paid for it, but it is now free.
The download is less than 500KB. and there are many user contributed levels.
One reason to still use CD/DVD is to easily keep different copies of a file with reduced risk of ALL data getting lost at once.
A HD may easily become a single point of failure.
Example:
Say you have 2 drives.
Drive A - Current data
Drive B - Backup data with multiple versions.
If drive B dies you potentially loose all your backups at ONCE.
For very important files a combo of HD and CD/DVD (or a cloud service) probably produces the best protection with relatively ease of maintenance.
As 3/4 of a million of Warhammer Online users will attest, if a company comes out with a solid 1.0 people will buy it. Specially if there is a period of public beta where people can actualy test the product.
If you are getting interviews then the problem is not with the resume, but with the interview.
You may want to check with the school you went to if they have anyone that could help you.
Failing that, you may be able to find resources online with key points to remember on an interview.
Also, many companies do tend to think that anyone that is in tech support for 2 years is because they could not do better, so you may want to look for a small company to work for while you can add some other tittle to the resume.
Specially think of a small ISP, or one where they may let you do other projects in addition to tech support.
In general small companies will have you involved with much more than tech support, even if that is what you are hired for. Larger companies tend to be more specialized so if you get hired for position X, it is little harder to move.
Any small company will, but there may not be as much technology beyond support for you to do. With an ISP there is a higher chance of you getting non tech support tasks.. even on the smallest of ISPs.
Typical case of marketing pushing for something without first confirming with the engineers. The other second common problem is for marketting pushing for a product release before it is up to par.
This most commonly happen on organizations with a formal marketing deparment.
A number of vendors try to maximize profit by trying to sale the most expensive solution, not the one that is best for it's customers. Sadly, many customers fall for the bigger is better without asking questions about whether all the additional features have been properly tested and for how long they have been in production.
It also seems sarcastic that they chosed the OS version of the product from the OS which is known for not been able to fulfill it's promises.
After having been involved in several major migrations I think an oversimplification of what any migration should have is:
Evaluation of needs
Research what product can satisfy those needs
A parallel production
A way to go running back to the old system in case the new one doesn't work
From the interview I gather they "may" (if they actually used it for production) have overlooked at their "true" needs and gone with what the vendor convinced them they needed.
Compaq makes a big part of their income, if not most, from selling hardware. Software is mostly a means to an end for them. In this regard they try to use software to try help sales of their equipment.
My feeling is that they are probably testing the waters and see how to best use this technology to their advantage. Unless someone shows them how they will sell more computers by making this open source I think it is unlikely they will change the licensing.
It is also very possible that Linux companies (i.e. Red Hat, Caldera..) will eventually approach Compaq and try to license the technology.
We at times forget that companies like compaq are in business to MAXIMISE profit. One way this can be accomplish by companies of the size of compaq is to try to use as much as possible from one's internal resources (i.e. parts) as long as one can produce them at a competitive price.
When Compaq bought Digital some time back it did so with several purposes. Ignoring all the patents, research teams and support infrastructure and concentrating in manufacturing there are a few things worth noting.
By having it's own architecture Compaq can have more control on what it can do. Also the Alpha's have been known to have a good architecture. In particular Compaq had little in terms of the Unix market which traditionally has always carried greater margins than PCs.
Digital also had it's own Unix which compaq can borrow code from.
By offering more support to Linux Compaq is simply trying to position itself as a premiere hardware vendor for the platform. It could also be said that perhaps they have a good understanding of the invaluable asset which is mindshare.
Maybe so many years of coding have made me biased, but the few times I have had to help some friends with scheme did not made me appreciate it a bit.
In particular I found the syntax got too much in the way.
From what I gathered in the comments (have not read the article) this is for intro to programming and most likely won't get too much into complex issues. Syntax can aid or be an obstacle. In the case of scheme and the C family of languages for that matter, syntax seems more of a roadblock than an aid.
Given the increase use of computers in most societies it would be helpful for kids to be involved with them.
Athough I have not read this plan I think it misses one important point. There are still many schools with no computers. There should be first and foremost a plan in trying to have computers available to most kids.
After most schools have computers even BEFORE they try to teach programming they should theach the basics of using a computer including some sort of suite, specially now that there are a few free ones, in particular word processing, database and a spreadsheet.
As for programming I agree with others that they should use pseudo code first and teach concepts. Once one knows concepts the rest is just a matter of syntax.
How does one go about writing for your company?
Is topic selection open or are there a set or topics you would accept?
How often are books revised? Open to the author?
There are a number of reasons why Linux is more popular. I don't have any experience/exposure to Net/Open so I will write based on my FreeBSD experience. A few of the reasons are:
-- Either by choice or by luck FreeBSD was originally seen as a Server OS. Most attention was on making fast and efficient. It was not until relatively recent that any meaninful attempts were made to make it easier to use.
The result of that was that people using it were more concerned with performance than usability. This further pushed the developers in favor of performance over usability since this was what the user base demanded and their reason to use FreeBSD.
-- Because there is a "core" team that either implements new code or reviews it before it makes it to the OS there have not been emphasis on making it easy to contribute code/man pages/documentation.
This is becoming easier and there are "projects" that make contributing easier (i.e. the documentation project), but FreeBSD still has a long way to go in terms of facilitating the work of volunteers.
Many people have been discouraged from trying to help, out of fustration on the hurdless they needed to overcome in order to help. These hurldess were(are?) mostly lack of documentation on how to contribute and lack of tools.
The perfect example is the FreeBSD "Handbook".. the official online manual for FreeBSD. This Handbook is done with SGML and for someone to help with it the would first need to figure out/install the tools and then deal with SGML. Last time I tried to help with documentation there was barely enough info on what tools to get and even less in terms of SGML documentation.
-- Marketting. Walnut Creek, Freebsd Inc, BSDI.. have done limited marketting in traditional media. BSDI probably are the ones that have done the most, yet most people don't even know who they are.