Reminds me of the "Amber Alert". Noble enough intentions, but the almost daily alerts made it offensive. Now we're down to 1 or 2 a week. Still annoying. And they're still working on reducing it.
I couldn't imagine getting DHS texts every week, and having my cell account charged. That would suck.
Late term abortions - know anyone that had one on a lark?
There's cases of hydro-encephaly where there no "brain" to speak of, and other severe birth defects. Should those be delivered (possibly via C-section since they may not fit through the birth canal) at great risk to the mother (yes, that's the woman involved here) only to die moments or agonizing weeks or months after birth? With potentially huge medical bills?
Oh wait, you can also refuse medical treatment. Now there's something you should really watch.
I find euthanasia much more humane in those situations.
You're correct that you can copy things out of iTunes and iPhoto. However, Spotlight will let you find the folder that the file you're looking for is in, so that, in the case of iPhoto, you can also copy the original(s).
For iTunes, this does not apply, and almost everything you need can be done from iTunes. Except, of course, if you're sharing your library in which case that store by artist/album feature will do the trick. What version of iTunes did that come out with?
I guess I'm just impatient then.;) My 2.4GHz P4 is just too slow for my liking while processing video.
Actually, I forgot to mention 1 other item that may get folks to buy new hardware - an HD HTPC. That is an application that doesn't necessarily require top of the line CPUs, but it does require some other hardware, and getting it all to work together is harder than it should be at the moment. This would be for a system that actually does what a consumer would want it to do, and do it simply.
As for the newest version of the VLK, I'm not familiar with those, but I'd be seriously surprised if they were able to "force" upgrades on, say, someone like the government, IBM, HP, or any other large customer. Maybe those corps are grandfathered on existing VLKs, and this only applies to new customers? If so, another reason Linux/Macs may be making headway.
Gamers and those into photo/video editing will benefit from newer CPU hardware. All those in your list don't require anything other than the equivalent of a "base" PC today. Those $100 laptops are looking better all the time for these folks. Another year or two, and those will be just perfect for them.
The thing that will get people to buy a new PC is voice or writing activated tablet type PCs, and maybe not even then.
The "Keep my iTunes Folder Organized" option contains the following text right under it and isn't checked by default:
Places song files into album and artist folders, and names the files based on the disc number, track number, and the song title.
Not exactly a confusing option (although the font used to display the description is a little on the small size).
I don't believe it had that back when I did this the first time. BTW, "manage" does not, to me at least, indicate that it should move files. It was tersely stated as "manage your files" and that was it. Manage is an ambiguous term that can mean any number of things, like the afore mentioned ID3 tagging or importing new files.
iTunes most certainly will move files. If you point to your top level MP3 directory which is nicely organized by artist and albums as your library, and tell iTunes to manage your files, those files will all disappear into iTunes god-forsaken organizational system. It appears to be similar to iPhoto's organization, which makes sense from a programmers perspective, but not from a user perspective.
Both those programs fail horribly in file organization from a user perspective. Now, on a Mac, with Spotlight, this isn't a killer. Then again, on a Mac, you learn to do things slightly differently not that this excuses the file system fiasco. For instance, let's say I want to back up my photos in roll 'x'. Well, you can copy them from within iPhoto to a CD/DVD and burn them, or copy them to another directory via a Finder window. But neither of these methodologies will do a full copy of everything relating to the "roll", including originals of edits made. For that, you get to dive into the file system with finder. Yeah, fun.
The real question is whether the commonly known way (ie, Windows) is really the "right" way. After using a Mac for the past 1.5 years while concurrently running multiple windows systems, my answer is that windows needs to change. (Vista is a massive change, but probably not in the right direction)
I'm going to cut this down, as I'm not sure you're even going to read it, but there's always a chance.:)
"Second, RAID 5 with 8 disks is certainly faster than RAID 0 or RAID 10 with less than 6 equivalent disks"
If this is true of your setup, then there is something deeply wrong with your controller setup.
Either you have a controller with a fast cpu and lots of cache + really really poor disks, or it doesn't really do raid 10.
Why yes, I do have controllers with buttloads of cache AND a fast CPU. Why would I run enterprise systems on the cheap?
You missed the point. for this to be true, your disks have to be truly awfull, way way out of scale to the controller.
Actually, I didn't miss the point. If your controller is fast enough that you don't notice the parity calculation happening, then there won't be any effects to notice. Then it becomes an issue of speed. 7 actual writing drives (RAID5 with 8 disks) out-perform 6 writing drives as long as the channels aren't saturated. (On SCSI controllers. I acknowledge complete ignorance on the actual internals including backplanes on new SATA/IDE/Fibre controllers, but the numbers are telling me it's not good - your given numbers that is. We'll get to that.)
BTW, I agree with most, if not all, of your comments on RAID 10. If money is no object, RAID 10 is the way to go. I will make this one statement though, if you're seeing 80% degradation of performance during a RAID 5 disk rebuild, your controller sucks. 50% is bad. 30% is about the max acceptable.
This never happens anymore. Even pc's are getting 533 -1000 MB/s on the pci/pcix, and thats our of scale of even 4G fibre.
1 SCSI 2-4 channel card meets the 500 MB/s easily. Latency is much lower than a fibre network. Always has been. Multiple cards increase bandwidth greatly, much like additional cards/ports.
Lots of enterprise class people are running fibre attached sata nowadays. Some business just can't see paying $1500 more for a drive to get that extra 15%
Now, here's where fibre is better - large flexible storage accessed by multiple machines. However, show me where fibre is cheaper than SCSI. 10K SATA drives cost as much or more than 10K SCSI drives. There are no 15K SATA drives. SATA/Fibre controllers, last time I checked just a month or so ago, were as much or more than a decent SCSI controller. The only thing fibre allows is multiple connected systems and easier management. (These are big issues, but again, it depends upon what your system is designed for - pure performance - fibre isn't that hard to beat. Pure performance on large multi-terrabyte arrays, things start to become more interesting. I haven't delved into that recently enough to comment on the latest state of the art, but SATA fell far short 2 years ago)
Now here's another set of stats: in 97 I spent roughly $10M on hardware for my organization, and about $400M by direction in associated organizations. In 2000, I spent another $2M personally, and by direction roughly $50M. In 2002, I spent another $1M by direction. Roughly 25-50% of that number was for storage. Each system was sized to support a minimum of 1K concurrent users.
At another job, we ran with 35K concurrent users.
We used SCSI RAID in all cases.
As for my discussion previously about mirrors in RAID 10 (or just RAID 1) existing on a single controller - if the mirror exists across 2 controllers, your performance goes to shit. Striping can exist across multiple controllers without too much effect, though. Again, this assumes a half-way worth a crap controller.
"your controller/array can handle the bandwidth, your system will never know the difference"
Then again, its a web browser. You can turn it off once in a while.
That's not really an excuse though is it... Hey, no need to fix memory leaks in Windows, it's only an OS, you can reboot it every so often...:) Shutting stuff down in order to work around a bug is a horrible and very annoying kludge.
This is more akin to installing driver/module 'x' into your os kernel, and it causes a leak. The real answer is to uninstall the problem extension(s). This is not a problem with FF. You can configure the cache settings specifically in the about:config page to shrink FF's memory footprint down, if you want to. I agree this could be a slightly more user friendly process.
I've had FF running for months at a time. It rarely exceeds 150MB, and I do have quite a few extensions loaded. If one starts giving me problems (ForecastFox) it gets unloaded and life returns to normal. BTW, Tab Mix Plus rocks. Don't know about stability issues with it, and there seems to be a hesitation with Ctrl-W closing a tab now, but haven't tracked that down to Tab Mix Plus yet.
There's nothing wrong with that, but I design HA linux clusters, and have been testing and specing storage subsystems for 15 years.
Well then - we're in the same ballpark. However, I'm not a pedantic asshole, err, bastard.
So, let's take you to school:
Lets see...
"--- very fast devices at both ends. This generally means RAID 0, 5, 6 or some combination thereof like 50 or 60.
Raid 10 is more for redundancy in case a disk dies than performance"
Nope, no speed by sequence there.
Let's see - I dropped RAID 3,4,30, and 40. Guess what, they're generally not used anymore. (Note - for your pedanticness, in general, ie, normally, ie, not specific use cases, they're not used anymore. I just hit someone's comma's in a sentence limit.) This is just a natural sequencing of numbers there.
"Second, RAID 5 with 8 disks is certainly faster than RAID 0 or RAID 10 with less than 6 equivalent disks"
If this is true of your setup, then there is something deeply wrong with your controller setup. Either you have a controller with a fast cpu and lots of cache + really really poor disks, or it doesn't really do raid 10.
Why yes, I do have controllers with buttloads of cache AND a fast CPU. Why would I run enterprise systems on the cheap?
"I have owned about 8 different types, although none from the last 2-3 years - ie, IDE/SATA)" Ok, now I'm getting the picture, you are a Hobbyist.
Not exactly, I dropped out of enterprise system hardware support about 5 years ago. Since then, I checked out the initial set of IDE RAID cards, and discovered they still didn't overcome issue #1 with IDE - namely, multiple I/O. This means IDE of any flavor sucks for performance. They're great as mass store devices though.
"RAID 6 would require a minimum of 5 drives"
Sorry, its only 4
That's true. Raid 5 only requires 3. Raid 5 with 3 drives, or raid 6 with 4, will suck eggs and isn't recommended. It's kinda like running windows with a minimum configuration - it'll work, but it will suck. Even with 4 and 5 drives respectively, it won't be great.
"As long as the controller can process faster than the I/O feed rate and your controller/array can handle the bandwidth, your system will never know the difference"
This statement isn't even wrong. Um... go back to school, or if my guess is right, start.
I'm guessing you had nothing sarcastic to comment on because it was beyond you. Perhaps DeVry really wasn't all it was cracked up to be?
"RAID0 is the fastest, on a single channel"
only the truly desperate use more than on drive per channel in PATA
Oh, I see. We're still in the wanna be professional arena: SATA/PATA. In case you didn't catch it above, IDE(PATA)/SATA suck.
SCSI is still where it's at, and RAID0 on a single SCSI channel works just fine and certainly isn't a sign of desperation. Perhaps you should start studying for the true enterprise league? After all, if you're claiming to represent enterprise customers and selling them PATA/SATA for performance, you're a fraud.
Um.. only raids 3 4 and "7" do the "just writing parity" to the other drive scenario Raid's 5 and 6 stripe the data and parity, with 6 striping 2 sets of parity. which is always going to write ~equally to the drives, and have more overhead than simple mirror and stripe, which is what raid 10 is.
I'm well aware of what RAID 0,1,3,4,5,6,10,0+1,30,40,50, and 60 do. Probably more so than you by what's becoming evident in this posting.
Let's first put aside the question of whether software is a license or a product. We'll say it's a license since you've bought into that. I tend to disagree, and that discussion follows.
I own the license. It's paid for. Therefore, I "own" the software, at least as far as the law allows me to. The law does not allow me to make copies and sell them, for instance. I also don't believe the law allows MS to deprive me of a legally obtained license either, except for under the terms of the license. Personally, I think MS is in a world of hurt if they ever try this (which I should say is doubtful).
Now, for the license/product discussion. MS could make it a license if they leased me a product, like, say, I could only lease my PC from MS or its "certified" vendors. Since I don't, and I own my hardware, that's null and void. You don't "license" a DVD or CD. You own it. Just like a book. The license bit is like a rental DVD. In that case, you don't own the DVD, you just pay to use it. Some programs that follow this "new" convention are Norton AV and McAfee AV. They both "sell" you the product, but the updates making it useful are a 1 year service, or the "license" part.
As an aside, I'm very happy McAfee/Norton work that way, because it provided the prodding I required to remove that POS from my system.
You're missing the point - the original EULA I agreed to didn't include anything regarding WGA or turning my system off. I never agreed to load arbitrary software. Actually, I didn't agree to running Windows Update either. Therefore I shut it off. I also never agreed to having my system online, ever. So exactly how are they going to win? Or shut my system down?
First, I didn't intend to convey speed by sequence. Second, RAID 5 with 8 disks is certainly faster than RAID 0 or RAID 10 with less than 6 equivalent disks. (8 is the max supported in a single array on my controllers, and I have owned about 8 different types, although none from the last 2-3 years - ie, IDE/SATA)
Another item - RAID 1 is faster than a single drive for reads, if your controller supports "striped" reading off a mirror. Second, RAID5 with 3 disks is dog-slow, but this really depends upon your controller. High end controllers can, and do, offload most of this type of processing so the system never sees the RAID5 effects unless the I/O load increases to a point the buffer no longer can handle the load. (This implies that write back cache is enabled)
RAID 6 would require a minimum of 5 drives, and again, it depends upon your controller. As long as the controller can process faster than the I/O feed rate and your controller/array can handle the bandwidth, your system will never know the difference.
Now, if you're comparing specific numbers of drives and channels, it becomes interesting. RAID0 is the fastest, on a single channel, RAID 10 can actually be slower than RAID5 or 6. This has to do with duplicating every write call vs just writing parity. 6 should be the same as 10 for 4 drives on a single channel, unless you're running the cheapest controller ever.
He's finding out that hard drives move data at a fraction of their stated max speed when moving large amounts of data. The only way you're going to fill up a FW channel to its capacity is to have very fast devices at both ends. This generally means RAID 0, 5, 6 or some combination thereof like 50 or 60. Raid 10 is more for redundancy in case a disk dies than performance, I mention it for completeness and to support its use over straight RAID0 for the uninitiated.
Think about this - the copy of XP I have came without WGA - I never agreed to use it (and since I long ago disabled windows update as part of securing XP, I don't have this issue anyways:). So, since WGA significantly alters the EULA and the original software, I don't see how MS has a leg to stand on.
You don't have to be EIT nor have a Professional Engineering License to be an "Engineer". Only certain careers require those. Many others do not, including some very lucrative ones. I happened to be in one where the EIT etc was worthless and stopped pursuing the PE. Turns out to have been a good choice for me, as a PE would have been worthless to me at this point.
You wouldn't want to disillusion people of the fact that engineers cannot write...;)
and I too started life as an ME. I did composite structures R&D, including experimentation. It involved lots of programming to do the analysis, which is how I segued into the world of programming. I also took a minor detour into System, Network, and Security Architecture for a few years.
There's tons of code monkeys out there that range from inept to brilliant. None are engineers. Sadly enough, our educational system, when it comes to computer science, is severely lacking in almost all facets relating to "Science", although they cover the keyboard well enough. Personally, I wouldn't be nearly as strong in my analytical and design abilities if it were not for my ME background.
There's a small group of folks out there that actually have the capability to logically analyze and design systems (software and/or hardware) that truly are engineers. These same folks are also the ones that I would call architects.
Now, if you believe that there is no engineering or architecture to be had in the software and systems worlds, I'd say you just haven't run into a large enough problem that required that type of approach, or you had the displeasure to work with the above mentioned code monkeys. Additionally, much of the CE and EE world is merely "designing by cookbook", not all that much different than being a code monkey. I cringe when some of those folks are called "engineers" as well. I especially cringe when I meet an Architect (in the civil sense) who doesn't have the slightest idea what fatigue is and presents some slender building artifice that would sway in the slightest wind. (See the Tacoma Narrows Bridge for the classic example, or the Hyatt Regency in Chicago for something even more straightforward and wholly the fault of the Architect, IMHO)
Heck, my home network contains more engineering skill than many small to medium and some large businesses. (And I should know, having worked for some that failed in all ways to properly design their interfaces to the internet, among many many other failures.)
I'll end this with the observation that I believe one of two things will occur in the programming world: either real programmers will have to be licensed (doubtful) or the dev tools for typical project will become so simple to use that programmers will no longer be needed in large numbers, as BA's and business owners will be able to do what they need themselves. In either case, I see a world where "code monkeys" will find fewer and fewer jobs.
Ahh, the wonderful memories. The days when the net had a signal:noise ratio that was bearable, even in USENET groups like talk.abortion and talk.origins. The days when USENET numbered under 1000 groups. The day the net began its transformation to the "intarweb": when AOL connected to USENET. Bleah.
I missed punch cards by 1 semester in college, and I still wave thrushes daily that I had the priviledge of working on VT100s.
As for =5 digit/. accounts, if I could only find out what my original account was... after all, I predate/. by quite a bit.:) Unfortunately, none of my email addresses from that time are functioning at this point.:(
The fact that OpenBSD has been around longer is irrelevent. The relevent part of the 'IE6 has been around too long' is the fact that its development stopped. If you stopped development of OpenBSD, you WILL find more and more holes than if you keep developing it.
Actually, given software development history and statistics, your statement is wrong on three counts:
IE 6 development has not exactly stopped. New development has, but there have been plenty of patches released. See XP SP2 for the patch that broke much functionality with IE 6.
According to everything out there, new development results in new/additional bugs. New development almost never reduces bugs, especially since new development generally focuses on, surprise, new code. Thus you get the aggregate of all the existing bugs, and those in the new code. According to something I read recently but don't have the link to anymore, a supposedly sr programmer will have 1 bug in every 10 lines of code. I don't believe that. I don't even believe the 1 in 100 lines, but can accept that more readily.
OpenBSD has parts that haven't been developed in ages. Take the SSH daemon, with it's well-publicized exploit recently that was patched in short order. It's been around forever, is a standard of all *nix installations, and it's had, I believe, only 1 exploit in something like 10 years.
Not really; OpenBSD mostly deals with trusted requests. IE (and any browser really) takes data from unknown sources and tries to parse it. Let OpenBSD's kernel accept commands from any computer on teh internet, and I bet it would be comprimised pretty quickly too.
A non-sequitor. Generic client requests are the primary function of most OpenBSD systems, as they are servers. *nix installations work in some of the most untrustworthy environments you could possibly create. Why would OpenBSD open the kernel to direct access? That's stupid. The fact that IE does this on MS OSes....
No, the reason they are going after Windows is because they just want the maxium number of computers to take over. They don't give one flying fuck about unix boxes. Unix boxes aren't the 'actual target.'
Trust me, most of those script kiddies would give their left nut and their botnets for direct access to a unix box. Well, ok, not the ones that merely want to brag about the size of their.... If you don't believe that, that's fine. Most admins would be fine if hackers merely did botnets. DDOS can be blocked, and routinely is, by those that know what they're doing and have the resources. Some site in England was non-responsive for about 5s during a daylong DDOS with at least 100K machines. It's another story also reported on/. I'm too lazy to search for. Something about script kiddies and the script kiddie culture. What was funny is the guy reporting on it used the DDOS to track how many compromised machines were out there, including their IPs. I think he also did a survey to see what OSes they were running.
We can disagree on this all day long, I will not have anything more substantive than the above to add.
Let me leave with this last thought: the value of a hacked Unix server is that you own it and all its data. You can leave a back door and take it down at will with a special corrupted command that would be extremely difficult to spot, leaving the system open to extortion forever. Botnets can be tracked and blocked.
And lastly, if MS was truly concerned about safety, they'd remove the server service and make it a special install. They'd also create a file sharing service for local networks only for home users. Those 2 changes would block almost all internet worms. Then rewrite an HTML rendering engine that only renders HTML, and use that as the common component across IE/Office/etc blocking that vector and most of their outright security exploits would be solved. You can't stop users from doing stupid crap, but at least the built-in backdoors that require no user intervention would be shut.
Slashdot Mirror
Reminds me of the "Amber Alert". Noble enough intentions, but the almost daily alerts made it offensive. Now we're down to 1 or 2 a week. Still annoying. And they're still working on reducing it.
I couldn't imagine getting DHS texts every week, and having my cell account charged. That would suck.
Late term abortions - know anyone that had one on a lark?
There's cases of hydro-encephaly where there no "brain" to speak of, and other severe birth defects. Should those be delivered (possibly via C-section since they may not fit through the birth canal) at great risk to the mother (yes, that's the woman involved here) only to die moments or agonizing weeks or months after birth? With potentially huge medical bills?
Oh wait, you can also refuse medical treatment. Now there's something you should really watch.
I find euthanasia much more humane in those situations.
You're correct that you can copy things out of iTunes and iPhoto. However, Spotlight will let you find the folder that the file you're looking for is in, so that, in the case of iPhoto, you can also copy the original(s).
For iTunes, this does not apply, and almost everything you need can be done from iTunes. Except, of course, if you're sharing your library in which case that store by artist/album feature will do the trick. What version of iTunes did that come out with?
I guess I'm just impatient then. ;) My 2.4GHz P4 is just too slow for my liking while processing video.
Actually, I forgot to mention 1 other item that may get folks to buy new hardware - an HD HTPC. That is an application that doesn't necessarily require top of the line CPUs, but it does require some other hardware, and getting it all to work together is harder than it should be at the moment. This would be for a system that actually does what a consumer would want it to do, and do it simply.
NT4 and 2K included workstations as well.
As for the newest version of the VLK, I'm not familiar with those, but I'd be seriously surprised if they were able to "force" upgrades on, say, someone like the government, IBM, HP, or any other large customer. Maybe those corps are grandfathered on existing VLKs, and this only applies to new customers? If so, another reason Linux/Macs may be making headway.
That's why NT4's life-cycle was extended twice, and 2K is still running?
Gamers and those into photo/video editing will benefit from newer CPU hardware. All those in your list don't require anything other than the equivalent of a "base" PC today. Those $100 laptops are looking better all the time for these folks. Another year or two, and those will be just perfect for them.
The thing that will get people to buy a new PC is voice or writing activated tablet type PCs, and maybe not even then.
I don't believe it had that back when I did this the first time. BTW, "manage" does not, to me at least, indicate that it should move files. It was tersely stated as "manage your files" and that was it. Manage is an ambiguous term that can mean any number of things, like the afore mentioned ID3 tagging or importing new files.
iTunes most certainly will move files. If you point to your top level MP3 directory which is nicely organized by artist and albums as your library, and tell iTunes to manage your files, those files will all disappear into iTunes god-forsaken organizational system. It appears to be similar to iPhoto's organization, which makes sense from a programmers perspective, but not from a user perspective.
Both those programs fail horribly in file organization from a user perspective. Now, on a Mac, with Spotlight, this isn't a killer. Then again, on a Mac, you learn to do things slightly differently not that this excuses the file system fiasco. For instance, let's say I want to back up my photos in roll 'x'. Well, you can copy them from within iPhoto to a CD/DVD and burn them, or copy them to another directory via a Finder window. But neither of these methodologies will do a full copy of everything relating to the "roll", including originals of edits made. For that, you get to dive into the file system with finder. Yeah, fun.
The real question is whether the commonly known way (ie, Windows) is really the "right" way. After using a Mac for the past 1.5 years while concurrently running multiple windows systems, my answer is that windows needs to change. (Vista is a massive change, but probably not in the right direction)
Actually, I didn't miss the point. If your controller is fast enough that you don't notice the parity calculation happening, then there won't be any effects to notice. Then it becomes an issue of speed. 7 actual writing drives (RAID5 with 8 disks) out-perform 6 writing drives as long as the channels aren't saturated. (On SCSI controllers. I acknowledge complete ignorance on the actual internals including backplanes on new SATA/IDE/Fibre controllers, but the numbers are telling me it's not good - your given numbers that is. We'll get to that.)
BTW, I agree with most, if not all, of your comments on RAID 10. If money is no object, RAID 10 is the way to go. I will make this one statement though, if you're seeing 80% degradation of performance during a RAID 5 disk rebuild, your controller sucks. 50% is bad. 30% is about the max acceptable.
1 SCSI 2-4 channel card meets the 500 MB/s easily. Latency is much lower than a fibre network. Always has been. Multiple cards increase bandwidth greatly, much like additional cards/ports.
Now, here's where fibre is better - large flexible storage accessed by multiple machines. However, show me where fibre is cheaper than SCSI. 10K SATA drives cost as much or more than 10K SCSI drives. There are no 15K SATA drives. SATA/Fibre controllers, last time I checked just a month or so ago, were as much or more than a decent SCSI controller. The only thing fibre allows is multiple connected systems and easier management. (These are big issues, but again, it depends upon what your system is designed for - pure performance - fibre isn't that hard to beat. Pure performance on large multi-terrabyte arrays, things start to become more interesting. I haven't delved into that recently enough to comment on the latest state of the art, but SATA fell far short 2 years ago)
Now here's another set of stats: in 97 I spent roughly $10M on hardware for my organization, and about $400M by direction in associated organizations. In 2000, I spent another $2M personally, and by direction roughly $50M. In 2002, I spent another $1M by direction. Roughly 25-50% of that number was for storage. Each system was sized to support a minimum of 1K concurrent users.
At another job, we ran with 35K concurrent users.
We used SCSI RAID in all cases.
As for my discussion previously about mirrors in RAID 10 (or just RAID 1) existing on a single controller - if the mirror exists across 2 controllers, your performance goes to shit. Striping can exist across multiple controllers without too much effect, though. Again, this assumes a half-way worth a crap controller.
/. was not accepting my post last night. I have a response ready @ home. Will post tonight.
This is more akin to installing driver/module 'x' into your os kernel, and it causes a leak. The real answer is to uninstall the problem extension(s). This is not a problem with FF. You can configure the cache settings specifically in the about:config page to shrink FF's memory footprint down, if you want to. I agree this could be a slightly more user friendly process.
I've had FF running for months at a time. It rarely exceeds 150MB, and I do have quite a few extensions loaded. If one starts giving me problems (ForecastFox) it gets unloaded and life returns to normal. BTW, Tab Mix Plus rocks. Don't know about stability issues with it, and there seems to be a hesitation with Ctrl-W closing a tab now, but haven't tracked that down to Tab Mix Plus yet.
Well then - we're in the same ballpark. However, I'm not a pedantic asshole, err, bastard.
So, let's take you to school:
Let's see - I dropped RAID 3,4,30, and 40. Guess what, they're generally not used anymore. (Note - for your pedanticness, in general, ie, normally, ie, not specific use cases, they're not used anymore. I just hit someone's comma's in a sentence limit.) This is just a natural sequencing of numbers there.
Why yes, I do have controllers with buttloads of cache AND a fast CPU. Why would I run enterprise systems on the cheap?
Not exactly, I dropped out of enterprise system hardware support about 5 years ago. Since then, I checked out the initial set of IDE RAID cards, and discovered they still didn't overcome issue #1 with IDE - namely, multiple I/O. This means IDE of any flavor sucks for performance. They're great as mass store devices though.
That's true. Raid 5 only requires 3. Raid 5 with 3 drives, or raid 6 with 4, will suck eggs and isn't recommended. It's kinda like running windows with a minimum configuration - it'll work, but it will suck. Even with 4 and 5 drives respectively, it won't be great.
I'm guessing you had nothing sarcastic to comment on because it was beyond you. Perhaps DeVry really wasn't all it was cracked up to be?
Oh, I see. We're still in the wanna be professional arena: SATA/PATA. In case you didn't catch it above, IDE(PATA)/SATA suck.
SCSI is still where it's at, and RAID0 on a single SCSI channel works just fine and certainly isn't a sign of desperation. Perhaps you should start studying for the true enterprise league? After all, if you're claiming to represent enterprise customers and selling them PATA/SATA for performance, you're a fraud.
I'm well aware of what RAID 0,1,3,4,5,6,10,0+1,30,40,50, and 60 do. Probably more so than you by what's becoming evident in this posting.
BTW, in your scen
Let's first put aside the question of whether software is a license or a product. We'll say it's a license since you've bought into that. I tend to disagree, and that discussion follows.
I own the license. It's paid for. Therefore, I "own" the software, at least as far as the law allows me to. The law does not allow me to make copies and sell them, for instance. I also don't believe the law allows MS to deprive me of a legally obtained license either, except for under the terms of the license. Personally, I think MS is in a world of hurt if they ever try this (which I should say is doubtful).
Now, for the license/product discussion. MS could make it a license if they leased me a product, like, say, I could only lease my PC from MS or its "certified" vendors. Since I don't, and I own my hardware, that's null and void. You don't "license" a DVD or CD. You own it. Just like a book. The license bit is like a rental DVD. In that case, you don't own the DVD, you just pay to use it. Some programs that follow this "new" convention are Norton AV and McAfee AV. They both "sell" you the product, but the updates making it useful are a 1 year service, or the "license" part.
As an aside, I'm very happy McAfee/Norton work that way, because it provided the prodding I required to remove that POS from my system.
You're missing the point - the original EULA I agreed to didn't include anything regarding WGA or turning my system off. I never agreed to load arbitrary software. Actually, I didn't agree to running Windows Update either. Therefore I shut it off. I also never agreed to having my system online, ever. So exactly how are they going to win? Or shut my system down?
First, I didn't intend to convey speed by sequence. Second, RAID 5 with 8 disks is certainly faster than RAID 0 or RAID 10 with less than 6 equivalent disks. (8 is the max supported in a single array on my controllers, and I have owned about 8 different types, although none from the last 2-3 years - ie, IDE/SATA)
Another item - RAID 1 is faster than a single drive for reads, if your controller supports "striped" reading off a mirror. Second, RAID5 with 3 disks is dog-slow, but this really depends upon your controller. High end controllers can, and do, offload most of this type of processing so the system never sees the RAID5 effects unless the I/O load increases to a point the buffer no longer can handle the load. (This implies that write back cache is enabled)
RAID 6 would require a minimum of 5 drives, and again, it depends upon your controller. As long as the controller can process faster than the I/O feed rate and your controller/array can handle the bandwidth, your system will never know the difference.
Now, if you're comparing specific numbers of drives and channels, it becomes interesting. RAID0 is the fastest, on a single channel, RAID 10 can actually be slower than RAID5 or 6. This has to do with duplicating every write call vs just writing parity. 6 should be the same as 10 for 4 drives on a single channel, unless you're running the cheapest controller ever.
He's finding out that hard drives move data at a fraction of their stated max speed when moving large amounts of data. The only way you're going to fill up a FW channel to its capacity is to have very fast devices at both ends. This generally means RAID 0, 5, 6 or some combination thereof like 50 or 60. Raid 10 is more for redundancy in case a disk dies than performance, I mention it for completeness and to support its use over straight RAID0 for the uninitiated.
Think about this - the copy of XP I have came without WGA - I never agreed to use it (and since I long ago disabled windows update as part of securing XP, I don't have this issue anyways:). So, since WGA significantly alters the EULA and the original software, I don't see how MS has a leg to stand on.
You don't have to be EIT nor have a Professional Engineering License to be an "Engineer". Only certain careers require those. Many others do not, including some very lucrative ones. I happened to be in one where the EIT etc was worthless and stopped pursuing the PE. Turns out to have been a good choice for me, as a PE would have been worthless to me at this point.
You wouldn't want to disillusion people of the fact that engineers cannot write... ;)
and I too started life as an ME. I did composite structures R&D, including experimentation. It involved lots of programming to do the analysis, which is how I segued into the world of programming. I also took a minor detour into System, Network, and Security Architecture for a few years.
There's tons of code monkeys out there that range from inept to brilliant. None are engineers. Sadly enough, our educational system, when it comes to computer science, is severely lacking in almost all facets relating to "Science", although they cover the keyboard well enough. Personally, I wouldn't be nearly as strong in my analytical and design abilities if it were not for my ME background.
There's a small group of folks out there that actually have the capability to logically analyze and design systems (software and/or hardware) that truly are engineers. These same folks are also the ones that I would call architects.
Now, if you believe that there is no engineering or architecture to be had in the software and systems worlds, I'd say you just haven't run into a large enough problem that required that type of approach, or you had the displeasure to work with the above mentioned code monkeys. Additionally, much of the CE and EE world is merely "designing by cookbook", not all that much different than being a code monkey. I cringe when some of those folks are called "engineers" as well. I especially cringe when I meet an Architect (in the civil sense) who doesn't have the slightest idea what fatigue is and presents some slender building artifice that would sway in the slightest wind. (See the Tacoma Narrows Bridge for the classic example, or the Hyatt Regency in Chicago for something even more straightforward and wholly the fault of the Architect, IMHO)
Heck, my home network contains more engineering skill than many small to medium and some large businesses. (And I should know, having worked for some that failed in all ways to properly design their interfaces to the internet, among many many other failures.)
I'll end this with the observation that I believe one of two things will occur in the programming world: either real programmers will have to be licensed (doubtful) or the dev tools for typical project will become so simple to use that programmers will no longer be needed in large numbers, as BA's and business owners will be able to do what they need themselves. In either case, I see a world where "code monkeys" will find fewer and fewer jobs.
Zork, what memories you bring to us.
Let's not forget '#' and his 'd'. (Hack, Nethack, or any of the several other flavors out there).
Ahh, the wonderful memories. The days when the net had a signal:noise ratio that was bearable, even in USENET groups like talk.abortion and talk.origins. The days when USENET numbered under 1000 groups. The day the net began its transformation to the "intarweb": when AOL connected to USENET. Bleah.
/. accounts, if I could only find out what my original account was... after all, I predate /. by quite a bit. :) Unfortunately, none of my email addresses from that time are functioning at this point. :(
I missed punch cards by 1 semester in college, and I still wave thrushes daily that I had the priviledge of working on VT100s.
As for =5 digit
But a woman can box your pop up.
And with this administration sponsoring this clause, how would a line item veto help?
The fact that OpenBSD has been around longer is irrelevent. The relevent part of the 'IE6 has been around too long' is the fact that its development stopped. If you stopped development of OpenBSD, you WILL find more and more holes than if you keep developing it.
Actually, given software development history and statistics, your statement is wrong on three counts:
Not really; OpenBSD mostly deals with trusted requests. IE (and any browser really) takes data from unknown sources and tries to parse it. Let OpenBSD's kernel accept commands from any computer on teh internet, and I bet it would be comprimised pretty quickly too.
A non-sequitor. Generic client requests are the primary function of most OpenBSD systems, as they are servers. *nix installations work in some of the most untrustworthy environments you could possibly create. Why would OpenBSD open the kernel to direct access? That's stupid. The fact that IE does this on MS OSes
No, the reason they are going after Windows is because they just want the maxium number of computers to take over. They don't give one flying fuck about unix boxes. Unix boxes aren't the 'actual target.'
Trust me, most of those script kiddies would give their left nut and their botnets for direct access to a unix box. Well, ok, not the ones that merely want to brag about the size of their.... If you don't believe that, that's fine. Most admins would be fine if hackers merely did botnets. DDOS can be blocked, and routinely is, by those that know what they're doing and have the resources. Some site in England was non-responsive for about 5s during a daylong DDOS with at least 100K machines. It's another story also reported on
We can disagree on this all day long, I will not have anything more substantive than the above to add.
Let me leave with this last thought: the value of a hacked Unix server is that you own it and all its data. You can leave a back door and take it down at will with a special corrupted command that would be extremely difficult to spot, leaving the system open to extortion forever. Botnets can be tracked and blocked.
And lastly, if MS was truly concerned about safety, they'd remove the server service and make it a special install. They'd also create a file sharing service for local networks only for home users. Those 2 changes would block almost all internet worms. Then rewrite an HTML rendering engine that only renders HTML, and use that as the common component across IE/Office/etc blocking that vector and most of their outright security exploits would be solved. You can't stop users from doing stupid crap, but at least the built-in backdoors that require no user intervention would be shut.