"1. You still need an OS to run VMware. If it is Windows, you get typical Windows problems, and if it is Linux, you will probably find that your hardware is not really compatible with anything but Windows."
Why? I've seen very few business class machines that were incompatible with linux (or for that matter, *bsd) in any meaningful way. They tend to use commodity parts to reduce cost, unlike the boutique gaming machines.
"2. Do you want to use one image, or a different image per user? If you use one image, you will immediately run into license problems with the software. If you use several images, you need a lot of storage space, and you need to copy the images back in the evening."
Again, why? Everyone at my office uses the same key for MS Office. It's called volume licensing. Same with Windows XP. Sure, if you want the machine itself to be part of the AD tree, you have to do some clever SID stuff, but that's the load one takes on with volume licensing and image building for Windows.
"But most of all you need to figure out what your real problem is, and why VMs should solve it."
Now this I think you have nailed dead on the money. No question, this whole solutions seems somehow convoluted and ugly. I'm still puzzled as to why the vast majority of business users aren't on Linux now. Many shops I've been in need basic WP/Spreadsheet and a browser (as more and more old mainframe apps are migrated to web-based forms fronting a *nix server farm or even the old mainframe). I have seen a few with homegrown applications that require Windows to run, but most are database front ends written in visual basic and are nearly trivial to 'webalize'. I'm absolutely puzzled at the failure of business to pick up free OS's. I mean, most of the stuff the average business user wants ('needs') Windows for are generally mildly discouraged by the company they work for anyway (think games and the like). And the TOC at the desktop end would be so ridiculously low... *shrug*. It's still "Nobody ever got fired for recommending Microsoft solutions". Maybe that will change, someday.
"The nice thing about VM's is the time to backup is rather quick...you can use something like drive snapshot [http://www.drivesnapshot.de/en/] (I know this program is for windows, but there has to be a linux version out there)."
If you're running vmware on linux, you just stop the VM and use cp or dd.
Usually by adults who are somewhat 'out of the loop'. I've seen lots of kids disappointed with "iPods" that were really something else entirely, when what they wanted was an iPod, not generic MP3 player X.
Mmmm... yeah, it's a cluster. I think the distinction is one of convenience, not reality. Multiple processors run multiple instances of the same code; the only 'real' distinction between separate machines 'clustered', running identical kernels, and two chips on the same board, is the ease with which the processors can communicate. The application must be designed to utilize dual processors, just as the application must be designed to utilize multiple systems in a cluster. The latency is lower, and the cost is lower, so slices can be smaller. When we increase latency, the slices get bigger. Right now, the chipset does a lot of the low-level stuff, stuff that our 'cluster management' system must manage if we use multiple machines.
"The system uses thousands of AMD Opteron processors running tuned, light-weight operating system kernels and interfaced to Cray's unique SeaStar network."
Perhaps I misunderstood your intent, but I feel it necessary to point out to you that the parent's discussion was directed at *this* cluster - the Cray in TFA. From TFA:
"The system uses thousands of AMD Opteron processors running tuned, light-weight operating system kernels and interfaced to Cray's unique SeaStar network. "
That's a cluster. It's also a supercomputer. Maybe you're looking for the word 'Mainframe'? Regardless, the article the parent links to is a really good discussion of clusters and their value/application.
Sure, Dell makes some nice laptops. Sony makes some very nice laptops - that's a more apt comparison to Apple (Sony). I'm not a fan of Windows. Regardless of whether you feel there are any objective reasons to choose OSX over Windows... I've been using MS products since the early 80s. Got an MCSE in the 90s, supported an enterprise NT4.0 network and migrated it to 2k; switched to Unix in the enterprise and never looked back. I got my first Mac eight months ago, and couldn't wait to be shut of Windows. That's why I won't buy a Dell or a Sony. OSX.
Yes, true, dual-core Xeons. A dual-core Xeon has 2 CPUs, unlike Hyperthreading, which was like a CPU-and-a-third. Thus two dual core Xeons constitutes 4 CPUS. That would make 4 Xeon CPUs, by my math. But even so, I'll rephrase: Go find, anywhere, a Dual-Processor, Dual Core Xeon system for $2199. *shrug*.
The Dell 1505 that's $823 is a Core Duo 1.60Ghz, according to Dell's site. The XPS1210 is much more comparable to the macbook, using the same graphics system and including a webcam and a small-size widescreen 1280x800 panel. The e1505 you chose is a 15" with the same resolution (a less expensive panel).
Your reply underlines my point; people who want to bag on Apple's prices invariably point to the fact that there are cheaper machines available, without regard to the fact that those cheaper systems are not *really* comparable. Because if you compare apples to apples...
I am constantly amazed by the assertions of 'ridiculously high prices' for Macs. I constantly see comparisons to Dells - a bargain-basement producer of systems from way back, who made their name on low cost systems with relatively high value. It's specious to compare a mac to a Dell, but let's do it anyway. To start with, go find a quad Xeon for $2199 anywhere... Now, let's look at Core Duo laptops. Dell has one for $1200 that uses the Intel integrated graphics, runs at 2x1.66Ghz, with 1 GB ram and 60 gb hdd. Apple's? $1199 for 2x1.83 and 1GB, with a 60 GB hdd and intel integrated graphics. Explain to me again how the Apple is 'ridiculously high price[d]'... You can go on like this for some time. The prices are comparable to Dell's across the board for like equipment. Apple just doesn't sell the $300 piece of crap system, or the $500 POS laptop. They draw the bottom end line higher, true, but that does not equate to being 'overpriced'.
Disclaimer - I work for one of the many wireless carriers on the 3g data network... I have no privileged knowledge about how the future will be billed, but I'm wagering it's going to be a flat rate, scaled by allocated throughput (bits * seconds). I think in the end its cost structure will be similar (in overall cost) to what we pay now. I think for some time there will be a deceptive 'unbundling'; ie, you'll pay a bandwidth cost and a service cost. But I can see a time when the wireless companies will provide a wireless pipe and value-added services, with a Bring-Your-Own-Handset solution.
It's coming. Everyone knows it. Sprint knows it, Verizon knows it, hell, tmobile knows it. Your handset is going to be one end of a broadband pipe sooner than you imagine. Nobody is afraid of VOIP - it's coming, and they know it. They're not afraid of VOIP, they're afraid of *screwing up* VOIP. In the end, packet switched networks are less expensive to operate than circuit switched networks.
'enabling dhcp to share the connection'? When did dhcpd start routing?
In other news - many new laptops do not, in fact, include the archaic PCMCIA/PCCARD interface; the new one is "Express-Card", and it's not compatible, backwards or forwards or sideways. Nobody, noway, nohow. But they have USB connections GALORE.
Oh, come on. It's trivial to run an ssh server on your cable-modem-connected box on port 443. And if that's a problem, run up any one of the java ssh clients on a web server running on port 443 of your cable-modem-connected system.
I find it interesting that network integrity cannot be guaranteed as long as encrypted traffic is allowed out (and in) - even through a transparent proxy. Even if you use type enforcement and stateful inspection, you can have an arbitrary network 'stub' appear via, for instance, openvpn, using openssl, and as near as I can tell, essentially indiscernible from valid https traffic. Thus I think many sysadmins are eventually going to feel they're forced to resort to blocking encrypted traffic - in the *name of security*. ROFLMAO.
I work for a major vendor of mobile phones. Maybe I'm not supporting my industry, but daily I want to scream "Shut up and drive!". I swear to GOD that every other damned car has someone on the phone - not handsfree, not a headset, but holding the damned thing to their head and waving their other hand in the air. A man in a Porsche Boxter driving 50 in the fast lane yammering on his RAZR and waving BOTH hands in the air and all I can do is pray - pray! - that he'll hit a pothole and scrape that car against the guardrail as an object lesson.
In the end, all I can do is HOPE that maybe these ass-wipes will get iPods and DROWN OUT the sound of their handset ringing.
As one reply already said, the iPod appears as a mass storage device, just like my sansa device and my creative device. It's even got a USB 2.0 cable - Imagine that! The only 'proprietary' part of the interface is the cable; the dock connector offers many more options than simple connection to a computer.
Even though I'm rather an apple fan, I think this would be a bad idea. Compare it to TVs with built-in DVD players. You can get 'em, but they don't sell well. Nobody wants to have to upgrade their phone everytime they upgrade their ipod, or vice versa. I think that's the source of the resistance to by 'combo' devices.
Plus, one must face the old engineering saw: "As complexity approaches infinity, mean time between failures approaches zero."
"There are all kinds of laws that require other people to do things for another person's benefit."
Except in the restrictive sense ("Don't kill other people, for their own good") I don't often agree with those laws. The example you give, taxes, is not for 'someone elses' benefit', but, supposedly anyway, for *the greater benefit of society*. There is no evidence that restricting video game access is 'good for anyone' except people who want the government to enforce their own perceptive values on their children for them. Tobacco and alcohol, on the other hand, have demonstrable, repeatable, and documented deleterious effects on anyone who uses them.
"How many parents do you think can afford a nanny? "
Perhaps you missed the other part... "Parents or". Yes, when you have children, you're on your own. You always have been. I wasn't holding up a nanny as a good example, merely mentioning that one might rationally expect to be able to hire another to enforce one's own views on one's child - provided one has the resources. Let's not make it a class struggle - I wouldn't hire a nanny if I could afford one. I am not poor - yet we are on our own with our child. Ya gotta put on your big girl panties and deal, eh?
I see that as requiring *someone else* to mitigate what *they* can. IMO, too many people look to the law for services that should be provided by the parent or a chosen and hired nanny.
When I was a child - in the sixties and seventies - I couldn't purchase a playboy magazine. Nobody in the world would sell 'em to me, and most of them would have called my parents if I had tried. But I had a stack of them (five or six) under my bed, hidden in a monopoly box.
You mitigate what you can, teach your children how to think rather than what to think, and then trust them - you have no choice. My folks still have no idea about half the stuff I did as a kid, and I'm not naive enough to think I'm 'better', that *I* will *know*. Just like Deathrace 2k (anyone remember that jewel?); I was taught by my parents that it wasn't polite to run over pedestrians. And never once was I confused about that relationship, even whilst I was cackling about the points I racked up with each pedestrian scream. Never once did I feel liek the game was teaching me how to run over pedestrians. It was a GAME, and they were not REAL PEOPLE. There's the real world, and the game world. The game world gets tough. Wear a cup.
Even though I wince at the egregious abuse of the language by my co-workers in the technical profession and their various bosses, their work is *light-years* ahead of what is 'average' in our society. We get a warped perspective working in an industry that's driven by skullwork; Even the people we consider disturbingly slow are actually, usually, above average. I'm forcibly reminded of this fact when I interact with various members of my family or my inlaws - being firmly entrenched in 'averageness'... it's even more distressing when they decide to craft emails and mass-mail them to the family. *shudder*.
Perhaps you meant this solely as a joke, but I think you hit the nail *right* on the head. It's something we don't like to talk about in our society, with its War On Drugs. For many people, drugs are recreational; for others, they're dangerous; for a few - like HST - they are cathartic and catalytic. For all of our history, we've sought altered states of perception for inspiration, whether it was the sweatlodge and peyote, wode, self flagellation and trance, alcohol, you name it. The shaman has always walked 'between the worlds' and come back with a perspective the rest don't see. In the case of acid - we've all encountered the old saw about "Anyone who's taken acid more than [insert number here] times is legally and clinically insane"... but the fact is that the result, for people like HST, seems to be a perspective separated from the 'norm'; a 'new view', if you will, and we experience their viewpoint second-hand, through their self-expression.
But the WOD has been 'won'; the vast majority of the people of HST's literary and intellectual caliber are 'too smart' for drugs, and would never even consider mind-altering experiences. And if they did, they'd likely fail the piss test that every employer seems to require. It was, IMO, the common nature of altered perception that gave rise to the electricity of the sixties. Anything that follows, bereft of unique experience, must seem prosaic and boring by comparison. As Bill Hicks said - "All that cool music they made in the 60s? *real* fuckin' high!"
I certainly won't contest your assessment of Dvorak's opinions. But a columnist does fit into the "Merriam-Webster" definition of 'journalist'; it's not just 'reporters'. And one may certainly be employed as a journalist whilst being a poor one. Obviously, eh?
"We don't feel that XenSource is stable enough to address banking, telco, or any other enterprise customer, so until we are comfortable, we will not release it."
He's talking about environments like the one I work in, where we're expected to deliver a real, honest-to-betsy, 99.999 uptime on our systems. We do sometimes use RHEL in the enterprise for those platforms, but to be fair, it's mostly in RAIC (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Computers) type applications, or non-call-path systems. Many of our call-path-systems are boxes that can lose a processor without the OS going down - or the application running on it. There are some stand-alone Linux products, and they perform well enough, but I understand his reservations in those arenas. We're not talking about fileservers here, folks. But as we move to a more distributed architecture, where uptime is provided by redundancy rather than the 'robustness' of a single system, something like Xen will become more and more feasible for such applications.
Heh. Well, I got my MCSE in 1997. By 2000 my duties migrated out the Windows component; that's why it's "oldschool" for me. I've not had to do windows professionally for six or seven years. It's only been six months since I got rid of my last windows box at home, though.
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"1. You still need an OS to run VMware. If it is Windows, you get typical Windows problems, and if it is Linux, you will probably find that your hardware is not really compatible with anything but Windows."
Why? I've seen very few business class machines that were incompatible with linux (or for that matter, *bsd) in any meaningful way. They tend to use commodity parts to reduce cost, unlike the boutique gaming machines.
"2. Do you want to use one image, or a different image per user? If you use one image, you will immediately run into license problems with the software. If you use several images, you need a lot of storage space, and you need to copy the images back in the evening."
Again, why? Everyone at my office uses the same key for MS Office. It's called volume licensing. Same with Windows XP. Sure, if you want the machine itself to be part of the AD tree, you have to do some clever SID stuff, but that's the load one takes on with volume licensing and image building for Windows.
"But most of all you need to figure out what your real problem is, and why VMs should solve it."
Now this I think you have nailed dead on the money. No question, this whole solutions seems somehow convoluted and ugly. I'm still puzzled as to why the vast majority of business users aren't on Linux now. Many shops I've been in need basic WP/Spreadsheet and a browser (as more and more old mainframe apps are migrated to web-based forms fronting a *nix server farm or even the old mainframe). I have seen a few with homegrown applications that require Windows to run, but most are database front ends written in visual basic and are nearly trivial to 'webalize'. I'm absolutely puzzled at the failure of business to pick up free OS's. I mean, most of the stuff the average business user wants ('needs') Windows for are generally mildly discouraged by the company they work for anyway (think games and the like). And the TOC at the desktop end would be so ridiculously low... *shrug*. It's still "Nobody ever got fired for recommending Microsoft solutions". Maybe that will change, someday.
"The nice thing about VM's is the time to backup is rather quick...you can use something like drive snapshot [http://www.drivesnapshot.de/en/] (I know this program is for windows, but there has to be a linux version out there)."
If you're running vmware on linux, you just stop the VM and use cp or dd.
Usually by adults who are somewhat 'out of the loop'. I've seen lots of kids disappointed with "iPods" that were really something else entirely, when what they wanted was an iPod, not generic MP3 player X.
Mmmm... yeah, it's a cluster. I think the distinction is one of convenience, not reality. Multiple processors run multiple instances of the same code; the only 'real' distinction between separate machines 'clustered', running identical kernels, and two chips on the same board, is the ease with which the processors can communicate. The application must be designed to utilize dual processors, just as the application must be designed to utilize multiple systems in a cluster. The latency is lower, and the cost is lower, so slices can be smaller. When we increase latency, the slices get bigger. Right now, the chipset does a lot of the low-level stuff, stuff that our 'cluster management' system must manage if we use multiple machines.
Can you imagine a Beowulf Cluster of these bad boys? >:)
From TFA:
"The system uses thousands of AMD Opteron processors running tuned, light-weight operating system kernels and interfaced to Cray's unique SeaStar network."
That's a cluster.
Perhaps I misunderstood your intent, but I feel it necessary to point out to you that the parent's discussion was directed at *this* cluster - the Cray in TFA. From TFA:
"The system uses thousands of AMD Opteron processors running tuned, light-weight operating system kernels and interfaced to Cray's unique SeaStar network. "
That's a cluster. It's also a supercomputer. Maybe you're looking for the word 'Mainframe'? Regardless, the article the parent links to is a really good discussion of clusters and their value/application.
Sure, Dell makes some nice laptops. Sony makes some very nice laptops - that's a more apt comparison to Apple (Sony). I'm not a fan of Windows. Regardless of whether you feel there are any objective reasons to choose OSX over Windows... I've been using MS products since the early 80s. Got an MCSE in the 90s, supported an enterprise NT4.0 network and migrated it to 2k; switched to Unix in the enterprise and never looked back. I got my first Mac eight months ago, and couldn't wait to be shut of Windows. That's why I won't buy a Dell or a Sony. OSX.
Yes, true, dual-core Xeons. A dual-core Xeon has 2 CPUs, unlike Hyperthreading, which was like a CPU-and-a-third. Thus two dual core Xeons constitutes 4 CPUS. That would make 4 Xeon CPUs, by my math. But even so, I'll rephrase: Go find, anywhere, a Dual-Processor, Dual Core Xeon system for $2199. *shrug*.
The Dell 1505 that's $823 is a Core Duo 1.60Ghz, according to Dell's site. The XPS1210 is much more comparable to the macbook, using the same graphics system and including a webcam and a small-size widescreen 1280x800 panel. The e1505 you chose is a 15" with the same resolution (a less expensive panel).
Your reply underlines my point; people who want to bag on Apple's prices invariably point to the fact that there are cheaper machines available, without regard to the fact that those cheaper systems are not *really* comparable. Because if you compare apples to apples...
I am constantly amazed by the assertions of 'ridiculously high prices' for Macs. I constantly see comparisons to Dells - a bargain-basement producer of systems from way back, who made their name on low cost systems with relatively high value. It's specious to compare a mac to a Dell, but let's do it anyway. To start with, go find a quad Xeon for $2199 anywhere... Now, let's look at Core Duo laptops. Dell has one for $1200 that uses the Intel integrated graphics, runs at 2x1.66Ghz, with 1 GB ram and 60 gb hdd. Apple's? $1199 for 2x1.83 and 1GB, with a 60 GB hdd and intel integrated graphics. Explain to me again how the Apple is 'ridiculously high price[d]'... You can go on like this for some time. The prices are comparable to Dell's across the board for like equipment. Apple just doesn't sell the $300 piece of crap system, or the $500 POS laptop. They draw the bottom end line higher, true, but that does not equate to being 'overpriced'.
Disclaimer - I work for one of the many wireless carriers on the 3g data network... I have no privileged knowledge about how the future will be billed, but I'm wagering it's going to be a flat rate, scaled by allocated throughput (bits * seconds). I think in the end its cost structure will be similar (in overall cost) to what we pay now. I think for some time there will be a deceptive 'unbundling'; ie, you'll pay a bandwidth cost and a service cost. But I can see a time when the wireless companies will provide a wireless pipe and value-added services, with a Bring-Your-Own-Handset solution.
It's coming. Everyone knows it. Sprint knows it, Verizon knows it, hell, tmobile knows it. Your handset is going to be one end of a broadband pipe sooner than you imagine. Nobody is afraid of VOIP - it's coming, and they know it. They're not afraid of VOIP, they're afraid of *screwing up* VOIP. In the end, packet switched networks are less expensive to operate than circuit switched networks.
Voice is just another application.
'enabling dhcp to share the connection'? When did dhcpd start routing?
In other news - many new laptops do not, in fact, include the archaic PCMCIA/PCCARD interface; the new one is "Express-Card", and it's not compatible, backwards or forwards or sideways. Nobody, noway, nohow. But they have USB connections GALORE.
Oh, come on. It's trivial to run an ssh server on your cable-modem-connected box on port 443. And if that's a problem, run up any one of the java ssh clients on a web server running on port 443 of your cable-modem-connected system.
I find it interesting that network integrity cannot be guaranteed as long as encrypted traffic is allowed out (and in) - even through a transparent proxy. Even if you use type enforcement and stateful inspection, you can have an arbitrary network 'stub' appear via, for instance, openvpn, using openssl, and as near as I can tell, essentially indiscernible from valid https traffic. Thus I think many sysadmins are eventually going to feel they're forced to resort to blocking encrypted traffic - in the *name of security*. ROFLMAO.
I work for a major vendor of mobile phones. Maybe I'm not supporting my industry, but daily I want to scream "Shut up and drive!". I swear to GOD that every other damned car has someone on the phone - not handsfree, not a headset, but holding the damned thing to their head and waving their other hand in the air. A man in a Porsche Boxter driving 50 in the fast lane yammering on his RAZR and waving BOTH hands in the air and all I can do is pray - pray! - that he'll hit a pothole and scrape that car against the guardrail as an object lesson.
In the end, all I can do is HOPE that maybe these ass-wipes will get iPods and DROWN OUT the sound of their handset ringing.
As one reply already said, the iPod appears as a mass storage device, just like my sansa device and my creative device. It's even got a USB 2.0 cable - Imagine that! The only 'proprietary' part of the interface is the cable; the dock connector offers many more options than simple connection to a computer.
Even though I'm rather an apple fan, I think this would be a bad idea. Compare it to TVs with built-in DVD players. You can get 'em, but they don't sell well. Nobody wants to have to upgrade their phone everytime they upgrade their ipod, or vice versa. I think that's the source of the resistance to by 'combo' devices.
Plus, one must face the old engineering saw: "As complexity approaches infinity, mean time between failures approaches zero."
"There are all kinds of laws that require other people to do things for another person's benefit."
Except in the restrictive sense ("Don't kill other people, for their own good") I don't often agree with those laws. The example you give, taxes, is not for 'someone elses' benefit', but, supposedly anyway, for *the greater benefit of society*. There is no evidence that restricting video game access is 'good for anyone' except people who want the government to enforce their own perceptive values on their children for them. Tobacco and alcohol, on the other hand, have demonstrable, repeatable, and documented deleterious effects on anyone who uses them.
"How many parents do you think can afford a nanny? "
Perhaps you missed the other part... "Parents or". Yes, when you have children, you're on your own. You always have been. I wasn't holding up a nanny as a good example, merely mentioning that one might rationally expect to be able to hire another to enforce one's own views on one's child - provided one has the resources. Let's not make it a class struggle - I wouldn't hire a nanny if I could afford one. I am not poor - yet we are on our own with our child. Ya gotta put on your big girl panties and deal, eh?
I see that as requiring *someone else* to mitigate what *they* can. IMO, too many people look to the law for services that should be provided by the parent or a chosen and hired nanny.
When I was a child - in the sixties and seventies - I couldn't purchase a playboy magazine. Nobody in the world would sell 'em to me, and most of them would have called my parents if I had tried. But I had a stack of them (five or six) under my bed, hidden in a monopoly box.
You mitigate what you can, teach your children how to think rather than what to think, and then trust them - you have no choice. My folks still have no idea about half the stuff I did as a kid, and I'm not naive enough to think I'm 'better', that *I* will *know*. Just like Deathrace 2k (anyone remember that jewel?); I was taught by my parents that it wasn't polite to run over pedestrians. And never once was I confused about that relationship, even whilst I was cackling about the points I racked up with each pedestrian scream. Never once did I feel liek the game was teaching me how to run over pedestrians. It was a GAME, and they were not REAL PEOPLE. There's the real world, and the game world. The game world gets tough. Wear a cup.
Even though I wince at the egregious abuse of the language by my co-workers in the technical profession and their various bosses, their work is *light-years* ahead of what is 'average' in our society. We get a warped perspective working in an industry that's driven by skullwork; Even the people we consider disturbingly slow are actually, usually, above average. I'm forcibly reminded of this fact when I interact with various members of my family or my inlaws - being firmly entrenched in 'averageness'... it's even more distressing when they decide to craft emails and mass-mail them to the family. *shudder*.
Perhaps you meant this solely as a joke, but I think you hit the nail *right* on the head. It's something we don't like to talk about in our society, with its War On Drugs. For many people, drugs are recreational; for others, they're dangerous; for a few - like HST - they are cathartic and catalytic. For all of our history, we've sought altered states of perception for inspiration, whether it was the sweatlodge and peyote, wode, self flagellation and trance, alcohol, you name it. The shaman has always walked 'between the worlds' and come back with a perspective the rest don't see. In the case of acid - we've all encountered the old saw about "Anyone who's taken acid more than [insert number here] times is legally and clinically insane"... but the fact is that the result, for people like HST, seems to be a perspective separated from the 'norm'; a 'new view', if you will, and we experience their viewpoint second-hand, through their self-expression.
But the WOD has been 'won'; the vast majority of the people of HST's literary and intellectual caliber are 'too smart' for drugs, and would never even consider mind-altering experiences. And if they did, they'd likely fail the piss test that every employer seems to require. It was, IMO, the common nature of altered perception that gave rise to the electricity of the sixties. Anything that follows, bereft of unique experience, must seem prosaic and boring by comparison. As Bill Hicks said - "All that cool music they made in the 60s? *real* fuckin' high!"
I certainly won't contest your assessment of Dvorak's opinions. But a columnist does fit into the "Merriam-Webster" definition of 'journalist'; it's not just 'reporters'. And one may certainly be employed as a journalist whilst being a poor one. Obviously, eh?
From TFA:
"We don't feel that XenSource is stable enough to address banking, telco, or any other enterprise customer, so until we are comfortable, we will not release it."
He's talking about environments like the one I work in, where we're expected to deliver a real, honest-to-betsy, 99.999 uptime on our systems. We do sometimes use RHEL in the enterprise for those platforms, but to be fair, it's mostly in RAIC (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Computers) type applications, or non-call-path systems. Many of our call-path-systems are boxes that can lose a processor without the OS going down - or the application running on it. There are some stand-alone Linux products, and they perform well enough, but I understand his reservations in those arenas. We're not talking about fileservers here, folks. But as we move to a more distributed architecture, where uptime is provided by redundancy rather than the 'robustness' of a single system, something like Xen will become more and more feasible for such applications.
Heh. Well, I got my MCSE in 1997. By 2000 my duties migrated out the Windows component; that's why it's "oldschool" for me. I've not had to do windows professionally for six or seven years. It's only been six months since I got rid of my last windows box at home, though.