The only thing that surprises me is how not surprised I am about this 11th hour cancelling of the Foleo. For Palm's sake I had been kind of clinging to the notion that perhaps it was all simply bad marketing and that when the Foleo was released a light would turn on as to why it was going to be the mass market hit they needed it to be. It turns out there was no one behind that curtain. It may have been an appealing product for some - but really for very few. And the cost? Well, Colligan says that their going to take a $10 million hit, but what was the opportunity cost for palm? How much has it cost them in the years they spent developing the Foleo while letting their gigantic industry lead in the smartphone business die, leaving them as a has been? Turning their once thriving community of fanatics and developers into a dwindling one filled with resentment?
It's definitely worth checking out if you use MySQL. It's well written and comprehensive. My own review was very close to this one. You can check it out on my blog (or amazon).
I'm curious to know what platform or platforms you will be running your service off of? My guess would be something like openBSD and solaris w/ some microsoft scattered about for customer compatibility, but what do I know?
Also how will clients access their files and how will those files be stored? Will you be using existing technology now like ssh/https type for the transfer or will you be writing a secure client?
one of my friends at avon tells me that the big u will be reprinted "sometime next year". so if youi want it just to read, i'd wait a bit rather than paying the $500-700 dollars you'll pay. of course if you're a collector that's a whole nother issue.
I believe you are only liable if people were notified of the problem and do nothing to prevent it. First time it happens you should be ok - it's all about repeated events.
At least that's what our harassment training guys said. And that makes sense, too.
So some of the best things you can do have already been mentioned - split out your database from your front end webservers, let the backend have it's own machine and run raid 0+1 on the db server. The frontends won't need the raid since they'll be serving a lot of the static stuff out of cache.
Some other ideas, are to split image serving onto it's own apache, not necessarily it's own box. This apache can be completely pared down to absolute minimum modules, since all it will be doing is serving up static images. It also let's cache be used efficiently, since mostly the common images will be stored. As opposed to common images contending with common text files for cache space if images and content are served from the same apache.
Also, what are you using in apache to create dynamic pages and connect to the db? Use long running processes where possible, which means pick mod_perl, php, fastCGI, servlets, etc... over plain cgi scripts. This will save you lots of cycles and also let you have persistent db connections. Always a very good thing.
Taking the splitting out of machines to the next level, you could also try splitting all of your dynamic content to it's own machine, mod_proxied through your front end apache's. This makes the front ends very small since they barely need any modules installed at all. It also gets some extra performance out of your dynamic content apaches. Of course you're running a lot of boxes now.:)
Read this if you're running mod_perl. And read this to optimize your db.
Cryptonomicon is not, in fact, a real book. He just made up the name.
And this should be the first book in a trilogy, although trilogy should be loosely interpreted, as I believe no character reuse will occur, it will be only thematically a trilogy.
I also have to take issue with the reviewer's comment that "Any novelist who's going to write about where we are and where we've been can only get so far as an outsiderAny novelist who's going to write about where we are and where we've been can only get so far as an outsider". Gibson didn't know a whole lot when he wrote neuromancer, which arguably was the first book of it's genre, or at least the one that really kickstarted it.
What I don't disagree with is that the book was great. I was worried a bit, after reading the diamond age, that hen was going down hill... but he really didn't.
And, for those of you who haven't looked yet, try http://www.eruditorum.org/
It's clearly important to secure your box... shut down as many services as possible, prefer ssh over telnet/ftp, is possible get users to pop/imap over an ssl tunnel, etc...
But sometimes it just can't be helped, a cracker's going to get into your site. Through an os exploit, or a webserver exploit, or through some cgi/dynamic page goof. A really good thing to do in this case is to run your webservers in a chrooted environment, which helps a good deal should someone get in. They'll find themselves locked into a small area - the worst they can do is corrupt your web server data. They won't be able to get to your actual os.
I was wondering about all this - redhat now has sold minority equity stakes to 5 massive companies (intel, netscape, oracle, ibm and compaq)... how many minorities does it take to become majority? does this worry anyone?
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The only thing that surprises me is how not surprised I am about this 11th hour cancelling of the Foleo. For Palm's sake I had been kind of clinging to the notion that perhaps it was all simply bad marketing and that when the Foleo was released a light would turn on as to why it was going to be the mass market hit they needed it to be. It turns out there was no one behind that curtain. It may have been an appealing product for some - but really for very few. And the cost? Well, Colligan says that their going to take a $10 million hit, but what was the opportunity cost for palm? How much has it cost them in the years they spent developing the Foleo while letting their gigantic industry lead in the smartphone business die, leaving them as a has been? Turning their once thriving community of fanatics and developers into a dwindling one filled with resentment?
Heh, I blogged a good more about it... but Colligan really, really has to go.
It's definitely worth checking out if you use MySQL. It's well written and comprehensive. My own review was very close to this one. You can check it out on my blog (or amazon).
I'm curious to know what platform or platforms you will be running your service off of? My guess would be something like openBSD and solaris w/ some microsoft scattered about for customer compatibility, but what do I know?
Also how will clients access their files and how will those files be stored? Will you be using existing technology now like ssh/https type for the transfer or will you be writing a secure client?
Thanks.
one of my friends at avon tells me that the big u will be reprinted "sometime next year". so if youi want it just to read, i'd wait a bit rather than paying the $500-700 dollars you'll pay. of course if you're a collector that's a whole nother issue.
felix
I believe you are only liable if people were notified of the problem and do nothing to prevent it. First time it happens you should be ok - it's all about repeated events.
At least that's what our harassment training guys said. And that makes sense, too.
Some other ideas, are to split image serving onto it's own apache, not necessarily it's own box. This apache can be completely pared down to absolute minimum modules, since all it will be doing is serving up static images. It also let's cache be used efficiently, since mostly the common images will be stored. As opposed to common images contending with common text files for cache space if images and content are served from the same apache.
Also, what are you using in apache to create dynamic pages and connect to the db? Use long running processes where possible, which means pick mod_perl, php, fastCGI, servlets, etc... over plain cgi scripts. This will save you lots of cycles and also let you have persistent db connections. Always a very good thing.
Taking the splitting out of machines to the next level, you could also try splitting all of your dynamic content to it's own machine, mod_proxied through your front end apache's. This makes the front ends very small since they barely need any modules installed at all. It also gets some extra performance out of your dynamic content apaches. Of course you're running a lot of boxes now. :)
Read this if you're running mod_perl. And read this to optimize your db.
Cryptonomicon is not, in fact, a real book. He just made up the name.
And this should be the first book in a trilogy, although trilogy should be loosely interpreted, as I believe no character reuse will occur, it will be only thematically a trilogy.
I also have to take issue with the reviewer's comment that "Any novelist who's going to write about where we are and where we've been can only get so far as an outsiderAny novelist who's going to write about where we are and where we've been can only get so far as an outsider". Gibson didn't know a whole lot when he wrote neuromancer, which arguably was the first book of it's genre, or at least the one that really kickstarted it.
What I don't disagree with is that the book was great. I was worried a bit, after reading the diamond age, that hen was going down hill... but he really didn't.
And, for those of you who haven't looked yet, try http://www.eruditorum.org/
felix
It's clearly important to secure your box ...
shut down as many services as possible, prefer ssh over telnet/ftp, is possible get users to
pop/imap over an ssl tunnel, etc...
But sometimes it just can't be helped, a cracker's
going to get into your site. Through an os
exploit, or a webserver exploit, or through some
cgi/dynamic page goof. A really good thing to
do in this case is to run your webservers in a
chrooted environment, which helps a good deal
should someone get in. They'll find themselves
locked into a small area - the worst they can do
is corrupt your web server data. They won't be
able to get to your actual os.
something good to do.
I was wondering about all this - redhat now has
sold minority equity stakes to 5 massive companies
(intel, netscape, oracle, ibm and compaq)...
how many minorities does it take to become
majority? does this worry anyone?