Four (4) servers? Are you joking? The plural of "anecdote" isn't "data".
When you spend lots of money on a server, you expect it to have better reliability than cheap clones. Especially if you keep the server in a proper room with controlled temperature and plugged to an UPS. Like the old AlphaServer 2100 we have 13 years ago, which is still up and running.
Don't say someone's post is crap because you have 4 data points. Well, I may have only 4 servers, but we have over 60 computers and there are very few that have been as unreliable than Sun's.
At Google, they keep track of how many computers fail PER SECOND in their server rooms. Failure is normal, and unless you're running a few hundred servers of different brands and models, you can't really use your personal experience to say one brand has "fucked up their hardware."
If failure were that normal, then they shouldn't put such a high price on their computers. I thought they were that expensive because failere was not normal with their hardware. Thanks for illuminating me. Then I don't know why they are more expensive (speed surely isn't the reason).
Have you even looked at their high end Ultra 20s? Or the new SunFires? Sun makes a pretty decent product these days. Well, maybe you are right. But we gave them the chance with the most expensive computer we have bought (and I was a big sun defender) and it failed miserably.
Oh, and by the way, how did Sun "fuck up Java"? I think I missed that article... Yes, maybe you missed it. It was a great language, but now it is a badly designed language. The JVM is still good , though. I'm using -source 1.4 with javac.
In general, you get what you pay for when it comes to reliability. A $4,000 sun box will not be more reliable than a $4,000 IBM/HP/Dell/whoever box. A $2,000,000 SunFire 25K will be a lot more reliable than a $4,000 Dell box (is it worth it? depends on your environment).
We paid $US 18.000 for the Sun box and it has been significantly less reliable than $US 7000 servers from other manufacturers
That's great. Thanks for sharing your wealth of experience on the subject.
We do not have more servers because we do not have as much money. We received a grant a couple of ays ago and will aquire 12 servers. You can be sure not even one of them will be from Sun.
You often hear this stuff from windows users who probaby wouldn't know RSC from OpenBoot. Could there be a pattern?
None of our servers or workstations run Windows. We use linux mostly, but we are also testing solaris. I, particularly think solaris is much better than linux for servers. I have seen the quality of linux distributions to decrease consistently.
I recently worked at a site with approximately 40 racks of equipment. The site suffered a UPS malfunction which resulted in horrible spikes and phase variations being delivered to the data centre. Even IBM zSeries and pSeries systems had to have power supplies replaced, let alone Dells and HPs with with cooked system boards.
Their Suns all came back up without even an fsck. The SF4900 & 6800 didn't even go down. What does this prove about the relative reliability and build quality of Sun systems? Nothing.
Well, my experience with Sun hardware is bad, and it is consistent with what many people say. We paid about 18.000 $ in a Sun server believing we were buying top qulity. We were wrong.
The fatc that my Sun server failed miserably does not mean that every Sun box will fail, but it means there is no guarantee of high quality to have sun servers. If we had bought 10 sevrers from Sun and only that one failed, we would still have had a 10% failure rate, and I somehow don't believe there would have only be a.
BTW, I forgot about a fifth server we almost do not use. A digital ALphaServer 2100 from about 13 years ago. Now that's quality. It is still up and running Debiean Linux and we do not even plug it to the UPS because it consumes too much power. It has never failed. That was the kind of quality I was expecting when I purchased a Sun server for 18.000 US$.
Generics are key - they move what would be a lot of runtime errors to compile time. As any developer knows, its a whole lot easier to debug compile time errors.
I'm not saying the concept of generics is wrong. I am saying the java implementation of generics is broken. This implementation introduces a lot of subtle runtime errors because they are not typesafe, as many believe. These generics only save you from a a few casts. The only runtime errors that will be moved to compile time errors are very stupid errors not common to most programmers (even not so good ones). Anyone who creates a List for storing Strings usually doesn't wriite code for adding ints to it. The use of collections is usually wrapped in more application specific classes.
J2SE 5 actually is quite a good platform - they have improved performance,
They improved the virtual machine, but they damaged the language. The best option is to compile with -source 1.4
Quite the opposite, in my opinion. They finally fixed all the stupid stuff.
If you say that type-unsafe containers, no enums and no normal library for various threading feature was somehow a better state of affairs, then you do not know what you are talking about.
It is clear you the one who don't know what you talk about. They didn't fix anything.
Java Generics ARE NOT type safe and that is why they are badly designed. They are designed only to hide casts, but introduce a lot of new subtle errors because they are not typesafe. If they are as typesafe as you say, then why do the new checkedList, checkedMap, checkedSet, etc. methods exist in java.util.Collections?
Very simple, because Java generics are not type safe.
The purpose of generics in most programming language is to provide type safety and enhance performance through the elimination of casts. Java generics do neither. They only hide casts and force you to used stupid methods like checkedList,etc. to achieve type safety. These methods could have been added to the old language version without problems. It's a disgrace that a language with "generics" requires that kind of method to achive type safety.
Regarding enums. They are the worst implementation of enums I have seen. They are implemented as classes and as such they are prone to very strange errors if several ClassLoaders are used, as is the case in most application server environments.
The worst part of the new Java language changes is that they are designed so that ignorant people like you, who do not know their implications, believe they are achieving type safety/better performance when in fact they are not.
How so? My group does a fair amount of development in a variety of languages (C/C++/Java/VB/C#/and various scripting languages) and by far, the developers prefer Java. I guess I don't see how Sun messed up Java as you indicate.
Java was a good language until 1.4.x. With Java 2 5 1.5 they turned it into a crappy language. Almost all the features they added are badly designed, especially generics.
While Suns tend to be pricey, it's because their built like tanks (both in terms of chasis/frame, and from CPU and internal layout).
That's crap. In my server room I have 4 servers. -An Intergraph Dual Intel Pentium III 700 bought in 1999. That's solid. It has never given any problems. -Two IBM PC Server Dual Pentium II 300 from 1998 I think. These have never failed. Solid as a rock. -A SunFire 280R 750MHz from 2001. It was extremely expensive and it stopped working last December. Total crap. Expensive and crappy. Our decision was to not buy Sun computers again. A lot of money lost.
Poor Sun. They fucked up Java, they fucked up their hardware. The only thing left is Solaris, and it's not going to make much money for them.
does this mean inputting accents on qt applications will finally be fixed? kde and lyx have been unusable for me since qt-3.something...
I might be just an ignorant troll, but if it wasn't qt-3, I don't know why else i can't write accented words on anything using qt.
I have never had this problem in Slackware or old versions of SuSE. You probably use one of those crappy distributions that bundle misconfigured software. I have a friend who had your problem with LyX in Ubuntu. It was the first time I saw it.
AFAIK, OS/2 had anabsolute 512MB memory limit. I don't know if they extended this with the server version (which I never used). I still have my red box OS/2 warp (and OS/2 2.1 too). That was the best you could use in a time dominated by the atrocity known as Windows 3.1
It was fairly compact until 1.4.x. The new Java 2 version 5 version 1.5 language is not compact. It's a complete, badly designed, mess. That's the problem of putting a lot of ignorant people (JCP) to take decisions that should be made by a small group of knowledgable people.
There are no shortage of people who would disagree with you about Microkernels. You also neglect mention that they are incredibly slow
While it is true that microkernels are slower than monolithic kernels, they have many advantages. They can be more stable and secure. Two things that plague current operating systems, including Linux.
Regarding performance, everyone likes to take Mach as an example of how slow microkernels are. But, many microkernel bashers seem to forget QNX, which has never been accused of being terribly small. It is one of the best (if not the best) hard real time operating systems out there. OK, it is proprietary, but it is a proof that microkernel based operating systems can be done right.
XML blaster is an open source message oriented middleware that has bindings for multiple languages (C,C++, Java, PHP, Python, Perl). I have never used it, but it's been available since a long time.
I'd hate to mention this, but the previous person would be the one to ask. didn't Venezuela privitized their social security a few years (ie 15-20) ago?
Social security in Venezuela has never been privatized. It sucks, though.
Re:Not just developing countries
on
The Sub-$100 Laptop?
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· Score: 2, Insightful
You are right. I live in Venezuela. This is currently one of the latin american countries with the highest proportion of poor people. But there are many levels of poverty. There are persons who live in absolute misery (they cannot even afford food). There are poor who have very low paying jobs and probably cannot buy a 100$ computer. They can barely afford food. There are poor who can afford food, but cannot have much luxury. They ussually have TV, stereo, and live in very humble homes. They cannot afford cars (some may have very old cars) or better housing, but a large part of them could afford a $100 computer. There are poor who have somewhat better paying jobs (they might be successful street sellers or something). They cannot afford new cars or elegant housing, but they can certainly 100$ computers. There are many others who were previously middle class, but now are now poor. Many of them are probably still able to afford a $100 computer. There are also lower middle class people (poor by first world standards) who can afford $100 (and probably, slightly more expensive) computers.
A $100 computer would certainly be a success here.
I would also imagine that the people in your country and other developing nations who can afford a $100 laptop are not the poor but the middle class.
No. Many poor people here (just not the poorest) could afford $100 computers (especially if it can be payed for in several monthly payments). Middle class people (a minority here) can afford much more expensive computers. In many other countries like Colombia, Brasil, Argentina, Mexico, Peru and Uruguay the situation is similar or, in many cases, better.
Also, what happened in California was an anomaly. Well, it hasn't happened in my third world country. Yet you talk like it is the norm in all third world countries. It is not. (Perhaps it was an anomaly in the Dominican Republic. I don't know. I've never been there).
Remember. There are many levels of poverty.
Anyway, this discussion is a little offtopic, because IIRC these $100 can only be bought by governments in quantities of at least one million. Venezuelan government can easily shell out 200 or 300 millions and give away the computers if they want to.
Re:Not just developing countries
on
The Sub-$100 Laptop?
·
· Score: 4, Informative
You ignorant. Not all third world countries are the same. I live in one and Iknow lots of people who cannotcurrently afford a computer, but would be able to buy a 100$ one. We don't have intermitent power. In fact our third world power infrastructure is better than some parts of the first world (e.g. California not long ago).
These computers would be perfect for a country like ours.
pkg-get does resolve dependencies.
I installed KDE on solaris using the command:
pkg-get install kde
Of course, pkg-get is not the package manager that comes bundled with solaris, but it builds on it. I downloaded it from blastwave.org.
I was playing with Solaris 10 X86 (version Oct 04) a few days ago, but I went back to slackware for serious work because it couldn't access the USB ports (it supossedly has USB support, but it didn't work on my PC).
I found solaris was very fast (in contrast to its fame as slowlaris). I found it much much faster than Suse 9.0. I didn't run any real benchmarks, but, for example, the "Konsole" program started much faster in solaris X86 (I have to admit it starts fast on other linux distributions too). The general feel I had was that it's a fast OS. Too bad it wasn't able to use the USB ports.
If they improve their hardware support they could be a very good alternative to Linux for desktops.
NT based versions of Windows have had ACLs since the beginning. ACLs have nothing to do with Mandatory Access Contro (MAC). ACLs let you implement DAC (Discretionary Access Control) and are necessary for a C2 security level. MAC is necessary for B1 or better security levels, which is higher that C1 or C2 and is required for many military applications. With SELinux, Linux gets MAC. TrustedSolaris has MAC. OpenBSD has MAC (IIRC not by default, I think you have to recompile the kernel). The article you point to says Solaris (or OpenSolaris 10) will have some security features (not necessarily all) of Trusted Solaris. It doesn mention MAC, which was specifically my question. Will Trusted Solaris 10, complete with MAC, be open source too?
That is exactly the first thing I tought about. I knew someone in slashdot would mention Lain. Hey, they are airing it right now. Gotta go watch it....
There is no such thing as XML goodness. XML is a stupid idea from stupid people who sell it to other stupid people. I have never once encountered a situation where there was any need to encapsulate data in XML in which the gains in flexibility weren't outweighed by the problems of unnecessary bloat and additional complexity in maintenance.
I mostly agree with you. However, I have used XML together with data binding tools for complex configuration files. There might be some other uses, but it sucks for almost everything else, including simple configuration files.
Especially crappy is the atrocity known as XSLT. There are many other better, more understandable technologies for achieving the same result.
Out of curiosity, what other kind of DB is out there that isn't an RDB(MS)? Edgar Codd's system has been working pretty well, and though there are other systems, I don't know that there's huge demand for them. You're not contradicting that, but I wonder what you were thinking of.
Berkeley DB is not a relational database and is among the most used databases in the world.
I am not asking if there are other LDAP server available for windows. Of course there are.
My question is if Windows Server's SMB/CIFS implementation supports LDAP backends different than ActiveDirectory. It's an honest question. I don't know if it does.
I'd love to be able to replace my entire Windows NT 4 domain with Samba running on Linux, but until Samba can actually provide a backup domain controller functionality that works with our existing LDAP infrastructure, I'm sorry, but Samba is not ready for prime-time. Having a single point of failure in your Samba PDC is not acceptable for enterprise use.
Samba supports PDC/BDC functionality. You can have has many BDC's as you want. I have a PDC and a BDC installed. It works fine. I'm using OpenLDAP though.
BTW, does Windows Server support any LDAP back-end that is not Microsoft's Active directory?
Slashdot Mirror
Four (4) servers? Are you joking? The plural of "anecdote" isn't "data".
When you spend lots of money on a server, you expect it to have better reliability than cheap clones. Especially if you keep the server in a proper room with controlled temperature and plugged to an UPS. Like the old AlphaServer 2100 we have 13 years ago, which is still up and running.
Don't say someone's post is crap because you have 4 data points.
Well, I may have only 4 servers, but we have over 60 computers and there are very few that have been as unreliable than Sun's.
At Google, they keep track of how many computers fail PER SECOND in their server rooms. Failure is normal, and unless you're running a few hundred servers of different brands and models, you can't really use your personal experience to say one brand has "fucked up their hardware."
If failure were that normal, then they shouldn't put such a high price on their computers.
I thought they were that expensive because failere was not normal with their hardware.
Thanks for illuminating me. Then I don't know why they are more expensive (speed surely isn't the reason).
Have you even looked at their high end Ultra 20s? Or the new SunFires? Sun makes a pretty decent product these days.
Well, maybe you are right. But we gave them the chance with the most expensive computer we have bought (and I was a big sun defender) and it failed miserably.
Oh, and by the way, how did Sun "fuck up Java"? I think I missed that article...
Yes, maybe you missed it.
It was a great language, but now it is a badly designed language. The JVM is still good , though. I'm using -source 1.4 with javac.
Actually, do you still have the sunfire? would you consider selling it cheaply for parts?
Actually, I would love to sell it, but can't since it belongs to the place I work.
In general, you get what you pay for when it comes to reliability. A $4,000 sun box will not be more reliable than a $4,000 IBM/HP/Dell/whoever box. A $2,000,000 SunFire 25K will be a lot more reliable than a $4,000 Dell box (is it worth it? depends on your environment).
We paid $US 18.000 for the Sun box and it has been significantly less reliable than $US 7000 servers from other manufacturers
That's great. Thanks for sharing your wealth of experience on the subject.
.
We do not have more servers because we do not have as much money. We received a grant a couple of ays ago and will aquire 12 servers. You can be sure not even one of them will be from Sun.
You often hear this stuff from windows users who probaby wouldn't know RSC from OpenBoot. Could there be a pattern?
None of our servers or workstations run Windows.
We use linux mostly, but we are also testing solaris. I, particularly think solaris is much better than linux for servers.
I have seen the quality of linux distributions to decrease consistently.
I recently worked at a site with approximately 40 racks of equipment. The site suffered a UPS malfunction which resulted in horrible spikes and phase variations being delivered to the data centre. Even IBM zSeries and pSeries systems had to have power supplies replaced, let alone Dells and HPs with with cooked system boards.
Their Suns all came back up without even an fsck. The SF4900 & 6800 didn't even go down.
What does this prove about the relative reliability and build quality of Sun systems?
Nothing.
Well, my experience with Sun hardware is bad, and it is consistent with what many people say.
We paid about 18.000 $ in a Sun server believing we were buying top qulity. We were wrong.
The fatc that my Sun server failed miserably does not mean that every Sun box will fail, but it means there is no guarantee of high quality to have sun servers. If we had bought 10 sevrers from Sun and only that one failed, we would still have had a 10% failure rate, and I somehow don't believe there would have only be a
BTW, I forgot about a fifth server we almost do not use. A digital ALphaServer 2100 from about 13 years ago. Now that's quality. It is still up and running Debiean Linux and we do not even plug it to the UPS because it consumes too much power.
It has never failed. That was the kind of quality I was expecting when I purchased a Sun server for 18.000 US$.
Generics are key - they move what would be a lot of runtime errors to compile time. As any developer knows, its a whole lot easier to debug compile time errors.
I'm not saying the concept of generics is wrong. I am saying the java implementation of generics is broken. This implementation introduces a lot of subtle runtime errors because they are not typesafe, as many believe.
These generics only save you from a a few casts.
The only runtime errors that will be moved to compile time errors are very stupid errors not common to most programmers (even not so good ones). Anyone who creates a List for storing Strings usually doesn't wriite code for adding ints to it. The use of collections is usually wrapped in more application specific classes.
J2SE 5 actually is quite a good platform - they have improved performance,
They improved the virtual machine, but they damaged the language. The best option is to compile with -source 1.4
Quite the opposite, in my opinion. They finally fixed all the stupid stuff.
If you say that type-unsafe containers, no enums and no normal library for various threading feature was somehow a better state of affairs, then you do not know what you are talking about.
It is clear you the one who don't know what you talk about. They didn't fix anything.
Java Generics ARE NOT type safe and that is why they are badly designed.
They are designed only to hide casts, but introduce a lot of new subtle errors because they are not typesafe.
If they are as typesafe as you say, then why do the new checkedList, checkedMap, checkedSet, etc. methods exist in java.util.Collections?
Very simple, because Java generics are not type safe.
The purpose of generics in most programming language is to provide type safety and enhance performance through the elimination of casts. Java generics do neither. They only hide casts and force you to used stupid methods like checkedList,etc. to achieve type safety. These methods could have been added to the old language version without problems. It's a disgrace that a language with "generics" requires that kind of method to achive type safety.
Regarding enums. They are the worst implementation of enums I have seen. They are implemented as classes and as such they are prone to very strange errors if several ClassLoaders are used, as is the case in most application server environments.
The worst part of the new Java language changes is that they are designed so that ignorant people like you, who do not know their implications, believe they are achieving type safety/better performance when in fact they are not.
How so? My group does a fair amount of development in a variety of languages (C/C++/Java/VB/C#/and various scripting languages) and by far, the developers prefer Java. I guess I don't see how Sun messed up Java as you indicate.
Java was a good language until 1.4.x.
With Java 2 5 1.5 they turned it into a crappy language. Almost all the features they added are badly designed, especially generics.
While Suns tend to be pricey, it's because their built like tanks (both in terms of chasis/frame, and from CPU and internal layout).
That's crap. In my server room I have 4 servers.
-An Intergraph Dual Intel Pentium III 700 bought in 1999. That's solid. It has never given any problems.
-Two IBM PC Server Dual Pentium II 300 from 1998 I think. These have never failed. Solid as a rock.
-A SunFire 280R 750MHz from 2001. It was extremely expensive and it stopped working last December. Total crap. Expensive and crappy. Our decision was to not buy Sun computers again. A lot of money lost.
Poor Sun. They fucked up Java, they fucked up their hardware. The only thing left is Solaris, and it's not going to make much money for them.
does this mean inputting accents on qt applications will finally be fixed? kde and lyx have been unusable for me since qt-3.something...
I might be just an ignorant troll, but if it wasn't qt-3, I don't know why else i can't write accented words on anything using qt.
I have never had this problem in Slackware or old versions of SuSE. You probably use one of those crappy distributions that bundle misconfigured software. I have a friend who had your problem with LyX in Ubuntu. It was the first time I saw it.
AFAIK, OS/2 had anabsolute 512MB memory limit. I don't know if they extended this with the server version (which I never used).
I still have my red box OS/2 warp (and OS/2 2.1 too).
That was the best you could use in a time dominated by the atrocity known as Windows 3.1
The core language is still fairly compact.
It was fairly compact until 1.4.x.
The new Java 2 version 5 version 1.5 language is not compact. It's a complete, badly designed, mess. That's the problem of putting a lot of ignorant people (JCP) to take decisions that should be made by a small group of knowledgable people.
Of course, we live in the real world, and in the real world whether 20-30% of real performance can be traded off for POTENTIAL theoretical benefits.
I would not call security and stability potential theoretical benefits.
There are no shortage of people who would disagree with you about Microkernels. You also neglect mention that they are incredibly slow
While it is true that microkernels are slower than monolithic kernels, they have many advantages. They can be more stable and secure. Two things that plague current operating systems, including Linux.
Regarding performance, everyone likes to take Mach as an example of how slow microkernels are. But, many microkernel bashers seem to forget QNX, which has never been accused of being terribly small. It is one of the best (if not the best) hard real time operating systems out there. OK, it is proprietary, but it is a proof that microkernel based operating systems can be done right.
XML blaster is an open source message oriented middleware that has bindings for multiple languages (C,C++, Java, PHP, Python, Perl).
I have never used it, but it's been available since a long time.
I'd hate to mention this, but the previous person would be the one to ask. didn't Venezuela privitized their social security a few years (ie 15-20) ago?
Social security in Venezuela has never been privatized.
It sucks, though.
You are right. I live in Venezuela.
This is currently one of the latin american countries with the highest proportion of poor people.
But there are many levels of poverty.
There are persons who live in absolute misery (they cannot even afford food).
There are poor who have very low paying jobs and probably cannot buy a 100$ computer. They can barely afford food.
There are poor who can afford food, but cannot have much luxury. They ussually have TV, stereo, and live in very humble homes. They cannot afford cars (some may have very old cars) or better housing, but a large part of them could afford a $100 computer.
There are poor who have somewhat better paying jobs (they might be successful street sellers or something). They cannot afford new cars or elegant housing, but they can certainly 100$ computers.
There are many others who were previously middle class, but now are now poor. Many of them are probably still able to afford a $100 computer.
There are also lower middle class people (poor by first world standards) who can afford $100 (and probably, slightly more expensive) computers.
A $100 computer would certainly be a success here.
I would also imagine that the people in your country and other developing nations who can afford a $100 laptop are not the poor but the middle class.
No. Many poor people here (just not the poorest) could afford $100 computers (especially if it can be payed for in several monthly payments).
Middle class people (a minority here) can afford much more expensive computers.
In many other countries like Colombia, Brasil, Argentina, Mexico, Peru and Uruguay the situation is similar or, in many cases, better.
Also, what happened in California was an anomaly.
Well, it hasn't happened in my third world country. Yet you talk like it is the norm in all third world countries. It is not. (Perhaps it was an anomaly in the Dominican Republic. I don't know. I've never been there).
Remember. There are many levels of poverty.
Anyway, this discussion is a little offtopic, because IIRC these $100 can only be bought by governments in quantities of at least one million.
Venezuelan government can easily shell out 200 or 300 millions and give away the computers if they want to.
You ignorant. Not all third world countries are the same. I live in one and Iknow lots of people who cannotcurrently afford a computer, but would be able to buy a 100$ one. We don't have intermitent power. In fact our third world power infrastructure is better than some parts of the first world (e.g. California not long ago). These computers would be perfect for a country like ours.
No, it doesn't resolve dependicies.
pkg-get does resolve dependencies.
I installed KDE on solaris using the command:
pkg-get install kde
Of course, pkg-get is not the package manager that comes bundled with solaris, but it builds on it. I downloaded it from blastwave.org.
I was playing with Solaris 10 X86 (version Oct 04) a few days ago, but I went back to slackware for serious work because it couldn't access the USB ports (it supossedly has USB support, but it didn't work on my PC).
I found solaris was very fast (in contrast to its fame as slowlaris). I found it much much faster than Suse 9.0. I didn't run any real benchmarks, but, for example, the "Konsole" program started much faster in solaris X86 (I have to admit it starts fast on other linux distributions too). The general feel I had was that it's a fast OS. Too bad it wasn't able to use the USB ports.
If they improve their hardware support they could be a very good alternative to Linux for desktops.
NT based versions of Windows have had ACLs since the beginning.
ACLs have nothing to do with Mandatory Access Contro (MAC).
ACLs let you implement DAC (Discretionary Access Control) and are necessary for a C2 security level.
MAC is necessary for B1 or better security levels, which is higher that C1 or C2 and is required for many military applications.
With SELinux, Linux gets MAC.
TrustedSolaris has MAC.
OpenBSD has MAC (IIRC not by default, I think you have to recompile the kernel).
The article you point to says Solaris (or OpenSolaris 10) will have some security features (not necessarily all) of Trusted Solaris. It doesn mention MAC, which was specifically my question.
Will Trusted Solaris 10, complete with MAC, be open source too?
AFAIK, Solaris 10 does not have Mandatory Access Control. Does it?
That is what makes Trusted Solaris "Trusted".
That is exactly the first thing I tought about. I knew someone in slashdot would mention Lain.
Hey, they are airing it right now.
Gotta go watch it....
There is no such thing as XML goodness. XML is a stupid idea from stupid people who sell it to other stupid people. I have never once encountered a situation where there was any need to encapsulate data in XML in which the gains in flexibility weren't outweighed by the problems of unnecessary bloat and additional complexity in maintenance.
I mostly agree with you. However, I have used XML together with data binding tools for complex configuration files. There might be some other uses, but it sucks for almost everything else, including simple configuration files.
Especially crappy is the atrocity known as XSLT. There are many other better, more understandable technologies for achieving the same result.
Out of curiosity, what other kind of DB is out there that isn't an RDB(MS)? Edgar Codd's system has been working pretty well, and though there are other systems, I don't know that there's huge demand for them. You're not contradicting that, but I wonder what you were thinking of.
Berkeley DB is not a relational database and is among the most used databases in the world.
I am not asking if there are other LDAP server available for windows. Of course there are.
My question is if Windows Server's SMB/CIFS implementation supports LDAP backends different than ActiveDirectory. It's an honest question. I don't know if it does.
I'd love to be able to replace my entire Windows NT 4 domain with Samba running on Linux, but until Samba can actually provide a backup domain controller functionality that works with our existing LDAP infrastructure, I'm sorry, but Samba is not ready for prime-time. Having a single point of failure in your Samba PDC is not acceptable for enterprise use.
Samba supports PDC/BDC functionality. You can have has many BDC's as you want. I have a PDC and a BDC installed. It works fine. I'm using OpenLDAP though.
BTW, does Windows Server support any LDAP back-end that is not Microsoft's Active directory?