When I first read it, I thought he was talking about connecting two offices together securely. Of course, I also hadn't considered that we here in Chicago tend to spend more money than people in other areas, either.
Use a point to point T1 just like all the other small businesses out there. Even small businesses can afford it. They just may not want to pay for it, but they will.
It's so safe, that no one uses it! It's kind of tough for it to be unsafe when everyone refuses to touch it! That would be like Rosanne Bar being in the high-risk category for STD's.
You asked for a recommendation for a company, so I'll give you one. There's a company called Applied Integration. I used to work for them (appropriate disclosure, I think) designing digital video surveillance systems (I worked on the software side). The market dropped out after the dot-com bomb, and the owner went back to doing custom hardware designs. He's very good at what he does, has designed imaging systems for the telescopes of major observatories down to small surveillance systems, and he's nearing retirement. He may be able to do what you need for a reasonable enough price. I also would never expect him to rip off your idea, though I would of course make sure to have an NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement) and the whole nine (legal-wise) yards in place. The website is http://appliedi.com/
As others have said, language isn't so important. That said, I can only recommend the tools I'm happy with: the Ganymede version of Eclipse for C++ with the Subclipse plugin (for Subversion). Gcc/G++ works well for me, though you can also use icc if you like. Other developers have told me that the Python version of the Ganymede Eclipse package is very nice as well, but I stick with C++, so that's only what I've heard.
Find tools you like to use for development, and learn the libraries. You may want to take projects you developed for Windows in school and port them to Linux. That should give you an easy start.
Oh man, I am SO buying one of these for my yacht, along with some powerful solar panels. That way, if I get stranded on a deserted island somewhere, I'll at least know I'll have clean drinking water.
Now I've just got to buy a yacht... anyone have one for sale, cheap?
As someone said, get a portfolio together to show companies. More importantly, follow how the coders get into the field: they write demo programs. Search around for opensource gaming projects which need a writer, and write for the opensource game. Make it good, and you can use that as a big feather in your cap to break into the industry. I suggest diving right in, too, rather than dipping your toes in with part-time stuff. Game developers make really good money. There's a Game Developer (I think that's the name) magazine too. I suggest you subscribe to that to get more insight into the industry.
Also, look on usenet. People interested in coding for games talk on usenet, a LOT. Ask people there, and look for groups about game writing.
Seriously? I personally came to the conclusion that Hak5 was the most dumbed-down braindead show of all Revision3's shows. At least, of the ones I'd even consider watching.
I easily believe there are 5,000 IT people in a Fortune 100 company. I bet there are actually a lot more than that. I don't believe that a Fortune 100 company could have only 35,000 employees. If that were the total number of employees, it would not possibly be in the Fortune 100 list. That's too small. She probably was talking about the one skyscraper she works in, not the total numbers for the whole company. Check out the company in finance.google.com. I bet the number of employees you see there is far greater. I worked for a company a few years ago that was barely too small to make the Fortune 500 list, and they had at least 150,000 employees in that one city alone, and many many more around the nation.
OH I see, you think this is something that microsoft can do, but Linux can't? Well, don't claim to know anything about Linux then.
You can do this in Linux very easily, in multiple ways.
a) You can partition the harddrives on the desktops to have a partition available for this (best way), which you then share over either ATA over Ethernet (ATAoE) or iSCSI, then put them into an LVM volume group.
b) You can share portions of the harddrives over NFS, create a large file on the NFS share, create your filesystem inside the file (so that it'll appear as a block device), and then add that to an LVM volume group.
c) Same as b, but with samba
d) same as all three above, but with EVMS instead of LVM.
Unlike with windows, however, no expensive server version of Linux is required to do this under Linux. You don't need a newer distro of Linux for this either. You can use one from the 90's to do this if you wish.
You could setup an Asterisks PBX (free open source, based on Linux), use VoIP to save money, have all the features you need and a lot more, and if you have a spare PC lying around for this (an old one is plenty of power), it'll cost you a lot less in the long run than paying a monthly fee. Plus, it'll be really cool: music on hold (music YOU like:), different mailboxes, nice voicemail system, ability to use cool phones if you want to (like those Cisco phones w/ the color displays), etc. If you can afford the upfront cost, then I think it's worth it. Use it to show off your geek prowess;)
I decided to go back to school to get a math degree, and either minor in CS or make it my second major. I'm 29, not 39, but I've gotten bored with coding business apps too. I decided to focus on math because it opens up other areas, as well, such as EE, ME, finance, structural engineering, and many others. I think I'd rather work with robotics than develop desktop/server apps, because I'll actually be able to physically interact with my creations. You might consider something similar to get more interesting work. I enjoy doing the math, hence my major, but anything with embedded systems work may be more interesting to you and therefore, CE might be a better tack.
Ahem, he means statically linked libraries. Somehow, I don't see that working well for and API.
However, the community of programmers who know what they're doing tend to prefer Debian or one of its derivatives. I'd personally start with supporting Slackware (due to its "pure" nature), then ensure it works with Debian. If you do that, you'll probably have few complaints. The people who use RHEL are more often admins, not coders. Who cares about the admins? You? Why would you? They're not coders, now, are they?
I have a script, along with a set of support files, that I wrote for Breezy. I never got around to releasing it, but it automatically updates your sources.list and installs all the extra software you want that's not included by default. If you're interested in helping me update it for Edgy, tweak the list of packages it installs, and testing/tweaking it, we can put it on sourceforge or whatever, and it'll make the task you're talking about much easier. Just respond to let me know.
It wouldn't hurt to share your issues over on the Gentoo forums. Those people are extremely helpful and are bound to get you through any Gentoo quirks you may have run into.
After using gentoo for a few years, then getting sick and tired of all the compiling and switching to Kubuntu, I have to say that I agree with you on this. When I've looked at the Ubuntu forums, I was horrified by the stark contrast in documentation quality. The gentoo docs are, IMO, the best in the Linux world. I also liked portage much better than apt. If gentoo were truly like the BSDs, it would offer binary installs of everything and I'd still be using it. I was just glad that I already knew Linux well when I installed Kubuntu for the first time (I used Slackware for enough years to have done practically everything manually). I would even recommend the gentoo docs to someone who doesn't use gentoo.
Then spend 30 seconds to do a google search to find out this is caused by the kernel upgrade, and the fix for the problem is to just rerun the simple NVidia installer tool so that it can compile its device driver abstraction layer against the new kernel. Problem solved, effortlessly. Remember, the driver didn't come from Ubuntu or Kubuntu, it came from NVidia.
And I have seen OS service packs and upgrades break Windows many times. Just look at the XP SP2 debacle. That one was a huge PITA for IT departments all over the world. Unlike the Ubuntu/Kubuntu world, however, Microsoft forced that down peoples' throats.
This reminds me of a flaw by the Ubuntu developers which irritates me: they use relative soft links in/lib,/bin,/usr/lib,/usr/bin, etc. This makes me wonder if they've never run into a problem with not having enough space allocated to the root or some other partition on a machine where they didn't use lvm, evms or some other volume management system. I installed Ubuntu in a virtual machine without using lvm, then ended up installing more into that vm than I had anticipated. Needless to say, when I moved some directories out of/usr into another partition with much more free space (using a soft link), I ran into this problem and had to rewrite the links by hand so they'd be relative to/. Actually, does anyone know of a tool which will do this for you?
I've been using Firefox 2.0 since about an hour or two before the release announcement (as soon as I saw it on an ftp site), and I've found it to be much better than 1.5. On my machines, it's much more responsive, and uses less memory. On my machine it has been running since I downloaded it, currently has over a dozen tabs open, has had hundreds of tabs closed, and here is the current memory consumption:
USER PID %CPU %MEM VSZ RSS TTY STAT START TIME COMMAND
---- ---- 1.8 15.9 344576 192924 ? Sl Oct26 60:26/usr/lib/firefox/firefox-bin
That's much better than it was in 1.5. I don't think this guy knows what he's talking about.
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When I first read it, I thought he was talking about connecting two offices together securely. Of course, I also hadn't considered that we here in Chicago tend to spend more money than people in other areas, either.
Use a point to point T1 just like all the other small businesses out there. Even small businesses can afford it. They just may not want to pay for it, but they will.
Duh, Qt!
It's so safe, that no one uses it! It's kind of tough for it to be unsafe when everyone refuses to touch it! That would be like Rosanne Bar being in the high-risk category for STD's.
You asked for a recommendation for a company, so I'll give you one. There's a company called Applied Integration. I used to work for them (appropriate disclosure, I think) designing digital video surveillance systems (I worked on the software side). The market dropped out after the dot-com bomb, and the owner went back to doing custom hardware designs. He's very good at what he does, has designed imaging systems for the telescopes of major observatories down to small surveillance systems, and he's nearing retirement. He may be able to do what you need for a reasonable enough price. I also would never expect him to rip off your idea, though I would of course make sure to have an NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement) and the whole nine (legal-wise) yards in place. The website is http://appliedi.com/
I hope that helps.
As others have said, language isn't so important. That said, I can only recommend the tools I'm happy with: the Ganymede version of Eclipse for C++ with the Subclipse plugin (for Subversion). Gcc/G++ works well for me, though you can also use icc if you like. Other developers have told me that the Python version of the Ganymede Eclipse package is very nice as well, but I stick with C++, so that's only what I've heard. Find tools you like to use for development, and learn the libraries. You may want to take projects you developed for Windows in school and port them to Linux. That should give you an easy start.
Oh man, I am SO buying one of these for my yacht, along with some powerful solar panels. That way, if I get stranded on a deserted island somewhere, I'll at least know I'll have clean drinking water. Now I've just got to buy a yacht... anyone have one for sale, cheap?
As someone said, get a portfolio together to show companies. More importantly, follow how the coders get into the field: they write demo programs. Search around for opensource gaming projects which need a writer, and write for the opensource game. Make it good, and you can use that as a big feather in your cap to break into the industry. I suggest diving right in, too, rather than dipping your toes in with part-time stuff. Game developers make really good money. There's a Game Developer (I think that's the name) magazine too. I suggest you subscribe to that to get more insight into the industry. Also, look on usenet. People interested in coding for games talk on usenet, a LOT. Ask people there, and look for groups about game writing.
How about something on Internet Security, which has a focus on Penetration Testing?
Seriously? I personally came to the conclusion that Hak5 was the most dumbed-down braindead show of all Revision3's shows. At least, of the ones I'd even consider watching.
I easily believe there are 5,000 IT people in a Fortune 100 company. I bet there are actually a lot more than that. I don't believe that a Fortune 100 company could have only 35,000 employees. If that were the total number of employees, it would not possibly be in the Fortune 100 list. That's too small. She probably was talking about the one skyscraper she works in, not the total numbers for the whole company. Check out the company in finance.google.com. I bet the number of employees you see there is far greater. I worked for a company a few years ago that was barely too small to make the Fortune 500 list, and they had at least 150,000 employees in that one city alone, and many many more around the nation.
OH I see, you think this is something that microsoft can do, but Linux can't? Well, don't claim to know anything about Linux then.
You can do this in Linux very easily, in multiple ways.
a) You can partition the harddrives on the desktops to have a partition available for this (best way), which you then share over either ATA over Ethernet (ATAoE) or iSCSI, then put them into an LVM volume group.
b) You can share portions of the harddrives over NFS, create a large file on the NFS share, create your filesystem inside the file (so that it'll appear as a block device), and then add that to an LVM volume group.
c) Same as b, but with samba
d) same as all three above, but with EVMS instead of LVM.
Unlike with windows, however, no expensive server version of Linux is required to do this under Linux. You don't need a newer distro of Linux for this either. You can use one from the 90's to do this if you wish.
Eat that, fanboy!
Enter DKMS, the Dell project, which abstracts the kernel version from the device driver. This project renders your point about device drivers moot.
See more here: Dell Linux Projects.
You could setup an Asterisks PBX (free open source, based on Linux), use VoIP to save money, have all the features you need and a lot more, and if you have a spare PC lying around for this (an old one is plenty of power), it'll cost you a lot less in the long run than paying a monthly fee. Plus, it'll be really cool: music on hold (music YOU like :), different mailboxes, nice voicemail system, ability to use cool phones if you want to (like those Cisco phones w/ the color displays), etc. If you can afford the upfront cost, then I think it's worth it. Use it to show off your geek prowess ;)
I decided to go back to school to get a math degree, and either minor in CS or make it my second major. I'm 29, not 39, but I've gotten bored with coding business apps too. I decided to focus on math because it opens up other areas, as well, such as EE, ME, finance, structural engineering, and many others. I think I'd rather work with robotics than develop desktop/server apps, because I'll actually be able to physically interact with my creations. You might consider something similar to get more interesting work. I enjoy doing the math, hence my major, but anything with embedded systems work may be more interesting to you and therefore, CE might be a better tack.
Does this mean there will be some way to fiddle with the GPLv2 vs GPLv3 licensing so we can get ZFS and DTrace into Linux?
Ahem, he means statically linked libraries. Somehow, I don't see that working well for and API.
However, the community of programmers who know what they're doing tend to prefer Debian or one of its derivatives. I'd personally start with supporting Slackware (due to its "pure" nature), then ensure it works with Debian. If you do that, you'll probably have few complaints. The people who use RHEL are more often admins, not coders. Who cares about the admins? You? Why would you? They're not coders, now, are they?
Last I heard, that was a soft phone, commonly implemented to utilize the SIP protocol.
Switch to a LAMP stack and choose one of the many freely available analyzers for Apache on Linux. (Yeah, like you didn't see that coming...)
I have a script, along with a set of support files, that I wrote for Breezy. I never got around to releasing it, but it automatically updates your sources.list and installs all the extra software you want that's not included by default. If you're interested in helping me update it for Edgy, tweak the list of packages it installs, and testing/tweaking it, we can put it on sourceforge or whatever, and it'll make the task you're talking about much easier. Just respond to let me know.
It wouldn't hurt to share your issues over on the Gentoo forums. Those people are extremely helpful and are bound to get you through any Gentoo quirks you may have run into.
After using gentoo for a few years, then getting sick and tired of all the compiling and switching to Kubuntu, I have to say that I agree with you on this. When I've looked at the Ubuntu forums, I was horrified by the stark contrast in documentation quality. The gentoo docs are, IMO, the best in the Linux world. I also liked portage much better than apt. If gentoo were truly like the BSDs, it would offer binary installs of everything and I'd still be using it. I was just glad that I already knew Linux well when I installed Kubuntu for the first time (I used Slackware for enough years to have done practically everything manually). I would even recommend the gentoo docs to someone who doesn't use gentoo.
Then spend 30 seconds to do a google search to find out this is caused by the kernel upgrade, and the fix for the problem is to just rerun the simple NVidia installer tool so that it can compile its device driver abstraction layer against the new kernel. Problem solved, effortlessly. Remember, the driver didn't come from Ubuntu or Kubuntu, it came from NVidia.
And I have seen OS service packs and upgrades break Windows many times. Just look at the XP SP2 debacle. That one was a huge PITA for IT departments all over the world. Unlike the Ubuntu/Kubuntu world, however, Microsoft forced that down peoples' throats.
This reminds me of a flaw by the Ubuntu developers which irritates me: they use relative soft links in /lib, /bin, /usr/lib, /usr/bin, etc. This makes me wonder if they've never run into a problem with not having enough space allocated to the root or some other partition on a machine where they didn't use lvm, evms or some other volume management system. I installed Ubuntu in a virtual machine without using lvm, then ended up installing more into that vm than I had anticipated. Needless to say, when I moved some directories out of /usr into another partition with much more free space (using a soft link), I ran into this problem and had to rewrite the links by hand so they'd be relative to /. Actually, does anyone know of a tool which will do this for you?
USER PID %CPU %MEM VSZ RSS TTY STAT START TIME COMMAND
---- ---- 1.8 15.9 344576 192924 ? Sl Oct26 60:26
That's much better than it was in 1.5. I don't think this guy knows what he's talking about.
Hey Slashdot readers, what's the best brand of oil to use in my car?
Dear Slashdot, I keep buying ballpoint pens that don't write well. I have to keep scribbling on scratch paper to make them work. What kind of pen should I get so I don't have this problem?
Dear Slashdot, my kid wants a dog. I don't want a dog that barks alot. What do you recommend?
Yo Slashdot, I got a beef wit dis guy in my 'hood. What kinda piece do you recommend I use on his a$$? Peace.
Dear Slashdot, I'm so fat I keep breaking every chair I sit on. Anyone know of an industrial strength chair I can get that won't get crushed by my lazy butt?
Hey all you smart Slashdot readers, I'm going to be on Who Wants to be a Millionaire. Anyone want to be one of my lifelines? You need to be really smart and stuff. Lemme know if you are.