Although you're right that money talks you're making an assumption that the RF used by cell phones is unique to cell phones when it is not. Also worth noting that cell phones exist in every country practically and no one has anything conclusive against them. There was evidence that analog phones put out too much power and could cause harm but that technology died quite a while ago.
That's also part of the reason that studies haven't been very conclusive so far, the technology keeps changing so you have to start over.
Man are you right about Ohio, growing up in Vermont and upstate New York also being victims. Acid rain is killing the Adirondacks because of Ohio. I don't know how things have persisted as long as they have.
All of my servers are up-to-date with no issue which includes Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2008, SUSE Enterprise Linux, Oracle Enterprise Linux, CentOS, Debian, OS X and Ubuntu.
Of course just because it all snaps into place in my environment doesn't necessarily mean it will in yours. For instance, I don't do anything with HOSTS files as the situation has not called for it except on my workstation which is largely because I don't like ads.
There are a certain number of installs where Windows update will break, it's not a specific patch problem but an issue with the catalog stored on the computer. When the catalog is wiped Windowsupdate reapplies the failed update and away you go. I've had this happen on 1 in 10 Windows Server installs.
How would patching a DNS server break a web server? My guess is that someone was blaming the patch for a problem that they created themselves.
"Certified" fixes for MS products come from Windows Update or in certain extreme circumstances you have to request the file such as the case with the Exchange 2003 issue with calendar updates to Exchange 2007 systems. The dates get mangled so the server is unable to read further updates. Just an example from my world.
It is quite rare these days unless you're doing something supremely funky that a patch will break your stuff. Doesn't mean you shouldn't test of course.
Yeah, our revenue stream was less than expected for 2008 so they decided to start slashing budgets. One would think a 16% reduction in revenue would result in a 16% reduction in budget but I actually had mine cut by more than 50% and IT isn't alone here.
Executives like to use the times are tough argument to carve out more money for themselves thus making times tougher. It's hard for me to believe cash flow is low when private planes and houseboats are being bought instead of the owner reinvesting back into the company like he had already done. It's his right to do so of course since it is his money. Of course I know the ole times are tough argument is simply BS.
One of the age old problems is the assumption that IT for most companies is simply capital expenditure. ROI is hard to measure for IT for most companies.
Picture a DR situation where an office is lost to fire. If the company didn't invest in adequate protection then that company is now often out of business losing entire client databases or even contracts. Now proper DR would not only save all your data so you can keep doing business but potentially you might not even have downtime as is the case with banks. This is of course federally mandated but the company I work for is a private entity and practices the same philosophy.
Then of course comes the automation, once a task is automated it is no longer reflected in ROI even though the system is still in place years later supporting it.
Course I'm one guy managing over 40 servers across five sites so I don't foresee a reduction in IT staffing anytime soon for this company.
You're right though, tight times means you spend the extra time to finish your deployments instead of investing in new projects. This means your environment becomes more cohesive and the new stuff later will snap in easier since everything will be well documented by then.
Consider the downtime a nice roadblock allowing you to audit everything you currently have to make sure you are using everything efficiently.
Virtualization for the win, we'll utilize our hardware more effectively while increasing functionality.
With my HP laptop I've no trouble doing dual monitors with ATI. Big Desktop took all of two minutes to setup. Of course with OpenSUSE it's even easier. Those guys have their act together in regards to multiple monitor support.
The only thing I've yet to figure out is how to have the laptop detect that I'm not longer in the docking station and thus that I don't want Big Desktop running which uses the gpu at full power so the battery life of the laptop sucks in the meantime.
Of course if you do that you will still get a warning since it's not an EV cert. No green light for IE7 users, not that very many people know to look for one yet.
Note, that is an SSL123 cert and not an extended validation certificate. If you get an EV cert you have more hoops to jump through going to far as faxed letterhead and the likes.
Although worth noting, if you already have a relationship with Thawte then the process is easier and takes less time. The first cert always takes the longest.
I guess it all depends on what you mean by modifying software. OEMs for Windows can rebrand everything and automate the install with any number of customizations. I got the impression that's all Psystar did with OS X. If that's the case there would be no grounds but again, Microsoft has licensing to accommodate this while Apple does not. So it may indeed be a violation of the EULA.
My anecdotal evidence has shown the G3s and G4s to be useless today. We don't even bother booting them up anymore. We finally even got rid of the dual G5 machine as it was having all kinds of hardware problems.
I've had similar hardware failure rates with Apple as I have with any other manufacturer but it's just my experience. The atrociousness that is Apple support would seem to indicate that the hardware is reliable otherwise they would have attempted to streamline their support practices by now.
The prices not marked up that high anymore on the low end laptops. The high-end gear is definitely marked up big time. For what you get from Apple for 10k you can do a lot better from another manufacturer. That's probably where a lot of the confusion comes from. Everyone does it though, the high end gear always has a larger profit margin to make up for the lack margin on the low-end gear.
I wouldn't think so, I've never heard of a mandatory recall before. You've always just run a certain safety risk in most situations. I could be wrong or uninformed but I don't think Apple can force Psystar to get all their merchandise back. Their customers would have no incentive to go through all the trouble and so they'd put up their own fight. Once you've bought something you've bought it. You can bring it back if you wish but they can't forcibly take it from you.
You're even allowed to make some modifications to it with Microsoft's OEM licensing. Apple doesn't offer such licensing. Of course under the doctrine of first sale it should be legit regardless of special OEM licensing.
I think you missed my point, I wasn't suggesting that it was a bad thing that all the options exist. As I said, different distros have different strengths but none of the distros make any attempt to illustrate their strengths. They leave it up to every user to determine if the distro is right for them. That is the real problem, people don't know which distro to go because they don't understand how each is different without spending a month on it.
In the car world they make it very clear, this Aveo is a piece of crap that will get you good gas mileage. This CLK 63 AMG will get you laid but forget about gas mileage. It's quite clear the differences.
Personally I like the competition, but the lack of standardization is harming Linux adoption. They either need to consolidate all the distros or start making it clear why you should choose this major distro over that major distro.
I'll grant IPCop is pretty straight forward in what they are targeting, same with Smoothwall, but Ubuntu? Fedora? OpenSUSE? What are they targeting? When should a user choose one over the other? If they are indeed all the same then competition hasn't helped anything, if they are different then that should be highlighted.
Wouldn't it be nice if there was more than just me in my position. Sadly, we're not big enough to do that so I'm pretty much on call all the time. In my experience even at a place like IBM this happens where you have specialists which need to always be available. This is not uncommon by any means even if it is poor practice.
People here at the office gather round desks all the time to watch certain videos. Just this morning someone had to show me a music video. At home we often show our guests a skit that one of my friends produced on youtube while he was drunk one night. It's hilarious and always leads to a video session where people share their favorite videos.
Of course these sessions don't last very long since everyone is standing around the computer.
That model works great when product has high viewership. When you have 160 channels and nothing on however your viewership is quite small and so you need ads from more sources since the advertisers need to hedge their bets across more channels. That also means they aren't willing to pay as much for space which means more ads.
It's a never ending shame spiral until they figure out how to make money without inundating viewers with ads.
Speak for yourself, as a manager of a site that sees a fair amount of traffic, we make a good amount in ad revenue. Of course it's not our primary revenue source so I suppose it works better for us than a lot of people that rely on it alone. Of course we don't use an ad manager. People buy ad space on our site directly which means we host the content ourselves and then don't have to worry about mal-ware getting distributed to our visitors.
Sounds like you're in the programming world instead of the sysadmin world where it is routine to bring the laptop home just in case something happens while you're away. This means you can fix that email queue while drinking a beer by the pool instead of driving all the way into the office.
I know on several occasions I've had to fire up the VPN for a five second fix that is holding some big-wig from closing a deal. It also means that if I wake up late I can connect to the VPN and do a couple of the morning tasks before I leave. That way I can arrive and not be inundated with tasks.
I think you're right but this is quite a problem. I recently made the switch from Windows to Ubuntu on my laptop. I still run Windows inside a VM but that's just for my management tools which are Windows only.
In these days you don't know which distro is right for you, they all provide much the same functionality and all have little differences. I tried the major distros, KDE, Gnome, and landed on Ubuntu with Gnome because everyone was ranting and raving about it and I thought it was worth a closer look.
In the end I've found that SUSE is easier for the desktop user while Ubuntu and Fedora are easier to hack out difficult functionality like fingerprint authentication using PAM which is still quite problematic, so much so I had to turn it off but that's largely due to a compatibility problem between VMWare and Ubuntu which results in me losing the ability to use my keyboard. Not all apps will work using fingerprint authentication so you still need to be able to type your elevation password.
Of course for me, I get around the issue by adding a widget to the panel which calls setxkbmap which fixes the issue so that I can type my elevation password after the failure has occurred.
Back to the original issue, it's impossible to tell which audience the major distros are targeting. They all try to cater to pretty much everyone and the result is that some distros are better at some things than others which means you have to try them all before you can pick the best one for you. That's a lot of work as you really need to use your machine to know and any machine you use on a regular basis you don't want to be installing a new distro every week on.
You land on a good point about traffic patterns, all efforts thus far result in breaking BT but also break apps like my VPN client, Lotus Notes has been another commonly hit application.
I have a standard way to negotiate IPSec across links, I have a slow private link and then a fast Internet link. OSPF can handle the rest.
Unfortunately, although the U.S. constitution mandates separation of church and state, states have every right to do it themselves unless it is against the individual state's constitution.
As long as it's not mandated on a federal level its all good, damned state's rights going in the wrong direction. The people of LA seem to think it's a good idea, as long as the people in my state don't agree then I'm cool with that as I don't think religion should be taught in a science class.
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Given the state of Nevada suing Arizona over cloud seeding I would think there would be a recourse or two that could have been taken.
Although you're right that money talks you're making an assumption that the RF used by cell phones is unique to cell phones when it is not. Also worth noting that cell phones exist in every country practically and no one has anything conclusive against them. There was evidence that analog phones put out too much power and could cause harm but that technology died quite a while ago.
That's also part of the reason that studies haven't been very conclusive so far, the technology keeps changing so you have to start over.
Man are you right about Ohio, growing up in Vermont and upstate New York also being victims. Acid rain is killing the Adirondacks because of Ohio. I don't know how things have persisted as long as they have.
All of my servers are up-to-date with no issue which includes Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2008, SUSE Enterprise Linux, Oracle Enterprise Linux, CentOS, Debian, OS X and Ubuntu.
Of course just because it all snaps into place in my environment doesn't necessarily mean it will in yours. For instance, I don't do anything with HOSTS files as the situation has not called for it except on my workstation which is largely because I don't like ads.
There are a certain number of installs where Windows update will break, it's not a specific patch problem but an issue with the catalog stored on the computer. When the catalog is wiped Windowsupdate reapplies the failed update and away you go. I've had this happen on 1 in 10 Windows Server installs.
How would patching a DNS server break a web server? My guess is that someone was blaming the patch for a problem that they created themselves.
"Certified" fixes for MS products come from Windows Update or in certain extreme circumstances you have to request the file such as the case with the Exchange 2003 issue with calendar updates to Exchange 2007 systems. The dates get mangled so the server is unable to read further updates. Just an example from my world.
It is quite rare these days unless you're doing something supremely funky that a patch will break your stuff. Doesn't mean you shouldn't test of course.
Yeah, our revenue stream was less than expected for 2008 so they decided to start slashing budgets. One would think a 16% reduction in revenue would result in a 16% reduction in budget but I actually had mine cut by more than 50% and IT isn't alone here.
Executives like to use the times are tough argument to carve out more money for themselves thus making times tougher. It's hard for me to believe cash flow is low when private planes and houseboats are being bought instead of the owner reinvesting back into the company like he had already done. It's his right to do so of course since it is his money. Of course I know the ole times are tough argument is simply BS.
One of the age old problems is the assumption that IT for most companies is simply capital expenditure. ROI is hard to measure for IT for most companies.
Picture a DR situation where an office is lost to fire. If the company didn't invest in adequate protection then that company is now often out of business losing entire client databases or even contracts. Now proper DR would not only save all your data so you can keep doing business but potentially you might not even have downtime as is the case with banks. This is of course federally mandated but the company I work for is a private entity and practices the same philosophy.
Then of course comes the automation, once a task is automated it is no longer reflected in ROI even though the system is still in place years later supporting it.
Course I'm one guy managing over 40 servers across five sites so I don't foresee a reduction in IT staffing anytime soon for this company.
You're right though, tight times means you spend the extra time to finish your deployments instead of investing in new projects. This means your environment becomes more cohesive and the new stuff later will snap in easier since everything will be well documented by then.
Consider the downtime a nice roadblock allowing you to audit everything you currently have to make sure you are using everything efficiently.
Virtualization for the win, we'll utilize our hardware more effectively while increasing functionality.
So what you're saying is we should go there to work out?
Which cards are lacking drivers?
With my HP laptop I've no trouble doing dual monitors with ATI. Big Desktop took all of two minutes to setup. Of course with OpenSUSE it's even easier. Those guys have their act together in regards to multiple monitor support.
The only thing I've yet to figure out is how to have the laptop detect that I'm not longer in the docking station and thus that I don't want Big Desktop running which uses the gpu at full power so the battery life of the laptop sucks in the meantime.
Of course if you do that you will still get a warning since it's not an EV cert. No green light for IE7 users, not that very many people know to look for one yet.
Note, that is an SSL123 cert and not an extended validation certificate. If you get an EV cert you have more hoops to jump through going to far as faxed letterhead and the likes.
Although worth noting, if you already have a relationship with Thawte then the process is easier and takes less time. The first cert always takes the longest.
I guess it all depends on what you mean by modifying software. OEMs for Windows can rebrand everything and automate the install with any number of customizations. I got the impression that's all Psystar did with OS X. If that's the case there would be no grounds but again, Microsoft has licensing to accommodate this while Apple does not. So it may indeed be a violation of the EULA.
My anecdotal evidence has shown the G3s and G4s to be useless today. We don't even bother booting them up anymore. We finally even got rid of the dual G5 machine as it was having all kinds of hardware problems.
I've had similar hardware failure rates with Apple as I have with any other manufacturer but it's just my experience. The atrociousness that is Apple support would seem to indicate that the hardware is reliable otherwise they would have attempted to streamline their support practices by now.
The prices not marked up that high anymore on the low end laptops. The high-end gear is definitely marked up big time. For what you get from Apple for 10k you can do a lot better from another manufacturer. That's probably where a lot of the confusion comes from. Everyone does it though, the high end gear always has a larger profit margin to make up for the lack margin on the low-end gear.
I wouldn't think so, I've never heard of a mandatory recall before. You've always just run a certain safety risk in most situations. I could be wrong or uninformed but I don't think Apple can force Psystar to get all their merchandise back. Their customers would have no incentive to go through all the trouble and so they'd put up their own fight. Once you've bought something you've bought it. You can bring it back if you wish but they can't forcibly take it from you.
You're even allowed to make some modifications to it with Microsoft's OEM licensing. Apple doesn't offer such licensing. Of course under the doctrine of first sale it should be legit regardless of special OEM licensing.
I think you missed my point, I wasn't suggesting that it was a bad thing that all the options exist. As I said, different distros have different strengths but none of the distros make any attempt to illustrate their strengths. They leave it up to every user to determine if the distro is right for them. That is the real problem, people don't know which distro to go because they don't understand how each is different without spending a month on it.
In the car world they make it very clear, this Aveo is a piece of crap that will get you good gas mileage. This CLK 63 AMG will get you laid but forget about gas mileage. It's quite clear the differences.
Personally I like the competition, but the lack of standardization is harming Linux adoption. They either need to consolidate all the distros or start making it clear why you should choose this major distro over that major distro.
I'll grant IPCop is pretty straight forward in what they are targeting, same with Smoothwall, but Ubuntu? Fedora? OpenSUSE? What are they targeting? When should a user choose one over the other? If they are indeed all the same then competition hasn't helped anything, if they are different then that should be highlighted.
Wouldn't it be nice if there was more than just me in my position. Sadly, we're not big enough to do that so I'm pretty much on call all the time. In my experience even at a place like IBM this happens where you have specialists which need to always be available. This is not uncommon by any means even if it is poor practice.
People here at the office gather round desks all the time to watch certain videos. Just this morning someone had to show me a music video. At home we often show our guests a skit that one of my friends produced on youtube while he was drunk one night. It's hilarious and always leads to a video session where people share their favorite videos.
Of course these sessions don't last very long since everyone is standing around the computer.
It's a never ending shame spiral until they figure out how to make money without inundating viewers with ads.
Speak for yourself, as a manager of a site that sees a fair amount of traffic, we make a good amount in ad revenue. Of course it's not our primary revenue source so I suppose it works better for us than a lot of people that rely on it alone. Of course we don't use an ad manager. People buy ad space on our site directly which means we host the content ourselves and then don't have to worry about mal-ware getting distributed to our visitors.
Sounds like you're in the programming world instead of the sysadmin world where it is routine to bring the laptop home just in case something happens while you're away. This means you can fix that email queue while drinking a beer by the pool instead of driving all the way into the office.
I know on several occasions I've had to fire up the VPN for a five second fix that is holding some big-wig from closing a deal. It also means that if I wake up late I can connect to the VPN and do a couple of the morning tasks before I leave. That way I can arrive and not be inundated with tasks.
I think you're right but this is quite a problem. I recently made the switch from Windows to Ubuntu on my laptop. I still run Windows inside a VM but that's just for my management tools which are Windows only.
In these days you don't know which distro is right for you, they all provide much the same functionality and all have little differences. I tried the major distros, KDE, Gnome, and landed on Ubuntu with Gnome because everyone was ranting and raving about it and I thought it was worth a closer look.
In the end I've found that SUSE is easier for the desktop user while Ubuntu and Fedora are easier to hack out difficult functionality like fingerprint authentication using PAM which is still quite problematic, so much so I had to turn it off but that's largely due to a compatibility problem between VMWare and Ubuntu which results in me losing the ability to use my keyboard. Not all apps will work using fingerprint authentication so you still need to be able to type your elevation password.
Of course for me, I get around the issue by adding a widget to the panel which calls setxkbmap which fixes the issue so that I can type my elevation password after the failure has occurred.
Back to the original issue, it's impossible to tell which audience the major distros are targeting. They all try to cater to pretty much everyone and the result is that some distros are better at some things than others which means you have to try them all before you can pick the best one for you. That's a lot of work as you really need to use your machine to know and any machine you use on a regular basis you don't want to be installing a new distro every week on.
You land on a good point about traffic patterns, all efforts thus far result in breaking BT but also break apps like my VPN client, Lotus Notes has been another commonly hit application.
I have a standard way to negotiate IPSec across links, I have a slow private link and then a fast Internet link. OSPF can handle the rest.
Unfortunately, although the U.S. constitution mandates separation of church and state, states have every right to do it themselves unless it is against the individual state's constitution.
As long as it's not mandated on a federal level its all good, damned state's rights going in the wrong direction. The people of LA seem to think it's a good idea, as long as the people in my state don't agree then I'm cool with that as I don't think religion should be taught in a science class.