After all, EPA libraries contain data about poisons, toxins, and biohazards. Maybe it's not budgetary constraint as much as certain people trying to keep us safe from outselves.
I'm tired of hearing libs complain about projects and other stuff getting cut, when they're the same flamers complaining that the deficit and spending needs to be reduced.
I'm one of those "libs." Actually, more socially libertarian and fiscally somewhat liberal. We need to *get the hell out of Iraq*, stop involvement in the Middle East (which is a lost cause IMHO) and concentrate on our own New Deal. Massive government subsidies for energy conservation, clean energy production, environmental, space, and automation research are in order. We need to reduce our dependence on countries that are poorer than us and have laxer environmental laws for manufacturing while maintaining our high standard of living. This can only be done through automation of manufacturing so that high-value workers can produce more. The environmental stuff is self-explanatory. First, it'll reduce our dependence on foreign oil, which has been one of the driving forces of our worst foreign policy decisions over the last 30 years. Secondly, there's a very high liklihood - I'd call it a certainty - that global warming is real. Enough said.
Why space? Humankind needs breathing room - somewhere for the born adventurers to go and explore. In addition, the Earth won't last forever, and humankind should continue on even in the case of the worst happening.
Yes, President Carter. Double-didgit inflation, taxes so high that they broke the econom, etc. were all Carter. Carter has done far more for the US after his presidency than he ever did for the country while in office.
Carter at least was honest, had integrity, was reasonably intelligent, and had his own ideas. What's Bush other than the stooge for a bunch of gangster puppeteers sitting on the sidelines and calling the shots? High taxes? Keep in mind that the Reagan tax cuts were mostly for the wealthy. I see *nothing* wrong with placing (say) a $5 mil (adjusted for inflation) cap on incomes and taxing everything after that at 90%. The wealthy will still be able to be comfortable, but this will reduce the disparity between haves- and have-nots and prevent the accumulation of *extreme* wealth. In addition, the money gained could pay for things like universal, free healthcare - as opposed to corporate universal health care plans like that abomination that Romney passed in MA.
At the same time, large companies should be taxed slightly more (percentage-wise) than small and startup businesses, which should even get a tax amnesty for the first few years of operation. Why? To encourage the growth of innovative small businesses and discourage the entrenchment of large corps.
Yes, I know that Linux has shells, but these are after-thoughts. They don't come close to the experience of OSX or even Windows XP.
By "shells", you mean GUI's, right? Most Linux distros have plenty of command-line *shells* that outperform anything shipped with OS X and certainly kick the Windows cmd.exe shell up and down the field.
If you're talking about GUI Window managers, this is true. KDE and Gnome come close. Myself, I like some of the NeXT clones (WindowMaker) etc, because they're light and fast. The Windows and OS X GUIs simple devote too many CPU cycles to garbage that serves no purpose - like rendering cute 'lil bouncing icons. I *much* preferred the nice, functional, hard user interface of Win2k. A GUI shouldn't have to look like a little girl's plaything to be successful in this metrosexual world!
Cars are a vendor lock in solution, and not many people like that. Cars are slower than flying.
How so? You can use fuel from any supplier in a car, provided that it's compatible. Plenty of generic aftermarket parts as well as parts for customization are on the market.
Granted, it isn't lossless like you get from the disc, but if that's a big deal to you, then just buy the disc.
That's only because the online music companies *choose* to provide the music in lossy compressed format. They could use lossless compression, and, with larger hard drives and faster DSL, 3-400 MB per album is actually an acceptable size since it can be downloaded in less than the play time.
Given 1.5Mbps downstream, that's ~150KB/s, so less than an hour for a 400 MB album. Not doable with a 56k modem; but 60% of the US is on some sort of broadband these days.
Most consulting companies charge at least $200 per hour, but a lot of that fee goes to the owners. Unfortunately the people doing the work aren't usually worth that rate.
I'm freelance in NYC, and damned if I'm going to work for anybody else doing IT work at this time. For an engineering job - absolutely - but being freelance and being able to set my own schedule makes me very happy for now!
I imagine SOX would dictate that some traceablity other than 'someone in the company' changed the file.
Doesn't apply to non-public companies (thank g-d for small things!) unless they're non-profits that handle more than a certain amount of donations yearly. Besides, not everyone lives under US laws (T.G.x2).
You seem to think data is worth less than the hardware too.
Where'd you get that impression??? What I meant about employees having access to the office is that if they have *physical* access to the server(s), they could always cause mischief. Security is only good until someone has access to the physical hardware. Now, off-site backups are a possibility, but older backup files should be immune to mischief of any type on the network.
Except this has an internal HDD, which no matter how much you twitch and turn it makes ALL the difference.
Not at that price, esp. since you can get the router for $100 and a USB external drive and hub for under $100. USB external drives are also much more easily swappable than internal drives. If you're worried about USB link speed, it's an order of magnitude greater than that of 802.11g's max and still greater than 100mbps Ethernet.
In addition, the Linksys product is designed to be hackable. Can you install any firmware that you want on the Asus router as well?
Yes but typically you have one password shared by everyone. Not very good from a security standpoint. It costs more to maintain all the computers without a domain.
Sorry for posting twice, but my initial reply had some bad HTML in it.
Actually, in a lot of 10-or-less person businesses, everyone needs to access almost every file, with a possible exception of the financial books. So having two users named "employee" and "president" (or something similar) isn't such a horrible plan. If you create multiple users, you'll still have to give each one access to almost all of the files; so if a single password leaks, you'll have the same problem.
The only advantage of having a separate username for all employees (assuming you're not running a mail/calendar server) is traceability, but if you trust your employees, that's not too much of an issue really.
Is this really different from having a single type of key for the front door instead of having ten keyholes for different keys? Any employee who can actually get into the office can do a lot more damage *physically* than just damaging data on the server.
Yes but typically you have one password shared by everyone. Not very good from a security standpoint. It costs more to maintain all the computers without a domain.
Actually, in a lot of
The only advantage of having a separate username for all employees (assuming you're not running a mail/calendar server) is traceability, but if you trust your employees, that's not too much of an issue really.
Is this really different from having a single type of key for the front door instead of having ten keyholes for different keys? Any employee who can actually get into the office can do a lot more damage *physically* than just damaging data on the server.
Then you have that lovely lack of security on any fileshares you may have. You know, since you no longer have a central security database. Oh, and anyone can just plug in and access the files.
Please explain how, kthx? You can still password-protect SMB & FTP shares and possibly tunnel traffic over SSL if you're really paranoid. I'm *not* talking about the "simple filesharing" crap that's all too common in badly set up XP Pro and XP Home boxes.
Pick a distro...any distro... They all work slightly differently. MS is not going to release an open-source version of Office that can be recompiled at will, because - well - they're still Microsoft. So, I'm betting that Office will act broken on a lot of distros and add to MS's image as a producer of buggy software. MS knows this all too well and thus won't release office for "Linux" in the first place. Maybe as a package guaranteed to work under RHEL or something, but still unlikely...
are the answers, probably in that order. Biofuel is only a decent solution if it's made out of stuff that'll go to waste anyway, like corncobs and wood scraps. So there's a limited supply of environmentally-sound biofuel. Even if production doesn't consume and pollute water, there's still the issue of land use, pesticides, and fertilizers.
We need to go electric as much as possible. Build more nuclear power plants. Wind power is also a good idea. Upgrade our hydroelectric dams with the most modern and efficient technology (building more has it's own consequences).
Then move to a hydrogen economy with fuel cell vehicles, use battery-powered cars for city use, and build a first-rate, modern, automated system of moderate-speed (~100 mph) electrified passenger and freight railroads. I'm talking about routing and switching being done by computer and having either unmanned or minimally-manned freight trains that are constantly tracked by satellite. Also, encourage businesses to locate in towns rather than on the highway strips and encourage the growth of medium-sized (~100,000 people) towns outside the major urban areas.
Our moving to this new economy will cost money, but it will also create jobs; and the US economy isn't doing great right now. With appropriate government stimulus, this project could be a New Deal for the 21st century.
Exactly. That's also the reason why there will never be a port to Mac OSX either.
The next OS X Office release will be crippled as compared to the Vista version. No VB macros for one, which will break support for a lot of specialized documents that companies may now have.
ODF is going to become the digital equivalent of paper. Universally readable, that'll remove the requirement for Office in a single stroke.
Bleh. We already have a decent standards that'll handle 99.99% of word processing documents just fine: HTML/JPG tarballs. Viewability on any browser post-extraction is a definite advantage. That's the standard that should be adopted worldwide for WP documents.
Other data like spreadsheets? Much as it pains me to do so, I'd go for MS's XML solution (maybe compressed after creation) over ODF. At least it should be readable in any text editor, whereas ODF probably isn't. Granted, Office-generated XML will probably be horribly bloated and obfuscated, but it's actually still a nice idea.
Small businesses are the ones most likely NOT to need domain trusts or more than one forest.
Not to need "domain controllers" at all, IMHO. One computer per user is the norm these days - just have a "user" login and an "admin" login on each box and use a "workgroup" model. And, yes, you can still manage remotely via RDC.
Again, correct me if I'm wrong, but I wouldn't imagine that most 'small' businesses would have the IT budget to invest in 3-5 dedicated servers and, if they did, they might not be 'small' businesses anymore and are probably not in the target market.
Define "server", please. You can get Mac Minis for $350-500 a pop and use them as microservers running BSD or even vanilla OS X. One for files. Another for mail and VPN. A third for your DB. Set them to all back up to a NAS box daily. Total investment in components might not exceed $2500 - better than a high-end server and more redundant.
A lot of the places that run SBS have no full time IT staff. With SBS they get an out-of-the box file server, domain controller, exchange server. There's a risk it may blow up and they'll lose those things, but for most of these places the alternative is not to have them in the first place.
Speaking as a freelance IT consultant, SBS servers, esp those which haven't been imaged initially for quick restoration after everything is working right and which have been running for a few years are a *fucking disaster* to manage. Nothing is transparent, and when something b0rks, you often have to resort to downloading random patches from MS and hoping they'll work.
Most small businesses need a file server, possibly a mail/calendar server, maybe a domain controller (actually, one-login-per-machine isn't horrible IMHO), maybe a VPN server, a DNS server, a DHCP server, a VPN gateway and a print server. All of which can be handily be accomplished with a net-installed Debian system in 5 or 6 hours. Assuming a consultant charging $70/hr, that's $350-420.
Then pay a few hundred a year for a consultant to manage the server remotely via SSH. Small price to pay for a quality server, or at least my clients seem to think so.
Cost $120 6 mo. ago and had most of the same functionality, apart from the internal drive. An external drive can be hooked up via USB 2.0 however. And, yes, it runs Linux - in fact, it's meant to be hackable.
So move along here - nothing new to see, really...
Slashdot Mirror
-b.
I'm one of those "libs." Actually, more socially libertarian and fiscally somewhat liberal. We need to *get the hell out of Iraq*, stop involvement in the Middle East (which is a lost cause IMHO) and concentrate on our own New Deal. Massive government subsidies for energy conservation, clean energy production, environmental, space, and automation research are in order. We need to reduce our dependence on countries that are poorer than us and have laxer environmental laws for manufacturing while maintaining our high standard of living. This can only be done through automation of manufacturing so that high-value workers can produce more. The environmental stuff is self-explanatory. First, it'll reduce our dependence on foreign oil, which has been one of the driving forces of our worst foreign policy decisions over the last 30 years. Secondly, there's a very high liklihood - I'd call it a certainty - that global warming is real. Enough said.
Why space? Humankind needs breathing room - somewhere for the born adventurers to go and explore. In addition, the Earth won't last forever, and humankind should continue on even in the case of the worst happening.
Cheers,
-b.
Carter at least was honest, had integrity, was reasonably intelligent, and had his own ideas. What's Bush other than the stooge for a bunch of gangster puppeteers sitting on the sidelines and calling the shots? High taxes? Keep in mind that the Reagan tax cuts were mostly for the wealthy. I see *nothing* wrong with placing (say) a $5 mil (adjusted for inflation) cap on incomes and taxing everything after that at 90%. The wealthy will still be able to be comfortable, but this will reduce the disparity between haves- and have-nots and prevent the accumulation of *extreme* wealth. In addition, the money gained could pay for things like universal, free healthcare - as opposed to corporate universal health care plans like that abomination that Romney passed in MA.
At the same time, large companies should be taxed slightly more (percentage-wise) than small and startup businesses, which should even get a tax amnesty for the first few years of operation. Why? To encourage the growth of innovative small businesses and discourage the entrenchment of large corps.
-b.
By "shells", you mean GUI's, right? Most Linux distros have plenty of command-line *shells* that outperform anything shipped with OS X and certainly kick the Windows cmd.exe shell up and down the field.
If you're talking about GUI Window managers, this is true. KDE and Gnome come close. Myself, I like some of the NeXT clones (WindowMaker) etc, because they're light and fast. The Windows and OS X GUIs simple devote too many CPU cycles to garbage that serves no purpose - like rendering cute 'lil bouncing icons. I *much* preferred the nice, functional, hard user interface of Win2k. A GUI shouldn't have to look like a little girl's plaything to be successful in this metrosexual world!
-b.
How so? You can use fuel from any supplier in a car, provided that it's compatible. Plenty of generic aftermarket parts as well as parts for customization are on the market.
-b.
Windows Mobile on cell phones? It's already happening, unfortunately.
-b.
That's only because the online music companies *choose* to provide the music in lossy compressed format. They could use lossless compression, and, with larger hard drives and faster DSL, 3-400 MB per album is actually an acceptable size since it can be downloaded in less than the play time.
Given 1.5Mbps downstream, that's ~150KB/s, so less than an hour for a 400 MB album. Not doable with a 56k modem; but 60% of the US is on some sort of broadband these days.
-b.
-->ulpppp -b.
I'm freelance in NYC, and damned if I'm going to work for anybody else doing IT work at this time. For an engineering job - absolutely - but being freelance and being able to set my own schedule makes me very happy for now!
-b.
Where? (buys a plane ticket)
-b.
Doesn't apply to non-public companies (thank g-d for small things!) unless they're non-profits that handle more than a certain amount of donations yearly. Besides, not everyone lives under US laws (T.G.x2).
You seem to think data is worth less than the hardware too.
Where'd you get that impression??? What I meant about employees having access to the office is that if they have *physical* access to the server(s), they could always cause mischief. Security is only good until someone has access to the physical hardware. Now, off-site backups are a possibility, but older backup files should be immune to mischief of any type on the network.
-b.
Not at that price, esp. since you can get the router for $100 and a USB external drive and hub for under $100. USB external drives are also much more easily swappable than internal drives. If you're worried about USB link speed, it's an order of magnitude greater than that of 802.11g's max and still greater than 100mbps Ethernet.
In addition, the Linksys product is designed to be hackable. Can you install any firmware that you want on the Asus router as well?
-b.
Sorry for posting twice, but my initial reply had some bad HTML in it.
Actually, in a lot of 10-or-less person businesses, everyone needs to access almost every file, with a possible exception of the financial books. So having two users named "employee" and "president" (or something similar) isn't such a horrible plan. If you create multiple users, you'll still have to give each one access to almost all of the files; so if a single password leaks, you'll have the same problem.
The only advantage of having a separate username for all employees (assuming you're not running a mail/calendar server) is traceability, but if you trust your employees, that's not too much of an issue really.
Is this really different from having a single type of key for the front door instead of having ten keyholes for different keys? Any employee who can actually get into the office can do a lot more damage *physically* than just damaging data on the server.
-b.
Actually, in a lot of The only advantage of having a separate username for all employees (assuming you're not running a mail/calendar server) is traceability, but if you trust your employees, that's not too much of an issue really.
Is this really different from having a single type of key for the front door instead of having ten keyholes for different keys? Any employee who can actually get into the office can do a lot more damage *physically* than just damaging data on the server.
-b.
Please explain how, kthx? You can still password-protect SMB & FTP shares and possibly tunnel traffic over SSL if you're really paranoid. I'm *not* talking about the "simple filesharing" crap that's all too common in badly set up XP Pro and XP Home boxes.
-b.
-b.
I have a working SQL server running on my OBSD box - I can't imagine Debian being too different. .NET? I'm talking about small businesses here (
-b.
We need to go electric as much as possible. Build more nuclear power plants. Wind power is also a good idea. Upgrade our hydroelectric dams with the most modern and efficient technology (building more has it's own consequences).
Then move to a hydrogen economy with fuel cell vehicles, use battery-powered cars for city use, and build a first-rate, modern, automated system of moderate-speed (~100 mph) electrified passenger and freight railroads. I'm talking about routing and switching being done by computer and having either unmanned or minimally-manned freight trains that are constantly tracked by satellite. Also, encourage businesses to locate in towns rather than on the highway strips and encourage the growth of medium-sized (~100,000 people) towns outside the major urban areas.
Our moving to this new economy will cost money, but it will also create jobs; and the US economy isn't doing great right now. With appropriate government stimulus, this project could be a New Deal for the 21st century.
-b.
The next OS X Office release will be crippled as compared to the Vista version. No VB macros for one, which will break support for a lot of specialized documents that companies may now have.
-b.
Bleh. We already have a decent standards that'll handle 99.99% of word processing documents just fine: HTML/JPG tarballs. Viewability on any browser post-extraction is a definite advantage. That's the standard that should be adopted worldwide for WP documents.
Other data like spreadsheets? Much as it pains me to do so, I'd go for MS's XML solution (maybe compressed after creation) over ODF. At least it should be readable in any text editor, whereas ODF probably isn't. Granted, Office-generated XML will probably be horribly bloated and obfuscated, but it's actually still a nice idea.
-b.
Not to need "domain controllers" at all, IMHO. One computer per user is the norm these days - just have a "user" login and an "admin" login on each box and use a "workgroup" model. And, yes, you can still manage remotely via RDC.
-b.
Define "server", please. You can get Mac Minis for $350-500 a pop and use them as microservers running BSD or even vanilla OS X. One for files. Another for mail and VPN. A third for your DB. Set them to all back up to a NAS box daily. Total investment in components might not exceed $2500 - better than a high-end server and more redundant.
-b.
And their Shadow Copy system seems to be broken or intermittent about half the time, so good luck backing up a mounted Exchange database!
-b.
Speaking as a freelance IT consultant, SBS servers, esp those which haven't been imaged initially for quick restoration after everything is working right and which have been running for a few years are a *fucking disaster* to manage. Nothing is transparent, and when something b0rks, you often have to resort to downloading random patches from MS and hoping they'll work.
Most small businesses need a file server, possibly a mail/calendar server, maybe a domain controller (actually, one-login-per-machine isn't horrible IMHO), maybe a VPN server, a DNS server, a DHCP server, a VPN gateway and a print server. All of which can be handily be accomplished with a net-installed Debian system in 5 or 6 hours. Assuming a consultant charging $70/hr, that's $350-420.
Then pay a few hundred a year for a consultant to manage the server remotely via SSH. Small price to pay for a quality server, or at least my clients seem to think so.
-b.
So move along here - nothing new to see, really...
-b.