I'm an avid gamer and a Vietnam vet. I play COD (all PC versions) and some Battlefield games from EA. I have, but do not play Battlefield Vietnam. I tried it and wasn't comfortable.
We have a few 100 TBs of SAN storage in our hospital. Some people would consider having the storage laid out as RAID 10 on each array and the production data base software mirrored across 3 arrays to be wasteful. Not really. Recently we had one of the data centers shutdown when maintenance was doing a generator test and forgot to put the generator in by-pass. The entire data center went dark, but the Epic application continued to run because of the mirroring done between data centers.
It took some time to clean up the mess that was caused, but the data base never went down.
As to the third mirror, we use that for nightly backups. The database is frozen in time, the mirror snapped off and moved to a different server. We backup the data base to tape, refresh a SUP{port} instance, and run integrity checks on the mirror. Once everything has completed, we bring the mirror (storage) back over to the production server and resync the volumes.
All in all, I'd say we have an HA solution that is pretty much bullet proof. It takes a lot of storage, but it gets the job done. As to waste, very little is actually wasted.
by mattwad (1643895) writes: Alter Relationship on Friday March 12, @09:33PM (#31460586) ...most Texans are still silently plotting how we can secede from the Union.
Damn, I knew there was a reason I was thinking of moving to Texas.
I have had a problem for years with nVIDIA cards overheating. So, I have the profile setup to run the fans as max speed. Makes the system a little noisy, but then again, when a grenade goes off in your face, the fan noise is not an issue.
I run the Epic servers at 85% CPU and nearly 100% memory. However, having said that, I must admit that Epic runs on AIX 5.3 on a p570 server. I would NEVER try to run my Windows system at those levels. At 50% CPU and memory, Windoze (I have XP for stuff that needs windoze) starts to have really issues.
As a former member of NSA, I can assure you that domestic eves dropping is definitely not allowed. The NSA can (and do) listen to communications originating outside the USA. If an intercept triggers certain key words or phrases, then the channel is fully monitored. If the other end of the connection is inside the US, then so be it. The original intercept was targeted at a location external to the US.
If you live inside the US and never make or receive calls overseas, you have absolute - repeat, ABSOLUTELY - nothing to fear from NSA. If you call Aunt Matilda down under and talk about kangaroo stew, you have ABSOLUTELY nothing to worry about from NSA. If you call some al qaeda stronghold and talk about a proposed terror attack on the US in the near future, you can bet your filthy ass you will be monitored.
Having spent 8 years in the Naval Security Group working with NSA and another 10 years as a defense contractor working with NSA on secure communications, I can tell you for a fact that if you don't have physical security, you don't have security. Period.
I have all the latest Call of Duty games and by far, UO is the best. You want realism? UO has it. Yes, the graphics are a bit old and not nearly as good as the later games, but the game play is great. When you get shot, you can't lie down and take a little nap while your body heals. If you are lucky enough you can pick up some health packs. Some of the AWE MODs cause you to "bleed out" if you don't find a health pack. Fatal shots are, well, FATAL! If you get shot in the head, you friggin' die.
The latest games have really crappy sound too. A M1911 sounds like a cap gun. In UO the same weapon sounds like the real weapon. That's because when the game was created actual weapons were recorded for the sounds. A rapid fire MP44 sound like the real thing (given you have the sound system to support it). This may not be important to some gamers because they are probably listening to tunes while they play and don't give a damn about the in-game sound. Personally i like to be able to hear someone sneaking up behind me (5.1 surround sound).
I would love to see a re-make of the graphics only for UO. That would be a dynamite game (pun intended).
We don't want to offend some third universe culture by not representing them (and their different cultures). Let's make sure that all games include every know creature in the entire universe before we allow a game to be released to the public so we don't offend any ONE (as in single, uno, #1) person. Heaven forbid we offend a single person in our strive to be politically correct.
geez, give me a break. These morons that think we are discriminating against someone need to get a life and forget about it.
I just checked out this link and got a big laugh. If you follow one of the offerings you will see your choices for the Operating System. Mind you, these are all Linux O/S (or free DOS). But what O/S ICON did Dell place to the left? Not a penguin as one would expect, but the stupid Windows LOGO. Geez! How dumb can marketing people be. Uh, never mind, they're marketing people, that answer the question in and of itself.
Are you nuts? You got exactly what you deserve. There is NO security if you don't have physical security. Bring your backup severs in house and keep your backup tapes in a security site (such as Iron Mountain).
I find one major problem with this: Half-Life has never and will never be primarily about dispatching enemies 'in a thoroughly bloody manner'.
Agree. Half-Life is more objective based than "dispatching enemies" based. In some cases you can run a gauntlet of baddies without killing a single one. Your objective was to get from point A to point B. If you get there without firing a single shot or clubbing someone with your crowbar, then good for you.
I work for a major trauma center in the twin cities. The IT department laid off about 8% of the work force last December. The layoff was across the board: from an Administrative Assistant to the CIO. Except for those two examples, most of the positions terminated appear to me to be pruning dead wood.
There are no plans to layoff any more, but who knows in this economy. We can all thank the greedy bastards in Wall Street and banking for our current situation. Sorry Bush bashers, this started with Clinton, not Bush.
As an IT Support Technician in a small corporation, I've been tasked by one of my managers to determine the feasibility of transitioning our small 40 or 50 person office from Microsoft Office 2000 to Open Office 3.0. What are some of the problems I may run into as far as document cross compatibility? Has the Open Office suite evolved to a point that permits easy transition from Microsoft's suite? Besides the obvious 'free vs. expensive' argument, what are some of the pros and cons of transitioning? Are there any reliable ways to view/edit/save a document saved in the OpenXML format through Open Office, or are my co-workers and I still going to be stuck in Microsoftland?"
... pretty much a typical IT response, but definitely applies here. I am a Senior UNIX Administrator for a major trauma center in the twin cities. We are switching 1500 - 2000 Microsoft workstations to Linux and Open Office because MS raised the support cost from $100/seat to $300/seat. In the current economy that is totally unacceptable. About 99% of what the users need can be done on the new implementation. They don't need Visio, but some people (like me) do, so we have Visio setup in a Citrix session. Some of the hospital applications don't run well in Linux so we have Citrix setup for them too.
The point to be made here is that for the casual user, Open Office works just fine. There are some issues with macros that need to be worked out especially if you exchange documents and spreadsheets with MS users. There is no Access database, so you need to consider that. Reading and/or saving data has not been an issue so far. One co-worker was having trouble reading a 2007 Word doc with his XP/2003 Word and I was able to read it with OO and save it as a 2003 doc. He was able to read it without any problems. So exchanging files has not been a major concern.
Some of the tools I use prefer a windows environment so I use wine. Wine is very mature these days and almost everything works flawlessly. My advise is to dump MS as quick as you can and deal with any out of band issues as they occur - you probably won't have very many.
Obviously you have never heard of firewalls, data encryption and secure logins. I work for a major trauma center which uses Epic. Our network team is top notch and there is no way to break into the system. Our docs can work from home or their office with complete confidence that the patient records are secure.
If you are not willing to pay top dollar for an IT staff and hardware, then you will be vulnerable to the possibility of patient data being compromised, but please don't say that a paperless patient data system can't work.
The real reason for more swap space than RAM was to capture all the data in RAM and CPU registers/cache in when the server would crash. Since O/S crashes are few and far between, it doesn't make a lot of sense to have huge swap spaces. Also, since most users aren't going to try and debug the core dump, you really don't need much swap at all. Farther down the line, since most applications are now better behaved and RAM is pretty cheap there is very little page swapping going on and another reason for smaller swap space.
I'm not saying zero swap, but you certainly don't need 2x swap or even 1x swap any longer. If you load your system up with applications and actually are doing page swapping, then you will need some swap. If you don't have any page swapping, then set swap space to one quarter or one half of your physical RAM.
I bought a new HP Media Center PC a month or so ago and swapped out Vista for XP because I need the PC for FPS gaming. Vista just would not work the way I needed it to. I would not consider the swap to be a downgrade, but rather an UPGRADE...
by Schmyz (1265182) Alter Relationship on Friday August 08, @11:29AM (#24527225) Homepage...I understand the need to develop new products...keep up with the growing needs...etc... but at what point to you allow your customer base to choose what works for THEM. I dont have Vista... because I dont need to HAVE vista....hope to never need to upgrade to it.
--
Correction: hope to never need to downgrade to it.:)
That's going make it tough to play FPS games... I guess if they come up with a head-band to move around with might work. Hum, not a bad idea! Maybe I should patent one right now...
Seems to me that about 50 years ago in high school, we did an experiment of separating hydrogen and oxygen from water using a small electric current and two plates of dissimilar metal (I don't recall what the metal plates were). Am I missing something here? Has the capability of separating water into it's gaseous components has significantly changed in the last half century?
Everyone has their opinion as to whether IM is a good thing or a bad thing. Well, it's just like eating: Eating too much is a bad thing, eating too little is a bad thing. IM is good when it is used in a good way. In the IT field, IM can be an invaluable when working large projects where people are scattered all over the place. Responding to a system crash may occasionally need colaboration from other members. The phone absolutely sucks if you have to explain everything you are doing. With IM, you simply cut and paste and people see right away what you did. e-mail is too slow. In a production environment you want to get the server back up ASAP. Having a group of people standing around watching you type REALLY sucks.
So, IMO, IM is good at [my work] work. I absolutely HATE IM'ing with my son or daughter. Just pick up the damn phone and talk to me. In that case IM is very, very bad.
Mad-cat(134809) wrote on March 12 @ 06:30PM
Having a site like this is a great idea. As long as it doesn't show any protected or privaledged information (such as address, phone number, marital status, date of birth, etc), people should be able to see their police officer's and rate them. Right on my man. If the site can help with positive feedback, then it's more than welcomed. If it is used just for police bashing, then maybe it shouldn't be around. Some of the comments I've read here are pretty much only about police bashing. I would highly suspect that those kinds of comments are coming from people who have, or are prone to, broken the law in the past.
did everyone over look the simple fact that this could be the FBIs corprate link to the internet? Unfiltered and unmonitored would be a normal configuration of a law enforcement organization's link to the world. I'm pretty sure the FBI would not want some nosey Verizon employee snooping on the line for anonymous tips. And like some readers have eluded to a DS3 is pretty low bandwidth for monitoring calls, but not so low for a internet link for a company the size of the FBI.
I assume then that you don't do anything in the winter months. Ergo "falling" back in the winter which gives us much shorter evening light (or no light at all after work depending on your location) doesn't seem to bother you. If we switched to one year round time, everything would be balanced.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm an avid gamer and a Vietnam vet. I play COD (all PC versions) and some Battlefield games from EA. I have, but do not play Battlefield Vietnam. I tried it and wasn't comfortable.
We have a few 100 TBs of SAN storage in our hospital. Some people would consider having the storage laid out as RAID 10 on each array and the production data base software mirrored across 3 arrays to be wasteful. Not really. Recently we had one of the data centers shutdown when maintenance was doing a generator test and forgot to put the generator in by-pass. The entire data center went dark, but the Epic application continued to run because of the mirroring done between data centers.
It took some time to clean up the mess that was caused, but the data base never went down.
As to the third mirror, we use that for nightly backups. The database is frozen in time, the mirror snapped off and moved to a different server. We backup the data base to tape, refresh a SUP{port} instance, and run integrity checks on the mirror. Once everything has completed, we bring the mirror (storage) back over to the production server and resync the volumes.
All in all, I'd say we have an HA solution that is pretty much bullet proof. It takes a lot of storage, but it gets the job done. As to waste, very little is actually wasted.
by mattwad (1643895) writes: Alter Relationship on Friday March 12, @09:33PM (#31460586)
...most Texans are still silently plotting how we can secede from the Union.
Damn, I knew there was a reason I was thinking of moving to Texas.
I have had a problem for years with nVIDIA cards overheating. So, I have the profile setup to run the fans as max speed. Makes the system a little noisy, but then again, when a grenade goes off in your face, the fan noise is not an issue.
I run the Epic servers at 85% CPU and nearly 100% memory. However, having said that, I must admit that Epic runs on AIX 5.3 on a p570 server. I would NEVER try to run my Windows system at those levels. At 50% CPU and memory, Windoze (I have XP for stuff that needs windoze) starts to have really issues.
Not all round pegs will fit in square holes.
As a former member of NSA, I can assure you that domestic eves dropping is definitely not allowed. The NSA can (and do) listen to communications originating outside the USA. If an intercept triggers certain key words or phrases, then the channel is fully monitored. If the other end of the connection is inside the US, then so be it. The original intercept was targeted at a location external to the US.
If you live inside the US and never make or receive calls overseas, you have absolute - repeat, ABSOLUTELY - nothing to fear from NSA. If you call Aunt Matilda down under and talk about kangaroo stew, you have ABSOLUTELY nothing to worry about from NSA. If you call some al qaeda stronghold and talk about a proposed terror attack on the US in the near future, you can bet your filthy ass you will be monitored.
Having spent 8 years in the Naval Security Group working with NSA and another 10 years as a defense contractor working with NSA on secure communications, I can tell you for a fact that if you don't have physical security, you don't have security. Period.
I have all the latest Call of Duty games and by far, UO is the best. You want realism? UO has it. Yes, the graphics are a bit old and not nearly as good as the later games, but the game play is great. When you get shot, you can't lie down and take a little nap while your body heals. If you are lucky enough you can pick up some health packs. Some of the AWE MODs cause you to "bleed out" if you don't find a health pack. Fatal shots are, well, FATAL! If you get shot in the head, you friggin' die.
The latest games have really crappy sound too. A M1911 sounds like a cap gun. In UO the same weapon sounds like the real weapon. That's because when the game was created actual weapons were recorded for the sounds. A rapid fire MP44 sound like the real thing (given you have the sound system to support it). This may not be important to some gamers because they are probably listening to tunes while they play and don't give a damn about the in-game sound. Personally i like to be able to hear someone sneaking up behind me (5.1 surround sound).
I would love to see a re-make of the graphics only for UO. That would be a dynamite game (pun intended).
We don't want to offend some third universe culture by not representing them (and their different cultures). Let's make sure that all games include every know creature in the entire universe before we allow a game to be released to the public so we don't offend any ONE (as in single, uno, #1) person. Heaven forbid we offend a single person in our strive to be politically correct.
geez, give me a break. These morons that think we are discriminating against someone need to get a life and forget about it.
Dell Precision Open-Source Workstations with Linux: http://www.dell.com/content/products/features.aspx/precn_n?c=us&cs=04&l=en&s=bsd Please Dell, Bring these to Canada.
I just checked out this link and got a big laugh. If you follow one of the offerings you will see your choices for the Operating System. Mind you, these are all Linux O/S (or free DOS). But what O/S ICON did Dell place to the left? Not a penguin as one would expect, but the stupid Windows LOGO. Geez! How dumb can marketing people be. Uh, never mind, they're marketing people, that answer the question in and of itself.
Sexy stewardess? Whoa, what time period are you from? I haven't seen a sexy stewardess since 1984. LOL
Are you nuts? You got exactly what you deserve. There is NO security if you don't have physical security. Bring your backup severs in house and keep your backup tapes in a security site (such as Iron Mountain).
I find one major problem with this: Half-Life has never and will never be primarily about dispatching enemies 'in a thoroughly bloody manner'.
Agree. Half-Life is more objective based than "dispatching enemies" based. In some cases you can run a gauntlet of baddies without killing a single one. Your objective was to get from point A to point B. If you get there without firing a single shot or clubbing someone with your crowbar, then good for you.
I work for a major trauma center in the twin cities. The IT department laid off about 8% of the work force last December. The layoff was across the board: from an Administrative Assistant to the CIO. Except for those two examples, most of the positions terminated appear to me to be pruning dead wood.
There are no plans to layoff any more, but who knows in this economy. We can all thank the greedy bastards in Wall Street and banking for our current situation. Sorry Bush bashers, this started with Clinton, not Bush.
"Pay The Piper writes
As an IT Support Technician in a small corporation, I've been tasked by one of my managers to determine the feasibility of transitioning our small 40 or 50 person office from Microsoft Office 2000 to Open Office 3.0. What are some of the problems I may run into as far as document cross compatibility? Has the Open Office suite evolved to a point that permits easy transition from Microsoft's suite? Besides the obvious 'free vs. expensive' argument, what are some of the pros and cons of transitioning? Are there any reliable ways to view/edit/save a document saved in the OpenXML format through Open Office, or are my co-workers and I still going to be stuck in Microsoftland?"
The point to be made here is that for the casual user, Open Office works just fine. There are some issues with macros that need to be worked out especially if you exchange documents and spreadsheets with MS users. There is no Access database, so you need to consider that. Reading and/or saving data has not been an issue so far. One co-worker was having trouble reading a 2007 Word doc with his XP/2003 Word and I was able to read it with OO and save it as a 2003 doc. He was able to read it without any problems. So exchanging files has not been a major concern.
Some of the tools I use prefer a windows environment so I use wine. Wine is very mature these days and almost everything works flawlessly. My advise is to dump MS as quick as you can and deal with any out of band issues as they occur - you probably won't have very many.
Obviously you have never heard of firewalls, data encryption and secure logins. I work for a major trauma center which uses Epic. Our network team is top notch and there is no way to break into the system. Our docs can work from home or their office with complete confidence that the patient records are secure.
If you are not willing to pay top dollar for an IT staff and hardware, then you will be vulnerable to the possibility of patient data being compromised, but please don't say that a paperless patient data system can't work.
The real reason for more swap space than RAM was to capture all the data in RAM and CPU registers/cache in when the server would crash. Since O/S crashes are few and far between, it doesn't make a lot of sense to have huge swap spaces. Also, since most users aren't going to try and debug the core dump, you really don't need much swap at all. Farther down the line, since most applications are now better behaved and RAM is pretty cheap there is very little page swapping going on and another reason for smaller swap space.
I'm not saying zero swap, but you certainly don't need 2x swap or even 1x swap any longer. If you load your system up with applications and actually are doing page swapping, then you will need some swap. If you don't have any page swapping, then set swap space to one quarter or one half of your physical RAM.
IMHO.
I bought a new HP Media Center PC a month or so ago and swapped out Vista for XP because I need the PC for FPS gaming. Vista just would not work the way I needed it to. I would not consider the swap to be a downgrade, but rather an UPGRADE...
by Schmyz (1265182) Alter Relationship on Friday August 08, @11:29AM (#24527225) Homepage ...I understand the need to develop new products...keep up with the growing needs...etc... but at what point to you allow your customer base to choose what works for THEM. I dont have Vista... because I dont need to HAVE vista....hope to never need to upgrade to it.
--
Correction: hope to never need to downgrade to it. :)
That's going make it tough to play FPS games... I guess if they come up with a head-band to move around with might work. Hum, not a bad idea! Maybe I should patent one right now...
Seems to me that about 50 years ago in high school, we did an experiment of separating hydrogen and oxygen from water using a small electric current and two plates of dissimilar metal (I don't recall what the metal plates were). Am I missing something here? Has the capability of separating water into it's gaseous components has significantly changed in the last half century?
Everyone has their opinion as to whether IM is a good thing or a bad thing. Well, it's just like eating: Eating too much is a bad thing, eating too little is a bad thing. IM is good when it is used in a good way. In the IT field, IM can be an invaluable when working large projects where people are scattered all over the place. Responding to a system crash may occasionally need colaboration from other members. The phone absolutely sucks if you have to explain everything you are doing. With IM, you simply cut and paste and people see right away what you did. e-mail is too slow. In a production environment you want to get the server back up ASAP. Having a group of people standing around watching you type REALLY sucks.
So, IMO, IM is good at [my work] work. I absolutely HATE IM'ing with my son or daughter. Just pick up the damn phone and talk to me. In that case IM is very, very bad.
Having a site like this is a great idea. As long as it doesn't show any protected or privaledged information (such as address, phone number, marital status, date of birth, etc), people should be able to see their police officer's and rate them. Right on my man. If the site can help with positive feedback, then it's more than welcomed. If it is used just for police bashing, then maybe it shouldn't be around. Some of the comments I've read here are pretty much only about police bashing. I would highly suspect that those kinds of comments are coming from people who have, or are prone to, broken the law in the past.
did everyone over look the simple fact that this could be the FBIs corprate link to the internet? Unfiltered and unmonitored would be a normal configuration of a law enforcement organization's link to the world. I'm pretty sure the FBI would not want some nosey Verizon employee snooping on the line for anonymous tips. And like some readers have eluded to a DS3 is pretty low bandwidth for monitoring calls, but not so low for a internet link for a company the size of the FBI.
I assume then that you don't do anything in the winter months. Ergo "falling" back in the winter which gives us much shorter evening light (or no light at all after work depending on your location) doesn't seem to bother you. If we switched to one year round time, everything would be balanced.