Like you, my main duties involved software engineering with a quite a bit of hardware and network tossed in for grins. However, you don't have to limit yourself to just one field. Get qualified in more than just one field of engineering. I have over a dozen myself. It's not absolutely easy, but mostly the different disciplines just involve technique and approach once you've learned the universal language (mathematics) which is what kills most people.
Once you have more than one field under your belt, nose around for jobs that involve going out into the field as much as working in the office. I never knew when I showed up for work where I was going to be next. I always kept a bag packed as quite often they would throw me on a plane to somewhere in the Pacific region. It's a ton of fun if you like a random, and surprising, lifestyle.
Then I'd take a long hard look at that cruft installed on your machine. Aside from power outages or the occasional patch, we never have to reboot any of our 2000 or 2003 machines, period. Not as good as our *nix machines, they don't need reboots except for kernal updates, but still not that bad. Now the XP pieces of crap are always crashing, usually during games, when using CD/DVD burning or anything network related.
Actually the Windows XP theme is included in Windows Server 2003. You do have to work at it to get it running though. First you have to turn on the Themes service, then select it is the Display properties. I should know as I use my own custom XP theme here. This has been true since the beta.
It's the multiple author part that gets most projects into trouble. When I'm working solo, bugs are not a problem. I practice software engineering not software development. After thirty years, no one has ever found a bug in my software and I do not write trivial applications. Heck, I don't even trust the OS to give me the correct date/time, I always do a sanity check. My code runs slower, sure, but it runs in defensive mode in every module and every function. Every input and output is checked. Similarly, I make extensive use of state machines to prevent misuse/abuse, intentional or not. No injection attacks here, thank ye.
In electrical/electronic engineering I do the same thing with fuses, capacitors, impedance matching circuits, etc. When will we in the software community wrap our head around the notion of coupling, limiters, and protection? Ditto my other fields of engineering. Can you say nuclear? I thought you could. Meltdowns are soooo messy.
Now bring some other people into the mix and it begins to become fun as I'm having to teach them proper engineering techniques, mathematical proofs, and all the other tools that are in my arsenal. Fortunately I love to teach, but it does get old after a while. Real old.
I'll probably never give up writing software, or teaching, and have three projects on the burner right now. But you'll never see me working on enterprise apps with a team until they put the science back into the computer science and take the hacking out. And yes, I can hack with the best of them too, and have for thirty five years, but not on production code.
I use Win Server 2003 Enterprise and Web on two of my workstations here and it is pretty durn wonderful. Especially the crippling of Internet Exploder through the Internet Explorer Enhanced Security Configuration (LOL!). That's installed by default and most all of the garbage services are also off by default as well, unlike XP or 2K (my other workstations are all some form of *nix or 2K Adv. Server). You only get those services you need. Heck, just trying to get audio and DirectX to work is an adventure the first time out (and we had to practically hold a gun to MS's head in the groups to get those). I don't like XP, even with SP2, and will not use it except under a VM for testing purposes. Too much crap, too unstable, and wayyy too vulnerable even with all my safeguards here.
As to benefits, well aside from coming out of the box with all the crap turned off and IE crippled (I use Firefox natch), I've found it remarkably stable, faster than 2000 Adv. Server on the same platform (my benchmarks surprised me), and much simpler to configure and maintain. Half the time in 2KAS I was having to dig through the help files or search online for some obscure setting to do things that you can do easily in 2003. Heck, the help files are much better! I have very little reg hacking to do on 2003 (always some, sadly). And you lose nothing in terms of stability versus 2KAS. The only time I crash is when hardware dies. Period. And that's been true since early beta.
What's not to like? Now if those idjits in Redmond would do a bit of cranial-rectal de-insertion and release a 2003 Workstation, they'd really have something. They can stuff Longhorn (something I'm playing with now since I test all this crap). I see nothing there even worth bothering with. If I wanted a Mac, I'd buy a *real* Mac.
Very nicely done Vitaly and not only added to my bookmarks but my field book as well for handing out to those that ask (all to many!) for a guide. Normally I have to find these through following the sig-block links but on a slow news day, as today seems, I don't mind at all seeing this show up as an article. Besides, this one beats the all too frequently out of date Google directory hands down. The "love" shows. Keep up the good work.
As with you, I like playing clerics and always have. My other favorite is some type of mage (or when allowed, a combination of the two). Call me weird, but I'm a support person at heart.
MS isn't beyond normal market forces, no company save a government sponsored monopoly ever is, and even they can get the surprise from time to time when tech wipes out their monopoly in the corporate blink of an eye. The problem here is that MS has the resources to adapt to market forces which many lesser monopolies over the long history of economics have not. Furthermore, MS has time after time swallow what little pride they have and switched to follow the consumer into new areas. We've seen that repeatedly as well. MS isn't the first into any section of the tech market, far from it. However when they do get there, it's like the 800 pound gorilla in the same room, kinda hard to ignore.
Thats okay, they seem bent on suidide most days of the week. (No.NET 2.0 in Longhorn? No WinFS? Etc., etc., etc.) Perhaps they will succeed. Someday. And someday, my computer will magically take care of all my email for me, mix me a martini, and even write and post all my SlashDot entries for me. Yeah, that's the ticket!
Yet another "Death of Microsoft" prediction, and I'll believe it when I see it. First off, MS is already working with one hard drive manufacturer to "improve" Windows by taking advantage of solid-state memory in the hard drive itself. Second, there is nothing that precludes having all of Windows in a device with solid state memory save the size of Windows itself, but all of us that bother to track such things (PhysOrg.com is good for this) know that the size of Flash memory is only increasing at a rapid pace, just as has been the case with hard drives themselves. In any case, you could easily create a device, albeit not as cheap, that had enough Flash memory today that would hold Windows. Who can say what the size of cheap Flash memory will be in a two to three years, or how cheap? 16-20 GB for under $50 would be my rough guess based on prior performance. Lastly, the MS monopoly has been, and will remain for the foreseeable future the corporate desktop. Unless, and until, you break that monopoly, you aren't going to break Microsoft. Period. We may be seeing the glimmerings of that in the Fortune 500, but it ain't happened yet. Similarly, while it may be happening there, all I'm seeing in the SMB market is an increase in MS dominance as they expand outward to include, as per a recent SlashDot article, into POS and other arenas. Sorry, but nice rant, very little economic reality. Would that it were otherwise.
Another point, I hear a lot about China as a market for *nix/JavaOS machines but very little actual data on adoption rates. The reality is that there is a potentially huge market there, but what do we find on the ground? Windows. Pirated Windows, but Windows all the same. The Chinese government can madate all it wants, but they can't seem to make the mental transition between thinking they have a central, commmand economy and the reality that the most vibrant part of the economy is actually free market. On theo other hand, the command part of the economy is a total mess wasting resources at a prodigious rate. That part may follow the directive not to use Windows, we shall see what the rest of the economy does.
Personally, I'd love to see Open Source take off (and I mean real F/OSS, not that Sun bastardization), but as an econometrician and engineer, I deal in reality. not pipe-dreams and rants. I think my tagline says it all:-).
Perhaps these modern machines make us too lazy. I started with punch cards and some of my programs were truly huge (the largest was over 25,000 cards and took a hand truck to deliver). I was always very cautious in my typing on the keypunch machine as a mistake equaled a card that could only be thrown away. Sure, there were some machines that would fix a card, by slapping some tape over the mistake, but that was just asking for trouble with the card reader. Sooo..., I type once and check twice when entering my code, which was always done on paper to start with anyway. I still do it that way.
In carpentry the rule is measure twice, cut once. Perhaps our lives would be a lot easier if we remembered that computers are tools as well. If you are sloppy in one thing, you probably are elsewhere which probably explains the state of software today. Heck, no probably about it.
Yep, good old power conflict theory in action. The only thing Marx got wrong was attributing just one group using such mechanisms. Any elite group attempts to manipulate their society to preserve their power and privileges and this is just one more example in the long history of mankind. When they overreach, and they already have to judge from events I'm seeing around the world, there will be a backlash. See the recent judicial decisions in France, of all places! Interesting times, very interesting. I love it.
Actually I expect they will find out the old fashioned way, when they ask their geek friends what computer they should buy. I must get at least three or four of these questions a day and I'm sure that I'm not the only one. I know for a fact that any computer that incorporates this just move to the bottom of my shjt list, a rather long list I must sadly add.
Actually I have to completely disagree with point 2 and that's as an economist and econometrician. You are making the inherent assertion that potential sales would be realized sales were it not for the fact that the person that downloaded the IP for free were unable to do so. Sorry, this couldn't be further from the truth. Both the statistical evidence as well as my own anecdotal evidence having known people in the 'scene' confirm that far too often these people download once, use a few times, and it's just so much wasted space on the hard drive, or other media.
True there is a small proportion that do use a IP on a continuing basis but this still does not mean that real IP protections will result in a sale. They won't according to every non-**AA study that I've seen. [Their studies have about as much reality as MS TCO studies, which means none at all.]
In both cases we have unrealized, potential, sales that are just so much wishful thinking on the part of the media industry. On the other hand (an economist can't ever type anything without that somewhere;-), we have increased real sales since the advent of P2P. The real art is for the industry to get off its collective duff, do some real econometric modeling and testing, and see at what price-point(s) they increase real sales to achieve maximal profit.
They have been completely unwilling to do this to date, which is no surprise. Fundamentally business is very conservative unless and until you force new technology/methods down their collective throat by the threat of total bankruptcy industry-wide (which is what we are seeing in the airline industry).
I deal in reality, as an engineer and an econometrician. This is reality, not media pipe-dreams.
To add to what RzUpAnmsCwrds posted, one of the first things I do here is use X-Setup/X-Setup Pro to turn off paging of the kernel to the pagefile. I rather use it than do my reghacks by hand these days, and I have a LOT of hacks. Actually it doesn't yield much measurable difference in performance here under normal circumstances, it only makes a difference when I'm screaming along with my virtual machines loaded, and it's a few percentage points at best.
Bad VM algorithms? I don't know your setup, probably have the pagefile on the boot volume or drive, but here it is not a problem and I go to the wall on my 1 GB system all the time. I have two pagefiles here, one on the system volume for whichever version of Windows is loaded at the time, and one on another HD on the other IDE channel (most people don't think of this). Both are set to 1.5 x system memory, but that's altogether excessive as I've never gone over 2 x system memory here. Windows, like *nix, is bright enough that if it has more than one pagefile it will make use of whichever is free at the time for use. As that other HD is for pagefile, temp file, and archival storage only, it's free a lot. Try it, it may surprise you. If it doesn't, you need a different motherboard or HD controller! Then again, I picked my motherboard with doing just this in mind from the get go. BTW, Linux (or at least SuSE and FC3) likes it too.
If you want directory symlinks, go on over to SysInternals.com and grab Junction (Windows NT-2K-XP-2K3/Utilties/Miscalleneous). Part of the kernel, but not normally accessible. Beats the heck out of buying the resource kit. Normal hardlinks, see FSUtil in the Support Tools (optional install from the Install CD). As the *nixen like to say, Read The Fine Manual(s):-). I can agree with you up to a point, but I shudder to think what your typical (ab)user would do with these, as I support them day in, day out {sigh}.
Not allowing Windows to run off of CD? Why would they want to have LiveCD's? This is Microsoft, you know: all you computers belong to us! Besides, from their viewpoint, that would only encourage piracy. I can sympathize somewhat with that view myself. Sheesh, those would be the hottest, most duplicated property on the planet! I want whatever drugs you are taking:P. Still, in the field it 'twould be nice, instead of carting around a baby HD and having to do a parallel install in some cases to fix things.
Blocking? I'd rather have blocking and demand my attention than watch work go down the toilet 'cause I forgot to save something and left the app open. I've never seen a system service block shutdown here and I run a lot of services, and many most people don't, here.
Lastly, I rather like the shell in Windows Server 2003. True, it ain't csh (my fave for the last 20+ years), but it's gotten much better than it was before, and beats the dogsnot out of DOS. Furthermore, you do know you can change a lot of the settings for the shell, don't you? Mine is not standard in appearence here, no how, no way. I like a lot more lines and larger type, but that's due to my high res setup more than anything else.
I hope this helps someone. Some good points in there, and yes the stupid installers always want to reboot the damn system even when not necessary, but...:-).
Guess your remote backwater lacks a WalMart, eh? As for Worst-Buy, Short-Circuit City, and CompUseless (I use the same names too!;-), some do, most don't. Sad to say, but many WalMarts have more better and cheaper computers and especially more knowledgable sales-support people, but true!
Woah! Thank you for the reference to RetroBox.com. Beats the heck out of having to make a special trip over to Silicon Valley once a year. I know a lot of people this will make very happy.
Supposedly fixed in Windows 2000 SP1 and XP SP2, although if it is still a problem, search the MS KnowledgeBase (at TechNet on microsoft.com) for your particular laptop/network adapter. I hope this helps.
I feel for you as I've been going through the same thing in a way here. I've got most of the major, and many minor, Linux distributions here and not a one of them can talk to my combination of an nVidia GeForce MX and Sony G400 correctly without hacking the config files. True, the nVidia driver installs about perfectly on all the major distros, true most all of them come with something resembling the G400's monitor specifications, but somehow the combination comes out looking like crap without major tweakage applied.
Now I could understand if this were some cheap monitor from China/Taiwan/Malaysia, but the G400 was anything but cheap. Heck, the thing cost more when I got it than my whole setup, which ain't no slouch either. For now I put up with the ugliness as I'm developing a real affection for SuSE. However, in Windows it is a simple matter of playing around with the resolution, dpi, and screen refresh settings and all ugliness disappears. For reference, Windows Server 2003 Enterprise (and XP Pro) are run in 1600x1200, 32 bit color, 120 dpi which just happens to match the screen dimensions exactly I might add. Linux can't quite hack that. Someday, I guess I'll build a from the ground up *nix machine. Until then, well each OS has its quirks.
My advice for any computer purchaser has remained the same over the years: take your budget, choose your applications, choose the OS for those applications, lastly choose the hardware that supports all of the above. Advice I've been giving for over two decades and still true today. Do it right the first time as you usually can't retrofit after the fact despite industry assuarances to the contrary.
Who modded this informative? Microsoft has been distrubuting the tools to do exactly this for years now, if you bother to install the support tools. Furthermore almost every package that I have from them includes directions for creating unattended installs to do this for yourself, a customer, or a client. Sheesh!
Right now we don't have due process as it is, so exactly who is supposed to protect us? I can't see an anti-phishing vigilante coming after me, if they can figure out where I am in the first place, let alone get into my network and then my systems. I could engage in this but choose not to, as I can do a lot of other things. Comes from working computer/network security and actually doing something real, not hokum.
Be that as it may, the legal system can't cope with this and never will be able to cope with it. It would require a whole new international legal system and you can't get all the members of the UN to agree on the shape of a conference table let alone a system of international jurisprudence or enforcement arm. Call me cynical, but that's the truth.
I'll wrap up both replies into one. Sure, that's peanuts to a dev team working on enterprise apps for a corporation. And sure, I know that that price is peanuts in comparison to other similar application servers and add-ons to such servers. I test enterprise apps/app-servers all the time here for the big-guns in the industry. What the heck, I retired at 31 and have a ton of time on my hands.
However, for ISV's without deep pockets or a sugar-daddy/mommy, fergit 'bout it. This is a problem I have with a lot of the tools/suites that I play with day in and night out and why I pay such close attention to SourceForge, F/OSS, and here. If we expect good software engineering, it requires good tools and platforms.
What I see out there is that the good tools and platforms are restricted to those with deep-pockets (or insane testers like myself). Sooo... the really neat ideas get implemented poorly due to a lack of good tools and/or testing, and when the industry and enterprises bitch, well they might want to go look in the mirror. Hypocrisy is the human condition, methinks.
Almost an aside, but I can't see any hosting providers putting this on their systems, not at this price-point, and my targets for deployment are all on a local machine or on an ISP Host. Another one for the nice idea, not for me pile.
He's probably seeing the same thing I am: "To confirm you are not a script, please type the text shown in this image: wtfwrxy". Stupid really, since there are two problems. (1) It ain't section 508 compliant (biggie to me as I'm also disabled, and these are really visually challenging to moi!). (2) I'm logged in as me and last time I looked, I ain't a script, although some might have a different opinion.
If they are really having problems with scripted spam from logged in users, block the fraggin' accounts! Or better yet, after you prove you ain't a script, remember it in the stupid cookie! How many times do you have to prove you are you?
Well I did. Guess what, bring money if you want to deploy using this beast. Here's the limitation right from the EULA:
"Small Workgroup Configuration" means a Java-based hardware and software configuration supporting the execution of a Developer Application and limited to (a) Apache Tomcat excluding any other J2EE application servers and (b) single CPU (Central Processing Unit) computers excluding computers with multiple CPUs' and excluding cluster or grid of computers.
You can forget running on your personal multiple cpu development machine, let alone anywhere reasonable, unless you pay the price. It ain't free folks!
I went digging to find the price for deploying it on anything but what they consider a workgroup machine. You'll find that in What are the licensing terms for Grasshopper. Bring lots of money! At least MS gouges me only once.
I believe I'll stick to doing my own porting, thank ye!
I'm not the one who designed it but it does work and work well at least in design. The same seeker head designs are used elsewhere. As for it requiring a full orbit to de-orbit, whoever told you that doesn't understand orbital mechanics. All it requires is sufficient energy added (say to the cannister) to begin the deorbit cycle. The shuttle requires such a landing pattern but remember it is doing an dead-stick landing. Lastly, with respect to how far ships move, I've been out there when we've been dodging spy and radar sattellites. Just three is enough to drive us more than a little nuts ducking and weaving. Ships don't move that far in the thirty minutes or so for Thor to strike. Also remember you are "luanching" into a basket (area). Saturate the area, just as the SFW JSOW does on land, and you'll bag the lot.
This is all off-the-shelf. The only reason it hasn't been deployed is that we haven't wanted to deploy it. The so-called "militarization of space" that throws the panty-waist brigade into a tizzy (as if it hadn't happened already).
Slashdot Mirror
Once you have more than one field under your belt, nose around for jobs that involve going out into the field as much as working in the office. I never knew when I showed up for work where I was going to be next. I always kept a bag packed as quite often they would throw me on a plane to somewhere in the Pacific region. It's a ton of fun if you like a random, and surprising, lifestyle.
Hmmpfh, trolling?
Actually the Windows XP theme is included in Windows Server 2003. You do have to work at it to get it running though. First you have to turn on the Themes service, then select it is the Display properties. I should know as I use my own custom XP theme here. This has been true since the beta.
In electrical/electronic engineering I do the same thing with fuses, capacitors, impedance matching circuits, etc. When will we in the software community wrap our head around the notion of coupling, limiters, and protection? Ditto my other fields of engineering. Can you say nuclear? I thought you could. Meltdowns are soooo messy.
Now bring some other people into the mix and it begins to become fun as I'm having to teach them proper engineering techniques, mathematical proofs, and all the other tools that are in my arsenal. Fortunately I love to teach, but it does get old after a while. Real old.
I'll probably never give up writing software, or teaching, and have three projects on the burner right now. But you'll never see me working on enterprise apps with a team until they put the science back into the computer science and take the hacking out. And yes, I can hack with the best of them too, and have for thirty five years, but not on production code.
As to benefits, well aside from coming out of the box with all the crap turned off and IE crippled (I use Firefox natch), I've found it remarkably stable, faster than 2000 Adv. Server on the same platform (my benchmarks surprised me), and much simpler to configure and maintain. Half the time in 2KAS I was having to dig through the help files or search online for some obscure setting to do things that you can do easily in 2003. Heck, the help files are much better! I have very little reg hacking to do on 2003 (always some, sadly). And you lose nothing in terms of stability versus 2KAS. The only time I crash is when hardware dies. Period. And that's been true since early beta.
What's not to like? Now if those idjits in Redmond would do a bit of cranial-rectal de-insertion and release a 2003 Workstation, they'd really have something. They can stuff Longhorn (something I'm playing with now since I test all this crap). I see nothing there even worth bothering with. If I wanted a Mac, I'd buy a *real* Mac.
Very nicely done Vitaly and not only added to my bookmarks but my field book as well for handing out to those that ask (all to many!) for a guide. Normally I have to find these through following the sig-block links but on a slow news day, as today seems, I don't mind at all seeing this show up as an article. Besides, this one beats the all too frequently out of date Google directory hands down. The "love" shows. Keep up the good work.
As with you, I like playing clerics and always have. My other favorite is some type of mage (or when allowed, a combination of the two). Call me weird, but I'm a support person at heart.
The hell with that. Will it run slashodot? How do I get a feed?!!
Thats okay, they seem bent on suidide most days of the week. (No .NET 2.0 in Longhorn? No WinFS? Etc., etc., etc.) Perhaps they will succeed. Someday. And someday, my computer will magically take care of all my email for me, mix me a martini, and even write and post all my SlashDot entries for me. Yeah, that's the ticket!
Another point, I hear a lot about China as a market for *nix/JavaOS machines but very little actual data on adoption rates. The reality is that there is a potentially huge market there, but what do we find on the ground? Windows. Pirated Windows, but Windows all the same. The Chinese government can madate all it wants, but they can't seem to make the mental transition between thinking they have a central, commmand economy and the reality that the most vibrant part of the economy is actually free market. On theo other hand, the command part of the economy is a total mess wasting resources at a prodigious rate. That part may follow the directive not to use Windows, we shall see what the rest of the economy does.
Personally, I'd love to see Open Source take off (and I mean real F/OSS, not that Sun bastardization), but as an econometrician and engineer, I deal in reality. not pipe-dreams and rants. I think my tagline says it all :-).
In carpentry the rule is measure twice, cut once. Perhaps our lives would be a lot easier if we remembered that computers are tools as well. If you are sloppy in one thing, you probably are elsewhere which probably explains the state of software today. Heck, no probably about it.
Yep, good old power conflict theory in action. The only thing Marx got wrong was attributing just one group using such mechanisms. Any elite group attempts to manipulate their society to preserve their power and privileges and this is just one more example in the long history of mankind. When they overreach, and they already have to judge from events I'm seeing around the world, there will be a backlash. See the recent judicial decisions in France, of all places! Interesting times, very interesting. I love it.
Actually I expect they will find out the old fashioned way, when they ask their geek friends what computer they should buy. I must get at least three or four of these questions a day and I'm sure that I'm not the only one. I know for a fact that any computer that incorporates this just move to the bottom of my shjt list, a rather long list I must sadly add.
In both cases we have unrealized, potential, sales that are just so much wishful thinking on the part of the media industry. On the other hand (an economist can't ever type anything without that somewhere ;-), we have increased real sales since the advent of P2P. The real art is for the industry to get off its collective duff, do some real econometric modeling and testing, and see at what price-point(s) they increase real sales to achieve maximal profit.
They have been completely unwilling to do this to date, which is no surprise. Fundamentally business is very conservative unless and until you force new technology/methods down their collective throat by the threat of total bankruptcy industry-wide (which is what we are seeing in the airline industry).
I deal in reality, as an engineer and an econometrician. This is reality, not media pipe-dreams.
Bad VM algorithms? I don't know your setup, probably have the pagefile on the boot volume or drive, but here it is not a problem and I go to the wall on my 1 GB system all the time. I have two pagefiles here, one on the system volume for whichever version of Windows is loaded at the time, and one on another HD on the other IDE channel (most people don't think of this). Both are set to 1.5 x system memory, but that's altogether excessive as I've never gone over 2 x system memory here. Windows, like *nix, is bright enough that if it has more than one pagefile it will make use of whichever is free at the time for use. As that other HD is for pagefile, temp file, and archival storage only, it's free a lot. Try it, it may surprise you. If it doesn't, you need a different motherboard or HD controller! Then again, I picked my motherboard with doing just this in mind from the get go. BTW, Linux (or at least SuSE and FC3) likes it too.
If you want directory symlinks, go on over to SysInternals.com and grab Junction (Windows NT-2K-XP-2K3/Utilties/Miscalleneous). Part of the kernel, but not normally accessible. Beats the heck out of buying the resource kit. Normal hardlinks, see FSUtil in the Support Tools (optional install from the Install CD). As the *nixen like to say, Read The Fine Manual(s) :-). I can agree with you up to a point, but I shudder to think what your typical (ab)user would do with these, as I support them day in, day out {sigh}.
Not allowing Windows to run off of CD? Why would they want to have LiveCD's? This is Microsoft, you know: all you computers belong to us! Besides, from their viewpoint, that would only encourage piracy. I can sympathize somewhat with that view myself. Sheesh, those would be the hottest, most duplicated property on the planet! I want whatever drugs you are taking :P. Still, in the field it 'twould be nice, instead of carting around a baby HD and having to do a parallel install in some cases to fix things.
Blocking? I'd rather have blocking and demand my attention than watch work go down the toilet 'cause I forgot to save something and left the app open. I've never seen a system service block shutdown here and I run a lot of services, and many most people don't, here.
Lastly, I rather like the shell in Windows Server 2003. True, it ain't csh (my fave for the last 20+ years), but it's gotten much better than it was before, and beats the dogsnot out of DOS. Furthermore, you do know you can change a lot of the settings for the shell, don't you? Mine is not standard in appearence here, no how, no way. I like a lot more lines and larger type, but that's due to my high res setup more than anything else.
I hope this helps someone. Some good points in there, and yes the stupid installers always want to reboot the damn system even when not necessary, but... :-).
Guess your remote backwater lacks a WalMart, eh? As for Worst-Buy, Short-Circuit City, and CompUseless (I use the same names too! ;-), some do, most don't. Sad to say, but many WalMarts have more better and cheaper computers and especially more knowledgable sales-support people, but true!
Woah! Thank you for the reference to RetroBox.com. Beats the heck out of having to make a special trip over to Silicon Valley once a year. I know a lot of people this will make very happy.
Supposedly fixed in Windows 2000 SP1 and XP SP2, although if it is still a problem, search the MS KnowledgeBase (at TechNet on microsoft.com) for your particular laptop/network adapter. I hope this helps.
Now I could understand if this were some cheap monitor from China/Taiwan/Malaysia, but the G400 was anything but cheap. Heck, the thing cost more when I got it than my whole setup, which ain't no slouch either. For now I put up with the ugliness as I'm developing a real affection for SuSE. However, in Windows it is a simple matter of playing around with the resolution, dpi, and screen refresh settings and all ugliness disappears. For reference, Windows Server 2003 Enterprise (and XP Pro) are run in 1600x1200, 32 bit color, 120 dpi which just happens to match the screen dimensions exactly I might add. Linux can't quite hack that. Someday, I guess I'll build a from the ground up *nix machine. Until then, well each OS has its quirks.
My advice for any computer purchaser has remained the same over the years: take your budget, choose your applications, choose the OS for those applications, lastly choose the hardware that supports all of the above. Advice I've been giving for over two decades and still true today. Do it right the first time as you usually can't retrofit after the fact despite industry assuarances to the contrary.
Who modded this informative? Microsoft has been distrubuting the tools to do exactly this for years now, if you bother to install the support tools. Furthermore almost every package that I have from them includes directions for creating unattended installs to do this for yourself, a customer, or a client. Sheesh!
Be that as it may, the legal system can't cope with this and never will be able to cope with it. It would require a whole new international legal system and you can't get all the members of the UN to agree on the shape of a conference table let alone a system of international jurisprudence or enforcement arm. Call me cynical, but that's the truth.
However, for ISV's without deep pockets or a sugar-daddy/mommy, fergit 'bout it. This is a problem I have with a lot of the tools/suites that I play with day in and night out and why I pay such close attention to SourceForge, F/OSS, and here. If we expect good software engineering, it requires good tools and platforms.
What I see out there is that the good tools and platforms are restricted to those with deep-pockets (or insane testers like myself). Sooo... the really neat ideas get implemented poorly due to a lack of good tools and/or testing, and when the industry and enterprises bitch, well they might want to go look in the mirror. Hypocrisy is the human condition, methinks.
Almost an aside, but I can't see any hosting providers putting this on their systems, not at this price-point, and my targets for deployment are all on a local machine or on an ISP Host. Another one for the nice idea, not for me pile.
If they are really having problems with scripted spam from logged in users, block the fraggin' accounts! Or better yet, after you prove you ain't a script, remember it in the stupid cookie! How many times do you have to prove you are you?
"Small Workgroup Configuration" means a Java-based hardware and software configuration supporting the execution of a Developer Application and limited to (a) Apache Tomcat excluding any other J2EE application servers and (b) single CPU (Central Processing Unit) computers excluding computers with multiple CPUs' and excluding cluster or grid of computers.
You can forget running on your personal multiple cpu development machine, let alone anywhere reasonable, unless you pay the price. It ain't free folks!
I went digging to find the price for deploying it on anything but what they consider a workgroup machine. You'll find that in What are the licensing terms for Grasshopper. Bring lots of money! At least MS gouges me only once.
I believe I'll stick to doing my own porting, thank ye!
This is all off-the-shelf. The only reason it hasn't been deployed is that we haven't wanted to deploy it. The so-called "militarization of space" that throws the panty-waist brigade into a tizzy (as if it hadn't happened already).