You'd have to already have the metavirus in order to recognise it in the string of trash. Information Theory 101.
Same problem with natural selection: the selection process has to "engage" with the selectable item(s) but the homeostasis built into most biological processes acts very strongly to prevent this.
If you think English computerese is bad, wait until L'Académie have finished reinterpreting it. Literally translated, the word is "counter" or "sorting machine".
The advantage of the current system is that I can discuss computers with a Korean, Russian, Zimbabwian or Peruvian -- knowing none of those languages -- and they can discuss computers amongst themselves. It's a pity that such a complex, irregular laguange had to be the defacto default (I'd prefer something like Lojban) but English is already the defacto default. Our choices are to work with what we have, or spend a lot of effort ploughing it up and reinventing local words for something which is essentially non-local.
Plus, of course, en_US. That's about one a month for the last six years. OpenOffice has about half as many, and KOffice a mere 27 localisations. This does not include partial and "unofficial" l10n/i18n efforts.
...a junker with a new coat of paint and a "standards compliant" banner across the windscreen will be no more economical or reliable than it was before the facelift.
Agree. Why would I want to use MS-Windows at all? For anything? It would involve ceding a large amount of control in exchange for... what? A chance to run a cut-down version of a randomly changing bugfarm and virus beacon?
A gui does let people who marginaly know thier stuff acomplish simular tasks as some one who definatly does know thier stuff
Ah. And is this a good thing?
If a GUI qualifies some TIBMIN who got little more than drool on their engineering exam to do airframe maintenance, then I'd rather walk than ride in a 'plane serviced by one.
Why, do you suppose, are Microsoft-based servers getting cracked so regularly when they're next to useless in terms of what can be done with 0wn3rsh!p of one? To put this in context, there are three times as many Apache servers out there as IIS, but IIS gets cracked more often. Are you prepared to admit that point-and-drip administration might be a significant contributing factor?
Add this to your zonefile, nudge the counter and refresh:
* IN A your.ip.addr.ess
Add this to your Apache config file:
UseCanonicalName Off RewriteEngine on RewriteMap lowercase int:tolower RewriteRule ^(.+)$ ${tolower:%{SERVER_NAME}}$1 RewriteRule ^w+\.(.+)$ $1 RewriteRule ^(.+)$/var/www/virtual/$1 [L]
Now all you need to do to add a new web service is make a new folder at/var/www/virtual/name.of.server and drop the website into it. Hooh, that's tough!
I'd pay good money to see you implement that in any type of Microsoft GUI tool, other than as a special case (i.e. a facility which was coded into to a GUI to do specifically this one task).
It's a very simple change to do stuff like put the main website in/var/www/virtual/name.of.server and assume everything else is a username, to be fetched from/var/www/users/name.of.server/$USER
Also, if some MCSE hands you a website that's case-blind (e.g. links in the text say Data/ThisFile.htm but the file is called Data/thisfile.HTM) you can use a find-plus-tr one-line script to lowercase all of the actual filenames in the file tree, then change the second-last RewriteRule to also lowercase each incoming HTTP request (only up to the first "?" if there is one) to match.
A. Cost of Leon setting up server with 3 services (DNS, email, fileshare): 4 hours @AUD$120 B. Cost of Leon attending on site roughly once a year: 2 hours @AUD$120 C. Cost of Leon remote-adminning random stuff 4x a year: 0.25hr @AUD$120 Nett cost of Leon over 2 years: A + 2 x B + 2 x 4 x C == 480 + 2 * 240 + 8 x 30 == AUD$1200 (+GST) D. MandrivaClub Silver membership, per year: EUR$120 == AUD$191.54 (x 2) TOTAL: AUD$1583.08 (+ AUD$120 in GST) or AUD$791.54 pa or AUD$39.58 per user per annum
A. Cost of random MCSE setting up server as above: 4 hours @AUD$80 B. Cost of random MCSE attending site roughly monthly: 1 hour @AUD$80 C. Cost of random MCSE remote adminning roughly fortnightly: 0.5hr @AUD$80 Nett cost of random MCSE labour so far: A + 24 x B + 52 x C == 320 + 24 x 80 + 52 x 40 == AUD$4320 (+GST) D. Cost of Windows 2003 Server (Standard, OEM): AUD$1105 (+GST) E. Cost of 15 extra user seats: AUD$272.80 (+GST and x 3) Cost of OS software: AUD$1923 (+GST) F. Cost of virus scanner: approx AUD$80 (or may be seat-bound depending on vendor) TOTAL: AUD$6323.40 (+GST) or AUD$3161.70+GST pa or AUD$158.09 per user per annum
That's going to be significant to one figure, maybe, so call it three grand a year vs eight hundred bucks a year and less downtime. Call it four times as expensive to install and run MS-Windows.
It also uses a free 3rd-party MTA for the MS-Windows solution. If you wanted MS-Exchange, the cheapest way to get that is SBS, which nudges the software cost up by AUD$1657+GST, or more than the entire Linux software and setup cost.
Also, I'm being kind to the MS-Windows side by assuming 20 users. The 21st user costs $272.80 (or for SBS, $635) extra, nudging the total cost by a further 10%.
On top of the facilities provided by SBS, the Linux server software includes a choice of SQL databases, a choice of webservers and wide choice of scripting launguages, several complete development environments, a virus scanner (for protecting the MS-Windows clients behind it), highly advanced routing/filtering/mapping/firewalling facilities (including Layer7), a range of VPN technologies, complete thin client support, failover support and assorted clustering tools, and too many other services and packages to list.
If you're managing logins and such trivia, you generally bind them to an SSO solution like LDAP or maybe something more specialised. If you're literally administering thousands of identical servers, you choose one of half a dozen cluster management suites to suit your application.
I have seen AD take 11,000 servers off the air in about ninety seconds, so I'm not all that enthusiastic about it.
WRT uptime, I manage one commodity box running three services and with an uptime of well over 700 days. The customer has literally forgotten the root password over a year ago, so no maintenance would be possible without offlining it. I manage scores of other commodity boxes with typical uptimes of a year (I like to update the kernel about every year; I'm looking forward to two-kernel monte becoming common, so switching kernels will no longer require a reboot), and they're running at least 3, typically 7 or 8 Internet-exposed services apiece. Having a Linux box run forever is not a notable event.
OTOH, it took until something like 2003 for the first MS-Windows box of any kind to hit two years of continuous uptime, and that's really, really rare. You'd also have to either be running maybe one, at most two, really obscure services on it that weren't likely to throw any vulnerabilities in all of that time, or protecting the box extremely well. I'd be interested in finding out what your idea of "really great" uptime is.
As to management in general, I remote-install and distro-upgrade Linux boxes (imagine updating Win2k to Win2k3 on the run without physical access) routinely. I don't know of anyone who installs or upgrades MS-Windows that way. I don't know... could AD manage such a migration? I know a very few people who Ghost or SUS out one or a few standard installations and then manually adapt them, everyone else babysits each install and then each app from CD, and has a hard-won list of which applications are hostile to one another.
Linux admins just ask the package manager to install a short list of things they need "and anything required by them" and forget about it until it's done. If there are a big pile of identical or near-identical servers, you can orchestrate the execution of whatever commands you like on the whole lot in parallel (there are several different system available to choose from to do this), rather than being limited to whatever a particular management package thinks you'll want to do.
FWIW, I'm posting from my 3rd/. UID. Lost the passwords and eventually the email addresses for the first two. And yes, I am an old fogey (43), why do you ask? (-:
It's not as if he needs the cash. Unless he's planning on out right buying a really large chunk of Apple or something.
Or a small but important chunk of Microsoft? The successor to Windows NT 2007 (AKA Vista) might ship with default cream-and-toothgel-and-brushed-metal themes and a whooshy faux-3D taskbar! (-:
Slashdot Mirror
"Why worry? Each of us is wearing an unlicensed nuclear accelerator on his back."
So... as long as he never crosses the streams, Anchorage should be OK? (-:
...wasn't intelligently designed, then?
[deem grinning, ducking and running all implied]
You'd have to already have the metavirus in order to recognise it in the string of trash. Information Theory 101.
Same problem with natural selection: the selection process has to "engage" with the selectable item(s) but the homeostasis built into most biological processes acts very strongly to prevent this.
...work out how to pronounce the number "#ERANGE".
Or possibly his calculator couldn't represent 0 to enough significant places.
"ordinateur"
If you think English computerese is bad, wait until L'Académie have finished reinterpreting it. Literally translated, the word is "counter" or "sorting machine".
The advantage of the current system is that I can discuss computers with a Korean, Russian, Zimbabwian or Peruvian -- knowing none of those languages -- and they can discuss computers amongst themselves. It's a pity that such a complex, irregular laguange had to be the defacto default (I'd prefer something like Lojban) but English is already the defacto default. Our choices are to work with what we have, or spend a lot of effort ploughing it up and reinventing local words for something which is essentially non-local.
Deem G/D/R implied.
Seriously, does this sound likely to you?
...a junker with a new coat of paint and a "standards compliant" banner across the windscreen will be no more economical or reliable than it was before the facelift.
Agree. Why would I want to use MS-Windows at all? For anything? It would involve ceding a large amount of control in exchange for... what? A chance to run a cut-down version of a randomly changing bugfarm and virus beacon?
If a GUI qualifies some TIBMIN who got little more than drool on their engineering exam to do airframe maintenance, then I'd rather walk than ride in a 'plane serviced by one.
Why, do you suppose, are Microsoft-based servers getting cracked so regularly when they're next to useless in terms of what can be done with 0wn3rsh!p of one? To put this in context, there are three times as many Apache servers out there as IIS, but IIS gets cracked more often. Are you prepared to admit that point-and-drip administration might be a significant contributing factor?
The rewrite also strips off leading w's-plus-dot, so http://www.fredsden.com/, http://ww.fredsden.com/ and http://fredsden.com/ all map to
I'd pay good money to see you implement that in any type of Microsoft GUI tool, other than as a special case (i.e. a facility which was coded into to a GUI to do specifically this one task).
It's a very simple change to do stuff like put the main website in
Also, if some MCSE hands you a website that's case-blind (e.g. links in the text say Data/ThisFile.htm but the file is called Data/thisfile.HTM) you can use a find-plus-tr one-line script to lowercase all of the actual filenames in the file tree, then change the second-last RewriteRule to also lowercase each incoming HTTP request (only up to the first "?" if there is one) to match.
"It's the only thing I know, and I can remember one or two that didn't crash constantly, so it must be all good".
Four to six times as expensive if you go the SBS route.
A. Cost of Leon setting up server with 3 services (DNS, email, fileshare): 4 hours @AUD$120
B. Cost of Leon attending on site roughly once a year: 2 hours @AUD$120
C. Cost of Leon remote-adminning random stuff 4x a year: 0.25hr @AUD$120
Nett cost of Leon over 2 years: A + 2 x B + 2 x 4 x C == 480 + 2 * 240 + 8 x 30 == AUD$1200 (+GST)
D. MandrivaClub Silver membership, per year: EUR$120 == AUD$191.54 (x 2)
TOTAL: AUD$1583.08 (+ AUD$120 in GST) or AUD$791.54 pa or AUD$39.58 per user per annum
A. Cost of random MCSE setting up server as above: 4 hours @AUD$80
B. Cost of random MCSE attending site roughly monthly: 1 hour @AUD$80
C. Cost of random MCSE remote adminning roughly fortnightly: 0.5hr @AUD$80
Nett cost of random MCSE labour so far: A + 24 x B + 52 x C == 320 + 24 x 80 + 52 x 40 == AUD$4320 (+GST)
D. Cost of Windows 2003 Server (Standard, OEM): AUD$1105 (+GST)
E. Cost of 15 extra user seats: AUD$272.80 (+GST and x 3)
Cost of OS software: AUD$1923 (+GST)
F. Cost of virus scanner: approx AUD$80 (or may be seat-bound depending on vendor)
TOTAL: AUD$6323.40 (+GST) or AUD$3161.70+GST pa or AUD$158.09 per user per annum
That's going to be significant to one figure, maybe, so call it three grand a year vs eight hundred bucks a year and less downtime. Call it four times as expensive to install and run MS-Windows.
It also uses a free 3rd-party MTA for the MS-Windows solution. If you wanted MS-Exchange, the cheapest way to get that is SBS, which nudges the software cost up by AUD$1657+GST, or more than the entire Linux software and setup cost.
Also, I'm being kind to the MS-Windows side by assuming 20 users. The 21st user costs $272.80 (or for SBS, $635) extra, nudging the total cost by a further 10%.
On top of the facilities provided by SBS, the Linux server software includes a choice of SQL databases, a choice of webservers and wide choice of scripting launguages, several complete development environments, a virus scanner (for protecting the MS-Windows clients behind it), highly advanced routing/filtering/mapping/firewalling facilities (including Layer7), a range of VPN technologies, complete thin client support, failover support and assorted clustering tools, and too many other services and packages to list.
If you're managing logins and such trivia, you generally bind them to an SSO solution like LDAP or maybe something more specialised. If you're literally administering thousands of identical servers, you choose one of half a dozen cluster management suites to suit your application.
I have seen AD take 11,000 servers off the air in about ninety seconds, so I'm not all that enthusiastic about it.
WRT uptime, I manage one commodity box running three services and with an uptime of well over 700 days. The customer has literally forgotten the root password over a year ago, so no maintenance would be possible without offlining it. I manage scores of other commodity boxes with typical uptimes of a year (I like to update the kernel about every year; I'm looking forward to two-kernel monte becoming common, so switching kernels will no longer require a reboot), and they're running at least 3, typically 7 or 8 Internet-exposed services apiece. Having a Linux box run forever is not a notable event.
OTOH, it took until something like 2003 for the first MS-Windows box of any kind to hit two years of continuous uptime, and that's really, really rare. You'd also have to either be running maybe one, at most two, really obscure services on it that weren't likely to throw any vulnerabilities in all of that time, or protecting the box extremely well. I'd be interested in finding out what your idea of "really great" uptime is.
As to management in general, I remote-install and distro-upgrade Linux boxes (imagine updating Win2k to Win2k3 on the run without physical access) routinely. I don't know of anyone who installs or upgrades MS-Windows that way. I don't know... could AD manage such a migration? I know a very few people who Ghost or SUS out one or a few standard installations and then manually adapt them, everyone else babysits each install and then each app from CD, and has a hard-won list of which applications are hostile to one another.
Linux admins just ask the package manager to install a short list of things they need "and anything required by them" and forget about it until it's done. If there are a big pile of identical or near-identical servers, you can orchestrate the execution of whatever commands you like on the whole lot in parallel (there are several different system available to choose from to do this), rather than being limited to whatever a particular management package thinks you'll want to do.
Cheaper than RHEL or SuSE or Win2k3 Server and they have had practice with some massive systems.
So much for wallowing in the royalties.
...you might have to wait a while. Things are a bit up-in-the-air at the moment.
None of this flimsy DRM-riddled crap, thank you.
...leather interior.
Quoting? (-:
An excellent point.
/. UID. Lost the passwords and eventually the email addresses for the first two. And yes, I am an old fogey (43), why do you ask? (-:
FWIW, I'm posting from my 3rd