Because there's a lot of interesting research and new technology coming out which is Xen based and not KVM. It looks like things will remain that way for some time.
Or, to look at it another way, KVM is behind the tech curve, and has a ways to go to catch up.
Then there's the issue of having to change over to a different infrastructure. Do you have any idea of what it takes to handle the vast number of VMs in Cloud Computing?
All in all, it's just better to go with a vendor which is more committed to your requirements.
Either RedHat's Marketing department is seriously misleading, or you're seriously mistaken.
.
Again, the question isn't whether old existing installations will be supported. It's about RedHat dropping Xen for future installations.
Let me give you this Marketing blurb, since you don't seem to be aware of it:
Red Hat Sets Its Virtualization Agenda"Red Hat's strategic direction for the future development of its virtualization product portfolio is based on KVM,
and
"Existing Xen-based deployments will continue to be supported for the full lifetime of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, and Red Hat will provide a variety of tools and services to enable customers to migrate from their Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Xen deployment to KVM."
Note the words "existing" and RHEL5. No mention about the future except for migrating to KVM.
It's pretty clear that, going forward, if you want to stay with RedHat, you need to move away from Xen.
Sorry, but many people are going to stay with Xen over RedHat. Fortunately there are companies who are willing to accomodate them.
If you have some official news to the contrary, I'd appreciate hearing about. Because right now, people are looking at (and finding) alternatives to Redhat.
"Again, wrong. RHEL 5 ships with Xen, and will support Xen until at least 2014. OUL also ships with Xen. Please remember, KVM has not shipped in *any* RHEL release (major or minor) yet. Only Red Hat internally knows the release agenda."
I hate to correct an otherwise good post, but that is at best misleading, and at worst just plain wrong. Redhat has announced that they are only going to support existing Xen installations, while providing a way to migrate to KVM.
Xen is dead with Redhat. At least for now.
Personally, I think this is a major screwup by RH, as I know of sites which had been stongly RH but are now looking at dropping them. Sorry, KVM just isn't ready for serious primetime. What's worse, is that the majority of Virtualization research out there is centered around Xen, for the simple fact that it's been around longer.
So Xen is the focus of the next generation of technology, and will remain that way for a while.
And before the KVM fanatics jump up shouting the usual "but-it's-faster!" mantra, you should be aware that Type II hypervisor support (ala KVM) was announced a couple weeks ago at the Xen Summit (at Oracle's HQ, btw).
So one can either choose a KVM type of hypervisor, or the original Xen hypervisor.
Oh, and I heard that the guy who did it coded up in 12 days as a lark.
But unfortunately one doesn't seem to have a choice with Redhat..
I certainly hope CentOS picks up the Xen work from Fedora this year. Otherwise I'll have to look to Oracle for serious datacenter work. I'm not happy about that at all, as I've been a very strong fan of Redhat (and have given them lots of business.
But this really underscores how good it is sticking with Open Source. At least I DO have choices.
There are about 3.5 million in IT, according to the BLS.
There are over 1 Million cheap workers here on the H1/L1 Visa program. That's quite a sizeable percentage of the total U.S. employment. And it's FAR greater than the total number of unemployed IT workers.
The basic fact is that if you want to eliminate or seriously reduce unemployment in the IT sector in the U.S., all you have to do is to eliminate all of the H1/L1 visas.
This would have the added benefit of opening up jobs to those in other fields (like the automotive industry). Yes, there would have to be some retraining. But we have such programs around, and they are a lot better than the fake educational systems (I.e. diploma mills) overseas.
It's time to eliminate the guest worker programs, and send the H1/L1s back home.
I just wanted to thanks for the many insightful comments here. I think they have answered quite well my original question, and have given me a better perspective on the situation.
That's the truth. Sun, Xen and even Microsoft are giving VMWare a run for their money nowadays.
There's one interesting thing which has struck me, that I haven't seen any comments on. Namely, that VMWare is stuck competing between Microsoft on the one hand, and several Open Source projects on the other (with some of the Open Source projects having serious financial backing).
Being positioned between Microsoft and Open Source generally hasn't been a good spot to be in (indeed, has anyone succeeded here?). So I have to wonder how VMWare is going to stand up in the future?
I've been a big fan of VMWare in the past, as it has saved my butt more than once. However, now I find myself using Xen more, and seriously considering Sun's offerings.
To VMWare's credit, they have arguably the best person in the world for the job as CEO (at least on paper). Some might remember Paul Maritz as being one of the top people from Microsoft, as well as having led Microsoft's original *NIX strategy (I.e. Xenix). So if there's anyone who can compete there, it is him.
But still, it is not an enviable position to be in, and it makes me wonder how they are going to compete in the long term? Especially since, from a technology basis, the Open Source efforts are arguably better.
Anyone care to add some insightful comments on this? The only way that I can see VMWare winning is if everyone else screws up. While that's possible, there's a lot of money at stake in the Virtualization field, and I think the odds of that happening are low.
Sorry, but I have to strongly disagree. I've seen this second hand, more than once in the industry. Thinking that you'll just get off with a lawsuit is very dangerous thinking.
The worst that will happen is the following. They will sue you for stealing the code. The kicker is that if they really want to put you out of business, they will also file *criminal* charges against you, for stealing their code. You need to be prepared for this, but good luck.
What then happens is that the Police will open up a criminal investigation. They are under absolutely no pressure to close it; they can keep it open indefinitely if they want. What this means for you is that your competition will be telling your customers that you have a criminal investigation going on against your product. Needless to say, your customers will be very reluctant to touch your product.
And all the Police have to do is find a relatively small number of lines of code which are the same in order to press charges if they want. Different police departments have different standards, so YMMV here.
Fighting these takes years; all the time you are losing sales to potential customers. It's basically an expensive uphill battle. So plan your strategies out in advance, and with advice from a great lawyer. Because their stategy is to bankrupt you, and your defensive options are limited.
The criminal charges scenario actually happened to a friend of mine, with Veritas (yes, that Veritas, when they were very small).
He had developed a great piece of software before going to Veritas, and then rewrote it from scratch at Veritats. They gave him a pittance for it, so he left, and rewrote it from scratch again, and started up a competing company.
Veritas didn't mess around. They filed criminal charges with the San Jose Police. The case might still be open after all of these years, I don't know. But I do know that he never went anywhere with the product, even though his third version was the best in the industry.
Personally, if I were in your shoes, I'd put your software under the GPLv3. That way at least you'd be getting a lot of publicity against the original company. And you might even get some legal help from the FSF. This is the only reasonable strategy that I can think of, as long as you MAKE ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN that there are no identical lines codes (other than the obvious ones, like "#include...stdio.h...".
Thank goodness you're not a moderator. The OPs points about Schwartz are spot on.
You also conveniently left out a couple key points about Sun. First, they consistently pay lower salaries than others. Oh yes, I know that they trot out the usual Marketing BS about the Salary Surveys that they buy. But compare that to real job offers from other places in the Valley, and Sun is always a low-baller.
Sun also has a long track record of offing employees for H1-Bs; a record which is so bad that it's documented externally.
In short, Sun uses low-ball labor to get things done. That's part of the reason why they are in this mess. Yes, they do have some exceptional talent here and there. That's certainly in the minority, and the real work gets done by people who are typically far less talented than their peers in other companies.
Which is a pity, because Sun used to be a great place. Until they recognize that they have to pay for good talent, and not the dumbest and cheapest, they are going to continue to go nowhere.
And that's a pity, because as I'm sure you know, they now have the opportunity to kick even IBM's rear in a serious fashion if they played their cards right. But it doesn't look to me like they are.
Sorry, I have to respectfully disagree. If it was as simple as throwing money at it, Vista would be the greatest OS ever made, instead of the dying pig that it's become.
Cash helps. But without good management (on the client's part), it's going to lead to disappointment. Unless you happen to get one of the very few contractors who knows how to manage things (like the customer) themselves (maybe 10% do, but 80% will claim to:) ).
There's an old Engineering saying:
- Better
- Faster
- Cheaper
Choose any two. This is still true today as it was 30+(?) years ago when it first came out for software development.
My personal experience though, is that you are very lucky to even get one of those, unless the project is well managed.
"we dont do training courses or setting up networks. wtf does that have to do with legal work ?"
One trend I've seen recently is the move to Linux by big companies for their products. And if you're reading Slashdot, you've heard of these companies. The main reason for this move is primarily due to driver and chipset support. Previously they might have used BSD due to "protecting" their Imaginary Property, but no longer. Now they use Linux to stay competitive and decrease the time to market.
The GPL is a completely foreign concept to many, many managers in these companies. And GPL exposure is something which always comes up, and is something that they have to be concerned with.
Consequently, they bring in Lawyers for training on what the GPL means and what their legal exposure is. This is undoubtedly what "training" means in the article.
If your company isn't doing this, then you are missing out on an easy market. Once you develop the training course, you just have to give it over and over again. And of course, you get to charge the usual overpriced legal fees. It doesn't get closer to a gravy train than this.
I've seen some of the "courses" that legal firms develop, and frankly, your average Slashdotter is more aware of the real issues than what these Coporate Legal firms offer. One firm didn't even go into the grey areas. And barely touched upon the concept of a derivative work.
I haven't seen what the FSF offers in this area. But if I were going to hire a legal firm to do a presentation, I'd have the FSF do it. They are unquestionably the best experts in this area. The standard big-name firms are just putting out incomplete boilerplate presentations, and not really getting into the issues in a way which really helps the company.
Why, by the way, undoubtedly means that they don't know how to properly defend themselves should a lawsuit ensue. But I digress.
As far as setting up networks goes, this is how you increase awareness and business contacts. Which in turns increases your business.
Also note carefully what the parent said, namely, "Use Tor to access the trackers". Tor is, by default, set up to disable bittorrent transfers, since it heavily loads the Tor network. Here's one article which well explains Why you shouldn't run bittorrent over Tor.
And if you look at the default exit node policies (see section 4.16 of the Tor FAQ), the standard bittorrent ports are explicitly rejected. So you really don't want to run bittorrent over Tor.
While this is a really cool service, nothing can beat hands on. My preference is
The Techshop.
The site seems slashdotted already. Google's cache should have a copy of their 3D printer, laser etcher, and other services for building (nearly) anything that you can imagine.
This is the most innovative thing to hit Silicon Valley in years. It really should've been covered by Slashdot long ago.
The advantage the Techshop has over mail-in is that you can get advice on how to create your prototype. The costs for a 3D print job can vary greatly depending on how you do it. Just the orientation alone can either save you or cost you quite a bit. So that's why I prefer "hands on". Now, if I really knew what I was doing, or I didn't have a TechShop nearby, then I'd probably do a mail-order service.
As far as apps goes, you can pull down one of the Google apps (whose name I've forgotten at the moment) and use that.
Oh - and the guy who founded the TechShop used to work with Mythbusters in creating their gadgets. I hear they even showed up on opening day.
I have no connecting with the Techshop other than has a happy and frequent customer.
I salute the authors for their efforts, as this is a significant and welcome contribution. But I have to respectfully disagree with this statement:
"There seems to be no easy remedy for these vulnerabilities."
Yes there is. All one has to do is misprogram the DRAM controller. And then wait until DRAM is fully discharged before continuing on with the boot sequence.
For those who aren't familiar with how DRAM controllers work, they are responsible for laying out memory as seen by the CPU. There are a whole bunch of parameters which the DRAM module supplies, and the DRAM controller needs, in order for RAM to work. Usually this is all done fairly automatically and quite quickly as one of the very first things which happens when you boot up.
If the DRAM controller is misprogrammed, then all of your memory accesses are at best scrambled. At worst, you can't even get to the various memory locations.
Good luck getting around that. While it's still not impossible, it does significantly raise the bar enough to defeat any attack via the CPU (as in booting these types of utilities, instead of an OS). I believe it would also defeat any bus-based attacks, say via a compromised PCI card, or a USB card. Perhaps I'm mistaken there, as I really haven't thought the latter cases through, and whether there's a way to cheat.
As an aside, yes, this trick has been known for years in the industry. For certain products that I've worked on, it's been tempting to use this in order to speed up the warm boot cycle. The problem is that the results from this type of behaviour are completely unspecified. So it's not something that you want to do in a commercial product. At least not lightly, when your reputation is on the line.
Like everyone else, I was under the impression that non-compete agreements were illegal in California. It turns out that there's an end-run around them. Here's the article:
Mattel, rival slug it out over rights to Bratz
. Registration required, just use bugmenot.com. Yeah, it's about dolls, and not software. But you know the sleezy Valley lawyers will be looking at this one for ideas.
In short, this guy signed an "Exclusivity" contract. Apparently that's different from a "Non-compete", though how in the world that's possible is beyond me.
Perhaps someone other than the IANAL types can educate me here. But, in short, if this one holds up, you can bet that you're going to see Exclusivity Contracts start popping up among software and hardware designers, instead of just doll designers.
Well, considering that the current wave in high-tech is to outsource the hardware development, it's a very valid concern.
Here's a classic example. Startups in Silicon Valley prefer not to bring in a hardware team to develop a new box from scratch, especially when they can just buy a COTS box elsewhere for the first round. The Imaginary Property resides in the Software Apps that they can develop to run on these boxes.
Consequently, they contract out with companies that used to be known for their motherboards, but who have moved up and will sell you a complete cutting edge system, and customize it to meet your needs. No hardware development time is required, and it's a lot cheaper.
The catch is that, in order to support these boxes, the Startup or the customer MUST NEVER OPEN THEM. If you do, you void the warranty. At $10,000-$20,000 per box (in the storage biz) that's a very strong incentive to never ever peek inside.
In short, these boxes are the best backdoor into an Organizations' IT infrastructure. You'd be surprised at the big, well-known names currently deploying them.
The beauty of this approach is that most of these companies are based in Taiwan. Simply put, with little effort, Taiwan gets to own both China and the U.S. at the same time. That would be amusing if it weren't so sad.
"Sun wants to treat MySQL like a product. They want to give away the "free" version as a stripped down marketing tool.
Yes, this is what Oracle does with Berkeley DB. On one project, we started out with using Berkeley DB. It wasn't meeting the needs, so we started looking at other options. Oracle had us hooked, and started reeling us in. Up until we got to the price tag. They wouldn't offer the support that we needed for their commercial version of Berkely DB, and instead wanted to push us towards their full Oracle DB. It sounded fine until we got to the price. They wanted, get this, 5% of the gross revenues of the product we were designing!!! Not a per-license fee, not a large finite sum for the product, but a full 5% of the revenues.
Needless to say, we told them to take a hike.
This is different than from a few years ago. Then they were willing to do a per license fee. But, of course, at an astronomical amount. Plus, this amount would literally change each time we talked to a different salesperson. There was a lot of confusion at the time. Now they've eliminated the confusion, but their greed knows no bounds.
Sun is welcome in this space, IMHO. More competition is good, because frankly, all of the vendors have serious drawbacks in one way or another.
The moral of the story is be real careful about the database you select, and your design. If you choose foolishly, you'll end up spending lots of money, when a better design could have saved you from this pain.
"We know that many of our emails never reach their destination.
[citation needed] I call bullshit on that one.
And I call BS on your BS. Clearly you're not familiar with the state-of-the-art as far as email goes. You've certainly not had to set up and run a private email server.
Here's one good reference. It mostly mirrors my experience, except that it's been going on longer than the writer has observed.
The basic problem is that Yahoo, Hotmail, ATT and other large email providers, or ISPs, simply refuse to honor the standards which have been published (DKIM, et. al.). Google is great. But it's gotten so bad with the others that I simply don't bother communicating with anyone who has a Hotmail, Yahoo, or ATT account. If they are someone important, I'll tell them once (via a different band) of the situation. And let them know that unless they change their email provider, I won't be responding to any future email from them.
Usually I just refer them to gmail, because google seems to be the only large email provider with a technical clue.
The other interesting thing is that all of these large companies will treat unsigned email from an Exchange server as more verified than a DKIM email, but I digress.
Supposedly the excuse is that it's due to spam. I'm certain that is part of the problem. But the other part is that there's definite incentive for the big boys to eliminate the small independent websites and drive all of the business into their arms.
So, yes, the OP's statement about many email messages not reaching their destination is quite true. Most? No. But anything that doesn't use the technology offered by the big commercial joints (including Microsoft server technology) is shut off from communicating with a large part of the internet.
Blackberry is not a mission critical service. The people who use it as such are naive.
Heh. Well, many PHBs would disagree, but your point is valid.
For your amusement, the Blackberry email servers are provided by a company called Mirapoint (mirapoint.com), and they are Linux based. From what I've heard, they cut over about 2 years ago from BSD to Linux, for various reasons. I'm also told that the CEO is a complete airhead who has difficulty managing a secretary, let alone a company. But that the mid-level managers and engineers in the U.S. are first rate. I imagine that they could indeed improve the uptime of the email servers, but those servers are quite good already.
Well, I wouldn't quite say that it's a non-story. But IMHO there's a bigger story which has been missed. Namely, that Google decided to take a BSD-derived libc and include it as a part of their Android effort. This is running on top of Linux.
This is a blow aimed squarely at the Free Software Foundation, and RMS's efforts to establish GPLv3. Good luck in trying to square that one away.
Now, why in the world Google would do this is beyond me. IHMO it smacks of too much money, and too many engineers with not enough relevant things to do. But hey, if Google's goal is to try to minimize both versions of the GPL, well, I can think of no better effort.
That's a funny moderation, as there was no flamebait there. Unless perhaps you're a spammer.
The only conclusion I can see is that some spammer is smart enough to realize that this approach might indeed affect business, that they don't have any defenses currently in placce against it, and doesn't want the word to get out.
All you need is the old martial arts trick of using your opponents attack against them.
These servers are used for phishing scams. But phishers can by lots of zombie botnets in order to send out their phishing scams.
So... Just point the botnets to these Russian Servers. That seems to me to be a lot cheaper than doing anything else. Including cleaning up the systems on your subnet.
Honestly, I'm surprised this hasn't happened already.
I haven't benchmarked it myself, so I can't say anything to back up the marketing claims. But if true, that's in the neighborhood of the 50 MBs that you used in your calculations.
Stack 8 of the 8 GB versions together, and you've got the 64 GB that Alienware is using.
This is really cool. I'd love to replace a lot of platter-based hard drives with some of these, and it's looking like a new opportunity is starting to open up here.
Slashdot Mirror
Because there's a lot of interesting research and new technology coming out which is Xen based and not KVM. It looks like things will remain that way for some time.
Or, to look at it another way, KVM is behind the tech curve, and has a ways to go to catch up.
Then there's the issue of having to change over to a different infrastructure. Do you have any idea of what it takes to handle the vast number of VMs in Cloud Computing?
All in all, it's just better to go with a vendor which is more committed to your requirements.
Either RedHat's Marketing department is seriously misleading, or you're seriously mistaken.
. Again, the question isn't whether old existing installations will be supported. It's about RedHat dropping Xen for future installations.
Let me give you this Marketing blurb, since you don't seem to be aware of it: Red Hat Sets Its Virtualization Agenda "Red Hat's strategic direction for the future development of its virtualization product portfolio is based on KVM,
and
"Existing Xen-based deployments will continue to be supported for the full lifetime of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, and Red Hat will provide a variety of tools and services to enable customers to migrate from their Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Xen deployment to KVM."
Note the words "existing" and RHEL5. No mention about the future except for migrating to KVM.
It's pretty clear that, going forward, if you want to stay with RedHat, you need to move away from Xen.
Sorry, but many people are going to stay with Xen over RedHat. Fortunately there are companies who are willing to accomodate them.
If you have some official news to the contrary, I'd appreciate hearing about. Because right now, people are looking at (and finding) alternatives to Redhat.
I hate to correct an otherwise good post, but that is at best misleading, and at worst just plain wrong. Redhat has announced that they are only going to support existing Xen installations, while providing a way to migrate to KVM.
Xen is dead with Redhat. At least for now.
Personally, I think this is a major screwup by RH, as I know of sites which had been stongly RH but are now looking at dropping them. Sorry, KVM just isn't ready for serious primetime. What's worse, is that the majority of Virtualization research out there is centered around Xen, for the simple fact that it's been around longer.
So Xen is the focus of the next generation of technology, and will remain that way for a while.
And before the KVM fanatics jump up shouting the usual "but-it's-faster!" mantra, you should be aware that Type II hypervisor support (ala KVM) was announced a couple weeks ago at the Xen Summit (at Oracle's HQ, btw).
So one can either choose a KVM type of hypervisor, or the original Xen hypervisor.
Oh, and I heard that the guy who did it coded up in 12 days as a lark.
But unfortunately one doesn't seem to have a choice with Redhat..
I certainly hope CentOS picks up the Xen work from Fedora this year. Otherwise I'll have to look to Oracle for serious datacenter work. I'm not happy about that at all, as I've been a very strong fan of Redhat (and have given them lots of business.
But this really underscores how good it is sticking with Open Source. At least I DO have choices.
There are about 3.5 million in IT, according to the BLS.
There are over 1 Million cheap workers here on the H1/L1 Visa program. That's quite a sizeable percentage of the total U.S. employment. And it's FAR greater than the total number of unemployed IT workers.
The basic fact is that if you want to eliminate or seriously reduce unemployment in the IT sector in the U.S., all you have to do is to eliminate all of the H1/L1 visas.
This would have the added benefit of opening up jobs to those in other fields (like the automotive industry). Yes, there would have to be some retraining. But we have such programs around, and they are a lot better than the fake educational systems (I.e. diploma mills) overseas.
It's time to eliminate the guest worker programs, and send the H1/L1s back home.
I just wanted to thanks for the many insightful comments here. I think they have answered quite well my original question, and have given me a better perspective on the situation.
Thank you! I knew there had to be one example out there, but I couldn't think of it.
That's the truth. Sun, Xen and even Microsoft are giving VMWare a run for their money nowadays.
There's one interesting thing which has struck me, that I haven't seen any comments on. Namely, that VMWare is stuck competing between Microsoft on the one hand, and several Open Source projects on the other (with some of the Open Source projects having serious financial backing).
Being positioned between Microsoft and Open Source generally hasn't been a good spot to be in (indeed, has anyone succeeded here?). So I have to wonder how VMWare is going to stand up in the future?
I've been a big fan of VMWare in the past, as it has saved my butt more than once. However, now I find myself using Xen more, and seriously considering Sun's offerings.
To VMWare's credit, they have arguably the best person in the world for the job as CEO (at least on paper). Some might remember Paul Maritz as being one of the top people from Microsoft, as well as having led Microsoft's original *NIX strategy (I.e. Xenix). So if there's anyone who can compete there, it is him.
But still, it is not an enviable position to be in, and it makes me wonder how they are going to compete in the long term? Especially since, from a technology basis, the Open Source efforts are arguably better.
Anyone care to add some insightful comments on this? The only way that I can see VMWare winning is if everyone else screws up. While that's possible, there's a lot of money at stake in the Virtualization field, and I think the odds of that happening are low.
"The can absolutely sue you, but they'll lose."
Sorry, but I have to strongly disagree. I've seen this second hand, more than once in the industry. Thinking that you'll just get off with a lawsuit is very dangerous thinking.
The worst that will happen is the following. They will sue you for stealing the code. The kicker is that if they really want to put you out of business, they will also file *criminal* charges against you, for stealing their code. You need to be prepared for this, but good luck.
What then happens is that the Police will open up a criminal investigation. They are under absolutely no pressure to close it; they can keep it open indefinitely if they want. What this means for you is that your competition will be telling your customers that you have a criminal investigation going on against your product. Needless to say, your customers will be very reluctant to touch your product.
And all the Police have to do is find a relatively small number of lines of code which are the same in order to press charges if they want. Different police departments have different standards, so YMMV here.
Fighting these takes years; all the time you are losing sales to potential customers. It's basically an expensive uphill battle. So plan your strategies out in advance, and with advice from a great lawyer. Because their stategy is to bankrupt you, and your defensive options are limited.
The criminal charges scenario actually happened to a friend of mine, with Veritas (yes, that Veritas, when they were very small).
He had developed a great piece of software before going to Veritas, and then rewrote it from scratch at Veritats. They gave him a pittance for it, so he left, and rewrote it from scratch again, and started up a competing company.
Veritas didn't mess around. They filed criminal charges with the San Jose Police. The case might still be open after all of these years, I don't know. But I do know that he never went anywhere with the product, even though his third version was the best in the industry.
Personally, if I were in your shoes, I'd put your software under the GPLv3. That way at least you'd be getting a lot of publicity against the original company. And you might even get some legal help from the FSF. This is the only reasonable strategy that I can think of, as long as you MAKE ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN that there are no identical lines codes (other than the obvious ones, like "#include ...stdio.h...".
Thank goodness you're not a moderator. The OPs points about Schwartz are spot on.
You also conveniently left out a couple key points about Sun. First, they consistently pay lower salaries than others. Oh yes, I know that they trot out the usual Marketing BS about the Salary Surveys that they buy. But compare that to real job offers from other places in the Valley, and Sun is always a low-baller.
Sun also has a long track record of offing employees for H1-Bs; a record which is so bad that it's documented externally.
In short, Sun uses low-ball labor to get things done. That's part of the reason why they are in this mess. Yes, they do have some exceptional talent here and there. That's certainly in the minority, and the real work gets done by people who are typically far less talented than their peers in other companies.
Which is a pity, because Sun used to be a great place. Until they recognize that they have to pay for good talent, and not the dumbest and cheapest, they are going to continue to go nowhere.
And that's a pity, because as I'm sure you know, they now have the opportunity to kick even IBM's rear in a serious fashion if they played their cards right. But it doesn't look to me like they are.
Sorry, I have to respectfully disagree. If it was as simple as throwing money at it, Vista would be the greatest OS ever made, instead of the dying pig that it's become.
Cash helps. But without good management (on the client's part), it's going to lead to disappointment. Unless you happen to get one of the very few contractors who knows how to manage things (like the customer) themselves (maybe 10% do, but 80% will claim to :) ).
There's an old Engineering saying:
- Better
- Faster
- Cheaper
Choose any two. This is still true today as it was 30+(?) years ago when it first came out for software development.
My personal experience though, is that you are very lucky to even get one of those, unless the project is well managed.
"we dont do training courses or setting up networks. wtf does that have to do with legal work ?"
One trend I've seen recently is the move to Linux by big companies for their products. And if you're reading Slashdot, you've heard of these companies. The main reason for this move is primarily due to driver and chipset support. Previously they might have used BSD due to "protecting" their Imaginary Property, but no longer. Now they use Linux to stay competitive and decrease the time to market.
The GPL is a completely foreign concept to many, many managers in these companies. And GPL exposure is something which always comes up, and is something that they have to be concerned with.
Consequently, they bring in Lawyers for training on what the GPL means and what their legal exposure is. This is undoubtedly what "training" means in the article.
If your company isn't doing this, then you are missing out on an easy market. Once you develop the training course, you just have to give it over and over again. And of course, you get to charge the usual overpriced legal fees. It doesn't get closer to a gravy train than this.
I've seen some of the "courses" that legal firms develop, and frankly, your average Slashdotter is more aware of the real issues than what these Coporate Legal firms offer. One firm didn't even go into the grey areas. And barely touched upon the concept of a derivative work.
I haven't seen what the FSF offers in this area. But if I were going to hire a legal firm to do a presentation, I'd have the FSF do it. They are unquestionably the best experts in this area. The standard big-name firms are just putting out incomplete boilerplate presentations, and not really getting into the issues in a way which really helps the company.
Why, by the way, undoubtedly means that they don't know how to properly defend themselves should a lawsuit ensue. But I digress.
As far as setting up networks goes, this is how you increase awareness and business contacts. Which in turns increases your business.
And, since the usual RIAA fanbois usually pop up once you mention Tor, casting FUD to scare people away from it, here's the EFF's legal FAQ, and here's the Tor FAQ.
Also note carefully what the parent said, namely, "Use Tor to access the trackers". Tor is, by default, set up to disable bittorrent transfers, since it heavily loads the Tor network. Here's one article which well explains Why you shouldn't run bittorrent over Tor.
And if you look at the default exit node policies (see section 4.16 of the Tor FAQ), the standard bittorrent ports are explicitly rejected. So you really don't want to run bittorrent over Tor.
The site seems slashdotted already. Google's cache should have a copy of their 3D printer, laser etcher, and other services for building (nearly) anything that you can imagine.
This is the most innovative thing to hit Silicon Valley in years. It really should've been covered by Slashdot long ago.
The advantage the Techshop has over mail-in is that you can get advice on how to create your prototype. The costs for a 3D print job can vary greatly depending on how you do it. Just the orientation alone can either save you or cost you quite a bit. So that's why I prefer "hands on". Now, if I really knew what I was doing, or I didn't have a TechShop nearby, then I'd probably do a mail-order service.
As far as apps goes, you can pull down one of the Google apps (whose name I've forgotten at the moment) and use that.
Oh - and the guy who founded the TechShop used to work with Mythbusters in creating their gadgets. I hear they even showed up on opening day.
I have no connecting with the Techshop other than has a happy and frequent customer.
"There seems to be no easy remedy for these vulnerabilities."
Yes there is. All one has to do is misprogram the DRAM controller. And then wait until DRAM is fully discharged before continuing on with the boot sequence.
For those who aren't familiar with how DRAM controllers work, they are responsible for laying out memory as seen by the CPU. There are a whole bunch of parameters which the DRAM module supplies, and the DRAM controller needs, in order for RAM to work. Usually this is all done fairly automatically and quite quickly as one of the very first things which happens when you boot up. If the DRAM controller is misprogrammed, then all of your memory accesses are at best scrambled. At worst, you can't even get to the various memory locations.
Good luck getting around that. While it's still not impossible, it does significantly raise the bar enough to defeat any attack via the CPU (as in booting these types of utilities, instead of an OS). I believe it would also defeat any bus-based attacks, say via a compromised PCI card, or a USB card. Perhaps I'm mistaken there, as I really haven't thought the latter cases through, and whether there's a way to cheat.
As an aside, yes, this trick has been known for years in the industry. For certain products that I've worked on, it's been tempting to use this in order to speed up the warm boot cycle. The problem is that the results from this type of behaviour are completely unspecified. So it's not something that you want to do in a commercial product. At least not lightly, when your reputation is on the line.
In short, this guy signed an "Exclusivity" contract. Apparently that's different from a "Non-compete", though how in the world that's possible is beyond me.
Perhaps someone other than the IANAL types can educate me here. But, in short, if this one holds up, you can bet that you're going to see Exclusivity Contracts start popping up among software and hardware designers, instead of just doll designers.
Free Kevin!?! Where have you been? I hear that he's rather expensive these days.
Well, considering that the current wave in high-tech is to outsource the hardware development, it's a very valid concern.
Here's a classic example. Startups in Silicon Valley prefer not to bring in a hardware team to develop a new box from scratch, especially when they can just buy a COTS box elsewhere for the first round. The Imaginary Property resides in the Software Apps that they can develop to run on these boxes.
Consequently, they contract out with companies that used to be known for their motherboards, but who have moved up and will sell you a complete cutting edge system, and customize it to meet your needs. No hardware development time is required, and it's a lot cheaper.
The catch is that, in order to support these boxes, the Startup or the customer MUST NEVER OPEN THEM. If you do, you void the warranty. At $10,000-$20,000 per box (in the storage biz) that's a very strong incentive to never ever peek inside.
Add to that proprietary IPMI cards.
In short, these boxes are the best backdoor into an Organizations' IT infrastructure. You'd be surprised at the big, well-known names currently deploying them.
The beauty of this approach is that most of these companies are based in Taiwan. Simply put, with little effort, Taiwan gets to own both China and the U.S. at the same time. That would be amusing if it weren't so sad.
Yes, this is what Oracle does with Berkeley DB. On one project, we started out with using Berkeley DB. It wasn't meeting the needs, so we started looking at other options. Oracle had us hooked, and started reeling us in. Up until we got to the price tag. They wouldn't offer the support that we needed for their commercial version of Berkely DB, and instead wanted to push us towards their full Oracle DB. It sounded fine until we got to the price. They wanted, get this, 5% of the gross revenues of the product we were designing!!! Not a per-license fee, not a large finite sum for the product, but a full 5% of the revenues.
Needless to say, we told them to take a hike.
This is different than from a few years ago. Then they were willing to do a per license fee. But, of course, at an astronomical amount. Plus, this amount would literally change each time we talked to a different salesperson. There was a lot of confusion at the time. Now they've eliminated the confusion, but their greed knows no bounds.
Sun is welcome in this space, IMHO. More competition is good, because frankly, all of the vendors have serious drawbacks in one way or another.
The moral of the story is be real careful about the database you select, and your design. If you choose foolishly, you'll end up spending lots of money, when a better design could have saved you from this pain.
[citation needed] I call bullshit on that one.
And I call BS on your BS. Clearly you're not familiar with the state-of-the-art as far as email goes. You've certainly not had to set up and run a private email server.
Here's one good reference. It mostly mirrors my experience, except that it's been going on longer than the writer has observed.
The basic problem is that Yahoo, Hotmail, ATT and other large email providers, or ISPs, simply refuse to honor the standards which have been published (DKIM, et. al.). Google is great. But it's gotten so bad with the others that I simply don't bother communicating with anyone who has a Hotmail, Yahoo, or ATT account. If they are someone important, I'll tell them once (via a different band) of the situation. And let them know that unless they change their email provider, I won't be responding to any future email from them.
Usually I just refer them to gmail, because google seems to be the only large email provider with a technical clue.
The other interesting thing is that all of these large companies will treat unsigned email from an Exchange server as more verified than a DKIM email, but I digress.
Supposedly the excuse is that it's due to spam. I'm certain that is part of the problem. But the other part is that there's definite incentive for the big boys to eliminate the small independent websites and drive all of the business into their arms.
So, yes, the OP's statement about many email messages not reaching their destination is quite true. Most? No. But anything that doesn't use the technology offered by the big commercial joints (including Microsoft server technology) is shut off from communicating with a large part of the internet.
Blackberry is not a mission critical service. The people who use it as such are naive.
Heh. Well, many PHBs would disagree, but your point is valid.
For your amusement, the Blackberry email servers are provided by a company called Mirapoint (mirapoint.com), and they are Linux based. From what I've heard, they cut over about 2 years ago from BSD to Linux, for various reasons. I'm also told that the CEO is a complete airhead who has difficulty managing a secretary, let alone a company. But that the mid-level managers and engineers in the U.S. are first rate. I imagine that they could indeed improve the uptime of the email servers, but those servers are quite good already.
This is a blow aimed squarely at the Free Software Foundation, and RMS's efforts to establish GPLv3. Good luck in trying to square that one away.
Now, why in the world Google would do this is beyond me. IHMO it smacks of too much money, and too many engineers with not enough relevant things to do. But hey, if Google's goal is to try to minimize both versions of the GPL, well, I can think of no better effort.
Yes, this is a P.R. disaster in the making, in more ways than one.
The only conclusion I can see is that some spammer is smart enough to realize that this approach might indeed affect business, that they don't have any defenses currently in placce against it, and doesn't want the word to get out.
These servers are used for phishing scams. But phishers can by lots of zombie botnets in order to send out their phishing scams.
So... Just point the botnets to these Russian Servers. That seems to me to be a lot cheaper than doing anything else. Including cleaning up the systems on your subnet.
Honestly, I'm surprised this hasn't happened already.
http://www.sandisk.com/Products/Catalog(1353)-SanDisk_Extreme_Ducati_Edition_CompactFlash.aspx
I haven't benchmarked it myself, so I can't say anything to back up the marketing claims. But if true, that's in the neighborhood of the 50 MBs that you used in your calculations.
Stack 8 of the 8 GB versions together, and you've got the 64 GB that Alienware is using.
This is really cool. I'd love to replace a lot of platter-based hard drives with some of these, and it's looking like a new opportunity is starting to open up here.
Heh. Ok, that's not what I was expecting by a long shot (as I'm not a great speller), But you're quite welcome.
:)
I was actually going to spell it "gybe", given the numerous references to pirates here. But I figured that no one would get that.