Imagine if they were looking at developing/deploying a "community computer", whereby instead of leasing/renting ISP connectivity, they provide you with Internet connectivity, a computer, with software pre-installed, etc., and some sort of "dumb" KVM connection into this machine. (Wyse terminal?)
They drop this thing into a local telco demark or trunking station, where some monster Internet connection is attached to this multi-cpu box. From there, hundreds of people connect into it via their existing ISP connection.
Each person that "rents space" on this box gets their own drive space, pre-installed software, and a guaranteed minimum amount of CPU/RAM. And the use of the other resources when not in use.
It seems to me that the biggest hurdle that everyone has been trying to solve has been achieving high-speed connections to the home... well, what if this "KVM" setup is quite capable of providing all the response required over existing dial-up or ISP connections? (except for stuff like burning ISO's locally, etc).
Might not be an ideal solution for tech-heads (like might be found on/.), but for someone like my parents (or their business, even), that need to understand things like backups, viruses, etc., but DON'T understand (or hope to ever understand), this might be a great thing. It also deals with the "latest bios upgrades", hardware upgrades, etc. It could also include such things as VOIP.
If they were to charge $500 or so a year for this service, I'd MAKE my parents sign up. Add some more software/stuff for a more Enterprise solution, and I'd DEMAND that they sign up their real estate office to this. (I just spent 4 days doing tech support on my parents computers while visiting last week... forgot to wear my "no I will not fix your computer" t-shirt!).
The devil would probably be in the details (local devices, like printers, etc), but for the majority of people that just need a computer to surf the web, view email, and do simple word processing, this could be an interesting concept.
Went to an Oracle "development shop" (or so they said), where they called me in because they thought they had an Oracle tuning issue. Turns out that their entire office of 65 people were plugged into a series of daisy-chained LinkSys 10MB hubs, and they were all accessing this Oracle DB with some rather high traffic requests.
I went in and did some investigation, and it was the first time I've EVER seen the actual network connection time out like that.
I raised this to their attention, and mentioned that they should probably go get some mid-range 100MB switches to replace that stuff, and they wouldn't accept my findings. They dismissed them as being wrong, and sent me packing.
I talked to another friend of mine a few weeks later, and it seems that he was also called in as an outside contractor to figure it out... and he came up with the same findings. And they did the same thing... dismissed the findings and sent him on his way.
They just couldn't or wouldn't believe that it was a network issue. I never really figured out why it was so hard for them to even entertain the thought.
You are wrong on so many of your assumptions. You are still thinking in a single switched LAN mentality. And all this without you seeing the requirements that are being provided.
For starters, many larger facilities have multiple Internet feeds, with many large network segments that are, for the most part, autonomous. Fibre optic has nothing to do with it... my desktop machine has fibre... doesn't speak squat about bandwidth or capacity. These network segments probably consist of many routers and countless switches, making your statement "it is easy enough to monitor incoming packets" laughable. Oh, I can make my MAC address anything I want... it's useless, unless tied into some sort of low level authentication and authorization scheme. Monitoring networks like this is anything but trivial, except for SIMPLE performance numbers. I've got 3 software companies, one of which is based on distributed systems monitoring software that I wrote years ago, designed to monitor this type of stuff... so I have real work experience in large Government, military, banking, etc., networks.
From your attempt at trying to explain your monitoring scenario, it is pretty plain to me that you have limited exposure to anything other than a simple network environment.
And, it's got nothing to do with being as "cool as me". It's about being exposed to real world situations.
Right now, I'd bet that you are only describing a network topology as YOU WOULD THINK IT WOULD EXIST... not one that you've been exposed to that would adequately reflect this kind of situation that is being discussed. Your description, in and of itself, shows how little you truly understand about the inherent complexity of these networks.
But hey... I'm just some guy on the Internet spouting off. That being said, it's not like I'd rush out and hire you to be one of my network techs.;)
This is just as simple as putting in a DSL line for the FBI and a VPN box.
That made me laugh... out loud... for a while.
Just another example of yet another intuitive response from the "I live in my Mom's basement and have absolutely no clue about how big, complex, dynamic networks really work, but I've read about them on Slashdot" crowd.
Cluelessness doesn't even begin to describe it.... and it gets modded INSIGHTFUL!
I had a client that had an old, big-ass Sun dot matrix printer (the kind that are about 4 feet tall, 3 feet wide, and 4 feet deep), and it was in the same room as their multiple 250's and 450's.
They had some weird motherboard issues, in that they'd just fail, or partially fail, and caused some weird behaviour. The Sun tech was out there at least 4 times a month replacing stuff, and couldn't figure it out.
We got the Sun tier 1 support guys involved, and spent 3-4 days debugging and poking and prodding, and getting weird, inconsistent results from our testing.
Eventually, after looking at the boards closely, we could see that they were covered with a fine mist/film. Turns out that the printer would spew out fine paper and ink dust, and it would get sucked into the servers, which would then cause the pieces to overheat and short out.
We moved the printer out of the server room, and haven't had a problem since.
Just be aware that THIS water cooling isn't the "hey, look what I McGuiver'd in my dorm room with some duct tape and a styrofoam cooler" type stuff. This is professional, high quality equipment with some serious engineering behind it.
Actually, with the way computers are being designed now, raised flooring and proper cooling is even MORE of an issue than it was.
With the advent of blades, the heat generated per rack space is now typically MUCH higher than it was a back in the day. If anything, the raised flooring should be redesigned, as it can't cope with the airflow that is needed for higher density server rooms.
You'll find that a number of racks are being redesigned with built-in plenums for cooling... a cold feed on the bottom, and a hot return at the top, with individual ducts for various levels of the rack.
There are even liquid-cooled racks available for the BIG jobs.
I think that it's not so much that we're going to get rid of raised floors, but just redesign the materials and layout of them to be more effective with the needs of today.
You should know that anyone can download the fully un-crippled version of the Enterprise DB from http://otn.oracle.com/ and use it all you want for development without paying a dime in licensing fees.
It's only when you go Production that you're required to have your Oracle licenses purchased.
Their installer requires the graphic libraries in order to launch, even if no graphical components are required. So, even if you perform what they call a "silent install", where you just launch the installer and pass it a parameter file, it still needs the graphical libraries in order to launch.
This has been a HUGE issue for some of the Government installations I've done where X is not allowed, and they've not even installed the basic libraries. It's also been a VERY stupid scenario, in my opinion.
In these cases, we've used a virtual frame buffer and/or VNC to do the installs. All of my DB servers are headless, and I just tunnel VNC over SSH for the installs.
Personally, I prefer the VNC approach, as it allows me to connect in, do what I need, then not have to worry about losing a client connection... the session is resident on the server.
Sounds like you don't know what you're doing. I routinely run MULTIPLE instances of Oracle on my 2GB laptop, each instance taking up less than 120MB of memory.
The biggest performance issue I have with them is the disk IO.
FYI, I run an Oracle shop. We've worked on over 300 different Oracle installations in the last 5 years, on everything from US/Canadian Government sites, on-line banks, to gaming sites (poker, etc) and custom apps. In all that time, we've only worked on 5 clusters, and 2 of them were specifically used for grid type scenarios. (The others were implemented for failover).
If you're expecting to be able to "understand" Oracle and get it installed and running and build something on it in a few hours, then you're looking at the wrong database. If anything, it might be said that Oracle gives the developer/dba TOO much control, and therefore makes it easier for the end-user to royally fsck things up.
I've spent over 15 years working with Oracle DB's (and others) and it is a CONSTANT learning curve. But then again, it's my trade, and not a hobby.
If you want to build your hobby-ish "web site stats" db, then you're probably better off using sqlServer or something more simple.
If you want to do some heavy lifting, then invest some time in learning Oracle, and it'll pay off big time.
The new installers for 10g actually DO tell you if/when some kernel param hasn't been set, etc.
You're right, though... Oracle typically has a VERY shitty track record with their installers. I remember taking 3 days to re-write the Apps 11i installer so it'd work (even though the installation itself took over 12 hours). The local Oracle tech's were begging for my re-write, as THEY couldn't get it installed and operational.
I'm still pissed over the fact that they got rid of their command line installer, among other installer issues. (Like, why oh why do you need a graphical environment to perform a silent install? It's like the marketing department designed the installers)
That being said, I'm still a big fan of using Oracle for medium to large projects, and find that most of the "developers" that bitch about or rag on Oracle DB's are either working on very small/simple apps where mySQL is addmittedly the tool for the job, or they just haven't used it before, or they just don't understand it.
Sure, I tend to use Oracle for everything, but that's probably due to the fact that I run an Oracle Dev shop, and we've got crap-loads of the things installed and running all over the place, and have all the build and monitoring tools and developer environments to work with them faster than anything else. I'm also probably pretty jaded to any/all of Oracle's foibles, as I'm used to dealing with them so much that I don't notice them any more.;)
The only time I see tipping working in advance is when I walk into a crowded bar, drop a $10/$20 bill into the bartender's tip jar (ensuring that he/she sees me) then I get incredible service all night... no more waiting in lines, etc. As soon as he/she sees me anywhere near the bar, it's "what'll you have"... much to the annoyance of the other patrons waiting in line.
But the point is not whether or not you're getting it for free... it's whether or not you're getting it legally.
It's not up to you to decide what is right or "just" to download someone's elses content.
Does it say somewhere in your contract with MovieNetwork that you're allowed to download that content? No. It actually says the complete opposite. (I'm a subscriber as well).
At the end of the day I could care less, and could care even less how/why/that some people justify it...
No kidding... it's hard for some people to even consider the fact that HBO IS IN THE RIGHT!
People are illegally distributing a copyrighted movie, and are BITCHING that HBO is stopping them, by knowing more about the "hackers" game than the "hackers" do.
Go HBO! More power to you, IMO.
I'm getting soooo sick of this sense of self-entitlement... "give me everything for free" attitude.
Ahh... but the majority of fees paid are for US contract lawyers, as most of our business is with US companies. So, if anything, I should GAIN 17% credibility.:P
Ummm... actually, if there is any kind of ambiguious language that can be reasonably interpretted more than one way, it is considered to have been the responsibilty of the contract-writer to make the contract unambiguous, and generally the interpretation of the non-contract-writer will carry more weight... once again, assuming it's a reasonable interpretation.
No, I am NOT a lawyer, but I have 3 software companies and have paid a crap-load of legal fees.:P
Slashdot Mirror
Intersting concept.
/.), but for someone like my parents (or their business, even), that need to understand things like backups, viruses, etc., but DON'T understand (or hope to ever understand), this might be a great thing. It also deals with the "latest bios upgrades", hardware upgrades, etc. It could also include such things as VOIP.
Imagine if they were looking at developing/deploying a "community computer", whereby instead of leasing/renting ISP connectivity, they provide you with Internet connectivity, a computer, with software pre-installed, etc., and some sort of "dumb" KVM connection into this machine. (Wyse terminal?)
They drop this thing into a local telco demark or trunking station, where some monster Internet connection is attached to this multi-cpu box. From there, hundreds of people connect into it via their existing ISP connection.
Each person that "rents space" on this box gets their own drive space, pre-installed software, and a guaranteed minimum amount of CPU/RAM. And the use of the other resources when not in use.
It seems to me that the biggest hurdle that everyone has been trying to solve has been achieving high-speed connections to the home... well, what if this "KVM" setup is quite capable of providing all the response required over existing dial-up or ISP connections? (except for stuff like burning ISO's locally, etc).
Might not be an ideal solution for tech-heads (like might be found on
If they were to charge $500 or so a year for this service, I'd MAKE my parents sign up. Add some more software/stuff for a more Enterprise solution, and I'd DEMAND that they sign up their real estate office to this. (I just spent 4 days doing tech support on my parents computers while visiting last week... forgot to wear my "no I will not fix your computer" t-shirt!).
The devil would probably be in the details (local devices, like printers, etc), but for the majority of people that just need a computer to surf the web, view email, and do simple word processing, this could be an interesting concept.
Self Contained Nuclear Power Generator
I've seen something almost as stupid.
Went to an Oracle "development shop" (or so they said), where they called me in because they thought they had an Oracle tuning issue. Turns out that their entire office of 65 people were plugged into a series of daisy-chained LinkSys 10MB hubs, and they were all accessing this Oracle DB with some rather high traffic requests.
I went in and did some investigation, and it was the first time I've EVER seen the actual network connection time out like that.
I raised this to their attention, and mentioned that they should probably go get some mid-range 100MB switches to replace that stuff, and they wouldn't accept my findings. They dismissed them as being wrong, and sent me packing.
I talked to another friend of mine a few weeks later, and it seems that he was also called in as an outside contractor to figure it out... and he came up with the same findings. And they did the same thing... dismissed the findings and sent him on his way.
They just couldn't or wouldn't believe that it was a network issue. I never really figured out why it was so hard for them to even entertain the thought.
What a gong show.
What he said.
You are wrong on so many of your assumptions. You are still thinking in a single switched LAN mentality. And all this without you seeing the requirements that are being provided.
;)
For starters, many larger facilities have multiple Internet feeds, with many large network segments that are, for the most part, autonomous. Fibre optic has nothing to do with it... my desktop machine has fibre... doesn't speak squat about bandwidth or capacity. These network segments probably consist of many routers and countless switches, making your statement "it is easy enough to monitor incoming packets" laughable. Oh, I can make my MAC address anything I want... it's useless, unless tied into some sort of low level authentication and authorization scheme. Monitoring networks like this is anything but trivial, except for SIMPLE performance numbers. I've got 3 software companies, one of which is based on distributed systems monitoring software that I wrote years ago, designed to monitor this type of stuff... so I have real work experience in large Government, military, banking, etc., networks.
From your attempt at trying to explain your monitoring scenario, it is pretty plain to me that you have limited exposure to anything other than a simple network environment.
And, it's got nothing to do with being as "cool as me". It's about being exposed to real world situations.
Right now, I'd bet that you are only describing a network topology as YOU WOULD THINK IT WOULD EXIST... not one that you've been exposed to that would adequately reflect this kind of situation that is being discussed. Your description, in and of itself, shows how little you truly understand about the inherent complexity of these networks.
But hey... I'm just some guy on the Internet spouting off. That being said, it's not like I'd rush out and hire you to be one of my network techs.
This is just as simple as putting in a DSL line for the FBI and a VPN box.
That made me laugh... out loud... for a while.
Just another example of yet another intuitive response from the "I live in my Mom's basement and have absolutely no clue about how big, complex, dynamic networks really work, but I've read about them on Slashdot" crowd.
Cluelessness doesn't even begin to describe it.... and it gets modded INSIGHTFUL!
LOL!
Yep... not just zinc whiskers...
I had a client that had an old, big-ass Sun dot matrix printer (the kind that are about 4 feet tall, 3 feet wide, and 4 feet deep), and it was in the same room as their multiple 250's and 450's.
They had some weird motherboard issues, in that they'd just fail, or partially fail, and caused some weird behaviour. The Sun tech was out there at least 4 times a month replacing stuff, and couldn't figure it out.
We got the Sun tier 1 support guys involved, and spent 3-4 days debugging and poking and prodding, and getting weird, inconsistent results from our testing.
Eventually, after looking at the boards closely, we could see that they were covered with a fine mist/film. Turns out that the printer would spew out fine paper and ink dust, and it would get sucked into the servers, which would then cause the pieces to overheat and short out.
We moved the printer out of the server room, and haven't had a problem since.
Except for the concrete dust... if you were to use a slab, I'd be sure to coat it with a very robust membrane of some sort.
Gee... you think?
Just be aware that THIS water cooling isn't the "hey, look what I McGuiver'd in my dorm room with some duct tape and a styrofoam cooler" type stuff. This is professional, high quality equipment with some serious engineering behind it.
For instance:
IBM's offering (starts at around US $5k, per rack)
Knurr's offering
Actually, with the way computers are being designed now, raised flooring and proper cooling is even MORE of an issue than it was.
With the advent of blades, the heat generated per rack space is now typically MUCH higher than it was a back in the day. If anything, the raised flooring should be redesigned, as it can't cope with the airflow that is needed for higher density server rooms.
You'll find that a number of racks are being redesigned with built-in plenums for cooling... a cold feed on the bottom, and a hot return at the top, with individual ducts for various levels of the rack.
There are even liquid-cooled racks available for the BIG jobs.
I think that it's not so much that we're going to get rid of raised floors, but just redesign the materials and layout of them to be more effective with the needs of today.
You should go back and re-read your original post.
I've tried to be nice, but you're a moron (or a troll), so I'm done wasting my time with you.
At the end of the day, it comes down to the requirements of the app and the environment it'll run in, and picking the right tool for the job.
Oracle provides excellent performance, data integrity, security, backup/recovery, clustering, and other features for those people that need them.
If you don't need any of that, or are unwilling to pay for the support environment it requires, then so be it.
I guess my main point was (to put it into your analogy) if you're not an F1 driver, don't bitch because you don't have the skills to drive an F1 car.
You should know that anyone can download the fully un-crippled version of the Enterprise DB from http://otn.oracle.com/ and use it all you want for development without paying a dime in licensing fees.
It's only when you go Production that you're required to have your Oracle licenses purchased.
Their installer requires the graphic libraries in order to launch, even if no graphical components are required. So, even if you perform what they call a "silent install", where you just launch the installer and pass it a parameter file, it still needs the graphical libraries in order to launch.
This has been a HUGE issue for some of the Government installations I've done where X is not allowed, and they've not even installed the basic libraries. It's also been a VERY stupid scenario, in my opinion.
In these cases, we've used a virtual frame buffer and/or VNC to do the installs. All of my DB servers are headless, and I just tunnel VNC over SSH for the installs.
Personally, I prefer the VNC approach, as it allows me to connect in, do what I need, then not have to worry about losing a client connection... the session is resident on the server.
Seriously?
Sounds like you don't know what you're doing. I routinely run MULTIPLE instances of Oracle on my 2GB laptop, each instance taking up less than 120MB of memory.
The biggest performance issue I have with them is the disk IO.
FYI, I run an Oracle shop. We've worked on over 300 different Oracle installations in the last 5 years, on everything from US/Canadian Government sites, on-line banks, to gaming sites (poker, etc) and custom apps. In all that time, we've only worked on 5 clusters, and 2 of them were specifically used for grid type scenarios. (The others were implemented for failover).
If you're expecting to be able to "understand" Oracle and get it installed and running and build something on it in a few hours, then you're looking at the wrong database. If anything, it might be said that Oracle gives the developer/dba TOO much control, and therefore makes it easier for the end-user to royally fsck things up.
I've spent over 15 years working with Oracle DB's (and others) and it is a CONSTANT learning curve. But then again, it's my trade, and not a hobby.
If you want to build your hobby-ish "web site stats" db, then you're probably better off using sqlServer or something more simple.
If you want to do some heavy lifting, then invest some time in learning Oracle, and it'll pay off big time.
The new installers for 10g actually DO tell you if/when some kernel param hasn't been set, etc.
You're right, though... Oracle typically has a VERY shitty track record with their installers. I remember taking 3 days to re-write the Apps 11i installer so it'd work (even though the installation itself took over 12 hours). The local Oracle tech's were begging for my re-write, as THEY couldn't get it installed and operational.
I'm still pissed over the fact that they got rid of their command line installer, among other installer issues. (Like, why oh why do you need a graphical environment to perform a silent install? It's like the marketing department designed the installers)
That being said, I'm still a big fan of using Oracle for medium to large projects, and find that most of the "developers" that bitch about or rag on Oracle DB's are either working on very small/simple apps where mySQL is addmittedly the tool for the job, or they just haven't used it before, or they just don't understand it.
Sure, I tend to use Oracle for everything, but that's probably due to the fact that I run an Oracle Dev shop, and we've got crap-loads of the things installed and running all over the place, and have all the build and monitoring tools and developer environments to work with them faster than anything else. I'm also probably pretty jaded to any/all of Oracle's foibles, as I'm used to dealing with them so much that I don't notice them any more.
The only time I see tipping working in advance is when I walk into a crowded bar, drop a $10/$20 bill into the bartender's tip jar (ensuring that he/she sees me) then I get incredible service all night... no more waiting in lines, etc. As soon as he/she sees me anywhere near the bar, it's "what'll you have"... much to the annoyance of the other patrons waiting in line.
But the point is not whether or not you're getting it for free... it's whether or not you're getting it legally.
It's not up to you to decide what is right or "just" to download someone's elses content.
Does it say somewhere in your contract with MovieNetwork that you're allowed to download that content? No. It actually says the complete opposite. (I'm a subscriber as well).
At the end of the day I could care less, and could care even less how/why/that some people justify it...
Yeah, but I'd rather be a CDN than a CAD. ;)
I download the Daily Show because I'm not getting cable installed just to watch one show, and waiting for it to come out on DVD isn't working so well.
My point exactly.
No kidding... it's hard for some people to even consider the fact that HBO IS IN THE RIGHT!
People are illegally distributing a copyrighted movie, and are BITCHING that HBO is stopping them, by knowing more about the "hackers" game than the "hackers" do.
Go HBO! More power to you, IMO.
I'm getting soooo sick of this sense of self-entitlement... "give me everything for free" attitude.
There's an interesting TV show (Canadian, no less) called Regenesis that featured just such a concept.
Hooked me for a few episodes.
Ahh... but the majority of fees paid are for US contract lawyers, as most of our business is with US companies. So, if anything, I should GAIN 17% credibility. :P
Ummm... actually, if there is any kind of ambiguious language that can be reasonably interpretted more than one way, it is considered to have been the responsibilty of the contract-writer to make the contract unambiguous, and generally the interpretation of the non-contract-writer will carry more weight... once again, assuming it's a reasonable interpretation.
:P
No, I am NOT a lawyer, but I have 3 software companies and have paid a crap-load of legal fees.
Yeah, but, well... it's DELUTH.