As much as I'd like to agree with you (because I think there are many better solutions), I can't. I work for a company that processes insurance claims and many of our claims are submitted via fax. Until about 6 months ago, they had 8 or 9 fax machines receiving the faxes, but they could barely keep up. Then, I replaced them with a couple of servers - 16 lines each - running Hylafax. On average, we're receiving 800 to 900 faxes a day, but during January and February, we were averaging around 1400.
I may be wrong, but I'm pretty sure I remember hearing that not only do solar cells require more energy to produce than they will generate over their entire lifetimes, but the production process is very environmentally unfriendly.
But you just made my point for me. The point is you're giving IBM and enormous amount of money; we arent, because we only have two AIX systems, neither of which cost more than $50,000. As a result, our support leaves a lot to be desired.
It's true: you can get IBM to give you a cheaper system, but you won't like it. The truth is IBM makes great hardware and AIX is a great operating system, but you need to be willing to spend big bucks. In my experience - and yes, I use both AIX and Linux every day - IBM may be willing to sell you a system worth less than $250K, but it'll be under-powered, and support will suck.
As far as I'm concerned, IBM had better get their shit together and decide what they want. Either sell inexpensive systems and provide decent support or be willing to tell people they're not worth IBM's time, unless they're willing to spend a serious chunk of change.
I've got an ohio scientific superboard 2 in my spare parts cabinet. I've got a C4P, myself, but it's just the cassette version. It still works, but it takes a couple of hours to "warm up", for some reason. I'd love to get a hold of the floppy version of the C4P, or better yet, a C2-OEM - the one with the 8" floppies.:-)
What you don't want are a bunch of desktops all running on different stuff because they you have to hire people to manage all of it, operational expenses go through the roof, etc.
I know that's the corporate mantra, but I'm sorry, if your IT people can't manage more than one vendor at a time, you need to get new IT people. I have no problem, myself, managing Unix (three different versions), Linux (at least three different distros), and Windows - not to mention all the different hardware we need to support.
To this day I've still never used Word, Excel or Powerpoint
My boss gave me a hard time, recently, when it was suggested I create an Excel spreadsheet to store some company information. I had to tell him I didn't know how, because I had never used a spreadsheet - ever. When he told me "You should be ashamed of yourself", I said "I'm a Unix administrator. What possible use could I have for a spreadsheet?"
We should stick to burning coal, firing gas... Those have all proven to have no unintended consequences.
Actually, I wonder if wind farms could be the solution to Global Warming. I mean, energy can be neither created nor destroyed, right? If they take energy out of the atmosphere, doesn't that absorb at least some of the energy the additional CO2 retains?
The Catholic church therefore needed to resort to something else.
I won't argue this with you, and I can't speak for the Catholic church in other countries, but here in the US (assuming that's where you live) you can't tell me the Catholic Church is worse than any others, as far as making money is concerned. If anything, they demand less from their members than most of their Protestant counterparts.
Odd, given that the official position of the Catholic Church contradicts that view?
That is odd, given my experience. I lived in Pittsburgh - a city that's roughly 80% Catholic - for most of my life, so I've met a lot of Catholics. In my entire life, I've met exactly two who don't believe humans evolved from earlier species. One of those completely accepts evolution and believes science is mostly correct about the age of the Universe, except he believes that God created humans, specially. He's also a special case: he converted to Catholicism.
Evolution has been forced on and indoctrinated into youth today and yet these figures seem to show that young adults are growing up with a faith in a higher power.
Umm... Acceptance of evolution and faith in a higher power are not mutually exclusive. Just ask the Catholics.
While I don't have any experience with the Checkpoint stuff, I certainly wouldn't recommend firewalls from Netscreen or Cisco (though I do like Cisco's switches and routers.) I inherited a few Netscreen boxes at my new job and, as far as I can tell, they're junk. I tried to replace a couple of them with a Cisco ASA box, but that didn't turn out well, either.
I've worked with a bunch of different firewalls - Gauntlet, Sonicwall, Cisco PIX and ASA, and Netscreen - and the best one by far, in my opinion, is Astaro. My next firewall will definitely be another one of those.
Crappy user interface. (You may as well learn the command line interface, which is what I did.) Outrageously expensive. Stupid hardware configuration. (Seperate interface for the IPS.)
'd probably most recommend the Cisco ASAs. Pricey, but worth it. They really are top notch. You can also look at Juniper's NEtscreen boxes (Juniper bought Netscreen).
Are you serious? I inherited a few Netscreen boxes at my new job, and as far as I can tell, they're junk. Unfortunately, I replaced a couple of them with a Cisco ASA... big mistake. I have yet to find a firewall better than the Astaro appliances I had at my old job.
Wait... You're going to replace your Sidewinder with a Netscreen box? Are you crazy? I inherited a few Netscreen boxes at my new job and I'm trying to get rid of them as soon as I can. As far as I can tell, they're junk. Sadly, I already replaced a couple of them with a Cisco ASA box, which turned out to be a big mistake... Yuck.
My next firewall will be an Astaro, like I had at my old job.
I'd have to agree with the guy above, who said to get a bigger one than you think you need. The thing that really pissed us off is that you can only define a limited number of custom services (TCP ports). If you run out, you have to buy a new firewall.
It also means that writes are much slower than reads
Actually, most of my disks are direct-overwrite (sometimes listed as LIMDOW, or just DOW) and, with those, the speed difference is barely noticeable.
When Quake 1 was popular, I used one of these disks to store my Quake area. Since I often had to download a map when I connected to a server, I used up a lot of disk space. With the MO disk, I could just pop it in when I wanted to play, and it wouldn't take up any space on my hard drive.
It's sad that Fujitsu didn't market their Dynamo drives very well. The 650MB version of their 3.5" drive came out at about the same time as Zip disks. They had more than 6 times the capacity for about twice the price and they were about as fast as a slow hard drive. I bought one of those about 8 years ago. It still works and I can still read all the disks. I wonder if that's true for most Zip disks.
Now, they have a 2.3Gb version that I'm pretty sure will still read disks down to 128MB, but I doubt they'll making them much longer. That's a shame, because it was a good format.
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That's already covered as "forgery"
Okay... It's a lot harder to prove forgery on a fax, when a forged signature is indistinguishable from a fake one.
A signature in an email isn't legally binding.
While it is legal on a fax in many places, it shouldn't be. Haven't any of these legislators heard of Photoshop?
I'd say that faxes are a disappearing technology.
As much as I'd like to agree with you (because I think there are many better solutions), I can't. I work for a company that processes insurance claims and many of our claims are submitted via fax. Until about 6 months ago, they had 8 or 9 fax machines receiving the faxes, but they could barely keep up. Then, I replaced them with a couple of servers - 16 lines each - running Hylafax. On average, we're receiving 800 to 900 faxes a day, but during January and February, we were averaging around 1400.
Solar is the ideal solution
I may be wrong, but I'm pretty sure I remember hearing that not only do solar cells require more energy to produce than they will generate over their entire lifetimes, but the production process is very environmentally unfriendly.
you'd be hard put to beat an IBM mainframe or 390
I'm sure that's true, but can you buy one of those for less than $100K?
and yes we do buy the $250K+++ systems as well
But you just made my point for me. The point is you're giving IBM and enormous amount of money; we arent, because we only have two AIX systems, neither of which cost more than $50,000. As a result, our support leaves a lot to be desired.
It's true: you can get IBM to give you a cheaper system, but you won't like it. The truth is IBM makes great hardware and AIX is a great operating system, but you need to be willing to spend big bucks. In my experience - and yes, I use both AIX and Linux every day - IBM may be willing to sell you a system worth less than $250K, but it'll be under-powered, and support will suck.
As far as I'm concerned, IBM had better get their shit together and decide what they want. Either sell inexpensive systems and provide decent support or be willing to tell people they're not worth IBM's time, unless they're willing to spend a serious chunk of change.
What you don't want are a bunch of desktops all running on different stuff because they you have to hire people to manage all of it, operational expenses go through the roof, etc.
I know that's the corporate mantra, but I'm sorry, if your IT people can't manage more than one vendor at a time, you need to get new IT people. I have no problem, myself, managing Unix (three different versions), Linux (at least three different distros), and Windows - not to mention all the different hardware we need to support.
To this day I've still never used Word, Excel or Powerpoint
My boss gave me a hard time, recently, when it was suggested I create an Excel spreadsheet to store some company information. I had to tell him I didn't know how, because I had never used a spreadsheet - ever. When he told me "You should be ashamed of yourself", I said "I'm a Unix administrator. What possible use could I have for a spreadsheet?"
We should stick to burning coal, firing gas ... Those have all proven to have no unintended consequences.
Actually, I wonder if wind farms could be the solution to Global Warming. I mean, energy can be neither created nor destroyed, right? If they take energy out of the atmosphere, doesn't that absorb at least some of the energy the additional CO2 retains?
The Catholic church therefore needed to resort to something else.
I won't argue this with you, and I can't speak for the Catholic church in other countries, but here in the US (assuming that's where you live) you can't tell me the Catholic Church is worse than any others, as far as making money is concerned. If anything, they demand less from their members than most of their Protestant counterparts.
Evelution and a litteral interpretation of Creation ARE mutually excslusive.
I see what you did there. You tried to equate people who insist on "a litteral interpretation of Creation" to "Christians". Nice try.
41 percent of Catholics agree with that view.
Odd, given that the official position of the Catholic Church contradicts that view?
That is odd, given my experience. I lived in Pittsburgh - a city that's roughly 80% Catholic - for most of my life, so I've met a lot of Catholics. In my entire life, I've met exactly two who don't believe humans evolved from earlier species. One of those completely accepts evolution and believes science is mostly correct about the age of the Universe, except he believes that God created humans, specially. He's also a special case: he converted to Catholicism.
Evolution has been forced on and indoctrinated into youth today and yet these figures seem to show that young adults are growing up with a faith in a higher power.
Umm... Acceptance of evolution and faith in a higher power are not mutually exclusive. Just ask the Catholics.
They want me to believe omnipotent, omniscient being did that?
I've asked a few fundies that question and the ones who have an answer say our bodies were perfect, until we were kicked out of the Garden of Eden.
... PC manufacturers to include Firewire ports on motherboards and laptops.
:-)
What do you mean? Both of my laptops have Firewire.
While I don't have any experience with the Checkpoint stuff, I certainly wouldn't recommend firewalls from Netscreen or Cisco (though I do like Cisco's switches and routers.) I inherited a few Netscreen boxes at my new job and, as far as I can tell, they're junk. I tried to replace a couple of them with a Cisco ASA box, but that didn't turn out well, either.
I've worked with a bunch of different firewalls - Gauntlet, Sonicwall, Cisco PIX and ASA, and Netscreen - and the best one by far, in my opinion, is Astaro. My next firewall will definitely be another one of those.
Want a list? Okay, of the top of my head:
Crappy user interface. (You may as well learn the command line interface, which is what I did.)
Outrageously expensive.
Stupid hardware configuration. (Seperate interface for the IPS.)
That's enough for me.
'd probably most recommend the Cisco ASAs. Pricey, but worth it. They really are top notch. You can also look at Juniper's NEtscreen boxes (Juniper bought Netscreen).
Are you serious? I inherited a few Netscreen boxes at my new job, and as far as I can tell, they're junk. Unfortunately, I replaced a couple of them with a Cisco ASA... big mistake. I have yet to find a firewall better than the Astaro appliances I had at my old job.
Wait... You're going to replace your Sidewinder with a Netscreen box? Are you crazy? I inherited a few Netscreen boxes at my new job and I'm trying to get rid of them as soon as I can. As far as I can tell, they're junk. Sadly, I already replaced a couple of them with a Cisco ASA box, which turned out to be a big mistake... Yuck.
My next firewall will be an Astaro, like I had at my old job.
I'd have to agree with the guy above, who said to get a bigger one than you think you need. The thing that really pissed us off is that you can only define a limited number of custom services (TCP ports). If you run out, you have to buy a new firewall.
Does no one post MPGs anymore?
Hey, don't complain. From what I've seen, everyone's addicted to WMVs, these days. At least Flash is a step up.
It also means that writes are much slower than reads
Actually, most of my disks are direct-overwrite (sometimes listed as LIMDOW, or just DOW) and, with those, the speed difference is barely noticeable.
When Quake 1 was popular, I used one of these disks to store my Quake area. Since I often had to download a map when I connected to a server, I used up a lot of disk space. With the MO disk, I could just pop it in when I wanted to play, and it wouldn't take up any space on my hard drive.
I'll third that.
It's sad that Fujitsu didn't market their Dynamo drives very well. The 650MB version of their 3.5" drive came out at about the same time as Zip disks. They had more than 6 times the capacity for about twice the price and they were about as fast as a slow hard drive. I bought one of those about 8 years ago. It still works and I can still read all the disks. I wonder if that's true for most Zip disks.
Now, they have a 2.3Gb version that I'm pretty sure will still read disks down to 128MB, but I doubt they'll making them much longer. That's a shame, because it was a good format.