People don't wait in line for Microsoft products just because they are Microsoft products.
You clearly weren't around when Microsoft released Windows 95. There were long lines for that - at midnight, no less. I think what Microsoft needs to ask themselves is why that's no longer true.
For good reason - it's the filesystem itself that updates the atime, and if the file is modified rsync reads the file. So the filesystem sees it as accessed. That's unavoidable (directly).
Tar does it. Why can't rsync? Sorry, but that makes it pretty much useless for backup (in all the cases I have to work with), and most the other IT people with whom I've discussed this agree.
However, he'll want to keep in mind that, depending on his environment, he may have some other issues. For instance, I'd like to use it at work, but I can't because file access times are important to us, and rsync changes the access times on the source files. Last I checked, there was no option to make it stop that, so I'm stuck with tar.
but in smaller cities and towns, T1 and T3s are still the way to go.
I'd like to know what you mean by small town, then. I live in what I'd call a small town. We've got roughly 80,000 people and we're the largest city within at least a 100 mile radius. Our ISP ran a fiber to our computer room and connected it to a media converter, the other side of which is Ethernet. We used to have two T1s, but the fiber/Ethernet connection gave us three times the bandwidth for maybe a 3% increase in price.
Third, 9 pin RS232C is frequently not enough for a lot of older devices.
That hasn't been my experience. I've been doing RS232 since the early 80s, and I've run across very few devices from that time period that use more than the minimum three.
What I have seen for devices that use the other signals is that they'll use them differently. For instance, the original RS232 spec uses RTS/CTS differently than they're used today. Also, pins will be used incorrectly; I have a computer in my garage that uses DTR for flow control.
You don't need an ISA slot to get serial ports. Just a few months ago, I put together a brand new computer at work that has two RS232 ports on a PCI-express card. You can get one from Newegg for around $50.
So who is going to teach Gladys from accounting how to store her contacts' PGP keys and encrypt her email?
Maybe PGP is a little on the difficult side, but at my company, we use a dedicated server for any email that needs to be encrypted. It has a little web app (written by a former employee) people can use to send and receive messages, with attachments, if necessary. All the data is transferred through HTTPS. I don't use it, myself, but it must be pretty easy, because we have to follow HIPAA regulations and we have plenty of people here who aren't exactly computer experts.
It always struck me that Zip drives became so ubiquitous.
I'm guessing they just happened to be in the right place, at the right time - right between floppy disks and recordable CDs. I never bought a ZIP drive, myself, because to me, it was clear they wouldn't be around for long. Ironically, they didn't even really outlast the floppies they were designed to replace.
I always thought it was too bad Fujitsu wasn't better at marketing. For twice the price, their 3-1/2" MO drives could generally hold 3 times as much. They were fast and reliable, too. My Dynamo 640 still works, after about 15 years.
Do they get to monitor communications or wipe my own device now if anything goes wrong?
I wouldn't worry about it. This will never happen at any company that has any concern about security. An employee can do what they want with their own computer, so it's a perfect vector for viruses, etc. If we give them a computer, we can say "this is to be used only for work." How can we allow them to bring their own devices, when we can't even allow them to plug in a USB key?
At my office, we don't even allow wireless connections, internally. The access points are connected to a router that's completely outside the firewall, and they're only turned on when we know someone's using it.
If you're going to get a new router, I'd strongly recommend the RT-N66U
I understand what makes ASUS think the RT-N66U is worth $60 more than an RT-N16, but does it really make a difference, if you're just using it for a home router?
Did they fix the installer? Once I got it installed, Fedora 18 (with KDE) is pretty good, but the installation was a bitch. The installer choked on my hard drive, because it was already partitioned. I had to get to the shell and delete the partitions manually to get it to work.
Who here is still using the x86 in their server farms?
What do you mean, "still"? I imagine most people are using them. Why? Because they're cheap and, most importantly, standardized.
I'll admit, I'm a big fax of Unix, but we decommissioned our last pSeries server a couple of years ago. The last straw was when we tried to add some additional disk space to the machine. Our distributor wanted about $25,000. After a little research, I discovered we could get a whole new x86 server with twice the disk space for less than $18,000. I'm pretty sure it was more powerful than the pSeries system. too. For the price of an IBM pSeries or iSeries machine, you can get a couple of x86 machines and use the second one for a backup.
Also, when you're dealing with IBM, you're locked into IBM. I suppose I'm not surprised that you can't just drop any old PCI card into an IBM system and expect it to work, but very few non-IBM SCSI peripherals worked with the system, either.
I hated to give up on IBM, but they're just too difficult to work with, any more.
Depends on what you call minimal. If you have a machine with (a minimum of) 512Mb memory, than yeah, it's fine. On the other hand, if you've got a machine from about 1998, with 64Mb of memory, you're basically SOL. CentOS won't even install. (I'm sure the fact that it's a Red Hat clone has something to do with it.)
Old machines are great for routers or VPN servers, and they can't be used for much else. If the machine is installed at a remote office, the long-term CentOS support is really useful, since I don't have to upgrade the machine (requiring on-site service) every 18 months, or so, if I want to keep getting kernel updates.
I guess I just don't get why I should care that Linux has a "stigma?"
You should care because, the fewer people who are using Linux, the less hardware manufacturers will care about supporting it. Look at how much trouble we've had getting 3D graphics drivers working properly. How would you like it if we had that kind of trouble with all hardware?
I imagine this had as much to do with the Pentium's 64-bit external data bus, as it had with the FPU. Pentiums were capable of moving data (from processor to memory) at nearly twice the rate of a 5x86/133. (Higher fill rates.)
In fact, the latter was faster than a Pentium 75MHz for anything that didn't require the FPU.
Or external bus access. A Pentium 90 could comfortably play Quake; an Am5x86/133 could not, because it only had a 32-bit external bus. Pentiums had a 64-bit external bus.
But none of those come close to the performance of COBOL for these specific tasks.
I'd actually like to know if this has ever really been put to the test.
The application on which we run our business was written in a language that is obviously a descendant of COBOL, and one of the reports it generates takes multiple hours to run. One day, I thought I'd try an experiment and, after messing around for an hour or two, I had a sed/awk pipeline that produced exactly the same results in about 10 minutes - and part of that time was used to convert the language's data files to text that sed and awk could understand.
It would be interesting to see how much COBOL code could be replaced in a similar way.
Sorry, I guess lost some clarity, by going for dramatic effect. I basically meant to say: "it sure would be a lot easier if all storage used the same units." It's pretty annoying when 1TB of memory doesn't fit into 1TB of disk.
Oh, stop. I've got no love for Microsoft, but in this case, I have to agree with them. It's not like we're talking about selling food and water for an inflated price after a disaster. It's just software. If you don't like the price, don't buy it.
There are plenty of other options. Use Linux. Write your own. Whatever. If people had started doing that ten years ago, when Linux started becoming a little more popular, Linux would be an entirely acceptable alternative, by now, and neither Microsoft nor Apple would be in a position to do any "price gouging." Instead, people complain that it's too hard, and then whine when companies take advantage of them. Sorry, but you won't get any sympathy from me.
How can BMW sell a car for $350,000 in Australia when the same model is $100,000 in the UK.
I'm not sure I understand what your problem is. If the price is too high, don't buy the car. If everyone did that, BMW would have no choice but to lower the price, if they want to continue to sell cars in Australia.
All else, such as file sizes, card, tape or disk storage
I honestly don't know what you're talking about, here. My computer knowledge goes back to the 70s, and I don't remember anyone expressing storage in base 10 units (outside of sales and marketing), until the early 90s. I always assumed "they" (the people who changed everything) meant "hard drive manufacturers".
One thing I'll add: I have to ask if your education was mostly on IBM machines. From what I remember, they couldn't do anything in the "standard" way. They broke the delete and ctrl keys, when they came out with the PC, and they produced AIX, for example.
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You clearly weren't around when Microsoft released Windows 95. There were long lines for that - at midnight, no less. I think what Microsoft needs to ask themselves is why that's no longer true.
Tar does it. Why can't rsync? Sorry, but that makes it pretty much useless for backup (in all the cases I have to work with), and most the other IT people with whom I've discussed this agree.
However, he'll want to keep in mind that, depending on his environment, he may have some other issues. For instance, I'd like to use it at work, but I can't because file access times are important to us, and rsync changes the access times on the source files. Last I checked, there was no option to make it stop that, so I'm stuck with tar.
I'd like to know what you mean by small town, then. I live in what I'd call a small town. We've got roughly 80,000 people and we're the largest city within at least a 100 mile radius. Our ISP ran a fiber to our computer room and connected it to a media converter, the other side of which is Ethernet. We used to have two T1s, but the fiber/Ethernet connection gave us three times the bandwidth for maybe a 3% increase in price.
That hasn't been my experience. I've been doing RS232 since the early 80s, and I've run across very few devices from that time period that use more than the minimum three.
What I have seen for devices that use the other signals is that they'll use them differently. For instance, the original RS232 spec uses RTS/CTS differently than they're used today. Also, pins will be used incorrectly; I have a computer in my garage that uses DTR for flow control.
You don't need an ISA slot to get serial ports. Just a few months ago, I put together a brand new computer at work that has two RS232 ports on a PCI-express card. You can get one from Newegg for around $50.
Maybe PGP is a little on the difficult side, but at my company, we use a dedicated server for any email that needs to be encrypted. It has a little web app (written by a former employee) people can use to send and receive messages, with attachments, if necessary. All the data is transferred through HTTPS. I don't use it, myself, but it must be pretty easy, because we have to follow HIPAA regulations and we have plenty of people here who aren't exactly computer experts.
I'm guessing they just happened to be in the right place, at the right time - right between floppy disks and recordable CDs. I never bought a ZIP drive, myself, because to me, it was clear they wouldn't be around for long. Ironically, they didn't even really outlast the floppies they were designed to replace.
I always thought it was too bad Fujitsu wasn't better at marketing. For twice the price, their 3-1/2" MO drives could generally hold 3 times as much. They were fast and reliable, too. My Dynamo 640 still works, after about 15 years.
I wouldn't worry about it. This will never happen at any company that has any concern about security. An employee can do what they want with their own computer, so it's a perfect vector for viruses, etc. If we give them a computer, we can say "this is to be used only for work." How can we allow them to bring their own devices, when we can't even allow them to plug in a USB key?
At my office, we don't even allow wireless connections, internally. The access points are connected to a router that's completely outside the firewall, and they're only turned on when we know someone's using it.
I understand what makes ASUS think the RT-N66U is worth $60 more than an RT-N16, but does it really make a difference, if you're just using it for a home router?
Did they fix the installer? Once I got it installed, Fedora 18 (with KDE) is pretty good, but the installation was a bitch. The installer choked on my hard drive, because it was already partitioned. I had to get to the shell and delete the partitions manually to get it to work.
What do you mean, "still"? I imagine most people are using them. Why? Because they're cheap and, most importantly, standardized.
I'll admit, I'm a big fax of Unix, but we decommissioned our last pSeries server a couple of years ago. The last straw was when we tried to add some additional disk space to the machine. Our distributor wanted about $25,000. After a little research, I discovered we could get a whole new x86 server with twice the disk space for less than $18,000. I'm pretty sure it was more powerful than the pSeries system. too. For the price of an IBM pSeries or iSeries machine, you can get a couple of x86 machines and use the second one for a backup.
Also, when you're dealing with IBM, you're locked into IBM. I suppose I'm not surprised that you can't just drop any old PCI card into an IBM system and expect it to work, but very few non-IBM SCSI peripherals worked with the system, either.
I hated to give up on IBM, but they're just too difficult to work with, any more.
Depends on what you call minimal. If you have a machine with (a minimum of) 512Mb memory, than yeah, it's fine. On the other hand, if you've got a machine from about 1998, with 64Mb of memory, you're basically SOL. CentOS won't even install. (I'm sure the fact that it's a Red Hat clone has something to do with it.)
Old machines are great for routers or VPN servers, and they can't be used for much else. If the machine is installed at a remote office, the long-term CentOS support is really useful, since I don't have to upgrade the machine (requiring on-site service) every 18 months, or so, if I want to keep getting kernel updates.
You should care because, the fewer people who are using Linux, the less hardware manufacturers will care about supporting it. Look at how much trouble we've had getting 3D graphics drivers working properly. How would you like it if we had that kind of trouble with all hardware?
I imagine this had as much to do with the Pentium's 64-bit external data bus, as it had with the FPU. Pentiums were capable of moving data (from processor to memory) at nearly twice the rate of a 5x86/133. (Higher fill rates.)
You'd think that, on Slashdot, people would try to know what they're talking about, before they make idiots of themselves, but I guess not.
http://download.intel.com/design/pentium/datashts/24199710.pdf
Or external bus access. A Pentium 90 could comfortably play Quake; an Am5x86/133 could not, because it only had a 32-bit external bus. Pentiums had a 64-bit external bus.
I'd actually like to know if this has ever really been put to the test.
The application on which we run our business was written in a language that is obviously a descendant of COBOL, and one of the reports it generates takes multiple hours to run. One day, I thought I'd try an experiment and, after messing around for an hour or two, I had a sed/awk pipeline that produced exactly the same results in about 10 minutes - and part of that time was used to convert the language's data files to text that sed and awk could understand.
It would be interesting to see how much COBOL code could be replaced in a similar way.
The only cars you can buy in Australia are BMWs? I'm not sure I believe that.
Sorry, I guess lost some clarity, by going for dramatic effect. I basically meant to say: "it sure would be a lot easier if all storage used the same units." It's pretty annoying when 1TB of memory doesn't fit into 1TB of disk.
Oh, stop. I've got no love for Microsoft, but in this case, I have to agree with them. It's not like we're talking about selling food and water for an inflated price after a disaster. It's just software. If you don't like the price, don't buy it.
There are plenty of other options. Use Linux. Write your own. Whatever. If people had started doing that ten years ago, when Linux started becoming a little more popular, Linux would be an entirely acceptable alternative, by now, and neither Microsoft nor Apple would be in a position to do any "price gouging." Instead, people complain that it's too hard, and then whine when companies take advantage of them. Sorry, but you won't get any sympathy from me.
I'm not sure I understand what your problem is. If the price is too high, don't buy the car. If everyone did that, BMW would have no choice but to lower the price, if they want to continue to sell cars in Australia.
I'll agree with you when you can tell me how to install exactly 1,000,000,000 bytes of memory in my computer - no more, no less.
I honestly don't know what you're talking about, here. My computer knowledge goes back to the 70s, and I don't remember anyone expressing storage in base 10 units (outside of sales and marketing), until the early 90s. I always assumed "they" (the people who changed everything) meant "hard drive manufacturers".
One thing I'll add: I have to ask if your education was mostly on IBM machines. From what I remember, they couldn't do anything in the "standard" way. They broke the delete and ctrl keys, when they came out with the PC, and they produced AIX, for example.
You would think they'd take an example from NeWS. Then again, it's likely that no one currently working on Gnome is old enough to remember it.