I'm not a specialist in electric power, but here in Switzerland we have what we call are "Pumpkraftwerke".
They are basically water powered generators utilizing a large storage lake - when demand is high, the water runs from the upper to the lower lake, creating electricity. When demand is low, the water is pumped from the lower to the upper lake.
They require a large difference in height between the two seas (usually in the lower hundreds), but otherwise are pretty low maintenance.
There _is_ of course some ecological impact. But they have served us well during the past years.
Virtualization is not the golden bullet it is often advertised to be.
While most of todays tasks are not CPU bound, they're often I/O bound.
I've seen to many people that tried to virtualize 10 servers on a single machine with just 8 arms - it doesn't work. And that doesn't even count in I/O heavy stuff like database/mail/fileservers.
That doesn't mean virtualization is bad or that one shouldn't use it. Just that virtualization means that you'll have to look at other stuff than just CPU and RAM.
Another big point with virtualization is availability and security isolation. The first one can be solved by clustering, which of course increases complexity - the second one can't be easily solved - that's why we use seperate machines for everything security related (domain controllers, firewalls, edge servers, etc.).
You ever actually tried to call Microsoft for Tech Support? The first words out of the Indian tech's mouth will be "Is this an OEM machine?" and then "Call Dell, we don't support you. *click*"
Yes, i did. Multiple times. We're in the MS Partner Program, and as such get a number of free support calls.
Whenever i called, i was always talking to someone that spoke flawless German (i don't care where the guy is from).
So far, all issues i took to Microsoft (usually advanced problems with Windows Server or Exchange) were resolved fast and with professional people - even though the L3 support i've only spoke english (which for me isn't a problem).
The points are absolutely valid for a site-to-site vpn. But they don't matter in a road warrior setup, where Firewall traversal is more important than performance.
* In fact, virtualize the entire filesystem so a bad program can't screw up your install.
Partially implemented in Vista. Very nice to run legacy apps without admin privleges.
* Instead of babysitting the user with endless "Cancel Allow" dialogs, allow some programs (administrator-defined) to run as administrator (i.e. root) by adding a popup dialog to ask the password. Add the possibility of remembering the password FOR THIS SESSION ONLY.
Did you ever use Vista? I've been working on my Vista machine since this morning, and i didn't see a single UAC dialog. Things might be different if you're a developer, but in that case it might make sense to run your development apps under another user account.
Btw. UAC can be configured to prompt for user:password instead of Permit/Deny. That's what i did.
* Speaking of filesystems, add native compatibility for ext2,ext3,ext4 (is it out yet?), reiserfs, jfs, xfs, etc. We live in an open world. Add compatibility or die.
I don't see a reason for doing this. Cross file system support in the OSS world is pretty spotty too, and simply: there is no need for it. Dual boot is never done in the corporate world, no SOHO customer does it either, just a few enthusiasts.
* Make (or adopt) a decent partitioner that can resize partitions without requiring to buy third party products.
Implemented in Vista.
* Give up on the directx "intellectual property" stuff and release the code under a GPL-compatible license.
Where is the business reason for this?
* Modify the kernel so it can run in Xen without CPU-virtualization extensions.
Even Hyper-V and VS2005 need their extensions installed in order for virtualization to reach properly. Besides, Citrix and Microsoft have an agreement on virtualization support. Which will probably result in what you need.
* Release the specs for developers to be able to make and use their own window managers (i.e.KDE, GNOME, etc) work with Windows.
I think a lot of this stuff is hard-coded and not as flexible as X11. There are replacements shells available, but they're not exactly the same as a window manager:
* Get rid of all that Digital Rights Management crap and allow users to save videos and music in hi-res formats for backups. Windows media player shouldn't allow any copy-protection crap to execute and spy on them.
Quick question: If Microsoft removed all their DRM stuff from WMP now, how much more would they earn in 2008?
* Open-source network-based apps and provide official support a-la sourceforge for users to submit bugs and security vulnerabilities.
Microsoft offers official support for a fee, just like almost all linux distributors. Community support is available through http://forums.microsoft.com/ and a myriad of 3rd Party Websites.
* Don't sell 7 different versions of the OS. Make the management and administration parts available on the darn CD / DVD.
I'll agree on the 7 different version thing, but it doesn't really matter. As a business, you don't have much of a choice. It's either Business or Ultimate if you don't have volume licensing, or Enterprise if you do.
I don't understand what you mean with management and administration - it's all there on the CD, and the RSAT tools for Server 2003/2008 are available for download.
* Here's an idea: Make (or use) a "/home" partition so users can put their configuration and files in a directory of their own, so advanced users can either boot Windows or Linux and still have their important documents unmodified.
Yes, that's configurable. At least since Windows 2000.
* And please, for the love of everything good in the world, GET RID OF THAT ANTIPIRACY C
Microsoft decided to fix some glaring security architecture issues that previous operating systems had, and now badly written 3rd party software breaks.
And you guys blame Microsoft. If one developed software against the recommendations for Windows XP, there wouldn't have been much breakage. Of course the one or other thing could still go wrong, but it's the 3rd parties fault for not providing a fix at the time Vista was officially released.
It depends. I'm working for a Systems Integrator/ISV. All our internal prod stuff is Bleeding Edge. We've been running Vista since Nov 06, and have been using the IIS7 GO LIVE! License. With RTM out, i'll be upgrading all our other servers next month (as long as the software running on them is supported, of course).
No better way to gain experience and real world QA.
I'm sorry if my reply sounded like i want "to jump down his throat".
He wants to go to a big expensive school - fine. His parents can't pay for it, so he has to find another way. I showed a few possible ways, but apparently thats "not cool". Sometimes, you have to find a solution which can work out, even though it's not exactly what you wanted in the first place.
First off, learn to make paragraphs. That post was horrible to read.
and would be proud to put some time into the cause.
It's a god damn operating system, not a cult or a cure for cancer. You're not helping "the cause". You're working for a company which has the sole purpose of making as much of money for their shareholders as possible. There is nothing wrong with that, but you desperately need a reality check.
I'm not going to make a big call about Universities in the US, but the OPs question seems idiotic to me.
Your Tag is spot on - every idiot can publish a GPLd App on Sourceforge and feel like he is the next big programming superstar. That doesn't entitle you to a boatload of money, and heck 30k is already a lot of money. But thats not enough for you?
I grew up in a working class family. We weren't rich, but we weren't poor either - i learned that in order to get what you want, you have to do something for it. After 9 years of obligatory school i decided to start an apprenticeship instead of studying - in order to make my own money. That was 8 years ago, and i'm 24 now.
I now have a decent job (with it's up and downs) and most of the people who decided to study instead aren't done yet. I know several people that studied, but they don't have a better paid or more fulfilling job than i, they lack 8 years of experience that i have, etc.
I'm not saying that Studying is a stupid idea, but if one can't afford it, there are plenty of alternatives that will work just as well. Maybe one could get a job while studying (e.G. in the evenings) and make enough money that way to study at whatever place one wants to?
Other people that really wanted to study but couldn't decided to do an apprenticeship with a "Berufsmatur", which is sort of a combination. After that, work for one or two years and live cheap - that way you can get money on the side. After that, quit your job and study.
I've found that people that choose the last path (I'm not one of them, i just did an apprenticeship) usually have both the practical experience and the theoretical knowledge - while people like me with just an apprenticeship are much more heavily focused on practical experiences and people who just studied are absorbed into their nice little theory world.
Yeah, but my point is why would anyone force himself to work with products he doesn't like or even hates?
There are lots of jobs out there and it doesn't make much sense to me to be working with products that you WANT to fail. The quality of your work will suffer and such your company as a whole.
Is WS2008 supported on that Machine? I know that IBM took it's sweet time on adding WS08 support on their current machines - HP supported a variety of Betas and RCs, and IBM didn't support anything.
That's why Microsoft introduced Windows Server Core. It's a core without most of the UI Framework and most of the Windows Shell.
Windows Server Core is the recommended way to deploy Hyper-V. If you do not know Server Core yet, look into it.
It's a very nice way to deploy basic infrastructure like domain controllers, DHCP / DNS / WINS, etc. servers with a reduced attack and maintenance surface.
Supported means just that: You can call MS PSS and tell them that their Shit doesn't work. That doesn't mean that it won't work. There is a lot of stuff that is not supported for a variety of reasons:
e.G. Exchange 2007 Version is not supported in ANY virtualized Environment - it works perfectly fine though and hundreds of people, even Microsoft uses that for testing and demo purposes. It just means that if you have a critical problem and call up PSS, you will not get help.
Slashdot Mirror
That's mostly because our local hippies don't want to build more nuclear reactors.
Instead we have to buy french electricity generated by using coal or oil.
Makes perfect sense. %)
I'm not a specialist in electric power, but here in Switzerland we have what we call are "Pumpkraftwerke".
They are basically water powered generators utilizing a large storage lake - when demand is high, the water runs from the upper to the lower lake, creating electricity. When demand is low, the water is pumped from the lower to the upper lake.
They require a large difference in height between the two seas (usually in the lower hundreds), but otherwise are pretty low maintenance.
There _is_ of course some ecological impact. But they have served us well during the past years.
Virtualization is not the golden bullet it is often advertised to be.
While most of todays tasks are not CPU bound, they're often I/O bound.
I've seen to many people that tried to virtualize 10 servers on a single machine with just 8 arms - it doesn't work. And that doesn't even count in I/O heavy stuff like database/mail/fileservers.
That doesn't mean virtualization is bad or that one shouldn't use it. Just that virtualization means that you'll have to look at other stuff than just CPU and RAM.
Another big point with virtualization is availability and security isolation. The first one can be solved by clustering, which of course increases complexity - the second one can't be easily solved - that's why we use seperate machines for everything security related (domain controllers, firewalls, edge servers, etc.).
"They're doing their part. Are you? Join the Mobile Infantry and save the world. Service guarantees citizenship."
What about the BMC of the servers? The IPMI-Interface? The network card? The video cards bios?
Do you have the sourcecode for you machines BIOS? The firmware in the RAID controller of your servers?
etc.
Yes, i did. Multiple times. We're in the MS Partner Program, and as such get a number of free support calls.
Whenever i called, i was always talking to someone that spoke flawless German (i don't care where the guy is from).
So far, all issues i took to Microsoft (usually advanced problems with Windows Server or Exchange) were resolved fast and with professional people - even though the L3 support i've only spoke english (which for me isn't a problem).
No idea what their end user support is like.
Here in Switzerland, the term POS is standard for cash registers.
So it doesn't seem specific to the US market or the UK market - but i wouldn't have assumed that everyone knew it either.
The points are absolutely valid for a site-to-site vpn. But they don't matter in a road warrior setup, where Firewall traversal is more important than performance.
* In fact, virtualize the entire filesystem so a bad program can't screw up your install.
Partially implemented in Vista. Very nice to run legacy apps without admin privleges.
* Instead of babysitting the user with endless "Cancel Allow" dialogs, allow some programs (administrator-defined) to run as administrator (i.e. root) by adding a popup dialog to ask the password. Add the possibility of remembering the password FOR THIS SESSION ONLY.
Did you ever use Vista? I've been working on my Vista machine since this morning, and i didn't see a single UAC dialog. Things might be different if you're a developer, but in that case it might make sense to run your development apps under another user account.
Btw. UAC can be configured to prompt for user:password instead of Permit/Deny. That's what i did.
* Speaking of filesystems, add native compatibility for ext2,ext3,ext4 (is it out yet?), reiserfs, jfs, xfs, etc. We live in an open world. Add compatibility or die.
I don't see a reason for doing this. Cross file system support in the OSS world is pretty spotty too, and simply: there is no need for it. Dual boot is never done in the corporate world, no SOHO customer does it either, just a few enthusiasts.
* Make (or adopt) a decent partitioner that can resize partitions without requiring to buy third party products.
Implemented in Vista.
* Give up on the directx "intellectual property" stuff and release the code under a GPL-compatible license.
Where is the business reason for this?
* Modify the kernel so it can run in Xen without CPU-virtualization extensions.
Even Hyper-V and VS2005 need their extensions installed in order for virtualization to reach properly. Besides, Citrix and Microsoft have an agreement on virtualization support. Which will probably result in what you need.
* Release the specs for developers to be able to make and use their own window managers (i.e.KDE, GNOME, etc) work with Windows.
I think a lot of this stuff is hard-coded and not as flexible as X11. There are replacements shells available, but they're not exactly the same as a window manager:
http://bb4win.sourceforge.net/bblean/
* Get rid of all that Digital Rights Management crap and allow users to save videos and music in hi-res formats for backups. Windows media player shouldn't allow any copy-protection crap to execute and spy on them.
Quick question: If Microsoft removed all their DRM stuff from WMP now, how much more would they earn in 2008?
* Open-source network-based apps and provide official support a-la sourceforge for users to submit bugs and security vulnerabilities.
Microsoft offers official support for a fee, just like almost all linux distributors. Community support is available through http://forums.microsoft.com/ and a myriad of 3rd Party Websites.
* Don't sell 7 different versions of the OS. Make the management and administration parts available on the darn CD / DVD.
I'll agree on the 7 different version thing, but it doesn't really matter. As a business, you don't have much of a choice. It's either Business or Ultimate if you don't have volume licensing, or Enterprise if you do.
I don't understand what you mean with management and administration - it's all there on the CD, and the RSAT tools for Server 2003/2008 are available for download.
* Here's an idea: Make (or use) a "/home" partition so users can put their configuration and files in a directory of their own, so advanced users can either boot Windows or Linux and still have their important documents unmodified.
Yes, that's configurable. At least since Windows 2000.
* And please, for the love of everything good in the world, GET RID OF THAT ANTIPIRACY C
Server 2008 & Vista have "Self healing NTFS", which is basically chkdsk running while the fs is already active.
Well, if you don't like Vista you have to switch platforms. XP support will run out, period. You have to move on or Switch.
Microsoft decided to fix some glaring security architecture issues that previous operating systems had, and now badly written 3rd party software breaks.
And you guys blame Microsoft. If one developed software against the recommendations for Windows XP, there wouldn't have been much breakage. Of course the one or other thing could still go wrong, but it's the 3rd parties fault for not providing a fix at the time Vista was officially released.
It depends. I'm working for a Systems Integrator/ISV. All our internal prod stuff is Bleeding Edge. We've been running Vista since Nov 06, and have been using the IIS7 GO LIVE! License. With RTM out, i'll be upgrading all our other servers next month (as long as the software running on them is supported, of course).
No better way to gain experience and real world QA.
From this i'm assuming that you're not a Sales
http://www.bash.org/?17246
I'm sorry if my reply sounded like i want "to jump down his throat".
He wants to go to a big expensive school - fine. His parents can't pay for it, so he has to find another way. I showed a few possible ways, but apparently thats "not cool". Sometimes, you have to find a solution which can work out, even though it's not exactly what you wanted in the first place.
It's a god damn operating system, not a cult or a cure for cancer. You're not helping "the cause". You're working for a company which has the sole purpose of making as much of money for their shareholders as possible. There is nothing wrong with that, but you desperately need a reality check.
I'm not going to make a big call about Universities in the US, but the OPs question seems idiotic to me.
Your Tag is spot on - every idiot can publish a GPLd App on Sourceforge and feel like he is the next big programming superstar. That doesn't entitle you to a boatload of money, and heck 30k is already a lot of money. But thats not enough for you?
I grew up in a working class family. We weren't rich, but we weren't poor either - i learned that in order to get what you want, you have to do something for it. After 9 years of obligatory school i decided to start an apprenticeship instead of studying - in order to make my own money. That was 8 years ago, and i'm 24 now.
I now have a decent job (with it's up and downs) and most of the people who decided to study instead aren't done yet. I know several people that studied, but they don't have a better paid or more fulfilling job than i, they lack 8 years of experience that i have, etc.
I'm not saying that Studying is a stupid idea, but if one can't afford it, there are plenty of alternatives that will work just as well. Maybe one could get a job while studying (e.G. in the evenings) and make enough money that way to study at whatever place one wants to?
Other people that really wanted to study but couldn't decided to do an apprenticeship with a "Berufsmatur", which is sort of a combination. After that, work for one or two years and live cheap - that way you can get money on the side. After that, quit your job and study.
I've found that people that choose the last path (I'm not one of them, i just did an apprenticeship) usually have both the practical experience and the theoretical knowledge - while people like me with just an apprenticeship are much more heavily focused on practical experiences and people who just studied are absorbed into their nice little theory world.
Yeah, but my point is why would anyone force himself to work with products he doesn't like or even hates?
There are lots of jobs out there and it doesn't make much sense to me to be working with products that you WANT to fail. The quality of your work will suffer and such your company as a whole.
Is WS2008 supported on that Machine? I know that IBM took it's sweet time on adding WS08 support on their current machines - HP supported a variety of Betas and RCs, and IBM didn't support anything.
That's why Microsoft introduced Windows Server Core. It's a core without most of the UI Framework and most of the Windows Shell.
Windows Server Core is the recommended way to deploy Hyper-V. If you do not know Server Core yet, look into it.
It's a very nice way to deploy basic infrastructure like domain controllers, DHCP / DNS / WINS, etc. servers with a reduced attack and maintenance surface.
Why are you working with products you dislike?
Does Vmware support Ubuntu or Debian, or other non-commercial Distributions?
I've found this link:
http://pubs.vmware.com/guestnotes/wwhelp/wwhimpl/js/html/wwhelp.htm
But i don't know what the VMware lingo "supported" actually means.
Supported means just that: You can call MS PSS and tell them that their Shit doesn't work. That doesn't mean that it won't work. There is a lot of stuff that is not supported for a variety of reasons:
:)
e.G. Exchange 2007 Version is not supported in ANY virtualized Environment - it works perfectly fine though and hundreds of people, even Microsoft uses that for testing and demo purposes. It just means that if you have a critical problem and call up PSS, you will not get help.
Think of "forcibly recommended"
Just use 802.1x and EAP-TLS. No need to record mac addresses or lock down specific ports. Works perfectly. We use it for LAN and WLAN.