Spec'ing out the equivalent appliances for two fully-redundant 100GB+ squid proxy servers that you can ssh into, with hot-swap RAID, redundant power supplies, network connectivity of your choice (gig ethernet, for example), etc. with a hardware vendor service agreement that specifies 4-hour parts replacement turnaround time may be an exercise in futility.
It's not futile - just write the req spec and see what the vendors would suggest.
Specify two fully redundant units with failover. Specify hotswap RAID disks with 100GB+ capacity and expansion capability of whatever You think is appropriate.
Spec the redundant hardware.
Spec the network connectivity. If it's a 1000BaseFX, then so be it. If four gig ethers bonded, then write it that way.
However, why are You specing ssh? You don't need ssh, You need an interface for configuring and maintaining the system from remote workstation using secure protocol.
With Your req's, I'd advice You to ask eg. IBM what they would suggest. They just might decide that You need two Linux+squid based www-cache appliances with gig-ether and ssh-based secure maintenance interface.
What You're doing now may be good and dandy, but if You're not considering other ways to do it, You're not doing the best You can. You're just doing what You're used to. If, after writing the req spec for web cache the solutions suggested are all more expensive, require more maintenance, and would require new training for admins, then You *KNOW* that Your current solution is best.
However, if You need large web caches, there are solutions optimzed for just that. Boxes that are transparent web caches, can cluster, failover, and so on. Ask the ISPs what they're using..
I know that not in all cases do appliances fullfill their promises. They are optimzed for certain usage. However, unless the IT dept is large and well manned, it's often worth asking well defined services and low-maintenance appliances for tasks that can be separated from the whole. And large, well manned IT dept is not always the most cost effective solution. It's good when the company relies heavily on custom IT solutions. And it's good every time a new solution needs to be specified, any IT related contract analyzed, and so on.
If You need a http proxy in enterprise environment, You don't set up a computer to do the task. You get an appliance with service contract.
Prepare a list of requirements:
- it must work in Your network configuration (DMZ, inside firewall, whatever)
- it can be managed from (management console using serial port, telnet, web-interface, SNMP, whatever), with management interface protected by (source address, password, client certificate, something else)
- it must provide statistics in some format You need (SNMP, certain log format, remote syslog, remote database, www-interface, etc)
- it must be configurable (blocking source/destination addresses/ports during 8-17, require user authentication using remote authentication server, and so on)
- it must support (external bandwidth, internal bandwidth, expected number of users)
- if it breaks, a maintenance engineer will come and fix it (within four hours, next business day)
- if You have a problem, You (go to website to fill incident report, call some number, whatever), and the problem will be solved (within 4 hours, next business day)
Then You take the requirements document to the IT manager with a list of companies known to provide web proxy appliances or servers and ask him to see if these requirements are within company standards (note that as OS is not mentioned and this is an appliance, they should be) and he can just sign the paper and send it to half a dozen companies expecting replies within (about a week or two).
I'd expect that the IT manager doesn't give a shit about what OS or software the proxy is running as You present it to him as a www-proxy appliance server, not a "Linux server running squid as www-proxy service" or "MS Web Cache" (or whatever it might be called).
That way, your proxy might be an IBM www-cache appliance server that runs Linux and squid. Or it might be a completely proprietary custom solution. Or a Dell Microsoft www-cache appliance server.
I use mozilla, and have set cookies (as well as images - due to web bugs) on "warn before accepting". Thus, as I browse, I get lots of "site foo.com wants to load an image/cookie" questions. However, as I answer them "yes, remember this decision" or "no, remember this decision", currently there are a couple of sites left where I always get asked the question, and gazillion of sites I haven't visited before.
However, my decision on accepting or not accepting is not "well informed". It's pretty much guesswork.. I usually allow the originating site to load images and set cookies, and with other sites I first go to the site to see what's it about, and then make my decision. Usually ending up disallowing adserver, ads, and other such server names.
If the cookie, when it first came, would immediatelly countered by the web browser with "request information regarding the cookie" which would then be presented to me, containing the host and domain that would see the cookie, name of the website operator (company that owns the site, or individual person who's set it up), reason for the cookie, as well as what data would be stored with help of the cookie, I could say that the decision to allow or not allow would be a lot more informed.
I'm all for cookies when used well. They are essential for eg. e-commerce, and many other functions of most websites.
What I don't like is:
- third party (usually adserver) using cookies for any purpose other than that given by the site from which the reference that invoked the cookie setting originated.
- Gathering tracking data for purposes not given to the website visitor, or for purposes of selling tracking data.
I'm willing to allow adservers to set cookies assuming that no identification data is ever cross-indexed using the cookie, or that if such is done, it's done after my explicit consent, usually would be for demographic statistics that then could be used for other purposes (targeted ads - however not target to me, but to a demographic group I belong to).
If I had faith in the human nature, I would be willing to get targeted ads. And I'm willing to be targeted by an e-commerce site I use if I trust them not to give the tracking data to third parties or sell it.
Of course explaining THIS idea to the legislators may well be hard.
Of course the W2kDC wouldn't be exposed to the internet. But, Code Red and Nimda could get into the corporate network through internet connected external webserver that then launches attacks all over the corporate intra. That's why some company could have hundreds of infected computers: not because all of them were exposed to the internet, but because one server that sees both internet and intra is compromised. And that may be under somebody else's responsibility. It takes just one lazy admin...
I don't know anything about W2kDC, so I don't know if running IIS on them would be required or not. Just that I've seen gazillion cases where some stupid application required IIS for some functionality that was pretty much essential for the application to be useful at all. Apparently everything by MS that has an administrative interface is nowadays "administrative WEB interface" that requires MS IIS to work, and administering the software without using said interface might be hard.
There are flaws in designs. Implementing a design as is thus produces flaws in program.
So, when implementing a design, when a flaw is noticed, that should be reported back, and implementation of that part of the design held back until the design has been corrected.
Then, there's no perfect code. Even when I write good code, there are limits to it. Eg. error conditions that the customer decides won't be handled specifically, but are considered "general errors" and acted accordingly (note: general errors are acted upon, it didn't say that the errors are NOT acted upon). Because it would be too expensive to do otherwise.
And testing. There are limits again: will You spend one, two, three, or ten times the cost of development on testing? So, we test different parts of programs and designs in different ways, writing automated tests for some parts, test plans executed manually by a human for other parts, and so on.
In the end, producing good quality software is possible, it just takes time and money. So the question is, how much are You willing to pay? And how much is the company creating a product willing to bet the (potential, future) customers are willing to pay? If the company bets on x dollars times y customers, and produces software that is profitable giving those figures, but the customers would be ready for 10*x (with y/2), the company made a mistake. And the customers are angry.
It's unlikely that boxed software developed for one time fee perpetual license and general use (ie. sell millions) would be good quality. A company that needs good quality has to buy the software on their own terms: write down the requirements and get some company to contract for those requirements.
Re:A great example of an RMS witch-hunt
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Five Years of KDE
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· Score: 1
I use Gnome because I'm used to it. I configured Gnome/Fvwm2 combo once, and it took me three years to move from Fvwm2 to Sawfish via AfterStep.
Even now, doing a fresh install, I chose Gnome. Not because I'd believe it's better, but because I know what I'm doing when I install Gnome. If KDE is better, I'll probably move over in the next 2-3 years.
It's not better or worse as much for me as it's "what I'm used to", ie. inertia.
Oh yes, I'm currently happy with Mozilla. Perhaps it's just because I haven't ever used Konqueror and thus don't know how great it is. But, for as long as I'm happy with Mozilla and have no real reason to try Konqueror, I'll probably stay with Mozilla. Reasons? Same as with Gnome. It works well enough for me. I get work done.
If money is not an issue, go for SCSI, but with enough drives and dual-channel RAID controller with mirroring over channels.
However, I agree that 3Ware Escalade is great. It clocks a mirror of 2 IDE drives (7200rpm 75GB IBM whatever it's model is) actually faster than my SCSI 2-drive mirror (on their own channel, so SCSI bus is not the bottleneck), it's reliable, and it's cheap. Real cheap.
However, how many motherboards have 64bit PCI slots?
My current setup consists of three rack mount PCs, one rack mount SCSI box, three tower case PCs, two desks (monitor, keyboard, mouse on each), network laser printer, ADSL and cable modem, 100BaseT switched LAN, DDS-4 and DDS-2 tape drives. Total cost perhaps around 20-30k USD at prices when the stuff was bought. Oh yes, two laptops, but those I don't own - they are for work.
I run Linux and Windows on these computers. Because that's what I need for my software needs.
I don't see why I would run Solaris on PC equipment - if I need a Solaris box, I should probably get some cheap UE220R or UE250 for that (try dotcom sales for cheap sun hardware). Same with other OS'es - if I want a MacOS, I'll get a Mac. If I want OpenVMS, I'll get an Alpha. And I don't want HP/UX, so I'm not going to get one.
What's most expensive? Storage subsystems. Diskspace is just plain expensive. Even with IDE disks, a rackmount 4U computer case with 7 IDE drives in removable bays and an IDE RAID controller cost about 2700 USD. And that's the absolute cheapest way to get about 240 visible, redundant, fast, reliable gigabytes of storage.
Next most expensive thing? Networking. A 100BaseT switched LAN just doesn't cut it - it's gotten slow. Of course I could just get enough diskspace for ALL computers, but that's expensive, too, so I use a lot of network storage. Which puts real strain on the network.. Let alone trying to do anything serious over the network..
Of course everyone has different needs. Don't ever even think of AV work as a hobby.. Digital video and audio equipment (the pro-grade) costs an arm and a leg, and make-do equipment has serious performance bottlenecks.
All in all - a decent new computer would cost me about 10-20k USD. However, if I'd just want to play the latest, gratest 3D FPS games, the dream setup would be a lot cheaper, coming to perhaps 3-4k USD. And that's what most people consider the "expensive computer needs" category. However, that's because I already have about 15k USD in my AV rack. "Dream" gaming station should, IMHO, include good quality audio hardware, which probably costs much more than the computer.
Now, I know that I may not be a "Real Linux User", having used Linux only from kernel 0.98[some letter], only using it for work and hobbies, not having written more than three kernel drivers (subcontracting, and for custom hardware that most of You have ever seen or will ever see). But, for me, the ULB is much more than for ESR, as I care about my storage subsystem's reliability and speed more than most. It's usually the worst bottleneck, and there's never enough of it.
And yes, two of my Linux boxen are indeed old junk that wouldn't run newest WinME/2k/XP with any speed that we could talk about. They're external network connection gateways and thus don't need to be fast.
I don't understand how one can call any box without hardware RAID an Ultimate Linux Box. Yes, it costs money (which is why I've decided on IDE RAID for new systems unless I miraculously get about 20k USD for storage subsystem), but it's better.
Never go for a non-redundant disk subsystem. Disks crash. Go bad. Die.
Also, I need some space to live with. About 200 gigs minimum for my next setup.
So, for ULB it would be a dual channel U160 RAID controller (64bit PCI bus, please), 14 36GB 10k rpm hotswap disks configured as 6 disk RAID5 with hotspare on each channel and mirror over channels, yielding 180GB. Takes one SCSI tower case. Performance and redundancy. And even for the ULB going for 14 72GB disks would be pretty expensive.
Also, to get the best out of CD-ROM/R/RW get Plextor UltraPlex 40 and PlexWriter. Absolutely forget all other CD-ROM/R/RW manufacturers.
Then for DVD get the Pioneer and a DVD-R(G), DVD-RW drive. Note that You still need the Plextors to get the best CD-ROM/R/RW drives available.
Hook all four into an external case, and put the DDS-4 drive there, too.
Now, put the computer case and the drive case away from Your table, take the removable media case onto Your table and be done with it.
I can't afford that setup. So, I'm going for IDE drives and 3ware Escalade IDE RAID controller. Cheaper, and gives me about 240 gigs with seven 80GB drives.
While I'm not all that familiar with Microsoft reserach (and after checking the research pages noticed that most of the papers available were a little bland), I think that the Millenium project position paper did have something that wasn't all that usual in '97: it tried to tie together many of the concepts and aimed at producing a prototype that would actually implement those features.
Of course it may be that others, too, were aiming at implementing similar projects - however, I'm still unaware of those. Just proves that I'm not a researcher on the field in question, and that I don't work in a suitable division in a large enough company that my co-workers would be doing research or analysis of the field.
I think the paper itself had interesting goal, although it'd be pretty hard to reach. Eg. load balanced, automatic network scheduling of processes, threads, and partial calculations is done, but only in very tightly designed cluster technologies (scheduling whole processes is done in many projects). Specifically I would be interested in the trusted domain based security system mentioned in the paper. That would be interesting, but would provide quite hard requirements for the core security to make it impossible to grab a calculation, it's data or code, even when the user of the physical computer that received the calculation for execution has full administrative rights to the computer.
Eg. in a company, financial management has lots of data that must not be leaked even to the employees until general announcements (quarter reports and so on) are made. That means that of course some of the IT staff do have full access to the data and the company relies on the fact that those employees aren't going to grab the data and run with it; BUT, either the whole computer base in the company is secured also physically or even within the company the computers are partitioned into several domains and thus only those computers belonging to the "company internal finances" -domain or "company truly secure servers" -domain may participate in financial management calculations.
And, as most calculations where a large distributed CPU power could become handy are, to some degree, sensitive data and thus confidential to a level where most employees shouldn't have access to the data, workstation security becomes a huge issue or the distributed CPU power just can't be used anyway and will stay working with SETI@home or alike.
I'm not so much interested in the latency or bandwidth issues (like some others here on/.) in a paper of this level of abstraction, because those can be solved and are just peripheral to the core of the research being done.
Now, I also know about some other research and how research may or may not lead to implementations aiming for marketability. At some point, when a concept has been implemented to a degree that proves its viability, it usually stops being research and starts being product development. Which means that the researchers end the project as "ready and successfull" and the product development teams take the results and, with the input from marketing and business sector in general, start translating the results into a product - including writing whole new requirements and designs.
Notice that this is a position paper describing goals for a research project that inteds to design and build a system that fulfills these goals. [Introduction, paragraphs 3-4]. They still don't believe that they'll be fully successfull, but they're going to try and see how far can they take the project - where are the impassable walls.
However, note that this paper doesn't have a date on it, refers to papers published in '91-'97 or something like that, and is actually listed in Microsoft research Systems & Networking under "Previous projects" mentioning some prototypes, but nothing big. Also, Millenium project page doesn't say much. Under the only available prototype page Coign the earliers reference to it is a paper presented in February '97, which thus is likely to date this project.
Perhaps it would be worth trying to date the papers before noting "Nothing new, same old same old". Four years ago this might not have been a vision from heaven, but it wasn't "same old" all the way. Especially trying to create prototype implementations of the features presented.
Microsoft research group actually does research and tries to innovate. Please don't include them in the general Microsoft conspiracy theories (except as providers of prototypes used to achieve world domination).
At my former employer, software was written cheap. There usually were no requirements (at least no written ones), no real management, and the execs wanted the deals in.
So, sometimes a project manager had a moment of brilliant thought when writing a schedule, time estimates, and budget, and happened to ask some senior developer "how long would this take, who'd need to work on this". With the answers (still not good, due to lack of information) he'd go on and get a decent schedule, time estimate and budget.
However, then the sales intervened with "the customer needs this faster and won't pay that much". If the project manager again happened to understand what's going on, and asked the senior developer about if those changes were possible and what would need to be cut, and reworked the numbers, they'd still be over the sales requirements.
Now, some exec who wants that particular deal in takes the numbers and the sales requirements (max time and money, both at most half the schedule and budget) and finds another project manager until someone takes the deal and decides he can make it happen.
Of course then the schedule and budget are blown, the customer is unhappy and the company makes loss with the project.
Some of us got sick with the company. We talked with the management, disagreed about the future, strategy, and basically everything there was. We walked out and formed a new company.
Now, we have written project orders with written requirements and written acceptance criteria. We give reasonable estimates about time and money, and if the customer doesn't want to pay that much or wait that long, we don't get the contract. However, we still have customers who're willing to wait and pay for programs that work, are documented, and tested. And the developers are happier.
And I'm a lot happier. Now I don't need to take deals that would need to be done "just well enough that the program works".
Drug companies don't make all that good profit. Try calculating returns of investment with reasonable risk profiles for eg. just the fortune 500 companies and see it yourself. And try to make the risk profiles reasonable.
For fun, I write software I happen to need, or someone else happends to need. For money, I write software some company happens to need.
When I write software for money, I agree that the customer owns all rights I usually would own to software I write. I agree to many things, including schedules, quality of documentation and code, coding style, test procedures, acceptance criteria, and so on. All the usual contract stuff.
In the end, I'm paid pretty well. I produce code and documentation I can be proud of. I might not be a gee-whiz all-night coder, nor the zen master. But I still produce decent quality in decent time, pretty consistently. That's why I can do that for living.
However, if the customer would have to open the code to everyone else when they ship a product containing the code, my work would be worth less to the customer, and thus I would be paid less. When the customer chooses to open some of the produced code and documentation, that's OK, and I'm all the happier. But if they had to, always, all the code? To their competitors? Code that cost them quite a lot. And their competitors wouldn't need to pay a dime.
Of course things are more complex than that, and would be even if all code would be free.
I'd agree that some things (like the period for which copyrights and patents are granted) aren't as well as they could be, but abolishing copyrights is not the solution. Perhaps the rights granted to producers of immaterial goods should be rethought and remodeled, but taking them away completely isn't a good idea.
To all the "everyone's doing this" posters
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$1200 Cheap!
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Yes, bundling is done. Like, I have to get one game with PS2 and so on. Adds about 10% to the price of the box. And, why would I buy the console without a game? As far as I can pick the game, it's OK.
However, "everyone" is not going to force You to buy extras worth twice the price of the barebones system. I don't need to get a second controller, wheel and pedals, and three games someone else chose for me when I buy the PS2.
And guess what? I will buy the consoles due to games. That is, I don't have a PS2, as the games I want it for weren't out when I last visited gaming stores. When they are, I'll happily get the games I want in the bundle with the PS2 - perhaps I'll even save a dollar or two in the deal..;)
Even if sometimes an investment can return tenfold, the businesses where that occurs are ones that often have 100% loss from investments.
A company that creates the cure for cancer (for example) has already made massive R&D in several areas, and have to cover losses where research doesn't lead to a profitable product.
If such a situation arises where a company has something it's not willing to license or sell but is important for the general healthcare, the governments will act.
However, remember that if medicine is sold at 1% of the usual price to the poorest countries, rich people will try to smuggle the medicine back because it'd still be only a fraction of the price in western countries, so a balance has to be struck so that the poor countries get it for a price that wouldn't actually even cover the R&D while the price of R&D is taken from the rich countries.
Going against the general Slashdot hivemind, I agree with Dolby in this. AC-3 (Dolby Digital) is patented technology, actually has required research and is very good, effective and inventive .
White papers are available from Dolby's website, and the technology is free for all to look at, with some exceptions (uses some noise reduction methods not described in the freely available white papers).
And, if Dolby wants, they can charge license fees. However, I wouldn't be surprised if they'd grant the LinuxTV team a free license with restrictions. Dolby labs isn't evil, but they're a business and mostly IPR company that licenses technology for manufacturers of consumer electronics. They have their own professional devices, though. So the license might have eg. restrictions about using the technology in an embedded system (eg. Nokia MediaTerminal, but Nokia can afford the license if they want to).
Also, from my discussion with Dolby Labs at one time when I was considering writing Pro Logic & Pro Logic II codec I would say that they are friendly. They required that they get the code for review before I'm allowed to say that it is Dolby anything compatible, but assured me that if it's free, open source software, they wouldn't charge licensing fees.
Mind You, I've read the scenarios created by the Finnish ministries of environment, industry and finance. There are different scenarios for compliance with Kyoto treaty and non-compliance ("Lets just continue as if nothing happened"). Compliance scenarios include both stupid ones ("Lets reduce use of energy") because the green party always wants to see those, but also different ways of keeping up with the requirements and assumed growth of energy use.
In the end, there are scenarios that don't cost all that much - the cheapest one was roughly EUR 250 / person in the timeframe 2001-2010. Or about 50/person/year (assuming that the costs are spread over five year period).
And, some parties (including some corps) have already started acting as would be needed to comply with Kyoto treaty, whether ratified or not.
For USA, compliance would actually save money in the long run - just upgrade Your old, non-economical facilities to new, economical and environmental ones. Savings come mainly from the facts that upgrading to environmentally sound facilities while upgrading to economical ones is pretty cheap, and that it would create lots of activity in the environment industry, thus more work, more jobs, and the money stays in the country. Not to say that it would ease dealing with the green fanatics (unlikely that it would help with the ecoterrorists, but most other environmentalists would react positively).
Now, it would be clear that if US ratified the Kyoto treaty, all EU countries would, too. But, as the pollution of USA is actually more than the whole EU, the treaty is pretty much meaningless unless USA complies. Even if EU did everything required, unless USA complies, too, pollution wouldn't lessen much.
However, as we like living in such conditions that we can safely breath the air, EU commission has long been working on different environmental directives that, even if Kyoto treaty isn't ratified, will work towards the same end. However, as that's not global and won't affect USA, it only means that the responsibility shifts mainly o USA, as its share of the global pollution will grow from the current roughly 30% (with population of about 4% - that's eight times the average).
And no, I'm not an environmentalist, left wing radical, or alike. I'm capitalist, pretty much right wing for Finland. But, I still think we should try to be efficient in use of resources, not wasteful. The technology for efficient, clean, environmentally sound production in about any industry You can name exists and is already reasonably cheap. Of course we can do better, given time and new inventions, and I'm not requiring all companies to upgrade to bleeding edge technology. However, not using clean technology where such is available is stupid. Just try to see a little farther than the bottom line of the next quarter or next year.
However, DVD as a term is perfectly good to describe the media used to distribute software. Aren't DVD-RW and DVD-RAM different physical media using different encoding from DVD-ROM? The filesystem can be the same, though.
While DVD-Video and -Audio discs are physically the same as DVD-ROM and use the same encoding, able to fit same amount of data, the difference lies in how the encoded data is interpreted. You can read DVD-Video and DVD-Audio discs using DVD-ROM, and they actually contain the same filesystem as standard DVD-ROM. It's just that they have specific files in specific directories, even some files in specific physical locations.
My preference is original language audio with English subtitles. It's rare for any dub to come close to the quality of the original - although there are some.
And, Finland is so small market that the translations aren't all that good. Fortunately dubbing is rare and subs are cheaper, so we mostly have decent to good subs. However, I still often go rather for English sub than Finnish one.
Oh yes, mostly I don't even have a choice.. I can either go for R2 original Japanese edition which I wouldn't understand, or R1 US English language edition. No European (let alone Finnish) release.
It's probably Linux because that way they get an OS that doesn't cost a dime (and remember that 10 million units times a couple of bucks means lots in licensing costs), an OS that has the features they need (less manpower needed to write design and write the features), and lastly, an OS that has supporters, meaning there will be more software for the device than Nokia could ever hope to write (or other third party companies would write).
Looking at Nokia, they sell hardware. Not software. So, to them it's not a big deal to give the software away, as their product is the hardware, and the software is pretty useless without hardware.
Also, think about it from the employer viewpoint: You need 20 kernel developers. Is it easier (and cheaper) to get 20 Linux hackers or 20 psOS hackers?
In the end it comes down to usability. If it's easy to use, most people won't care if it's Linux or some proprietary rtos. So the software available from Nokia (the "official" software) must be easy to use.
Remember that there are different divisions in Nokia. Nokia Mobile Phones isn't all that open, but even they're considering the implications of open source.
The MediaTerminal is, I think, produced by some emerging division currently under Nokia Ventures Organization. This means that if it doesn't sell, they'll just drop the issue and count that venture as one of the failures (and they can drop a project at 100s of MEURs deciding it was RnD that went nowhere). However, the new ventures are more open towards open source community.
Regarding Linux and Nokia.. In one open source seminar someone (forgetting names) from Nokia talked about embedded software and open source. They had actually had Linux running on (forgetting details, I think it was ADSL modem) but in that case it wasn't stable enough and they dropped it in favour of some other OS (don't remember which one).
Oh yes, if I remember correctly, MediaScreen was running Linux on some PPC chip. Had quite a lot of flash and RAM, big screen, embedded GSM modem and DVB-T receiver, was video conferensing ready, and so on. I wonder how much that'd had cost should it have made it to retail.. Just a showpiece, though. Of course I don't know if they considered it as a product or a prototype.
When I first heard the name "MediaTerminal" I was thinking only about DigiTV. However, the product specs already suggested something more than that.. It was far too much for just a set-top box.
Go see yourself: http://www.nokia.com/multimedia/mediaterminal.html
Whatever it really is meant to be, it solves my problems regarding "What kind of computer could I connect to my home stereo/video systems" although I expect that to be pretty expensive.
Re:H1-B visa and other issues
on
IT Unions?
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· Score: 1
Actually IT shortage exists. But it's not so much about shortage of people, it's shortage of highly skilled and qualified people.
Given that You can't replace a highly skilled person with one, two, or even three average workers - only with someone of similar skill, and that not everyone is suited to the field, the shortage is pretty hard to get over. So, we're going to see even more average people in the field.
Of course there are lots of positions that are suited for people not so highly skilled in some aspects of the craft (art? I prefer craft). People with higher social skills are better in many support positions. People with social and organizational skills are better in project management. And most of the people in the field who have some organizational skills are well suited for programming and administration.
The people with special insight in the craft should be doing design and analysis - whether network security design or software architecture design.
However, that would require that things would be done in organized, planned manner - not in the chaotic way. In chaotic programming, everyone participating should be highly skilled and able to do design changes on the spot. In organized and planned software development it's easier for most people to work productively.
So, if employees noticed this and started to plan, organize and document procedures and processes, they'd notice that there really isn't shortage of qualified staff. Until that time, only some individuals can pull the projects to successfull conclusion.
Of course planned and organized project might take a little longer to conclude because of the additional organizational overhead, but at least then the result would be consistently forseeable. Now, the result is dependent on the heroics of few.
Happily, some companies have pretty good staff able to pull off a miracle after another. But always there are those who can't.
Slashdot Mirror
It's not futile - just write the req spec and see what the vendors would suggest.
Specify two fully redundant units with failover. Specify hotswap RAID disks with 100GB+ capacity and expansion capability of whatever You think is appropriate.
Spec the redundant hardware.
Spec the network connectivity. If it's a 1000BaseFX, then so be it. If four gig ethers bonded, then write it that way.
However, why are You specing ssh? You don't need ssh, You need an interface for configuring and maintaining the system from remote workstation using secure protocol.
With Your req's, I'd advice You to ask eg. IBM what they would suggest. They just might decide that You need two Linux+squid based www-cache appliances with gig-ether and ssh-based secure maintenance interface.
What You're doing now may be good and dandy, but if You're not considering other ways to do it, You're not doing the best You can. You're just doing what You're used to. If, after writing the req spec for web cache the solutions suggested are all more expensive, require more maintenance, and would require new training for admins, then You *KNOW* that Your current solution is best.
However, if You need large web caches, there are solutions optimzed for just that. Boxes that are transparent web caches, can cluster, failover, and so on. Ask the ISPs what they're using..
I know that not in all cases do appliances fullfill their promises. They are optimzed for certain usage. However, unless the IT dept is large and well manned, it's often worth asking well defined services and low-maintenance appliances for tasks that can be separated from the whole. And large, well manned IT dept is not always the most cost effective solution. It's good when the company relies heavily on custom IT solutions. And it's good every time a new solution needs to be specified, any IT related contract analyzed, and so on.
If You need a http proxy in enterprise environment, You don't set up a computer to do the task. You get an appliance with service contract.
Prepare a list of requirements:
- it must work in Your network configuration (DMZ, inside firewall, whatever)
- it can be managed from (management console using serial port, telnet, web-interface, SNMP, whatever), with management interface protected by (source address, password, client certificate, something else)
- it must provide statistics in some format You need (SNMP, certain log format, remote syslog, remote database, www-interface, etc)
- it must be configurable (blocking source/destination addresses/ports during 8-17, require user authentication using remote authentication server, and so on)
- it must support (external bandwidth, internal bandwidth, expected number of users)
- if it breaks, a maintenance engineer will come and fix it (within four hours, next business day)
- if You have a problem, You (go to website to fill incident report, call some number, whatever), and the problem will be solved (within 4 hours, next business day)
Then You take the requirements document to the IT manager with a list of companies known to provide web proxy appliances or servers and ask him to see if these requirements are within company standards (note that as OS is not mentioned and this is an appliance, they should be) and he can just sign the paper and send it to half a dozen companies expecting replies within (about a week or two).
I'd expect that the IT manager doesn't give a shit about what OS or software the proxy is running as You present it to him as a www-proxy appliance server, not a "Linux server running squid as www-proxy service" or "MS Web Cache" (or whatever it might be called).
That way, your proxy might be an IBM www-cache appliance server that runs Linux and squid. Or it might be a completely proprietary custom solution. Or a Dell Microsoft www-cache appliance server.
I use mozilla, and have set cookies (as well as images - due to web bugs) on "warn before accepting". Thus, as I browse, I get lots of "site foo.com wants to load an image/cookie" questions. However, as I answer them "yes, remember this decision" or "no, remember this decision", currently there are a couple of sites left where I always get asked the question, and gazillion of sites I haven't visited before.
However, my decision on accepting or not accepting is not "well informed". It's pretty much guesswork.. I usually allow the originating site to load images and set cookies, and with other sites I first go to the site to see what's it about, and then make my decision. Usually ending up disallowing adserver, ads, and other such server names.
If the cookie, when it first came, would immediatelly countered by the web browser with "request information regarding the cookie" which would then be presented to me, containing the host and domain that would see the cookie, name of the website operator (company that owns the site, or individual person who's set it up), reason for the cookie, as well as what data would be stored with help of the cookie, I could say that the decision to allow or not allow would be a lot more informed.
I'm all for cookies when used well. They are essential for eg. e-commerce, and many other functions of most websites.
What I don't like is:
- third party (usually adserver) using cookies for any purpose other than that given by the site from which the reference that invoked the cookie setting originated.
- Gathering tracking data for purposes not given to the website visitor, or for purposes of selling tracking data.
I'm willing to allow adservers to set cookies assuming that no identification data is ever cross-indexed using the cookie, or that if such is done, it's done after my explicit consent, usually would be for demographic statistics that then could be used for other purposes (targeted ads - however not target to me, but to a demographic group I belong to).
If I had faith in the human nature, I would be willing to get targeted ads. And I'm willing to be targeted by an e-commerce site I use if I trust them not to give the tracking data to third parties or sell it.
Of course explaining THIS idea to the legislators may well be hard.
For everyone proposing firewalls etc:
Of course the W2kDC wouldn't be exposed to the internet. But, Code Red and Nimda could get into the corporate network through internet connected external webserver that then launches attacks all over the corporate intra. That's why some company could have hundreds of infected computers: not because all of them were exposed to the internet, but because one server that sees both internet and intra is compromised. And that may be under somebody else's responsibility. It takes just one lazy admin...
I don't know anything about W2kDC, so I don't know if running IIS on them would be required or not. Just that I've seen gazillion cases where some stupid application required IIS for some functionality that was pretty much essential for the application to be useful at all. Apparently everything by MS that has an administrative interface is nowadays "administrative WEB interface" that requires MS IIS to work, and administering the software without using said interface might be hard.
There are flaws in designs. Implementing a design as is thus produces flaws in program.
So, when implementing a design, when a flaw is noticed, that should be reported back, and implementation of that part of the design held back until the design has been corrected.
Then, there's no perfect code. Even when I write good code, there are limits to it. Eg. error conditions that the customer decides won't be handled specifically, but are considered "general errors" and acted accordingly (note: general errors are acted upon, it didn't say that the errors are NOT acted upon). Because it would be too expensive to do otherwise.
And testing. There are limits again: will You spend one, two, three, or ten times the cost of development on testing? So, we test different parts of programs and designs in different ways, writing automated tests for some parts, test plans executed manually by a human for other parts, and so on.
In the end, producing good quality software is possible, it just takes time and money. So the question is, how much are You willing to pay? And how much is the company creating a product willing to bet the (potential, future) customers are willing to pay? If the company bets on x dollars times y customers, and produces software that is profitable giving those figures, but the customers would be ready for 10*x (with y/2), the company made a mistake. And the customers are angry.
It's unlikely that boxed software developed for one time fee perpetual license and general use (ie. sell millions) would be good quality. A company that needs good quality has to buy the software on their own terms: write down the requirements and get some company to contract for those requirements.
I use Gnome because I'm used to it. I configured Gnome/Fvwm2 combo once, and it took me three years to move from Fvwm2 to Sawfish via AfterStep.
Even now, doing a fresh install, I chose Gnome. Not because I'd believe it's better, but because I know what I'm doing when I install Gnome. If KDE is better, I'll probably move over in the next 2-3 years.
It's not better or worse as much for me as it's "what I'm used to", ie. inertia.
Oh yes, I'm currently happy with Mozilla. Perhaps it's just because I haven't ever used Konqueror and thus don't know how great it is. But, for as long as I'm happy with Mozilla and have no real reason to try Konqueror, I'll probably stay with Mozilla. Reasons? Same as with Gnome. It works well enough for me. I get work done.
If money is not an issue, go for SCSI, but with enough drives and dual-channel RAID controller with mirroring over channels.
However, I agree that 3Ware Escalade is great. It clocks a mirror of 2 IDE drives (7200rpm 75GB IBM whatever it's model is) actually faster than my SCSI 2-drive mirror (on their own channel, so SCSI bus is not the bottleneck), it's reliable, and it's cheap. Real cheap.
However, how many motherboards have 64bit PCI slots?
My current setup consists of three rack mount PCs, one rack mount SCSI box, three tower case PCs, two desks (monitor, keyboard, mouse on each), network laser printer, ADSL and cable modem, 100BaseT switched LAN, DDS-4 and DDS-2 tape drives. Total cost perhaps around 20-30k USD at prices when the stuff was bought. Oh yes, two laptops, but those I don't own - they are for work.
I run Linux and Windows on these computers. Because that's what I need for my software needs.
I don't see why I would run Solaris on PC equipment - if I need a Solaris box, I should probably get some cheap UE220R or UE250 for that (try dotcom sales for cheap sun hardware). Same with other OS'es - if I want a MacOS, I'll get a Mac. If I want OpenVMS, I'll get an Alpha. And I don't want HP/UX, so I'm not going to get one.
What's most expensive? Storage subsystems. Diskspace is just plain expensive. Even with IDE disks, a rackmount 4U computer case with 7 IDE drives in removable bays and an IDE RAID controller cost about 2700 USD. And that's the absolute cheapest way to get about 240 visible, redundant, fast, reliable gigabytes of storage.
Next most expensive thing? Networking. A 100BaseT switched LAN just doesn't cut it - it's gotten slow. Of course I could just get enough diskspace for ALL computers, but that's expensive, too, so I use a lot of network storage. Which puts real strain on the network.. Let alone trying to do anything serious over the network..
Of course everyone has different needs. Don't ever even think of AV work as a hobby.. Digital video and audio equipment (the pro-grade) costs an arm and a leg, and make-do equipment has serious performance bottlenecks.
All in all - a decent new computer would cost me about 10-20k USD. However, if I'd just want to play the latest, gratest 3D FPS games, the dream setup would be a lot cheaper, coming to perhaps 3-4k USD. And that's what most people consider the "expensive computer needs" category. However, that's because I already have about 15k USD in my AV rack. "Dream" gaming station should, IMHO, include good quality audio hardware, which probably costs much more than the computer.
Now, I know that I may not be a "Real Linux User", having used Linux only from kernel 0.98[some letter], only using it for work and hobbies, not having written more than three kernel drivers (subcontracting, and for custom hardware that most of You have ever seen or will ever see). But, for me, the ULB is much more than for ESR, as I care about my storage subsystem's reliability and speed more than most. It's usually the worst bottleneck, and there's never enough of it.
And yes, two of my Linux boxen are indeed old junk that wouldn't run newest WinME/2k/XP with any speed that we could talk about. They're external network connection gateways and thus don't need to be fast.
I don't understand how one can call any box without hardware RAID an Ultimate Linux Box. Yes, it costs money (which is why I've decided on IDE RAID for new systems unless I miraculously get about 20k USD for storage subsystem), but it's better.
Never go for a non-redundant disk subsystem. Disks crash. Go bad. Die.
Also, I need some space to live with. About 200 gigs minimum for my next setup.
So, for ULB it would be a dual channel U160 RAID controller (64bit PCI bus, please), 14 36GB 10k rpm hotswap disks configured as 6 disk RAID5 with hotspare on each channel and mirror over channels, yielding 180GB. Takes one SCSI tower case. Performance and redundancy. And even for the ULB going for 14 72GB disks would be pretty expensive.
Also, to get the best out of CD-ROM/R/RW get Plextor UltraPlex 40 and PlexWriter. Absolutely forget all other CD-ROM/R/RW manufacturers.
Then for DVD get the Pioneer and a DVD-R(G), DVD-RW drive. Note that You still need the Plextors to get the best CD-ROM/R/RW drives available.
Hook all four into an external case, and put the DDS-4 drive there, too.
Now, put the computer case and the drive case away from Your table, take the removable media case onto Your table and be done with it.
I can't afford that setup. So, I'm going for IDE drives and 3ware Escalade IDE RAID controller. Cheaper, and gives me about 240 gigs with seven 80GB drives.
Hated it
While I'm not all that familiar with Microsoft reserach (and after checking the research pages noticed that most of the papers available were a little bland), I think that the Millenium project position paper did have something that wasn't all that usual in '97: it tried to tie together many of the concepts and aimed at producing a prototype that would actually implement those features.
/.) in a paper of this level of abstraction, because those can be solved and are just peripheral to the core of the research being done.
Of course it may be that others, too, were aiming at implementing similar projects - however, I'm still unaware of those. Just proves that I'm not a researcher on the field in question, and that I don't work in a suitable division in a large enough company that my co-workers would be doing research or analysis of the field.
I think the paper itself had interesting goal, although it'd be pretty hard to reach. Eg. load balanced, automatic network scheduling of processes, threads, and partial calculations is done, but only in very tightly designed cluster technologies (scheduling whole processes is done in many projects). Specifically I would be interested in the trusted domain based security system mentioned in the paper. That would be interesting, but would provide quite hard requirements for the core security to make it impossible to grab a calculation, it's data or code, even when the user of the physical computer that received the calculation for execution has full administrative rights to the computer.
Eg. in a company, financial management has lots of data that must not be leaked even to the employees until general announcements (quarter reports and so on) are made. That means that of course some of the IT staff do have full access to the data and the company relies on the fact that those employees aren't going to grab the data and run with it; BUT, either the whole computer base in the company is secured also physically or even within the company the computers are partitioned into several domains and thus only those computers belonging to the "company internal finances" -domain or "company truly secure servers" -domain may participate in financial management calculations.
And, as most calculations where a large distributed CPU power could become handy are, to some degree, sensitive data and thus confidential to a level where most employees shouldn't have access to the data, workstation security becomes a huge issue or the distributed CPU power just can't be used anyway and will stay working with SETI@home or alike.
I'm not so much interested in the latency or bandwidth issues (like some others here on
Now, I also know about some other research and how research may or may not lead to implementations aiming for marketability. At some point, when a concept has been implemented to a degree that proves its viability, it usually stops being research and starts being product development. Which means that the researchers end the project as "ready and successfull" and the product development teams take the results and, with the input from marketing and business sector in general, start translating the results into a product - including writing whole new requirements and designs.
Notice that this is a position paper describing goals for a research project that inteds to design and build a system that fulfills these goals. [Introduction, paragraphs 3-4]. They still don't believe that they'll be fully successfull, but they're going to try and see how far can they take the project - where are the impassable walls.
However, note that this paper doesn't have a date on it, refers to papers published in '91-'97 or something like that, and is actually listed in Microsoft research Systems & Networking under "Previous projects" mentioning some prototypes, but nothing big. Also, Millenium project page doesn't say much. Under the only available prototype page Coign the earliers reference to it is a paper presented in February '97, which thus is likely to date this project.
Perhaps it would be worth trying to date the papers before noting "Nothing new, same old same old". Four years ago this might not have been a vision from heaven, but it wasn't "same old" all the way. Especially trying to create prototype implementations of the features presented.
Microsoft research group actually does research and tries to innovate. Please don't include them in the general Microsoft conspiracy theories (except as providers of prototypes used to achieve world domination).
At my former employer, software was written cheap. There usually were no requirements (at least no written ones), no real management, and the execs wanted the deals in.
So, sometimes a project manager had a moment of brilliant thought when writing a schedule, time estimates, and budget, and happened to ask some senior developer "how long would this take, who'd need to work on this". With the answers (still not good, due to lack of information) he'd go on and get a decent schedule, time estimate and budget.
However, then the sales intervened with "the customer needs this faster and won't pay that much". If the project manager again happened to understand what's going on, and asked the senior developer about if those changes were possible and what would need to be cut, and reworked the numbers, they'd still be over the sales requirements.
Now, some exec who wants that particular deal in takes the numbers and the sales requirements (max time and money, both at most half the schedule and budget) and finds another project manager until someone takes the deal and decides he can make it happen.
Of course then the schedule and budget are blown, the customer is unhappy and the company makes loss with the project.
Some of us got sick with the company. We talked with the management, disagreed about the future, strategy, and basically everything there was. We walked out and formed a new company.
Now, we have written project orders with written requirements and written acceptance criteria. We give reasonable estimates about time and money, and if the customer doesn't want to pay that much or wait that long, we don't get the contract. However, we still have customers who're willing to wait and pay for programs that work, are documented, and tested. And the developers are happier.
And I'm a lot happier. Now I don't need to take deals that would need to be done "just well enough that the program works".
Drug companies don't make all that good profit. Try calculating returns of investment with reasonable risk profiles for eg. just the fortune 500 companies and see it yourself. And try to make the risk profiles reasonable.
I write software. For fun, and for money.
For fun, I write software I happen to need, or someone else happends to need. For money, I write software some company happens to need.
When I write software for money, I agree that the customer owns all rights I usually would own to software I write. I agree to many things, including schedules, quality of documentation and code, coding style, test procedures, acceptance criteria, and so on. All the usual contract stuff.
In the end, I'm paid pretty well. I produce code and documentation I can be proud of. I might not be a gee-whiz all-night coder, nor the zen master. But I still produce decent quality in decent time, pretty consistently. That's why I can do that for living.
However, if the customer would have to open the code to everyone else when they ship a product containing the code, my work would be worth less to the customer, and thus I would be paid less. When the customer chooses to open some of the produced code and documentation, that's OK, and I'm all the happier. But if they had to, always, all the code? To their competitors? Code that cost them quite a lot. And their competitors wouldn't need to pay a dime.
Of course things are more complex than that, and would be even if all code would be free.
I'd agree that some things (like the period for which copyrights and patents are granted) aren't as well as they could be, but abolishing copyrights is not the solution. Perhaps the rights granted to producers of immaterial goods should be rethought and remodeled, but taking them away completely isn't a good idea.
Yes, bundling is done. Like, I have to get one game with PS2 and so on. Adds about 10% to the price of the box. And, why would I buy the console without a game? As far as I can pick the game, it's OK.
;)
However, "everyone" is not going to force You to buy extras worth twice the price of the barebones system. I don't need to get a second controller, wheel and pedals, and three games someone else chose for me when I buy the PS2.
And guess what? I will buy the consoles due to games. That is, I don't have a PS2, as the games I want it for weren't out when I last visited gaming stores. When they are, I'll happily get the games I want in the bundle with the PS2 - perhaps I'll even save a dollar or two in the deal..
Even if sometimes an investment can return tenfold, the businesses where that occurs are ones that often have 100% loss from investments.
A company that creates the cure for cancer (for example) has already made massive R&D in several areas, and have to cover losses where research doesn't lead to a profitable product.
If such a situation arises where a company has something it's not willing to license or sell but is important for the general healthcare, the governments will act.
However, remember that if medicine is sold at 1% of the usual price to the poorest countries, rich people will try to smuggle the medicine back because it'd still be only a fraction of the price in western countries, so a balance has to be struck so that the poor countries get it for a price that wouldn't actually even cover the R&D while the price of R&D is taken from the rich countries.
Going against the general Slashdot hivemind, I agree with Dolby in this. AC-3 (Dolby Digital) is patented technology, actually has required research and is very good, effective and inventive .
White papers are available from Dolby's website, and the technology is free for all to look at, with some exceptions (uses some noise reduction methods not described in the freely available white papers).
And, if Dolby wants, they can charge license fees. However, I wouldn't be surprised if they'd grant the LinuxTV team a free license with restrictions. Dolby labs isn't evil, but they're a business and mostly IPR company that licenses technology for manufacturers of consumer electronics. They have their own professional devices, though. So the license might have eg. restrictions about using the technology in an embedded system (eg. Nokia MediaTerminal, but Nokia can afford the license if they want to).
Also, from my discussion with Dolby Labs at one time when I was considering writing Pro Logic & Pro Logic II codec I would say that they are friendly. They required that they get the code for review before I'm allowed to say that it is Dolby anything compatible, but assured me that if it's free, open source software, they wouldn't charge licensing fees.
Mind You, I've read the scenarios created by the Finnish ministries of environment, industry and finance. There are different scenarios for compliance with Kyoto treaty and non-compliance ("Lets just continue as if nothing happened"). Compliance scenarios include both stupid ones ("Lets reduce use of energy") because the green party always wants to see those, but also different ways of keeping up with the requirements and assumed growth of energy use.
In the end, there are scenarios that don't cost all that much - the cheapest one was roughly EUR 250 / person in the timeframe 2001-2010. Or about 50/person/year (assuming that the costs are spread over five year period).
And, some parties (including some corps) have already started acting as would be needed to comply with Kyoto treaty, whether ratified or not.
For USA, compliance would actually save money in the long run - just upgrade Your old, non-economical facilities to new, economical and environmental ones. Savings come mainly from the facts that upgrading to environmentally sound facilities while upgrading to economical ones is pretty cheap, and that it would create lots of activity in the environment industry, thus more work, more jobs, and the money stays in the country. Not to say that it would ease dealing with the green fanatics (unlikely that it would help with the ecoterrorists, but most other environmentalists would react positively).
Now, it would be clear that if US ratified the Kyoto treaty, all EU countries would, too. But, as the pollution of USA is actually more than the whole EU, the treaty is pretty much meaningless unless USA complies. Even if EU did everything required, unless USA complies, too, pollution wouldn't lessen much.
However, as we like living in such conditions that we can safely breath the air, EU commission has long been working on different environmental directives that, even if Kyoto treaty isn't ratified, will work towards the same end. However, as that's not global and won't affect USA, it only means that the responsibility shifts mainly o USA, as its share of the global pollution will grow from the current roughly 30% (with population of about 4% - that's eight times the average).
And no, I'm not an environmentalist, left wing radical, or alike. I'm capitalist, pretty much right wing for Finland. But, I still think we should try to be efficient in use of resources, not wasteful. The technology for efficient, clean, environmentally sound production in about any industry You can name exists and is already reasonably cheap. Of course we can do better, given time and new inventions, and I'm not requiring all companies to upgrade to bleeding edge technology. However, not using clean technology where such is available is stupid. Just try to see a little farther than the bottom line of the next quarter or next year.
However, DVD as a term is perfectly good to describe the media used to distribute software. Aren't DVD-RW and DVD-RAM different physical media using different encoding from DVD-ROM? The filesystem can be the same, though.
While DVD-Video and -Audio discs are physically the same as DVD-ROM and use the same encoding, able to fit same amount of data, the difference lies in how the encoded data is interpreted. You can read DVD-Video and DVD-Audio discs using DVD-ROM, and they actually contain the same filesystem as standard DVD-ROM. It's just that they have specific files in specific directories, even some files in specific physical locations.
My preference is original language audio with English subtitles. It's rare for any dub to come close to the quality of the original - although there are some.
And, Finland is so small market that the translations aren't all that good. Fortunately dubbing is rare and subs are cheaper, so we mostly have decent to good subs. However, I still often go rather for English sub than Finnish one.
Oh yes, mostly I don't even have a choice.. I can either go for R2 original Japanese edition which I wouldn't understand, or R1 US English language edition. No European (let alone Finnish) release.
It's probably Linux because that way they get an OS that doesn't cost a dime (and remember that 10 million units times a couple of bucks means lots in licensing costs), an OS that has the features they need (less manpower needed to write design and write the features), and lastly, an OS that has supporters, meaning there will be more software for the device than Nokia could ever hope to write (or other third party companies would write).
Looking at Nokia, they sell hardware. Not software. So, to them it's not a big deal to give the software away, as their product is the hardware, and the software is pretty useless without hardware.
Also, think about it from the employer viewpoint: You need 20 kernel developers. Is it easier (and cheaper) to get 20 Linux hackers or 20 psOS hackers?
In the end it comes down to usability. If it's easy to use, most people won't care if it's Linux or some proprietary rtos. So the software available from Nokia (the "official" software) must be easy to use.
Remember that there are different divisions in Nokia. Nokia Mobile Phones isn't all that open, but even they're considering the implications of open source.
The MediaTerminal is, I think, produced by some emerging division currently under Nokia Ventures Organization. This means that if it doesn't sell, they'll just drop the issue and count that venture as one of the failures (and they can drop a project at 100s of MEURs deciding it was RnD that went nowhere). However, the new ventures are more open towards open source community.
Regarding Linux and Nokia.. In one open source seminar someone (forgetting names) from Nokia talked about embedded software and open source. They had actually had Linux running on (forgetting details, I think it was ADSL modem) but in that case it wasn't stable enough and they dropped it in favour of some other OS (don't remember which one).
Oh yes, if I remember correctly, MediaScreen was running Linux on some PPC chip. Had quite a lot of flash and RAM, big screen, embedded GSM modem and DVB-T receiver, was video conferensing ready, and so on. I wonder how much that'd had cost should it have made it to retail.. Just a showpiece, though. Of course I don't know if they considered it as a product or a prototype.
When I first heard the name "MediaTerminal" I was thinking only about DigiTV. However, the product specs already suggested something more than that.. It was far too much for just a set-top box.
l
Go see yourself: http://www.nokia.com/multimedia/mediaterminal.htm
Whatever it really is meant to be, it solves my problems regarding "What kind of computer could I connect to my home stereo/video systems" although I expect that to be pretty expensive.
Actually IT shortage exists. But it's not so much about shortage of people, it's shortage of highly skilled and qualified people.
Given that You can't replace a highly skilled person with one, two, or even three average workers - only with someone of similar skill, and that not everyone is suited to the field, the shortage is pretty hard to get over. So, we're going to see even more average people in the field.
Of course there are lots of positions that are suited for people not so highly skilled in some aspects of the craft (art? I prefer craft). People with higher social skills are better in many support positions. People with social and organizational skills are better in project management. And most of the people in the field who have some organizational skills are well suited for programming and administration.
The people with special insight in the craft should be doing design and analysis - whether network security design or software architecture design.
However, that would require that things would be done in organized, planned manner - not in the chaotic way. In chaotic programming, everyone participating should be highly skilled and able to do design changes on the spot. In organized and planned software development it's easier for most people to work productively.
So, if employees noticed this and started to plan, organize and document procedures and processes, they'd notice that there really isn't shortage of qualified staff. Until that time, only some individuals can pull the projects to successfull conclusion.
Of course planned and organized project might take a little longer to conclude because of the additional organizational overhead, but at least then the result would be consistently forseeable. Now, the result is dependent on the heroics of few.
Happily, some companies have pretty good staff able to pull off a miracle after another. But always there are those who can't.