Also RDRAM is a lot faster than SDRAM so you are gonna pay more for the performance increase.
For values of "a lot faster" approaching 1-2%, yes. None of the benchmarks I've seen for RDRAM are that impressive, certainly not "pay 5 times as much" impressive...
I bought an FIC SD-11. It's fast, had every feature I wanted, stable & they had tons in stock at a good price. The other boards seem to comparable.
My question is just why this is a problem. You've got a selection of good boards at good prices, all of which are in stock. Even if there are only a few companies making them, why would this prevent you from buying an Athlon? Isn't this really a good thing in that it gives all of the manufacturers better volume than the more contested Intel market, thereby increasing the benefit for standing up to Intel?
There are a lot of know-nothings raised on Windows who are desparate to see a registry on Linux. Occasionally they even pop up on Slashdot. Don't listen to them, fight them with every breath in your body. In their ignorance they'd destroy Linux's greatest asset - stability.
I don't know that I'd agree completely with this - if you assume a system shipping standard with a real relational database, there's definitely something to be said for a single interface, particularly as things like transactions would be useful for installation and proper relationship & check rules would be really handy for large systems ("Foolish PFY, you tried to use a string instead of an integer. Nice try!").
Of course, in real life, you get Close Enough using the filesystem under/etc if you enforce a sane directory/file structure. We just need to civilize those remaining programs (e.g. sendmail) which use arcane mutant config syntax...
What does it say that even people on slashdot.org find those outfits ludicrous? I mean, how does a designer spin the fact that even a bunch of geeks think the outfit counteracts the model's looks? Only the ones which showed enough skin seemed to get positive comments...
Personally, the whole show looks like the sort of thing Wired gets parodied for ("We're hip. We're with it. We get it! Really! Stop Laughing!"). Very few of those looked like anyone had done even basic UI thought - the very first picture has a wearable that is less convenient than a desktop PC! I was also disappointed to see that the designers still think people find the heavily drugged look appealing, too.
Shareware hell? I've got a total of one app that I needed to register - Mail-it - and a bunch of open-source stuff. The same open-source stuff that I use on a linux box. Where does the shareware hell come from?
I use Windows becuase it's easy to install a program, becuase it's easy to see what im doing, where im going and how to get there. I use it because when i want an mp3 dbasing util, i can download a single package, and install it with a mouse click. I don't need to hunt for an obscure library file, i don't need to make sure that it will run with the Window Manager i want to use, i don't need to decode version numbers of updates to work out what i need and don't need. This may sound lazy, but i don't have the time to do this, i don't have the energy to do this, i don't have the knowledge to do this. Most of the market that Linux needs to reach out and grab is like me, the computer techs are sold, the geeks and nerds are sold, the average user ? not yet, they will, but not yet.
Please don't get me wrong, i love the concept of linux, open-sourced, free, community built and driven, and i would switch back in minutes given the chance, but linux really needs that single element that MS still has, Gloss and simplicity.
Unfortunately, having had to support desktop Windows installations, I have to say that "simplicity" is why I don't use Windows. Re-fixpacking every five seconds, hunting down DLL versions that work with all of your applications, getting Microsoft apps to leave everything else alone, etc. It's just too much of a hassle. (I don't like MacOS for similar reasons, although the interface is arguably easier for, say, my grandmother to use)
Linux is definitely worse from a simplicity stand-point and I think the people who consider it a non-techie desktop replacement are getting way ahead of themselves. I use linux on servers and my desktop, but I'm also not going to be scared about using installing the latest Netscape (or compiling it for that matter). The reason why I consider Linux a win over Windows is that, although it may not be as simple, it's much more predictable. I've never had a Linux system where an application magically corrupts itself to the point where you need a fresh reinstall of the operating system.
What I've been eyeing as a potential desktop OS replacement is BeOS. It's got a very slick and polished GUI and, unlike Linux, the user never needs to go near a command prompt if they don't want to; if they do, they'll find a well equipped command prompt with all the usual Unix software (lots of ported OpenSource stuff). They just aren't forced to use it. It's got very solid multitasking and handles a heavy load much better than Windows (it's a tossup between BeOS and Linux on my machine as far as scalability goes) with very well developed multimedia support, too.
The best part, however, is the speed. Installing it took something like 15 minutes, which consisted of telling it which partition to use and most of the time was spent copying files off of the CD. A 5 second reboot later, everything was up and running - no plug and pray, no hardware configuration dialogs. The only config I had to do was providing my IP address to the network driver. Everything else was auto-detected without more than a second's delay.
The bottom line: BeOS is fast, extremely stable and it's got a very easy GUI. My mother could install this and use it without training even though it's also got enough neat technology that I find it interesting as well.
I don't know about you, but I find it very annoying to have to use each individual's unmunging scheme. Munging is just irritating - my filters take care of incoming SPAM and I don't have to worry about munging addresses.
Isn't using a Palm PC to cruise the web kind of like using a hand drill when you need a blowtorch when you need to drill a hole?
No. It's handy keeping web-based reference on that hand-held form-factor. I have AvantGo pull news sites down so they're handy the next time I'm waiting somewhere & killing time. It's also nice for admins - I've got a VT100 serial terminal, all of my site-specific details for configuration (safely blowfish encrypted) and just about anything else I might need for a little impromptu configuration.
Of course, the notorious answer for this is the simple: "Ever try to use your PC from the can?"
Both of my regular boxes run full GUIs. I still don't think a color Palm Pilot is useful & that's just based on batter life. One of the nicest things about the Palm pilot, and the reason why those color PDAs are basically flops in comparison, is that it just works. You change batteries every month or two and it's there when you need it. The color devices have much shorter battery life because of the displays. Color is nice and as soon as color devices perform as well as greyscale, I'll buy one (Not Wince unless they realize it's not a desktop & design a PDA GUI). The concern is that color will be used as a gimmick. I don't want color if it comes at the expense of making the device less useful than my current Visor and Palm IIIe. Personally, I find wireless networking far more useful, even if it is (to some) less cool. That said, I quite agree with your last point - let them make whatever they want. If it's worth the money, I'll buy it...
While the figures cited are somewhat bloated, there's a lot more cost associated with something like this than simply putting the cracked page back up. I've worked in organizations where this has happened (not my fault, though;>) and it usually leads to 1-2 weeks of beefing up security to prevent the same thing from happening again.
This isn't something that can be blamed on the crackers, though. Beefing up security is something that should have been done anyway. It's like buying a lock for the front door after someone walked in...
They cite a webpage that's making $18 million per day. If it's down for a day, that's $18 million they just lost.
An $18,000,000 site should have backup servers, frequent backup tapes and so forth.
What about disaster recovery - how were they planning to handle things if there was a hurricane, earthquake, fire, etc. Lose $18M/day until Sun ships them a new box?
If they're making that kind of money, shouldn't they have at least one full-time security guru?
If they didn't do any of the above (necessary to claim the kind of damage they're [fraudulently] claiming) aren't they going to be liable for some sort of share-holders lawsuit, just like I would be if I set up a huge shopping mall and was too cheap to buy locks or hire guards? (Note that the cost of everything abouve would be under 5% of a single days revenue, if their figures were true (unlikely))
I really hate it when people go off bashing the administrators when they haven't necessarily done anything wrong or incompetantly at all. These guys are the victims. The script kiddies that mount these downloadable attacks are the people we need to be fighting here.
I quite agree. However, there are two points which the original poster made which were quite good:
Ludicrously inflated costs - $300K to clean up a server? Does it really take 4 man-years? Personally, I think this is a case of management choosing to hide costs in something they won't take political heat for. I expect Y2k will have similar abusers...
A non-trivial number of sites that are broken into had not been patched in months or years. This really isn't excusable for a system with a full-time admin and, I'm sure you'd agree, is quite different from being one of the "lucky" front-liners when some new attack appears.
First of all, you assume that mongamy == morality. I disagree. Anyway, I don't have statistics handy, but there are plenty of ways to get AIDS:
I didn't claim "monogamy == morality" - the people the original poster mention equate the two. The issue was not whether or not their opinion was right but rather whether living your life the way they want would reduce the risk of AIDS, which is true. Another poster posted some numbers - drug usage and homosexual sex were listed as the most common disease vectors by the CDC by a hefty margin. Without getting into issues of whether those practices are right or wrong, it's pretty obvious that they do increase your risk (which was my point).
The first two of these do not count as immoral in anybody's book.
You'd be surprised. There are those who consider blood transfusions wrong and there's a growing body of medical evidence suggesting that non-blood surgery is not only safer but also more effective.
Also, plenty of people who might fit your definition of morality in that they only have one partner at a time might have more than one partner in a lifetime and thus spread AIDS or some other STD.
Also quite true - I never claimed otherwise. However, if you follow what the original poster might have described as the right-wing fundamentalist lifestyle (sex only with spouse) it reduces the transmission risk to the accidental ones you mentioned.
As you might expect, www.be.com has some information. Basically, Stinger is the BeOS trimmed down for internet appliances. They've demoed it on NatSemi's webpads using Opera at a couple shows.
Usually they inflate the costs of these things if they're trying to get damages from someone (the word "E911" comes to mind). I'd be surprised if they weren't counting a large percentage of the R&D costs in that prototype.
Yeah, but the point is as long as you're using the data to make money, which is what your company and you indirectly are doing, you should pay a fee. And, you should be willing to pay a fee.
Huh? I never claimed otherwise - I was just trying to point out that there are reasons for buying such data other than sending out bushels of junk mail. I quite agree - if I'm using it, I pay the fee. If $900 is a show-stopping expense, your project is too underfunded to work anyway...
That said, the only people who have a use for a large database of zipcodes are mass marketers
There are also a few of us demented web developers who've wanted to do address validation in the past while selling stuff online. (Not just for billing, either. Doing a lookup is a good way of reducing the number of mis-delivered packages. ("According to the USPS, that address doesn't exist. Send anyway?") For some businesses this can add up to a non-trivial savings.)
I believe you'll find that the licensing issue comes from the costs in distributing the data. The full database is fairly large large and there's apparently a bit of cleanup involved as well (Also IIRC, the data was developed for internal usage; as is often the case it needs a little packaging before being sent outside). If you look at the costs, it's around a $900 to get a copy on CD-ROM according to the price guide on page 113 of the USPS's product doc. I think once you factor in the production costs (which aren't amortized over a huge distribution base) this is probably not that unreasonable. Unless I'm mis-remembering, government agencies are allowed to charge fees to cover production costs on information, even if they're required to give it to you. Even though the USPS has a somewhat unusual position compared to more traditional government agencies, this probably still applies.
'm a Unix sysadmin in a shop with several S/390's and the only experience I have with them is network data transfer. Between the Sun 6000 and Sun 10000 I can get 66 Mbps using ftp across our 100bps network. From an S/390 I only get 21 Mbps. Of course, you're talking about aggregate disk transfer rates, not network speeds. Do you know of any resource where test results are actually available?
Not really. I have found a couple articles in the last year or so talking about places that are actually using S/390s as high-end webservers, strictly because they can handle such high traffic volumes on database-backed sites. Your quoted network rates make me wonder if somone decided it'd be cheaper to get the El Crappo network adapter; also, I believe the TCP/IP stack was somewhat suboptimal until comparatively recent versions.
You're right though, the big selling point has been disk transfer, not network. The biggest gain from the mainframe at that point is that these things have heavily decentralized storage systems, which becomes really when you have thousands of simultaneous users all doing disk I/O. This is similar to the performance gains of SCSI with multiple programs doing disk I/O but more so. Those people I've seen using them for webservers had the common scenario where a given page-load might only generate a 50-100K of network traffic but it'd have to chew through megabytes or gigabytes worth of DB/2 tables to generate that 100K.
What is the value of a Linux port to the S/390? The price/performance ratio would be awful -- even before taking into account the hardware maintenance costs of an S/390.
People aren't buying S/390s to play Quake on. The real selling point for these systems is data transfer and reliability. Take a look at the data transfer rates you see on one of these boxes - there's a good reason why some ridiculous percentage of the data in the world (I've seen estimates in the 50-70% range) is sitting on storage connected to an IBM mainframe.
Local dealer advertising? Give me a break. They don't show much of anything; they just blather on about deals and "Hi, mom!".
Not the "Meet Cal Worthington & his dog" blither. I was referring more to what I've noticed with my friends & family - when someone's looking for a new vehicle, they're going to get a copy of the newspaper or magazine (e.g. regionals like the AutoTrader or Car & Driver, Consumer Reports & similar) and compare prices.
The only manufacturers who really seem to benefit from brand-awareness campaigns are the new ones (e.g. Killed-In-Action, etc); otherwise, it's usually a question of who's offering more for less.
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My question is just why this is a problem. You've got a selection of good boards at good prices, all of which are in stock. Even if there are only a few companies making them, why would this prevent you from buying an Athlon? Isn't this really a good thing in that it gives all of the manufacturers better volume than the more contested Intel market, thereby increasing the benefit for standing up to Intel?
Of course, in real life, you get Close Enough using the filesystem under /etc if you enforce a sane directory/file structure. We just need to civilize those remaining programs (e.g. sendmail) which use arcane mutant config syntax...
Personally, the whole show looks like the sort of thing Wired gets parodied for ("We're hip. We're with it. We get it! Really! Stop Laughing!"). Very few of those looked like anyone had done even basic UI thought - the very first picture has a wearable that is less convenient than a desktop PC! I was also disappointed to see that the designers still think people find the heavily drugged look appealing, too.
Linux is definitely worse from a simplicity stand-point and I think the people who consider it a non-techie desktop replacement are getting way ahead of themselves. I use linux on servers and my desktop, but I'm also not going to be scared about using installing the latest Netscape (or compiling it for that matter). The reason why I consider Linux a win over Windows is that, although it may not be as simple, it's much more predictable. I've never had a Linux system where an application magically corrupts itself to the point where you need a fresh reinstall of the operating system.
What I've been eyeing as a potential desktop OS replacement is BeOS. It's got a very slick and polished GUI and, unlike Linux, the user never needs to go near a command prompt if they don't want to; if they do, they'll find a well equipped command prompt with all the usual Unix software (lots of ported OpenSource stuff). They just aren't forced to use it. It's got very solid multitasking and handles a heavy load much better than Windows (it's a tossup between BeOS and Linux on my machine as far as scalability goes) with very well developed multimedia support, too.
The best part, however, is the speed. Installing it took something like 15 minutes, which consisted of telling it which partition to use and most of the time was spent copying files off of the CD. A 5 second reboot later, everything was up and running - no plug and pray, no hardware configuration dialogs. The only config I had to do was providing my IP address to the network driver. Everything else was auto-detected without more than a second's delay.
The bottom line: BeOS is fast, extremely stable and it's got a very easy GUI. My mother could install this and use it without training even though it's also got enough neat technology that I find it interesting as well.
(A few weeks ago, I summarized my experiences installing stuff on my new PC.)
I don't know about you, but I find it very annoying to have to use each individual's unmunging scheme. Munging is just irritating - my filters take care of incoming SPAM and I don't have to worry about munging addresses.
FTHI:
Of course, the notorious answer for this is the simple: "Ever try to use your PC from the can?"
Both of my regular boxes run full GUIs. I still don't think a color Palm Pilot is useful & that's just based on batter life. One of the nicest things about the Palm pilot, and the reason why those color PDAs are basically flops in comparison, is that it just works. You change batteries every month or two and it's there when you need it. The color devices have much shorter battery life because of the displays. Color is nice and as soon as color devices perform as well as greyscale, I'll buy one (Not Wince unless they realize it's not a desktop & design a PDA GUI). The concern is that color will be used as a gimmick. I don't want color if it comes at the expense of making the device less useful than my current Visor and Palm IIIe. Personally, I find wireless networking far more useful, even if it is (to some) less cool. That said, I quite agree with your last point - let them make whatever they want. If it's worth the money, I'll buy it...
http://www.be.com/products/beappliance/ http://www.be.com/press/pressreleases/99-11-16_sem i.html
As you might expect, www.be.com has some information. Basically, Stinger is the BeOS trimmed down for internet appliances. They've demoed it on NatSemi's webpads using Opera at a couple shows.
Usually they inflate the costs of these things if they're trying to get damages from someone (the word "E911" comes to mind). I'd be surprised if they weren't counting a large percentage of the R&D costs in that prototype.
I believe you'll find that the licensing issue comes from the costs in distributing the data. The full database is fairly large large and there's apparently a bit of cleanup involved as well (Also IIRC, the data was developed for internal usage; as is often the case it needs a little packaging before being sent outside). If you look at the costs, it's around a $900 to get a copy on CD-ROM according to the price guide on page 113 of the USPS's product doc. I think once you factor in the production costs (which aren't amortized over a huge distribution base) this is probably not that unreasonable. Unless I'm mis-remembering, government agencies are allowed to charge fees to cover production costs on information, even if they're required to give it to you. Even though the USPS has a somewhat unusual position compared to more traditional government agencies, this probably still applies.
You're right though, the big selling point has been disk transfer, not network. The biggest gain from the mainframe at that point is that these things have heavily decentralized storage systems, which becomes really when you have thousands of simultaneous users all doing disk I/O. This is similar to the performance gains of SCSI with multiple programs doing disk I/O but more so. Those people I've seen using them for webservers had the common scenario where a given page-load might only generate a 50-100K of network traffic but it'd have to chew through megabytes or gigabytes worth of DB/2 tables to generate that 100K.
Not the "Meet Cal Worthington & his dog" blither. I was referring more to what I've noticed with my friends & family - when someone's looking for a new vehicle, they're going to get a copy of the newspaper or magazine (e.g. regionals like the AutoTrader or Car & Driver, Consumer Reports & similar) and compare prices.
The only manufacturers who really seem to benefit from brand-awareness campaigns are the new ones (e.g. Killed-In-Action, etc); otherwise, it's usually a question of who's offering more for less.