Its actually one of the easiest O.S to install and work with when it comes to back-end servers for running network infrastructure type services (vpn, firewall, chat server, torrent server, dns, dhcp etc. etc.) - nothing comes close.
What are some reasons for OpenBSD not being a more popular OS on web servers? I always wondered about this, as on paper OpenBSD (and FreeBSD) seem like they have the edge but most server admins end up running linux. Another case of linux being slightly easier to use and doing the job well enough?
I'm a big fan of FreeBSD/OpenBSD as server OS's. I've put OpenBSD/pf to great use as firewall machines, as they're VERY easy to configure, and the docs are most everything you need. FreeBSD has been great for general-purpose workloads.
For some time OpenBSD has been regarded as "slow", in big part because it couldn't use large amounts of RAM, and it scaled across multiple cores poorly. I'm not sure if this is still the case.
OpenBSD has never had performance as a driving criteria, and has for long time, both justly and unjustly, been considered "slow", especially on machines with more than two CPUs, when compared to Linux and FreeBSD. Though it's been 6 years or so since I did any sort of serious large scale sysadmin work with it so I don't know if things have changed.
OpenBSD is not friendly to the kind of newbie who prefers HOWTOs, GUI admin tools, etc. It does have excellent man pages and tasteful text-based tools, though - e.g. http://www.openbsd.org/faq/pf/example1.html#allrules is enough to configure a SOHO firewall.
Hmm, really? I love OpenBSD, but last I checked the installer tells you to create slices then drops you straight into fdisk. Has this been polished up? I'm just concerned "one of the easiest to install" would give a n00b the wrong impression.
There is a specific / very specific case missing here - Working on the Trading Floor.
I have found that the general noise + energy level of a Floor gives you a natural high and it also drowns out individual Phone calls + conversations (which tend to be the most distracting). Additionally, in my case i only get interrupted via email and very rarely via IM, so it works for me.
A definite plus move and the canny thing is locating it near the existing "Tech Triangle" - Shoreditch and moving Eastwards towards Stratford.
That part of London is cheap, well connected and has a large immigrant population. It will be interesting to see how this pans out in reality , but all the good signs are there.
Shoreditch is anything but cheap. It'll fall off pretty quick by the time you get to Stratford though.
I lived in Tower Hamlets (ie, the area in question) for 10 years and loved it. A lot of native Londoners look down on it as it has a reputation and is kinda rough around the edges. I understand a lot has changed in the last few years with the financial collapse and them dumping money in to the area in the build up to the Olympics.
Paisa.com is geared towards the Indian stock markets. BSE/NSE prices/stats are all available. For the current status, take a look at the chart on top right corner.
The Asia dropdown shows other markets in Asia since it's in the world markets section.
Yes - he did cancel the Billion Dollar contract but not because I.T suddenly became a core competency. Non-front office facing I.T is being pushed to cheaper locations - primarily to Scotland and Southampton in the UK and is not considered a Core Competency , its outsourcing in a different form , its called IN-Sourcing.
The primary reason for the cancellation of the contract was the sheer amount of beauracracy IBM imposed. Their modus-operandi was - pick up staff who were working in "non-critical" areas and make them report to IBM managers. So now all-of a sudden if i need to get something from our DBA i can't walk upto him and ask him , i need to raise a request in a god-awful system which goes to his manager who would be sitting in a remote location in a different time-zone "managing" the work-load of the DBA who sits 5 feet away from me. In the majority of the cases for access to sysadmins and DBA's who were an integral part of your team before you now had to go through this route.
I will leave the readers to draw their own conclusions to this marvellous scheme.
Yeah, but it probably worked out pretty well for IBM, and lazy/mediocre managers could pretty easily abdicate responsibility for things while not getting fired for buying IBM.
"Equally" is a loaded word but depending on the areas you work in, a software engineer can make a lot of money in Hedge Funds and IB's. The key differentiator is how "close" you are to the Front-Office.
Practical Definitions:
An Employee is part of the liability on a company's balance-sheet, its a cost to be pruned when the going gets tough. IN any large company worth its name he is just a number on the wrong side of the Balance Sheet, how good/loyal he is almost completely irrelevant.
A Contractor is a resource and his cost comes from the Project's budget. A manager's position is strengthened by managing ever larger(read costlier) projects , it is in the manager's interest to have more resources(read contractors).
End Definitions.
Contractors by their very nature have no say in the corporate political power game thereby not threatening a manager's position. If something doesn't work out and its time for a scape-goat , contractors can very easily be dismissed , letting go of an employee is a much more onerous task.Given a choice a Manager will almost always opt for a contractor and to top it all of Contractors earn more cash.
Why would one want to be an employee in any large corporate entity ?
"Given a choice a Manager will almost always opt for a contractor and to top it all of Contractors earn more cash."
This hasn't been my experience at real-world medium-size companies around here. I have friends in several, but almost everyone's IT department has a VP or director that has a policy of "absolutely no contractors", so I can't get a foot in the door at any of these places. If they want something done, they _only_ do it internally. They will buy outside products, but they will not outsource development work.
The other medium-big companies in the area have contracts with big groups like RHT or EDS, which is really frustrating and annoying.
Well, the reasoning behind this is obvious. What is the value of a high tech company? It's not "the brand", it's not that it owns a pile of servers in a datacentre somewhere, it's not even in the code in its version control. It's that it is a group of people able to identify and solve new and commercially relevant problems, and that that group possesses a great deal of institutional knowledge. A contractor has self-consciously decided to discount that kind of knowledge; therefore what they can contribute in such an environment is only what could be automated anyway.
My experience has been mainly with large/very large Financial institutions and this is almost always the case.
Manager gets money for Project , hires contractors , if project deemed successful , more money, more contractors , if project deemed failure , fire contractors move on.
Cycle repeats.
From what i know that was the original intention behind Slang and SecDB. Standardization of use across different departments and in some ways a way to subvert the politics.
Another day - another article on outsourcing. This is not particularly new or newsworthy i think. All kinds of grunt work across different industries will move to cheaper locations , its just inevitable.
India seems to remain THE outsourcing destination for information-based industries, whether software, legal work, accounting gruntwork, securities analysis or whatever.
Seems like the last 4 yrs has seen a sudden growth in legal work going there which will no doubt transform that industry the way IT has been. Will Hollywood someday move everything to Bollywood, as Canada and NZ become more expensive?
