Floschi has an update:”Quality over time in Munich”

“There is not just a technical switch from proprietary to open standards and free software, but also a general improvement and reorganization of Munich’s IT. A reorganization to centralized IT services for our linux client. Nowadays we’re doing much more than planned in 2003, to gain an efficient and sustainable IT structure, based on open standards and free software. That’s a long-term strategic objective, not just related to free software.”

I have enough trouble bringing one LAN segment into the 21st century. Imagine the work they have done for 12. They are in no hurry. They will just go to GNU/Linux in an organized fashion instead of “7″. It makes a lot of sense to me.

If they are at the stage where in any of these 12 municipal departments they can just haul in a thin client or switch a machine to PXE boot then they are not almost done. Essentially, they ARE DONE.

Yes. I know Windows can do Terminal Services. Ever dealt with the licensing nightmare that comes with it?

Have another CAL. Thanks, but no thanks.

Arguing that batch converting with a single command is less efficient than opening them one by one in Excel and printing them to a PDF virtual printer, really.. want to try to do that to a couple hundred files?

Around the turn of the century I was sysadmin for a company that grew from less then 10 to over 60 employees over a few years. Because of a tight budget that meant ending up with a mix of Windows 98, ME, 2000, and XP workstations. And of course flex workspaces with roaming profiles were a must.

BSOD galore whenever people moved from one workstation to another. Or moaning and groaning that it took so long to log in (because someone decided to keep a folder with a few hundred MP3′s on their DESKTOP). I can only imagine the same thing spread over fifteen thousand workstations. 1000 people to maintain 15000 workspaces. That’s one person for each measly fifteen machines. A capable sysadmin can easily manage a handful of servers and several hundred thin clients by him or herself. Back then I spent more time keeping inventory of Office/Windows/ProprietaryCrap licenses then actually getting any real work done.

So in Munich they will be able to unify all their workstations to whatever release of KDE they are happy with, without ever haveing to move from workstation to workstation or taking a single EUROpenny of taxpayers’ money for software upgrades. Never mind that fact that the all of Germany, and the entire WORLD might benefit from the work of Munich’s inhouse developers.

Give it another ten years and y’all might realize that proprietary “commercially unsupported” software is SO last century.

Bash runs my system but it is used for command/control not production, most times, so it is not on the radar for CPU load. On a website using PHP in the same manner, that will also be true.

Egad, yes, we’ve been through this before, even the interpreter itself is written in C most of the time (obvious exception being Java, which is written using itself), in the case of a webapp, the server itself is often written in C (with the exception of j2ee), the DBMS is often written in C as well (with the exception of j2ee), the actual web programming, however in something like 99% of use cases is nopt being done in C, and is never done on high volume websites which was the original point of contention.

It can certainly be done (and more power to you for having the patience to do it with Pascal (I don’t find the tradeoff in effort/time worth the marginal perf boost mind you, though I get the best of both worlds with Java).

In fact, the closest thing to a high traffic website being done in compiled code is sites built with Java, since the VM compiles oft-accessed parts into bytecode, though it can be compiled, Java is nevertheless an interpreted language, mind you.

Of course, if you pretend that the server, it modules, database, the underlying operating system and the interpreter itself is the website (it isn’t), then sure, but then you’re grasping at straws while performing a monumental goalpost switch, but your inition assertion (regarding high volume websites) would still be wrong on the grounds that Java powers the huge majority of the enterprise (by many accounts, the very definition of ‘high volume’ and ‘mission critical’), and in a j2ee environment, the whole stack, down to the VM itself is written in Java (which is interpreted), but then I suppose you could argue that the underlying OS is written in C, ergo C is doing all the heavy lifting, even though it serves the sole purpose of running the VM.

Of course, never mind that the whole thing is a giant red herring aimed at an argument nobody actually made, which in and of itself is a poor (failed) attempt to blur the distinction between the actual point of contention (web sites) and something else (the underlying web server).

• shorter hours of daylight is stressful for many
• students are ESL with no English milieu
• curricula/resources designed for the South do not work here
• weather – ten to twenty degrees C colder in winter
• no A&W, McDonalds, shopping malls, etc.
• limited entertainment
• less reliable infrastructure
• high cost of freight
• flying

If you think you can hack it, apply: via EducationCanada.com.

Nice. So if anyone is making money or spending money on high volume (whatever that means), it is therefore critical. Another shifting of goal posts. Now you can be right any time and every time.

They must be pretty desperate for teachers up there in bear country because … wow.

I don’t believe that “high volume sites” can legitimately be parsed as a synonym for “critical situations.”

Is it possible that the richness of your vocabulary is blinding you to the poverty of your cognitive ability?

Some people can admit when they’re full of shit. Others cannot.