Opinion
Re-carpeting the data center – in review
Apr 2nd
Just random sets of links to different sites that were linking back or referencing our April Fools tie in.
We had a great day and some very silly feedback – and I hope you enjoyed it as much as we did.
http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/
http://www.webhostersnews.com/
http://seclists.org/nanog/ – my personal favorite
http://robot-roomba.cellcasesandmore.com/
Linux Distributions vs PHP
Mar 24th
The splintering of Linux distributions seems to be continuing!
This week, I have had requests for PHP versions 5.3 and 5.2 on both Red Hat EL 5 and CentOS 5 – though never distribution supports higher than 5.1.6 in the official repositories.
PHP 5.2 has been out quite a while. Ubuntu Hardy LTS has it and it is 2 years old. Ubuntu Lucid LTS is coming out in April has 5.3 by default. I bet Debian Lenny is at 5.2 or higher already. SUSE is at 5.3 (for version 11.x where X != 0)
“Why” seems to be the question of the day – why doesn’t RHEL do some updates to something people feel they ‘require’ for their PHP web applications? CentOS would then follow.
Even old/stodgy FreeBSD (my personal favorite) is all over the 5.2 camp for PHP since 6.x, and the *BSD people do not play the version of the day.
If I have to run Linux based systems, I choose Ubuntu. Not always the latest version but at least this distribution keeps up with customer wants (and sometimes…needs).
Goodbye VISI, it had been good
Mar 22nd
Today, a Minnesota company has been purchased by a corporation outside of Minnesota, for the second time.
A Brief history…
Vector Internet Services, Inc. started in October, 1994.
In July of 1996, I went to work at Vector (as it was known then) along with some of my old Winternet crew.
In May of 2000, VISI.com (as it was called) was sold to DSL.net out of New Haven, CT. Details of this sale are available to anyone who can use Google and has a little bit of time (ticker was DSLN).
In May of 2004, I left VISI.com out of boredom – DSLN really didn’t allow for any growth in the business or employee potential. Yes, I have a small chip on my shoulder about DSLN.
In December of 2005, Digital North purchased VISI.com for $3.3M and later renamed itself to VISI.
In March of 2010, VISI sells to TDS Telecom for $17.8M out of Madison, WI (Telephone and Data Systems, Inc. is out of Chicago and is the parent organization)
My largest competitor in the local market has been sold for its 3rd time, though I don’t know if that’ll be the charm.
I am sad to see them go. I’ll also miss the competition in the local marketplace for ‘largest locally owned & operated service provider in the state of Minnesota’, though I can think of worse ways to go
Best wishes and good luck to everyone still employed with VISI, and to the customers who continue to use VISI today and in the future.
References:
- Telephone and Data Systems, Inc. acquires VISI Incorporated (from TDS)
- Telephone and Data Systems, Inc. acquires VISI Incorporated (from VISI)
- VISI sold to Wisconsin Firm; no layoffs planned (twincities.com)
- Managed-hosting firm VISI sold for $17.8 million (finance-commerce.com)
- TDS Partnership to Fuel VISI Growth (from blog.visi.com and Mike Sowada)
- news.google.com search query
The new iPad hype
Jan 29th
What’s the issue really?
Oh noes, no camera? That’ll change I bet.
No flash? Win in my book!
No multitasking? Really, you wanna run more things, buy a computer.
Now, the speculation about version 2 makes me laugh, but really, aren’t we at version 3? In my office common area, I have version 1, and I’ll include a picture.
Back to the iPad – just sit back and see what really happens. We are 60-90 days out (minimum) before it hits the shelves, maybe a surprise will come. Like tether-ability! That’d be win.
And as promised…and yes, it still works, and is not for sale.
For those about to write..
UNIX Shell services, what’s the fuss?
Jan 21st
Wowzers, quite a little thread going on in a newsgroup, but really, what’s the big deal?
I think I know…
Not everyone uses the Internet for viewing web pages and downloading pr0nself-help videos and television shows. The Internet itself has become much easier for the layman to use, and with that, these historical services are no longer needed and support for them is harder and harder to come by.
In the past, most service providers (especially the ISPs that service residential users) used to offer some kind of UNIX shell for their paying clientele. Over time, the number of service providers has decreased, and of those that are left, the percentage of them that offer this type of environment has decreased by orders of magnitude. I’ll speculate on why further down this post.
UNIX shells are fascinating experiments in shared computing resources with a very long history.
