• execute a single instance on a single 32-bit CPU
• allocate a maximum of 1 Gb of RAM
• store a maximum of 4 Gb of data

XE is a free for development use, not production use, version of Oracle Database. It can be used by developers, and educators or students for educational/training purposes. Its also licensed for use by Independent Software Vendors whose product fits within these restrictions and this small footprint.

I'd say for most organizations, the public-facing corporate website breaking is less of a big deal than if all e-mail routing ground to a halt for a day. Not that this was likely to happen today.

HTTP is also an easier IP application to troubleshoot than say SMTP, DNS, or even and routing at layer 3. When troubleshooting effectively, you make small changes then observe the effects of the change. Which is really the next reason not to test SMTP on IPv6 today...

Participants aren't just testing HTTP servers today. Someone also had to keep a close eye on DNS infrastructure, and network layer 3. I have seen Cyrus IMAP Murder clusters failing to replicate with link-local IPv6 turned on in DNS and on the IMAP servers, while IPv6 was disabled at network layer 3. That tends to back up mail routing real quick, when something like IMAP services do not function as expected. Its nearly impossible to troubleshoot a situation like that, mail routing is backed up, DNS queries all seem to work, and then you have Cyrus spewing weird incomprehensible error messages which might lead you on a red herring troubleshooting hunt. I am sure most participants do not want a shit-storm to deal with today, just by throwing mail services into the ring.

So our own organization turned on IPv6 at layer 3 on a few isolated VLANs a couple months ago to test everything out-of-band in a lab environment. We learned a few lessons like what exactly NDP (Network Discovery Protocol) does in IPv6, and how to firewall an IPv6 Linux server. The ICMPv6 rules are drastically different than the equivalent on IPv4, because you're supplanting ARP with NDP for the most part. Gradually we turned on IPv6 in the production DMZ VLAN. Then turned IPv6 on for one external DNS server and the corporate website, observed the effects for a day and made adjustments. Then finally turned IPv6 on for the remaining external DNS servers. At which time, it was discovered our TLD doesn't fully support IPv6 DNS glue yet, despite them being a fairly early adopter of technologies like IPv6 and DNSSEC.

Today was about testing the waters by sticking a toe in, not diving in head first to a pool with only 3 inches of water. Events like today's puts pressure on hardware vendors, major ISPs, and application vendors. It would be great to be able to dump some network stats for my IPv6 interfaces on the DNS boxes, although our network monitoring systems don't quite fully support IPv6 yet. There really isn't a good way to differentiate DNS or interface stats between IPv4 and IPv6, yet.

I kept some pretty thorough notes on IPv6 Linux configuration for anyone who hasn't had a chance to play with IPv6, yet, link here.

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=pc+stealth+grow+box

No, you're confusing ethics with moral. Morals are for the most part black and white, these are principles and values that remain consistent and universal across race, nationality, and religion. Something like "do no harm to others" is a moral principle.

Ethics, on the other hand, is an entirely different branch of moral philosophy. In a sense, you could say ethics are moral principles practically applied to situational circumstances, particular world views, or as you put it a particular social context. Ethics are where you find the shades of gray which people tend to see things differently, depending on the situation and context. For example, someone might subscribe to the ethical philosophy that you shouldn't do harm to others, but it may be ethically acceptable to harm in the context of curtailing some greater evil, or harm.

So why is it that Linus should have to subscribe to the Free Software Foundation's ethical standards? More specifically, why should he have to subscribe to the FSF's ethical objections with regard to tivo-ization and DRM clauses in the GPLv3?

Countdown to Portal?

If you round off their 2010 income numbers, subscription income totals to $639 million (85.3%), and training service income totals to $110 million (14.6%). That is all on page 40 of their 2010 Annual SEC (10-K) filing. The subscriptions had a 93% profit margin, and the training had a 36% profit margin this year. Which makes sense, I imagine training services cost quite a bit, you would probably have equipment and training material costs, as well as trainer's salaries. Then, at least some of the time, there would be travel and hotel costs incurred for the trainers themselves, anytime they are training groups.

According to page 48 of the same report, they spent $272 on sales and marketing, which the fancy training mailer pamphlets would fall under. However, that would also include expenses from sponsoring Open Source conferences under the same line item (its not all wasted on those fancy pamphlets).

Research and Development I imagine covers salaries for Kernel and subsystem developers. R&D costs total $148 million. Administrative costs were $104 million. According to the 10-K report, they have 3,000 employees globally.

Total operating expense for 2010 was $534 million, once you have tacked on taxes the Net income comes to $87 million.

There is a lot of boring stuff in SEC filings, most always something interesting to learn from them though. If you really want to find out what a company is all about, there are some interesting details, a lot of it is in there. It explains in brief detail what each line item in the Balance Sheets and Income Statements actually mean in mostly plain English. Plus, the executive summary gives you some insight into their management's frame of mind, business model, and strategies.

I think I've seen a few non-anonymous Florian Mueller articles.

But my thoughts exactly. Why are anonymous article submissions allowed? Why wouldn't the submitter put their own username on the submission?

Don't know the employment law in Minnesota, but depending on how faculty/staff are classified (either state, or for-profit research division of the Uni.), I would think that the University would be liable for unfair termination. That is if Jerry Moore was not guilty of some legal or ethical breach of conduct, the University would be liable for unfair termination of a classified state employee without due process (hearing his side of the story). On the other hand, if he was an at-will research division employee then any perceived ethical breach could legally lead to a quick termination, and he doesn't even have to be guilty of any misconduct.

There is an off-hand comment in the story about the Westboro Baptist Church, and while that is a shallow comparison for the blogger in question, it does bring up a good point. We let those scumbags get away with their "protests" at military funerals in the name of freedom of speech. Freedom of speech does extend to the press when the reporting is based in fact, and is not libelous. Its a tiny bit hypocritical to not extend the same courtesy to a blogger, even if the blogger in question is just as much a scumbag. Briefly perusing his blog, he does seem to have a bone to pick with this guy. However, if you start putting conditions on freedoms, where do you justifiably stop?

I agree with you on two points, however. If the University fired Jerry Moore merely to save face (rather than some breach of ethical conduct prohibited by his employment contract) then that is wrong. In my opinion, that is the University's liability not the blogger in question. Also, 12 jurors agreed on this and anybody now reading this, only has some of the facts. Without having all the facts, I would like to place some confidence in a jury. Despite all the faults of the justice system, jury trials are one of the most direct ways to participate in government and actually test the law, more so than voting for representatives.

I may have done (or at least attempted) an install of Slackware around that time direct from CD-ROM (w/ boot & root floppies). I distinctly remember having to RAWRITE more than just the 2 floppies, though. It could have been that I couldn't get my root disk to read from CD, or it may have just been not knowing any better. It is briefly mentioned near the end of the INSTALL.TXT in that release that it was possible. However, it would have been easy to glance over, and miss that part. The file does however stress the point several times, that you can install from: NFS, hard disk, or floppy.

From the INSTALL.TXT:

Certainly. As someone who loves computers and technology, I valued that struggle to get things working "just right". I am a better person and technologist, from what I have learned from those experiences.

My ramble wasn't a complaint reminiscing how bad things were. There are a lot of newer users of Linux, in my opinion, that don't really have any drive to learn anything about their systems. While there is absolutely nothing wrong with just wanting an easy-to-use system, I think they are missing out on something special, when all they do is complain and then give up so easily. I started using it because it was fun; its a rewarding hobby that turned into a quite enjoyable career.