Re: [Discuss] SQL discussion
Richard Pieri richard.pi...@gmail.com writes: Precisely. What is the structure of a relational database? A table. A 2-dimensional table. If you have 3 dimensions of data in a relational | x | y | z | t | Humidity | Pressure | |-+-++---+--+--| | 100 | -10 | 12 | 12:05 | 40 |1.302 | ... |-+-++---+--+--| Not what you had in mind? -- Mike Small sma...@panix.com ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [Discuss] New to VMWare DataStores
From: Scott Ehrlich [mailto:sc...@ehrlichtronics.com] The server does have a PERC, but it does not acknowledge any disks, indicating the four disks are truly independent. Having the latest ESXi version, what is the next step to having the system actually see each 4 TB drive at or near the raw capacity (i.e. 3.6 TB)? You don't want non-redundant storage, do you? A single disk goes bad, your whole system goes down and the only way you'll get it back up again is to remove the faulted disk to allow the other systems to come up... Is that really what you want? ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [Discuss] New to VMWare DataStores
I just had a chance to get more involved with the hardware - it turns out we actually have a preconfigured RAID 6 setup with each drive showing 2 TB available. I am going to break the RAID and see capacity we can recover. Glad it is not in production, yet :-) On Wed, Jan 14, 2015 at 2:25 PM, Edward Ned Harvey (blu) b...@nedharvey.com wrote: From: Scott Ehrlich [mailto:sc...@ehrlichtronics.com] The server does have a PERC, but it does not acknowledge any disks, indicating the four disks are truly independent. Having the latest ESXi version, what is the next step to having the system actually see each 4 TB drive at or near the raw capacity (i.e. 3.6 TB)? You don't want non-redundant storage, do you? A single disk goes bad, your whole system goes down and the only way you'll get it back up again is to remove the faulted disk to allow the other systems to come up... Is that really what you want? ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [Discuss] SQL discussion
On 1/14/2015 1:53 PM, ma...@mohawksoft.com wrote: Yes, the language structure was designed to facilitate relational data. No, and go read Jerry's post from this morning for details. Because SQL is built on two dimensional algebra. Two dimensional math cannot easily encompass three or more dimensions. That's like saying you can't represent 3 dimensions on a piece of paper. No, it's not. You can represent 3 or 4 or 8 dimensions on a piece of paper. That's not the same as being easy to represent 3 or 4 or 8 dimensions on a piece of paper. Why must you perform multiple queries? Its all how you choose to structure your data and how you choose to query it. Precisely. What is the structure of a relational database? A table. A 2-dimensional table. If you have 3 dimensions of data in a relational database system then you have a stack of tables. Standard SQL has 2 axes for queries: column and row. There is no way to query along the Z axis so you have to iterate your queries through the stack (or subset of the stack) of tables then combine and filter the results to get what you want. Or you can use stored procedures or JOINs, both of which have their own sets of portability and scalability issues which I consider myself wholly unqualified to discuss since I'm not a DBA and I don't want to be one when I grow up. :) -- Rich P. ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [Discuss] SQL discussion
On 1/13/2015 1:39 PM, ma...@mohawksoft.com wrote: SQL is a database interface language. It was designed specifically for use with relational tables. That is part of it, true, but not all of it. No, that's the entirety of it: SQL was developed specifically for use with relational data. Period. You can argue that it's not but if you're going to do that then I suggest taking it up with the guys at IBM who designed it. Yes, the language structure was designed to facilitate relational data. This is true, but that is the last yard so to speak. The original work included representing data such that it could be relational. How to represent types of data. Specifying the language and verbs on how to find it, how to add data to the system, etc. It wasn't JUST relational. --- It's difficult to implement queries against these kinds of data with SQL. Why? Because SQL is built on two dimensional algebra. Two dimensional math cannot easily encompass three or more dimensions. That's like saying you can't represent 3 dimensions on a piece of paper. It isn't true. The number of dimensions that are represented are defined by the number of axis used. Correct? The next question is how do you want to structure your data to represent 3 dimensions? 3D arrays? Tables? what? If you want 4 dimensions, just one more axis. Such queries are much more complex in SQL than their native equivalents and they are much slower as a direct consequence of this complexity. Why? With SQL you perform multiple queries and figure out how to combine the results. With a native multi-dimensional query you perform one query and receive one result. Why must you perform multiple queries? Its all how you choose to structure your data and how you choose to query it. ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [Discuss] Finance software for Linux
The US govt. (IRS) should provide the tax filing software or service -- like other countries do. On Jan 14, 2015 10:33 AM, Jerry Feldman g...@blu.org wrote: On 01/14/2015 10:16 AM, Jack Coats wrote: Doing this system got me to understand US taxes. Convoluted.. Yes. Logical.. Yes[once you dig in deep enough]. Every tax simplification act has only added complexity. To truly simplify we must toss out all old rules and start the system over, not just patch on fixes. This last statement not only applies to the tax code, but also to just about every piece of software. You tend to fix bugs, and over time the code becomes unmaintainable. -- Jerry Feldman g...@blu.org Boston Linux and Unix PGP key id:B7F14F2F PGP Key fingerprint: D937 A424 4836 E052 2E1B 8DC6 24D7 000F B7F1 4F2F ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [Discuss] Finance software for Linux
On 01/14/2015 03:26 PM, Greg Rundlett (freephile) wrote: The US govt. (IRS) should provide the tax filing software or service -- like other countries do. +1. Has someone filed one of those white house petitions on this? ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [Discuss] New to VMWare DataStores
From: Scott Ehrlich [mailto:sc...@ehrlichtronics.com] I just had a chance to get more involved with the hardware - it turns out we actually have a preconfigured RAID 6 setup with each drive showing 2 TB available. I am going to break the RAID and see capacity we can recover. Glad it is not in production, yet :-) You're probably saying something that makes sense if read differently or phrased differently, but I can't make any sense of it. If you have 4x 4TB drives in a raid6, then the OS will only see one drive with 8TB (so the phrase each drive showing some number of TB would not be applicable). Its performance will be terrible for random IO, but probably ok for serial IO which will certainly almost never happen. Perhaps you might want to change it to Raid-10, or simply two separate mirrors. If you break the raid and present individual drives to vmware, you will have no redundancy at all. Cuz as I said in other email - vmware can't do soft raid. ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [Discuss] Finance software for Linux
On Wed, Jan 14, 2015 at 08:26:36AM -0500, Matthew Gillen wrote: On 1/14/2015 8:05 AM, Jerry Feldman wrote: Unfortunately there are only a few companies in the industry who produce tax software, and they only Windows and Mac compatible, or you can use the web interfaces. This type of software does not really lend itself to to Open Source. Why do you say that? Because it requires a lot of specialized knowledge that typical CS majors don't have? That, AND that it requires being current with the entire country's tax codes on an annual basis. Most OSS software projects can't update that much that quickly, particularly when the domain knowledge required is completely orthogonal from the domain knowledge required to do the coding work. On top of that, it needs to reliably produce correct results, or its users would be in a world of hurt. So, the standard OSS liability disclaimers don't really work well here--the users really NEED to be able to have someone to blame. Paying pros may not afford you a lot of protection, but it does afford you more than none. -- Derek D. Martinhttp://www.pizzashack.org/ GPG Key ID: 0xDFBEAD02 -=-=-=-=- This message is posted from an invalid address. Replying to it will result in undeliverable mail due to spam prevention. Sorry for the inconvenience. ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [Discuss] SQL discussion
On 1/14/2015 4:22 PM, Mike Small wrote: | x | y | z | t | Humidity | Pressure | |-+-++---+--+--| | 100 | -10 | 12 | 12:05 | 40 |1.302 | ... |-+-++---+--+--| Not what you had in mind? It works, but I call this an example of the quip that when the only tool you have is a RDBMS then all data look like tables. In a multi-dimensional sparse array database your X and Y axes might be latitude and longitude, your Z axis might be altitude, your T axis is time. Temperature, humidity and pressure are some of the actual data at a given intersection of these axes. Keep in mind that this is still wholly structured data which makes it relatively easy to represent in tabular form. Less-structured data won't fit so easily without resorting to hacks like embedding whole JSON objects in table cells. -- Rich P. ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [Discuss] Higher-end keyboards to try?
On Wed, Jan 14, 2015 at 04:44:23PM -0500, Daniel Barrett wrote: I'm interested in getting a better keyboard, like a Cherry MX type, but would like to try out a few first to compare them. Is there a computer store in the Boston area where this is possible? That is, they've got Cherry red, blue, brown, etc., available to try out? I tried a friend's Cherry MX Blue at work at it was quite awesome, though loud. MicroCenter probably has several different kinds, and are usually amenable to opening up boxes. Personally, I think the Enduras from pckeyboard.com, with proper buckling springs, beat everything else hollow. But the Cherry MX Blue is not a bad substitute, and I hear the MX Green is pretty good. -dsr- ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [Discuss] Higher-end keyboards to try?
On 1/14/2015 8:10 PM, Derek Martin wrote: Mine had weird problems where the LED states were wrong, the That's a manufacturing defect. You should have returned it for a replacement. With known faulty wiring backlighting would flicker often when my computer was under load (which makes very little sense in my mind), a couple keys made ding ... it makes perfect sense to me that there would be other electrical problems. I did look at the Vengeance line. Too much unnecessary bling for something that I spend almost no time actually looking at. -- Rich P. ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [Discuss] Higher-end keyboards to try?
Sadly, nobody makes double shot molded keycaps any more. You COULDN'T wear the lettering off those because it went all the way through. http://deskthority.net/wiki/Double-shot_molding On Wed, Jan 14, 2015 at 9:53 PM, Tom Metro tmetro+...@gmail.com wrote: Dan Ritter wrote: Daniel Barrett wrote: I'm interested in getting a better keyboard, like a Cherry MX type, but would like to try out a few first to compare them. I tried a friend's Cherry MX Blue at work at it was quite awesome, though loud. MicroCenter probably has several different kinds, and are usually amenable to opening up boxes. Last time I was at Micro Center they had a demo keyboard mounted to the shelf in the keyboard isle that featured a variety of Cherry MX switch types. It probably isn't ideal, as there was only a subset of keys that used each type, so you couldn't really get the feel of what it would be like to type on a whole keyboard using that switch type. Then again, you never really get a feel for a keyboard until you've used it for a week or so. Wikipedia has a decent description of the different switch types: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZF_Electronics#Cherry_switches http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_M_keyboard and: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OfUAQiIOWQ Personally, I think the Enduras from pckeyboard.com, with proper buckling springs, beat everything else hollow. The buckling springs are stuffer and noisier than the MX blues. I have an old machine that still has a tenkeyless Model M on it that I use rarely. After years of typing on much lighter action keyboards with much shorter travel, it doesn't take long for the model M to make my hands sore. Derek Martin wrote: I suspect you want a brown, which has about the same tension in the key switch as a blue but without the click. I've read likewise - same tactile sensation as blues, but without the noise. However when I tried them, I got hardly any tactile sensation from the browns. Not only do you hear the blues, but they have a crisp trigger point you distinctly feel. The down side is that anyone else in the room or on the phone can hear them too. ...went to Microcenter since I figured they would have the biggest selection of keyboards in the store... I was looking for a tenkeyless design (also known as 80%, relative to the size of a 104-key keyboard; the number pad is wasted space for my uses) and I think at the time they had maybe only one choice. I'm also considering 70% designs, which tucks the arrow, Pg Up, Pg Down, Home, End, Ins, and Del keys into into the main layout. Some designs do this more effectively than others. (There are also 60% designs, but they compromise too much for the sake of space savings in my opinion. At least if you are using them for coding.) ...if you'd be interested in something with a slightly smaller form factor, I'd also suggest the CM Storm Quickfire TK... That's one of the ones I've been considering. (It's an 80% design.) Among the cheapest at under $70: http://tigerimports.net/sunshop/index.php?l=product_detailp=13445 But no backlighting. Corsair Gaming K65 RGB is pretty nice. Many keyboards in this market have aluminum backing plates under the switches for stiffness. This one has an aluminum bezel as well, which allows them to make the sides of he keyboard almost flush with the keys, making it among the narrowest of the 80% designs. But at $150 you're paying a premium for the fancy lighting effects (full RGB LEDs with a variety of programmable lighting patterns), and the lack of competition during the period in which it is available exclusively at Best Buy: http://www.bestbuy.com/site/corsair-gaming-k65-rgb-mechanical-keyboard/7547002.p?id=1219279718644skuId=7547002st=categoryid$abcat0513000cp=1lp=8# Some example 70% mechanical boards (mostly) with backlighting and MX blue switches: Keycool 84 http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00A7NFPF0?psc=1 Vortex KBT RACE TKL Mechanical Keyboard http://tigerimports.net/sunshop/index.php?l=product_detailp=13523 Deck 82 TKL Mechanical Keyboard http://tigerimports.net/sunshop/index.php?l=product_detailp=13456 Matias Mini Quiet Pro for PC TKL Mechanical http://tigerimports.net/sunshop/index.php?l=product_detailp=13874 (You can find reviews of some of these on YouTube.) Some example 80% mechanical boards (mostly) with backlighting and MX blue switches: Razer Blackwidow Tournament Edition 2014 (no backlighting, and I believe it uses a knock-off MX switch, as is becoming increasingly common) http://www.microcenter.com/product/430345/Blackwidow_Tournament_Edition_2014_Mechanical_Gaming_Keyboard There are like a dozen Ducky models that fit the general description, some lacking backlighting http://www.ncix.com/detail/ducky-dk2087-zero-brown-switch-81-90669.htm http://tigerimports.net/sunshop/index.php?l=product_detailp=9667 http://www.mechanicalkeyboards.com/shop/index.php?l=product_detailp=664
Re: [Discuss] Finance software for Linux
VMware should certainly be available for Linux indefinitely, but you also can easily migrate your VM to VirtualBox or KVM without too much difficulty/ On 01/14/2015 08:02 AM, Daniel Barrett wrote: On January 13, 2015, Rich Braun wrote: It looks like the end of the road for desktop finance [...]. I truly lament the state of this industry. +1 on that. I'm still running Quicken 2006 (old but very reliable) in a Windows XP VM (with networking turned off), importing stock quotes from Yahoo's API as CSV files, because there seems to be nothing better and things Just Work. In theory, this solution should continue to work as long as VMware runs on Linux, which should be a long time. As for tax software, I continue to use TurboTax on the desktop and fork out the extra $20 for the elevated version of the software because it works. Yeah, Intuit's approach to software upgrades is greedy, but as far as Pure Evil In The World is concerned, Intuit is barely a blip on the map. (I'll balance things out by donating extra to Doctors Without Borders this year) -- Jerry Feldman g...@blu.org Boston Linux and Unix PGP key id:B7F14F2F PGP Key fingerprint: D937 A424 4836 E052 2E1B 8DC6 24D7 000F B7F1 4F2F ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [Discuss] Finance software for Linux
I designed and wrote a corporate tax package for a Fortune 100 company in the late '70s. I worked very closely with a brilliant CPA. Together we designed and validated it on 9 months before relational databases were popular. It is one of the 2 or 3 big projects in, my career. It used IBM mainframe for data collection and a Univac that had an early spreadsheet system [Foresight] that allowed a team of tax CPAs to do the forms the IRS required back when. The CPAs could maintain and run it without computer folks intervention. I got Lots of flack from IT peers but it worked for a long time. It was the 2nd computer tax submission to the IRS. Still had to send 5 copies of paper submission but sent a reel of tape too. Doing a tax system can be done, but it must be maintainable by tax geeks, not just computer geeks. Doing this system got me to understand US taxes. Convoluted.. Yes. Logical.. Yes[once you dig in deep enough]. Every tax simplification act has only added complexity. To truly simplify we must toss out all old rules and start the system over, not just patch on fixes. Jack On Jan 14, 2015 8:25 AM, Bill Bogstad bogs...@pobox.com wrote: On Wed, Jan 14, 2015 at 2:26 PM, Matthew Gillen m...@mattgillen.net wrote: On 1/14/2015 8:05 AM, Jerry Feldman wrote: Unfortunately there are only a few companies in the industry who produce tax software, and they only Windows and Mac compatible, or you can use the web interfaces. This type of software does not really lend itself to to Open Source. Why do you say that? Because it requires a lot of specialized knowledge that typical CS majors don't have? There are certain projects in the open source world that have to pay attention to regulatory issues (e.g. wireless drivers), and they seem to be able to do so. I suppose the tax code is orders of magnitude more complex and intertwined. I'd be curious to explore your statement a little more though regarding what kinds of things lend themselves to open source. It isn't just the complexity. It is the constant churn. Sometimes because of last minute changes from Congress, the IRS doesn't put out final instructions/forms until late Fall. Admittedly these are usually fairly esoteric issues, but as lots of people have something odd about their taxes (uninsured medical expenses, loss due to theft/fire, consulting income, etc., etc.); any organization putting out tax software has to be prepared to put out a new version fairly quickly. Plus the software is geographically restricted. US Federal tax software might be adaptable to state level returns; but probably won't be at all useful for UK or Canadian taxes. This just doesn't strike me as a problem domain that is very tractable to volunteer efforts. It is also (to a great extent) an all or nothing problem for most users. If tax software only handles 2 of the 3 forms that I need to fill out, it probably isn't worth my time to use it. I'm not aware of any other free software (or culture i.e. wikipedia) which operates under these conditions. Bill Bogstad ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [Discuss] Finance software for Linux
On 01/14/2015 08:26 AM, Matthew Gillen wrote: On 1/14/2015 8:05 AM, Jerry Feldman wrote: Unfortunately there are only a few companies in the industry who produce tax software, and they only Windows and Mac compatible, or you can use the web interfaces. This type of software does not really lend itself to to Open Source. Why do you say that? Because it requires a lot of specialized knowledge that typical CS majors don't have? There are certain projects in the open source world that have to pay attention to regulatory issues (e.g. wireless drivers), and they seem to be able to do so. I suppose the tax code is orders of magnitude more complex and intertwined. I'd be curious to explore your statement a little more though regarding what kinds of things lend themselves to open source While products like Quicken can certainly be Open Source (eg GNU Cash) my comment is mostly for the tax software. The development companies invest a lot of resources, not only in software developers but also in tax professionals. Could an Open Source development company make those investments. Or, what if Intuit decided to Open Source TurboTax, it would still require a rather large investment not only in developers but also in tax professionals. You would still have to have a rather large paid staff. -- Jerry Feldman g...@blu.org Boston Linux and Unix PGP key id:B7F14F2F PGP Key fingerprint: D937 A424 4836 E052 2E1B 8DC6 24D7 000F B7F1 4F2F ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [Discuss] Finance software for Linux
On Wed, Jan 14, 2015 at 2:18 PM, Jerry Feldman g...@blu.org wrote: On 01/13/2015 10:16 AM, john saylor wrote: bonjour On 1/13/15 8:56 , Rich Braun wrote: GnuCash, I'm afraid, is even farther behind on the UI usability front. works for me, but one size does not fit all. It looks like the end of the road for desktop finance; the future is cloud services. But really, I'm a cloud-security developer: who can possibly trust the cloud with personal-finance data? the people who trust the cloud are the ones who don't really understand it ... once it's on those cloud servers, your control is gone. and all it takes is one careless temp, or disgruntled dba. Mike Rhodin, IBM Senior VP and general manager of the Watson Group one stated that the cloud is simply the old mainframe way of doing things, but they had to use different terminology. But conceptually, you are running on some company's computers located somewhere. This isn't just mainframe computing, it is akin to commercial time sharing/service bureau computing. Admittedly for many people they were one the same, since most businesses couldn't afford to own their own mainframe; but I would still consider them different computing styles. Bill Bogstad ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
[Discuss] New to VMWare DataStores
I am new to VMWare Datastores. Previous positions have already had a vCenter system built and enterprise-storage ready. We just installed a new Dell R520 PowerEdge server with 4 x 4 TB SAS drives, vCenter 5.5.0 preinstalled, and a 2 TB boot disk. Do we need to create a PERC RAID set with the 4 TB disks for vCenter to see that volume as a Datastore? I've been googling to see what is fundamentally needed for disks to be visible in vCenter for a Datastore to be created. Thanks. Scott ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [Discuss] Finance software for Linux
On 01/14/2015 10:16 AM, Jack Coats wrote: Doing this system got me to understand US taxes. Convoluted.. Yes. Logical.. Yes[once you dig in deep enough]. Every tax simplification act has only added complexity. To truly simplify we must toss out all old rules and start the system over, not just patch on fixes. This last statement not only applies to the tax code, but also to just about every piece of software. You tend to fix bugs, and over time the code becomes unmaintainable. -- Jerry Feldman g...@blu.org Boston Linux and Unix PGP key id:B7F14F2F PGP Key fingerprint: D937 A424 4836 E052 2E1B 8DC6 24D7 000F B7F1 4F2F ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [Discuss] Finance software for Linux
On 01/14/2015 09:31 AM, Bill Bogstad wrote: On Wed, Jan 14, 2015 at 2:18 PM, Jerry Feldman g...@blu.org wrote: On 01/13/2015 10:16 AM, john saylor wrote: bonjour On 1/13/15 8:56 , Rich Braun wrote: GnuCash, I'm afraid, is even farther behind on the UI usability front. works for me, but one size does not fit all. It looks like the end of the road for desktop finance; the future is cloud services. But really, I'm a cloud-security developer: who can possibly trust the cloud with personal-finance data? the people who trust the cloud are the ones who don't really understand it ... once it's on those cloud servers, your control is gone. and all it takes is one careless temp, or disgruntled dba. Mike Rhodin, IBM Senior VP and general manager of the Watson Group one stated that the cloud is simply the old mainframe way of doing things, but they had to use different terminology. But conceptually, you are running on some company's computers located somewhere. This isn't just mainframe computing, it is akin to commercial time sharing/service bureau computing. Admittedly for many people they were one the same, since most businesses couldn't afford to own their own mainframe; but I would still consider them different computing styles. Bill Bogstad Certainly, modern networking technology has enabled this technology. The Arpanet really did not exists until 1969. And certainly cloud computing today makes this technology almost universally accessible. But conceptually, when you run a program on the cloud or store data on the cloud, you are running on someone else's computers. -- Jerry Feldman g...@blu.org Boston Linux and Unix PGP key id:B7F14F2F PGP Key fingerprint: D937 A424 4836 E052 2E1B 8DC6 24D7 000F B7F1 4F2F ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [Discuss] Finance software for Linux
On Wed, Jan 14, 2015 at 2:26 PM, Matthew Gillen m...@mattgillen.net wrote: On 1/14/2015 8:05 AM, Jerry Feldman wrote: Unfortunately there are only a few companies in the industry who produce tax software, and they only Windows and Mac compatible, or you can use the web interfaces. This type of software does not really lend itself to to Open Source. Why do you say that? Because it requires a lot of specialized knowledge that typical CS majors don't have? There are certain projects in the open source world that have to pay attention to regulatory issues (e.g. wireless drivers), and they seem to be able to do so. I suppose the tax code is orders of magnitude more complex and intertwined. I'd be curious to explore your statement a little more though regarding what kinds of things lend themselves to open source. It isn't just the complexity. It is the constant churn. Sometimes because of last minute changes from Congress, the IRS doesn't put out final instructions/forms until late Fall. Admittedly these are usually fairly esoteric issues, but as lots of people have something odd about their taxes (uninsured medical expenses, loss due to theft/fire, consulting income, etc., etc.); any organization putting out tax software has to be prepared to put out a new version fairly quickly. Plus the software is geographically restricted. US Federal tax software might be adaptable to state level returns; but probably won't be at all useful for UK or Canadian taxes. This just doesn't strike me as a problem domain that is very tractable to volunteer efforts. It is also (to a great extent) an all or nothing problem for most users. If tax software only handles 2 of the 3 forms that I need to fill out, it probably isn't worth my time to use it. I'm not aware of any other free software (or culture i.e. wikipedia) which operates under these conditions. Bill Bogstad ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [Discuss] New to VMWare DataStores
From: Discuss [mailto:discuss-bounces+blu=nedharvey@blu.org] On Behalf Of Scott Ehrlich I am new to VMWare Datastores. Previous positions have already had a vCenter system built and enterprise-storage ready. We just installed a new Dell R520 PowerEdge server with 4 x 4 TB SAS drives, vCenter 5.5.0 preinstalled, and a 2 TB boot disk. Do we need to create a PERC RAID set with the 4 TB disks for vCenter to see that volume as a Datastore? I've been googling to see what is fundamentally needed for disks to be visible in vCenter for a Datastore to be created. Oh dear. You're not going to like this answer. First of all, if you're installing on a Dell, you should ensure you've checked Dell's site to see if you need the Dell customized installation image. Go to http://support.dell.com Enter your service tag Go to Drivers Downloads For OS, select VMWare ESXi 5.1 (or whatever is latest) If you see Enterprise Solutions with ESXi Recovery Image under it, you need to use that custom ISO. Otherwise, go to vmware.com and download the standard VMWare ESXi ISO Before you begin, you probably want to configure your PERC as one big raid set. Vmware doesn't have support for storage changes, soft raid, changes to hard raid, snapshots, or backups. It can handle raw disks, iscsi, nfs, and not much else. It also doesn't support backups unless you pay for some thing (not sure what, and not sure how much.) With a Dell server specifically, you can contact Dell about how to install OMSA, which will give you an interface you can use to control your PERC configuration without needing to reboot the system, but the extent of usefulness will be limited to basically replacing failed disks without the need for rebooting. Just make sure you don't upgrade vmware after you've installed OMSA (or else you have to reinstall OMSA). By far, far, far, the best thing to do is to run vmware on a system that is either diskless or has a minimal amount of disk that you don't care about, just for vmware. My preference is to let the vmware be diskless, and let the storage system handle all the storage, including the vmware boot disk. (Generally speaking, it's easy to boot from iscsi nowadays, so there's no need to muck around with pxe or anything annoying.) Let the guest machine storage reside on something like a ZFS or other storage device that's meant to handle storage well, including snapshots backups. Solves *all* the problems. Using simple dumb 10G ether works well and inexpensively as long as you get sufficient performance out of it (it performs equivalently to approx 6 or 9 disks). Anything higher performance will need infiniband, fiber channel, or similar. By far, my favorite setup is a ZFS server for storage, and a diskless ESX server to do work. ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [Discuss] New to VMWare DataStores
A server reboot and a closer look via vCenter client shows the machine shipped with 5.5 U2. It also does show what appears to be our four x 4 TB drives - they do show in the machine's BIOS. But, under vCenter client, when seeing the available disks to use, it lists the 4 x 4 TB disks at 1.8 TB each. Again, they are NOT in a RAID, but individual SAS, and directly attached. There is another storage device with ESXi on it. The server does have a PERC, but it does not acknowledge any disks, indicating the four disks are truly independent. Having the latest ESXi version, what is the next step to having the system actually see each 4 TB drive at or near the raw capacity (i.e. 3.6 TB)? This page - https://communities.vmware.com/thread/467221 - has been very helpful. Thanks. Scott On Wed, Jan 14, 2015 at 11:30 AM, Edward Ned Harvey (blu) b...@nedharvey.com wrote: From: Discuss [mailto:discuss-bounces+blu=nedharvey@blu.org] On Behalf Of Scott Ehrlich I am new to VMWare Datastores. Previous positions have already had a vCenter system built and enterprise-storage ready. We just installed a new Dell R520 PowerEdge server with 4 x 4 TB SAS drives, vCenter 5.5.0 preinstalled, and a 2 TB boot disk. Do we need to create a PERC RAID set with the 4 TB disks for vCenter to see that volume as a Datastore? I've been googling to see what is fundamentally needed for disks to be visible in vCenter for a Datastore to be created. Oh dear. You're not going to like this answer. First of all, if you're installing on a Dell, you should ensure you've checked Dell's site to see if you need the Dell customized installation image. Go to http://support.dell.com Enter your service tag Go to Drivers Downloads For OS, select VMWare ESXi 5.1 (or whatever is latest) If you see Enterprise Solutions with ESXi Recovery Image under it, you need to use that custom ISO. Otherwise, go to vmware.com and download the standard VMWare ESXi ISO Before you begin, you probably want to configure your PERC as one big raid set. Vmware doesn't have support for storage changes, soft raid, changes to hard raid, snapshots, or backups. It can handle raw disks, iscsi, nfs, and not much else. It also doesn't support backups unless you pay for some thing (not sure what, and not sure how much.) With a Dell server specifically, you can contact Dell about how to install OMSA, which will give you an interface you can use to control your PERC configuration without needing to reboot the system, but the extent of usefulness will be limited to basically replacing failed disks without the need for rebooting. Just make sure you don't upgrade vmware after you've installed OMSA (or else you have to reinstall OMSA). By far, far, far, the best thing to do is to run vmware on a system that is either diskless or has a minimal amount of disk that you don't care about, just for vmware. My preference is to let the vmware be diskless, and let the storage system handle all the storage, including the vmware boot disk. (Generally speaking, it's easy to boot from iscsi nowadays, so there's no need to muck around with pxe or anything annoying.) Let the guest machine storage reside on something like a ZFS or other storage device that's meant to handle storage well, including snapshots backups. Solves *all* the problems. Using simple dumb 10G ether works well and inexpensively as long as you get sufficient performance out of it (it performs equivalently to approx 6 or 9 disks). Anything higher performance will need infiniband, fiber channel, or similar. By far, my favorite setup is a ZFS server for storage, and a diskless ESX server to do work. ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [Discuss] New to VMWare DataStores
It is seeing the 4 TB disks as 1.8 TB each? Sounds like the well-known 2TB limitation related to MBR partition tables and 512-byte sectors. Does VMWare support 4096-byte sector format disks? Does VMWare support GPT partition tables? Perhaps this may help: http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_UScmd=displayKCexternalId=2058287 On Wed, Jan 14, 2015 at 12:57:40PM -0500, Scott Ehrlich wrote: A server reboot and a closer look via vCenter client shows the machine shipped with 5.5 U2. It also does show what appears to be our four x 4 TB drives - they do show in the machine's BIOS. But, under vCenter client, when seeing the available disks to use, it lists the 4 x 4 TB disks at 1.8 TB each. Again, they are NOT in a RAID, but individual SAS, and directly attached. There is another storage device with ESXi on it. The server does have a PERC, but it does not acknowledge any disks, indicating the four disks are truly independent. Having the latest ESXi version, what is the next step to having the system actually see each 4 TB drive at or near the raw capacity (i.e. 3.6 TB)? This page - https://communities.vmware.com/thread/467221 - has been very helpful. Thanks. Scott On Wed, Jan 14, 2015 at 11:30 AM, Edward Ned Harvey (blu) b...@nedharvey.com wrote: From: Discuss [mailto:discuss-bounces+blu=nedharvey@blu.org] On Behalf Of Scott Ehrlich I am new to VMWare Datastores. Previous positions have already had a vCenter system built and enterprise-storage ready. We just installed a new Dell R520 PowerEdge server with 4 x 4 TB SAS drives, vCenter 5.5.0 preinstalled, and a 2 TB boot disk. Do we need to create a PERC RAID set with the 4 TB disks for vCenter to see that volume as a Datastore? I've been googling to see what is fundamentally needed for disks to be visible in vCenter for a Datastore to be created. Oh dear. You're not going to like this answer. First of all, if you're installing on a Dell, you should ensure you've checked Dell's site to see if you need the Dell customized installation image. Go to http://support.dell.com Enter your service tag Go to Drivers Downloads For OS, select VMWare ESXi 5.1 (or whatever is latest) If you see Enterprise Solutions with ESXi Recovery Image under it, you need to use that custom ISO. Otherwise, go to vmware.com and download the standard VMWare ESXi ISO Before you begin, you probably want to configure your PERC as one big raid set. Vmware doesn't have support for storage changes, soft raid, changes to hard raid, snapshots, or backups. It can handle raw disks, iscsi, nfs, and not much else. It also doesn't support backups unless you pay for some thing (not sure what, and not sure how much.) With a Dell server specifically, you can contact Dell about how to install OMSA, which will give you an interface you can use to control your PERC configuration without needing to reboot the system, but the extent of usefulness will be limited to basically replacing failed disks without the need for rebooting. Just make sure you don't upgrade vmware after you've installed OMSA (or else you have to reinstall OMSA). By far, far, far, the best thing to do is to run vmware on a system that is either diskless or has a minimal amount of disk that you don't care about, just for vmware. My preference is to let the vmware be diskless, and let the storage system handle all the storage, including the vmware boot disk. (Generally speaking, it's easy to boot from iscsi nowadays, so there's no need to muck around with pxe or anything annoying.) Let the guest machine storage reside on something like a ZFS or other storage device that's meant to handle storage well, including snapshots backups. Solves *all* the problems. Using simple dumb 10G ether works well and inexpensively as long as you get sufficient performance out of it (it performs equivalently to approx 6 or 9 disks). Anything higher performance will need infiniband, fiber channel, or similar. By far, my favorite setup is a ZFS server for storage, and a diskless ESX server to do work. ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [Discuss] Finance software for Linux
I personally find MoneyDance to be reasonably good and I have been using it for a number of years. In some cases where I have reported a problem, Sean Reilly got back to me quickly and solved the problem. Unfortunately there are only a few companies in the industry who produce tax software, and they only Windows and Mac compatible, or you can use the web interfaces. This type of software does not really lend itself to to Open Source. On 01/13/2015 09:16 AM, Bill Bogstad wrote: On Tue, Jan 13, 2015 at 2:56 PM, Rich Braun ri...@pioneer.ci.net wrote: [lots about personal finance software] First a confession, I don't use any personal finance software. I view my statements regularly, but don't do any reconciliation of accounts and I have an accountant do my taxes... While I can understand how Tax software needs constant updates, it is less clear to me why personal finance software would need this. The only changes that I can imagine would be needed on a frequent base would be for automated inputing of statements from outside parties. It would seem to me that some kind of plugin/filter system which allowed users to write data input modules might help to spread the effort around. Perhaps something like the system used in the Zotero bibliography package which understands many data layouts because it makes it easy for users to write and distribute import/export plugins. Perhaps I'm missing something? -- Jerry Feldman g...@blu.org Boston Linux and Unix PGP key id:B7F14F2F PGP Key fingerprint: D937 A424 4836 E052 2E1B 8DC6 24D7 000F B7F1 4F2F ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [Discuss] Finance software for Linux
On 1/14/2015 8:05 AM, Jerry Feldman wrote: Unfortunately there are only a few companies in the industry who produce tax software, and they only Windows and Mac compatible, or you can use the web interfaces. This type of software does not really lend itself to to Open Source. Why do you say that? Because it requires a lot of specialized knowledge that typical CS majors don't have? There are certain projects in the open source world that have to pay attention to regulatory issues (e.g. wireless drivers), and they seem to be able to do so. I suppose the tax code is orders of magnitude more complex and intertwined. I'd be curious to explore your statement a little more though regarding what kinds of things lend themselves to open source. Matt ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [Discuss] SQL discussion
On 01/13/2015 02:49 PM, Richard Pieri wrote: On 1/13/2015 1:39 PM, ma...@mohawksoft.com wrote: Semantic arguments over canonically understood terms is not a good start. When one says a SQL database, everyone knows what is being discussed. The only time that I've ever seen a SQL database having a canonically understood meaning is in regards to specific instances of Microsoft SQL Server databases. Then again, the fact that we're even having this argument suggests that when one says a SQL database, /not/ everyone knows what is being discussed. SQL is a database interface language. It was designed specifically for use with relational tables. That is part of it, true, but not all of it. No, that's the entirety of it: SQL was developed specifically for use with relational data. Period. You can argue that it's not but if you're going to do that then I suggest taking it up with the guys at IBM who designed it. Absolutely yes. SQL was the language used by IBM's Sequel product. I sat on the ANSI database standards committee at the time when we released the SQL standard. We also released the standard for network databases. I think we are talking back in the early 1980s. But before that in the 1970s my company at the time was choosing a database for our IBM mainframes, and we had a few choices, IBM's system that was a hierarchial database, and a few others. But, on the committee we did struggle with a number of items. For instance, should the committee define number types. But we decided that number types were really the responsibility of the computer languages. We added a number of things, but later decided that IBM's Sequel was the defacto standard and we reset to that. On the other foot, SQL is absolutely terrible for queries against unstructured and multi-dimensional data. LOL, *everything* else is just as bad. The proliferation of post-relational databases in high-profile applications suggests that this is merely your opinion. By high-profile I mean the likes of Ameritrade and Kaiser Permanente. I list these two because I had a very, very, very indirect hand in their deployments. It's difficult to implement queries against these kinds of data with SQL. Why? Because SQL is built on two dimensional algebra. Two dimensional math cannot easily encompass three or more dimensions. Such queries are much more complex in SQL than their native equivalents and they are much slower as a direct consequence of this complexity. Why? With SQL you perform multiple queries and figure out how to combine the results. With a native multi-dimensional query you perform one query and receive one result. Rhetorical nonsense. Assertions without explanations. No, it's just you being hide-bound in re. SQL and relational databases. Hm. I seem to recall something... wasn't it one of your posts that I replied with a quip to the effect that when all you have is a RDBMS then every problem looks like a table? -- Jerry Feldman g...@blu.org Boston Linux and Unix PGP key id:B7F14F2F PGP Key fingerprint: D937 A424 4836 E052 2E1B 8DC6 24D7 000F B7F1 4F2F ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [Discuss] Finance software for Linux
On January 13, 2015, Rich Braun wrote: It looks like the end of the road for desktop finance [...]. I truly lament the state of this industry. +1 on that. I'm still running Quicken 2006 (old but very reliable) in a Windows XP VM (with networking turned off), importing stock quotes from Yahoo's API as CSV files, because there seems to be nothing better and things Just Work. In theory, this solution should continue to work as long as VMware runs on Linux, which should be a long time. As for tax software, I continue to use TurboTax on the desktop and fork out the extra $20 for the elevated version of the software because it works. Yeah, Intuit's approach to software upgrades is greedy, but as far as Pure Evil In The World is concerned, Intuit is barely a blip on the map. (I'll balance things out by donating extra to Doctors Without Borders this year) -- Dan Barrett dbarr...@blazemonger.com ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
