Other boards troubled / Motherboards troub.. The great BOI laptop robbery

seem politics.ie is still having teething trouble and now boards.ie is having trouble too

< mod Discussion of BOI laptop robberies discussed further on on this thread HERE /mod >

What manner of trouble, hacking again?

error from p.ie indicates they are using MYSQL - surely that is not powerful enough for a busy discussion board? isn't it limited to 10 concurrent database transactions or something?

Boards seems to be working again. On their bargain alerts forum (the only one I use) some lad claims to have got two return flights to New York Business Class with Aer Lingus for 350 euro due to a technical glitch . Oh how I'm jealous of people who stumbled upon that sort of luck. I know a guy who once ordered a Dell laptop and they only charged him 27 euro!

Zhou_Enlai wrote:

error from p.ie indicates they are using MYSQL - surely that is not powerful enough for a busy discussion board? isn't it limited to 10 concurrent database transactions or something?

Not a bit of it. It's far more capable than, say, SQL Server, and a lot of far more high-trafficked sites run on it. P.ie would have been running it before.

The problem is that they haven't adjusted the maximum connections setting.

ibis wrote:

Zhou_Enlai wrote:

error from p.ie indicates they are using MYSQL - surely that is not powerful enough for a busy discussion board? isn't it limited to 10 concurrent database transactions or something?

Not a bit of it. It's far more capable than, say, SQL Server, and a lot of far more high-trafficked sites run on it. P.ie would have been running it before.

The problem is that they haven't adjusted the maximum connections setting.

Actually, when I look at it, the problem is more likely to be that their database connections are not being released. I've had that issue on sites. It also looks like they eventually have to reboot to clear the connections.

Isn't the mysql connection closed after every query ibis? What mechanism would allow this to happen? A dodgy search.php perhaps ?

EvotingMachine0197 wrote:

Isn't the mysql connection closed after every query ibis? What mechanism would allow this to happen? A dodgy search.php perhaps ?

I'm trying to remember...the connection doesn't necessarily close after every connection, but it should certainly be available for another query.

When does one need to upgrade to SQL server? I had CRM s/w vendors recommending upgrades to SQL Server from MySQL. We did it eventually but I was ambivalent about the point of it.

Zhou_Enlai wrote:

When does one need to upgrade to SQL server? I had CRM s/w vendors recommending upgrades to SQL Server from MySQL. We did it eventually but I was ambivalent about the point of it.

I have to admit, I don't regard it as an upgrade. I've had two or three very large databases handed over to me as SQLServer, and all of them were faster and more reliable under mySQL.

Some vendors like to give the impression that mySQL is a 'noddy' database, because it's largely free. That's very much not the case - the only reason I can see for going over to SQLServer is that it keeps a Microsoft shop purely Microsoft.

ibis wrote:

Some vendors like to give the impression that mySQL is a 'noddy' database, because it's largely free. That's very much not the case - the only reason I can see for going over to SQLServer is that it keeps a Microsoft shop purely Microsoft.

Wikipedia says MySql is owned by Sun and distributed under the GNU licence which means once you pay you can use it as much as you like as well as being free to customise it - unthinkable with Microsoft today. They also say it has 11 million installations worldwide .. all this and it's still only a drop in the ocean compared to the penetration of Microsoft SQL. Imagine companies like Sun and Apple have to resort to giving away their code in order to try to dent Microsoft but no chance. Would they ever feck off and die?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mysql

Comparison by MS of their SQL against MySql
http://www.microsoft.com/sql/prodinfo/compare/mysql/default.mspx

Auditor #9 wrote:

ibis wrote:

Some vendors like to give the impression that mySQL is a 'noddy' database, because it's largely free. That's very much not the case - the only reason I can see for going over to SQLServer is that it keeps a Microsoft shop purely Microsoft.

Wikipedia says MySql is owned by Sun and distributed under the GNU licence which means once you pay you can use it as much as you like as well as being free to customise it - unthinkable with Microsoft today. They also say it has 11 million installations worldwide ..

Including Facebook and Google. The Sun buyout is pretty recent.

Auditor #9 wrote:

all this and it's still only a drop in the ocean compared to the penetration of Microsoft SQL. Imagine companies like Sun and Apple have to resort to giving away their code in order to try to dent Microsoft but no chance. Would they ever feck off and die?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mysql

Comparison by MS of their SQL against MySql
http://www.microsoft.com/sql/prodinfo/compare/mysql/default.mspx

A lot of companies have been persuaded to upgrade MS Access to SQL Server...which is at least an upgrade. My own experience is that by and large SQL Server is in the hands of companies who haven't really figured out how to use a database.

It's mad how software can be cobbled together by Microsoft and even though it's sub-standard and over-priced it's everywhere because of momentum and a new form of hegemony which isn't imposed but appears because of the limits of people's patience and technical ability as well as for business expediency. Though companies use MS on the desktop and on servers, the back-ends and web servers tend rarely if ever to have MS, am I right? I've seen RS6000s, AS400s, MVS even ICL and VAX in my line but never MS for the serious stuff. Network heads used to talk about NT running Oracle doing the job of the IBM machines but at that high end ..? No way never...

Auditor #9 wrote:

It's mad how software can be cobbled together by Microsoft and even though it's sub-standard and over-priced it's everywhere because of momentum and a new form of hegemony which isn't imposed but appears because of the limits of people's patience and technical ability as well as for business expediency. Though companies use MS on the desktop and on servers, the back-ends and web servers tend rarely if ever to have MS, am I right? I've seen RS6000s, AS400s, MVS even ICL and VAX in my line but never MS for the serious stuff. Network heads used to talk about NT running Oracle doing the job of the IBM machines but at that high end ..? No way never...

This is so true. When will Microsoft implode? MS wordprocessing packages are worse now than Wordperfect was 20 years ago.

It's no joke. If you look at boards now and then you'll see people want to put XP back on which wasn't a bad OS; I don't use Vista as I've said - I've only a GB ram . The free Ubuntu is blazing fast and trouble free. Troublesome at the start, mind you, but once it gets going then it's a beauty. I leave it on all day and night O jesus someone might hack me I should get a firewall . Incredible that free software can be better - and more to the point - less annoying

Have to admit I use XP and would be slightly reluctant to use a non standard OS, however for anything else http://sourceforge.net/ is yer only man.

www.ubuntu.com

You can download it to your hard drive, burn it to a disk and test drive it from the disk only - it won't affect your OS. If you want to install it, the installer will take you through some menus where your disk gets partitioned and linux installed beside XP so now you've got both.

See? the wariness of branching out. XP is the last great MS OS though. Vista looks great but I'm convinced you need 2GB ram.

I refused to upgrade to Vista but went for Office 2007 and it is driving me spanners.
I can no longer search through emails without installing a separate search program whcih tries to index all my files as well as my emails.
All command locations have to be relearnt.
Half the keypad shortcuts are gone from Word 2007 and those that are not gone do not work if you hit the key sequence too quick.
I cannot find "change case" function in any menu or "ribbon".
Word was hanging when I tabbed between documents because an add-in which previously worked with Word 2003 no longer worked. It took a lot of googling to figure that out.
Deltaview no longer works even if I save documents in 2003 format. If I want to compare them I have to go to a computer with 2003 on it.
Worst of all the .docx docments are not backward compatible. This causes problems when computer illiterates post in 2007 documents to other people in the organisation.

Glad I got that off my chest!

A lot of people who got Word 2007 have gone back to older versions. It is multi-dysfunctional in our opinion - features gone, much slower, multiple commands etc.

Audi, I'm gonna try Ubuntu at the weekend on my XP machine. I am already dreading having to use Vista, even though there's a couple of years left in my current box.

I already use non-MS nearly always. Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice, Apache, MySQL, myPHPAdmin etc.

Thanks for that info.

I would love to use open source s/w but it would seem to be imprudent given that there is no reliable patching system to combat severe exploits.

I am also worried that documents will not be compatible with other companies wordprocessing software.

For these reasons I think I am stuck with MS for the moment.

Zhou, I use MSOffice in the office, and Openoffice at home and neber had trouble transferring docs/spreadsheets etc to and fro.

One neat feature in openoffice is an embedded PDF generator.

On exploits, most exploits are for MS components, because they are still in the majority in terms of usage.

That's interesting - I didn't know about the portability. It sounds better than Word 2007 already! I might load it up on the laptop at home.

I agree most exploits are for MS but at least you eventualy hear about them and they get patched. You do hear of exploits for open source as well but the patches don't seem to be as quick.

Zhou_Enlai wrote:

I refused to upgrade to Vista but went for Office 2007 and it is driving me spanners.
I
can no longer search through emails without installing a separate
search program whcih tries to index all my files as well as my emails.
All command locations have to be relearnt.
Half the keypad shortcuts are gone from Word 2007 and those that are not gone do not work if you hit the key sequence too quick.
I cannot find "change case" function in any menu or "ribbon".
Word
was hanging when I tabbed between documents because an add-in which
previously worked with Word 2003 no longer worked. It took a lot of
googling to figure that out.
Deltaview no longer works even if I
save documents in 2003 format. If I want to compare them I have to go
to a computer with 2003 on it.
Worst of all the .docx docments are
not backward compatible. This causes problems when computer illiterates
post in 2007 documents to other people in the organisation.

Glad I got that off my chest!

and that's before you start using it . I haven't a great idea of MS
applications as I worked in a dumb terminal environment mostly or
terminal emulator and pc stuff just gave me the willies. It all seems
so bitty compared to the Centralised Mainframe-style thing in the
corner which never goes down, ever. IBM have extremely solid
goods - they really are the Rolls Royce or Mercedes of the multi-user
business world. The network solution really looks bitty or something.

EvotingMachine0197 wrote:

Audi, I'm gonna try Ubuntu at the weekend on my XP machine. I am already dreading having to use Vista, even though there's a couple of years left in my current box.

I already use non-MS nearly always. Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice, Apache, MySQL, myPHPAdmin etc.

Thanks for that info.

You have made my day. Do you have a second internet connection? I could help you for the little I know - it could be MNs first real project. Nothing stopping you logging your progress here you know - maybe it'd inspire Zhou and we'd get the Unix virus spinning off from MN right here (unix is considered by some to be the biggest virus ever written ). It takes two hours to burn the iso image or whatever they call it - the CD. If you use Open Office already then you'll know the pleasure of it .. it opens files all around the net no problem as you say. It's really only a matter for time before Microsoft will have to reduce their charge for Office I think - the Openoffice solution is getting more prevalent all the time.

But really the OS ubuntu is so fast once set up - you might have a pain in your hole for a month as bits and pieces might not work and you may have to reinstall it a few times - don't want to scare you but it's totally worth it. Once I got it working to my liking then Vista just paled in comparison - so slow and unprofessional compared to a free piece of software - ubuntu really is just so fast - maybe IE is the problem with Vista ? And skype on linux is way faster too thought the camera doesn't work yet on the version (but I know what she looks like already anyway: ). It was virtually working perfectly out of the box anyway - I had to install a program to play DVDs and another bit of code to get the CD sound working properly and lastly the wifi was the hardest thing though I could connect perfectly using cable. And that was it really, not much at all. It's very command line based but you probably are no stranger to that. Happy linuxing !

For some reason I can't even log on to Politics.ie homepage.

Would there be a logical reason for that? An IP address not wanted maybe?