Can open source replace your office servers?

When http://www.networxpc.com decided to startup the first thing we talked about was providing small businesses with open source alternatives. What we found was surprising and a bit annoying at the same time.

Not only did we easily find alternatives for almost every single Microsoft based server in the small business sector, but we also found alternatives that worked better with more features.

Here is a small run down of what can be fairly easily replaced with open source software. And yes Networx pc supports them all.

• Microsoft exchange (Alternative offers a great web interface, desktop app, or even use Outlook)
• File server (No surprise since Linux and open source have been doing this since day 1)
• Active Directory with or without roaming profiles (This was a big surprise for me, people spend thousands on MS based AD servers, and a similar alternative is available for free)
• Backup server (No matter if its a single file or an entire drive the Open Source community has this one under wraps with very easy and stable setup)
• Groupware (Sharing information is big in most businesses. weather its calendars, notes, files, or documents. We found several alternatives that leave customers asking "Why did I spend so much on our solution?")

A big reason many of these "Alternatives" are not used is because most IT based businesses can't see any way to make money on them. However, if you look outside the mid west you will find dozens possibly hundreds of businesses making very good money from supporting open source. The money doesn't come from selling some junk software that needs constant hand holding. Instead it comes from offering support and configuration of the system and selling of hardware the system will run on.

Not only does this make customers happy, but the business providing the support has far less out of pocket expense getting a customer setup then a similar business using proprietary software. The servers themselves are also more cost effective due to no longer needed constant updating and rebooting, or an anti-virus solution to protect the server from rouge malware.

With all of this said let me assure you that open source may not be the right solution for every situation. Some businesses rely very heavy on Microsoft or system specific software and possibly hardware. With time these businesses may get an alternative that suits them. But for now its best to take great care and do plenty of research before implementing any open source system.

We see great potential for what we offer, and we hope our customers will to.

Jeff L. Richtman

V.P. Networx PC LLC

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Island Paradise Fishing Helper.

Its a nice day outside and you want to go out and do something, but your Island Paradise game needs tending. What do you do?

Let it fish for you. In a span of about 10 hours of no interaction our little app was able to catch around 700-800 coins worth of fish and junk (Wood, Cans, boots etc) All by fishing for you.

How it works:

The script sits watching your island for several images. First the whirl pool, this is where fishing begins. Once the script find a whirl pool it move the mouse over to click on it. This throws down the net. It then automatically click the Save button for you. The script also click the "Skip" button on most boxes that pop-up. So no interruptions caused by wanting you to play other games, or notify your friends of you catch.

Once time has expired and a fish pops up. The script will move the mouse over to click on the new fish. All without you doing anything.

Bugs:

Its not perfect just yet. With glitches in the game and problems with facebook the script can move your island over to one side of the other, making it only possible to catch fish in one area.

Anything under the save button such as land, grass or even your avatar will make the save feature no longer work. Since it is looking for an exact pixel match in the image.

Other windows that may pop up such as Windows updates, or third party software can also cause problems as the script continues to run no matter what is on the screen.

Conclusion:

Its for these reasons why we are not actually releasing the little program for download. We don't want people complaining about damage done to their data. There is little worse then a rouge mouse clicking on random things.

If you would like to try it out however, please contact either myself or kat. If you don't know how please email webmaster at jeicrash dot net and I'll send you a copy.

You will need Autohotkey in order for the script to work, I will not be giving out compiled exe's of this script.

The work rant!!!!!!!!

----Hello professor would you like to play a game------(Its from Wargames DUH)

#no Joshua I need to rant. (Joshua is the name of the system prof. Falken built)

---Proceed-----

Boy really wish I hadn't been woken up today twice for work related questions. I have a full time job where I work 8 hours a day 5 days a week. At my job I don't have to do much. I fix computers, make systems work so we can sell them, manage 60+ websites and email accounts for each, do service calls whenever and where ever needed, keep track of weeks of work in my head when I don't have time to get it written down into the work calendar, fix printers even though I have never been trained (Its all guess work and somehow it always gets fixed). Talk to customers and make them happy when their systems are not fixed when said due to me not being in the office. And a few other things, but still not much.....RIGHT?????

Aside from that I also maintain a few sites outside of work that I started way before beginning my current full time job. These sites can take another 40 hours a week out of me so as you can tell my weekends are pretty precious to me. And on top of that this weekend one of my kids (I have two) wasn't feeling so hot, So I took a day off work to be home with him. Barely any contact related to work on Friday. But Saturday morning I get two calls pertaining to work. One to ask me for help on a blackberry cell phone (I own one that does not make me support) the other to ask if a system from Friday was done (I wasn't there call the tech who was).

So here is what I am going to do from now on since I know this is bound to happen again.

First time: I'll help the person with whatever I can then let work know I need an additional $75.00 added to my paycheck for that week.

Second time: I'll get rid of my work phone and get a personal phone. This will remove any need to think that since I have a work phone I should be obligated to work at anytime.

Third time. I'll simply hand in my 30 day resignation letter and worry about finding work elsewhere.

The real sad thing is I never get away from work. And I don't think anyone really does. No matter what your profession or area of expertise people are always going to bother you. Like when someone find out a person is a doctor its never "Hi nice to meet you." its always "Can I ask you a question?" Same for us geeks, we just don't have to look at strange rashes.

Most times I can't even goto family gatherings without being piled with questions. Wouldn't be a problem if I had my own company and I could simply say "Wait till Monday and come see me, I'll give you a good deal on whatever part/service you need" Instead I have to spend my time fixing peoples stuff then waiting for payment if I ever get it. In a year on average at my $15/hr rate I probably give away a few thousand dollars of free help. Many times I don't mind because its on my terms. But when I get calls related to work on days I don't work it irritates me. Firstly because if I do decide to do the work I might "MIGHT" get my base hourly rate from my job for it. Otherwise its free or they will get invoiced the $75/hr and I get nothing. Secondly I usually get into work 8:30am - 8:45am and most days don't take lunch and work till 5pm so by the weekend on a good week I have put in my 40hrs. This means weekend work is overtime, and even at that pay its not worth my time or my families time for me to work even more.

Lately I have lost interest in my job, too much work and not enough incentive. I get paid an hourly rate, no benefits, no paid vacation, and no bonuses. I am A+ certified which to me means nothing but to the IT industry means an average pay of $15/hr and currently working on NET+ and Security+ certifications. I have a solid 14 years of experience in my skill set. I work on Windows, Mac, and LINUX.

In the past I have done data recovery for FBI agents investigating an Ebay scam. I have taught college classes as a substitute teacher at the Quincy Vatterotte college. Spent countless hours teaching the elderly how to use computers for free. Been referred to more then one time as a companies "Star" technician, Goto guy, hacking deviant, even fired by one company as a security threat only to be hired again later at higher pay. I have collected (And sadly lost) hundreds of letters from happy customers and three letters of recommendation two from the same employer.

I have a nack for figuring out problems, probably why I like metal puzzles. I have installed windows on machines with no floppy, usb, cd-rom, or network card without actually installing the operating system while hooked up to another system. Written countless linux bash scripts to automate tasks, parse logs, filter traffic. Built dozens of specialized servers for just about every task imaginable. And learned more pointless but useful stuff then anyone I have met so far.

I don't know jack about Microsoft Server editions but I am learning. It has never been a need since everything Microsoft server does I have always used Linux. Including roaming profiles, ldap user authentication, samba file servers, print servers, network monitoring and access restriction. etc.

So basically at this point I should either be running my own business or working for much higher pay. Instead I'm an entry level tech making entry level wages. And this weekend crap is getting on my nerves. A person can only play dumb for so long before they get tired of it. This geeks has had enough and in the next following months I'll be seriously deciding weather its worth it to continue the work I am doing or look for something more suited for my skill level and pay grade.

----End of line----(Its from TRON if you don't know)

Hello from Internet land

Welly Welly Welly Welly Well My little lovelies. Its been a long time and no fun since I have done anything fun on the Internet. Lately I have been spending nights of long trying to get things sorted for what will hopefully become a new source of income. And as ideas smash around inside my little head I get a feeling way down in my gutty wutts that this time year after I could be a free man. At least free from working for "The man". Instead yours truly will be "The man". With much help and appreciation from a former co-worker and now business partner. Things are looking good this far. No tats or yarns about failure for these two chaps. No, instead much thinking of alike, and a feeling of accomplishing ones goals this lads been thinking lately.

Here's to a grand ol' 2010 and hopes that 2012 is not the real end to us all, Because as many of you may know or will learn very shortly. It can take up-to 5 years before one sees profits of green from a new venture such as this. And I don't want it cut short by some unwanted kick to the yarballs from old father time and faithful Nostradamus predictions and what not.

Instead I'm hoping year after this time I may be able to actually say I am stable. Well financially at least. Mentally will probably never happen.

Cheers and all that pip.

weekend of code starting Feb 5th.

For a long time I have tried to think of projects I can do to keep busy and make something useful in the process. Usually projects get put aside due to money, or time, or life. So now starts a new project. Weekend of code, which will be me and possibly others coding different thing over the weekends. Projects will range from websites to autohotkey scripts to just about anything I feel I can do. I'll be updating my twitter and facebook accounts during the entire process to keep everyone informed. And will try to get a blog up sunday night between doing laundry and taking out the trash of what all I accomplished or did not accomplish during the weekend. And if anything useful comes from it I may even post the code for other to use and better upon.

ATT wants to cut the land line.

Read several articles on this today. And I have to say, the only other thing more scary then a large company deciding when something should be no longer used, is the ipod credit card swipe.

Not to mention its getting a bit old seeing multi-million+ dollar companies trying to push their ideas onto the rest of the world.

Heres a few things that need to be done before landlines are cut.

1. world wide replacement of all copper lines and upgraded to IP based systems (At phone companies expense).

2. Migration of all current copper line users to phone based systems at the same or lower price.

3. Survey of how many users city, state, and world wide who still depend on copper lines.

sure cell phone are great, and dial-up should no longer be needed in todays age. But this is not the case in many smaller areas. Take Iowa, Illinois, and Missouri for perfect examples. A vast majority of people are still using landlines and dial-up Internet service mostly because large Telco's will not put out the money to upgrade their equipment in these areas.

I personally no longer use landlines, but just about all of my neighbors do. bleh. alwell.

Its time to sit back and wait for the industry to change yet again, just because some large company doesn't want to spend the money the right way.

blah blah blah.

Winterm Hacking, a test of the old.

Recently I purchased a few winterm computers from someone I know. These are small computers designed to connect people to a larger server to access programs instead of having a full blown computer sitting at each workstation. Also called "Thinclients" many businesses prefer these devices over the maintenance and power consumption of full computers.

Why winterms?
The average person would look at a winterm and ask "What does it do?", and after answering "Not much right now" they'd laugh and walk away. But to me the challenge of making something that was designed for one thing do something completely different is a fun and most awaited challenge.

The hurdles.
Winterms range from slow, low ram, no hard drive systems up to fully working computers in a very small case. The two I acquired are on the slower, almost no hard drive side.

One was the WYSE Winterm 3350, a stand up box with mouse, keyboard, ethernet, two usb ports, pcmcia port, and enough storage space to hold the bootloader and windows CE.

This one was the hardest of the two to get moving in the direction I wanted. Mainly due to the fact that a lot of the winterm hacking sites and resources that once roamed the net are now very outdated or completely dead. Many of the smaller versions of linux are also dead due to their lack of support.

But it wasn't to long (About 6 hours) after I got them home that I had linux running on the first winterm. I found that I first had to re flash the firmware using tftp a process that I may outline later on my website but for now I will not go into too much detail.
After flashing the firmware I was able to boot to a usb flash drive with a special linux distro modified just for this one specific type of winterm. Needless to say the boot time was very slow, and surfing the web almost painful due to its sad 200hmz processor and about 16mb or so of ram. However I still have the device, and eventually may come up with a use for it. Otherwise I may just sell or give it away some day.

The second winterm was a tk3350 which seamed much more promising. Again sporting two usb ports, and ethernet port, and ps/2 mouse and keyboard ports. This one does not have the pcmcia adapter built in but the manual boasts that a pci riser card, and pcmcia adapter can be purchased for the device. I don't think I'll be spending any money on the extras but its nice to know the option is available. On top of the regular specs these devices also had a 32mb compact flash card plugged into a cf to IDE adapter. Right away the first thing I did was disconnect the cf card and tried to read it on my computer. Its a fat16 partition but windows nor linux would read it. So instead I simply used dd if=/dev/sda of=winterm.img to back the device up. I then formatted it and surfed the web for a small linux distro that would fit on the 32mb card.

There are tons of small linux distros out on the net, but I wanted one with X windows and a web browser, this winterm had a 533mhz processor and 128mb or ram. So it was more then capable of running what I wanted. Sadly the closest I could come with a pre-built distro was slitaz
Sadly with X and Firefox/seamonkey/mozilla the iso image bulged at 29mb making it too big to fit on the cf card along side the bootloader and give it enough room to be contiguous. What I ended up doing was using slitaz-2.0 with just X and no browser. It booted wonderfully and worked like a charm. Although still no www browser except text based which for most people would be like having your teeth drilled out with a sand blaster.

Every viable use I came up with would require me to purchase a larger cf card. The same person a I purchased the units from came over with a 4gb ultra II card. However the cf adapter did not support it, and everything failed to load. And since I have more important things to spend my money on at the moment I'll have to wait. Here's a breakdown of what can be done with different sizes of cf cards on this unit.

32mb Load X windows and use the system to play some boring games like solitaire.
64mb Load X and browser and use the device as a web browsing device, or even load samba and use the device as a NAS (Network attached storage) device.
128mb-1GB card. The possibilities are endless. The device could be turned into an information kiosk, storage device, movie player (Assuming the video card could keep up) Car based computer, on and on and on my friends.

The tragic part is that one of the winterms had a windows xp embedded sticker on it, but this one was destroyed while someone else attempted to take it apart. Sadly this was probably a 700mhz unit which could have done far more.

Right now I am waiting on a 1gb donor card to test out some other items. Once all my testing and hacking about is done I'll be posting a rather large guide on my site with pictures to the entire process.

Note: The good unit I have seams to have a faulty nic port, which leaves me to run a usb ethernet card. Its not horrible, but would be nice to have the whole unit self contained. I may look into modding it later if I can get anything of use running on it.