[tech] [unisfa-committee] Deep Thought

Mon Jul 29 22:45:55 WST 2013

Option 2 is good too though! Cooperation for the win!

On Mon, Jul 29, 2013 at 10:37 PM, Alice McCullagh <alice.mccullagh at gmail.com
> wrote:

> PS: Bob, I think UniSFA will happily take option 1! On the off chance that
> Deep Thought turns rabid and tries to eat somebody, I will accept full
> responsibility.
>
> A note on some of the stuff we want to run: You can get iTunes to run on
> Linux, but not natively. Also, it is my experience that most in-browser
> video players such as iView (or Netflix or whatever else is actually
> available in Australia) use Silverlight. It is really difficult to get
> Silverlight to run on Linux. Sure, it's possible, if you have three hours
> and a lot of patience, but the whole point of this change is so that a
> moderately intelligent, computer literate person can manage Deep Thought
> without ending up in the middle of the ocean, hoping that the sharks will
> stay away until they reach shallow water.
>
> Anyway Bob, we appreciate your help, but please do not take the change in
> software as a personal insult to you or your abilities. It's just what will
> be best for our club's needs.
>
>
> On Mon, Jul 29, 2013 at 10:23 PM, Andrew Adamson <bob at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au>wrote:
>
>> There are three options available to UniSFA for deepthought. I have
>> detailed some of the pros and cons of each below. I must first point out
>> that this is all me talking, not wheel/committee/god/cthulu/etc.
>>
>> =========================================================================
>> 1. UniSFA installs Windows on deepthought and have their own admin control
>> over it
>> - Yay full control and non-uccans how to use it
>> - Yay you can install itoons and netflicks on it
>> - UCC needs somebody (a unisfan) to be responsible for it. This is
>> because the internet connection is through UCC and the finger gets pointed
>> at UCC when the machine gets botnetted. UCC can't afford to have their
>> internet turned off or filtered. (This is what I was asking for on the
>> UniSFA facebook group).
>> - The machine will probably be moved to our insecure network. You will
>> still get internet, but it will be more heavily firewalled, and possibly
>> packet filtered too.
>> - There will (should?) be an administrator login, and the normal unisfa
>> login will be unprivileged. So you're still dependent on one or a few
>> people to maintain it. I'm sorry but giving every man and his dog admin
>> access is a sure path to failure. We don't even do this in UCC where most
>> people are "good with computers".
>> - It will be difficult for UCC to help when this machine breaks. As Luke
>> pointed out in his email, "The responsibility to support a system has to
>> come with the right to control its configuration." This as much due to
>> passwords as due to windows - it's not easy to support windows remotely
>> without the appropriate tools and setup (which we don't have on a
>> non-ucc system).
>>
>> =========================================================================
>> 2. UniSFA gives UCC a windows 7 licence and UCC installs the UCC standard
>> operating environment (SOE) on it with a guest UniSFA user.
>> - Yay windows, and non-uccans know how to use it
>> - Yay somebody can install itoons and netflicks on it
>> - deepthought practically becomes just like a UCC clubroom machine
>> - you will have to poke a UCC winadmin or wheel member (of which there
>> are many) to install stuff. Wheel is pretty much perpetual and the machine
>> won't stop being maintained when somebody leaves uni.
>> - The machine is less likely to get maintained on a regular basis
>> than a linux install because it's difficult to do it quickly and remotely.
>> As I've previously stated, I will not personally support windows on
>> deepthought - I didn't say that somebody else wouldn't.
>> - This is probably your best option from a long term reliability and
>> maintainability point of view, as there are is a group of people who
>> automatically have the ability to maintain it
>>
>> =========================================================================
>> 3. Deepthought is left with some form of linux on it - pretty much the
>> same as currently, but not necessarily debian
>> - Yay free software
>> - Yay easiest to maintain by uccans. It should also be easy to maintain by
>> CS students
>> - Yay reliable (I know unisfa doesn't think so, but I'll explain that
>> later).
>> - Ubuntu and linuxmint can actually run itunes and netflix (I'm intigued -
>> netflix hasn't been released in australia yet anyway)
>> - Will still play all the media and whatnot that you want it to (don't
>> judge everything by Debian)
>> - Debian sucks as a desktop OS because it tries to be too open source.
>> This is why things like firefox were a bitch to install - debian has its
>> own, fully open variant called iceweasel. It's also a pain with codecs for
>> movies and music. Linux mint would be a better option.
>>
>> =========================================================================
>> Reliability:
>> Deepthought has some of the best uptimes of ANY COMPUTER MANAGED BY UCC.
>> Most of the problems on deepthought have been external hardware issues
>> unrelated to the operating system, or plain old malicious users (when I
>> got to it the other day somebody had deliberately removed and purged both
>> X and gdm).
>>
>> What putting windows on deepthought *won't* solve:
>> - It won't stop stupid users who break things deliberately or out of
>> ignorance
>> - It won't help when you have yanked the disk drive out of an old machine
>> and put it in a new machine with completely different hardware and bios
>> settings
>> - It won't help the barcode reader work when it hasn't been plugged in at
>> all
>> - It won't help the barcode reader work when it has been plugged into the
>> mouse port
>> - It won't help the network work after the network cable got left across
>> the doorway and got shredded
>> - It won't help it if the power is not plugged in
>>
>> All of the above things are the "issues" I've dealt with on deepthought in
>> my time maintaining it, which is why I'm a little peeved that the finger
>> seems to be being pointed at me and the software it is running.
>>
>> ==========================================================================
>> Hardware:
>> Until the most recent iteration of deepthought it was run on ucc donated
>> hardware. Both the current and the last box were capable of playing
>> whatever movies you want (even with the existing OS) - you pretty much
>> need a $35 graphics card with the right outputs for what you want. I think
>> I mentioned this on the facebook group several months ago when it was
>> being discussed there and it got ignored.
>>
>> ==========================================================================
>>
>> Hope that helps you make a decision.
>>
>>
>> Andrew Adamson
>> bob at ucc.asn.au
>>
>> |"If you can't beat them, join them, and then beat them."                |
>> | ---Peter's Laws                                                        |
>> _______________________________________________
>> UniSFA-Committee mailing list
>> UniSFA-Committee at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au
>> http://lists.ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/unisfa-committee
>>
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au/pipermail/tech/attachments/20130729/36f1728f/attachment.htm 