@ajstringham I don't know, having used all three plus Cinnamon and some others, XFCE comes out dramatically on top of Gnome in my book. Better interface, lighter, more intuitive. I don't know many aspects of Gnome that I would consider on par with it anymore.

http://www.infoworld.com/t/javascript/paypal-and-netflix-cozy-nodejs-237593

Node.js is just awesome. So cool to see it making such rapid inroads in the industry.

http://www.infoworld.com/t/javascript/jxcore-brings-multithreading-sort-of-nodejs-237562

There is a bit of Node affinity around here so thought that people might be interested.

http://www.datamation.com/open-source/why-xfce-beats-kde-and-gnome-1.html

Saw this one in the news today and thought that I would share. Rare to see someone taking the time to champion XFCE.

@Minion-Queen said:

Ok I have lived in an African Jungle with center section of the town was known Mosquito. Nope would take that any day over more snow. I am so sick of winter... it is snowing again.

Not too horrible down here. Cold but clear. And the storm that was supposed to hit on Sunday did absolutely nothing.

@Dashrender said:

This is funny, but actually THANK YOU for posting it!

I'm going to be telling my users they should be replacing their home computers if they have XP. The few I've already spoken to have asked... how do I know if I have XP? My normal go to is if the start button is green, you have XP. But if they are in classic mode it will be gray, so that won't be any help.

This page will be awesome for them.

It's kind of ridiculous that people actually need this page but.... it's nice that it exists for them.

We call that "grape koolaid"

@Katie said:

The downside to temperate weather year-round is that the mosquitoes don't die.

Ugh. I'm liking my snow again.

Here are the books that you want to have:

http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0790145370167.do

http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0790145405722.do

http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0790145406453.do

@ajstringham said:

@scottalanmiller Xen over VMware? I'm curious as to why.

Paravirtualization. That's why Xen was able to run Asterisk rock solid about five years before VMware even had it working at all. There was a time when Xen was the only way to do this. Now they've all improved to a point where they can all do it. But Xen remains the only option for pure PV.

@Katie said:

At my last gig, Windstream was the provider, though it was Nuvox first (before they were bought out.
Their support staff were pretty good, and there was a team designated for the specific system we used at the time. (which was Shoretel)

Windstream is the rebranding of Paetech from Rochester. They changed their identity presumably to overcome the horrific reputation that they had built. I've worked with them before and they were both technically unable to deliver their solutions and unreliable even when they did. I've heard a lot of horror stories of people dealing with Windstream. Lots of outages, inability to get support, etc.

@Dashrender said:

@Hubtech said:

That's the trick. If you have a high density environment, i'd do either a dedicated network to your VoIP service or get two ISP connections and a load balancer with QoS. Either way, i usually recommend QoS. If your ISP provides your SIP they can provision SIP priority on the delivery side of your pipe.

I spoke to Cox about SIP, they can provide it, but they will only do so for solutions that they have certified, and it must come over it's own connection outside of your internet connection (which in theory is fine... but you find yourself bound to that specific ISP).

Yes, sadly doing this you end up being tied to your SIP provider just as if they were a PRI. It saves on taxes and sometimes adds some flexibility but often you gain little to nothing because all the real benefits of a neutral technology are taken away.

@Dashrender said:

@NetworkNerd said:

Remember you will want 87-100Kbps of upload bandwidth per concurrent call. I can definitely understand having a tough time swallowing ISP pricing, but if it is going to ensure phone clarity,management will pay it.

What do you mean? ISP Pricing? If I'm using a SIP provider that is not my ISP, don't I simply have to ensure I leave enough available bandwidth open for incoming calls (not really sure how to do that?), Outgoing is easy to handle through QOS, but incoming? Our 6 meg pipe spends most of the day saturated because of our cloud EMR and VPN tunnels to other branches.

A saturated link will cause problems.

@Dashrender said:

@NetworkNerd said:

I actually really like Broadvox (recently acquired by Fusion and named NBS) in addition to the others that were recommended here.

The phone bill is literally about $400 or less for 4 companies and 15 concurrent calls. That is amazing compared to what it was when we had PRI.

$400 a month for basically 15 lines I guess that's good. I think we pay around $500 for a PRI (23 lines) so $400 doesn't seem like such a deal.

Well you can't just compare lines to lines. Phone lines aren't sold that way. Have to compare DIDs, minutes, lines, etc. Lots of possible factors. And is $500 base or after tax because SIP isn't taxes like PRI is (one is legally phone, one is not.) Generally SIP comes with a lot more features.

@NetworkNerd said:

Elastix plays really, really well as a VM. I think it likes ESXi best personally, but Scott may disagree.

Xen PV would be my first choice. vSphere second. HyperV third. KVM last.

@Eric said:

I am interested to see for myself which is more useful.

What kind of a phone are you using? I thought that you were on a Blackberry.

Or for the Brits.... "In the Cupboard of Patrick's Love"

@ajstringham said:

@Eric If it's loo, it needs to be "In the Loo" or "On the Loo". Loo alone doesn't make sense and makes @dominica think potty humor is acceptable/normal...

Does it need to be "in the water closet" then?

Pretty much any wiki will give you the same results. What you are looking for might be something more like OneNote. You want a rich text editing experience, not wiki markdown.

If you just put text into MediaWiki, or any wiki really, the wiki markup will run it all together. You have to select your formatting if you want it to do something else. What you want is to tell MediaWiki that the text is "pre-formated". Otherwise you are, by default, telling it that it is unformatted and without further instructions the wiki will mash everything together. Remember a Wiki is like writing a raw HTML page, it is not a graphical editor. It uses Markdown (or Wiki Markup) which is much easier than HTML but is still a markup language and if you don't put in the markup, you are telling it to strip whitespace.