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I work in an art museum and we have some digital artwork in the form of mpeg and mov files. They were given to us on external USB drives. One of the drives gave up the ghost. It was a recovery nightmare but once we got everything back together, we settled on the following solution. The works total close to 200GB and are backed up to LTO tape. Whenever they are needed for a show, they are spun off of tape and onto the external drives for display purposes.

I realize that some other posters have called into question the reliability of tapes. I have never dealt with a bad backup tape. I've had experience with DLT, DDS and LTO tapes going back to the mid-1990s. I think the realistic problem with archiving to tape will be maintain the drive to read it. The tape drive will go out long before the media experiences problems.

There isn't a universally agreed upon way to deal with digital artwork. One of the best resources out there is the following mailing list. Ask your question there.

http://www.lsoft.com/scripts/wl.exe?SL1=MUSEUM-L&H=HOME.EASE.LSOFT.COM

On the Debian bugs system page it says the first version was realeased in 94. I'm not sure how much was implemented, but in it's current form it's really very much alike the patent (what is said in the abstract anyways.

Listserv might also apply, if they had advanced mailinglist management in the beginning.

      "DiCaprio's no idiot," says one insider. "His questions about the M1
      and M2 money supply really impressed the president, and when he
      floated a proposal about allowing offshore hedge funds to manage
      Social Security, Clinton's ears really perked up. They were smart
      questions, tough questions -- not the kind of questions you'd expect
      from Barbara Walters."

      Other insiders agree. "DiCaprio knows more about currency fluctuations
      than Cokie Roberts, Diane Sawyer and Sam Donaldson rolled into one,"
      says one source at ABC. "He's not just another pretty face."

In the mid 60's IBM created CP-67 which virtualized the IBM S/360. In the following years the system became VM/370, and has evolved to z/VM today http://www.vm.ibm.com/. VM (the general term for z/VM) is made up of two primary components, VM/CP (control program) and VM/CMS (a mini single user operating system). VM/CMS provided the ground work for being able to administer the system, and provided a nice programming environment in that each VM/CMS user had their own "system" that one could edit, compile and run their programs in an interactive environment (think of a MS-DOS type of model -- then remember that this was in the late 60's).

CMS itself provided some limited simulation of IBM's two other mainframe operating systems OS/360 and DOS. Enough that one could write simple OS or DOS programs and do at least some unit testing. The simulation by CMS was by providing a limited set of the OS and DOS API.

Unlike MVS or DOS, (or even the CP/M, Windows, or *nix families) VM/CP itself does not provide many services directly. VM/CP does not provide any filesystems, any application APIs, etc. All VM/CP really did was to provide a barebone virtual machine and only provide those services one would find on the bare hardware. It was the responsibilty of the operating system running within the virtual machine to provide the application API, filesystems, application memory management, etc. Communication between vm's were originally only via the raw hardware model (channel-to-channel adapters, shared disk volumes, and a method of "punching" virtual cards and sending the virtual cards to another vm's virtual card reader.) As time progressed, VM/CP did provide some API's that allowed very simple messaging between two vm's (first VMCF - Virtual Machine Communication Facility, and then IUCV - Inter User Communication Vehicle).

Early on it was "discovered" that the virtual machine model made a lot of sense as a method to implement VM services. For example if one were to look at a modern VM system, you would see that the entire native VM TCP/IP stack is managed within a small collection of vm's. (Under VM/CP, a vm is called a "userid"). The native VM TCP/IP stack consists of a TCPIP userid that manages the network interface devices, and the TELNET server. The FTP userid implements the FTP protocol, etc. Each userid is totally seperate from the rest of the system and from each other (the tcp/ip socket facility "rides" on top of IUCV in a transparent fashion so that a tcp/ip server is coded the same as on *nix).

Because of the facilities provided by CMS, it is fairly easy to write little servers. For example the orginal LISTSERV server http://www.lsoft.com/products/listserv-history.asp / was written as a CMS application. As well as several native VM webservers.

If one wants to see what is and has been possible in a virtual machine environment, one should at least look at the history of IBM's VM.

For an excellent history of VM http://www.princeton.edu/~melinda/
and the VMSHARE archive, an early BBS used by VM system adminshttp://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare/

• WinNT-L
• Swynk Exchange List
• Microsoft's own newsgroups

My first suggestion is to subscribe to the SPAM-L mailing list.

My next suggestion is to front-end Exchange with something stronger on security, especially if the machine running Exchange stores any confidential data (such as mail). For example, you can run a Postfix server on OpenBSD or Linux and configure it to accept mail for all your domains and pass them to Exchange. Put Exchange on a private IP address so it isn't reachable by the public. That will cover you between the times when exploits are revealed and you can get them installed. And this will let you build up some experience in this software, too.

And finally, help advise us on how better to get the word out to those mail admins that don't yet know. For example, what could we have done to help ensure you had become aware of these things a lot sooner? Is there some course you took that we should clue-in the teacher for? Is there some book you read that we should clue-in the author of?

Microsoft does have a news server which I use occassionally, both on the Web and through NNTP. There's alot of granularity in the groups, which is nice when I'm, say, working on a scripting problem, I can hit the .NET Scripting group and get good responses. There's also multiple languages available, perhaps useful for non-English speakers. But, unless if you're looking for more general discussions like Slashdot has, I don't think you'll find it there.

For general sysadmin and related discussion, problem solving, tips, etc., I've found mailing lists are much more manageable and informative. A real good provider is Sunbelt Software. The NTSysAdmin and Exchange lists are the most popular and general (and the only ones I'm a member of), but there's also ones dedicated to Windows security, Active Directory, etc. Be aware, though, that there's a LOT of traffic on some of these lists. Mine go into a Public Folder, but you can also get the digest if you prefer. One other one that I have used and recommend is the WinNT-List. I'm not on it currently, but mainly because of time restraints. Then again...I hardly check the Sunbelt lists anymore either....

And, of course, I've yet to find a similar forum to replace Slashdot's unique blend of tech, news, and politics...that's why I'm still here.

As John posted to the Amateur Rocketry Listserv today, they are on track for a manned supersonic and unmanned spaceshot in 2003. That puts them in sight of the X-Prize for 2004. That is, if I don't get my butt in gear!

Amateur rocktery is alive and well. For over 5 years, aRocket is the general amateur rocketry group. You will find Carmack and hundreds of others often posting to the aRocket Forum.

WINNT-L: Windows NT/2000 Discussion List is a good place to ask questions and look for answers. Their archive is online but you have to be subscribed to search it. I think they host some other good mailing lists but I'm only subscribed to this one.

There is a SPAM-L web archive, but it's only available to registered SPAM-L members. The identical message was posted to news.admin.net-abuse.email, and is available to all.

http://www.claws-and-paws.com/spam-l/

Search and archives are at:

http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/spam-l.html

But you have to be a subscriber to use the above.

Sig: What Happened To The Censorware Project (censorware.org)