This is *so* making my day! I didn't find this on their info pages, I found it from the "learn more" page in the Apple Store for the drive bays.
"Mac OS X Server includes AppleRAID, providing RAID 0 and 1 support through software, allowing you to increase either data redundancy or performance. Xserve is able to boot from RAID volumes. Choose any combination of mirroring or striping across the four drive bays, but all RAID configurations require a minimum of two ADM hard drives."
Also, it looks like the management software will provide the monitoring and notification I want.
This is an important point which often gets glossed over. OS X can take two drives and make them RAID 1 but it can't boot off it. That means even with this Xserve you can't have disk redundancy for your OS. OS's drive fails, server goes kerplunk.
This is what I want - I want my OS on a RAID 1 and my data on a separate RAID 1 or RAID 5. If any drive fails I want the system to keep going, keep providing access to the data and I want it to let me know a drive failed via blinkenlights and by email (my pager has email). If it doesn't have its own email alert, I want it to execute the program of my choice or log it to a file so I can use a script or cron+script to make my own email alert.
I want this in a system which costs around $5000, provides at least 8GB for the OS disk and 30GB for data. I don't need a 14 bay array which will probably cost $3000 before you even add any drives to it. I need to set up an OS X file server this summer. I don't need a blazing processor or even blazing disk performance. I need reliability, redundancy and monitorability (I think I made up that word).
I can get this for Windows 2000 Server from many sources (with hardware RAID and hotswap drives, something I don't really need).
I know of one which uses the first,middle,last initials + last 4 SSN format. Currently I know of 9 collisions there (they add a letter after the numbers to resolve). Their solution to resolve the collisions has problems of its own. Occasionaly people write code expecting the AAAXXXX format or have a 7 character entry limitation which prevents those people with the letter from logging in.
I think what increases the chances of a collision is if someone doesn't have or use their middle name, they use 'x' in its place. People from a lot of different cultures don't have middle names so if there are a lot of foreign students (like at a tech school), the chances of collision increase. Now that I think about it, those foreign students don't have SSN's so whatever they use to substitute for SSN's may increase the chances of collision as well.
Schools which receive federal funding (i.e. all of them) were supposed to stop using SSN's as unique identifiers years ago but many still do.
Tom Stoppard, playwright
on
Enigma
·
· Score: 3, Informative
He's written for multiple media but I think he is still considered primarily a playwright. He is probably best known for his play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. It's a good sign to see his name on a writing credit.
VPC on Windows *should* perform better than VPC/Mac (assuming roughly comparable processors) but it doesn't seem to. I haven't done a side by side comparison but I have more often found myself waiting for VPC/Win than VPC/Mac. I've only used VPC/Mac on OS 9 and lower so perhaps the fact that the host OS allows it to almost monopolize the processor makes the difference. Also, VPC/Mac has been around for a long time and VPC/Win is still pretty new so VPC/Win code probably has a lot of kinks that still need to be ironed out.
I've had better luck than you in installing non-Windows OS's in VPC. I successfully run OpenBSD (2.9) and RedHat (7.2) tho' neither is using X (didn't try in OpenBSD and screwed up video settings when setting up RedHat but I don't need it).
I don't use the OpenBSD guest OS much but I've been using the RedHat at lot as a practice run for setting up a server for a project. The Windows support is definitely better, for some reason the RedHat in console mode can still be really slow, like waiting for the characters I've typed to show up sometimes (on an 90MHz Athlon). Initially the Virtual Switch (Host OS must be Win2k or XP) network just didn't work but now it works with few problems. I wouldn't use VPC to run virtual production servers but for testing purposes it's invaluable.
VPC wins over VMWare in ease of use. It's interface much easier to work with and they sell disk images with operating systems pre-installed (tho' I haven't purchased one). I tried VMWare back when RedHat 6.2 was new and had a much harder time trying to set it up. Maybe it's improved since then.
VPC does this too, at least if the host is Win2k or newer. Each "guest OS" has a network setting, NAT or Virtual Switch. Virtual Switch can be set to Local Only (guest OS's network with each other), Local and Host (guest OS's and host OS networked), Local, host and external (communicate with everything, guest appears to be just another box on the LAN), or External only (host and other guest OS's can't communicate with guest).
I was not expressing my personal beliefs, I was simply trying to express the position on which I believe the U.S. TV business model is based. I shouldn't have expressed that position so succinctly because it appears to have stopped readers in their tracks, leading them to hitting the Reply link rather than reading the whole post (others are more guilty of this than Xtifr).
As for logic, while I think it's instructive for every person to be familiar with it, I don't think it needs to be adhered to at all times, certainly not here. If this were a debate (which it's not), the goal would be to pursuade others and forming a strong logical chain from premises to conclusion is not the only way to pursuade. In fact in practice it's a pretty bad way to try to pursuade. Really most of us are merely expressing thoughts and opinions to stimulate the thinking of others or just to share. It's nice to be logically coherent but it's not necessary.
I wish someone would give those fallacies new names, latin is so pompous and it obstructs people's learning and understanding of the concepts.
Remove the need to be commercially competitive, and the quality of the programmes goes up - the incentive is to make something that people want to listen to.
Let me make the american free market counter-argument. American programming is of higher quality because it is ad-supported. You are correct that the progamming can be considered filler between the advertisements but that filler must be of high quality for people to watch it and therefore for advertisements to pay for the programming. If a show is bad, people don't watch, advertisers don't pay for ads on unwatched shows so the show goes away. If a show is good, more people watch it and advertisers pay more to have their ads shown during that program.
With the TV license, the network already has their money, from the TV owners. The network won't get more money if they produce better shows and they won't get less money if they produce worse shows. Even if a TV owner only watches the network's competition, the private broadcasters, the network still gets its money. They only have to produce "good enough" programming across their whole line of channels to keep masses of people from getting rid of their "rabbit ears," dish, cable, or the TV entirely. Even those that do try to do without broadcast TV are harrassed by their own government who treats them as guilty before proven innocent of not paying the license.
The real pro-license argument is it means the network is free from appeasing risk-adverse advertisers and from appealling to the lowest common denominator in its audience. Also the fact that shows do not have to be cut into little bits to fit between the ads allows for greater artistic freedom. The networks have more "pure" goals, they want to "enrich" the audience, not themselves.
PBS is a dilluted form of this. PBS relies on tax money and contributions individual viewers. However the programs also have "sponsors" who are sometimes non-profit organizations but are usually for-profit corporations and they get to show an "ad-like" spot before the program. I remember the sponsor spots being fairly dry, read by PBS announcers with fairly ordinary text shown on screen. It made the argument that show sponsors were not doing it for the TV time plausible. Today the spots are virtually indistinguishable from advertisements on other channels so it's hard to believe the TV time isn't a major motivation for the sponsors.
Scriptable programs are very useful. The scriptability of Outlook is how you sync Outlook with a PDA. What's bad about Outlook 2000 and earlier is programs can use this automation without the user being aware of it.
Last year Microsoft released a security patch for Outlook 2000 which makes programmatic access to Outlook's settings and data trigger a pop-up message asking the user if they want to let the action continue. The user can click "No" or can permit the access for some period of time (1 minute, 2 minutes, etc.). It has a separate trigger when a program tries to use Outlook to send an email.
This means no worm can read the addressbook without a pop-up appearing and it can't send a copy of itself without a different pop-up appearing. When the addressbook reading is legitimate, like syncing a PDA, the user can allow it but "unknown" programs trying to access the data are blocked unless the user is just that stupid.
This patch is incorporated into Outlook 2002 and is enabled by default.
A one-time pad can disguise the length of a message as long as the message is shorter than the pad. If I use a 2K pad I can send a message which is "All your base are belong to us" or the GPS coordinates for all the Fortune 100 headquarters and the size of the encrypted message will be the same, 2K.
No form of encryption can hide the fact that a message has been sent. That's what stegaography and other forms of obfuscation are for.
Not much has been done to the TiBook model since it was introduced so it's overdue for some change. Many people expect there to be some significant news about the TiBook at Macworld New York (July 16). If you like the changes, buy that. If you don't, the current TiBook models will be cheaper:-)
You haven't been paying attention to this subject. That's okay, it's not your country.
One problem is that it's an information vacuum, it sucks up *everything* from the ISP, not just the packets sent or received by the suspect. They supposed to toss the packets belonging to everyone but the suspect but we only have their word on that. It's like they tapped every phone at a CO and are supposed to throw out all the tapes except the ones for the one house.
Another is that the implementation of Carnivore does *not* have the same oversight wiretaps or property searches do.
Have you ever seen Goodfellas or The Sopranos? When they do a wiretap, they're only allowed to record or listen if they hear in the first two minutes the target of the wiretap (not his wife, not his cousin) or if it's is material to the case. If its not, they have to turn it off for a period of time (something like 5 minutes) after which they can turn it back on to check again. With Carnivore they keep it all and don't even have a way of knowing who in the household was using the computer. Carnivore is like a secret search warrant of every home or business the suspect or anyone in his family visited.
Someone else mentioned a suspect has no way of knowing if they're being "bugged" by Carnivore but I don't think we have a fundemental right to know if a warrant has been issued with our name on it.
Of course wiretaps have gotten broader. I believe the FBI finally got their "roaming wiretap" law allowing them to listen to any phone the suspect *may* use. I'm sure there are rules of admissability if they record someone else by "mistake" but it's to late, the damage to innocent people's privacy has been done, they can't un-listen to their conversation.
The Internet is different from other communications networks, not in terms of our rights but in technical terms. This has important ramifications for how laws are written and implemented. You should be squirming at the sight of my my similes comparing Carnivore to wiretaps and house searches, most metaphors relating the Internet to the physical world break down with a little scrutiny, but I'm just trying to relate my perspective.
Carnivore is part of a larger trend we've been seeing in this country where what we believe is our right to privacy is being trampled by our government, not to mention corporations and other individuals. We see the lack of oversight for something like Carnivore and we feel the "chilling effect" it has on our speech and acts. It comes down to Quis cusotdiet ipsos custodes, "Who Watches the Watchers?" The recording of interviews by the police in the UK is smart for evdentiary reasons but it's really there to prevent abuses by the police. How do we get that for the use of Carnivore?
That's what PICS is for. It hasn't really caught on but some browsers, like Internet Explorer, has support for it.
The only way to really keep the kiddies safe from being accosted by big, bad breasts is to use a system on the child's computer which relies on a continually monitored whitelist of "safe" sites. Besides, breaking the system so they can look at boobies is good computer experience.
Slashdot is a good example. It started off as a hobby and.org was probably a fine choice of TLD. There were no ads. At some point ads came along, probably just because the bandwidth costs were getting out of hand. Then they got bought out by a company. Most recently they started selling subscriptions.
So under your system when would they forced to give up the.org for a.com? When money changed hands? When they became part of a corporation? When they started selling a service to individuals rather than eyeballs to advertisers?
Ooh, sorry, someone else already owns slashdot.com, a company which sells razors to sadist cartoonists, guess Taco & Co. can kiss their branding goodbye. Oh well, if people are really interested in them, they can find them through Google.
Re: I pity the fool who speak without thinking
on
CaptyTV for Mac
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· Score: 2
USB bandwidth is 12Mb/sec, not 12MB/sec. That's Mega-Bits, not Mega-Bytes. Big difference.
Yes, USB video converters have been around for a while and they suck ass.
Unfortunately, I've discovered some web sites have legitimate windows which won't open if "popups" are disabled.
Microsoft's (are you surprised?) Outlook Web Access, the web application for accessing an Exchange Server, opens messages in their own window when you click on them in the index. Fine and dandy. The problem comes when you try to Reply or Forward the message. Whatever method they use to display that window involves onLoad or some related technique because clicking Reply or Forward makes the message window close and no replacement window appear. Incredibly lame web coding on their part.
I'm pretty sure Mac OS had the time sync option set to Off by default. I always turn it on (and enter a different sync server) so I can't remember if they changed the default to On in OS 9 or OS X.
Re:MacSFTP is nice for Mac OS X (but $25 shareware
on
Good SFTP Clients?
·
· Score: 2
Of course OS X has the command line sftp. For Mac OS 9 GUI there is the commercial app F-Secure (f-secure.com). For OS X GUI there is RBrowser (rbrowser.com) which supports many methods including sftp, scp and tunnelling through ssh.
Slashdot Mirror
1GHz CPU, 4 60GB disks (as 2 RAID 1 drives), AppleCare for $3,889.00 (.edu price) Whoo-hoo!
This is an important point which often gets glossed over. OS X can take two drives and make them RAID 1 but it can't boot off it. That means even with this Xserve you can't have disk redundancy for your OS. OS's drive fails, server goes kerplunk.
This is what I want - I want my OS on a RAID 1 and my data on a separate RAID 1 or RAID 5. If any drive fails I want the system to keep going, keep providing access to the data and I want it to let me know a drive failed via blinkenlights and by email (my pager has email). If it doesn't have its own email alert, I want it to execute the program of my choice or log it to a file so I can use a script or cron+script to make my own email alert.
I want this in a system which costs around $5000, provides at least 8GB for the OS disk and 30GB for data. I don't need a 14 bay array which will probably cost $3000 before you even add any drives to it. I need to set up an OS X file server this summer. I don't need a blazing processor or even blazing disk performance. I need reliability, redundancy and monitorability (I think I made up that word).
I can get this for Windows 2000 Server from many sources (with hardware RAID and hotswap drives, something I don't really need).
I know of one which uses the first,middle,last initials + last 4 SSN format. Currently I know of 9 collisions there (they add a letter after the numbers to resolve). Their solution to resolve the collisions has problems of its own. Occasionaly people write code expecting the AAAXXXX format or have a 7 character entry limitation which prevents those people with the letter from logging in.
I think what increases the chances of a collision is if someone doesn't have or use their middle name, they use 'x' in its place. People from a lot of different cultures don't have middle names so if there are a lot of foreign students (like at a tech school), the chances of collision increase. Now that I think about it, those foreign students don't have SSN's so whatever they use to substitute for SSN's may increase the chances of collision as well.
Schools which receive federal funding (i.e. all of them) were supposed to stop using SSN's as unique identifiers years ago but many still do.
I found a decent page about his various works. A Tom Stoppard Bibliography
Because VMware is *not* an OS emulator, it is very much like VPC. Bochs is the one that's really different from the others.
The point of reviewing them all is because they all should be considered when the task is to run multiple virtual operating systems inside a host one.
VPC on Windows *should* perform better than VPC/Mac (assuming roughly comparable processors) but it doesn't seem to. I haven't done a side by side comparison but I have more often found myself waiting for VPC/Win than VPC/Mac. I've only used VPC/Mac on OS 9 and lower so perhaps the fact that the host OS allows it to almost monopolize the processor makes the difference. Also, VPC/Mac has been around for a long time and VPC/Win is still pretty new so VPC/Win code probably has a lot of kinks that still need to be ironed out.
I've had better luck than you in installing non-Windows OS's in VPC. I successfully run OpenBSD (2.9) and RedHat (7.2) tho' neither is using X (didn't try in OpenBSD and screwed up video settings when setting up RedHat but I don't need it).
I don't use the OpenBSD guest OS much but I've been using the RedHat at lot as a practice run for setting up a server for a project. The Windows support is definitely better, for some reason the RedHat in console mode can still be really slow, like waiting for the characters I've typed to show up sometimes (on an 90MHz Athlon). Initially the Virtual Switch (Host OS must be Win2k or XP) network just didn't work but now it works with few problems. I wouldn't use VPC to run virtual production servers but for testing purposes it's invaluable.
VPC wins over VMWare in ease of use. It's interface much easier to work with and they sell disk images with operating systems pre-installed (tho' I haven't purchased one). I tried VMWare back when RedHat 6.2 was new and had a much harder time trying to set it up. Maybe it's improved since then.
VPC does this too, at least if the host is Win2k or newer. Each "guest OS" has a network setting, NAT or Virtual Switch. Virtual Switch can be set to Local Only (guest OS's network with each other), Local and Host (guest OS's and host OS networked), Local, host and external (communicate with everything, guest appears to be just another box on the LAN), or External only (host and other guest OS's can't communicate with guest).
That's all I had to say.
I was not expressing my personal beliefs, I was simply trying to express the position on which I believe the U.S. TV business model is based. I shouldn't have expressed that position so succinctly because it appears to have stopped readers in their tracks, leading them to hitting the Reply link rather than reading the whole post (others are more guilty of this than Xtifr).
As for logic, while I think it's instructive for every person to be familiar with it, I don't think it needs to be adhered to at all times, certainly not here. If this were a debate (which it's not), the goal would be to pursuade others and forming a strong logical chain from premises to conclusion is not the only way to pursuade. In fact in practice it's a pretty bad way to try to pursuade. Really most of us are merely expressing thoughts and opinions to stimulate the thinking of others or just to share. It's nice to be logically coherent but it's not necessary.
I wish someone would give those fallacies new names, latin is so pompous and it obstructs people's learning and understanding of the concepts.
With the TV license, the network already has their money, from the TV owners. The network won't get more money if they produce better shows and they won't get less money if they produce worse shows. Even if a TV owner only watches the network's competition, the private broadcasters, the network still gets its money. They only have to produce "good enough" programming across their whole line of channels to keep masses of people from getting rid of their "rabbit ears," dish, cable, or the TV entirely. Even those that do try to do without broadcast TV are harrassed by their own government who treats them as guilty before proven innocent of not paying the license.
The real pro-license argument is it means the network is free from appeasing risk-adverse advertisers and from appealling to the lowest common denominator in its audience. Also the fact that shows do not have to be cut into little bits to fit between the ads allows for greater artistic freedom. The networks have more "pure" goals, they want to "enrich" the audience, not themselves.
PBS is a dilluted form of this. PBS relies on tax money and contributions individual viewers. However the programs also have "sponsors" who are sometimes non-profit organizations but are usually for-profit corporations and they get to show an "ad-like" spot before the program. I remember the sponsor spots being fairly dry, read by PBS announcers with fairly ordinary text shown on screen. It made the argument that show sponsors were not doing it for the TV time plausible. Today the spots are virtually indistinguishable from advertisements on other channels so it's hard to believe the TV time isn't a major motivation for the sponsors.
Scriptable programs are very useful. The scriptability of Outlook is how you sync Outlook with a PDA. What's bad about Outlook 2000 and earlier is programs can use this automation without the user being aware of it.
Last year Microsoft released a security patch for Outlook 2000 which makes programmatic access to Outlook's settings and data trigger a pop-up message asking the user if they want to let the action continue. The user can click "No" or can permit the access for some period of time (1 minute, 2 minutes, etc.). It has a separate trigger when a program tries to use Outlook to send an email.
This means no worm can read the addressbook without a pop-up appearing and it can't send a copy of itself without a different pop-up appearing. When the addressbook reading is legitimate, like syncing a PDA, the user can allow it but "unknown" programs trying to access the data are blocked unless the user is just that stupid.
This patch is incorporated into Outlook 2002 and is enabled by default.
A one-time pad can disguise the length of a message as long as the message is shorter than the pad. If I use a 2K pad I can send a message which is "All your base are belong to us" or the GPS coordinates for all the Fortune 100 headquarters and the size of the encrypted message will be the same, 2K.
No form of encryption can hide the fact that a message has been sent. That's what stegaography and other forms of obfuscation are for.
No one wants to see you in a bikini.
Not much has been done to the TiBook model since it was introduced so it's overdue for some change. Many people expect there to be some significant news about the TiBook at Macworld New York (July 16). If you like the changes, buy that. If you don't, the current TiBook models will be cheaper :-)
Actually in 1994, commonly used browsers did not have support for inline JPEGs.
You haven't been paying attention to this subject. That's okay, it's not your country.
One problem is that it's an information vacuum, it sucks up *everything* from the ISP, not just the packets sent or received by the suspect. They supposed to toss the packets belonging to everyone but the suspect but we only have their word on that. It's like they tapped every phone at a CO and are supposed to throw out all the tapes except the ones for the one house.
Another is that the implementation of Carnivore does *not* have the same oversight wiretaps or property searches do.
Have you ever seen Goodfellas or The Sopranos? When they do a wiretap, they're only allowed to record or listen if they hear in the first two minutes the target of the wiretap (not his wife, not his cousin) or if it's is material to the case. If its not, they have to turn it off for a period of time (something like 5 minutes) after which they can turn it back on to check again. With Carnivore they keep it all and don't even have a way of knowing who in the household was using the computer. Carnivore is like a secret search warrant of every home or business the suspect or anyone in his family visited.
Someone else mentioned a suspect has no way of knowing if they're being "bugged" by Carnivore but I don't think we have a fundemental right to know if a warrant has been issued with our name on it.
Of course wiretaps have gotten broader. I believe the FBI finally got their "roaming wiretap" law allowing them to listen to any phone the suspect *may* use. I'm sure there are rules of admissability if they record someone else by "mistake" but it's to late, the damage to innocent people's privacy has been done, they can't un-listen to their conversation.
The Internet is different from other communications networks, not in terms of our rights but in technical terms. This has important ramifications for how laws are written and implemented. You should be squirming at the sight of my my similes comparing Carnivore to wiretaps and house searches, most metaphors relating the Internet to the physical world break down with a little scrutiny, but I'm just trying to relate my perspective.
Carnivore is part of a larger trend we've been seeing in this country where what we believe is our right to privacy is being trampled by our government, not to mention corporations and other individuals. We see the lack of oversight for something like Carnivore and we feel the "chilling effect" it has on our speech and acts. It comes down to Quis cusotdiet ipsos custodes, "Who Watches the Watchers?" The recording of interviews by the police in the UK is smart for evdentiary reasons but it's really there to prevent abuses by the police. How do we get that for the use of Carnivore?
The only way to really keep the kiddies safe from being accosted by big, bad breasts is to use a system on the child's computer which relies on a continually monitored whitelist of "safe" sites. Besides, breaking the system so they can look at boobies is good computer experience.
Slashdot is a good example. It started off as a hobby and .org was probably a fine choice of TLD. There were no ads. At some point ads came along, probably just because the bandwidth costs were getting out of hand. Then they got bought out by a company. Most recently they started selling subscriptions.
.org for a .com? When money changed hands? When they became part of a corporation? When they started selling a service to individuals rather than eyeballs to advertisers?
So under your system when would they forced to give up the
Ooh, sorry, someone else already owns slashdot.com, a company which sells razors to sadist cartoonists, guess Taco & Co. can kiss their branding goodbye. Oh well, if people are really interested in them, they can find them through Google.
USB bandwidth is 12Mb/sec, not 12MB/sec. That's Mega-Bits, not Mega-Bytes. Big difference.
Yes, USB video converters have been around for a while and they suck ass.
I don't know about the airline example (tho' it sounds valid) but the phone company breakup was the result of an anti-trust lawsuit, not deregulation.
Unfortunately, I've discovered some web sites have legitimate windows which won't open if "popups" are disabled.
Microsoft's (are you surprised?) Outlook Web Access, the web application for accessing an Exchange Server, opens messages in their own window when you click on them in the index. Fine and dandy. The problem comes when you try to Reply or Forward the message. Whatever method they use to display that window involves onLoad or some related technique because clicking Reply or Forward makes the message window close and no replacement window appear. Incredibly lame web coding on their part.
I'm pretty sure Mac OS had the time sync option set to Off by default. I always turn it on (and enter a different sync server) so I can't remember if they changed the default to On in OS 9 or OS X.
Of course OS X has the command line sftp. For Mac OS 9 GUI there is the commercial app F-Secure (f-secure.com). For OS X GUI there is RBrowser (rbrowser.com) which supports many methods including sftp, scp and tunnelling through ssh.
Did you mean ASR as in Apple Software Restore? ASR is a good thing.