I'm looking for a roughly similar "solution" - adequate performance with redundancy and lots of storage space. A "SAN" ("Storage Area Network" - one of the current buzzwords going around these days) might be useful.
Either iSCSI (if you want economical and standards-based) or Fiber-Channel (if you're wealthy and the speed of writes to the hard drive array is critical) based boxes of hard drives seems to be an option, and from the point of view of the server (or whatever computer is using them) they are just another hard drive. Or so the materials I've read say. (Think of them as an external RAID box...)
iSCSI seems to be limited to 1Gb speeds (unless you can get your hands on 10Gb ethernet cards and switch, which I gather are now available), which to me seems perfectly adequate for most file-server type uses. It looks to my still-new-to-the-area eye that you can also do a lot of potentially useful tricks because of the standard IP-based nature of the data transfer (such as being able to mount a "hard drive" directly over the internet or a LAN, if you have some reason to need to do so). Fiber-channel is faster (2Gb seems to be typical, 4Gb is apparently getting fairly established, and 8Gb is available if you're made of money) but requires specialized and fairly expensive hardware ($500+ for each fiber-channel interface card at the LOW end, as I recall, plus several thousand for the fiber-channel equivalent of a "switch".)
On the subject of iSCSI, there seem to be active projects with both "target" (iSCSI device server) drivers and "client" (iSCSI device mounting) drivers for Linux on Sourceforge...
Corrections welcome, of course...
Incidentally, that's not to be confused with "NAS" ("Network Attached Storage") which as far as I can tell is a buzzword used by people due to the fact that "file server" doesn't sound "cool" any more...your "NAS" might be using a "SAN" to store the drives that it is serving...
In any case, this may be me trying to "hijack" this Ask Slashdot, but what do people here think of the "SAN" concept and its implementations?
Okay, that IS pretty funny, but it does make me wonder - who DOES own the copyright on those warnings? Anybody? Or are they produced by the US Government and therefore public domain?
Could you legally rip just those screens out of the DVD's, compile them all into a DVD or Ogg Theora or DivX files, and then redistribute them via BitTorrent?...
I find it frustrating to have to dredge up CVS's from the DRI project and go through the hassles of compiling in order to get 3D acceleration on my laptop's S3 "ProSavage/DDR" chipset.
It does seem to work, though obviously not all that impressively by modern standards. Anyone know if they've FINALLY folded in the Savage DRI modules into this X.org release? The release notes don't mention it, but I'm hoping...
Naturally, I was wondering about Linux capability as well. On the Windows systems, does "LightScribe(tm)" act like a printer driver? Or is it something totally "other"?
Believe it or not, I've been wondering what it would take to get some of that. I get the impression that since it went nuts in the southern states it's hard to get elsewhere (people afraid of it taking over...)
If somebody would engineer some oil-producing genes into the stuff we could solve our fuel problems virtually overnight (biodiesel is our friend). I imagine the remains from processing the oil could be pressed into cheap building material, too...
Agreed - I think OpenPGP is simpler to implement and use (due to the lack of a need for a centralized "certificate authority"), but S/Mime is what always gets built in[1]. Either way, between OpenPGP and S/Mime there are already two documented standards with one or more genuinely open implementations available, so I don't imagine this new one is going to go very far.
[1] - Although I like the idea of blaming it on a proprietary software conspiracy, who prefers to encourage the "pay someone else to deal with things for you because you just can't handle it" model [e.g. a Certificate Authority], I think the reason S/Mime gets in is because it seems to use the same algorithms and methods that SSL does in the first place. Since any real email client has to support SSL for secure communication with servers anyway, extending that code just a bit to add S/Mime is a lot less work that adding support for OpenPGP would be. I'm just hoping Enigmail and other OpenPGP[2] interfaces for email clients become ubiquitous and trivial to install and use. If they do, I can imagine OpenPGP taking back the role of "preferred mail signing and encryption standard"
[2] - In case anyone doesn't already know - "OpenPGP" is the name of the standard. "PGP" is the company that currently owns the original implementation of that standard and still provides semi-proprietary[3] software for it. "GnuPG" and others (including, obviously, PGP Corporations products) are implementations of the OpenPGP standard (and therefore interoperate with each other just fine).
[3] - they are a "software license fee" company and the software isn't properly "open source". However, they DO apparently publish their source code for peer-review (just not for redistribution).
Hmmm...this entire post sounds like Paranoid Schizophrenia to me. Some Chlorpromazine should help with that. Take some and stop inciting panic in the populace.
Yeah, I know. Chlorpromazine's "old school". I just couldn't resist responding, and "chlorpromazine" was the first antipsychotic medication to come to mind...
Are there any simple (relatively speaking) SIP servers that can be pressed into service as a Voice-over-IP conferencing server, the way OpenH323's OpenMCU can? I wouldn't really care that it was SIP, except that SIP seems to be the protocol with the greatest selection of open and/or free clients available at the moment.
I'm not thinking here of a full hook-your-telephone-to-the-internet system (which Asterisk seems to be ideal for), just a simple open-standards server for a few people to point their computer-based voice phones at, running on my OWN server, for a casual conference, using readily-acquired free/open software. I've gotten OpenMCU to work for that before, but H.323 seems like it is slowly being replaced by SIP (and there appear to be more SIP clients available than H.323 ones.)
To me, it seems like PHP strikes a good balance between the strengths and weaknesses. It's got much of the same sort of flexibility and text-handling capability that Perl does, but not so much so that it suffers from the same degree of wild variability that Perl is accused of having.
The "C-like" syntax makes PHP very similar in style to a variety of other programming languages (C, C++, Java, etc.), so it will seem at least somewhat familiar to people who have programmed a bit in other languages.
PHP has support for "object-oriented" programming style, without actually REQUIRING it (unlike, say, Java [or Python?]), so both OO and procedural programmers can feel somewhat comfortable with it.
PHP has a lot of built-in functionality to simplify dealing with connections over the network, e.g. to web servers, ftp servers, database servers, etc. - this and text handling are PHP's two biggest strengths in my opinion. Note that in my own experience I've found the PHP is useful for a lot of the sort of non-web-based "command line" administrative tasks that traditionally have been handled by Perl.
Or in summary - PHP is a nice "middle-of-the-road" sort of language. It's not the "best" language for very many programming styles, but it IS "pretty good" for a lot of them, so regardless of one's own preferred style PHP will usually not be completely uncomfortable.
Since the patent system was originally created as an incentive to reveal "trade secrets" to the public to spur greater innovation, I say if something is not useful as a "trade secret", it should not even be CONSIDERED for a patent.
Or in other words, if withholding an idea from the public doesn't actually affect the public - as may be the case with this "patent" - then it's not really useful as a "trade secret". Since so many other people seem to have come up with implementations of this same idea already, this company "revealing" this amazing "invention" by patenting it makes no difference. They therefore should not be rewarded with a monopoly on the idea.
Now, if we could just get the legislature to hear everyone saying this over the jangling of lobbyist's loose change, maybe we could do something about it...
Speaking of SCO and "IP", I've noticed that for the last couple of months EV1 Servers has been advertising in "Linux Journal". They have the gall to put a claim of being "IP Compliant" at the bottom...
Does EV1 really think it's a good idea to KEEP supporting SCO's FUD in front of a big audience of Linux people? Or do they figure that not many Linux people remember what was going on?
Before, I could have written them off as "suckers" for falling for SCO's claims. Now, though, I can only assume they're doing it on purpose...
As mentioned (probably more than once by now), the only issue is some non-thread-safe libraries that PHP can link to. Configuring Apache to run with the "Prefork" MPM solves this problem (by running with the same model as Apache 1.x did).
I see no reason so far to discourage use of Apache 2.0 with PHP other than vague "well, I heard from some guy that he tried it and it had some kind of problem" sort of complaints. Personally, I like the fact that Apache 2.0x has mod_ssl and mod_deflate (/mod_gzip) as part of the codebase, so I no longer have to compile and install them separately...
Answering my own question, according to the Bugzilla entry regarding WebDAV support in FireFox, it is at least being worked on, ableit perhaps slowly and sporadically. Bugzilla lists the "target milestone" as "Mozilla 1.9alpha".
Just stick Apache and mod_dav on the file server and configure appropriately. Both Windows and MacOSX support WebDAV folders right from the desktop.
Unfortunately, it appears to me that Microsoft has broken this again. DAV works fine in older versions of Microsoft Windows, but more recent updated versions seem to have problems connecting to DAV. I gather they've once again replaced and renamed their DAV support (from "Web Folders". Now they have a different service called "DAV Redirector" or something of the sort, and the "Open as Web Folder" option no longer appears in Internet Explorer(tm).) and it appears to be even less compatible with the published standard than before.
I'd be interested if anyone has good information on getting more recent Windows(tm) versions to interoperate with non-Microsoft DAV implementations again. Any chance Firefox will incorporate DAV support soon, I wonder? Being able to use Firefox as a DAV client would be a convenient cross-platform way to bypass Microsoft's unreliable support.
I think you've described the problem exactly. People have gotten used to being too lazy.
People love to whine, but don't want to do anything about problems. I think that's one of the reasons corporations can get away with being so irresponsible - nobody will bother to change their habits no matter what they do, so they don't even need to consider changing their business practices until they're sued. And maybe not even then, because lazy "consumers" will continue to shovel money at them rather than go through the mental effort of taking their business elsewhere.
The issue of the infamous "McDonald's(tm) Hot Coffee" lawsuit came up peripherally on a Groklaw post recently, and the ensuing discussion of the real facts of the case pointed out a few facts that aren't commonly mentioned, like the fact that apparently this McDonald's(tm) had been getting complaints about the coffee being too hot for some time.
If they'd been getting all of those complaints, why didn't McDonald's(tm) quit serving the coffee too hot? Because listening to complaints doesn't cost anything, and evidently people kept coming and paying them for the overheated coffee ANYWAY. If people were willing to continue buying the coffee even after complaining about it, it must not be all that important, right?...(I would have sworn I'd read elsewhere that the plaintiff in that case got coffee from this place "every morning".)
Of course, since the laziness of "consumers" means most corporations have what amounts to a virtual "willingly captive" audience, there's not much point in trying to compete with them, and that means the "not-dangerously-hot coffee and fast food" place down the street will end up going out of business, and those few of us who would actually bother to take our business elsewhere end up not having anywhere else to take it TO. Yes, people's laziness doesn't just hurt themselves...
Even the WORD "consumer" implies this - the "consumer" is nothing more than a metaphorical digestive tract. Corporations offer "goods" and the "consumer" just gobbles them down, whatever they are, and produces economic fertilizer as a result, and that's all that's important about them. Yes, I consider the word to be an insult.
If I understand the history correctly (and, admittedly, I may very well not), even this isn't quite accurate.
What I understood the patent process to be for was to be an alternative to "trade secrets". The protection of the inventor was the "payment" that the inventor got, not the purpose of the patent. The purpose was to ensure that the patented idea DID become available to the public for study and future innovation from. (So, yes, the first part of your post is exactly correct...)
It seems like it's more recent to look at the patent monopoly as an "entitlement" and a marketing gimmick ("Patented" copper bracelet with magic healing powers - if it's patented it MUST be good, right?) rather than half of a societal bargain. It's gone from being "Well, okay, if you can assure me I won't be punished as a result, I'll go ahead and let the public know the details of my trade secret" to "HA! In your face! I OWN this idea now! And there's nothing you can do about it! HA HA HA HA HA!"
Second: "of" sounds the same that "have", but is NOT the same.
Oh, good, I'm not the only grammar "nazi" that hates that one. That and the "loose/lose" confusion (which everyone on the internet seems to have developed over the last few years) have got to be the top two irritations I have with bad language on the internet and elsewhere.
Though the word "orientated" substituted for "oriented" comes close...
Since the FCC only hears from the handful of people who are irritated enough to throw a tantrum, perhaps it would help give them perspective if they started getting "I say (name of show) and they had something on the show that I thought might be controversial. I want to report that I was NOT offended by it in the least..." messages as well...
The only downside that I have seen to using CIFS is that - at least on Slackware - mount.cifs doesn't seem to be included by default.
It's trivial to obtain, but kind of difficult to mount CIFS filesystems without it...
Note also that the old SMBFS is subject to the annoying 2GB file size limit, while CIFS is not, if you still need an excuse to switch. As far as I can tell, you can use CIFS for any server where you would previously have been using SMBFS, so you ought to be able to just switch without any hassles.
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I'm looking for a roughly similar "solution" - adequate performance with redundancy and lots of storage space. A "SAN" ("Storage Area Network" - one of the current buzzwords going around these days) might be useful.
Either iSCSI (if you want economical and standards-based) or Fiber-Channel (if you're wealthy and the speed of writes to the hard drive array is critical) based boxes of hard drives seems to be an option, and from the point of view of the server (or whatever computer is using them) they are just another hard drive. Or so the materials I've read say. (Think of them as an external RAID box...)
iSCSI seems to be limited to 1Gb speeds (unless you can get your hands on 10Gb ethernet cards and switch, which I gather are now available), which to me seems perfectly adequate for most file-server type uses. It looks to my still-new-to-the-area eye that you can also do a lot of potentially useful tricks because of the standard IP-based nature of the data transfer (such as being able to mount a "hard drive" directly over the internet or a LAN, if you have some reason to need to do so). Fiber-channel is faster (2Gb seems to be typical, 4Gb is apparently getting fairly established, and 8Gb is available if you're made of money) but requires specialized and fairly expensive hardware ($500+ for each fiber-channel interface card at the LOW end, as I recall, plus several thousand for the fiber-channel equivalent of a "switch".)
On the subject of iSCSI, there seem to be active projects with both "target" (iSCSI device server) drivers and "client" (iSCSI device mounting) drivers for Linux on Sourceforge...
Corrections welcome, of course...
Incidentally, that's not to be confused with "NAS" ("Network Attached Storage") which as far as I can tell is a buzzword used by people due to the fact that "file server" doesn't sound "cool" any more...your "NAS" might be using a "SAN" to store the drives that it is serving...
In any case, this may be me trying to "hijack" this Ask Slashdot, but what do people here think of the "SAN" concept and its implementations?
Okay, that IS pretty funny, but it does make me wonder - who DOES own the copyright on those warnings? Anybody? Or are they produced by the US Government and therefore public domain?
Could you legally rip just those screens out of the DVD's, compile them all into a DVD or Ogg Theora or DivX files, and then redistribute them via BitTorrent?...
I find it frustrating to have to dredge up CVS's from the DRI project and go through the hassles of compiling in order to get 3D acceleration on my laptop's S3 "ProSavage/DDR" chipset.
It does seem to work, though obviously not all that impressively by modern standards. Anyone know if they've FINALLY folded in the Savage DRI modules into this X.org release? The release notes don't mention it, but I'm hoping...
Naturally, I was wondering about Linux capability as well. On the Windows systems, does "LightScribe(tm)" act like a printer driver? Or is it something totally "other"?
Believe it or not, I've been wondering what it would take to get some of that. I get the impression that since it went nuts in the southern states it's hard to get elsewhere (people afraid of it taking over...)
If somebody would engineer some oil-producing genes into the stuff we could solve our fuel problems virtually overnight (biodiesel is our friend). I imagine the remains from processing the oil could be pressed into cheap building material, too...
Agreed - I think OpenPGP is simpler to implement and use (due to the lack of a need for a centralized "certificate authority"), but S/Mime is what always gets built in[1]. Either way, between OpenPGP and S/Mime there are already two documented standards with one or more genuinely open implementations available, so I don't imagine this new one is going to go very far.
[1] - Although I like the idea of blaming it on a proprietary software conspiracy, who prefers to encourage the "pay someone else to deal with things for you because you just can't handle it" model [e.g. a Certificate Authority], I think the reason S/Mime gets in is because it seems to use the same algorithms and methods that SSL does in the first place. Since any real email client has to support SSL for secure communication with servers anyway, extending that code just a bit to add S/Mime is a lot less work that adding support for OpenPGP would be. I'm just hoping Enigmail and other OpenPGP[2] interfaces for email clients become ubiquitous and trivial to install and use. If they do, I can imagine OpenPGP taking back the role of "preferred mail signing and encryption standard"
[2] - In case anyone doesn't already know - "OpenPGP" is the name of the standard. "PGP" is the company that currently owns the original implementation of that standard and still provides semi-proprietary[3] software for it. "GnuPG" and others (including, obviously, PGP Corporations products) are implementations of the OpenPGP standard (and therefore interoperate with each other just fine).
[3] - they are a "software license fee" company and the software isn't properly "open source". However, they DO apparently publish their source code for peer-review (just not for redistribution).
Hmmm...this entire post sounds like Paranoid Schizophrenia to me. Some Chlorpromazine should help with that. Take some and stop inciting panic in the populace.
Yeah, I know. Chlorpromazine's "old school". I just couldn't resist responding, and "chlorpromazine" was the first antipsychotic medication to come to mind...
Are there any simple (relatively speaking) SIP servers that can be pressed into service as a Voice-over-IP conferencing server, the way OpenH323's OpenMCU can? I wouldn't really care that it was SIP, except that SIP seems to be the protocol with the greatest selection of open and/or free clients available at the moment.
I'm not thinking here of a full hook-your-telephone-to-the-internet system (which Asterisk seems to be ideal for), just a simple open-standards server for a few people to point their computer-based voice phones at, running on my OWN server, for a casual conference, using readily-acquired free/open software. I've gotten OpenMCU to work for that before, but H.323 seems like it is slowly being replaced by SIP (and there appear to be more SIP clients available than H.323 ones.)
That's disappointing. So much for "Everyone's Invited"...
To me, it seems like PHP strikes a good balance between the strengths and weaknesses. It's got much of the same sort of flexibility and text-handling capability that Perl does, but not so much so that it suffers from the same degree of wild variability that Perl is accused of having.
The "C-like" syntax makes PHP very similar in style to a variety of other programming languages (C, C++, Java, etc.), so it will seem at least somewhat familiar to people who have programmed a bit in other languages.
PHP has support for "object-oriented" programming style, without actually REQUIRING it (unlike, say, Java [or Python?]), so both OO and procedural programmers can feel somewhat comfortable with it.
PHP has a lot of built-in functionality to simplify dealing with connections over the network, e.g. to web servers, ftp servers, database servers, etc. - this and text handling are PHP's two biggest strengths in my opinion. Note that in my own experience I've found the PHP is useful for a lot of the sort of non-web-based "command line" administrative tasks that traditionally have been handled by Perl.
Or in summary - PHP is a nice "middle-of-the-road" sort of language. It's not the "best" language for very many programming styles, but it IS "pretty good" for a lot of them, so regardless of one's own preferred style PHP will usually not be completely uncomfortable.
My own, possibly misguided opinion, obviously...
Wouldn't really matter. To repeat a rehash of an old joke:
Q:"What do you get when you cross Microsoft and Sun?"
A:"Microsoft."
Since the patent system was originally created as an incentive to reveal "trade secrets" to the public to spur greater innovation, I say if something is not useful as a "trade secret", it should not even be CONSIDERED for a patent.
Or in other words, if withholding an idea from the public doesn't actually affect the public - as may be the case with this "patent" - then it's not really useful as a "trade secret". Since so many other people seem to have come up with implementations of this same idea already, this company "revealing" this amazing "invention" by patenting it makes no difference. They therefore should not be rewarded with a monopoly on the idea.
Now, if we could just get the legislature to hear everyone saying this over the jangling of lobbyist's loose change, maybe we could do something about it...
Speaking of SCO and "IP", I've noticed that for the last couple of months EV1 Servers has been advertising in "Linux Journal". They have the gall to put a claim of being "IP Compliant" at the bottom...
Does EV1 really think it's a good idea to KEEP supporting SCO's FUD in front of a big audience of Linux people? Or do they figure that not many Linux people remember what was going on?
Before, I could have written them off as "suckers" for falling for SCO's claims. Now, though, I can only assume they're doing it on purpose...
As mentioned (probably more than once by now), the only issue is some non-thread-safe libraries that PHP can link to. Configuring Apache to run with the "Prefork" MPM solves this problem (by running with the same model as Apache 1.x did).
I see no reason so far to discourage use of Apache 2.0 with PHP other than vague "well, I heard from some guy that he tried it and it had some kind of problem" sort of complaints. Personally, I like the fact that Apache 2.0x has mod_ssl and mod_deflate (/mod_gzip) as part of the codebase, so I no longer have to compile and install them separately...
"Eat these, they're 'Smart Pills'."
"Ewwww! These taste like rabbit turds!"
"See? You're smarter already!"
Answering my own question, according to the Bugzilla entry regarding WebDAV support in FireFox, it is at least being worked on, ableit perhaps slowly and sporadically. Bugzilla lists the "target milestone" as "Mozilla 1.9alpha".
Unfortunately, it appears to me that Microsoft has broken this again. DAV works fine in older versions of Microsoft Windows, but more recent updated versions seem to have problems connecting to DAV. I gather they've once again replaced and renamed their DAV support (from "Web Folders". Now they have a different service called "DAV Redirector" or something of the sort, and the "Open as Web Folder" option no longer appears in Internet Explorer(tm).) and it appears to be even less compatible with the published standard than before.
I'd be interested if anyone has good information on getting more recent Windows(tm) versions to interoperate with non-Microsoft DAV implementations again. Any chance Firefox will incorporate DAV support soon, I wonder? Being able to use Firefox as a DAV client would be a convenient cross-platform way to bypass Microsoft's unreliable support.
I think you've described the problem exactly. People have gotten used to being too lazy.
People love to whine, but don't want to do anything about problems. I think that's one of the reasons corporations can get away with being so irresponsible - nobody will bother to change their habits no matter what they do, so they don't even need to consider changing their business practices until they're sued. And maybe not even then, because lazy "consumers" will continue to shovel money at them rather than go through the mental effort of taking their business elsewhere.
The issue of the infamous "McDonald's(tm) Hot Coffee" lawsuit came up peripherally on a Groklaw post recently, and the ensuing discussion of the real facts of the case pointed out a few facts that aren't commonly mentioned, like the fact that apparently this McDonald's(tm) had been getting complaints about the coffee being too hot for some time.
If they'd been getting all of those complaints, why didn't McDonald's(tm) quit serving the coffee too hot? Because listening to complaints doesn't cost anything, and evidently people kept coming and paying them for the overheated coffee ANYWAY. If people were willing to continue buying the coffee even after complaining about it, it must not be all that important, right?...(I would have sworn I'd read elsewhere that the plaintiff in that case got coffee from this place "every morning".)
Of course, since the laziness of "consumers" means most corporations have what amounts to a virtual "willingly captive" audience, there's not much point in trying to compete with them, and that means the "not-dangerously-hot coffee and fast food" place down the street will end up going out of business, and those few of us who would actually bother to take our business elsewhere end up not having anywhere else to take it TO. Yes, people's laziness doesn't just hurt themselves...
Even the WORD "consumer" implies this - the "consumer" is nothing more than a metaphorical digestive tract. Corporations offer "goods" and the "consumer" just gobbles them down, whatever they are, and produces economic fertilizer as a result, and that's all that's important about them. Yes, I consider the word to be an insult.
Yeah, I know, I'm ranting. I'll stop now.
If I understand the history correctly (and, admittedly, I may very well not), even this isn't quite accurate.
What I understood the patent process to be for was to be an alternative to "trade secrets". The protection of the inventor was the "payment" that the inventor got, not the purpose of the patent. The purpose was to ensure that the patented idea DID become available to the public for study and future innovation from. (So, yes, the first part of your post is exactly correct...)
It seems like it's more recent to look at the patent monopoly as an "entitlement" and a marketing gimmick ("Patented" copper bracelet with magic healing powers - if it's patented it MUST be good, right?) rather than half of a societal bargain. It's gone from being "Well, okay, if you can assure me I won't be punished as a result, I'll go ahead and let the public know the details of my trade secret" to "HA! In your face! I OWN this idea now! And there's nothing you can do about it! HA HA HA HA HA!"
The sharks will just carry them safely back to shore. ("Professional Courtesy".)
Oh, good, I'm not the only grammar "nazi" that hates that one. That and the "loose/lose" confusion (which everyone on the internet seems to have developed over the last few years) have got to be the top two irritations I have with bad language on the internet and elsewhere.
Though the word "orientated" substituted for "oriented" comes close...
Nope. "Ridiculous", which goes with the verb "ridicule" (to make fun of).
Man, if this were a spelling contest, you'd "loose"...
(I think there's a law that people sending information over the internet are forbidden from spelling "lose" properly, too, you see...).
Since the FCC only hears from the handful of people who are irritated enough to throw a tantrum, perhaps it would help give them perspective if they started getting "I say (name of show) and they had something on the show that I thought might be controversial. I want to report that I was NOT offended by it in the least..." messages as well...
Isn't this the same dubious patent concept that Priceline.com was using to sue people as part of their business model?
The only downside that I have seen to using CIFS is that - at least on Slackware - mount.cifs doesn't seem to be included by default.
It's trivial to obtain, but kind of difficult to mount CIFS filesystems without it...
Note also that the old SMBFS is subject to the annoying 2GB file size limit, while CIFS is not, if you still need an excuse to switch. As far as I can tell, you can use CIFS for any server where you would previously have been using SMBFS, so you ought to be able to just switch without any hassles.