I work at a University, where a lot of infrastructure support is geared towards research. Physicists like to collect enormous amounts of data, but they also expect us to be able to back it up and store monthly archivals going back three years.
It's relatively cheap to put up a nice raid-5 external scsi storage chassis -- about 1Tb of space would cost slightly over $10k. Most research groups can easily come up with this amount of money, however we end up turning them down because we cannot afford to back up that much data. Tape drives are NOT cheap. Tapes are NOT cheap either. Moreover, while drive capacities have been increasing steadily, tapes haven't been able to catch up at all -- AIT3s are currently 100G uncompressed, and with the data physicists like to produce, we cannot rely on the 2:1 compression to hold true. To be able to back up 1Tb of data we would need at least 8 tapes and at least an 8-tape changer.
Add to this 30-60 AIT3s for daily backups (~$5k), plus 8x12x3=288 AIT3s for a 3-year monthly archival storage, and you quickly run into SUBORBITAL amounts of money which research groups expect us to come up with. I mean, we're talking ~$10k for the 8-tape changer, and ~$25k for tapes. The fact that it takes us ~$40k to back up $10k worth of storage is something that a lot of people don't realize, especially not the faculty.
Is it just me, or does anyone else find the headline "Man conquers space" ironic coupled with the news of a half-mile-wide asteroid nearly missing Earth?
RedHat is competing in the Windows NT/2k/XP Workstation/Server market, and isn't apparently too interested in the home desktop market, and their installer reflects this.
I agree. Here's how Red Hat installation goes for our workstations:
Turn power on
Wait for PXE to show the menu
Type "workstation-install" at the prompt
Walk away
About 5-15 minutes later the system reboots ready -- if it was a reinstall, kickstart will automatically pull all stored configuration files for X, sshd, iptables, etc. from the backup server during %post. Of course, if this is a new install, running Xconfigurator takes a few more minutes.
Total admin time spent on reinstall -- 10-15 seconds. Total workstation downtime after a HDD crash -- 10 minutes to put in a new HDD, plus 10-15 minutes until it reboots fully installed. A lot of physicists very happy.
So, because I can use Photoshop, XEmacs, Office and bash simultaneously, I'm a "grandma." Sure.
No, you're a "middle of the road user". Last week I've enabled loopback encryption in YDL (ppdd). Let's see you do that under Darwin/OS X.:) Notably, 99.9999% of people won't need to do that, but I thought it would be fun to try out, so I did. The knowledge might come useful some time in the future, you never know.
I'll give you that Linux is "ideologically," superior, but doesn't the ability to increase productivity by not being stuck in reboot hell counter it, at least somewhat?
No, I use the tablet about once in every two-three weeks, when I am working on some graphics. It's not my primary occupation, more of a hobby. For other people rebooting is sub-optimal, I agree, but the whole point of my post is showing why I use it, not why everyone should switch to it, which I don't even suggest.
A lot of questions here as per "why would anyone run linux when there is OS X?". I personally run YDL on my Titanium, and I have my personal reasons to. Let me see if I can cover them.
I do this primarily for ideological reasons. Aqua is closed-source, proprietary software and I do not like that. Understandably, you may have different ideals, so this might or might not apply to you.
I am a computer professional and whenever I am in OS X, I feel extremely constrained by the interface. Sure, it's pretty. However, I miss my virtual desktops, I miss my hotkeys, I miss focus-follows-mouse, I miss many other things that I'm used to. I miss having a usable mail client (I don't like Mail.app for several reasons that I won't go into). I know that I can "emulate" all those things, but in order to do that I would have to buy even more proprietary software that costs money -- as opposed to already having all of that available under X.
I admit -- I am boggled by the prettyness: from full alpha transparency to the consistency of the interface. Then again, I recently looked at gnome-2, and I like what I see. Full power of X-window -- including network transparency, which is non-existent in OS X -- and nearly just as pretty. Full alpha-transparency support is, of course, not there yet in X-window (apart from cheap tricks like grabbing whatever is below), but I find it actually annoying on OS X most of the time. It doesn't do anything to me in terms of real usefulness. I mean, whooptie-doo, I can see what's below my terminal. Now that's useful.
I don't like having to depend on one vendor for security updates. If I find that TerraSoft is taking too long to come up with a new version of a package, I apply the patches myself and install a patched RPM. In order to do that under OS X I would have to a) have access to the package source (which is not always available), b) guess and double-guess which patches Apple already applies to the packages to make them work, and c) install from source, possibly breaking the Apple's Automated Updater mechanism.
Darwin sucks as a unix.:) You can't just take a product and compile it under Darwin and expect it to work like you would under Linux or most BSD's. I mean -- c'mon, it doesn't even have dlopen. You have to emulate it. Besides, we run Red Hat at the office, and I like to have all configuration files to have the same layout between home and work. It's saner to me that way.
I do use OS X periodically. I have an MP3 player that can't be accessed from Linux at this time -- it only works from windows and mac classic; and I use Macromedia Fireworks with my Graphire Tablet from time to time. It has its uses. For real work I use YDL.
From my point of view, OS X is an OS written and suitable entirely for middle-of-the-road users. It's a system that a grandma can use without getting hopelessly lost and confused. I am not a grandma -- I'm an enthusiast. To draw popular analogies to cars, I like to get my hands into the very innards of the system, including replacing the engine, overhauling the suspension, and putting oversized tires. I can only do that efficiently enough under YDL -- when I try to do something like that to OS X, I feel like I'm ricing a Civic.
As there are companies who sell parts and tools to car enthusiasts, similarly TerraSoft sells a distribution to people who like to be adventurous with their computers. Branding that as "stupid" is not entirely correct, nor really called for.
Now, why did I get an Apple notebook in the first place? a) I didn't pay for it,:) and b) I was intrigued by OS X. Would I get another Apple notebook? Probably, but not a Titanium. I might get a next-generation iBook, whenever they come out on G4's. Simply because I've already invested in some software on OS X that I would like to keep using (same MM Fireworks, for example). Titanium is like an all-leather interior: good for impressing your date, but no real use otherwise.:)
That's what I do too, but a while ago a friend of mine used one of the addresses I only give to people I know to send me an e-card, and that's been the end of this little scheme.:(
How bout a gconf-ish tool, that doesn't use a stupid daemon that can break, keeps all files in xml or similar in ~/etc, or ~/gnome or ~/kde.
What if you mount your home dir over NFS and log in from two computers at the same time? Which preferences "take over"? Last saved? Unfortunately, a daemon-like process is necessary so you don't hose your config files in a situation like this.
First, the book is riddled with mistakes : obvious typographical errors, embarassing spelling and grammatical mistakes, confusing shifts in time, and bizarre factual errors.
Wow, and the book is being berated for that on SLASHDOT of all places! Oh, the irony!
The astronomers were able to locate similar structures in the universe, some much closer to us than previously expected. Thus, the infamous "Horseshit Nebula" has been spotted in the Western Hemisphere and its origins were successfully traced to the Microsoft PR department.
Ximian is asking you to pay $119.40 per year for software that is functionally on par with Microsoft Windows. I wouldn't pay $120 per year for Windows, and I'm not going to pay $120 for Ximian GNOME, either.
So, like, don't.;) This service would be useless for people on anything less than a T1 anyway. Did you miss the part where it said "still free for those not willing to pay for fast download speeds"?
Remember, folks, it's still legal to mirror this stuff. It's all GPL.
Yeah, so, like, you missed the point again. Of course it's still legal to mirror ximian. Corporations, however, are funny and don't like to rely on sites named "twoguysandapizza.linuxrulez.com", which may be up, or down whenever the owner of the mirror decides to boot into windows. Suits would actually prefer to pay a fee to have an official distribution center available to them on a fast uplink and 24/7.
This application is described fully in 'The Code Book', by Simon Singh, although the method was only theoretical at the time the book was first published."
Uhm... I believe this is wrong. The book was issued in 1999, and it contains this sentence in chapter 8:
In 1995, researchers at the University of Geneva succeeded in implementing quantum cryptography in an optic fiber that stretched 23 km from Geneva to the town of Nyon.
Moreover, one paragraph further we see:
More recently, a group of scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico has once again begun to experiment with quantum cryptography in the air. Their ultimate aim is to create a quantum cryptographic system that can operate via satellites. If this could be achieved, it would enable absolutely secure global communication. So far the Los Alamos group has succeeded in transmitting a quantum key through air over a distance of 1 km.
One of us is wrong -- either I'm reading this from an edited version of "the Code Book", although nowhere does it say "second edition", or the original poster needs to re-check his facts.
I'm typing this from a TiBook running YDL2.1. I've had a bit of trouble with it. For one, it didn't recognize the CD-ROM during install (but there is a hint on what to do about that at the ydl site).
Second, the trackpad didn't work after a wake-up it confused the vertical with horizontal and acted all jittery. Thankfully, I found a patch and managed to build a working pmud RPM with it.
Then, CD-ROM again -- it just didn't want to work in the IDE mode. Oddly, this got fixed when loading it as ide-scsi (had to MAKEDEV sr).
My biggest "aarhg!" was when I tried ext3 and after a couple of reboots I lost my partitions. Not sure whether it's their ext3 patches to blame, but it's my biggest suspicion so far.
One reinstall later and after deciding not to touch ext3 on this kernel any more (2.4.10 with a bunch of patches), I tackled the biggest problem -- they shipped it with Gnome 1.2.1! (I don't like KDE, oh, and the KDE 2.2.1 version they shipped has a broken soundserver on PPC. I think they knew that when they shipped it). So, I managed to rebuild most packages from the Ximian-gnome install that the Monkey-people have for YDL2.0. Some packages I had to borrow from Red Hat Linux SRPM's -- surprisingly most of them rebuild for PPC quite nicely.
So, after about a week of playing with it, I have a working Linux/Gnome install with the latest goodies from Ximian like Evo RC2... But, unless you're familiar with Linux and like hacking, don't try YDL 2.1 on TiBooks yet. It's... not polished to the stage where it's a reliable distro.
Can't say anything about SuSE -- haven't touched the stuff in about a year.
SPEC files aren't exactly dark magic, you know. It's painfully straightforward and the only problem is when you have specific patches (isn't that common of a problem, too).
We do not know how events will unfold in the next few years, but we had already set a goal, summer 2004, as the final opportunity for establishing the Thirteen Moon Calendar Change Peace Plan. The strategy to accomplish this plan has also been prepared - the Campaign for the New Time. Through this Campaign we must now mobilize for the New Time of Peace.
While I share the view that alternative calendars should be supported, this is some of the stupidest claptrap I've seen! Thirteen Moon Calendar Change Peace Plan? Change to it, and we will forever rid the world of war? That must be one of the most escapist solutions I've seen! Apart from that whole "kiss your freedoms good-bye" stuff.
Newsflash: intriguing new results of a survey indicate that/. audience is not at all uniformly white, protestant, and american, as it was being envisioned by the editors.
"It was a real eye-opener," says Hemos, one of the members of the editing staff, "to realize that some of my dumber comments can be perceived as offensive in some other parts of the world."
"Of course," he added after a bit of thought. "Not like we care about those unwashed filthy pigs in their silly little countries, anyway."
Are they so poor in russia that their universities do not have their own domian presence?
For one, I don't appreciate this troll.
For two, this is some "research center", not a university.
For three, from what I know about the situation, Podkletnov was sacked from several research institutes in the past, and I am unaware of anything that is called "Moscow Chemical Scientific Research Centre" in Moscow, especially not at that address and zip code. If it's a respectful government research agency, then it happened to successfully elude most research institute listings in Moscow. If it's something private: it's their own damn problem if they can't get a domain (which costs pennies in the.ru zone, and you can always get a free.org.ru domain). Something is screwey here, if you ask me...
Slashdot Mirror
Backups.
I work at a University, where a lot of infrastructure support is geared towards research. Physicists like to collect enormous amounts of data, but they also expect us to be able to back it up and store monthly archivals going back three years.
It's relatively cheap to put up a nice raid-5 external scsi storage chassis -- about 1Tb of space would cost slightly over $10k. Most research groups can easily come up with this amount of money, however we end up turning them down because we cannot afford to back up that much data. Tape drives are NOT cheap. Tapes are NOT cheap either. Moreover, while drive capacities have been increasing steadily, tapes haven't been able to catch up at all -- AIT3s are currently 100G uncompressed, and with the data physicists like to produce, we cannot rely on the 2:1 compression to hold true. To be able to back up 1Tb of data we would need at least 8 tapes and at least an 8-tape changer.
Add to this 30-60 AIT3s for daily backups (~$5k), plus 8x12x3=288 AIT3s for a 3-year monthly archival storage, and you quickly run into SUBORBITAL amounts of money which research groups expect us to come up with. I mean, we're talking ~$10k for the 8-tape changer, and ~$25k for tapes. The fact that it takes us ~$40k to back up $10k worth of storage is something that a lot of people don't realize, especially not the faculty.
Now the most difficult part is figuring out how to convey "w3 0wn j00r a55, fUx0R!" over the dubious medium that is the megaphone.
It's that time of the year when someone has to post a link to this other idea from Apple. :)
Is it just me, or does anyone else find the headline "Man conquers space" ironic coupled with the news of a half-mile-wide asteroid nearly missing Earth?
I agree. Here's how Red Hat installation goes for our workstations:
About 5-15 minutes later the system reboots ready -- if it was a reinstall, kickstart will automatically pull all stored configuration files for X, sshd, iptables, etc. from the backup server during %post. Of course, if this is a new install, running Xconfigurator takes a few more minutes.
Total admin time spent on reinstall -- 10-15 seconds. Total workstation downtime after a HDD crash -- 10 minutes to put in a new HDD, plus 10-15 minutes until it reboots fully installed. A lot of physicists very happy.
No, you're a "middle of the road user". Last week I've enabled loopback encryption in YDL (ppdd). Let's see you do that under Darwin/OS X. :) Notably, 99.9999% of people won't need to do that, but I thought it would be fun to try out, so I did. The knowledge might come useful some time in the future, you never know.
No, I use the tablet about once in every two-three weeks, when I am working on some graphics. It's not my primary occupation, more of a hobby. For other people rebooting is sub-optimal, I agree, but the whole point of my post is showing why I use it, not why everyone should switch to it, which I don't even suggest.
A lot of questions here as per "why would anyone run linux when there is OS X?". I personally run YDL on my Titanium, and I have my personal reasons to. Let me see if I can cover them.
I do use OS X periodically. I have an MP3 player that can't be accessed from Linux at this time -- it only works from windows and mac classic; and I use Macromedia Fireworks with my Graphire Tablet from time to time. It has its uses. For real work I use YDL.
From my point of view, OS X is an OS written and suitable entirely for middle-of-the-road users. It's a system that a grandma can use without getting hopelessly lost and confused. I am not a grandma -- I'm an enthusiast. To draw popular analogies to cars, I like to get my hands into the very innards of the system, including replacing the engine, overhauling the suspension, and putting oversized tires. I can only do that efficiently enough under YDL -- when I try to do something like that to OS X, I feel like I'm ricing a Civic.
As there are companies who sell parts and tools to car enthusiasts, similarly TerraSoft sells a distribution to people who like to be adventurous with their computers. Branding that as "stupid" is not entirely correct, nor really called for.
Now, why did I get an Apple notebook in the first place? a) I didn't pay for it, :) and b) I was intrigued by OS X. Would I get another Apple notebook? Probably, but not a Titanium. I might get a next-generation iBook, whenever they come out on G4's. Simply because I've already invested in some software on OS X that I would like to keep using (same MM Fireworks, for example). Titanium is like an all-leather interior: good for impressing your date, but no real use otherwise. :)
That's what I do too, but a while ago a friend of mine used one of the addresses I only give to people I know to send me an e-card, and that's been the end of this little scheme. :(
http://www.savekaryn.com/
What if you mount your home dir over NFS and log in from two computers at the same time? Which preferences "take over"? Last saved? Unfortunately, a daemon-like process is necessary so you don't hose your config files in a situation like this.
Wow, and the book is being berated for that on SLASHDOT of all places! Oh, the irony!
It should be noted, that the article is about older iMacs, not ones with pivoting LCD screens.
Fine, fine. s/Microsoft PR department/Your-favorite-Company's PR department/g.
Geez, it's like you've never worked with PR people. The joke is aimed at them, not Microsoft.
The astronomers were able to locate similar structures in the universe, some much closer to us than previously expected. Thus, the infamous "Horseshit Nebula" has been spotted in the Western Hemisphere and its origins were successfully traced to the Microsoft PR department.
So, like, don't. ;) This service would be useless for people on anything less than a T1 anyway. Did you miss the part where it said "still free for those not willing to pay for fast download speeds"?
Yeah, so, like, you missed the point again. Of course it's still legal to mirror ximian. Corporations, however, are funny and don't like to rely on sites named "twoguysandapizza.linuxrulez.com", which may be up, or down whenever the owner of the mirror decides to boot into windows. Suits would actually prefer to pay a fee to have an official distribution center available to them on a fast uplink and 24/7.
This application is described fully in 'The Code Book', by Simon Singh, although the method was only theoretical at the time the book was first published."
Uhm... I believe this is wrong. The book was issued in 1999, and it contains this sentence in chapter 8:
Moreover, one paragraph further we see:
One of us is wrong -- either I'm reading this from an edited version of "the Code Book", although nowhere does it say "second edition", or the original poster needs to re-check his facts.
It's time to code firewalls
Wireless devices had had this stuff for years, except they're called "concretewalls".
I'm typing this from a TiBook running YDL2.1. I've had a bit of trouble with it. For one, it didn't recognize the CD-ROM during install (but there is a hint on what to do about that at the ydl site).
Second, the trackpad didn't work after a wake-up it confused the vertical with horizontal and acted all jittery. Thankfully, I found a patch and managed to build a working pmud RPM with it.
Then, CD-ROM again -- it just didn't want to work in the IDE mode. Oddly, this got fixed when loading it as ide-scsi (had to MAKEDEV sr).
My biggest "aarhg!" was when I tried ext3 and after a couple of reboots I lost my partitions. Not sure whether it's their ext3 patches to blame, but it's my biggest suspicion so far.
One reinstall later and after deciding not to touch ext3 on this kernel any more (2.4.10 with a bunch of patches), I tackled the biggest problem -- they shipped it with Gnome 1.2.1! (I don't like KDE, oh, and the KDE 2.2.1 version they shipped has a broken soundserver on PPC. I think they knew that when they shipped it). So, I managed to rebuild most packages from the Ximian-gnome install that the Monkey-people have for YDL2.0. Some packages I had to borrow from Red Hat Linux SRPM's -- surprisingly most of them rebuild for PPC quite nicely.
So, after about a week of playing with it, I have a working Linux/Gnome install with the latest goodies from Ximian like Evo RC2... But, unless you're familiar with Linux and like hacking, don't try YDL 2.1 on TiBooks yet. It's... not polished to the stage where it's a reliable distro.
Can't say anything about SuSE -- haven't touched the stuff in about a year.
No RPM locking dependancy. If there's an issue, you can upgrade from source quickly.
Bah. If you absolutely can't wait for an errata package, this is what you do to make the latest source release work:
wget http://package.org/package-bugfix.tar.gz ../SRPMS ../RPMS/i386
mv package-bugfix.tar.gz SOURCES
rpm -ivh package.src.rpm
cd SPECS
vi package.spec
rpm -bs package.spec
cd
rpm --rebuild package-bugfix.src.rpm
cd
rpm -Uvh package-bugfix.i386.rpm
SPEC files aren't exactly dark magic, you know. It's painfully straightforward and the only problem is when you have specific patches (isn't that common of a problem, too).
We do not know how events will unfold in the next few years, but we had already set a goal, summer 2004, as the final opportunity for establishing the Thirteen Moon Calendar Change Peace Plan. The strategy to accomplish this plan has also been prepared - the Campaign for the New Time. Through this Campaign we must now mobilize for the New Time of Peace.
While I share the view that alternative calendars should be supported, this is some of the stupidest claptrap I've seen! Thirteen Moon Calendar Change Peace Plan? Change to it, and we will forever rid the world of war? That must be one of the most escapist solutions I've seen! Apart from that whole "kiss your freedoms good-bye" stuff.
if (IsInOneSentence("Microsoft", "sucks")){
throwFits();
popupEula();
lockComputer();
notifyAuthorities();
showBillWavingHisFingerAndSaying("Naughty Boy!");
}
I would usually ignore you, but I found your note humorous, since it's completely wrong. ;)
Newsflash: intriguing new results of a survey indicate that /. audience is not at all uniformly white, protestant, and american, as it was being envisioned by the editors.
"It was a real eye-opener," says Hemos, one of the members of the editing staff, "to realize that some of my dumber comments can be perceived as offensive in some other parts of the world."
"Of course," he added after a bit of thought. "Not like we care about those unwashed filthy pigs in their silly little countries, anyway."
Are they so poor in russia that their universities do not have their own domian presence?
For one, I don't appreciate this troll.
For two, this is some "research center", not a university.
For three, from what I know about the situation, Podkletnov was sacked from several research institutes in the past, and I am unaware of anything that is called "Moscow Chemical Scientific Research Centre" in Moscow, especially not at that address and zip code. If it's a respectful government research agency, then it happened to successfully elude most research institute listings in Moscow. If it's something private: it's their own damn problem if they can't get a domain (which costs pennies in the .ru zone, and you can always get a free .org.ru domain). Something is screwey here, if you ask me...