What's interesting is how much people like to trash ZFS as being unstable, referring to all of the reports of catastrophic data loss.
I've read a bunch of these reports of data loss, before I decided to use ZFS on OpenSolaris for my new fileserver.
When you refuse to follow the repeated warnings of the vendor about best practices and you lose your data, it's not the fault of the vendor or the technology; it's yours.
I've read a ton of documentation/articles/manuals/guides which state that many USB enclosures when given the "cache flush" command, will lie. They report completion of the flush when in fact the cache still has data in it. This can lead to the updated uberblock being corrupted and catastrophic pool failure. USB is not only not recommended, there are warnings about it's use.
Virtual Box by default has the issue as well. Other VMs may not honor write cache flush commands as well.
And yet, so many morons out there are still using USB enclosures and whining loudly when they lose everything. Others using VMs which don't honor cache flush commands are doing the same.
I have a bare-metal OpenSolaris install which is using it the way it was intended. I've actually read the documentation. I follow the best practices.
ZFS in OpenSolaris is more than just a File System.
It's the entire storage system stack AND the associated file system.
This is why there are TWO major commands that you use to administer it; "zpool" and "zfs". "zfs" is used to deal with the file system. "zpool" is used to deal with the equivalent of the volume manager.
While the file system is supported by Linux, the stack isn't. The stack is one of the things that makes ZFS great.
While the ZFS stack has been described as "a rampant layering violation", it's the fact that it's not obsessively partitioned that gives it some pretty incredibly useful abilities.
The stack offers end to end checksums. Data leaving the drive is checksummed from the time it leaves the drive until it hits RAM, where hopefully ECC takes over in providing data integrity.
Rebuilding a traditional RAID5 or RAID6 takes the same amount of time even if it's 10% full, due to the fact that the VM doesn't know about files as it only deals with volumes (partitions). Rebuilding a RAIDZ, RAIDZ2, or RAIDZ3 which is 40% full takes 1/2 the time of one that is 80% full, due to "rampant layering violations".:) If a drive starts racking up unrecoverable read errors leading to corruption, ZFS detects this (on scrub or access) and will replace bad blocks provided there's a redundant copy or parity. This does not require a rebuild; the amount of time it takes depends on the amount of corruption. Triple parity RAID support was recently added.
Mirrors under ZFS write at single drive speed, but read at the speed of a stripe. If you have a co-located server, where you have to pay more for after hours access and for rack units; you can set up a 3 way or 4 way mirror which will provide extremely high data redundancy with RAID-0 read speeds. How much of a web servers disk IO load is writes depends on what it's serving, but generally it is overwhelmingly read heavy so for one of my friends this is extremely useful.
ZFS offers storage pools as the basic volume structure. Storage pools consist of a number of RAIDs, mirrors, single drives, or iSCSI shares. Data is striped across all devices currently in a pool when the data is written. Online Expansion of storage space is accomplished this way with a single "zpool add" command very quickly. Adding storage is painless the way JBOD often is, with the performance of striping. The downside is that once you've added a mirror, RAID, or drive to a pool; it's there for keeps. Support for removal was supposed to be added at some point...
Unlike anything else I've ever used, when you create a volume/partition/filesystem on a zpool, you don't specify a size. The size of a filesystem is dynamically reallocated. No more having to manually manage the amount of space allocated to a given partition. The file system will take the amount of space that it's contents require; filesystem limits/quotas are available.
The ZFS stack supports a high speed zpool cache called a ZIL (writes), and one called L2ARC (reads). This allows for huge performance increases using one or more solid state drives. Seagate is doing something similar in hardware with their new Momentus XT laptop drive, which according to Anandtech is comparable to the WD Velociraptor.
Referring to ZFS as a filesystem alone, or using it via FUSE neglects 90% or more of what ZFS under OpenSolaris offers. ZFS as a filesystem alone is NOT compelling. It's the whole stack that makes it incredible.
"Just what is "Team" play? Team games add a whole new level to cooperative play. Set before the game starts, a Team is effectively one side controlled by two or more players. Resources, technologies, and vision are all shared by the Team members, who don't have to play the same species. Unit control is also shared-- units that are currently selected by your teammates are marked so that you won't accidentally override your teammate's orders. "
I have OVER 90 Gigs of MP3s on a remote share, since I'm at work I don't know how many songs that is off the top of my head. But it's a crapload. The point is that with my Core 2 E6400 based machine with 1GB of 80Mhz DDR2, iTunes is fast enough that I never notice lag. My fileserver (K6-2 500) where the files are located, is on a 100Mb network, runs a lean and mean install of Slackware, and uses a 3ware based PATA RAID 5 (7 drives + hotspare). Not only that, I don't notice lag on my wife's Athlon 2600+ either.
If there is a problem with how fast iTunes is on a system that beefy, I'd guess it's something with your box.
This does nothing to determine what issues will affect normal people using Windows. The truth is that more 80% of them are infected with at least one trojan, piece of spyware, or other malware on their systems.
I'm a computer tech at a school and I work on the side doing computer repair/reinstalls, what have you. Because I'm a respected IT person where I work, there have been many teachers that I have done work for. Teachers are a fairly decent representative sample of "Joe Sixpack". Some of them have are power users, some are clueless. Furthermore, because I like sharing what I know, I run into people in the general public that I end up doing work for. In the past 5 years I have seen only 2 "home user" Windows machines not infected by malware. The people that I know who do this as well as the people in the computer shops I talk to report over 90% infection rates of the machines that come to them. So perhaps the numbers of worms mass successfully propagating themselves across the net may be declining, but where Windows is concerned, that does not mean that the platform is incredibly safe. The other aspect of this is that this study (and most like it) relate to the enterprise (medium to large). This study does not reflect the realities present in small business and home.
As far as Linux is concerned, I've noted in my logs that there are a lot of worms trying to infect it, though about 1/2 the worms are aimed at Windows.
The point made about compatibility, is that the OS should support what it claims it does. This is like stating that because LinuxPPC does not install on i386 or Redhat on PPC boxes, that they're not as compatible as other versions of Linux that do... You may as well complain that Windows mobile for ARM is should be judged as crappy for not supporting the phones that Symbian does
Redhat claims to be an generic i386 based OS and should be rated for what it does support within it's claims. OS X is not claimed to run on anything but Apple shipped PCs.
Vista claims to be a generic i386 OS for i386 PCs. No one forced Microsoft to claim to support the greater array of "Personal Computer" hardware.
Actually WRT the CLI comment and OSX not being Linux. You're mostly off the mark there.
My biggest complaints about the OSX command line vs. that of Linux is the lack of "rename" and "watch". Interestingly, these commands are also missing on some of the other *nix platforms I've used.
I love bash, sed, and awk. While at some point I should get off of my butt and learn some perl, I'm content with what I use now. It works, and with the exception of bash they're installed by default on most any crusty old or new version of *nix I tinker with. Scripting and CLI stuff on OSX with minor exceptions, is basically the same as most any other *nix.
At the school I work at, I've recently: I've written some scripts to monitor computer labs usage with vncsnapshot and export a web-based gallery. I've written a script that will mount the C: drives of the XP based lab machines and find student work saved to the "My docs" folder regardless of which machine the student was using. I've written a script that will move the old profiles (those not used for two weeks or more) to a temp directory. (Lots of profile directories in Docs and Settings slow the machines to a crawl) More...
These scripts will work the same on OSX, Linux, or FreeBSD.
So I'm guessing that your response to the poorer people out there is: you cannot afford a good education, the freely available content sucks, so you shouldn't waste time trying to learn to code....
While I am an OSX enthusiast, I'm not a Fanboi. The main difference between the two is pointed out in your comment about the iShit.
I wouldn't buy it, though the Fanbois would stand in long lines for it.
I don't own an iPod, and while I'd like one, I don't think that an MP3 player/portable HD is worth that much of my money, yet.
I also have not bought one of the Intel Macs. The reason is that Apple has yet to pull their heads out of their asses with regards to shipping something that appeals to the gamer segment. The Mac Pro is one hell of a workstation, but I'm not really in the market for a workstation. For $2000 I better be getting something that likes SLI or Crossfire. I don't want FBDIMMs. I don't need 4 cores. Four cores would be nice but for the most part a Mac Mini would be fast enough for development, surfing, and most everything I do _except_ games.
My current internal debate is whether I want to: build another gaming system to replace my aging Athlon, and buy a separate Mac mini or MacBook; build a core 2 system and join the hack OSX to run on vanilla x86 crowd; hope that Apple releases a conroe based tower (with SLI/Crossfire workability,2 PCIe 8x or 16x slots); or buy a Mac Pro and hope that it cuts it as a gaming rig for years to come (somehow doubtable without SLI), while being annoyed at having to pay twice the price or more for SLOWER server memory.
I got a Nokia 6600 for my wife last Christmas. It's certainly NOT a peice of shit. It happens to be able to play music, although it's never used for that.
It DOES however have over 4 days of standby on the orginal battery, which is over 2 years old now. It DOES have half of the reception bars still remaining when my Sony has no reception at all, it has better reception with T-Mobile (less network coverage) than my sister's Motorola does on Verizon (much more network coverage) much of the time. It DOES still work after being dropped on multiple occasions (not by me). It DOES have the ability to run GPS enabled mapping software (TomTom), athough we have not done that. It DOES use a SIM (easy switching of phone numbers) and have a MMC slot which will take 2GB MMC cards. It DOES syncronize contact info seamlessly using iSync on OSX via bluetooth.
The UI is crappy, but not as bad as many, but all current phones have sucky UIs IMHO. The the music software (Real One) is extraordinarily shitty.
UI considerations aside, it's a great PHONE. It's a crappy MP3 player. It's also a rather crappy camera for that matter, but I have an Olympus c740 which isn't.
Hopefully Apple can create a non-sucky UI for a cell phone that offers iPod-like ease of use as an MP3 player. Then provided that the number of defective units is low, I'll buy one.
Biodiesel from fast-growing algae might be a goer. Biodiesel from conventional crops is a stunt.
No, it might be a pain to get going, and it may require changes to be made, but it's not a stunt...
Proposing cars running on 100% hydrogen is a stunt... Actually, hydrogen power isn't a stunt, it's a scam. It's 20 years out at the least, which is long enough for all of the current oil execs to retire (which is long enough for them).
The stadium is the only place you have a leg to stand on, since you're probably paying for it. In this sense, being that it was most likely publicly funded, it's less of an affront to the owner of the place.
The restaurant is probably a completely private enterprise which can refuse service to most anyone. This is why a club or restaurant may forbid you from coming back, with legal recourse if you return. They may completely ignore the needs of certain people (vegetarians) and provide a service to other people (smokers). This is part of what Freedom actually entails.
The word "Freedom" is widely bandied about in flowery speeches, and mindless platitudes.
But in reality, as a concept, "Freedom" is not very popular right now. It's similar to "Justice" in this regard.
I'm also asthmatic, to the point where I was forced to move from Virginia to Arizona in order to be able to live without massive quantities of medications. I very nearly didn't make it to the hospital on one occasion, being that I was at the point of unconsciousness during entry to the emergency room (This prompted the move out of state).
I agree with the above poster. My freedoms are worth more to me. If a bar is too smokey, I don't go there.
Please save the hand-holding for the children. I'm a responsible adult, I can buy things elsewhere.
On the other hand, I have no problem with smoking bans in government buildings (can't avoid those), public transport, hospitals, and perhaps gas stations (can't seem to avoid those either). Basically if it's publicly purchased, it's ok by me to make it a "safe zone". This would include in my opinion baseball stadiums, a certain illegally state sponsored parking garage in Phoenix, a certain corporate welfare child of a hotel in Phoenix, and anything else _I_ am paying for. Privately owned things should be left alone. But what _I_ am paying for, _I_ should be able to use, and that's the only excuse to impose something like this.
For the most part the market will work this kind of thing out. Notice how hotels now offer "non-smoking rooms".
It's also funny how the bar/restaurant traffic has severely declined in the Phoenix metro area in those cities with smoking bans. Places that used to be packed are going under in those places. Other bars that are located in municipalities without bans are happily picking up all of the business. As a taxpayer I don't want to lose the revenue.
That's amazing... Perhaps it's just OSX they don't know, but the IT where I work seems to know virtually nothing about Macs. They seem to be more comfortable with Windows, but some aren't very that competent with that either.
I was at another district for a short while. During that time I was introduced to a problem they created. They'd used an OSX Server machine to host some files for a campus of Windows machines (It's cheaper, no CALs). They had moved some files to it that were used by a some Windows applications, and used a new name for the share point. The new share name is what they used in setting up half the campus (WinXP or 2k, don't remember). Problem was that the other half of the machines (still running 98) were set to use the old share name. OSX 10.2 Server didn't have an option in the GUI to share the same directory twice using different share names.
They were going to go to every last Win98 machine and remap the share point. We're talking a few hundred machines. I was incredulous.
I opened the terminal emulator, and made a symbolic link to the directory that needed shared. I then went into the GUI and added the symbolic link as a new share point using the old name. The entire time they (we're talking multiple district level techs) were freaking out cause I was using "Terminal" and they didn't know "Terminal". It worked flawlessly. Later I set up rsync to do offsite backups for the gradebook databases (Filemaker Pro based) from the CLI as well. Note: these guys knew more about OSX than the people I work with now.
The job went poorly. The only member of the staff I got along with very well was going to school for an CompSci degree and was leaving after graduation. The other members of the IT staff were cold, even nasty to me, and I left.
The moral of the story: never take a job where the boss says "I think you can help the department rise to the next level". The department probablty doesn't want to "rise to the next level". They want a cushy job, doing what they've been doing all along. They don't want to have to learn anything, and they sure as hell don't want to read anything remotely work related when not on the clock.
And of course, the definition of competent changes from person to person. I'm very demanding of myself in this regard.
Furthermore, if you weren't such an immature smacktard, you'd realize that most school techs are completely incompetent, and that all school machines "suck"
With the Windows XP machines at my district, right-clicking in explorer does not work for students. You may as well have a one-button mouse. This is a district bigwig mandated policy. Thank God they've not handicapped the Staff accounts so terribly. Also this is why having the Admin password is nice:)
The violent need to vomit can be fixed by making a few changes when setting up an XP install.
1)Right click on the desktop and select properties from the menu.
The popup menu listed under "Themes:" has the Fischer-Price inspired "Windows XP" theme selected by default.
Change this to "Windows Classic"
2)Right click on the Start Menu and select properties from the menu.
The "Taskbar" tab will be selected.
Make sure that the check box for "Hide inactive icons" is not selected.
3)Select the "Start Menu" tab at the top of the "Taskbar and Start Menu Properties" window.
Select "Classic Start menu" from the list.
3)Click the "Customize..." button beside the "Classic Start menu" option.
Make sure that the following are enabled: "Display Log Off", "Display Run", and "Expand Control Panel".
Make sure that the following are disabled: "Use Personalized Menus" and "Display Favorites".
The rest is more tuned to personal preference. I generally also enable: "Display Administrative Tools", "Enable dragging and dropping", "Use Small Icons in Start Menu", and all of the "Expand" options except "Expand Network Connections".
4)Click the "OK" button on both open windows and the nausea should fade away...
---
Sadly I end up doing this to every XP box I have to use to simply get it to a decently usable state. Furthermore, these settings tend to confuse standard users FAR less than the default ones. If I had a dime for every user problem that was due to "Personalized Menus", it'd be enough for A new MacBook... (well, it seems that way sometimes.) It'd definitely be enough for a new Logitech mouse. *grin*
There's no reason that a laptop shouldn't be used for a light duty server, with one major caveat. The drives on them are generally extremely slow and less reliable than their desktop counterparts.
The fix for this is rather simple provided you use an OS with a small footprint; like my file server's CLI-only Slackware Linux install (less than 1G). Replace the drive with a flash based 2.5" drive. They come in sizes of up to 8GBs for around $300 that I've found using Froogle . An important addition to this would be to add enough RAM that you don't require much if any swapping, since I'm not aware of how much rewriting these drives will handle in real world usage.
The great thing about doing this is that it not only increases the reliability of your server (no critical moving parts remaining that will fail), but it will lower the power consumption of your laptop, adding greatly to the battery life. This being due to the fact that hard drives are one of the more power consumptive parts in a laptop. Futhermore it will seriously increase performance due to the fact that flash based laptop drives have lower seek times and probably better sustained throughput than even conventional desktop drives. (66MB/s sustained)
Second, I like my family so I wouldn't subject them to Mac OS.
I generally say the same thing about Windows, but then again I support Windows professionally and know all about the sorts of things a standard Windows user faces.
Example: I downloaded a video file (WMV) a couple of nights ago and the file requested to download a codec. So it goes online and pulls down a "codec" (innocent seeming)and the damn thing is infested with Spy Falcon. Luckily for me, Spy Sweeper caught it and nothing was installed, but I've had to remove Spy Falcon before from a client's machine. I'm wondering if this is how they got it. Spy Falcon was rather nasty to remove, although now there's tools that make it much easier.
At this point I've put end-users on Windows, OSX, (OS9 despite trying everything to convince them otherwise), and Linux.
Windows requires decent effort to lock down, and even then you have to train people to be safe. With regard to my own parents, I've set them up with a Windows machine in the past. They used it for email, some web browsing, and bringing work home. Other than that the machine was left off.
OS9 is crap. I have many, many reasons for this opinion. I could write a book detailing them.
Linux (the last time I tried it for this) was far too much trouble for people like my parents to get working with all of the little knick-knacks that they buy. This includes scanners, a digital camera, a webcam, a printer, etc. Since they're 2400 miles away it's not like I can do it. Furthermore living in rural Virginia, I wouldn't know who to send them to that I'd trust to fix it.
My parents have a iBook now and the stuff that they've done using it has surprised me. They do 10 times more with it than they ever did with Windows (and it's not that I didn't install equivalent software). To be honest, this was not an immediate change. I got them a book (written by Robin Williams, PeachPit Press), and it's taken my parents a while to learn how to use the OS. For the record however, I previously got them a Windows book.
I really hated the whole Mac thing WRT the OS9 era. I still despise OS9. But I've used OS9. I've also used Windows since version 2.0 and before that DOS from about 1981 or 1982. Linux I've never hated, but I've used that since 1997 (mostly Slackware) and FreeBSD a few years after that.
When a friend of mine, whom I really respect, suggested I try out OSX, I gave it a whirl using a Beige G3 I picked up in a junkyard. The point is that I used it in order to make an informed decision. Amazingly it's now my preferred OS for development, as well as generic use.
Have you even used OSX at all? For more than a day or two? If not:
Predjudice is a crutch for the weak. You're as bad as those Mac fanatics who trash on Windows for BS reasons all the time.
Apparently you've not priced "quiet computing" solutions. I have both PPC Macs and x86 Windows machines (among other architectures/vendors). My Athlon is not quiet. Actually it's loud enough that it competes with the Lucent P120 switch in my computer room for the generation of white noise. I used to use a thermaltake cooler on it, but that was loud enough to be annoying, and has been replaced. Note:enterprise level networking gear is very loud.
On the other hand, at one point my wife had an iMac in the bedroom, which while not fast was virtually silent. This is why it was allowed in the bedroom in the first place. Her Aluminum Powerbook is likewise extremely quiet. This is unlike my sister's Compaq laptop which emits a loud whining noise when used for anything remotely CPU intensive.
I've checked out the costs to make my Athlon STFU, but basically decided that it wasn't worth it for an older machine. I'm waiting on it's replacement in order to deal with the noise issues. The switch on the other hand is going to be placed in an enclosure to lower the overall noise in the room.
While people like myself deal better with loud computers, most older people in their 50s and up would rather not hear it. My father for example used to complain about their HP for that reason.
Quoth the AC: 200 bucks for a Windows license? I don't think so. Are you so clueless that you think IT people drive down to the local computer store and buy a boxed copies of Windows???
You're assuming that the only market for software is medium to large enterprise. Autocad (which is made by a well known vendor) is used by tons and tons of architects. Since I've worked in IT support for a few architectural firms, I can tell you that most of them are comprised of small business of under 50 employees. I've used Autocad under Windows, however when I needed to use something to make some plans for a shed for my church, I used Sketch-Up, because there's an OSX native version.
Furthermore, most of the people that I've run across who are excited about virtualization are primarily interested in using it to run the existing Windows apps they own, and plan on replacing those with OSX native versions where available, and comparable OSX native apps where not available. The other major segment (where I fall into this equation)interested in virtualization, is the IT people who use/support multiple platforms.
Boot Camp is for games. Noone I have spoken with that knows about virtualization is seriously intersted in using it for anything other than games.
Saith the parent: "If you have enough Mac customers that your Mac software is a profitable product, you are going to lose money from your decision. If you didn't have that many Mac customers, you shouldn't have been making a Mac product anyway."
Quoth the AC: Woah!
Only someone who has never worked in a real life software dev house could make such a wildly stupid statement.
+ Savings from dumping Mac developers and overhead to support them + Savings from dumping Mac support and packaging - Percentage of Mac running customers who stop buying your product due to canceled OS X version
Revenue goes down, but profits go up in almost every case outside of having 75-100 percent or so of your Mac customers stop buying your product. It is pretty funny to see Mac people freaking out about everyday business economics - "But that won't happen because I wouldn't like it to!" Heh.
What? I'm not understanding something...
This seems like Carly Fiorina Logic. If we stop making HP calculators, people will just buy handheld HP units with similar funtionality. It doesn't matter that the calculator group provides a substantial net profit for the company. If we stop spending all that money on supporting calculators and simply use the computer support people we already have... Think of the savings!!!!
When a group/division in a company that caters to a market makes the company lots of money, leave them alone. They're doing their job, pulling a PHB stunt in wall street business tactics will only hurt your company.
Being an administrative user on an OSX machine means that your account is a member of the group "admin" which is the administrative group on OSX. This is a requirement for invoking sudo or being able to "su root". It does NOT mean that you are the system "Super User" or Admin.
Please do not comment about what is going on underneath the hood of the OS unless you know something about the underlying architecture.
Someone knows how to box really well. They win lots of boxing matches.
Technique is:
The boxer faces off against a martial artist who drops to the floor, hooks their foot behind the boxer's ankle and uses their other foot to kick them in the kneecap...
Not to spoil the ending, but the boxer's knee makes a really nasty noise and there's some screaming involved.
I've won quite a few fights, not because of skill neccesarily, but speed and technique.
Slashdot Mirror
If only I had mod points, I'd mod you +8 Insightful!
There are chances of you losing all your data.
-10 ignorant!!!
There are ALWAYS chances of this regardless of whatever technology you use.
You should ALWAYS have backups.
What's interesting is how much people like to trash ZFS as being unstable, referring to all of the reports of catastrophic data loss.
I've read a bunch of these reports of data loss, before I decided to use ZFS on OpenSolaris for my new fileserver.
When you refuse to follow the repeated warnings of the vendor about best practices and you lose your data, it's not the fault of the vendor or the technology; it's yours.
I've read a ton of documentation/articles/manuals/guides which state that many USB enclosures when given the "cache flush" command, will lie. They report completion of the flush when in fact the cache still has data in it. This can lead to the updated uberblock being corrupted and catastrophic pool failure. USB is not only not recommended, there are warnings about it's use.
Virtual Box by default has the issue as well. Other VMs may not honor write cache flush commands as well.
And yet, so many morons out there are still using USB enclosures and whining loudly when they lose everything. Others using VMs which don't honor cache flush commands are doing the same.
I have a bare-metal OpenSolaris install which is using it the way it was intended. I've actually read the documentation. I follow the best practices.
ZFS in OpenSolaris is more than just a File System.
It's the entire storage system stack AND the associated file system.
This is why there are TWO major commands that you use to administer it; "zpool" and "zfs". "zfs" is used to deal with the file system. "zpool" is used to deal with the equivalent of the volume manager.
While the file system is supported by Linux, the stack isn't. The stack is one of the things that makes ZFS great.
While the ZFS stack has been described as "a rampant layering violation", it's the fact that it's not obsessively partitioned that gives it some pretty incredibly useful abilities.
The stack offers end to end checksums. Data leaving the drive is checksummed from the time it leaves the drive until it hits RAM, where hopefully ECC takes over in providing data integrity.
Rebuilding a traditional RAID5 or RAID6 takes the same amount of time even if it's 10% full, due to the fact that the VM doesn't know about files as it only deals with volumes (partitions). Rebuilding a RAIDZ, RAIDZ2, or RAIDZ3 which is 40% full takes 1/2 the time of one that is 80% full, due to "rampant layering violations". :) If a drive starts racking up unrecoverable read errors leading to corruption, ZFS detects this (on scrub or access) and will replace bad blocks provided there's a redundant copy or parity. This does not require a rebuild; the amount of time it takes depends on the amount of corruption. Triple parity RAID support was recently added.
Mirrors under ZFS write at single drive speed, but read at the speed of a stripe. If you have a co-located server, where you have to pay more for after hours access and for rack units; you can set up a 3 way or 4 way mirror which will provide extremely high data redundancy with RAID-0 read speeds. How much of a web servers disk IO load is writes depends on what it's serving, but generally it is overwhelmingly read heavy so for one of my friends this is extremely useful.
ZFS offers storage pools as the basic volume structure. Storage pools consist of a number of RAIDs, mirrors, single drives, or iSCSI shares. Data is striped across all devices currently in a pool when the data is written. Online Expansion of storage space is accomplished this way with a single "zpool add" command very quickly. Adding storage is painless the way JBOD often is, with the performance of striping. The downside is that once you've added a mirror, RAID, or drive to a pool; it's there for keeps. Support for removal was supposed to be added at some point...
Unlike anything else I've ever used, when you create a volume/partition/filesystem on a zpool, you don't specify a size. The size of a filesystem is dynamically reallocated. No more having to manually manage the amount of space allocated to a given partition. The file system will take the amount of space that it's contents require; filesystem limits/quotas are available.
The ZFS stack supports a high speed zpool cache called a ZIL (writes), and one called L2ARC (reads). This allows for huge performance increases using one or more solid state drives. Seagate is doing something similar in hardware with their new Momentus XT laptop drive, which according to Anandtech is comparable to the WD Velociraptor.
Referring to ZFS as a filesystem alone, or using it via FUSE neglects 90% or more of what ZFS under OpenSolaris offers. ZFS as a filesystem alone is NOT compelling. It's the whole stack that makes it incredible.
Starcraft ALREADY did this...
http://www.battle.net/scc/faq/multi.shtml
"Just what is "Team" play?
Team games add a whole new level to cooperative play. Set before the game starts, a Team is effectively one side controlled by two or more players. Resources, technologies, and vision are all shared by the Team members, who don't have to play the same species. Unit control is also shared-- units that are currently selected by your teammates are marked so that you won't accidentally override your teammate's orders. "
I have OVER 90 Gigs of MP3s on a remote share, since I'm at work I don't know how many songs that is off the top of my head. But it's a crapload. The point is that with my Core 2 E6400 based machine with 1GB of 80Mhz DDR2, iTunes is fast enough that I never notice lag. My fileserver (K6-2 500) where the files are located, is on a 100Mb network, runs a lean and mean install of Slackware, and uses a 3ware based PATA RAID 5 (7 drives + hotspare). Not only that, I don't notice lag on my wife's Athlon 2600+ either.
If there is a problem with how fast iTunes is on a system that beefy, I'd guess it's something with your box.
The analysis is only a partial one...
This does nothing to determine what issues will affect normal people using Windows. The truth is that more 80% of them are infected with at least one trojan, piece of spyware, or other malware on their systems.
I'm a computer tech at a school and I work on the side doing computer repair/reinstalls, what have you. Because I'm a respected IT person where I work, there have been many teachers that I have done work for. Teachers are a fairly decent representative sample of "Joe Sixpack". Some of them have are power users, some are clueless. Furthermore, because I like sharing what I know, I run into people in the general public that I end up doing work for. In the past 5 years I have seen only 2 "home user" Windows machines not infected by malware. The people that I know who do this as well as the people in the computer shops I talk to report over 90% infection rates of the machines that come to them. So perhaps the numbers of worms mass successfully propagating themselves across the net may be declining, but where Windows is concerned, that does not mean that the platform is incredibly safe. The other aspect of this is that this study (and most like it) relate to the enterprise (medium to large). This study does not reflect the realities present in small business and home.
As far as Linux is concerned, I've noted in my logs that there are a lot of worms trying to infect it, though about 1/2 the worms are aimed at Windows.
That's retarded a retarded point...
The point made about compatibility, is that the OS should support what it claims it does. This is like stating that because LinuxPPC does not install on i386 or Redhat on PPC boxes, that they're not as compatible as other versions of Linux that do... You may as well complain that Windows mobile for ARM is should be judged as crappy for not supporting the phones that Symbian does
Redhat claims to be an generic i386 based OS and should be rated for what it does support within it's claims.
OS X is not claimed to run on anything but Apple shipped PCs.
Vista claims to be a generic i386 OS for i386 PCs. No one forced Microsoft to claim to support the greater array of "Personal Computer" hardware.
Actually WRT the CLI comment and OSX not being Linux. You're mostly off the mark there.
My biggest complaints about the OSX command line vs. that of Linux is the lack of "rename" and "watch". Interestingly, these commands are also missing on some of the other *nix platforms I've used.
I love bash, sed, and awk. While at some point I should get off of my butt and learn some perl, I'm content with what I use now. It works, and with the exception of bash they're installed by default on most any crusty old or new version of *nix I tinker with. Scripting and CLI stuff on OSX with minor exceptions, is basically the same as most any other *nix.
At the school I work at, I've recently:
I've written some scripts to monitor computer labs usage with vncsnapshot and export a web-based gallery.
I've written a script that will mount the C: drives of the XP based lab machines and find student work saved to the "My docs" folder regardless of which machine the student was using.
I've written a script that will move the old profiles (those not used for two weeks or more) to a temp directory. (Lots of profile directories in Docs and Settings slow the machines to a crawl)
More...
These scripts will work the same on OSX, Linux, or FreeBSD.
So I'm guessing that your response to the poorer people out there is: you cannot afford a good education, the freely available content sucks, so you shouldn't waste time trying to learn to code....
IBM would probably disagree with that assessment.
I'd personally argue that IBM agreed to let M$ shaft them, but consentual shafting is still shafting.
While I am an OSX enthusiast, I'm not a Fanboi. The main difference between the two is pointed out in your comment about the iShit.
I wouldn't buy it, though the Fanbois would stand in long lines for it.
I don't own an iPod, and while I'd like one, I don't think that an MP3 player/portable HD is worth that much of my money, yet.
I also have not bought one of the Intel Macs. The reason is that Apple has yet to pull their heads out of their asses with regards to shipping something that appeals to the gamer segment. The Mac Pro is one hell of a workstation, but I'm not really in the market for a workstation. For $2000 I better be getting something that likes SLI or Crossfire. I don't want FBDIMMs. I don't need 4 cores. Four cores would be nice but for the most part a Mac Mini would be fast enough for development, surfing, and most everything I do _except_ games.
My current internal debate is whether I want to: build another gaming system to replace my aging Athlon, and buy a separate Mac mini or MacBook; build a core 2 system and join the hack OSX to run on vanilla x86 crowd; hope that Apple releases a conroe based tower (with SLI/Crossfire workability,2 PCIe 8x or 16x slots); or buy a Mac Pro and hope that it cuts it as a gaming rig for years to come (somehow doubtable without SLI), while being annoyed at having to pay twice the price or more for SLOWER server memory.
I got a Nokia 6600 for my wife last Christmas. It's certainly NOT a peice of shit. It happens to be able to play music, although it's never used for that.
It DOES however have over 4 days of standby on the orginal battery, which is over 2 years old now.
It DOES have half of the reception bars still remaining when my Sony has no reception at all, it has better reception with T-Mobile (less network coverage) than my sister's Motorola does on Verizon (much more network coverage) much of the time.
It DOES still work after being dropped on multiple occasions (not by me).
It DOES have the ability to run GPS enabled mapping software (TomTom), athough we have not done that.
It DOES use a SIM (easy switching of phone numbers) and have a MMC slot which will take 2GB MMC cards.
It DOES syncronize contact info seamlessly using iSync on OSX via bluetooth.
The UI is crappy, but not as bad as many, but all current phones have sucky UIs IMHO.
The the music software (Real One) is extraordinarily shitty.
UI considerations aside, it's a great PHONE. It's a crappy MP3 player. It's also a rather crappy camera for that matter, but I have an Olympus c740 which isn't.
Hopefully Apple can create a non-sucky UI for a cell phone that offers iPod-like ease of use as an MP3 player. Then provided that the number of defective units is low, I'll buy one.
No, it might be a pain to get going, and it may require changes to be made, but it's not a stunt...
Proposing cars running on 100% hydrogen is a stunt... Actually, hydrogen power isn't a stunt, it's a scam. It's 20 years out at the least, which is long enough for all of the current oil execs to retire (which is long enough for them).
http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/display.article?id=655
http://www.worldwatch.org/node/4081
http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,16781,1648
ttp://www.biofuelwatch.org.uk/background5.php
If you check out those articles you'll see that 40% of Brazil's fuel already comes from sugar cane. And they're still ramping up production...
The stadium is the only place you have a leg to stand on, since you're probably paying for it. In this sense, being that it was most likely publicly funded, it's less of an affront to the owner of the place.
The restaurant is probably a completely private enterprise which can refuse service to most anyone. This is why a club or restaurant may forbid you from coming back, with legal recourse if you return. They may completely ignore the needs of certain people (vegetarians) and provide a service to other people (smokers). This is part of what Freedom actually entails.
The word "Freedom" is widely bandied about in flowery speeches, and mindless platitudes.
But in reality, as a concept, "Freedom" is not very popular right now. It's similar to "Justice" in this regard.
I'm also asthmatic, to the point where I was forced to move from Virginia to Arizona in order to be able to live without massive quantities of medications. I very nearly didn't make it to the hospital on one occasion, being that I was at the point of unconsciousness during entry to the emergency room (This prompted the move out of state).
I agree with the above poster. My freedoms are worth more to me. If a bar is too smokey, I don't go there.
Please save the hand-holding for the children. I'm a responsible adult, I can buy things elsewhere.
On the other hand, I have no problem with smoking bans in government buildings (can't avoid those), public transport, hospitals, and perhaps gas stations (can't seem to avoid those either). Basically if it's publicly purchased, it's ok by me to make it a "safe zone". This would include in my opinion baseball stadiums, a certain illegally state sponsored parking garage in Phoenix, a certain corporate welfare child of a hotel in Phoenix, and anything else _I_ am paying for. Privately owned things should be left alone. But what _I_ am paying for, _I_ should be able to use, and that's the only excuse to impose something like this.
For the most part the market will work this kind of thing out. Notice how hotels now offer "non-smoking rooms".
It's also funny how the bar/restaurant traffic has severely declined in the Phoenix metro area in those cities with smoking bans. Places that used to be packed are going under in those places. Other bars that are located in municipalities without bans are happily picking up all of the business. As a taxpayer I don't want to lose the revenue.
Wow....
That's amazing... Perhaps it's just OSX they don't know, but the IT where I work seems to know virtually nothing about Macs. They seem to be more comfortable with Windows, but some aren't very that competent with that either.
I was at another district for a short while. During that time I was introduced to a problem they created. They'd used an OSX Server machine to host some files for a campus of Windows machines (It's cheaper, no CALs). They had moved some files to it that were used by a some Windows applications, and used a new name for the share point. The new share name is what they used in setting up half the campus (WinXP or 2k, don't remember). Problem was that the other half of the machines (still running 98) were set to use the old share name. OSX 10.2 Server didn't have an option in the GUI to share the same directory twice using different share names.
They were going to go to every last Win98 machine and remap the share point. We're talking a few hundred machines. I was incredulous.
I opened the terminal emulator, and made a symbolic link to the directory that needed shared. I then went into the GUI and added the symbolic link as a new share point using the old name. The entire time they (we're talking multiple district level techs) were freaking out cause I was using "Terminal" and they didn't know "Terminal". It worked flawlessly. Later I set up rsync to do offsite backups for the gradebook databases (Filemaker Pro based) from the CLI as well. Note: these guys knew more about OSX than the people I work with now.
The job went poorly. The only member of the staff I got along with very well was going to school for an CompSci degree and was leaving after graduation. The other members of the IT staff were cold, even nasty to me, and I left.
The moral of the story: never take a job where the boss says "I think you can help the department rise to the next level". The department probablty doesn't want to "rise to the next level". They want a cushy job, doing what they've been doing all along. They don't want to have to learn anything, and they sure as hell don't want to read anything remotely work related when not on the clock.
And of course, the definition of competent changes from person to person. I'm very demanding of myself in this regard.
Furthermore, if you weren't such an immature smacktard, you'd realize that most school techs are completely incompetent, and that all school machines "suck"
:)
With the Windows XP machines at my district, right-clicking in explorer does not work for students. You may as well have a one-button mouse. This is a district bigwig mandated policy. Thank God they've not handicapped the Staff accounts so terribly. Also this is why having the Admin password is nice
No, I'm picky
Interestingly, while I don't find Win2k's UI particularly impressive, it's serviceable.
XP's on the other hand is annoying to the point of uselessness, as far as I'm concerned, until these changes are made.
The violent need to vomit can be fixed by making a few changes when setting up an XP install.
1)Right click on the desktop and select properties from the menu.
The popup menu listed under "Themes:" has the Fischer-Price inspired "Windows XP" theme selected by default.
Change this to "Windows Classic"
2)Right click on the Start Menu and select properties from the menu.
The "Taskbar" tab will be selected.
Make sure that the check box for "Hide inactive icons" is not selected.
3)Select the "Start Menu" tab at the top of the "Taskbar and Start Menu Properties" window.
Select "Classic Start menu" from the list.
3)Click the "Customize..." button beside the "Classic Start menu" option.
Make sure that the following are enabled: "Display Log Off", "Display Run", and "Expand Control Panel".
Make sure that the following are disabled: "Use Personalized Menus" and "Display Favorites".
The rest is more tuned to personal preference. I generally also enable: "Display Administrative Tools", "Enable dragging and dropping", "Use Small Icons in Start Menu", and all of the "Expand" options except "Expand Network Connections".
4)Click the "OK" button on both open windows and the nausea should fade away...
---
Sadly I end up doing this to every XP box I have to use to simply get it to a decently usable state.
Furthermore, these settings tend to confuse standard users FAR less than the default ones. If I had a dime for every user problem that was due to "Personalized Menus", it'd be enough for A new MacBook... (well, it seems that way sometimes.) It'd definitely be enough for a new Logitech mouse. *grin*
There's no reason that a laptop shouldn't be used for a light duty server, with one major caveat. The drives on them are generally extremely slow and less reliable than their desktop counterparts.
The fix for this is rather simple provided you use an OS with a small footprint; like my file server's CLI-only Slackware Linux install (less than 1G). Replace the drive with a flash based 2.5" drive. They come in sizes of up to 8GBs for around $300 that I've found using Froogle . An important addition to this would be to add enough RAM that you don't require much if any swapping, since I'm not aware of how much rewriting these drives will handle in real world usage.
The great thing about doing this is that it not only increases the reliability of your server (no critical moving parts remaining that will fail), but it will lower the power consumption of your laptop, adding greatly to the battery life. This being due to the fact that hard drives are one of the more power consumptive parts in a laptop. Futhermore it will seriously increase performance due to the fact that flash based laptop drives have lower seek times and probably better sustained throughput than even conventional desktop drives. (66MB/s sustained)
I generally say the same thing about Windows, but then again I support Windows professionally and know all about the sorts of things a standard Windows user faces.
Example: I downloaded a video file (WMV) a couple of nights ago and the file requested to download a codec. So it goes online and pulls down a "codec" (innocent seeming)and the damn thing is infested with Spy Falcon. Luckily for me, Spy Sweeper caught it and nothing was installed, but I've had to remove Spy Falcon before from a client's machine. I'm wondering if this is how they got it. Spy Falcon was rather nasty to remove, although now there's tools that make it much easier.
At this point I've put end-users on Windows, OSX, (OS9 despite trying everything to convince them otherwise), and Linux.
Windows requires decent effort to lock down, and even then you have to train people to be safe. With regard to my own parents, I've set them up with a Windows machine in the past. They used it for email, some web browsing, and bringing work home. Other than that the machine was left off.
OS9 is crap. I have many, many reasons for this opinion. I could write a book detailing them.
Linux (the last time I tried it for this) was far too much trouble for people like my parents to get working with all of the little knick-knacks that they buy. This includes scanners, a digital camera, a webcam, a printer, etc. Since they're 2400 miles away it's not like I can do it. Furthermore living in rural Virginia, I wouldn't know who to send them to that I'd trust to fix it.
My parents have a iBook now and the stuff that they've done using it has surprised me. They do 10 times more with it than they ever did with Windows (and it's not that I didn't install equivalent software). To be honest, this was not an immediate change. I got them a book (written by Robin Williams, PeachPit Press), and it's taken my parents a while to learn how to use the OS. For the record however, I previously got them a Windows book.
I really hated the whole Mac thing WRT the OS9 era. I still despise OS9. But I've used OS9. I've also used Windows since version 2.0 and before that DOS from about 1981 or 1982. Linux I've never hated, but I've used that since 1997 (mostly Slackware) and FreeBSD a few years after that.
When a friend of mine, whom I really respect, suggested I try out OSX, I gave it a whirl using a Beige G3 I picked up in a junkyard. The point is that I used it in order to make an informed decision. Amazingly it's now my preferred OS for development, as well as generic use.
Have you even used OSX at all? For more than a day or two? If not:
Predjudice is a crutch for the weak.
You're as bad as those Mac fanatics who trash on Windows for BS reasons all the time.
Apparently you've not priced "quiet computing" solutions. I have both PPC Macs and x86 Windows machines (among other architectures/vendors). My Athlon is not quiet. Actually it's loud enough that it competes with the Lucent P120 switch in my computer room for the generation of white noise. I used to use a thermaltake cooler on it, but that was loud enough to be annoying, and has been replaced. Note:enterprise level networking gear is very loud.
On the other hand, at one point my wife had an iMac in the bedroom, which while not fast was virtually silent. This is why it was allowed in the bedroom in the first place. Her Aluminum Powerbook is likewise extremely quiet. This is unlike my sister's Compaq laptop which emits a loud whining noise when used for anything remotely CPU intensive.
I've checked out the costs to make my Athlon STFU, but basically decided that it wasn't worth it for an older machine. I'm waiting on it's replacement in order to deal with the noise issues. The switch on the other hand is going to be placed in an enclosure to lower the overall noise in the room.
While people like myself deal better with loud computers, most older people in their 50s and up would rather not hear it. My father for example used to complain about their HP for that reason.
You're assuming that the only market for software is medium to large enterprise. Autocad (which is made by a well known vendor) is used by tons and tons of architects. Since I've worked in IT support for a few architectural firms, I can tell you that most of them are comprised of small business of under 50 employees. I've used Autocad under Windows, however when I needed to use something to make some plans for a shed for my church, I used Sketch-Up, because there's an OSX native version.
Furthermore, most of the people that I've run across who are excited about virtualization are primarily interested in using it to run the existing Windows apps they own, and plan on replacing those with OSX native versions where available, and comparable OSX native apps where not available. The other major segment (where I fall into this equation)interested in virtualization, is the IT people who use/support multiple platforms.
Boot Camp is for games. Noone I have spoken with that knows about virtualization is seriously intersted in using it for anything other than games.
What?
I'm not understanding something...
This seems like Carly Fiorina Logic. If we stop making HP calculators, people will just buy handheld HP units with similar funtionality. It doesn't matter that the calculator group provides a substantial net profit for the company. If we stop spending all that money on supporting calculators and simply use the computer support people we already have... Think of the savings!!!!
When a group/division in a company that caters to a market makes the company lots of money, leave them alone. They're doing their job, pulling a PHB stunt in wall street business tactics will only hurt your company.
Being an administrative user on an OSX machine means that your account is a member of the group "admin" which is the administrative group on OSX. This is a requirement for invoking sudo or being able to "su root". It does NOT mean that you are the system "Super User" or Admin.
Please do not comment about what is going on underneath the hood of the OS unless you know something about the underlying architecture.
Skill is:
Someone knows how to box really well. They win lots of boxing matches.
Technique is:
The boxer faces off against a martial artist who drops to the floor, hooks their foot behind the boxer's ankle and uses their other foot to kick them in the kneecap...
Not to spoil the ending, but the boxer's knee makes a really nasty noise and there's some screaming involved.
I've won quite a few fights, not because of skill neccesarily, but speed and technique.