I just deployed a FreeBSD 4.4 virtual machine onto an IBM NetVista using VMware Workstation 3.0, which can safely put any PC-based OS into a hibernation mode on demand with one click.
This hibernation mode snapshot can be duplicated or even put on other machines in the event of a system failure. The virtual machine will then come back online like nothing ever happened, with hardware devices effectively still attached and processes still running.
It works really slick, you can perform other tasks and come back to your virtual machine later without slow boot times. This will also work on Linux, Solaris, and Windows platforms. I'd highly recommend VMware for on-demand OS access.
This is what I've heard, but I have a stock iBook G3 500 with 320 (64 + 256) megs of RAM. Stock HD and CD-ROM. I am running a fresh install of OS X 10.1.2, with IE 5.1, iTunes 2.0.3, Thoth, AIM, ircle, etc. Classic is not active as I try to only use OS X native apps. No funky modifications or system changes are installed. No power management changes, no window extensions, etc.
This was the case even when I was running 10.0.4 months back. It is just very unresponsive, even running IE by itself. Sites render extremely slow - downloads are fast though.
Everything on 10.1.2 sucks, even when I only run one or two applications at a time. It is considerably faster then 10.0.4, I'd say a 40% improvement, still when I switch between applications, it is slow. File copies seem OK. Window operations (drags, resizes, etc) are slow. Pretty much everything in the Finder is slow as well, opening new windows, renaming directories.
I've pretty much given up trying to do anything useful in 10. Do you PowerMac and PowerBook users find it to be an easy switch over? Does it perform usable on your machines? I hope it isn't as slow as it is on my G3/500. I guess I'll just have to look at u pgrading from my nice new iBook to a new PowerMac to run OS X.
I am a Network Consultant who spent a lot of time researching and then deciding to buy an iBook. Great laptop, great feature set and good price points. But even loaded with as much RAM as you can put in it - OS 10.1.2 performs like shit. That's the bottom line.
You cannot have a web browser (IE), an MP3 player (iTunes) and a news reader open without significant slowdown and swapping. Page displays in IE are very very slow and it makes your general web experience disappointing. Also, doing simple things like trying to sort through files in Finder is awfully slow. List views are very low performance and almost to the point where they are frustratingly unusable.
It really pisses me off, it seems like they only optimize 10 for their high-end products, but for those considering to buy an iBook to run OS X - don't waste your time. Buy a PowerBook.
Anyways, that's my two cents. I use OS 9.1, as on OS 9.2 and OS 10 you cannot shut your laptop lid without the box going to sleep. You have no choice, so forget using it in a docked configuration.
I am an AT&T Broadband, formerly MediaOne RoadRunner customer in Fresno, CA. My upstream and downstream rates were read directly from my DOCSIS cable modem. (a Motorola SurfBoard 4100 - a queryable sex machine with a built in web server)
I used DocsDiag - a Java DOCSIS SNMP query applet on my iBook, a partial report is below. This is given to my modem from a DOCSIS cable headend. Note, the TFTP path shows the configuration which ATT gives me - indicating 1.5M upstream, 300k downstream with 3 MAC addresses allowed.
QoS max upstream bandwidth = 300000 bps
QoS max downstream bandwidth = 1500000 bps
Configuration filename =/DOCSIS/1500x300st-3
Performance on ATT/MediaOne/RR's network has been quite acceptable - both peak and non-peak hours., with the exception of last Christmas when they announced cable Internet access and oversold it. They acquired additional capacity in late February and things have been fine since then.
Reliability, however is another story with ATT, as their customer service is quite brain-dead. I had an outage for almost 6 days and they wouldn't roll a truck to replace my fried USR CMX because of the @Home switchover. Lame asses. Never really had a problem with them until then.
I found this topic to be quite interesting. As a long time UNIX and Linux user - I mean pre-RedHat and pre-GUI installs, I installed distributions like MCC, SLS and Slackware. At that time, we had a bunch of HOWTOs, which by the time they were written were obsolete.
Some of these documents were varied in terms of usefulness, accuracy or depth. Documents like an IP firewall HOWTO was worthless once it was written because it didn't cover all the latest bugs and hacks, and the command line options no longer worked.
Documentation has since gotten better with innovations like the LDP, enabling developers and writers to submit and critique documentation but the fact of the matter is, we still need to concentrate on getting useful, readable, concise and comphrensive documentation on individual components. It still is hard to find the latest PCMCIA setup instructions.
I am not sure that fighting over what is free & non-free is necessarily the best thing. Although it is great to see the latest FreeBSD and Linux book sets at Barnes and Noble and Amazon - I think the community still has a ways to go in developing "useable" documentation. What are your thoughts?
The signal sounds to my naked (and non-audiophile ear) like a 96K MP3. Almost CD quality. Then again I think it varies based on what you listen to, I don't think the talk and news channels get that much bandwidth.
As far as techno and rock go, it sounds good to me. Much better then FM anyways.
As a current XM subscriber in Fresno, CA I commute daily to the South Valley (Tulare/Visalia). For an almost hour long one-way drive, I was forced to listen to the same old crap. I listen to jazz, techno/trance, a bit of gangsta rap and I love the non-stop stand up comedy on the way to work. Puts me in a good mood in the morning.
Signal and quality is great! I have a Sony receiver (the silver and purple one) in my 2001 Honda Accord. Signing up online took me about 15 minutes, and it took another 40 minutes to drill the mounting bracket in and install my antenna inside my car by the back window cleanly (that was at night)
What a treat it was when I got it working. A majority of the good channels are unfiltered (cussing, racial slurs and various other profanity) is allowed if you are into that thing. The DJs are moderately cool.
Service is great. Only complaints I have are with the Sony deck, and they are: 1. Not enough presets, 2. Backlight and the LCD suck and will cause accidents if you attempt to read it while driving, 3. No direct station access on the remote (just presets, who thought of that?) The only places I've ever lost service is when you are in bumper-to-bumper traffic on the Highway and you pass under a bridge. If you are going at least 50, you won't lose your tunes. Also, the overhangs at gas stations will cause your radio to chunk out "No signal".
Thought I'd pitch in my two cents. Fire off some questions if you have any.
I will second that. I was so tired of UPS 2nd Day packages not showing up, arriving mangled, or not getting refunds for late shipment that I opened a corporate account.
I use it to ship all my items I sell on eBay too, and I can do everything myself - including quote rates, create labels and everything all online with no software. Sorry to sound like a commercial, but at least I can go to bed at night knowing my shit is going to show up.
I try to avoid UPS at all costs when I can online, I wish more stores supported it online. Only the big guys do. My 2 cents.
When you get a chance, can you please give me a referral for your crack dealer? He must sell some really good stuff.
I have one question for you, can you please point me to a web page with a USB hard drive that outperforms FireWire? Apple tax or not, FireWire kills USB 1.0 in performance AND reliability.
A serial bus used for products like mice and modems won't even touch the throughput on a FireWire drive. Try again!
Just thought I'd let you know, I upgraded my original station this evening and my OS 10.1.1 box, no go on the RADIUS/LEAP on the server side, or the firewall/access list functionality.
LEAP is supported on the AirPort client software, however.
I'm guessing that only the dual Ethernet version gets the access list support. However, I am purplexed by the lack of RADIUS support. Maybe the CPU is not powerful enough, or there is not enough RAM to handle the queries?
The only visible new feature is AOL support as a Network Type for connectivity. Hope this helps. Nothing to be too excited over!
Airport is still a solid product for PC or Mac users and gives a good bang for the buck. I enjoy using mine with the new software (and the new iTunes and 10.1.1 upgrade). I feel like a kid in a candy store!
I'm running 10.1 on my new iBook I got two months ago. I anxiously awaited the 10.1 release and bumrushed my local TechSource store in Fresno to get a copy. Man, that was fun, a ton of people there waiting for the UPS guy.
I was/am very happy with my iBook when I first got it, I ordered a 256Mb chip from coastmemory.com and got OS 9.1 set up really nice. I was very anxious to run OS X 10.0.4 and got it installed. Damn it was slow.
Now, I'm in 10.1 as I write this and I have some complaints that no one has really mentioned that I think are show stoppers:
You cannot shut your laptop lid without the iBook going into sleep mode. Forget using all those nice ports you paid for. My LCD will die shortly. They broke this in 9.2.1 and 10.x. I have some rubber feet stuffed in between my LCD and keyboard docked into a plastic laptop stand.
My brand new machine runs IE 5 on OS X like SHIT. It takes literally 2 minutes of a spinning color cursor just to render one Slashdot comments page. What the heck is up with that?
I misstated in my post how many current MCSEs there are. I was actually stating Windows 2000 MCSEs, in referring to the amount of NT 4.0 MCSEs that will be washed up soon.
Thanks for replying and correcting me. Good luck on your certification.
Before you go shooting on the MCSE bandwagon, you need to realize that Windows 2000 has been out for over a year now. There are less then a few thousand MCSEs, as former Windows NT 4.0 MCSEs are finding the tests to be MUCH harder then before. After December, once the NT 4.0 MCSEs have expired and they no longer hold their certification, it will go further in eliminating watered down MCSEs.
Microsoft has done an excellent job at reducing the amount of excess water in their certifications with the new rounds of exams. I've taken and passed my Windows 2000 MCSE (after my Solaris SCNA and Cisco CCNA certifications) and I found the design exams to be especially challenging. To pass the new Windows 2000 tests, you MUST have experience with deploying their products or you WILL fail.
Cut Microsoft some slack in their certification department. They've came a long way in establishing a well-known industry standard and now they are "fine-tuning" it to ensure that its worth stays intact. As someone who has gone through the process, it holds a lot of value to myself and my clients and customers.
On a side note, pick up a Solaris book at Barnes and Noble and read it for two days. You can pass it without almost no experience, other then knowing run levels and where rc files are located.
Good post. Let me see if I can clarify why this is (as a PBX rookie of course) PBX's do not send location data unless your company has what is called a CAMA trunk. It is a special trunk that connects directly to 911 call centers to pass in-building location information that is in your switch translations.
I think digital PRI trunks can pass this information as well. When an emergency call is made, switch translations are read to find all sorts of useful information about your location. i.e. campus building, room number, office number, wiring jack number or whatever is programmed.
This information then shows on the screen of the 911 call center person that gets the call, so that office 911 calls can be routed properly. Hope that helps, that is what I learned in my Avaya training. Woohoo.
Iridium offers data capability at 9600 baud via satellite phone with a serial interface. You dial up as normal using dial-up networking. I think they charge near $1/minute. Not too bad since taxpayers foot the bill anyways.
I'd rather pay $1/minute then have my house burn down. The phones feature decent battery life, don't need to be aimed at all, could probably tie into a DC adapter into the vehicle.
Also I believe Inmarsat and other satellite data providers have similar offerings. Hope this helps.
Thanks for your work on LimeWire, it's a great Gnutella client! I enjoy using it on MacOS 9.2.1, it is nice and fast and usable.
What can you tell us about the MacOS X 10.0.4 support? It is the exact opposite, slow to load, slow to run and consumes massive amounts of CPU. That and the widgets look funky, buttons don't line up with Aqua title bars and when you resize it splatters everywhere.
Imagine.. your 6 year old daughter in Kindergarten.
Your phone rings at work. "Hello?", you answer. "This is the police, we have your daughter in custody." "What?", you exclaim.
"We were tipped off that your daughter exchanged secret encrypted messages, so we are placing her under arrest until we can get to the bottom of this".
8 months later, you find out she was practicing her alphabet.....
I read this article, it seems pretty cool to be able to store all your keys and access them using the ssh-agent, but I'm having a hard time just generating an RSA SSH2 key and having it work. Anyone mind helping me out? I've followed this process:
1. ssh-keygen -t rsa
2. typed in a 12 character password
3. copied the dsa_key.pub from my desktop and pasted it to ~/.ssh/authorized_keys2 on the server.
4. ssh -2 remotehost.
Then it asks for a password. I used ssh -v, which it said it was trying RSA but it failed. I'm running OpenSSH 2.9p2 on Mac OS X. Help me, I've read the man pages repeatedly but it's still all jibber-jabber!
Under Linux, you can use the gsmlib package. It includes synchronization, messaging, communication and debugging tools and is quite mature. It has support for almost every GSM phone that has serial or infrared capabilities.
From freshmeat:
GSMLIB is a library to access GSM mobile phones through GSM modems. Features include: modification of phonebooks stored in the mobile phone or on the SIM card, reading and writing of SMS messages stored in the mobile phone, sending and reception of SMS messages.
I think all this jibber-jabber about space stations is pretty cool. I'm jazzed that the US was able to actually work with other countries to build a "space outpost" to conduct science and research.
I'm all down for the commercial modernization though, like having 8 space port doors to pull up some space busses, like a big Boeing 877 space bus, and the McDonalds and Wendy's module.
When we get tired of doing research, take a quick spin (literally) to the Blockbuster Module and rent some DVDs. I'd like to see how they keep the movies on the shelves from spinning. They could also have night clubs and stuff to party and get yo' groove on.
They could even build station interconnects, so that you can link Russian and US stations together. So you can vacation on the other station when you run out of entertainment. But definitely, they should have some type of "shell" module that companies could buy to run their own consumer businesses in space.
Museums, hotels.. all the stuff to make an interesting time. And you'd have to have some satellite TV to watch (can you get DirecTV from the space station? guess you'd need a special dish) No casinos, because you wouldn't want to be broke on a space station. Pay up or Vinny will shoot your ass out the bathroom hatch.
Slashdot Mirror
This hibernation mode snapshot can be duplicated or even put on other machines in the event of a system failure. The virtual machine will then come back online like nothing ever happened, with hardware devices effectively still attached and processes still running.
It works really slick, you can perform other tasks and come back to your virtual machine later without slow boot times. This will also work on Linux, Solaris, and Windows platforms. I'd highly recommend VMware for on-demand OS access.
-Pat
-Pat
This was the case even when I was running 10.0.4 months back. It is just very unresponsive, even running IE by itself. Sites render extremely slow - downloads are fast though.
Everything on 10.1.2 sucks, even when I only run one or two applications at a time. It is considerably faster then 10.0.4, I'd say a 40% improvement, still when I switch between applications, it is slow. File copies seem OK. Window operations (drags, resizes, etc) are slow. Pretty much everything in the Finder is slow as well, opening new windows, renaming directories.
I've pretty much given up trying to do anything useful in 10. Do you PowerMac and PowerBook users find it to be an easy switch over? Does it perform usable on your machines? I hope it isn't as slow as it is on my G3/500. I guess I'll just have to look at u pgrading from my nice new iBook to a new PowerMac to run OS X.
-Pat
You cannot have a web browser (IE), an MP3 player (iTunes) and a news reader open without significant slowdown and swapping. Page displays in IE are very very slow and it makes your general web experience disappointing. Also, doing simple things like trying to sort through files in Finder is awfully slow. List views are very low performance and almost to the point where they are frustratingly unusable.
It really pisses me off, it seems like they only optimize 10 for their high-end products, but for those considering to buy an iBook to run OS X - don't waste your time. Buy a PowerBook.
Anyways, that's my two cents. I use OS 9.1, as on OS 9.2 and OS 10 you cannot shut your laptop lid without the box going to sleep. You have no choice, so forget using it in a docked configuration.
-Pat
I used DocsDiag - a Java DOCSIS SNMP query applet on my iBook, a partial report is below. This is given to my modem from a DOCSIS cable headend. Note, the TFTP path shows the configuration which ATT gives me - indicating 1.5M upstream, 300k downstream with 3 MAC addresses allowed.
QoS max upstream bandwidth = 300000 bps /DOCSIS/1500x300st-3
QoS max downstream bandwidth = 1500000 bps
Configuration filename =
Performance on ATT/MediaOne/RR's network has been quite acceptable - both peak and non-peak hours., with the exception of last Christmas when they announced cable Internet access and oversold it. They acquired additional capacity in late February and things have been fine since then.
Reliability, however is another story with ATT, as their customer service is quite brain-dead. I had an outage for almost 6 days and they wouldn't roll a truck to replace my fried USR CMX because of the @Home switchover. Lame asses. Never really had a problem with them until then.
Happy holidays.
-Pat
Documentation has since gotten better with innovations like the LDP, enabling developers and writers to submit and critique documentation but the fact of the matter is, we still need to concentrate on getting useful, readable, concise and comphrensive documentation on individual components. It still is hard to find the latest PCMCIA setup instructions.
I am not sure that fighting over what is free & non-free is necessarily the best thing. Although it is great to see the latest FreeBSD and Linux book sets at Barnes and Noble and Amazon - I think the community still has a ways to go in developing "useable" documentation. What are your thoughts?
-Pat
As far as techno and rock go, it sounds good to me. Much better then FM anyways.
-Pat
Signal and quality is great! I have a Sony receiver (the silver and purple one) in my 2001 Honda Accord. Signing up online took me about 15 minutes, and it took another 40 minutes to drill the mounting bracket in and install my antenna inside my car by the back window cleanly (that was at night)
What a treat it was when I got it working. A majority of the good channels are unfiltered (cussing, racial slurs and various other profanity) is allowed if you are into that thing. The DJs are moderately cool.
Service is great. Only complaints I have are with the Sony deck, and they are: 1. Not enough presets, 2. Backlight and the LCD suck and will cause accidents if you attempt to read it while driving, 3. No direct station access on the remote (just presets, who thought of that?) The only places I've ever lost service is when you are in bumper-to-bumper traffic on the Highway and you pass under a bridge. If you are going at least 50, you won't lose your tunes. Also, the overhangs at gas stations will cause your radio to chunk out "No signal".
Thought I'd pitch in my two cents. Fire off some questions if you have any.
-Pat
I use it to ship all my items I sell on eBay too, and I can do everything myself - including quote rates, create labels and everything all online with no software. Sorry to sound like a commercial, but at least I can go to bed at night knowing my shit is going to show up.
I try to avoid UPS at all costs when I can online, I wish more stores supported it online. Only the big guys do. My 2 cents.
Pat
I have one question for you, can you please point me to a web page with a USB hard drive that outperforms FireWire? Apple tax or not, FireWire kills USB 1.0 in performance AND reliability.
A serial bus used for products like mice and modems won't even touch the throughput on a FireWire drive. Try again!
-Pat
I checked my Airport Configurator on 10.1 and it supports PPPoE as well as the DHCP identifier, modem dial and AOL. Hopefully that'll make you happy!
-Pat
I'm guessing that only the dual Ethernet version gets the access list support. However, I am purplexed by the lack of RADIUS support. Maybe the CPU is not powerful enough, or there is not enough RAM to handle the queries? The only visible new feature is AOL support as a Network Type for connectivity. Hope this helps. Nothing to be too excited over!
Airport is still a solid product for PC or Mac users and gives a good bang for the buck. I enjoy using mine with the new software (and the new iTunes and 10.1.1 upgrade). I feel like a kid in a candy store!
-Pat
I'm running 10.1 on my new iBook I got two months ago. I anxiously awaited the 10.1 release and bumrushed my local TechSource store in Fresno to get a copy. Man, that was fun, a ton of people there waiting for the UPS guy.
I was/am very happy with my iBook when I first got it, I ordered a 256Mb chip from coastmemory.com and got OS 9.1 set up really nice. I was very anxious to run OS X 10.0.4 and got it installed. Damn it was slow.
Now, I'm in 10.1 as I write this and I have some complaints that no one has really mentioned that I think are show stoppers:
- You cannot shut your laptop lid without the iBook going into sleep mode. Forget using all those nice ports you paid for. My LCD will die shortly. They broke this in 9.2.1 and 10.x. I have some rubber feet stuffed in between my LCD and keyboard docked into a plastic laptop stand.
- My brand new machine runs IE 5 on OS X like SHIT. It takes literally 2 minutes of a spinning color cursor just to render one Slashdot comments page. What the heck is up with that?
-PatI misstated in my post how many current MCSEs there are. I was actually stating Windows 2000 MCSEs, in referring to the amount of NT 4.0 MCSEs that will be washed up soon.
Thanks for replying and correcting me. Good luck on your certification.
-Pat
Microsoft has done an excellent job at reducing the amount of excess water in their certifications with the new rounds of exams. I've taken and passed my Windows 2000 MCSE (after my Solaris SCNA and Cisco CCNA certifications) and I found the design exams to be especially challenging. To pass the new Windows 2000 tests, you MUST have experience with deploying their products or you WILL fail.
Cut Microsoft some slack in their certification department. They've came a long way in establishing a well-known industry standard and now they are "fine-tuning" it to ensure that its worth stays intact. As someone who has gone through the process, it holds a lot of value to myself and my clients and customers.
On a side note, pick up a Solaris book at Barnes and Noble and read it for two days. You can pass it without almost no experience, other then knowing run levels and where rc files are located.
-Pat
I think digital PRI trunks can pass this information as well. When an emergency call is made, switch translations are read to find all sorts of useful information about your location. i.e. campus building, room number, office number, wiring jack number or whatever is programmed.
This information then shows on the screen of the 911 call center person that gets the call, so that office 911 calls can be routed properly. Hope that helps, that is what I learned in my Avaya training. Woohoo.
-Pat
Thanks mdouglas.
-Pat, CCNA
I'd rather pay $1/minute then have my house burn down. The phones feature decent battery life, don't need to be aimed at all, could probably tie into a DC adapter into the vehicle.
Also I believe Inmarsat and other satellite data providers have similar offerings. Hope this helps.
Pat
-Pat
Thanks for your work on LimeWire, it's a great Gnutella client! I enjoy using it on MacOS 9.2.1, it is nice and fast and usable.
What can you tell us about the MacOS X 10.0.4 support? It is the exact opposite, slow to load, slow to run and consumes massive amounts of CPU. That and the widgets look funky, buttons don't line up with Aqua title bars and when you resize it splatters everywhere.
Again, thanks for your help! Have a nice weekend.
-Pat
Your phone rings at work. "Hello?", you answer. "This is the police, we have your daughter in custody." "What?", you exclaim.
"We were tipped off that your daughter exchanged secret encrypted messages, so we are placing her under arrest until we can get to the bottom of this".
8 months later, you find out she was practicing her alphabet.....
-Pat
1. ssh-keygen -t rsa
2. typed in a 12 character password
3. copied the dsa_key.pub from my desktop and pasted it to ~/.ssh/authorized_keys2 on the server. 4. ssh -2 remotehost.
Then it asks for a password. I used ssh -v, which it said it was trying RSA but it failed. I'm running OpenSSH 2.9p2 on Mac OS X. Help me, I've read the man pages repeatedly but it's still all jibber-jabber!
-Pat
From freshmeat:
GSMLIB is a library to access GSM mobile phones through GSM modems. Features include: modification of phonebooks stored in the mobile phone or on the SIM card, reading and writing of SMS messages stored in the mobile phone, sending and reception of SMS messages.
Get it at http://freshmeat.net/projects/gsmlib/.
-Pat
I'm all down for the commercial modernization though, like having 8 space port doors to pull up some space busses, like a big Boeing 877 space bus, and the McDonalds and Wendy's module.
When we get tired of doing research, take a quick spin (literally) to the Blockbuster Module and rent some DVDs. I'd like to see how they keep the movies on the shelves from spinning. They could also have night clubs and stuff to party and get yo' groove on.
They could even build station interconnects, so that you can link Russian and US stations together. So you can vacation on the other station when you run out of entertainment. But definitely, they should have some type of "shell" module that companies could buy to run their own consumer businesses in space.
Museums, hotels.. all the stuff to make an interesting time. And you'd have to have some satellite TV to watch (can you get DirecTV from the space station? guess you'd need a special dish) No casinos, because you wouldn't want to be broke on a space station. Pay up or Vinny will shoot your ass out the bathroom hatch.
OK, I guess I'll lay off the crack now.
-Pat