I swore some 4 years ago when I got my first ThinkPad that I would never use another brand. Recently I got a Z60t (the smaller of the two widescreen models) as a replacement for a defective T41 (these have motherboard / chassis issues). On the plus side, I can say that the chassis construction is definitely sturdier than the T41, probably on par with the T43.
On the down side:
Minor stuff:
- windows keys have appeared -- call that a question of taste, but it means a smaller spacebar, and keys I'll never use. - display quality is down: vertical viewing angles on the panel are dismal, especially for a widescreen
Biggies imho:
- the CPU fan blows _downwards_, not out the sides. If you thought it was hot to have a laptop on your thighs, think again. - the PSU has CHANGED! Forget that we have 5-6 other thinkpads at the office: I can't borrow the PSU from one of my colleagues! The new models rate 90W instead of 72W. Different connector and all... - the RAM is not accessible from under the chassis, now one has to remove the palm rest, as it is placed under the trackpad - the audio jacks are placed on the front of the machine. Awkward (the Z60m doesn't have that problem).
All in all ? Well, the Z series are definitely consumer-ish, so I guess I should wait and see what happens with the T series. But I know that within the next 3 years, my company will have to start looking at alternatives. I simply don't think there's incentive enough for the ThinkPad as we know it to continue to exist.
... while others (PostgreSQL) have all one needs. I guess that's an unavoidable dynamic of free software (and a good one as well -- just like in other competing open source projects). So probably one day MySQL will have everything that PostgreSQL has today, but why wait ? It's mostly transparent to move from one to the other, and there are tons of guides and scripts to convert from MySQL to PgSQL. Even PhpMyAdmin has its Pg pendent (PhpPgAdmin).
And it's painful to go back when you've learned to do proper logic separation using stored procedures, triggers, views and transactions, things that way too many projects duplicate in the PHP or Ruby front-end, relegating the DB to the "simple" role of being a storage backend (even Ruby on Rails forces you to think that way via the MVC architecture).
For that purpose, use SQLite -- it does what you need, is very high performance (on-disk, non-concurrent access -- can't get any faster than that). For real solid DB work, with garanteed integrity, just the way RDBMS were meant to be, go for PgSQL.
It's not meant to limit SPAM (unless your idea of email, as some want it to become, is a communication medium where you only accept people you "trust" and reject the others). It's meant to protecte trademarks, and push responsibility away from the sender (i.e.: "you should have checked who the mail came from, ours are signed). Yahoo, and of course banks and other institutions who want to defend their credentials love SPF and similar systems. They don't care about SPAM, they just don't want to get blamed by customers and their insurers for phishing mails and the like.
... maybe they should make a new project for a new license ? After OpenCVS, OpenBGPD, OpenSSH, maybe we get (drumroll...) OpenLicense ? It would be, like, this really totally cool concept, like, you know, you could reuse all the code you want, but - and this is the really cool bit - you'd have to - get ready! - GIVE BACK the changes to the community if you redistributed the binaries! Wouldn't that be cool ? And you could, you know, make a manifesto or something, and - now this is really catchy - call it the BPL! YEAH! The BSD Public License!! And you could start all kinds of really gnarly software projects under that license! And Theo wouldn't even have to grow a long beard, wear a toga and go around with an old hard disk platter on his head -- cause it wouldn't be like this would be about calling to people's moral obligation to share software, cause, you know, software should be free, no, this would be to finance OpenBSD! W00t!
Re:How does it compare to Bacula?
on
Amanda 2.5 Released
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Nice web interface -- any plans to make it available ?
Yet another scam. This is nothing new. It just involves getting slimeball ISPs trying to make an extra buck to redirect DNS queries to some UnifiedRoot "root" servers. It's bogus, and it's dangerous. Support nightmare as well.
So, let me guess... If (and that's theoretical - http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi1098.htm) an American had invented the phone, the US should have retained control of telephony ? I mean, there's a number of infrastructures that have been created, not all of them are american, and the country the inventions originated from didn't retain control. Oh wait, come to think of it, it looks like decent transport was invented in Europe, and we obviously retained control of it, considering the state of US railways. Ah well, maybe you do have point.
Microsoft wants to be in the living room. Badly. They'll be "open" when it comes to peripherals, but their real goal is to be the digital hub that Apple has been talking about for years. And the hope to do that with the 360. So of course it will be compatible with that Canon digital camera, and will accept videos from that Sony camcorder. But the software inside ? In your dreams.
Come on! I mean, Open Source is about... open source. Keeping the software free may be a form of moral crusade for some, but when I releease software as open source, I do it for pragmatic reasons. Here's the code, use it, have fun. If some people get offended because their programs get used, but no one gives back, then too bad for you. This may be a two-way street, but moping and closing the source because "people just repackage and sell" will certainly NOT get people to contribute. Writing code, releasing it, and _expecting_ that people will contribute is a seriously flawed view of how the whole thing works. Might as well raise kids and expect them to pay back their bills[*]. If people find the code useful, they'll contribute. But this is still a market economy, and there will always be some people that will try to make a buck. I won't try and plug the BSD license, but dammit there's a reason why it's such a simple license in the first place -- it's pragmatic and realistic. People who really want to will contribute, but the others you won't get rid of.
The GPL is an excellent license to encourage everyone to play fair, and those that don't will get their fingers slapped. But I guess in the end that the Nessus folk do whatever they feel like: they developed, they released, and they'll just sulk in their corner and close the source. The earth still spins, and Open Source will continue to exist, just as it did before ESR started talking about "the community" or "us".
Sheesh.
[*] See the excellent "Alberto Express" if you ever get a chance.
"no more than 5 microsecs" is fine, but -- how the sustained rate, and what about garanteed completion time ? (they have a low boundary too: they shouldn't execute too fast either).
Over the last 10 years, UNIX system administrators have had to get used to the progression of Windows/NT in the corporate environment, sometimes having to jump through hoops to integrate the two environments (something that, frankly, Microsoft gets very little credit for, since almost all the solid integration technologies came from the Open Source side). Now it seems that Linux is playing the same game, and there's no doubt that it's not going away either.
So is the Linux Lab really an evaluation platform for Microsoft to evaluate Open Source, or (let's be honest) a marketing dissemination platform that will be used to "inform" customers of the advantages and disadvantages of Linux/Open Source ?
In case of the latter, is there an internal equivalent that really evaluates Linux and Open Source, in order to learn, integrate, and maybe build real bridges ?
Or is it, and will it always only be, about damage control ?
"The idea of running a system that costs absolutely nothing on the software side is a powerful one"
Indeed, and the risk is the nature of the people promoting Linux: the community [Note: I hate that word, it makes it sound like Linux was planned all along rather than just being the collective efforts of many individuals who had very specific needs of their own] aims not to coexist with other technologies, but for total replacement of every other OS out there. Whether it's the range of platform (read: any) that Linux runs on, the range of applications that Linux is envisioned to run (even those clearly counter indicated for such an OS, like avionics or weaponry -- see the talk by Dan Klein on this: http://www.usenix.org/events/lisa04/tech/talks/kle in.pdf), the "Linux everywhere", though quite unavoidable, is a bit worrying. I guess competing against Windows does that to you (hint: humor).
Write Cache enable is default on most IDE/ATA drives. Most SCSI drives don't enable it. If you don't like it, turn it off. There's no "lying", and I'm sure the fsync() function doesn't know diddly squat about the cache of your disk. Maybe the ATA/device abstraction layer does, and I'm sure there's a configurable registry/sysctl/frob you can twiddle to make it DTRT (like FreeBSD has).
Every month, Bruce Schneier's CryptGram reviews security products, events, and technologies. There are tons of people out there who claim to have invented better, easier to use crypto.
But as it has been mentioned already, until the source code is available, there is no incentive for people to try a closed source application in order to review how solid it really is, especially when dealing with data encryption. At best, it will help the vendor improve their useability (which seems to be their target anyway).
And even when the source code does get released (under what license!), it'll still have to deal with S/MIME and OpenPGP standards...
All recent (around 2 months) servers we've been getting from HPaq, with 3.4 GHz Xeons, are all 64 bit capable. SuSE SLES 9 even says on install "you are installing 32 bit software on a 64 bit computer".
This is a _very_ simple mechanism: when receiving mail from domain "slashdot.org", simply lookup the nameservers for "slashdot.org", and check if the sending server is authorized to send _on behalf_ of slashdot.org. Reverse MX.
i.e.:
slashdot.org. MX 10 inbound.smtp.slashdot.org
slashdot.org. RMX outbound.smtp.slashdot.org
This will cut massive amounts of spam posing as other domains (aol, yahoo, hotmail, and everything else of course).
... for the financially challenged. We use FreeBSD + RaidFrame (originally from NetBSD) for a smallish raid5 (250 GB effective storage), using 60 GB IBM ATA disks. Works like a charm. Otherwise go for www.zero-d.com -- they have scsi IDE raid cabinets. Nifty, but more expensive.
Slashdot Mirror
I swore some 4 years ago when I got my first ThinkPad that I would never use another brand. Recently I got a Z60t (the smaller of the two widescreen models) as a replacement for a defective T41 (these have motherboard / chassis issues). On the plus side, I can say that the chassis construction is definitely sturdier than the T41, probably on par with the T43.
On the down side:
Minor stuff:
- windows keys have appeared -- call that a question of taste, but it means a smaller spacebar, and keys I'll never use.
- display quality is down: vertical viewing angles on the panel are dismal, especially for a widescreen
Biggies imho:
- the CPU fan blows _downwards_, not out the sides. If you thought it was hot to have a laptop on your thighs, think again.
- the PSU has CHANGED! Forget that we have 5-6 other thinkpads at the office: I can't borrow the PSU from one of my colleagues! The new models rate 90W instead of 72W. Different connector and all...
- the RAM is not accessible from under the chassis, now one has to remove the palm rest, as it is placed under the trackpad
- the audio jacks are placed on the front of the machine. Awkward (the Z60m doesn't have that problem).
All in all ? Well, the Z series are definitely consumer-ish, so I guess I should wait and see what happens with the T series. But I know that within the next 3 years, my company will have to start looking at alternatives. I simply don't think there's incentive enough for the ThinkPad as we know it to continue to exist.
... while others (PostgreSQL) have all one needs. I guess that's an unavoidable dynamic of free software (and a good one as well -- just like in other competing open source projects). So probably one day MySQL will have everything that PostgreSQL has today, but why wait ? It's mostly transparent to move from one to the other, and there are tons of guides and scripts to convert from MySQL to PgSQL. Even PhpMyAdmin has its Pg pendent (PhpPgAdmin).
And it's painful to go back when you've learned to do proper logic separation using stored procedures, triggers, views and transactions, things that way too many projects duplicate in the PHP or Ruby front-end, relegating the DB to the "simple" role of being a storage backend (even Ruby on Rails forces you to think that way via the MVC architecture).
For that purpose, use SQLite -- it does what you need, is very high performance (on-disk, non-concurrent access -- can't get any faster than that). For real solid DB work, with garanteed integrity, just the way RDBMS were meant to be, go for PgSQL.
It's not meant to limit SPAM (unless your idea of email, as some want it to become,
is a communication medium where you only accept people you "trust" and reject the
others). It's meant to protecte trademarks, and push responsibility away from the
sender (i.e.: "you should have checked who the mail came from, ours are signed).
Yahoo, and of course banks and other institutions who want to defend their
credentials love SPF and similar systems. They don't care about SPAM, they just
don't want to get blamed by customers and their insurers for phishing mails and
the like.
... maybe they should make a new project for a new license ?
After OpenCVS, OpenBGPD, OpenSSH, maybe we get (drumroll...)
OpenLicense ? It would be, like, this really totally cool
concept, like, you know, you could reuse all the code you want,
but - and this is the really cool bit - you'd have to - get ready! -
GIVE BACK the changes to the community if you redistributed the binaries!
Wouldn't that be cool ? And you could, you know, make a manifesto or
something, and - now this is really catchy - call it the BPL! YEAH!
The BSD Public License!! And you could start all kinds of really gnarly
software projects under that license!
And Theo wouldn't even have to grow a long beard, wear a toga and go around with an old hard disk platter on his head -- cause it wouldn't be like this would be about calling to people's moral obligation to share software, cause, you know, software should be free, no, this would be to finance OpenBSD! W00t!
Nice web interface -- any plans to make it available ?
o wnload.php?file=bacula-web_1.1.tar.gz
Also, check out this: http://www.indpnday.com/bacula_stuff/bacula-web/d
Yet another scam. This is nothing new. It just involves getting slimeball ISPs trying to make an extra buck to redirect DNS queries to some UnifiedRoot "root" servers. It's bogus, and it's dangerous. Support nightmare as well.
So, let me guess... If (and that's theoretical - http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi1098.htm) an American had invented the phone, the US should have retained control of telephony ? I mean, there's a number of infrastructures that have been created, not all of them are american, and the country the inventions originated from didn't retain control. Oh wait, come to think of it, it looks like decent transport was invented in Europe, and we obviously retained control of it, considering the state of US railways. Ah well, maybe you do have point.
"It takes 12 hours from New York to LA".
This is great! Please repeat in Europe and North America, thank you Microsoft!
> What is this "digital hub that Apple has been talking about for years"? Care to give
5 088_0_4_0_Cd /
> reference?
Among others:
http://www.alwayson-network.com/comments.php?id=P
http://www.apple.com/hotnews/articles/2002/11/hei
There are quite a few times where Apple mentioned this.
> Care to elaborate? Or are you just a knee-jerk Apple guy?
Haha! Just because I put the word Apple I'm an Apple guy?
How naive.
Microsoft wants to be in the living room. Badly. They'll be "open" when it comes to peripherals, but their real goal is to be the digital hub that Apple has been talking about for years. And the hope to do that with the 360. So of course it will be compatible with that Canon digital camera, and will accept videos from that Sony camcorder. But the software inside ? In your dreams.
> Of course it'll probably turn out that SCO wrote MySQL at some point and
> we'll all have to start using postgres instead.
You mean, the same way that people abandoned Linux and moved to the BSDs when SCO sued ?
Come on! I mean, Open Source is about ... open source. Keeping the software free may be a form of moral crusade for some, but when I releease software as open source, I do it for pragmatic reasons. Here's the code, use it, have fun. If some people get offended because their programs get used, but no one gives back, then too bad for you. This may be a two-way street, but moping and closing the source because "people just repackage and sell" will certainly NOT get people to contribute. Writing code, releasing it, and _expecting_ that people will contribute is a seriously flawed view of how the whole thing works. Might as well raise kids and expect them to pay back their bills[*]. If people find the code useful, they'll contribute. But this is still a market economy, and there will always be some people that will try to make a buck. I won't try and plug the BSD license, but dammit there's a reason why it's such a simple license in the first place -- it's pragmatic and realistic. People who really want to will contribute, but the others you won't get rid of.
The GPL is an excellent license to encourage everyone to play fair, and those that don't will get their fingers slapped. But I guess in the end that the Nessus folk do whatever they feel like: they developed, they released, and they'll just sulk in their corner and close the source. The earth still spins, and Open Source will continue to exist, just as it did before ESR started talking about "the community" or "us".
Sheesh.
[*] See the excellent "Alberto Express" if you ever get a chance.
"no more than 5 microsecs" is fine, but -- how the sustained rate, and what about garanteed completion time ? (they have a low boundary too: they shouldn't execute too fast either).
Subselects, views, triggers, table inheritance, stored procedures, tablespace management.
ahem.
What is the exact purpose of the Linux Lab ?
Over the last 10 years, UNIX system administrators have had to get used to the progression of Windows/NT in the corporate environment, sometimes having to jump through hoops to integrate the two environments (something that, frankly, Microsoft gets very little credit for, since almost all the solid integration technologies came from the Open Source side). Now it seems that Linux is playing the same game, and there's no doubt that it's not going away either.
So is the Linux Lab really an evaluation platform for Microsoft to evaluate Open Source, or (let's be honest) a marketing dissemination platform that will be used to "inform" customers of the advantages and disadvantages of Linux/Open Source ?
In case of the latter, is there an internal equivalent that really evaluates Linux and Open Source, in order to learn, integrate, and maybe build real bridges ?
Or is it, and will it always only be, about damage control ?
"The idea of running a system that costs absolutely nothing on the software side is a powerful one"
e in.pdf), the "Linux everywhere", though quite unavoidable, is a bit worrying. I guess competing against Windows does that to you (hint: humor).
Indeed, and the risk is the nature of the people promoting Linux: the community [Note: I hate that word, it makes it sound like Linux was planned all along rather than just being the collective efforts of many individuals who had very specific needs of their own] aims not to coexist with other technologies, but for total replacement of every other OS out there. Whether it's the range of platform (read: any) that Linux runs on, the range of applications that Linux is envisioned to run (even those clearly counter indicated for such an OS, like avionics or weaponry -- see the talk by Dan Klein on this: http://www.usenix.org/events/lisa04/tech/talks/kl
I'm shocked. "Apple is beleaguered" used to be de rigueur, when mentioning Apple's future. Not as popular as "BSD is dead", but close.
http://www.google.com/search?q=apple+beleaguered
Write Cache enable is default on most IDE/ATA
drives. Most SCSI drives don't enable it.
If you don't like it, turn it off. There's
no "lying", and I'm sure the fsync() function
doesn't know diddly squat about the cache of
your disk. Maybe the ATA/device abstraction layer does, and I'm sure there's a configurable registry/sysctl/frob you can twiddle to make it DTRT (like FreeBSD has).
Move along, nothing to see...
Every month, Bruce Schneier's CryptGram reviews security products, events, and technologies. There are tons of people out there who claim to have invented better, easier to use crypto.
But as it has been mentioned already, until the source code is available, there is no incentive for people to try a closed source application in order to review how solid it really is, especially when dealing with data encryption. At best, it will help the vendor improve their useability (which seems to be their target anyway).
And even when the source code does get released (under what license!), it'll still have to deal with S/MIME and OpenPGP standards...
All recent (around 2 months) servers we've
been getting from HPaq, with 3.4 GHz Xeons, are all 64 bit capable. SuSE SLES 9 even says on install "you are installing 32 bit software on a 64 bit computer".
I think people need to view Dan Klein's "Flying Linux" presentation. Streaming link at LinuxForum 2004
Seems to be it's going to be worth a lot of
money soon.
http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-danisch- dns-rr-smtp-02.txt
This is a _very_ simple mechanism: when receiving mail from domain "slashdot.org", simply lookup the nameservers for "slashdot.org", and check if the sending server is authorized to send _on behalf_ of slashdot.org. Reverse MX.
i.e.:
slashdot.org. MX 10 inbound.smtp.slashdot.org
slashdot.org. RMX outbound.smtp.slashdot.org
This will cut massive amounts of spam posing as other domains (aol, yahoo, hotmail, and everything else of course).
... for the financially challenged. We use FreeBSD + RaidFrame (originally from NetBSD) for a smallish raid5 (250 GB effective storage), using 60 GB IBM ATA disks. Works like a charm. Otherwise go for www.zero-d.com -- they have scsi IDE raid cabinets. Nifty, but more expensive.