Most everyone is recommending hard drives and I'm definitely part of that crowd. Most everyone says "RAID" as well. I'll tell you what I do at work, not for photographs necessarily, but for all our data. I have two servers for user data, one on each side of campus. One is the "active" server with RAID drives, the other is a backup. Each night (I have the luxury of a quiet network at night), I run a network backup to toss stuff over to the second server with RAIDed drives. This prevents the accidental "rm -rf" users that just 1 server with RAID wouldn't prevent against (of course other types of attacks WOULD kill two server solution, which is why important data goes to an external firewire drive from the backup storage server).
Granted, not everyone has the cash to blow on all this, but my stepfather, who is also a professional photographer, has finally taken that all important step toward moving to digital. He's been backing up to CD and he usually gets away with a session on one or two CDs, not counting any editing he does in Photoshop (he still prefers to touch up photos by hand). Anyway, he has been watching his bookshelf fill up with CDs, much like all his file cabinets that store all his old hard copy negatives and select prints. Any long time photographer probably deals with the same stuff, which was a problem before digital ever came around.
What I've been working with him on is what will most likely be a big storage server... even at 2GB a session, you could shoot every day of the year and only use 700GB, which will cost you about $300-400 in a non-RAID solution nowadays (based on me just purchasing 4x 300GB drives at $110 each and my friend buying a 400GB for $200). A small server with a few drives will be all the online backup one should need, plus to be extra safe, either that backup server, or just a few external drives.
If you backup to the external drive once a week or so, this should save anyone from the accidental rm -rf (my stepfather once deleted all the pictures on his laptop by accidentally dragging the wrong folder to the Recycle Bin -- naturally all his photos were too big for the trash and were instantly deleted, luckily he had all his CDs to restore from). Plus, as long as you're backing up regularly, it should be obviously that the hard drive is working or not working. If you start hearing clicking, or feel something funny -- get it replaced.
I guess my summary of all this is to have two backups. If one is your "online," primary storage, it should be obvious if it's failing or not failing, and assuming you're backing up to your second backup regularly, there shouldn't be any danger of you not realizing it's failing, because you are using it all the time. with DVDs and CDs and other media of that type, it's because you set it on a shelf and forget about it for years that is where the danger is caused.
I want to second this. The product isn't perfect, but if you're using primarily Windows machines with a lot of older machines in the mix, it works quite well.
Why older machines? If your machine doesn't support PXE, they have a solution which allows you to WoL boot up your machine and then switch over to a hidden drive image (the software manages switching between your OSes and its hidden drive image OS), which then allows you to image a machine as if you had PXE support. It's nice if you work for a school where the machines can be across campus, but you've still got a grip of Win95/98 machines laying around.
By default, the client that runs on the machines also allows what's said above: asset tracking, etc, plus remote VNC-like control of the box, mass network setting modifications (change 200 machines to a different workgroup? no problem), etc.
Did you check out any other wikis before selecting MediaWiki? I've been using a personal wiki (Instiwiki) for work, but the features of the various wikis have been putting me off making a good permanent selection for our staff (MediaWiki isn't heavy on access restrictions, but it has a lot of features that the other ones don't have).
I've had lots of various problems with small projects. What I've learned to do is port a few things at a time, especially if you have a lot of libraries and other things, you can try porting over a library and fix that up to keep running with other VS6.0 stuff while you slowly move it all over.
Of course the fun one would be download the trial beta and take a copy of all the code, build it, and see how many errors you get (hint: it will probably be a lot).
I think it renders fine in my Firefox, but that's neither here nor there.
If you do a Google search with words like: native, kde, osx (and/or "os x") you get various matches. Here's one. The links from here have a bunch of screenshots: http://dot.kde.org/1073009304/
They say it's pre-alpha level code, but I did try it (ages ago). I know a friend who switched from Linux to a Mac, but still starts up X + KDE just to use KMail to check his mail. It would be nice to see more KDE apps running natively.
which should open up the removal applet thingy. You could try making that a shortcut or something else. Anything more complicated (like specific device removal) would probably involve a script of some sort.
In Japan, doors tend to open slower, with you having to be closer to them. It's annoying, and I'm always so close to hitting my face on the door before remembering US doors are faster, but I think it tries to make it feel more like a "real" door (you standing there and sliding it open, whether you're physically doing it or not).
I never doubt that are are tons and tons of legitimate uses for SUVs -- originally there were a lot of good reasons why they started being manufactured.
In fact, if a woman has 7 kids, she probably does need an SUV to keep all of them inside, but most of my experiences have involved childless or 1-2 children familes where they (men and women alike) drive the SUV for the "status symbol" it provides, not because of it making it any more or less useful for them.
Flat out asking someone to have two cars -- SUV and econobox or whatnot -- is ridiculous. However, the decision to buy an SUV should be at least slightly influenced by a need for one, in my opinion.
I'm not sure, that'd be an interesting thing to find out. How much a car costs, over the life of it -- including costs to the environment during construction and then demolition.
I will point out that the SUV-driving family mentions towing a boat as well, so they are obviously well off, so isn't much of a good argument (in this case).
You're right, it isn't anyone else's business. All the same, I think it's up to you to be considerate of other people in your neighborhood, your country, and your (our) world.
Drive what ever you want, but take a moment to think about how it will affect more than just you. We wouldn't need so many laws and regulations if individuals gave the larger group a thought every once in a while.
I imagine that your fuel efficiency is comparatively pretty good, because even though you're getting ~15mpg, you're moving 7 people (versus 2 cars with more mpg, but more stops if they have smaller gas tanks and more confusion, and also more traffic).
However, the problem isn't your family going on trips in an SUV. Most (relatively rational) people would agree that in your case, for that situation, it makes sense. What about when you aren't on trips, who uses it? Does someone use it to drive to the market every day, run errands, etc? That's where it starts to bother people.
Here in Japan, the way it works for SUICA (pay as you go, primarily used for train fare) is: walk up to vending machine, insert your card and add money to it (or purchase the card, add money to it). Since the vending machines are at every train station (which means everywhere), SUICA seems to end up getting used for lots of other things too. A lot of places now accept it as a form of payment (restaurants, etc), which is great in a society that uses 0 checks and very few use credit cards.
Non-pay-as-you-go cell phones are also almost always payed by cash. You receive a bill, go to the local convenience store, pay your bill. Almost all the convenience stores handle you paying your bill, and convenience stores are everywhere, so you still manage to avoid most of the hassle.
Based on those two things, but since I don't use a pay-as-you-go cell phone, I'm not positive, I believe there's also a system in place which involves heading to a local X store (maybe a convenience store, maybe a cell phone shop -- those are everywhere too), and stick a few extra bucks on your phone.
The key here is you don't send money directly to the company, you go to a local store to pay your bills for almost everything, which was a necessity in a society which, as mentioned above, isn't big on checks or credit cards.
I think it's more important for the other cell phone providers to also have the same service. DoCoMo phones can have built-in SUICA, right? Why not au, Vodafone, Tuka, etc?
I like that I can use SUICA to buy train tickets, but also buy lunch at a curry restaurant in Akihabara. I wish I didn't have to have a separate card though. Someone should add it to my phone (au)!
If I remember, 7 meters of the flat cat6 at the time was much cheaper than anything I saw in the US for standard cable (which I buy in bulk, but I also bought the cable in Akihabara, known for its ridiculously low prices).
Also, check out http://www2.elecom.co.jp/cable/lan/index.asp Even without knowing Japanese, you can get a general idea of the types of cables they offer (they have tons of other networking products too).
I haven't heavily tested my cable (Elecom flat CAT6), but in normal use, I get the same speeds as my friends who have regular gigabit cables on a cheap D-Link gigabit switch (upwards of 12MB/s -- they have Powerbooks, I have a Gateway; all built-in NICs).
Last year (during summer) when I was in Japan, I bought a bunch of Elecom cables (CAT6 though, but the same thin design). They also sold CAT5 (10/100) cable at the same store I got my CAT6, so I'm assuming the real "news" is that they now have gigabit-capable CAT5 cable in the thin variety, not that flat cable is something new, or that even gigabit varieties of flat cable are new.
FYI, a few years ago I walked up to a WF ATM, started to put my card in, and noticed a M$ Dev. Studio GPF dialog asking if I wanted to debug the application or cancel!!)
All the touchscreen WF ATMs I've used in the past few years (I'm a customer) have all been IE-based. It's funny when something happens to the images and some show up as that X image that IE shows when the image can't be found.
You do realize that "educational technology" money often goes to a lot more than teachers teaching technology (or the technology itself).
From the article:
"The administration's elimination of the EETT program will spell the end of meaningful technology training for the 2,600 teachers in Calcasieu Parish Public Schools, will result in greatly reduced technology opportunities for the 35,000 students who attend our schools, and will cause me to eliminate up to six full-time technology positions. The real-world impact of these cuts is extremely devastating," said Sheryl Abshire, instructional technology coordinator for this Louisiana district.
I should add that I work for a large school district, teaching technology to both teachers and students. The computers in our classrooms are definitely underutilized by teachers, but there are people out there working to get teachers more interested and showing them how to use the computer as a tool for learning (as opposed to what some teachers think -- put the students on the computer and then they won't have to teach).
By cutting this money, we are insuring that your two best friends will never get away from just figuring out email, and this money will never go back to the states or counties or anything, but into some other "more important" budget than the education of our children.
As a person, he's not that great. Of course the birth of a child is far more important than just a job. However, from the point of view of a customer/client/user, it does seem kind of cool to know there was that much dedication toward the product you're using (even if it is a game).
If you're under 26 and/or a student, you can get really cheap fares going with a student travel agency (look around near college campuses). I've gotten tickets to Japan for under $600 (although to Narita, which is admittedly probably easier to get to than Nagoya because of Narita's more international status).
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Does no one remember sixdegrees? The social networking site back in the mid-90's? Nothing? Nobody?
"lots of flash, explosions, and the occasional breast"
I believe you just described Michael Bay's entire career, hence why it's so scary that he turned this project done.
Most everyone is recommending hard drives and I'm definitely part of that crowd. Most everyone says "RAID" as well. I'll tell you what I do at work, not for photographs necessarily, but for all our data. I have two servers for user data, one on each side of campus. One is the "active" server with RAID drives, the other is a backup. Each night (I have the luxury of a quiet network at night), I run a network backup to toss stuff over to the second server with RAIDed drives. This prevents the accidental "rm -rf" users that just 1 server with RAID wouldn't prevent against (of course other types of attacks WOULD kill two server solution, which is why important data goes to an external firewire drive from the backup storage server).
Granted, not everyone has the cash to blow on all this, but my stepfather, who is also a professional photographer, has finally taken that all important step toward moving to digital. He's been backing up to CD and he usually gets away with a session on one or two CDs, not counting any editing he does in Photoshop (he still prefers to touch up photos by hand). Anyway, he has been watching his bookshelf fill up with CDs, much like all his file cabinets that store all his old hard copy negatives and select prints. Any long time photographer probably deals with the same stuff, which was a problem before digital ever came around.
What I've been working with him on is what will most likely be a big storage server... even at 2GB a session, you could shoot every day of the year and only use 700GB, which will cost you about $300-400 in a non-RAID solution nowadays (based on me just purchasing 4x 300GB drives at $110 each and my friend buying a 400GB for $200). A small server with a few drives will be all the online backup one should need, plus to be extra safe, either that backup server, or just a few external drives.
If you backup to the external drive once a week or so, this should save anyone from the accidental rm -rf (my stepfather once deleted all the pictures on his laptop by accidentally dragging the wrong folder to the Recycle Bin -- naturally all his photos were too big for the trash and were instantly deleted, luckily he had all his CDs to restore from). Plus, as long as you're backing up regularly, it should be obviously that the hard drive is working or not working. If you start hearing clicking, or feel something funny -- get it replaced.
I guess my summary of all this is to have two backups. If one is your "online," primary storage, it should be obvious if it's failing or not failing, and assuming you're backing up to your second backup regularly, there shouldn't be any danger of you not realizing it's failing, because you are using it all the time. with DVDs and CDs and other media of that type, it's because you set it on a shelf and forget about it for years that is where the danger is caused.
Sorry this was long.
I want to second this. The product isn't perfect, but if you're using primarily Windows machines with a lot of older machines in the mix, it works quite well.
Why older machines? If your machine doesn't support PXE, they have a solution which allows you to WoL boot up your machine and then switch over to a hidden drive image (the software manages switching between your OSes and its hidden drive image OS), which then allows you to image a machine as if you had PXE support. It's nice if you work for a school where the machines can be across campus, but you've still got a grip of Win95/98 machines laying around.
By default, the client that runs on the machines also allows what's said above: asset tracking, etc, plus remote VNC-like control of the box, mass network setting modifications (change 200 machines to a different workgroup? no problem), etc.
Did you check out any other wikis before selecting MediaWiki? I've been using a personal wiki (Instiwiki) for work, but the features of the various wikis have been putting me off making a good permanent selection for our staff (MediaWiki isn't heavy on access restrictions, but it has a lot of features that the other ones don't have).
I've had lots of various problems with small projects. What I've learned to do is port a few things at a time, especially if you have a lot of libraries and other things, you can try porting over a library and fix that up to keep running with other VS6.0 stuff while you slowly move it all over.
Of course the fun one would be download the trial beta and take a copy of all the code, build it, and see how many errors you get (hint: it will probably be a lot).
Haha, so true.
I think it renders fine in my Firefox, but that's neither here nor there.
If you do a Google search with words like: native, kde, osx (and/or "os x") you get various matches. Here's one. The links from here have a bunch of screenshots: http://dot.kde.org/1073009304/
http://wiki.befunk.com/tiki-index.php
They say it's pre-alpha level code, but I did try it (ages ago). I know a friend who switched from Linux to a Mac, but still starts up X + KDE just to use KMail to check his mail. It would be nice to see more KDE apps running natively.
I'm on a Mac now, but I remember consistently having a problem where my USB removal applet would disappear, so I have this from notes:
rundll32.exe shell32.dll,Control_RunDLL hotplug.dll
which should open up the removal applet thingy. You could try making that a shortcut or something else. Anything more complicated (like specific device removal) would probably involve a script of some sort.
In Japan, doors tend to open slower, with you having to be closer to them. It's annoying, and I'm always so close to hitting my face on the door before remembering US doors are faster, but I think it tries to make it feel more like a "real" door (you standing there and sliding it open, whether you're physically doing it or not).
I never doubt that are are tons and tons of legitimate uses for SUVs -- originally there were a lot of good reasons why they started being manufactured.
In fact, if a woman has 7 kids, she probably does need an SUV to keep all of them inside, but most of my experiences have involved childless or 1-2 children familes where they (men and women alike) drive the SUV for the "status symbol" it provides, not because of it making it any more or less useful for them.
Flat out asking someone to have two cars -- SUV and econobox or whatnot -- is ridiculous. However, the decision to buy an SUV should be at least slightly influenced by a need for one, in my opinion.
I'm not sure, that'd be an interesting thing to find out. How much a car costs, over the life of it -- including costs to the environment during construction and then demolition.
I will point out that the SUV-driving family mentions towing a boat as well, so they are obviously well off, so isn't much of a good argument (in this case).
You're right, it isn't anyone else's business. All the same, I think it's up to you to be considerate of other people in your neighborhood, your country, and your (our) world.
Drive what ever you want, but take a moment to think about how it will affect more than just you. We wouldn't need so many laws and regulations if individuals gave the larger group a thought every once in a while.
I imagine that your fuel efficiency is comparatively pretty good, because even though you're getting ~15mpg, you're moving 7 people (versus 2 cars with more mpg, but more stops if they have smaller gas tanks and more confusion, and also more traffic).
However, the problem isn't your family going on trips in an SUV. Most (relatively rational) people would agree that in your case, for that situation, it makes sense. What about when you aren't on trips, who uses it? Does someone use it to drive to the market every day, run errands, etc? That's where it starts to bother people.
Here in Japan, the way it works for SUICA (pay as you go, primarily used for train fare) is: walk up to vending machine, insert your card and add money to it (or purchase the card, add money to it). Since the vending machines are at every train station (which means everywhere), SUICA seems to end up getting used for lots of other things too. A lot of places now accept it as a form of payment (restaurants, etc), which is great in a society that uses 0 checks and very few use credit cards.
Non-pay-as-you-go cell phones are also almost always payed by cash. You receive a bill, go to the local convenience store, pay your bill. Almost all the convenience stores handle you paying your bill, and convenience stores are everywhere, so you still manage to avoid most of the hassle.
Based on those two things, but since I don't use a pay-as-you-go cell phone, I'm not positive, I believe there's also a system in place which involves heading to a local X store (maybe a convenience store, maybe a cell phone shop -- those are everywhere too), and stick a few extra bucks on your phone.
The key here is you don't send money directly to the company, you go to a local store to pay your bills for almost everything, which was a necessity in a society which, as mentioned above, isn't big on checks or credit cards.
I think it's more important for the other cell phone providers to also have the same service. DoCoMo phones can have built-in SUICA, right? Why not au, Vodafone, Tuka, etc?
I like that I can use SUICA to buy train tickets, but also buy lunch at a curry restaurant in Akihabara. I wish I didn't have to have a separate card though. Someone should add it to my phone (au)!
Do you mean pricing-wise?
If I remember, 7 meters of the flat cat6 at the time was much cheaper than anything I saw in the US for standard cable (which I buy in bulk, but I also bought the cable in Akihabara, known for its ridiculously low prices).
Also, check out http://www2.elecom.co.jp/cable/lan/index.asp Even without knowing Japanese, you can get a general idea of the types of cables they offer (they have tons of other networking products too).
I haven't heavily tested my cable (Elecom flat CAT6), but in normal use, I get the same speeds as my friends who have regular gigabit cables on a cheap D-Link gigabit switch (upwards of 12MB/s -- they have Powerbooks, I have a Gateway; all built-in NICs).
Last year (during summer) when I was in Japan, I bought a bunch of Elecom cables (CAT6 though, but the same thin design). They also sold CAT5 (10/100) cable at the same store I got my CAT6, so I'm assuming the real "news" is that they now have gigabit-capable CAT5 cable in the thin variety, not that flat cable is something new, or that even gigabit varieties of flat cable are new.
FYI, a few years ago I walked up to a WF ATM, started to put my card in, and noticed a M$ Dev. Studio GPF dialog asking if I wanted to debug the application or cancel!!)
All the touchscreen WF ATMs I've used in the past few years (I'm a customer) have all been IE-based. It's funny when something happens to the images and some show up as that X image that IE shows when the image can't be found.
You do realize that "educational technology" money often goes to a lot more than teachers teaching technology (or the technology itself).
From the article:
"The administration's elimination of the EETT program will spell the end of meaningful technology training for the 2,600 teachers in Calcasieu Parish Public Schools, will result in greatly reduced technology opportunities for the 35,000 students who attend our schools, and will cause me to eliminate up to six full-time technology positions. The real-world impact of these cuts is extremely devastating," said Sheryl Abshire, instructional technology coordinator for this Louisiana district.
I should add that I work for a large school district, teaching technology to both teachers and students. The computers in our classrooms are definitely underutilized by teachers, but there are people out there working to get teachers more interested and showing them how to use the computer as a tool for learning (as opposed to what some teachers think -- put the students on the computer and then they won't have to teach).
By cutting this money, we are insuring that your two best friends will never get away from just figuring out email, and this money will never go back to the states or counties or anything, but into some other "more important" budget than the education of our children.
For a long time, when all my friends had wireless and I did not, I carried around a ~100ft cat5 cable and would refer to it as my "wireless cable."
Sometimes I even got better range than them.
As a person, he's not that great. Of course the birth of a child is far more important than just a job. However, from the point of view of a customer/client/user, it does seem kind of cool to know there was that much dedication toward the product you're using (even if it is a game).
If you're under 26 and/or a student, you can get really cheap fares going with a student travel agency (look around near college campuses). I've gotten tickets to Japan for under $600 (although to Narita, which is admittedly probably easier to get to than Nagoya because of Narita's more international status).