[A] new ninth planet has been glimpsed beyond Neptune, just as those influences had said it would be glimpsed. Astronomers, with a hideous appropriateness they little suspect, have named this thing "Pluto." I feel, beyond question, that it is nothing less than nighted Yuggoth - and I shiver when I try to figure out the real reason why its monstrous denizens wish it to be known in this way at this especial time. I vainly try to assure myself that these daemoniac creatures are not gradually leading up to some new policy hurtful to the earth and its normal inhabitants . . . Sometimes I fear what the years will bring, especially since that new planet Pluto has been so curiously discovered.
"The Whisperer in Darkness" (1930) I hope we have our XK-PLUTO nuclear-powered bombers ready for the Old Ones. Me? I'm going to take a little trip to XK-Masada.
On a related note, I'd love to be able to redirect the sound over wireless networking from my iBook (and its tiny little speakers) when I watch movies or TV shows with mplayer to my Linux server with a nice speaker setup hooked to it. Suggestions?
Here's what I sent to some other people on easily-scratchable nanos. Note that this does *not* discuss the cracking/breaking-screen problem that Apple is promising to fix. The two are completely-separate issues.
[...]
Note that Apple is promising to deal with actual defects to the LCD screen itself. Not mere scratches, for which Apple is simply advising people to buy cases to avoid. (I've heard of people using clear packing tape and badge holders.) I believe I've solved the mystery of the scratches.
After our Monday conversation I paid a visit to both a Apple and a CompUSA retail store here in San Francisco. The displayed nanos at both locations indeed had scratches all over the shell, while the minis' screens did not. The breakthrough occurred when I realized that the displayed iPod classic was scratched up in an identical way.
Both the classic and nano iPods' front outer shells are made of clear polycarbonate plastic that completely covers the colored (white or black) plastic and the LCD screen. Remember that the various iPod classic models were, and are, always too big for a pants pocket. In addition, by the time they became popular, plenty of cases were available. When the minis--the first pants-pocketable iPods--came out, Apple decided to go with a scratch-resistant, brushed-aluminum case that left the LCD screen's glass outer layer bare. As anyone who's worn eyeglasses knows, glass is much, much more scratch-resistant than any plastic. (In retrospect I shouldn't have been surprised to hear that a tissue scratched up your nano; the pulp that tissues and paper towels are made out of is very rough. That's why the best thing to clean eyeglasses with is a lint-free lens cloth/tissue or a clean cotton t-shirt. Take it from someone who's been wearing lenses since the age of six.)
Due to Apple's decision to revert to a classic-like outer shell with the nano, for the first time this clear plastic is being exposed to a much tougher environment than before. It doesn't help that a) nano-sized cases won't be in stock for another two weeks, b) scratches are more meaningful compared to the small size of the nano screen (although anyone who says that the scratches make their screens unusuable is lying; they are simply not visible from most angles), and c) the nanos are the first iPods--with the minor exception of the special U2 units--that are available in black, a color that scratches are much more visible on than white.
See my signature. And that was seven to nine months ago, so it might very well be cheaper now, and/or possible to get more capacity with the newly-available 500GB drives.
Yes, $4100 is a lot of money. But I built it for exactly the reason you mentioned; I've always been of the philosophy of "do it once and do it right," and this way I've taken care of my storage needs for years to come.
I'm sorry, but this sounds hilarious (I'm sorry I missed the streets paved with corpses of the dead) and absolutely appropriate. I mean, explorers returning from a remote, mysterious, newly-discovered jungle outpost bring back a highly-contagious disease that decimates the young and weak and severely weakens the strong? Entire books and movies have been written with less to work with!
I finally got around to setting up a KDC for my domains. It's nice to run "kinit" once, and then have full access to every machine I'm supposed to have full access to.
Yes, this *rocks*. I love being able to log into my iBook with my Kerberos password, then as part of the OS X authorization process getting a Kerberos ticket that I can then use to SSH into my Linux boxes. With OpenVPN, I can do the exact same thing from on the road, such as the hotel room I'm sitting in right now.
This wasn't very hard to set up. I had to install DarwinPorts' OpenSSH binaries on the iBook because neither the stock nor the Fink versions have GSSAPI support compiled in. I also had to make some modifications to/etc/authorization and install some Kerberos-related PAM modules on the iBook.
Reuters is reporting that the US Pentagon is designing a laser cannon that's small enough to fit onto a fighter jet yet powerful enough to knock out a missile.
The Defense Department is wasting valuable taxpayers' money. Does no one at the Pentagon remember that GI Joe (the code name for America's highly-trained special-mission force) *and* Cobra (a ruthless terrorist organization determined to rule the world) had fighter jets with lasers *twenty years ago*?!? Not to mention laser tanks and laser pistols. Heck, even Shipwreck's old fashioned-looking flintlock shot laser beams. There are even highly-detailed blueprints available on the Web!
Now all we need to do is make fighter jets space worthy for that true Star Wars feel.
Superman, we need your help! Lex Luthor just stole the Einstein document just after its discovery! Fortunately, your friend Jimmy Olsen of the Daily Planet was one of the witnesses; he can tell you what happened.
1. How would you design a CVS-like system that is most effective for multiple teams of developers working simultaneously in Delhi, Mumbai, and Hyderabad, with the final customer in California?
2. How well can Visual Studio, Eclipse, and Emacs handle filenames in Hindi and Kannada?
Bonus question: How does the answer change when Bengali, Gujarati, and Urdu are also used?
3. Use Rational Rose, Visio, or another modeling tool of your choice to draw a flowchart of the proper actions a call center operator can follow to deal with a customer who wants to find out the status of his online purchase. Make sure to incorporate the high likelihood that the customer will become steadily more irate as he tries, but fails, to understand the "English" that the operator speaks, with appropriately calm and soothing responses to at least three forms of bodily threats or insults.
Announcer: . . . And at the 46-mile marker, Team Banzai has pulled ahead! Team Banzai has just passed Team Caltech to take the lead in the DARPA Grand Challenge! Look at it go!
[...]
Wait, what happening? Ladies and gentlemen, the Team Banzai car has suddenly frozen up. And it looks like there's a rainbow-colored wheel spinning above it!
Through an inside source I've managed to get my hands on the script for the Transformers movie. I'm glad to say that it's not like anything I've ever seen before! Here is an excerpt to show you what I mean.
---------
PRESIDENT
The giant "Rock," as the press has dubbed it, is still heading for Earth. Although we, the Europeans, and the Russians are working together to stop it, I am afraid that the odds do not look good.
(Beat)
As a result, I have decided to accept the offer of help from Mr. Optimus Prime. It . . . He says he can help save the planet. In return, I have issued a pardon for all federal offenses committed by the "Autobots" before their capture by the CIA "Bad Boys" team at Pearl Harbor, effective immediately. They will leave for the Rock on the experimental spacecraft "The Island" on Thursday.
I will now take your questions.
(Blinding camera flashes as many journalists jostle for positioning. The PRESIDENT nods at a REPORTER in front.)
REPORTER
Mr. President, can these robots be trusted? Did they explain why they attacked the Island Cloning Lab?
PRESIDENT
Judy, I am afraid that we have no other choice. We face imminent and total Armageddon.
I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned the Linux Logical Volume Manager subsystem.
As mentioned, my 2.8TB setup uses LVM2 on RAID 5 (mdadm, not raidtools). I think anyone building one of these babies would be crazy to not use LVM; why limit your future expansion options?
Meanwhile, you'll have a noisy space heater hidden in your closet, that dims the lights in a half-block radius every time a drive overheats and the array goes into rebuild mode...:-P
In all seriousness, I didn't mention the electricity cost in my original Usenet post since of course I didn't have sufficient data then. According to the PG&E Web site:
I live in a studio apartment in downtown San Francisco and had a Linux desktop run 24/7 before deploying the RAID server (also 24/7) on 15 February. As far as I can tell it hasn't affected my total power consumption one bit! Perhaps I somehow built a perpetual-motion machine.
And yes, I can also gladly report that rebuilding the RAID array (once to build the array in the first place, and once accidentally in the first week) neither causes the lights to dim nor dogs to howl at the moon.
Just kidding... It sounds like you got a lot of bang for your buck. Congrats on the nice (and well built, I might add) fat RAID array. (you lucky bastard)...:-)
Thank you. I knew before building the array that what I wanted to achieve was straightforward enough technically, but that there was a real chance noise, heat, and power would be issues. I've already talked about the power (NB: Load on the preexisting UPS that serves both the array and my longtime Linux system is 84%). Thanks to the closet, noise isn't an issue. And despite the closet, heat is surprisingly not an issue, either; my logs say the warmest one of the drives gets is 41C, which is acceptable in my book.
I'm a software person. I *don't* like playing with hardware. I have no interest in taking a hacksaw and Dremel and modding a case, or doing what the 0.5TB guy did and having to build giant fan clusters in hopes of keeping his array from combusting in The Simpsons-style flames. I wanted to build something with off-the-shelf components that would be reliable and which I could (literally) stick in a closet and forget about for months or years at a time. I am very, very satisfied with the results. At least until the $5 laser-etched holographic 3d memory cubes arrive, of course.
The price/GB is nice, but 14 drives in a rackmount case for merely 0.5TB? Bah!
Four months ago I detailed in a lengthy Usenet post how I built a 2.8TB RAID 5 array for home use. It sits on the floor of my hallway closet and, I'm happy to report, hasn't had a lick of trouble. I'd love to hear others' thoughts on my project.
I bought the game at the end of January. I've built my Paladin up to 34 or 35. No alts except a very low-level gnome Mage I use as my auction house/additional storage mule. Although I'm single my job requires crazy hours so I don't get to play much; maybe two hours all this week. Some weekends I get to play more.
(Parenthetical comment to those who gripe that they were able to get to 60 in WoW in two weeks: Don't assume you represent most, or even many, of WoW's 1.5M subscribers. Most people in real life aren't unemployed, or perpetually hunkered down in their dorm rooms.)
My plan is to get to 60 while questing in just a few zones. Then I'll repeat with other characters, then I'll switch factions, until I finally see all of Azeroth. I figure it'll take me a couple of years, and by that time there will be even more content to work through.
I've owned a TiVo for almost five years now. And for five years I've faithfully marked programs I like watching with a Thumbs Up.
All that gets me from the auto-suggest feature is those same programs I've already seen. I've seen the Suggest feature pull up a program I hadn't heard of before perhaps two or three times.
Here's my observations on BitTorrent 4.0. It's a slight-edited version of something I sent to a colleague of Cohen's.
Overall, the new version is a vast improvement over the 3.4.x line for those of us who prefer using a console client (I keep btlaunchmanycurses.py running all the time under GNU screen). A global --max_upload_rate is much appreciated for everyone who doesn't have bandwidth shaping in their router (I do now, but for a long time I didn't). All in all, many very welcome changes.
The below comments are based on use of just btlaunchmanycurses.py 3.9.1/4.0, not any of the other console clients or the GUI clients, and are sorted in order of seriousness.
* --saveas_style absolutely, positively should not have 1 as the default. Stripping file extensions from downloaded files' names, and changing downloaded files' names at all from what's encoded in the torrents, is very bad form. * I can cause a semi-reproducible crash by running more than about 70 torrents at once at a time. * On my 80x40 screen, there often isn't enough room to completely display the second line in each torrent's section. "17 peers 5 seeds 0 dist copies" could easily be shortened to "17p/5s/0d." * Ctrl-L ought to redraw the screen as in other well-behaved Unix console apps. * Saving the hashes is very appreciated. How about also saving cumulative up/download byte totals across sessions? (I wonder if the data/metainfo directory is meant for this; it seems unused at the present.) * While the scrolling torrent listing is much appreciated (and incidentally also takes care of the notorious "exceed available screen space and instantly crash the client" bug in the 3.4.x series), I'd prefer the scrolling be controllable. I'm thinking a static list that the user can page up/down in manually. * The version notes are far too skimpy. Speaking of the previous, I can't find any documentation on (for example) how 4.0 differentiates between "peers," "seeds," and "dist copies." The figures don't seem to correspond with what the trackers report. * Shouldn't the total up/downloaded bytes readouts appear directly under the "Download" and "Upload" column headings, instead of being switched? Perhaps even better would be to preserve their relative positions but move total uploaded bytes directly under the "Size" column heading. (I always try to keep a torrent running until I've uploaded as much as I've downloaded. It's possible the "dist copies" indicator is an easier way to learn when I've achieved this, but again, I don't know due to the lack of documentation.) * --parse_dir_interval probably ought to have a default lower than the current 60 seconds (I use 3, but would be happy with 3.4.x's hardwired 0).
Slashdot Mirror
I hope we have our XK-PLUTO nuclear-powered bombers ready for the Old Ones. Me? I'm going to take a little trip to XK-Masada.
On a related note, I'd love to be able to redirect the sound over wireless networking from my iBook (and its tiny little speakers) when I watch movies or TV shows with mplayer to my Linux server with a nice speaker setup hooked to it. Suggestions?
There isn't a copy-protection scheme around that Fast Hack'em can't defeat![1]
[1] These Sandisk cards come in 5 1/4" format, right?
A Microsoft offering proves to be a disappointing "toy" made up of "fairy dust."
I'd never have seen it coming!!!1!!1!ELEVEN!!!
See my signature. And that was seven to nine months ago, so it might very well be cheaper now, and/or possible to get more capacity with the newly-available 500GB drives.
Yes, $4100 is a lot of money. But I built it for exactly the reason you mentioned; I've always been of the philosophy of "do it once and do it right," and this way I've taken care of my storage needs for years to come.
Yes, this *rocks*. I love being able to log into my iBook with my Kerberos password, then as part of the OS X authorization process getting a Kerberos ticket that I can then use to SSH into my Linux boxes. With OpenVPN, I can do the exact same thing from on the road, such as the hotel room I'm sitting in right now.
This wasn't very hard to set up. I had to install DarwinPorts' OpenSSH binaries on the iBook because neither the stock nor the Fink versions have GSSAPI support compiled in. I also had to make some modifications to
The Defense Department is wasting valuable taxpayers' money. Does no one at the Pentagon remember that GI Joe (the code name for America's highly-trained special-mission force) *and* Cobra (a ruthless terrorist organization determined to rule the world) had fighter jets with lasers *twenty years ago*?!? Not to mention laser tanks and laser pistols. Heck, even Shipwreck's old fashioned-looking flintlock shot laser beams. There are even highly-detailed blueprints available on the Web!
Yet again, the government forgets that it had fighter jets (with lasers) in space twenty years ago! Sheesh!
Superman, we need your help! Lex Luthor just stole the Einstein document just after its discovery! Fortunately, your friend Jimmy Olsen of the Daily Planet was one of the witnesses; he can tell you what happened.
1. How would you design a CVS-like system that is most effective for multiple teams of developers working simultaneously in Delhi, Mumbai, and Hyderabad, with the final customer in California?
2. How well can Visual Studio, Eclipse, and Emacs handle filenames in Hindi and Kannada?
Bonus question: How does the answer change when Bengali, Gujarati, and Urdu are also used?
3. Use Rational Rose, Visio, or another modeling tool of your choice to draw a flowchart of the proper actions a call center operator can follow to deal with a customer who wants to find out the status of his online purchase. Make sure to incorporate the high likelihood that the customer will become steadily more irate as he tries, but fails, to understand the "English" that the operator speaks, with appropriately calm and soothing responses to at least three forms of bodily threats or insults.
Pluto: Old and busted.
Planet X: The new hotness!
Announcer: . . . And at the 46-mile marker, Team Banzai has pulled ahead! Team Banzai has just passed Team Caltech to take the lead in the DARPA Grand Challenge! Look at it go!
[...]
Wait, what happening? Ladies and gentlemen, the Team Banzai car has suddenly frozen up. And it looks like there's a rainbow-colored wheel spinning above it!
But I don't quite understand some of the steps in the document. For example, what do these lines do?Oh well. To paraphrase Superman, If we can't trust the NSA, who can we trust?
As mentioned, my 2.8TB setup uses LVM2 on RAID 5 (mdadm, not raidtools). I think anyone building one of these babies would be crazy to not use LVM; why limit your future expansion options?
In all seriousness, I didn't mention the electricity cost in my original Usenet post since of course I didn't have sufficient data then. According to the PG&E Web site:I live in a studio apartment in downtown San Francisco and had a Linux desktop run 24/7 before deploying the RAID server (also 24/7) on 15 February. As far as I can tell it hasn't affected my total power consumption one bit! Perhaps I somehow built a perpetual-motion machine.
And yes, I can also gladly report that rebuilding the RAID array (once to build the array in the first place, and once accidentally in the first week) neither causes the lights to dim nor dogs to howl at the moon.
Thank you. I knew before building the array that what I wanted to achieve was straightforward enough technically, but that there was a real chance noise, heat, and power would be issues. I've already talked about the power (NB: Load on the preexisting UPS that serves both the array and my longtime Linux system is 84%). Thanks to the closet, noise isn't an issue. And despite the closet, heat is surprisingly not an issue, either; my logs say the warmest one of the drives gets is 41C, which is acceptable in my book.
I'm a software person. I *don't* like playing with hardware. I have no interest in taking a hacksaw and Dremel and modding a case, or doing what the 0.5TB guy did and having to build giant fan clusters in hopes of keeping his array from combusting in The Simpsons-style flames. I wanted to build something with off-the-shelf components that would be reliable and which I could (literally) stick in a closet and forget about for months or years at a time. I am very, very satisfied with the results. At least until the $5 laser-etched holographic 3d memory cubes arrive, of course.
The price/GB is nice, but 14 drives in a rackmount case for merely 0.5TB? Bah!
Four months ago I detailed in a lengthy Usenet post how I built a 2.8TB RAID 5 array for home use. It sits on the floor of my hallway closet and, I'm happy to report, hasn't had a lick of trouble. I'd love to hear others' thoughts on my project.
I bought the game at the end of January. I've built my Paladin up to 34 or 35. No alts except a very low-level gnome Mage I use as my auction house/additional storage mule. Although I'm single my job requires crazy hours so I don't get to play much; maybe two hours all this week. Some weekends I get to play more.
(Parenthetical comment to those who gripe that they were able to get to 60 in WoW in two weeks: Don't assume you represent most, or even many, of WoW's 1.5M subscribers. Most people in real life aren't unemployed, or perpetually hunkered down in their dorm rooms.)
My plan is to get to 60 while questing in just a few zones. Then I'll repeat with other characters, then I'll switch factions, until I finally see all of Azeroth. I figure it'll take me a couple of years, and by that time there will be even more content to work through.
On Usenet I posted a detailed description of how I built a 2.8TB RAID storage array for under $4100.
. . . is, naturally, this.
Let's see.
Von Braun station, 1952
ISS, 2005
Yes, we are behind schedule
Bah. I've been using VM under Emacs for ten years this May. 5.84 then, and 7.19 now.
Thanks, Kyle!
I've owned a TiVo for almost five years now. And for five years I've faithfully marked programs I like watching with a Thumbs Up.
All that gets me from the auto-suggest feature is those same programs I've already seen. I've seen the Suggest feature pull up a program I hadn't heard of before perhaps two or three times.
Here's my observations on BitTorrent 4.0. It's a slight-edited version of something I sent to a colleague of Cohen's.
Overall, the new version is a vast improvement over the 3.4.x line for those of us who prefer using a console client (I keep btlaunchmanycurses.py running all the time under GNU screen). A global --max_upload_rate is much appreciated for everyone who doesn't have bandwidth shaping in their router (I do now, but for a long time I didn't). All in all, many very welcome changes.
The below comments are based on use of just btlaunchmanycurses.py 3.9.1/4.0, not any of the other console clients or the GUI clients, and are sorted in order of seriousness.
* --saveas_style absolutely, positively should not have 1 as the default. Stripping file extensions from downloaded files' names, and changing downloaded files' names at all from what's encoded in the torrents, is very bad form.
* I can cause a semi-reproducible crash by running more than about 70 torrents at once at a time.
* On my 80x40 screen, there often isn't enough room to completely display the second line in each torrent's section. "17 peers 5 seeds 0 dist copies" could easily be shortened to "17p/5s/0d."
* Ctrl-L ought to redraw the screen as in other well-behaved Unix console apps.
* Saving the hashes is very appreciated. How about also saving cumulative up/download byte totals across sessions? (I wonder if the data/metainfo directory is meant for this; it seems unused at the present.)
* While the scrolling torrent listing is much appreciated (and incidentally also takes care of the notorious "exceed available screen space and instantly crash the client" bug in the 3.4.x series), I'd prefer the scrolling be controllable. I'm thinking a static list that the user can page up/down in manually.
* The version notes are far too skimpy. Speaking of the previous, I can't find any documentation on (for example) how 4.0 differentiates between "peers," "seeds," and "dist copies." The figures don't seem to correspond with what the trackers report.
* Shouldn't the total up/downloaded bytes readouts appear directly under the "Download" and "Upload" column headings, instead of being switched? Perhaps even better would be to preserve their relative positions but move total uploaded bytes directly under the "Size" column heading. (I always try to keep a torrent running until I've uploaded as much as I've downloaded. It's possible the "dist copies" indicator is an easier way to learn when I've achieved this, but again, I don't know due to the lack of documentation.)
* --parse_dir_interval probably ought to have a default lower than the current 60 seconds (I use 3, but would be happy with 3.4.x's hardwired 0).