I went through this decision process at a civil engineering firm with 3TB of data. We wound up building a SAN out of XServe RAID cabinets, QLogic SANbox switches, XSan software for the OS X machines and ADIC's StorNext FX software for the Linux and Windows. XSan/StorNext is a shared filesystem, which inherently gets you a combined namespace without any DFS-type machinations. All servers literally mount the very same volume and access it simultaneously.
XSan is really the deal of the century - you can build a full-blown StorNext system starting with ADIC's software, but that approach can be exceptionally expensive. Instead, start with XSan (which is a functional but slightly stripped version of StorNext) and then use ADIC's much less expensive StorNext FX client licenses for each non OS X server that needs to join.
Redundancy can be everywhere. Start with a pair of redundant XServes as metadata controllers. Add a pair of redundant SAN switches. Apple's FiberChannel HBAs are all dual channel, as are the XServe RAID cabinets. For any non-Apple hardware, buy dual channel QLogic HBAs.
Apple provides a variety of maintenance contracts for all their hardware, as does QLogic. ADIC and Apple provide support maintenance agreements for the software. The only missing piece of your equation is SCSI-based storage. But since this whole system is entirely standards-based, all you need to do is find a favorite vendor of SCSI FiberChannel cabinets and drop a few into your SAN and then partition them accordingly, right along with all the SATA storage.
It's a beautiful system, and a raging bargain compared to every other comparable solution I've investigated.
Big deal, Viewsonic has offered stands that mount any of their Pro series LCDs (15" to 21") in not only dual horizontal but also dual vertical, triple wide and quad (2x2) layouts. You buy the standard LCDs, remove the included bases, and mount them to the special stands. If you ever decide to split them up, you still have the original bases to reattach and use standalone elsewhere.
I priced out the same 2-wide setup at CDW with 19" ViewSonics and it came out cheaper, for better quality monitors IMHO.
Re:Keytronic Ergoforce
on
Blank Keyboard
·
· Score: 4, Informative
I'm a big fan and longtime user of Keytronic's keyboards, and I'd say it's more likely that Das Keyboard is simply reselling the Keytronic with new keycaps (and a 4x markup). Perhaps Keytronic is even doing the manufacturing for them.
Verizon's Broadband Access works and is widely available, and if you're a heavy mobile user you can't really beat the $79/mo unlimited usage plan. In markets with the 3G equipment in place (San Diego for example) you get the faster EVDO speeds (throughput is good but latency is still a bit high - you won't be fragging in Quake over it), and everywhere else Verizon has coverage you get good ol' 1xRTT speed which is as functional as dialup and a helluva lot more convenient.
The AirPrime PC5220 card that Verizon provides works under Windows and Mac OS X (one of the recent 10.3.x patches included official drivers), and can be used under Linux if you follow Phil Karn's excellent writeup. Only gotcha is that you need Windows for the initial activation, but from that point on you're fine on your alternative OS.
I'm not sure I buy this. Maybe for enthusiast and home gaming PCs, but if you include business desktops I'd venture to say that Intel still carries somewhere around 75%. Go look at the business-oriented desktop lines from HP, IBM and Dell and you'll see very few AMDs in there.
Gyration has the best solutions I've found. Their mouse can be waved in the air to move the pointer, and they have a compact keyboard + mouse set that's intended for HTPC type solutions. It's not cheap stuff, but it looks nice and works well.
Yeah call the program DeSPYWARE, because never before has the DMCA been invoked to shut down linking to or distribution of program code which can be used to "pirate" other "intellectual property."
I recently saw a copy of this email from the Spamhaus project saying that they would no longer be making their blacklist available through other 3rd parties such as Osirusoft. Perhaps this sparked the shutdown of the Osirusoft project?
Date: Wed, 6 Aug 2003 18:42:07 +0100 From: Steve Linford To: nanog@merit.edu Subject: SBL soon only from sbl.spamhaus.org
If you currently use the SBL by querying the master zone sbl.spamhaus.org then you can ignore this message.
If you are using the SBL via 3rd party composite DNSBLs and not directly from sbl.spamhaus.org, then please read this as the following change affects your DNSBL setup.
For a long time the SBL has been available either directly from Spamhaus (as sbl.spamhaus.org) or via 3rd party composite zones such as relays.osirusoft.com (as spamhaus.relays.osirusoft.com) and blackholes.easynet.nl which import SBL data from Spamhaus. This distribution is now changing. In order to better manage SBL logistics, DNSBL zone and query traffic, from Monday 11 August 2003 the SBL should only be available from sbl.spamhaus.org.
The fact the SBL was available from multiple DNSBLs was causing some confusion, plus other small factors (such as the different zones having different build times - which for example meant that we'd tell someone an IP had been removed, but they'd contact us a few hours later to say it was still blocked), plus the likely emergence of further composite lists which may add confusion, meant that it was time to make a change now rather than in a year or two.
So, if you are not using sbl.spamhaus.org but would like to continue using the SBL, please add sbl.spamhaus.org to your mail server's DNSBL list.
--
Steve Linford
The Spamhaus Project
http://www.spamhaus.org
I run a Postfix setup which uses Osirusoft as one of its blacklists, and going through my maillogs I see that the RBL was unresponsive early on the 24th, and then started answering again later in the day. It was down the 25th and most of the 26th, until it briefly came on and started answering only some of the requests with "blocked using relays.osirusoft.com, reason: Please stop using relays.osirusoft.com". But it wasn't rejecting everything as the 2nd article says - just a subset of our mail. The rejects might even have been legitimate blacklisted IPs - perhaps they just changed the rejection message so admins would see it in their logs?
Additionally Postfix is a smart enough MTA so that during the RBL downtime it didn't reject any mail - the default behavior is to deliver if the RBL can't be contacted.
This is grossly off-topic, but it shocks me that a list admin would do such a thing. I've run mailing lists for years, and NOTHING gets deleted or modified in the archives. Period. It's a historical record, and I treat it as such.
Sorry I probably should have worded it differently. The LKML list admin didn't remove the already existing posts, I believe he just set up regex filters that prevented the thread from continuing and turning into an off-topic flamewar. He also threatened to blacklist anyone who starts another BK topic.
I don't think many people really understand the implications of the BK license: At this point, neither can Linus nor any other kernel developer that used BK, ever, ever work on anything that even smells like it came from the same planet as BitKeeper. For the rest of their lives!
Apparently you don't understand the implications of the BK license. Nowhere in the free license (http://www.bitkeeper.com/bkl.txt) is there any limitation on what Linus or any other BK user can do in the future. It simply says that they can't use BK to write a BK competitor or clone. (Section 3(c) - and note that limitation is one of the FREE BK license, the commercial BK license is a whole different animal and doesn't apply to this situation at all.)
I can't believe this wound up on Slashdot. First of all, the vger list admin already shitcanned the thread from LKML because it's just inappropriate there. Now it moves over here for further idiotic discussion.
If you read the original thread between McVoy and Rory Browne, you'll see that Rory started the whole thing by posting a BitKeeper licensing question to the LKML. I'd almost say Rory was just trolling. From there, McVoy's personality took over and he tossed out a worst-case scenario (rewriting the BK protocol to stay ahead of people trying to reverse-engineer it), and that's what spawned RMS's post.
Okay, so I won't disagree that having open protocols and open software is a good thing. But this is hardly a good example for RMS to pick on. There are completely open CVS and SVN gateways into BK, so at no point is the Linux Kernel code at risk. Major kernel hackers such as Alan Cox don't even use BK themselves - they use CVS or SVN to do all their kernel development.
If you read further down the thread, you'll find that even the most rabid of anti-BK people on the list concede McVoy's point - it's his product, protected by his license, and he can do anything he damn well pleases with it. There should be no more upset over this than when the Linux community went after Linksys to get them to obey the GPL for their router software.
The thread ends with a number of posts by people thanking Larry for what he's done by providing tools that make our kernel get better. That and a number of other "we don't need to rehash this again" messages. It's apparent that people are tired of this issue.
Re:How about finish *one* first?
on
Opengroupware
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
What you're not considering is that this isn't an unfinished project! It's mature. It's a release into open source of a product which was closed source yesterday. Yesterday I would have had to purchase it for around 9000 Euros. Today I can download it (granted without the Exchange connection and a few other features). But it immediately leapfrogs all of the half-finished projects out there, because I can go stick it on a server today and start using it.
I have a radio card in my computer which feeds through my sound card's input line.
Using the 'fm' utility from fmtools, my script tunes to the proper FM station and sets the volume.
Then I call SoX to grab the output stream in WAV format from the soundcard, and pipe it through to lame, which turns it into a mp3 in realtime (takes about 40% CPU time on my 1GHz P3).
Just last Sunday I saw a small article in Parade Magazine (the weekly rag that comes in your Sunday paper), saying that they are going to start placing CueCat barcodes to relevant articles/advertisements in their magazine as well.
I run a website which was originally dedicated to the Apex player, but have just put up a message forum for discussion of this newly-discovered player.
I've found great success with the Keystone system. It's a PHP and MySQL web-based incident tracking system that makes good use of email for notification and status reports. I believe there is also a module that lets you submit incidents via email.
RedHat could be seen as taking advantage of the fact that most people don't know it's free to get an unjustified "Aww how nice of them to give away their product to schools" reaction. Remember that the public is used to paying for their operating systems...
If you're stuck somewhere w/o Circuit City (or international), it appears that you can also get these through Damark. Catalog number is B-20811-744733, and they're priced at $179.99. As of 1/13/00 they were in stock...
For Canadians, you can check out www.futureshop.ca and search on Apex. They're more expensive there, even considering the exchange rate.
I haven't bought Q3A yet, but plan to. I'd like to support the Linux game numbers, but right now the only machine I have capable of playing Q3A is my Windows box.
I plan to upgrade my Linux machine in the next month, and at that point would play the Linux version.
If I buy the Linux version now, will I find the Win32 EXEs on it? Or will I have to wait until 1) id releases the patch; 2) I upgrade my Linux?
Their headquarters is down the street from me - I've worked with them to create enclosures for the computers onboard a hazardous materials fire truck... pricey, but good stuff.
This is fantastic news! It makes my skin tingle to think how worried NSI should get over this and why.:^)
This will also give service providers/web developers a better handle on "one-stop shopping" for their customers - go to ONE place and send ONE check to get a domain name and hosting, and not have to muck thru NSI's slow response times.
Slashdot Mirror
I went through this decision process at a civil engineering firm with 3TB of data. We wound up building a SAN out of XServe RAID cabinets, QLogic SANbox switches, XSan software for the OS X machines and ADIC's StorNext FX software for the Linux and Windows. XSan/StorNext is a shared filesystem, which inherently gets you a combined namespace without any DFS-type machinations. All servers literally mount the very same volume and access it simultaneously.
XSan is really the deal of the century - you can build a full-blown StorNext system starting with ADIC's software, but that approach can be exceptionally expensive. Instead, start with XSan (which is a functional but slightly stripped version of StorNext) and then use ADIC's much less expensive StorNext FX client licenses for each non OS X server that needs to join.
Redundancy can be everywhere. Start with a pair of redundant XServes as metadata controllers. Add a pair of redundant SAN switches. Apple's FiberChannel HBAs are all dual channel, as are the XServe RAID cabinets. For any non-Apple hardware, buy dual channel QLogic HBAs.
Apple provides a variety of maintenance contracts for all their hardware, as does QLogic. ADIC and Apple provide support maintenance agreements for the software. The only missing piece of your equation is SCSI-based storage. But since this whole system is entirely standards-based, all you need to do is find a favorite vendor of SCSI FiberChannel cabinets and drop a few into your SAN and then partition them accordingly, right along with all the SATA storage.
It's a beautiful system, and a raging bargain compared to every other comparable solution I've investigated.
Big deal, Viewsonic has offered stands that mount any of their Pro series LCDs (15" to 21") in not only dual horizontal but also dual vertical, triple wide and quad (2x2) layouts. You buy the standard LCDs, remove the included bases, and mount them to the special stands. If you ever decide to split them up, you still have the original bases to reattach and use standalone elsewhere.
I priced out the same 2-wide setup at CDW with 19" ViewSonics and it came out cheaper, for better quality monitors IMHO.
I'm a big fan and longtime user of Keytronic's keyboards, and I'd say it's more likely that Das Keyboard is simply reselling the Keytronic with new keycaps (and a 4x markup). Perhaps Keytronic is even doing the manufacturing for them.
Das Keyboard looks EXACTLY like Keytronic's standard black USB model.
I'd also venture to say that this "article" submission was done by someone who would benefit from more sales of Das Keyboard. :)
Verizon's Broadband Access works and is widely available, and if you're a heavy mobile user you can't really beat the $79/mo unlimited usage plan. In markets with the 3G equipment in place (San Diego for example) you get the faster EVDO speeds (throughput is good but latency is still a bit high - you won't be fragging in Quake over it), and everywhere else Verizon has coverage you get good ol' 1xRTT speed which is as functional as dialup and a helluva lot more convenient.
The AirPrime PC5220 card that Verizon provides works under Windows and Mac OS X (one of the recent 10.3.x patches included official drivers), and can be used under Linux if you follow Phil Karn's excellent writeup. Only gotcha is that you need Windows for the initial activation, but from that point on you're fine on your alternative OS.
I'm not sure I buy this. Maybe for enthusiast and home gaming PCs, but if you include business desktops I'd venture to say that Intel still carries somewhere around 75%. Go look at the business-oriented desktop lines from HP, IBM and Dell and you'll see very few AMDs in there.
Gyration has the best solutions I've found. Their mouse can be waved in the air to move the pointer, and they have a compact keyboard + mouse set that's intended for HTPC type solutions. It's not cheap stuff, but it looks nice and works well.
Yeah call the program DeSPYWARE, because never before has the DMCA been invoked to shut down linking to or distribution of program code which can be used to "pirate" other "intellectual property."
I recently saw a copy of this email from the Spamhaus project saying that they would no longer be making their blacklist available through other 3rd parties such as Osirusoft. Perhaps this sparked the shutdown of the Osirusoft project?
Date: Wed, 6 Aug 2003 18:42:07 +0100
From: Steve Linford
To: nanog@merit.edu
Subject: SBL soon only from sbl.spamhaus.org
If you currently use the SBL by querying the master zone
sbl.spamhaus.org then you can ignore this message.
If you are using the SBL via 3rd party composite DNSBLs and not
directly from sbl.spamhaus.org, then please read this as the
following change affects your DNSBL setup.
For a long time the SBL has been available either directly from
Spamhaus (as sbl.spamhaus.org) or via 3rd party composite zones such
as relays.osirusoft.com (as spamhaus.relays.osirusoft.com) and
blackholes.easynet.nl which import SBL data from Spamhaus. This
distribution is now changing. In order to better manage SBL
logistics, DNSBL zone and query traffic, from Monday 11 August 2003
the SBL should only be available from sbl.spamhaus.org.
The fact the SBL was available from multiple DNSBLs was causing some
confusion, plus other small factors (such as the different zones
having different build times - which for example meant that we'd tell
someone an IP had been removed, but they'd contact us a few hours
later to say it was still blocked), plus the likely emergence of
further composite lists which may add confusion, meant that it was
time to make a change now rather than in a year or two.
So, if you are not using sbl.spamhaus.org but would like to continue
using the SBL, please add sbl.spamhaus.org to your mail server's
DNSBL list.
--
Steve Linford
The Spamhaus Project
http://www.spamhaus.org
I run a Postfix setup which uses Osirusoft as one of its blacklists, and going through my maillogs I see that the RBL was unresponsive early on the 24th, and then started answering again later in the day. It was down the 25th and most of the 26th, until it briefly came on and started answering only some of the requests with "blocked using relays.osirusoft.com, reason: Please stop using relays.osirusoft.com". But it wasn't rejecting everything as the 2nd article says - just a subset of our mail. The rejects might even have been legitimate blacklisted IPs - perhaps they just changed the rejection message so admins would see it in their logs?
Additionally Postfix is a smart enough MTA so that during the RBL downtime it didn't reject any mail - the default behavior is to deliver if the RBL can't be contacted.
Sorry I probably should have worded it differently. The LKML list admin didn't remove the already existing posts, I believe he just set up regex filters that prevented the thread from continuing and turning into an off-topic flamewar. He also threatened to blacklist anyone who starts another BK topic.
Apparently you don't understand the implications of the BK license. Nowhere in the free license (http://www.bitkeeper.com/bkl.txt) is there any limitation on what Linus or any other BK user can do in the future. It simply says that they can't use BK to write a BK competitor or clone. (Section 3(c) - and note that limitation is one of the FREE BK license, the commercial BK license is a whole different animal and doesn't apply to this situation at all.)
I can't believe this wound up on Slashdot. First of all, the vger list admin already shitcanned the thread from LKML because it's just inappropriate there. Now it moves over here for further idiotic discussion.
If you read the original thread between McVoy and Rory Browne, you'll see that Rory started the whole thing by posting a BitKeeper licensing question to the LKML. I'd almost say Rory was just trolling. From there, McVoy's personality took over and he tossed out a worst-case scenario (rewriting the BK protocol to stay ahead of people trying to reverse-engineer it), and that's what spawned RMS's post.
Okay, so I won't disagree that having open protocols and open software is a good thing. But this is hardly a good example for RMS to pick on. There are completely open CVS and SVN gateways into BK, so at no point is the Linux Kernel code at risk. Major kernel hackers such as Alan Cox don't even use BK themselves - they use CVS or SVN to do all their kernel development.
If you read further down the thread, you'll find that even the most rabid of anti-BK people on the list concede McVoy's point - it's his product, protected by his license, and he can do anything he damn well pleases with it. There should be no more upset over this than when the Linux community went after Linksys to get them to obey the GPL for their router software.
The thread ends with a number of posts by people thanking Larry for what he's done by providing tools that make our kernel get better. That and a number of other "we don't need to rehash this again" messages. It's apparent that people are tired of this issue.
What you're not considering is that this isn't an unfinished project! It's mature. It's a release into open source of a product which was closed source yesterday. Yesterday I would have had to purchase it for around 9000 Euros. Today I can download it (granted without the Exchange connection and a few other features). But it immediately leapfrogs all of the half-finished projects out there, because I can go stick it on a server today and start using it.
Using the 'fm' utility from fmtools, my script tunes to the proper FM station and sets the volume.
Then I call SoX to grab the output stream in WAV format from the soundcard, and pipe it through to lame, which turns it into a mp3 in realtime (takes about 40% CPU time on my 1GHz P3).
The command looks something like this:
Put all that together in a script that's called by at or cron, and you're in business!
You have missed an opportunity to upgrade your unstable box to 3.0.4.
3 .0.4/Deb ian
l
The KDE mirrors have Debian packages available for both Sid and Woody:
ftp://download.us.kde.org/pub/kde/stable/
Add that to your apt.sources and party on. I believe it's a good idea to remove 2.2.x entirely before doing the 3.0.x upgrade.
FAQ here:
http://davidpashley.com/debian-kde/faq.htm
Just last Sunday I saw a small article in Parade Magazine (the weekly rag that comes in your Sunday paper), saying that they are going to start placing CueCat barcodes to relevant articles/advertisements in their magazine as well.
I run a website which was originally dedicated to the Apex player, but have just put up a message forum for discussion of this newly-discovered player.
:^)
You can find the forums at http://www.nerd-out.com/forum/list.php?f= 13, and can find general region-free/loophole news and information at the main Nerd-out.com Apex site
--Alowishus
(yeah yeah, shameless plug, but the site is there for the community, not my benefit... so take advantage of me while you can!
I've found great success with the Keystone system. It's a PHP and MySQL web-based incident tracking system that makes good use of email for notification and status reports. I believe there is also a module that lets you submit incidents via email.
This could backfire with techies though.
RedHat could be seen as taking advantage of the fact that most people don't know it's free to get an unjustified "Aww how nice of them to give away their product to schools" reaction. Remember that the public is used to paying for their operating systems...
If you're stuck somewhere w/o Circuit City (or international), it appears that you can also get these through Damark. Catalog number is B-20811-744733, and they're priced at $179.99. As of 1/13/00 they were in stock...
For Canadians, you can check out www.futureshop.ca and search on Apex. They're more expensive there, even considering the exchange rate.
--Alowishus
Yahoo! all the way. Fast as can be, no fancy HTML crap, and no downtime.
And if you use Yahoo! as your start page, there's a little box you can add to "My Yahoo" that tells you when you have new mail.
I haven't bought Q3A yet, but plan to. I'd like to support the Linux game numbers, but right now the only machine I have capable of playing Q3A is my Windows box.
I plan to upgrade my Linux machine in the next month, and at that point would play the Linux version.
If I buy the Linux version now, will I find the Win32 EXEs on it? Or will I have to wait until 1) id releases the patch; 2) I upgrade my Linux?
I'm getting anxious...
Another place to try - http://www.icsadvent.com/
Their headquarters is down the street from me - I've worked with them to create enclosures for the computers onboard a hazardous materials fire truck... pricey, but good stuff.
This is fantastic news! It makes my skin tingle to think how worried NSI should get over this and why. :^)
This will also give service providers/web developers a better handle on "one-stop shopping" for their customers - go to ONE place and send ONE check to get a domain name and hosting, and not have to muck thru NSI's slow response times.
Funny someone should mention this... I've always thought I'd be the appropriate person to create a Unix called Penix - it's my last name. :^)
If anyone wants to give control of penix.com away, I'd LOVE to have it!
--Joshua Penix