Re:This Comment May Be Slightly Off Topic
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Fix a Troubled Mac
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I think you just supported my point. If the machine is "dead", Google probably isn't going to be of much help; you need to rely on experience and troubleshooting tactics.
Um, it's distributed online in PDF. A subscription for updates is available. You can download a partial copy of the book free of charge, to evaluate it yourself.
Re:This Comment May Be Slightly Off Topic
on
Fix a Troubled Mac
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Google is truly a gift from the gods when dealing with error messages, but not so much help in figuring out what to do when the machine just does something weird or hard to describe, or is quite simply "dead". Those sorts of problems can only be solved through a combination of experience, intuition, and logic, and I can see how reading through a book of this sort might be a good supplement if your experience is lacking. There's way too much variety of stuff out there to deal with in the Windows and Linux realms, but the smaller set of Mac-compatible hardware and software (and combinations thereof) makes it more feasible to distill "common problems" into a book like this.
And why would we want it? Because Windows people use it?
The future is SVG + ECMAScript.
Maybe. But the present and the immediate future is Flash. Pardon me for being pragmatics, but I want Flash on Linux because it'd mean I could stop using Windows as a development environment and stick to just using it as a test environment. Fortunately I can also do Flash development work on the Mac, but I've only got one of those and it's busy sometimes.
But many people have plenty of other sources of motivation, and work out in a gym for other reasons (more/better equipment, availability of trainers and/or spotters, etc....)
The scenery.
The most fit I've been in my adult life (i.e. since I discovered alcohol) was when I was working at a college, where I had free access to the campus athletic facilities... complete with exercising college students. It's easier to keep your pace when trying to keep up with a nice-looking runner ahead of you on the track, or to squeeze out another 10 reps on the weight machines when there's a pretty young thing doing situps in your line of sight.
So don't go trying to switch distros on them, or install a different mail transport, or whatever. They may be in need of security updates and you should start rolling those out, a few/day until you catch up. But evidently what they have is working, so don't fsck with it unless you discover a problem. That approach may not be very "proactive", but until you've got some real-world experience in running someone else's shop, it's best to err on the side of conservatism. And odds are they've got enough stuff that genuinely is broken to keep you busy for a while.
While availability in packaged format is a legitimate line item for a comparison chart, I would encourage people not to put much emphasis on it. MT (for example) is mostly just a bundle of Perl scripts, which can be installed easily enough from a tarball. As a sysadmin I'm at the comfort level that usually begs for.rpm or.pkg instead of.tgz, but I found MT a piece of cake to install. The only difficult part for me was remembering how to create an empty database with the right permissions in MySQL (which no package manager would have been able to help with).
OK, so the fans of the various distros are all comparing how big the penises of their favorites are. It's a fun exercise, but not what the guy asked about. I'd suggest that someone new to Linux look at:
Mandrake, Xandros, Lycoris, SUSE, or Linspire. Each of these has a company behind it that's placing a high priority on making their distro accessible to new users, and that sounds like your top priority as well.
I get around using a principle you might call "least necessary hardware". My mechanic friend would call it "the right tool for the job". It keeps my fuel costs pretty low.
If I can walk, I walk. If it's too far to walk in a reasonably amount of time, I ride my bike. If the weather's lousy, or it's too far to take the bike, or I need to transport a bunch of groceries or other stuff, I take the car. If I need to transport something bigger than my car can handle (I didn't buy an SUV or van "just in case"), I borrow my friend's Ford Extinction. And if it's too far to drive in the amount of time I have, I get on a plane.
I listen to people complaining about $2+/gal gasoline, and I sympathize with them... because sometime next month I'm going to have to put gas in the car, and I'll have to pay that much too. But the last gas I bought was only about $1.75.
(I'd like to add another mode between the bike and the car, for when weather might permit biking, but the distance and/or a need to avoid sweating would not. I'm saving up for a scooter for that.)
I don't understand how people claim to get 100's of spam messages per day.
"Claim"? Just because it isn't happening to you doesn't give you reason to question the truthfulness of people to whom it is happening.
The addresses I get the most spam sent to are ones I've had published on various web sites (especially the long-standing ones, such as one for a shareware program I wrote 6 years ago) and the address I used for much of the 90's on Usenet (back when I was young and foolish about such virtual promiscuity).
It's a widely perpetuated myth that NT is a microkernel. It may have started out that way, but has long since grown through millikernel, centikernel, decikernel to full blown kernel... (and beyond if you count browser, media player and kitchen sink OS embedding)
I think we're up to "megakernel" by now. Longhorn should cross the "gigakernel" threshold, and when Office is finally integrated into Windows, we'll have the world's first "terakernel" OS.
actually there was a esoteric bug in SPX connections on a Netware network...
Been there, done that, got the t-shirt. I occasionally had people give me shit about asking them to reboot the print server a second time, but when I asked them to trust me and they did it... I became their hero. For the day.
Umm... Ethernet frames don't get send over dialup lines.
Right. But parity and stop bits do. I usually pretend that a byte = 10 bits (and simplify my mental arithmetic) when looking at dial-up throughput rates.
The software that Apple is referring to with the term "BSD subsystem", and the BSD core I/O routines to which the grandparent is referring, are not the same thing. I don't know for sure, but I believe Apple's talking about some additional libraries and such that folks developing for BSD are used to having installed, but which aren't needed by OS X and typical Apple-centric apps.
does that mean that if you want to talk dirty with your friends, you have to ID each message thusly,
It's a Federal Trade Commission rule, and their purview is limited to commercial activities. So you don't have to label a message telling your friends how this chick sucked on your balls while stroking your dick and fingering your butt... unless you're using this story to try selling Amway® lubricants to your customer-friends.
Community colleges can be a good place to "roll your own" program with the classes that suit your interests and abilities. Even if you can't satisfy the requirements for one of their Associates degrees, you can still benefit from the classes. For example, some of them are good prep for certificate exams, which - if you're not getting a degree - are what you'll need on your resume to keep it from getting tossed out.
I've been working the past 6 months at a community college after working previously at a private 4-year residential college, and I've been surprised at how much more accomodating they are of cognitive disabilities here. A part of me is disheartened to see (for example) reading classes at a college, but that's my intellectual snobbery at work. It shows that they're trying to meet the needs of local students, which is a Good Thing, and might be good for you. Talk to the Disability Services folks at your nearest CC to see what they suggest.
A friend of mine with a learning disability (not autism) who probably couldn't learn algebra to save his life enrolled at CC several years ago. In his case, the classes didn't work out very well for him, but at least CC gave him a shot at it, and it didn't cost him an arm and a leg.
The majority of graduates of US four-year college programs get a BA. My BA would have been switched to a BS if I'd taken a few more "science" classes (I think another one in Electronics, more upper-level Math, another CS class) and a few fewer "humanities" classes (in my case I would've had to skip Analytic Philosophy, Psych 2, and Writing Satire). I don't think that makes my degree "bullshit". It just means my studies were broader instead of deeper.
Unless your point is that any four-year degree is "bullshit", which I'd simply have to disagree with. Getting a Masters or PhD is well and good, but it's not at all a prerequisite to being an expert in one's field. Experience is where that comes from.
Another possibility is that he's just a guy who's worked substantially with *n*x (thus making him something of an "expert" on the topic) but who has also come to see some merit in Microsoft's stuff and doesn't mind admitting it. And yes, it has some good points... they're just overshadowed by the bad.
Obviously MS isn't going to hire someone sincerely hostile to their wares for this "open discussion". But that doesn't mean everyone there is necessarily an MS partisan. So, kind of like one of those political-pundit shows where they take a few conservatives then add a moderate or two for "balance", this program will probably have a handful of MS lieutenants giving their sincerely-held variations on the party line, and one or two folks to chime in with "yes, that's true about Windows, but open-source software can do that too" or "but closed-source software isn't always better".
Do not bury cables of any kind between buildings. Not CAT6, not coax, not fiber, and definitely not RS-232. If you don't want to use wireless, instead bury conduits. Whatever you run between buildings today, you will want to replace it someday. Or some of it'll go bad. And then you'll be stuck digging again. Instead lay nice big pipes, and you'll be able to replace cables easily.
With that said... Run fiber through your conduit for now. It's far less vulnerable to lightning and water damage.
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I think you just supported my point. If the machine is "dead", Google probably isn't going to be of much help; you need to rely on experience and troubleshooting tactics.
Have you tried "ssh" and "sftp"? :)
Um, it's distributed online in PDF. A subscription for updates is available. You can download a partial copy of the book free of charge, to evaluate it yourself.
Google is truly a gift from the gods when dealing with error messages, but not so much help in figuring out what to do when the machine just does something weird or hard to describe, or is quite simply "dead". Those sorts of problems can only be solved through a combination of experience, intuition, and logic, and I can see how reading through a book of this sort might be a good supplement if your experience is lacking. There's way too much variety of stuff out there to deal with in the Windows and Linux realms, but the smaller set of Mac-compatible hardware and software (and combinations thereof) makes it more feasible to distill "common problems" into a book like this.
Maybe. But the present and the immediate future is Flash. Pardon me for being pragmatics, but I want Flash on Linux because it'd mean I could stop using Windows as a development environment and stick to just using it as a test environment. Fortunately I can also do Flash development work on the Mac, but I've only got one of those and it's busy sometimes.
The scenery.
The most fit I've been in my adult life (i.e. since I discovered alcohol) was when I was working at a college, where I had free access to the campus athletic facilities... complete with exercising college students. It's easier to keep your pace when trying to keep up with a nice-looking runner ahead of you on the track, or to squeeze out another 10 reps on the weight machines when there's a pretty young thing doing situps in your line of sight.
So don't go trying to switch distros on them, or install a different mail transport, or whatever. They may be in need of security updates and you should start rolling those out, a few/day until you catch up. But evidently what they have is working, so don't fsck with it unless you discover a problem. That approach may not be very "proactive", but until you've got some real-world experience in running someone else's shop, it's best to err on the side of conservatism. And odds are they've got enough stuff that genuinely is broken to keep you busy for a while.
While availability in packaged format is a legitimate line item for a comparison chart, I would encourage people not to put much emphasis on it. MT (for example) is mostly just a bundle of Perl scripts, which can be installed easily enough from a tarball. As a sysadmin I'm at the comfort level that usually begs for .rpm or .pkg instead of .tgz, but I found MT a piece of cake to install. The only difficult part for me was remembering how to create an empty database with the right permissions in MySQL (which no package manager would have been able to help with).
{shrug} sure.
OK, so the fans of the various distros are all comparing how big the penises of their favorites are. It's a fun exercise, but not what the guy asked about. I'd suggest that someone new to Linux look at: Mandrake, Xandros, Lycoris, SUSE, or Linspire. Each of these has a company behind it that's placing a high priority on making their distro accessible to new users, and that sounds like your top priority as well.
If I can walk, I walk. If it's too far to walk in a reasonably amount of time, I ride my bike. If the weather's lousy, or it's too far to take the bike, or I need to transport a bunch of groceries or other stuff, I take the car. If I need to transport something bigger than my car can handle (I didn't buy an SUV or van "just in case"), I borrow my friend's Ford Extinction. And if it's too far to drive in the amount of time I have, I get on a plane.
I listen to people complaining about $2+/gal gasoline, and I sympathize with them... because sometime next month I'm going to have to put gas in the car, and I'll have to pay that much too. But the last gas I bought was only about $1.75.
(I'd like to add another mode between the bike and the car, for when weather might permit biking, but the distance and/or a need to avoid sweating would not. I'm saving up for a scooter for that.)
"Claim"? Just because it isn't happening to you doesn't give you reason to question the truthfulness of people to whom it is happening.
The addresses I get the most spam sent to are ones I've had published on various web sites (especially the long-standing ones, such as one for a shareware program I wrote 6 years ago) and the address I used for much of the 90's on Usenet (back when I was young and foolish about such virtual promiscuity).
No, he said "OS-9".
I think we're up to "megakernel" by now. Longhorn should cross the "gigakernel" threshold, and when Office is finally integrated into Windows, we'll have the world's first "terakernel" OS.
When I was in college, "brown" meant "high on marijuana". Maybe AST is hinting that the interview took place over hash brownies? ;)
Been there, done that, got the t-shirt. I occasionally had people give me shit about asking them to reboot the print server a second time, but when I asked them to trust me and they did it... I became their hero. For the day.
Right. But parity and stop bits do. I usually pretend that a byte = 10 bits (and simplify my mental arithmetic) when looking at dial-up throughput rates.
{puzzled}
Friend: Can you hear me now?
You: Yeah, hang on a sec while I adjust my music volume.
Friend: Can you hear me now?
You: What?
Not even teenagers are that mixed up.
Also, if your iPod was your phone, I bet it would automatically pause the music while you were on a call.
Seriously, that's a good point about multitasking issues. But bad example. {smile}
The software that Apple is referring to with the term "BSD subsystem", and the BSD core I/O routines to which the grandparent is referring, are not the same thing. I don't know for sure, but I believe Apple's talking about some additional libraries and such that folks developing for BSD are used to having installed, but which aren't needed by OS X and typical Apple-centric apps.
It's a Federal Trade Commission rule, and their purview is limited to commercial activities. So you don't have to label a message telling your friends how this chick sucked on your balls while stroking your dick and fingering your butt... unless you're using this story to try selling Amway® lubricants to your customer-friends.
I've been working the past 6 months at a community college after working previously at a private 4-year residential college, and I've been surprised at how much more accomodating they are of cognitive disabilities here. A part of me is disheartened to see (for example) reading classes at a college, but that's my intellectual snobbery at work. It shows that they're trying to meet the needs of local students, which is a Good Thing, and might be good for you. Talk to the Disability Services folks at your nearest CC to see what they suggest.
A friend of mine with a learning disability (not autism) who probably couldn't learn algebra to save his life enrolled at CC several years ago. In his case, the classes didn't work out very well for him, but at least CC gave him a shot at it, and it didn't cost him an arm and a leg.
Unless your point is that any four-year degree is "bullshit", which I'd simply have to disagree with. Getting a Masters or PhD is well and good, but it's not at all a prerequisite to being an expert in one's field. Experience is where that comes from.
Obviously MS isn't going to hire someone sincerely hostile to their wares for this "open discussion". But that doesn't mean everyone there is necessarily an MS partisan. So, kind of like one of those political-pundit shows where they take a few conservatives then add a moderate or two for "balance", this program will probably have a handful of MS lieutenants giving their sincerely-held variations on the party line, and one or two folks to chime in with "yes, that's true about Windows, but open-source software can do that too" or "but closed-source software isn't always better".
With that said... Run fiber through your conduit for now. It's far less vulnerable to lightning and water damage.
Actually, somebody does make a device similar in form and spirit to the old TRS-80 model 100.