I'll second the recommendation for Sprocketdata.com. I have a dedicated RH7.2 box there that I've been very happy with. I use it as a testbed for web apps I'm working on--java, php, and perl stuff mostly.
I think if one of my lame-ass business ideas actually pans out I would move to a rackspace or highway, but it fills my needs nicely.
I use zoneedit.com for DNS. With a dedicated box, zoneedit, and godaddy.com for domain registration I can go from idea to website in under 48 hrs for about $10. (Step 2 ???? seems to be the tricky bit holding me back from Profit!)
Before sprocketdata I was hosting with fdcservers.net. They blow dead goats.
We are using java for yet another web app at my current contract and I must say that after a few weeks of swing UI programming I'm dying to try something new.
Trillian rocks. The logging feature is the greatest thing to happen to my IM usage. I send URLs via IM all the time and promptly forget them. Weeks later I need to recall and now that is very easy. I have accounts with AOL, Yahoo, MSN, ICQ and even use it for IRC now and then. (I'd love to set up a socks IM gateway on my linux box with logging features so I could have a single log with all my IM history regardless of client/computer used.)
The only thing missing is jabber support. And that is a biggie.
I compiled and set up a jabber server on my linux box from scratch, but it appears that setting up transports for the other IM is a big time sink. So, switching to a jabber client as my IM gateway doesn't appear to be in the cards at the moment.
Trillian does what I need beautifully. I paid for the pro version. If something better comes along I will switch.
This sounds like a very cool product. I've already replaced the back-breaking labor of shlepping my laptop into work every day with a pocketec 20g USB2 hard drive. I just work directly off the drive now, and since I mirror it to my home machine with rsync every now and then I've improved my backup strategy as well. Adding 802.11 support and a battery is a natural extension of this great tech.
Here's what I would add (down the road) to make this Sony thing a killer product:
- Bluetooth (duh)
- Some sort of powerline networking that provides 10M or better throughput (I guess this becomes less important as 802.11g becomes more ubiquitous). BUT, if you are going to need to plug it in anyway to recharge the battery why not add another networking strategy while you're at it?
- I wouldn't mind seeing this thing built into a backpack or bicycle messenger bag with a retractable cord built right the bag itself (kinda like the souped-up iPod that is built right into a purse). The thing provides wireless networking, right? Why would I ever want to pull it out of my bag, plug in a power adapter, plug it into the wall or a port on computer, etc? Dumb!
ps. As this kind of product adds features like the ones above, I see the form factor being less important. I mean, what do I care if it is the size of a deck of cards if I never pull it out of my backpack anyway? I would pay $500 for the device above even if it weighed 2 lbs and was triple the size of the Sony product.
I'd rather have a regular-sized HD with lots of storage (say 100gig or so to start) with a built in rechargeable battery and Bluetooth. I'd put this thing in my briefcase and forget it. Form factor becomes less important when you talk about something that sits in your briefcase all day.
Don't get me wrong, increasing storage density is a worthy goal, but we actually have the technology today to build the bluetooth thingy and this would solve a need for lots of people.
MP3 players, portable video players, cell phones, whatever... could feed off this storage. Oh yeah, you could plug it in to your computer at home or at the office with USB2 or firewire when you need higher xfer rates for things like backup or working off the actual drive.
I carry around a pocketec 20gig usb2 hard drive already, I just wish it were actually useful when it isn't plugged into something. I would gladly carry something 3 or 4 times as big if it had bluetooth and a battery.
How strange. We're having a little AudioGalaxy reunion here...
I loved the Audiogalaxy message boards. I went to the Sneaker Pimps message board (they had a message board per band) and asked what else I should check out, knowing nothing about trip hop at the time. This led me to stumble upon Lamb, Hooverphonic (2 wicky still blows my mind), and also rediscovered some old Portishead stuff that has held up well.
AG had some great forums going where you could ask a question like "what are the three best Brand New Heavies songs?" and you would get like 30 responses from folks who really liked the music.
Sure, you can also do that kind of thing of Usenet, but lots of music lovers don't even know what Usenet is (or even Google groups, for that matter).
Wouldn't it be cool if some of the P2P apps were tied into a Usenet-type threaded discussion system, set up as one group per artist?
I've only dealt with this problem on personal sites, but I'd recommend outsourcing DNS for at least a few weeks before and after your move.
I've been real happy with zoneedit for DNS services. In fact, from looking at the identical sign-up forms on the Verisign and Zoneedit websites, I think Verisign is reselling their services (not that what those guys do should necessarily be an inspiration to anyone).
This might help to eliminate one very hairy variable from your already complex equation.
If you are afflicted with Windows on any of your machines, give Replay Radio a look. I played with it briefly a while back, and think it does what you are looking for.
I always read these stories about Linux PVRs with interest, but there is one HUGE disadvantage for roll-your-own solutions that I never see discussed: the DirectTV with built-in Tivo unit has the ability to record the exact stream that is broadcast from the satellite. This means you can watch a time-shifted or recorded program with absolutely no degradation in quality (beyond the degradation already inherit in DirecTV's MPEG2-ish compression, anyway).
Back when I had a stand-alone tivo I never thought this would be a big deal, but man it really is. If you don't admit this is an advantage, raise your hand and affirm this statement: "I think VHS is just as good as DVD"
Don't get my wrong, Linux has its place in the home network (I'm pulling video off my tivo over a turbonet card from 9thtee.com for archival etc--and yes I have to degrade the quality to accomplish this) but until the linux tools get a lossless compression scheme working it is really nothing but a fun hack for the true tv aficionados.
This is an excellent idea. The main two problems I see with actual implementation are:
1. Accountability. Most sites will want to know how much traffic their mirrored site is getting. Surely the geniuses at Slashdot could provide a mechanism for the sites to get this data. Perhaps the old pixel gif trick would apply here, the mirrored site could simply deliver a 1x1 gif from a server with logging turned on: mirroredsite.com/slash/pixel.gif?story=coolde sk&pg =1 mirroredsite.com/slash/pixel.gif?story=cooldes k&pg =2... and so on....
Just parse the results with grep, a script, load into DB, whatever. (I used to work in engineering at DoubleClick so I'm aware of all the fun you can have with pixel gifs:-)
2. advertising. Most third party advertising is handled via a couple lines of html pulling from someone else's server anyway, so you probably just need to include this html intact or maybe provide some simple functionality to plug in random numbers for cache busting--either server-side or w/javascript.
Voila, slash serves the html w/embedded img src tags to pull pixel gifs from mirrored site, advertising from whererever. Slash can either host the bandwidth-intensive images/media themselves, or go with someone like Akamai if they aren't interested in this nightmare (I wouldn't be).
Some kinks to be worked out, admittedly, but this could work.
>the fact that people can and will use this as their primary storage >not only for their music data but all of their portable content is >beyond likely--it's probable
bingo. the only real reason i lug my laptop home with me each night is because it has archives of 3 yrs worth of personal and business emails in Eudora. this along with a/my_stuff folder (under 1gig) has everything I ever need. most of the files are completely platform independent to make sharing easy between mac/pc/*nix.
give me a smaller drive that is fast enough and I would pay $1000 for it. oh yeah, how bout some freaking NT support?
i've got this cool usb port and no way to use it...
Note: Until recently, the Intel Celeron processor was the only Intel processor, with "On-Die" cache.
Because the Intel Pentium II processor on many laptop models, and the Intel Celeron processor both have "On-Die" cache, Intel's CPUID Utility reports the Intel Pentium II as an Intel Celeron processor. Intel is aware of this issue, and has stated that the next revision of the CPUID Utility will fix this issue.
I have DSL at home and the first person to put a web browser on my TV that has an ethernet port will get my check for up to $500. I really don't care if it is Sega, Nintendo, Sony, or WebTV (they seem likely to be first).
Quote.com's IPO resource is interesting, but I wouldn't bet the farm (or not bet) based on their analysis.
I checked out a few Witcapital.com offerings that have been very good to me, and they had lukewarm ratings on Quote (STMP and MLTX if you are curious). They also gave their highest rating to BNBN, which has been a bit of a dog.
Thanks for sharing though, I like to evaluate all the tools I can find out there.
Re:here's the pricelist [/. effect claims another]
on
Empeg Shipping
·
· Score: 1
Let's see... I just priced a linux box with 24 gig storage and a Sound Blaster AWE64 sound card--it came out to $875
Now if someone would just make a nice little MP3 control panel to stick in my dashboard...
Slashdot Mirror
I'll second the recommendation for Sprocketdata.com. I have a dedicated RH7.2 box there that I've been very happy with. I use it as a testbed for web apps I'm working on--java, php, and perl stuff mostly.
I think if one of my lame-ass business ideas actually pans out I would move to a rackspace or highway, but it fills my needs nicely.
I use zoneedit.com for DNS. With a dedicated box, zoneedit, and godaddy.com for domain registration I can go from idea to website in under 48 hrs for about $10. (Step 2 ???? seems to be the tricky bit holding me back from Profit!)
Before sprocketdata I was hosting with fdcservers.net. They blow dead goats.
Use the flash app to enter picks in ESPN's sweet 16 pool
Very slick.
We are using java for yet another web app at my current contract and I must say that after a few weeks of swing UI programming I'm dying to try something new.
hahahaha. thought you had a cool idea and did some googling:
beam me up scotty
It's freakin huge!
>He now has good access to binary newsgroups
You turned your uncle on to porn? Doesn't it usually work the other way around?
>keeps the logs in a straight text file
Trillian rocks. The logging feature is the greatest thing to happen to my IM usage. I send URLs via IM all the time and promptly forget them. Weeks later I need to recall and now that is very easy. I have accounts with AOL, Yahoo, MSN, ICQ and even use it for IRC now and then. (I'd love to set up a socks IM gateway on my linux box with logging features so I could have a single log with all my IM history regardless of client/computer used.)
The only thing missing is jabber support. And that is a biggie.
I compiled and set up a jabber server on my linux box from scratch, but it appears that setting up transports for the other IM is a big time sink. So, switching to a jabber client as my IM gateway doesn't appear to be in the cards at the moment.
Trillian does what I need beautifully. I paid for the pro version. If something better comes along I will switch.
This story reminds me how much I love Homer
This sounds like a very cool product. I've already replaced the back-breaking labor of shlepping my laptop into work every day with a pocketec 20g USB2 hard drive. I just work directly off the drive now, and since I mirror it to my home machine with rsync every now and then I've improved my backup strategy as well. Adding 802.11 support and a battery is a natural extension of this great tech.
Here's what I would add (down the road) to make this Sony thing a killer product:
- Bluetooth (duh)
- Some sort of powerline networking that provides 10M or better throughput (I guess this becomes less important as 802.11g becomes more ubiquitous). BUT, if you are going to need to plug it in anyway to recharge the battery why not add another networking strategy while you're at it?
- I wouldn't mind seeing this thing built into a backpack or bicycle messenger bag with a retractable cord built right the bag itself (kinda like the souped-up iPod that is built right into a purse). The thing provides wireless networking, right? Why would I ever want to pull it out of my bag, plug in a power adapter, plug it into the wall or a port on computer, etc? Dumb!
ps. As this kind of product adds features like the ones above, I see the form factor being less important. I mean, what do I care if it is the size of a deck of cards if I never pull it out of my backpack anyway? I would pay $500 for the device above even if it weighed 2 lbs and was triple the size of the Sony product.
I'd rather have a regular-sized HD with lots of storage (say 100gig or so to start) with a built in rechargeable battery and Bluetooth. I'd put this thing in my briefcase and forget it. Form factor becomes less important when you talk about something that sits in your briefcase all day.
Don't get me wrong, increasing storage density is a worthy goal, but we actually have the technology today to build the bluetooth thingy and this would solve a need for lots of people.
MP3 players, portable video players, cell phones, whatever... could feed off this storage. Oh yeah, you could plug it in to your computer at home or at the office with USB2 or firewire when you need higher xfer rates for things like backup or working off the actual drive.
I carry around a pocketec 20gig usb2 hard drive already, I just wish it were actually useful when it isn't plugged into something. I would gladly carry something 3 or 4 times as big if it had bluetooth and a battery.
How strange. We're having a little AudioGalaxy reunion here...
I loved the Audiogalaxy message boards. I went to the Sneaker Pimps message board (they had a message board per band) and asked what else I should check out, knowing nothing about trip hop at the time. This led me to stumble upon Lamb, Hooverphonic (2 wicky still blows my mind), and also rediscovered some old Portishead stuff that has held up well.
AG had some great forums going where you could ask a question like "what are the three best Brand New Heavies songs?" and you would get like 30 responses from folks who really liked the music.
Sure, you can also do that kind of thing of Usenet, but lots of music lovers don't even know what Usenet is (or even Google groups, for that matter).
Wouldn't it be cool if some of the P2P apps were tied into a Usenet-type threaded discussion system, set up as one group per artist?
How about for the sign "Here there be trolls"
then for the servers:
- hotgrits
- portman
- sovietrussia
- firstpost
- osxrules
The best way I have seen to enforce is through a little social engineering known as baggy pantsing
People usually fall for this trick exactly one-time.
Has anyone seen my pants?
I've only dealt with this problem on personal sites, but I'd recommend outsourcing DNS for at least a few weeks before and after your move.
I've been real happy with zoneedit for DNS services. In fact, from looking at the identical sign-up forms on the Verisign and Zoneedit websites, I think Verisign is reselling their services (not that what those guys do should necessarily be an inspiration to anyone).
This might help to eliminate one very hairy variable from your already complex equation.
If you are afflicted with Windows on any of your machines, give Replay Radio a look. I played with it briefly a while back, and think it does what you are looking for.
I always read these stories about Linux PVRs with interest, but there is one HUGE disadvantage for roll-your-own solutions that I never see discussed: the DirectTV with built-in Tivo unit has the ability to record the exact stream that is broadcast from the satellite. This means you can watch a time-shifted or recorded program with absolutely no degradation in quality (beyond the degradation already inherit in DirecTV's MPEG2-ish compression, anyway).
Back when I had a stand-alone tivo I never thought this would be a big deal, but man it really is. If you don't admit this is an advantage, raise your hand and affirm this statement: "I think VHS is just as good as DVD"
Don't get my wrong, Linux has its place in the home network (I'm pulling video off my tivo over a turbonet card from 9thtee.com for archival etc--and yes I have to degrade the quality to accomplish this) but until the linux tools get a lossless compression scheme working it is really nothing but a fun hack for the true tv aficionados.
This is an excellent idea. The main two problems I see with actual implementation are:
e sk&pg =1s k&pg =2 ... and so on ....
:-)
1. Accountability. Most sites will want to know how much traffic their mirrored site is getting. Surely the geniuses at Slashdot could provide a mechanism for the sites to get this data. Perhaps the old pixel gif trick would apply here, the mirrored site could simply deliver a 1x1 gif from a server with logging turned on:
mirroredsite.com/slash/pixel.gif?story=coold
mirroredsite.com/slash/pixel.gif?story=coolde
Just parse the results with grep, a script, load into DB, whatever. (I used to work in engineering at DoubleClick so I'm aware of all the fun you can have with pixel gifs
2. advertising. Most third party advertising is handled via a couple lines of html pulling from someone else's server anyway, so you probably just need to include this html intact or maybe provide some simple functionality to plug in random numbers for cache busting--either server-side or w/javascript.
Voila, slash serves the html w/embedded img src tags to pull pixel gifs from mirrored site, advertising from whererever. Slash can either host the bandwidth-intensive images/media themselves, or go with someone like Akamai if they aren't interested in this nightmare (I wouldn't be).
Some kinks to be worked out, admittedly, but this could work.
> I can make Caldera just as good a server as Red Hat with just a few downloads.
:-)
would you mind saying what a few of those downloads are?
I just installed Caldera this week and am looking to optimize
I have heard it is a good idea to upgrade KDE right away...
off topic: I also tried to install RedHat 6 recently, and it was kind enough to fry my Fujitsu laptop's lcd. My vote is for Caldera.
can't wait for my DSL to get installed and to get my class C addresses, to start serving!
>the fact that people can and will use this as their primary storage
/my_stuff folder (under 1gig) has everything I ever need. most of the files are completely platform independent to make sharing easy between mac/pc/*nix.
>not only for their music data but all of their portable content is
>beyond likely--it's probable
bingo. the only real reason i lug my laptop home with me each night is because it has archives of 3 yrs worth of personal and business emails in Eudora. this along with a
give me a smaller drive that is fast enough and I would pay $1000 for it. oh yeah, how bout some freaking NT support?
i've got this cool usb port and no way to use it...
Note: Until recently, the Intel Celeron processor was the only Intel processor, with "On-Die" cache.
Because the Intel Pentium II processor on many laptop models, and the Intel Celeron processor both have "On-Die"
cache, Intel's CPUID Utility reports the Intel Pentium II as an Intel Celeron processor. Intel is aware of this issue,
and has stated that the next revision of the CPUID Utility will fix this issue.
I will post this little story elsewhere, since it is a bit long:
http://www.chadhead.com/philosophy.txt
This actually made me think much harder about materialism than the Cringley article.
I have DSL at home and the first person to put a web browser on my TV that has an ethernet port will get my check for up to $500. I really don't care if it is Sega, Nintendo, Sony, or WebTV (they seem likely to be first).
an URL where I can find the Aeron, please. didn't see it on staples.com or officedepot.com
Quote.com's IPO resource is interesting, but I wouldn't bet the farm (or not bet) based on their analysis.
I checked out a few Witcapital.com offerings that have been very good to me, and they had lukewarm ratings on Quote (STMP and MLTX if you are curious). They also gave their highest rating to BNBN, which has been a bit of a dog.
Thanks for sharing though, I like to evaluate all the tools I can find out there.
Let's see... I just priced a linux box with 24 gig storage and a Sound Blaster AWE64 sound card--it came out to $875
Now if someone would just make a nice little MP3 control panel to stick in my dashboard...
http://www.indybox.com/cgi-bin/XAMD.pl