Yes, we could get a new cannister/motor installed in the basement, but the vacuum jacks are only in certain parts of the house. Even in the reachable parts of the house, using the flexible hose is a pain the further you get from the jack because it always bumps into knick-knacks and stuff. CVS is just a clumsy, "gee-whiz" idea leftover from an earlier time.
A smallish ping-pong ball can get sucked around easily, but there is no way the motor is strong enough to create enough suction to draw CAT5...especially when you consider that the tubes have to make turns at certain points. It would be easier to tie some CAT5 to a hamster, snake or gerbil and let it run around the tubes. There's probably quite a few guys in SF that could help you with this.
My thought is that if someone doesn't care that the house is now wired, then they'll just ignore the cabling and that will be ok. However, it may spark some interest compared to other, identical houses on the street. The vacuum system itself is not that great given the jack layout and newer parts of the house don't even have jacks; so the tubes are essentially wasted for practical vacuuming purposes.
There are only four vacuum jacks and the plug-in tubes cannot reach/are too cumbersome to vacuum every part of the house like a regular vacuum can. And forget about the tubes reaching the family room, which was added years after the vacuum tubes were installed. It is possible, however, to wire the family room since the tubes are at least in proximity and a rogue line can be strung out there if need be.
My mom's house has a central vacuum system, too. We've never used it in the 25 years that we've had the house, so the dust puppies living in its tubes must be ancient! Before my mom sells the house and moves, I'd like to run some CAT5 through the tubes and set up some keystone jacks in place of the current vacuum sockets. Then the realtor can say that the house is "wired for broadband internet and home networking." Should add a dollar or two to the market value:)
For the unitiated, this is what a central vacuum system is all about:
Imagine the telephone wiring in your house. Now imagine dirt, dust and tiny bits of garbage going through those wires and getting sucked into that little junction box in your basement. That is the jist of a central vacuum system.
In the basement there is essentially a cannister vacuum attached to the wall. However, the motor is more powerful and there is a 2-3 inch diameter tube going from the top of the cannister into the floors and walls above. In certain rooms, there are vacuum jacks just like phone jacks, but wider of course. To use the vacuum, you insert a long, flexible tube into the jack. The end of the tube that goes into the jack is metallic and connects two metal contacts in the jack to turn on the power for the cannister in the basement. It's just like using the tube extension on a regular upright vacuum cleaner.
I have 1000 feet of CAT5 on standby. All I have to do now is find the time to do this and also learn how to wire CAT5 into jacks. My words of advice are this:
1. Make sure the tubes are relatively clear of debris. I've shone a flashlight into my vacuum cleaner tubes and the amount of stuff that rests on the bottom of horizontal runs of tubes is amazing.
2. Check the local building codes to see whether or not plenum cable is required for a residence. It's sure required for offices around here. Plenum costs more, but it doesn't get smokey and toxic like regular cable in case of a fire.
3. Unless your tubing is really complicated, you should have access to the actual tubes in certain parts of the house (basement ceiling, inside certain closets). If the tube is visible in certain places and then it bends up into the walls, feel free to cut yourself a little porthole into the tube to help fish the CAT5 through. Note: Make sure you follow tip #1 before cutting holes...or wear goggles:)
4. Think about where a broadband internet connection would be coming into the house. Try to syncronise the location of the hub/switch/firewall/server room with this location.
Other than that, the rules should be the same as if you're putting wire through any other object and I'll defer to the experts here for that advice. Good luck!!!!
Using a real, paper calendar for personal use is better than a software calendar, but one of the things that my company uses Exchange for is so that there is one, unified company calendar. I've never used it, but I'm sure that Lotus Notes offers the same thing.
It's nice to click on the calendar and see who is here and not here today, what times the conference room will be taken, when an associate will be out travelling, when most people will be on vacation and when someone has left early because they're sick. The best part is that it's simple to update and all the information is accessable at the click of a mouse, as opposed to running around the office, wasting time and finding out.
I may be offtopic, but since we're talking about Mandrake I thought I'd ask. Has anyone been using Mandrake Corporate Server 1.0? I've had my eye on it for a while for use as a small web, email and Samba server to run off my (firewalled) cable modem. However, I like to read reviews of distros before I go ahead and buy or download them. Thanks:)
Putting Mr. Nimoy aside for a moment...what about the actual Spock character? Is he old enough to fit into the time frame of this new show? Sure, he'd be younger...I'd recommend the guy who played Methos on the Highlander series to play a younger Mr. Spock.
In the case of these CD's, I would say keep buying them and returning them constantly to the store and getting a new copy. Eventually the store will have piles of opened and returned CDs. The stores will complain to the record companies eventually.
I'm not too familiar with the Star Trek universe but I enjoy watching the various shows now and then. One thing I have learned is that Vulcans have a pretty long lifespan. IE, Mr. Tuvok from Voyager also served under Sulu from a couple human generations ago.
My question is this: since Vulcans live so long, is there any chance that Mr. Spock could make a cameo appearance on Enterprise? I have no idea how old Mr. Spock is, so I could be way off base.
I recently received the ASA (American Society of Appraisers) email newsletter. Someone wrote an article talking about the recent Nimbda and WTC.EXE attacks and how we should be careful to update our virus software, not open attachments, etc. She also mentioned the Gartner Group recommendation. However, no alternatives to IIS were discussed. I sent off an email talking about Apache's strength and popularity over IIS. I also referenced this discussion in my email. Here is the text of what I wrote:
*****
Thank you for writing your informative article regarding recent computer virus and worm attacks in the ASA BV E-Letter. Since a number of valuation analysts sometimes find themselves administering the corporate network (as two associates do at my company), the tips you provided and the accompanying links will be very helpful. I took notice to one particular passage in your article:
"On September 25, 2001, the research group Gartner warned enterprises to
'immediately' replace their Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS)server software with a more secure server application."
I have been reading about Gartner's recommendation through various news outlets, but no one ever seems to go on and actually talk about alternatives. I would like to offer you, and any other E-Letter readers that may ask, some information on at least one alternative.
The Apache Software Foundation (www.apache.org) develops the Apache HTTP (web) Server. Here is an excerpt from their "about" page that discusses their overall mission:
"The Apache Project is a collaborative software development effort aimed at creating a robust, commercial-grade, featureful, and freely-available source code implementation of an HTTP (Web) server. The project is jointly managed by a group of volunteers located around the world, using the Internet and the Web to communicate, plan, and develop the server and its related documentation. These volunteers are known as the Apache Group. In addition, hundreds of users have contributed ideas, code, and documentation to the project. This file is intended to briefly describe the history of the Apache Group and recognize the many contributors."
Apache is actually the number one used web server on the internet. According to Netcraft, an organization that surveys the internet and collects web server and usage statistics, Apache held an approximate 60% market share of active web sites as of August 2001, versus an approximate 28% market share for Microsoft's IIS. Survey results here: http://www.netcraft.com/survey/ This survey includes over 30 million web sites and does not dilineate between corporate use, personal use, Fortune 500/100 companies, etc. (as some other surveys do).
In addition, Apache (especially when used in conjunction with UNIX-based operating systems) tends to provide a more secure web server solution. A recent Ziff-Davis (ZDNet) article from July 20 discusses the security robustness of Apache over IIS. Here is the link: www.zdnet.com/eweek/stories/general/0,11011,279286 0,00.html
Finally, I refer you to this link: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/09/25/194204 Slashdot.org provides an open forum to discuss current events, news articles and various topics, all loosely tied to their relevance to information technology. The topic of this particular link is "Switching Painlessly from IIS to Apache?" A network administrator has received a mandate from management to explore a systems migration from IIS to Apache, largely due to the recent Code Red and Nimda attacks. The discussion that follows provides a plethora of informative, insightful and interesting comments.
Again, thank you for writing your article and I hope that some of the information I have provided you today will be helpful to our industry colleagues.
*****
Anyone in a similar situation is free to copy this letter and mark it up appropriately for their needs.
With the exception of just a few merchants that are set up to receive electronic payments from your bank, a large portion of your payments through Quicken and Money are still done by printing and mailing checks. So, instead of writing checks yourself, the bank is printing and mailing out checks for you.
Even though your bank statement will list the payee's name instead of a check number, there is an actual check number and a physical check associated with your payment (in the case of payees that don't take electronic payments). I know this because I worked in the PC Banking department of CoreStates during my senior year of college...and because I use this same method to send money to family members--who receive paper checks in the mail.
I haven't seen any Sacajwea dollars since one or so months after they came out. People must be hoarding them like $2 bills.
The 50-state quarters seem to be abundant. I could be wrong, but I believe you see more of those quarters circulating due to the popularity of those collection books where you can pop in one of each quarter. At least that's the way it is at my house. We'll go through the change basket looking for quarters. If we see a quarter that's not yet in the book, we stick it in there. If we already have it, then it's fair game for the machines at the laundromat:-)
Do you seriously believe that only "working class" people go to strip clubs, smoke pot, play pool and drink at bars??? I've seen plenty of luxury cars parked outside of strip clubs and bars.
Uh, yeah, you "own" a piece of the moon. Once a group of people land on the moon and set up house on "your" 1,774 acres they will own it until someone with bigger guns/clubs kicks them off. The law of the jungle works in outer space, too.
Property and ownership are illusions created by civilization. You only own something so long as you can defend it and hold onto it. In our society, we help each other out and generally agree not to tread on others' property, but by no means is property or ownership a God-given right.
"Re:Incorrect Assumption
by Anonymous Coward on 7:14 21st September, 2001 (Score:0)
Yeah.
And Linux isn't free, because it came taped to the cover of a magazine that I paid $4 for."
Your analogy is incorrect. You can acquire Linux without having to purchase that magazine. You cannot get and legally use IIS without purchasing a copy of Windows 2K, 9X.
"Actually, IIS is entirely free. Or at least it comes built into Windows 2000 and 98, and is downloadable for free for NT and 95."
It precisely *is not* free if you can only get it bundled with software or if you own a certain piece of software. You paid for IIS when you purchased your MS OS. Whether or not you choose to download it and actually use it is entirely up to you.
Same thing with Internet Explorer...it is not a free program; you paid for it when you bought Win 98,2000,NT, etc. For proof, just read the EULA...you can only use it if you own a copy of an MS OS.
I upgraded from an ATI @Work 98 w/8mb to the venerable Voodoo3 3000 AGP w/16mb when I read the system requirements for Quake 3 (after I bought it). A less than a year later I upped my PII 266 to a 350 and got myself a Tyan Trinity 400 to pep things up. I increased my RAM from 64 megs to 256 recently since it's so cheap now and it definitely helped to boost performance a tiny bit.
So far the Voodoo3 3000 has lasted through Q3A (ID), Soldier of Fortune (based upon ID's software) and Half Life TFC (based upon ID's software). I'd like to say that the card is working well for my new copy of Tribes 2, but no matter what I do, I'm getting the Unhandled Exception Error and can't play it yet:'(
With that hardware setup, I don't think he's running anything mission critical enough to warrant a UPS. I don't have one either on my Smoothwall, either.
Hey, Smoothwall 0.9.9 comes out this Sunday! Get ready for some enhanced firewall logging, better DNS lookup facilities and a web-managed VPN gateway!
I recommend Smoothwall, as well. I was using MandrakeSecurity Single Network Firewall before and I found its web-based interface rather slow. Smoothwall's web interface is very peppy (on the same machine, an old P200). I have had no problems with Smoothwall whatsoever and the only reboots are due to power outages. Version 0.99 is due out this Sunday and promises some tasty new improvements, including a VPN gateway!
One convenience of using an old PC and a custom Linux firewall is that you can pop in a 56k modem in addition to the dual NICs. If the cable/DSL goes out, you can use the 56k to dial out to a backup dial-up ISP.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, we could get a new cannister/motor installed in the basement, but the vacuum jacks are only in certain parts of the house. Even in the reachable parts of the house, using the flexible hose is a pain the further you get from the jack because it always bumps into knick-knacks and stuff. CVS is just a clumsy, "gee-whiz" idea leftover from an earlier time.
A smallish ping-pong ball can get sucked around easily, but there is no way the motor is strong enough to create enough suction to draw CAT5...especially when you consider that the tubes have to make turns at certain points. It would be easier to tie some CAT5 to a hamster, snake or gerbil and let it run around the tubes. There's probably quite a few guys in SF that could help you with this.
My thought is that if someone doesn't care that the house is now wired, then they'll just ignore the cabling and that will be ok. However, it may spark some interest compared to other, identical houses on the street. The vacuum system itself is not that great given the jack layout and newer parts of the house don't even have jacks; so the tubes are essentially wasted for practical vacuuming purposes.
There are only four vacuum jacks and the plug-in tubes cannot reach/are too cumbersome to vacuum every part of the house like a regular vacuum can. And forget about the tubes reaching the family room, which was added years after the vacuum tubes were installed. It is possible, however, to wire the family room since the tubes are at least in proximity and a rogue line can be strung out there if need be.
My mom's house has a central vacuum system, too. We've never used it in the 25 years that we've had the house, so the dust puppies living in its tubes must be ancient! Before my mom sells the house and moves, I'd like to run some CAT5 through the tubes and set up some keystone jacks in place of the current vacuum sockets. Then the realtor can say that the house is "wired for broadband internet and home networking." Should add a dollar or two to the market value :)
:)
For the unitiated, this is what a central vacuum system is all about:
Imagine the telephone wiring in your house. Now imagine dirt, dust and tiny bits of garbage going through those wires and getting sucked into that little junction box in your basement. That is the jist of a central vacuum system.
In the basement there is essentially a cannister vacuum attached to the wall. However, the motor is more powerful and there is a 2-3 inch diameter tube going from the top of the cannister into the floors and walls above. In certain rooms, there are vacuum jacks just like phone jacks, but wider of course. To use the vacuum, you insert a long, flexible tube into the jack. The end of the tube that goes into the jack is metallic and connects two metal contacts in the jack to turn on the power for the cannister in the basement. It's just like using the tube extension on a regular upright vacuum cleaner.
I have 1000 feet of CAT5 on standby. All I have to do now is find the time to do this and also learn how to wire CAT5 into jacks. My words of advice are this:
1. Make sure the tubes are relatively clear of debris. I've shone a flashlight into my vacuum cleaner tubes and the amount of stuff that rests on the bottom of horizontal runs of tubes is amazing.
2. Check the local building codes to see whether or not plenum cable is required for a residence. It's sure required for offices around here. Plenum costs more, but it doesn't get smokey and toxic like regular cable in case of a fire.
3. Unless your tubing is really complicated, you should have access to the actual tubes in certain parts of the house (basement ceiling, inside certain closets). If the tube is visible in certain places and then it bends up into the walls, feel free to cut yourself a little porthole into the tube to help fish the CAT5 through. Note: Make sure you follow tip #1 before cutting holes...or wear goggles
4. Think about where a broadband internet connection would be coming into the house. Try to syncronise the location of the hub/switch/firewall/server room with this location.
Other than that, the rules should be the same as if you're putting wire through any other object and I'll defer to the experts here for that advice. Good luck!!!!
Using a real, paper calendar for personal use is better than a software calendar, but one of the things that my company uses Exchange for is so that there is one, unified company calendar. I've never used it, but I'm sure that Lotus Notes offers the same thing.
It's nice to click on the calendar and see who is here and not here today, what times the conference room will be taken, when an associate will be out travelling, when most people will be on vacation and when someone has left early because they're sick. The best part is that it's simple to update and all the information is accessable at the click of a mouse, as opposed to running around the office, wasting time and finding out.
I may be offtopic, but since we're talking about Mandrake I thought I'd ask. Has anyone been using Mandrake Corporate Server 1.0? I've had my eye on it for a while for use as a small web, email and Samba server to run off my (firewalled) cable modem. However, I like to read reviews of distros before I go ahead and buy or download them. Thanks :)
It was a beagle, not a bassett hound. I have the latter and they're much longer than beagles...with cute floppy ears.
Putting Mr. Nimoy aside for a moment...what about the actual Spock character? Is he old enough to fit into the time frame of this new show? Sure, he'd be younger...I'd recommend the guy who played Methos on the Highlander series to play a younger Mr. Spock.
In the case of these CD's, I would say keep buying them and returning them constantly to the store and getting a new copy. Eventually the store will have piles of opened and returned CDs. The stores will complain to the record companies eventually.
I'm not too familiar with the Star Trek universe but I enjoy watching the various shows now and then. One thing I have learned is that Vulcans have a pretty long lifespan. IE, Mr. Tuvok from Voyager also served under Sulu from a couple human generations ago.
My question is this: since Vulcans live so long, is there any chance that Mr. Spock could make a cameo appearance on Enterprise? I have no idea how old Mr. Spock is, so I could be way off base.
I recently received the ASA (American Society of Appraisers) email newsletter. Someone wrote an article talking about the recent Nimbda and WTC.EXE attacks and how we should be careful to update our virus software, not open attachments, etc. She also mentioned the Gartner Group recommendation. However, no alternatives to IIS were discussed. I sent off an email talking about Apache's strength and popularity over IIS. I also referenced this discussion in my email. Here is the text of what I wrote:
6 0,00.html
4 Slashdot.org provides an open forum to discuss current events, news articles and various topics, all loosely tied to their relevance to information technology. The topic of this particular link is "Switching Painlessly from IIS to Apache?" A network administrator has received a mandate from management to explore a systems migration from IIS to Apache, largely due to the recent Code Red and Nimda attacks. The discussion that follows provides a plethora of informative, insightful and interesting comments.
*****
Thank you for writing your informative article regarding recent computer virus and worm attacks in the ASA BV E-Letter. Since a number of valuation analysts sometimes find themselves administering the corporate network (as two associates do at my company), the tips you provided and the accompanying links will be very helpful. I took notice to one particular passage in your article:
"On September 25, 2001, the research group Gartner warned enterprises to
'immediately' replace their Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS)server software with a more secure server application."
I have been reading about Gartner's recommendation through various news outlets, but no one ever seems to go on and actually talk about alternatives. I would like to offer you, and any other E-Letter readers that may ask, some information on at least one alternative.
The Apache Software Foundation (www.apache.org) develops the Apache HTTP (web) Server. Here is an excerpt from their "about" page that discusses their overall mission:
"The Apache Project is a collaborative software development effort aimed at creating a robust, commercial-grade, featureful, and freely-available source code implementation of an HTTP (Web) server. The project is jointly managed by a group of volunteers located around the world, using the Internet and the Web to communicate, plan, and develop the server and its related documentation. These volunteers are known as the Apache Group. In addition, hundreds of users have contributed ideas, code, and documentation to the project. This file is intended to briefly describe the history of the Apache Group and recognize the many contributors."
Apache is actually the number one used web server on the internet. According to Netcraft, an organization that surveys the internet and collects web server and usage statistics, Apache held an approximate 60% market share of active web sites as of August 2001, versus an approximate 28% market share for Microsoft's IIS. Survey results here: http://www.netcraft.com/survey/ This survey includes over 30 million web sites and does not dilineate between corporate use, personal use, Fortune 500/100 companies, etc. (as some other surveys do).
In addition, Apache (especially when used in conjunction with UNIX-based operating systems) tends to provide a more secure web server solution. A recent Ziff-Davis (ZDNet) article from July 20 discusses the security robustness of Apache over IIS. Here is the link: www.zdnet.com/eweek/stories/general/0,11011,27928
Finally, I refer you to this link: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/09/25/19420
Again, thank you for writing your article and I hope that some of the information I have provided you today will be helpful to our industry colleagues.
*****
Anyone in a similar situation is free to copy this letter and mark it up appropriately for their needs.
Hey, I thought stores were not allowed to pass the credit card surcharge onto customers.
With the exception of just a few merchants that are set up to receive electronic payments from your bank, a large portion of your payments through Quicken and Money are still done by printing and mailing checks. So, instead of writing checks yourself, the bank is printing and mailing out checks for you.
Even though your bank statement will list the payee's name instead of a check number, there is an actual check number and a physical check associated with your payment (in the case of payees that don't take electronic payments). I know this because I worked in the PC Banking department of CoreStates during my senior year of college...and because I use this same method to send money to family members--who receive paper checks in the mail.
I haven't seen any Sacajwea dollars since one or so months after they came out. People must be hoarding them like $2 bills.
:-)
The 50-state quarters seem to be abundant. I could be wrong, but I believe you see more of those quarters circulating due to the popularity of those collection books where you can pop in one of each quarter. At least that's the way it is at my house. We'll go through the change basket looking for quarters. If we see a quarter that's not yet in the book, we stick it in there. If we already have it, then it's fair game for the machines at the laundromat
Do you seriously believe that only "working class" people go to strip clubs, smoke pot, play pool and drink at bars??? I've seen plenty of luxury cars parked outside of strip clubs and bars.
Uh, yeah, you "own" a piece of the moon. Once a group of people land on the moon and set up house on "your" 1,774 acres they will own it until someone with bigger guns/clubs kicks them off. The law of the jungle works in outer space, too.
Property and ownership are illusions created by civilization. You only own something so long as you can defend it and hold onto it. In our society, we help each other out and generally agree not to tread on others' property, but by no means is property or ownership a God-given right.
I recently applied for membership at the local Hollywood Video. When asked for my SSN on the form, I put the following:
N O Y F B
Guess what it stands for?
"Re:Incorrect Assumption
by Anonymous Coward on 7:14 21st September, 2001 (Score:0)
Yeah.
And Linux isn't free, because it came taped to the cover of a magazine that I paid $4 for."
Your analogy is incorrect. You can acquire Linux without having to purchase that magazine. You cannot get and legally use IIS without purchasing a copy of Windows 2K, 9X.
"Actually, IIS is entirely free. Or at least it comes built into Windows 2000 and 98, and is downloadable for free for NT and 95."
It precisely *is not* free if you can only get it bundled with software or if you own a certain piece of software. You paid for IIS when you purchased your MS OS. Whether or not you choose to download it and actually use it is entirely up to you.
Same thing with Internet Explorer...it is not a free program; you paid for it when you bought Win 98,2000,NT, etc. For proof, just read the EULA...you can only use it if you own a copy of an MS OS.
A lot of NSA people would probably qualify, then. Especially those developing NSA Linux!
that the surgeon yelled out "First Incision!"
/me raises his hand.
:'(
I upgraded from an ATI @Work 98 w/8mb to the venerable Voodoo3 3000 AGP w/16mb when I read the system requirements for Quake 3 (after I bought it). A less than a year later I upped my PII 266 to a 350 and got myself a Tyan Trinity 400 to pep things up. I increased my RAM from 64 megs to 256 recently since it's so cheap now and it definitely helped to boost performance a tiny bit.
So far the Voodoo3 3000 has lasted through Q3A (ID), Soldier of Fortune (based upon ID's software) and Half Life TFC (based upon ID's software). I'd like to say that the card is working well for my new copy of Tribes 2, but no matter what I do, I'm getting the Unhandled Exception Error and can't play it yet
With that hardware setup, I don't think he's running anything mission critical enough to warrant a UPS. I don't have one either on my Smoothwall, either.
Hey, Smoothwall 0.9.9 comes out this Sunday! Get ready for some enhanced firewall logging, better DNS lookup facilities and a web-managed VPN gateway!
"Me too!!!"
I recommend Smoothwall, as well. I was using MandrakeSecurity Single Network Firewall before and I found its web-based interface rather slow. Smoothwall's web interface is very peppy (on the same machine, an old P200). I have had no problems with Smoothwall whatsoever and the only reboots are due to power outages. Version 0.99 is due out this Sunday and promises some tasty new improvements, including a VPN gateway!
One convenience of using an old PC and a custom Linux firewall is that you can pop in a 56k modem in addition to the dual NICs. If the cable/DSL goes out, you can use the 56k to dial out to a backup dial-up ISP.
I remember seeing something like that for OS/2.