Back in '92 and getting started in ham radio, I fixed a friend's father's PC. He had been an extra class for years already, opened a drawer full of radios (scanners, not ham transceivers) and said "pick one." I picked a Radio Shack PRO-2005 that he modified to receive cellular, and I still sleep to the sounds of that radio every night! I even modified it to support PC control two years ago.
Then in '94 while working desktop support at NYU, I went to a few dorms after hours to fix problem machines. One guy brought a fifth of vodka for me the next day as a thank you. Haven't opened it yet.
EXT3 can shrink, but I don't know about the others
I've heard that EXT3 cannot shrink and that ReiserFS is the only one that can. While not a demo of shrinking, here's part 2 of a 3-part series of articles on using ReiserFS with LVM. This segment shows off resizing a partition without even unmounting it!
And the timeliness of /. prevails!
on
G4TechTV Announced
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
I was *just* wishing for TechTV to start showing up on my Comcast Digital Cable. In the meantime, I was watching a Screen Savers episode On Demand -- the one about security, not 20 minutes ago. I figured it was going to be a lousy glossing over, but they opened by talking about Nessus and spent a good 10-15 minutes going over a nice-looking Windows port of Nessus, Newt. They really seemed to know what they were talking about. A couple of screw-ups here and there, but I was just blown away that a couple of tv dorks even heard of Nessus and could speak authoritatively about it.
While true for many years, not so anymore. Nextel in the US offers free incoming calls on some of their plans. I also have unlimited AOL IM for $5/mo so I don't have any per-message SMS charges.
I guess the submitter doesn't remember Lotus eSuite.
Re:Too many features,
on
Camera Phone Tips
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
all had a battery that lasted at least 72 hours on average use (my T39m lasted for about a week)
I really don't understand these types of comments. Although I've always heard no one actually TALKS on their "mobile" in Europe because everyone is sending millions upon millions of SMS messages. If that's all you're doing then, yes, I can understand how your phone can last a week on a single charge. We have better devices for that function over here. They're called Blackberries.
Stateside, since we don't really "do" SMS over here, we talk on our phones and that uses a LOT more battery. I know three people who use more than 1,600 minutes a month of talk time on their cells. I average around 1,200 myself. Show me a phone that can handle 1,000 cellular minutes a month and only be charged 4 times in that month and I'll... I'll... well I don't know what I'll do because Nextel doesn't carry it!
One scam I hate is the shipping.. $5 items that fit in a courier pak costing $15 to ship?
That "scam" is to lower the listing fees paid to Ebay by the seller. I've seen $100 computers with $200 for "shipping and handling". Now that Ebay's cut and Paypal's cut are going into the same pot, some people view both charges as one fee. It's not to rip you off, its to rip off Ebay, er, keep more of their profits.
bonuses get taxed 50% (or damn close) no matter how much you make per year
If you can expect annual bonuses, jack up your deductions with a W-4 right before your bonus hits if you want to keep more of that money. Payroll depts are required to process as many W-4's as you submit -- not only during major life changes. Don't forget to bring it back down to a normal range for the next paycheck. Also, if you have a 401(k) and want to put most of the bonus in there, jack your 401(k) contributions to the limit right before the bonus kicks, and then lower it after the paycheck with the bonus. Puts the whole bonus in your 401(k) as pretax money.
Remember, it is key to think of any overpayments of your federal tax witholdings as an interest-free loan you are giving the government. People who lack the maturity to save tend to use income tax returns as a "vacation fund" and often cannot wait until the refund checks come in because they need the money so desperately. Although I don't have to care anymore, my absolute best year for planning had the feds owing me $125 on April 15th. That means I shorted myself about $10 a month over the entire previous year. In other words, I put *all* of my money to work for me that year. Nowadays I get a downpayment on a car back:(
Isn't that the usual attack on Free Software? "who do we sue when shit breaks?"
Fsck sue, companies really didn't know who to *call*. Knowing us zealots, being more tech than business-oriented, how many of us have said, "don't BUY it, I'll just bring in a copy from home. Yes its legal. You can install it on every single PC and server in the company." So the next question is, "who am I gonna call when something is broken?" After about 5 years, we could reply, "LinuxCare" (for distros other than RH and SuSe) and then after another 5, we could finally say "IBM".
Close to one of my ideas.. instant translation between any two spoken languages. I sure could have used it in Paris. God help me if I have to go to the Tokyo office!
Did anyone else think this was going to be a story about thousands of TiVo users recording the animated Clone Wars episodes that recently aired on Cartoon Network?
For one, to save the 100,000 (well 50,000) thousand jobs left there, and to make them competitive again, all while bringing credit back to the brand. Non-techies or Wall St-watchers (and that's still a huge population) have an old-fashioned respect for Ma Bell. A total ressurection could bring it back from the brink, the way it did for IBM, as you originally mentioned.
And what did we do different? We kept the mainframe business, kept the research. We added Global Services and became the world's larget IT consulting firm overnight. What core business could AT&T focus on and still compete in today's marketplace? Don't they still own most of the copper that nearly all the other long distance carriers lease from? And what about nationwide and global networking? Their primary competitor is MCI Worldcom. Ewwwww. Just about the only thing that survived the dotbomb era is that we will still need ever more bandwidth, every year, forever, and ever, Amen.
Valid point about Sun, and I had a conversation with IBM's Executive Vice President of Communications last September. I told him how we in the trenches are a little nervous about actions Sun may take while teetering on the edge of failure since they own Java, and our entire Websphere line depends on it. One wrong move with Java, and we stand to get into some serious hot water with our entire web application server line. Not good. I think high up, IBM is nervous about facing anti-competitive regulatory actions again, and I think that would be triggered much more quickly if we snatched up Sun than if we snatched up what's left of AT&T. All that aside, being 2004, we would partner long before picking *anyone* up. And I would venture a bet that a massive project with AT&T would get into trouble (re: unpaid bills) before it ever got off the ground. Still think it would be fun to be tasked with "saving AT&T", though. Now, its 84 degrees and sunny out. I'm going back outside!!:)
But AT&T's so far gone, not even a total shakeout can save them.
I'd like to see IBM pick up the stinky, fly-ridden roadkill shell of a carcass that is AT&T, and rebuild it over 5 years as a massive showcase for On Demand, and then divest it as the world's largest, well 2nd largest, On Demand business. I'd definitely ask to work on that project. That would be HUGE.
Come on, now, being just a tad bit futuristic, aren't we? Do you seriously believe that not one person anywhere receives not one paper bill anymore? I used CheckFree back in the 80's, so I'm about as tech as it gets with respect to bill payment. That said, I never *ever* permit vendors to automatically debit my checking account. Instead, I schedule pushes as much as possible and e-bills whenever possible. But I still get paper bills from Comcast, the water company, god damned Wells Fargo Mortgage (PLEASE don't send me a bill if I'm caught up), Verizon (even though they started sending e-bills months ago), Nextel (Yet they make PDFs available.. PLEASE give me the option to shut off the paper copy), the condo association, the local tax collector, and lets see.. anyone I forget? I think that's enough to make the point. We get ebills from the power/gas company, verizon, and our insurance guy.
If you are honestly shocked that anyone could possibly still get a paper bill, then you need to get back to reality. I respect your low UID, but that usually means you have a greater sense of reality than the usual lot around here.
Yeah, your results are not typical. Comcast recently changed their rates, so I know I'm 3Mbits/s down, and I believe 256kbits/s up. I regularly push 26kbit/s up and get over 100KBytes/s down. When I pick something really popular, I've been able to break 200KBytes/s down. That's 2MBits/s. Believe me, ISOs come FLYING in at at that rate, relative to any straight p2p.
I'm kind of torn here, because I feel that BT should be used to distribute the files, but I also feel that we should have a better patching mechanism in place, so that we're all either pulling the 2MB patch files from the k.o mirrors, or better yet, from USENET. So, until we all wise up and try to preserve the waning resource that we call bandwidth, I'd like to see the 30MB kernels out on BT... besides it might bring some legitimacy to p2p.
Oh, and why aren't there any SuSE ISO's on BT? I thought we're allowed to redistribute them so long as we don't charge?
The point is you shouldn't trust any site other than Kernel.org, but if you can verify that what you got is a perfect match for what you would have downloaded from kernel.org, then its just as good. You should never, ever download a kernel from a rogue site and then verify the MD5SUM against that same rogue site, or rely upon BitTorrent's built-in error checking to certify that you received an uncorrupted copy. The point is to ensure that you received a perfect copy of kernel.org's distribution (i.e. no trojans), and only kernel.org's published MD5SUM can tell you that.
But what happens when I set it next to two or three computers?
Put a NAS frontend on it and let clients mount it. A little too "enterprisey" for the hobby crowd I know, but a solution nonetheless. Instead of saving up to buy one of these, I could just put a hard disk somewhere in my computer room and have clients map the drive space. Also comes in handy during those pesky FBI raids when your data drives are actually installed in the attic or inside the walls themselves.
Check out Pac-Audio for their steering wheel control stuff. I'm waiting for them to release their interface to let me connect an MP3 player to the unused satellite radio port on my Murano. Currently in test, should ship RSN.
As much as I hate to reply to AC's, you incorrectly assume that all Windows users frequently visit WindowsUpdate and *get* the latest versions of Outlook and Outlook Express. Nothing could be further from the truth. Viruses are not spread by the 10 people using Eudora or Mozilla under Windows and they CERTAINLY are not being spread by the people using webmail, such as Yahoo! or SquirrelMail.
Windows and Linux admins in the same organization? What organization is this?!
Damn near every Linux-centric organization I've ever been a part of, for a start.
Your experience may be unique. For the organizations that I've dealt with as an IT Architect, thier Linux personnel grew out of UNIX operations, not Windows, which IMHO makes much more sense. There are always some hangers-on who think that the Intel space is called "Wintel" and that "if its Intel, the Windows folks own it", which is just really stupid.
Eastern Pennsylvania. Any day, any time. You gotta help drag it out. Contact me. Bring a pickup truck. Used to house ooooooold DECtalk gear. Still has 1 4U DECtalk unit installed, if you ever wanted to do text-to-voice with DTMF readback over 8 phone lines at once.
I also am a strong proponent of virtualization if possible. I'm up to about 15 virtual machines running under VMWare ESX, and I started a new box intended to run Linux VMs using usermode linux. Now that "virtualization" is a key buzzword for 2004, I don't think I'll ever get around to populating the rack with gear. Get it out of my house.
Slashdot Mirror
Back in '92 and getting started in ham radio, I fixed a friend's father's PC. He had been an extra class for years already, opened a drawer full of radios (scanners, not ham transceivers) and said "pick one." I picked a Radio Shack PRO-2005 that he modified to receive cellular, and I still sleep to the sounds of that radio every night! I even modified it to support PC control two years ago.
Then in '94 while working desktop support at NYU, I went to a few dorms after hours to fix problem machines. One guy brought a fifth of vodka for me the next day as a thank you. Haven't opened it yet.
reiserfs can be resized (grow and shringk) but must be unmounted
Re-read my parent. I *just* linked to an article showing how to resize reiser without unmounting it.
EXT3 can shrink, but I don't know about the others
I've heard that EXT3 cannot shrink and that ReiserFS is the only one that can. While not a demo of shrinking, here's part 2 of a 3-part series of articles on using ReiserFS with LVM. This segment shows off resizing a partition without even unmounting it!
I was *just* wishing for TechTV to start showing up on my Comcast Digital Cable. In the meantime, I was watching a Screen Savers episode On Demand -- the one about security, not 20 minutes ago. I figured it was going to be a lousy glossing over, but they opened by talking about Nessus and spent a good 10-15 minutes going over a nice-looking Windows port of Nessus, Newt. They really seemed to know what they were talking about. A couple of screw-ups here and there, but I was just blown away that a couple of tv dorks even heard of Nessus and could speak authoritatively about it.
While true for many years, not so anymore. Nextel in the US offers free incoming calls on some of their plans. I also have unlimited AOL IM for $5/mo so I don't have any per-message SMS charges.
I guess the submitter doesn't remember Lotus eSuite.
all had a battery that lasted at least 72 hours on average use (my T39m lasted for about a week)
I really don't understand these types of comments. Although I've always heard no one actually TALKS on their "mobile" in Europe because everyone is sending millions upon millions of SMS messages. If that's all you're doing then, yes, I can understand how your phone can last a week on a single charge. We have better devices for that function over here. They're called Blackberries.
Stateside, since we don't really "do" SMS over here, we talk on our phones and that uses a LOT more battery. I know three people who use more than 1,600 minutes a month of talk time on their cells. I average around 1,200 myself. Show me a phone that can handle 1,000 cellular minutes a month and only be charged 4 times in that month and I'll... I'll... well I don't know what I'll do because Nextel doesn't carry it!
One scam I hate is the shipping.. $5 items that fit in a courier pak costing $15 to ship?
That "scam" is to lower the listing fees paid to Ebay by the seller. I've seen $100 computers with $200 for "shipping and handling". Now that Ebay's cut and Paypal's cut are going into the same pot, some people view both charges as one fee. It's not to rip you off, its to rip off Ebay, er, keep more of their profits.
Yeah, if you don't mind not being able to sit down for the next five years.
Now, if you live in the so-called democracy called USA, that may be different
No, its not.
bonuses get taxed 50% (or damn close) no matter how much you make per year
:(
If you can expect annual bonuses, jack up your deductions with a W-4 right before your bonus hits if you want to keep more of that money. Payroll depts are required to process as many W-4's as you submit -- not only during major life changes. Don't forget to bring it back down to a normal range for the next paycheck. Also, if you have a 401(k) and want to put most of the bonus in there, jack your 401(k) contributions to the limit right before the bonus kicks, and then lower it after the paycheck with the bonus. Puts the whole bonus in your 401(k) as pretax money.
Remember, it is key to think of any overpayments of your federal tax witholdings as an interest-free loan you are giving the government. People who lack the maturity to save tend to use income tax returns as a "vacation fund" and often cannot wait until the refund checks come in because they need the money so desperately. Although I don't have to care anymore, my absolute best year for planning had the feds owing me $125 on April 15th. That means I shorted myself about $10 a month over the entire previous year. In other words, I put *all* of my money to work for me that year. Nowadays I get a downpayment on a car back
Isn't that the usual attack on Free Software? "who do we sue when shit breaks?"
Fsck sue, companies really didn't know who to *call*. Knowing us zealots, being more tech than business-oriented, how many of us have said, "don't BUY it, I'll just bring in a copy from home. Yes its legal. You can install it on every single PC and server in the company." So the next question is, "who am I gonna call when something is broken?" After about 5 years, we could reply, "LinuxCare" (for distros other than RH and SuSe) and then after another 5, we could finally say "IBM".
Speech generation and recognition?
Close to one of my ideas.. instant translation between any two spoken languages. I sure could have used it in Paris. God help me if I have to go to the Tokyo office!
Did anyone else think this was going to be a story about thousands of TiVo users recording the animated Clone Wars episodes that recently aired on Cartoon Network?
For one, to save the 100,000 (well 50,000) thousand jobs left there, and to make them competitive again, all while bringing credit back to the brand. Non-techies or Wall St-watchers (and that's still a huge population) have an old-fashioned respect for Ma Bell. A total ressurection could bring it back from the brink, the way it did for IBM, as you originally mentioned.
:)
And what did we do different? We kept the mainframe business, kept the research. We added Global Services and became the world's larget IT consulting firm overnight. What core business could AT&T focus on and still compete in today's marketplace? Don't they still own most of the copper that nearly all the other long distance carriers lease from? And what about nationwide and global networking? Their primary competitor is MCI Worldcom. Ewwwww. Just about the only thing that survived the dotbomb era is that we will still need ever more bandwidth, every year, forever, and ever, Amen.
Valid point about Sun, and I had a conversation with IBM's Executive Vice President of Communications last September. I told him how we in the trenches are a little nervous about actions Sun may take while teetering on the edge of failure since they own Java, and our entire Websphere line depends on it. One wrong move with Java, and we stand to get into some serious hot water with our entire web application server line. Not good. I think high up, IBM is nervous about facing anti-competitive regulatory actions again, and I think that would be triggered much more quickly if we snatched up Sun than if we snatched up what's left of AT&T. All that aside, being 2004, we would partner long before picking *anyone* up. And I would venture a bet that a massive project with AT&T would get into trouble (re: unpaid bills) before it ever got off the ground. Still think it would be fun to be tasked with "saving AT&T", though. Now, its 84 degrees and sunny out. I'm going back outside!!
But AT&T's so far gone, not even a total shakeout can save them.
I'd like to see IBM pick up the stinky, fly-ridden roadkill shell of a carcass that is AT&T, and rebuild it over 5 years as a massive showcase for On Demand, and then divest it as the world's largest, well 2nd largest, On Demand business. I'd definitely ask to work on that project. That would be HUGE.
Who gets paper versions of their bills anymore?
Come on, now, being just a tad bit futuristic, aren't we? Do you seriously believe that not one person anywhere receives not one paper bill anymore? I used CheckFree back in the 80's, so I'm about as tech as it gets with respect to bill payment. That said, I never *ever* permit vendors to automatically debit my checking account. Instead, I schedule pushes as much as possible and e-bills whenever possible. But I still get paper bills from Comcast, the water company, god damned Wells Fargo Mortgage (PLEASE don't send me a bill if I'm caught up), Verizon (even though they started sending e-bills months ago), Nextel (Yet they make PDFs available.. PLEASE give me the option to shut off the paper copy), the condo association, the local tax collector, and lets see.. anyone I forget? I think that's enough to make the point. We get ebills from the power/gas company, verizon, and our insurance guy.
If you are honestly shocked that anyone could possibly still get a paper bill, then you need to get back to reality. I respect your low UID, but that usually means you have a greater sense of reality than the usual lot around here.
Yeah, your results are not typical. Comcast recently changed their rates, so I know I'm 3Mbits/s down, and I believe 256kbits/s up. I regularly push 26kbit/s up and get over 100KBytes/s down. When I pick something really popular, I've been able to break 200KBytes/s down. That's 2MBits/s. Believe me, ISOs come FLYING in at at that rate, relative to any straight p2p.
I'm kind of torn here, because I feel that BT should be used to distribute the files, but I also feel that we should have a better patching mechanism in place, so that we're all either pulling the 2MB patch files from the k.o mirrors, or better yet, from USENET. So, until we all wise up and try to preserve the waning resource that we call bandwidth, I'd like to see the 30MB kernels out on BT... besides it might bring some legitimacy to p2p.
Oh, and why aren't there any SuSE ISO's on BT? I thought we're allowed to redistribute them so long as we don't charge?
The point is you shouldn't trust any site other than Kernel.org, but if you can verify that what you got is a perfect match for what you would have downloaded from kernel.org, then its just as good. You should never, ever download a kernel from a rogue site and then verify the MD5SUM against that same rogue site, or rely upon BitTorrent's built-in error checking to certify that you received an uncorrupted copy. The point is to ensure that you received a perfect copy of kernel.org's distribution (i.e. no trojans), and only kernel.org's published MD5SUM can tell you that.
But what happens when I set it next to two or three computers?
Put a NAS frontend on it and let clients mount it. A little too "enterprisey" for the hobby crowd I know, but a solution nonetheless. Instead of saving up to buy one of these, I could just put a hard disk somewhere in my computer room and have clients map the drive space. Also comes in handy during those pesky FBI raids when your data drives are actually installed in the attic or inside the walls themselves.
Check out Pac-Audio for their steering wheel control stuff. I'm waiting for them to release their interface to let me connect an MP3 player to the unused satellite radio port on my Murano. Currently in test, should ship RSN.
As much as I hate to reply to AC's, you incorrectly assume that all Windows users frequently visit WindowsUpdate and *get* the latest versions of Outlook and Outlook Express. Nothing could be further from the truth. Viruses are not spread by the 10 people using Eudora or Mozilla under Windows and they CERTAINLY are not being spread by the people using webmail, such as Yahoo! or SquirrelMail.
I'm beginning to see why you posted AC.
Windows and Linux admins in the same organization? What organization is this?!
Damn near every Linux-centric organization I've ever been a part of, for a start.
Your experience may be unique. For the organizations that I've dealt with as an IT Architect, thier Linux personnel grew out of UNIX operations, not Windows, which IMHO makes much more sense. There are always some hangers-on who think that the Intel space is called "Wintel" and that "if its Intel, the Windows folks own it", which is just really stupid.
Hey, is it worth studying CERTs OCTAVE method for survivability anymore, or is it too outdated now?
Eastern Pennsylvania. Any day, any time. You gotta help drag it out. Contact me. Bring a pickup truck. Used to house ooooooold DECtalk gear. Still has 1 4U DECtalk unit installed, if you ever wanted to do text-to-voice with DTMF readback over 8 phone lines at once.
I also am a strong proponent of virtualization if possible. I'm up to about 15 virtual machines running under VMWare ESX, and I started a new box intended to run Linux VMs using usermode linux. Now that "virtualization" is a key buzzword for 2004, I don't think I'll ever get around to populating the rack with gear. Get it out of my house.