Oh my god! It's true! OSS projects are sexual in nature!;P (It's a joke for those of you who don't get those kinds of things) Beyond that. What in the hell is a "pumpking"?
Hey, if you're happy being just a user instead of actually running your own services that's fine. But the previous company (Stratos) actually addressed the needs of people like me. Corecomm was only interested in the money to be gained from more customers. On the other hand, Speakeasy has been excellent. I've only had to deal with customer support four times in five years and each experience was handled flawlessly. I'm not the average consumer and don't expect to be treated like one. Corecomm should have known what kind of customers the Stratos user base were when they bought the company.
"thumping" and "wads". Two words that should never be used outside of sexual references. Combining it with the word "cash" is just plain sick and should be illegal.;P
I'm guessing that you're a libertarian. I do agree with you that companies attacking each other with lawsuits is stupid. Especially when a company has the ability to prove it's worth by making a better product. After all, they are supposed to be competing to see who makes the better product that garners the most customers. However, this world is not ideal. The market is hopelessly broken because the big players have gamed the system in their favor. There is no way that true competition on merit is possible due to the large amount of marketing that has far more success in pushing a product than actual quality.
Well... I remember reading the first few issues of Wired back in the early 90s. They were cool. then They focused more on technology for the masses rather then the people with a lot of money for big ticket items. They focused on people like Jaron Lanier (the "father of virtual reality") who actually contributed something to technology that could benefit everyone. Now they seem to be a mouthpiece for libertarians (they had some nimrod calling for the "breakup" of the U.S. Postal Service industry monopoly a few months back) and their insane schemes to privatize everything. Yeah... that's what I want, replace the well oiled U.S.P.S. with companies that have more in common with all the crappy baby Bells that provide piss poor service for high prices. In the recent issue, they had a *very small* writeup of an expensive device to pull water out of air and make it potable. The unit is $800 for cubicle monkeys. In the past they wouldn't have done a small write up. They would have had an article about how the unit works, in detail, so that more driven people could build their own and make the technology cheaper and more effiecient. Thereby eventually providing a possibly free or low cost alternative to the expensive unit. But now, it's just like some kind of catalog for techno fetishists. Gone is the original "Whole Earth" feel of the magazine. It used to have more of a hippy feeling to it in the early 90s. Now it's more yuppie.
Finally! Someone who feels the same way I do about Wired! I *HATE* Wired magazine. It's not a tech culture magazine anymore. It's a fashion rag for gadget guys. Gadget guys != technologists. We are technologists. We use technology to make lives better and easier for anyone. Gadget guys are the proverbial fools who are soon parted from their money.
Time and Relative Dimensions In Space. AKA T.A.R.D.I.S. How do you spell relief? T-A-R-D-I--ummm-S! Has anyone who doesn't like Doctor Who ever latched onto the fact that the name of his time/space vehicle is awfully similar to the word "retard"? Retardis anyone? (Yeah. Tasteless, I know. But, I'm pretty sure there are a few people out there with mental retardation that WOULD find this comment funny.)
My firewall is a Pentium (non-MMX) 200 with 32 Megs of RAM and 1.2 Gigs of HD and two $5 NICs (remember, unless you're dealing with a really high bandwidth pipe, a 100 Mb/s NIC should be plenty). You could probably grab one of those from a local surplus dealer or eBay for less than $50. Then set up Linux (whatever distro you feel you could deal with except Linspire). I use Redhat myself.:) Do a minimal install but remember to keep devel tools on so you can compile all of your own custom stuff. Spend a few days removing all unneeded commands/services, recompiling the kernel for serial console (so you can ditch ssh and/or telnet), iptables support, etc... Set up your inside and outside interfaces. Put on Snort, Portsentry, what have you for security and auditing. Plug it inline and away you go. I've been running with the same exact config since 2001. The only thing I've had to do is rebuild the kernel a few times due to exploits. Also upgrading portsentry from time to time, or snort. So far no one has hacked my network and I'm aware of every packet that enters or exits it. There is nothing outside except for the one NIC on that box. Cheap, simple, efficient.
Since 1994, I've only bought two systems with Windows. The rest came with no OS. That's typical for the majority of Slashdotters. Why buy from someone like HP or Dell, when you can build a better system for less yourself and load up a better OS (Linux or one of the BSDs)? I currently have one machine that runs Windows here at home. Just one. And it's almost always booted into Fedora Core 3. The reason for the Windows installation is that I still like Sony's Vegas video editor better than anything I've seen on Linux. Other than that, there's not a whole lot of reason to buy Windows anymore.
Hmmm... I got Cedega and was still unable to play Riven or Uru. I also noticed they aren't on the list of games people want to play. But... I want to play them.
This is a rating of the biggest ISPs and it's based on normal consumer needs, not geek needs. You'll notice that Speakeasy (the BEST DSL ISP out there) is not on the list. That's because most consumers don't need static IP. How many of you hear actually use dynamic IP? I don't. Even with dialup I only used ISPs that allowed me to have a static IP and run servers. That would probably speak for 90% of the Slashdot population.
Many of the ISPs listed in the report don't allow you to run servers either. What good is that? We've got services to provide dammit! I, for one, don't trust anyone with my e-mail but myself. I have 500 GB of space for mail with mail archived back to 1990 (from the old Cleveland Freenet days). Why on earth would I want an ISP that wouldn't let me run my own secure and reliable mail server? Same goes for DNS. When I had a static dialup account (Stratos Internet Services in Cleveland who got bought out and all customers fucked over by the shitty ISP Corecomm), I didn't run my own DNS. When Corecomm took over, I needed a DNS change made ASAP for mail. They screwed up the DNS change even though I was completely clear about what needed to be done. It also took a week for them to make the change. After that it took another week to fix the error THEY made. So I had two weeks without mail because I didn't run DNS. Never again. Now I do it all: mail, DNS, web, it's all on my systems and nothing on my ISPs systems. That way *if* I have to switch ISPs, I can carry all my data with me and just change DNS myself.
I'm sure most of you can relate and run all those services yourself for the same reason; most ISPs IT departments provide pretty poor service for the advanced user. I'm happy running everything myself. I've been doing it for seven years now and have only mysefl to blame if something stops working. Nothing better than that for incentive to keep your systems secure and up to date! This report from PC World does not address those kinds of needs because it's a consumer rag. Slashdot should do it's own survey.
Oh yeah this is OT: I *HATE* Corecom. They fucked me over in so many ways, I can't wait to tell people to NOT buy service from them. Stratos was a decent company that provided unlimited dialup for the reasonable price of $9.95. For static IP, it was $21.95. When Corecom took over, they did the following to me:
1. Stole my e-mail address that I'd had for five years at that point (used to be eno@stratos.net). They told me that when they merged the accounts from Corecom and Stratos that the user at Corecom who was eno@core.com already had the address eno@stratos.net. Talk about lazy admins!!! They fucked me over with mail and I've never forgiven them for that! 2. They took away my static IP. I was trying to hit my system from work one afternoon and wasn't getting any response. I assumed that maybe my dialup connection got futzed or something. When I got home, I found that I couldn't log in, so I called support. They told me that due to the merge I now had to use 'eno@stratos.net' as my login (even after they stole my e-mail address!). So I changed that and they reset my password. After a few tries, I was able to log in. But... lo and behold I had a different IP than the one I normally had! I called them back and asked where my static IP was. They said, "Oh. You have a standard account. You need to talk to sales to get static IP". !!!WTF???!!!! I said that I'd had a static IP for five years and they said that it's something to talk to sales about. So I did. And sales said, "You have a standard dialup account without static IP." I said, "But I'm paying $21.95 a month"! And they said, "Yeah, that's just standard unlimited dialup". Me, "What about the $9.95 rate!!!?" Them, "Huh? We've never offered that. Oh wait. You must be a Stratos customer. Yeah, those rates are gone". !!!????WTF????!!!! Them, "If you want static, you have to pay by the year and it's $360 a year. By the way, it looks like you owe us money for st
Hehehe. Actually, I'm a Linux guy who knows a good deal about Windows. My friend got the hardware firewall before SP2 was out. When he did install SP2 based on my advice, he complained about the warning dialogs that pop up when applications first execute that MS doesn't consider safe. I told him it was a lot like the free firewall he had in Windows 98 (Can't remember the name now, it was the one endorse by Gibson Research). He groaned and then proceeded to work with the dialogs for each program that he wanted to run.
...for a book to be published in 40 or 50 years similar to the 1980's "Whatever Happened to the Future". In that 80s book, they asked the question like:
1. Where's my flying car that was mentioned in Popular Science in the 1950s? 2.How come I don't have a four day workweek now like some science and technology magazines predicted in the 40s and 50s? 3. How come our city streets aren't air conditioned and climate controlled as we were promised in the 50s? 4. Where are the family cars that drive themselves while we play Parchisi in the back?
I just got the latest issue of Wired (one of the shittiest magazines known to man) and they had a special advert insert that shows off what they plan to showcase at Nextfest. All I can say is that this is not for technologist, but for gadget guys. There is a huge difference between the two even though the popular press attempts to equate them. Gadget guys are the first on the block to have the latest technology... even if they don't need it, use it, or understand it. Technologists usually have the technology before the gadget guys, but only because they built it themselves. The main difference between what the gadget guys have and what the technologists have is stylishness and status symbol value. The gadget guys will probably have the nicer looking device with far more status symbol value and a higher pricetag, but not significantly different from what the technologist built or hacked.
As a side note, when I was looking at Wired last night (before I gave it to my kid to tear up at play time) I wondered, "Is there an asshole out there who lives by this magazine an buys ever gadget featured"? It was a chilling thought. Nobody could possily be that stupid. Could they? Imagine living in a house that looked like everything came from Sharper Image. Brrrrr... terrifying.
When a friend of mine got a new Windows XP (Pro, not Home) box, he asked me to help him get it set up. I told him that he should have two accounts: one admin (He has a strong password for his admin account and the username has been changed from default.) and one regular user. I explained the whole issue of how an exploited machine with the user running as admin could cause more problems than if he ran as a regular user. I cautioned him that he'd have to deal with the pain of switching between the accounts whenever he needed to do stuff that required admin rights. Since he's been trojaned before, he agreed. We also set up the Windows XP firewall for extra security since he was directonly connected to the net.
Within a month, I got a call where he said, "Dude! Can we get rid of this admin account and the goddamn firewall? Everytime I want to do anything useful, I have log into the admin account. And I'm always having to log into admin and turn the firewall off to play online games". So, I suggested that he spend the money to get an external hardware DSL/Cable router. He did, and we turned off the firewall. But he still wanted his regular user account to be admin because that's where all his data was. After arguing with him for a bit, I told him we could set it up as an admin user (he didn't want power user because we'd tried that and there were still a few programs he claimed he couldn't run even as power user. CDRWIN was one of them) but that if anything resembling the worm/trojan that hit him in Win98 happened, it would be a full reinstall. I wouldn't try to figure out what happened. He agreed. It's been a year and a half since then. He's really good about applying the latest critical updates and that hardware router has probably saved him numerous times. But I still think he's in a risky position.
Most people just don't want to have to deal with the hassle of switching between two user accounts or learning to use "runas". It will always be this way. End users need full privs on their boxes. The only way around this is to set OSes up so that each user's "desktop" is actually a full VM. Then if it gets hosed by them running as admin, the only thing that needs to be wiped is their profile and that VM's image. Much cleaner than having to do an OS reinstall or a postmortem.
Funny. I've got data that goes all the way back to 1985 and it's easily survived multiple platform moves (Atari ST --> Amiga --> Macintosh --> Windows --> Linux) as well as media moves (360k 5.25" floppies --> 360k 3.5" diskettes --> 720k 3.5" diskettes --> 1.44M 3.5" diskettes --> HD --> Syquest 44 Meg carts --> Iomega 100 Meg Zip disks (they sucked ass but I didn't lose data) --> CD-R --> CD-RW). It all comes down to how careful you are. Now watch... as my system comes tumbling down because I've bragged about it, what I'm doing.;P
Backup one HD to another. But I would say you probably want to make sure each "HD" is a RAID 5 array. That's where I'm headed soon. Also... you didn't mention the platform you're on. I use Linux and I've found that rsync is the ultimate backup tool. I use it to back up HD to HD with only files that have changed and network to HD for my web/mail server. There really isn't a better way until someone comes up with reliable removable media that can store at least ten times the largest current HD. That would mean 4 TB of storage on removable media since the largest IDE drives are currently 400 gigs. I don't think that will be happening anytime soon because most removable media companies are way behind the times with offline storage. Also keep in mind that the way a lot of big enterprise outifts are moving is:
Disk --> Disk --> Tape Library
HP also has a virtual tape library that really exists on disks. At this point, I think HDs are still the best backup method. Just make sure you have many copies. The ideal if you're going for just HDs:
Data Disk --> Backup Disk --> Backup Archive Disk
The "Data Disk" is where you store all your data The "Backup Disk" is where nightly backups go The "Backup Archive Disk" is where you hold the previous week's backups from the backup disk in tar.gz or Zip format.
I would also keep the "Backup Archive Disk" on a separate machine on a separate network (just a cross over cable from your main machine) on a separate electtical circuit. This way even a power surge is not likely to wipe out all your data. The "Backup Archive Disk" should be at least ten times the size of your main "Data Disk". In my case that would be 5TB. Make sure you pay your electric bill too.;P
As a child, I used to stare at the sun for minutes at a time because I was facinated by the big purple ball that it left behind as an after image. I can see fine (with the exception of needing glasses to correct nearsighteness which is hereditary in my case). I also looked at the sun during an eclipse when I was in college, but that was because I didn't know it was an eclipse. It was a sunny day, without a cloud in the sky, but for some reason it looked omewhat overcast. There were also tons of students sitting on the siewalks holding up these funny little visors. It still didn't click though. So I looked up and noticed that something was partially blotting out the sun. (Doesn't look anything like what you see in the textbooks with the corona spilling out around the moon though) Of course, I was a little busy and somewhat preoccupied since I was carrying $4000 in cash that the student loan center had just given me. They actually just gae it to me wrapped as a wad in rubber bands! I didn't have a book bag on me so I asked if they could give me the money in envelopes. The best they could do was break up the wad into two parts and put each into a standard envelope with the university logo on it. Good thing there was an eclipse happening because no one noticed the little bit of green showing from each envelope. It was a small town... I'm not used to small towns. I'm a city bwah myself.
Actually, politics get in the way. A lot! From what I've seen, HR will as the IT dept. for a job description. The heads of the IT dept. will talk about what they really want, but then they have to take a step back from a lot of it because it might not be "politically correct". For instance:
Manager A: "We want the candidate to know his limits within the department. That last guy had a Messiah complex and he was damn near useless". Manager B: "Yeah, but we can't really say it that way. Hmmm... how else can we phrase that"? Manager C: "How about, 'works well with others'"? Manager A: "Yeah. It's cliched, but it should filter out the people who are god's gift to IT".
Or this scenario:
Manager A: "We need someone who can work on their own with just a little nudging and who has really good Unix skills for this position". Manager B: "Well, don't forget that this guy will also be managing some Windows servers that interact with the Unix systems because the Windows guy doesn't want to touch them". Manager A: "Yeah. I forgot about that. Hmmm... cross-platform admin"? Manager C: "Well, he (or she) is really going to be mostly Unix". Manager A: "Let's leave out the Windows part". Manager B: "We can't because it's essential to the job and the Windows guys will have a fit if they still have to try and work with Cygwin". Manager C: "OK. What about this, 'Must have strong Unix background but be willing to work closely with Windows servers and possibly train or simplify Windows/Unix interaction'"? Manager A: "That's going to make it sound like a big job. Anyone really think that we'll get a competent Unix admin who would want the job"? Manager B: "OK. Let's leave out the Windows part and just filter the folks when we get the second interview".
So you see... sometimes, the fault for the generic job listings lie with the politics.
Blanche: "Eww! Iris, what's the smell"? Iris: "Oh... tomhudson posted instructions on Slashdot that were crafted to get less intelligent people to look at the sun. You're smelling their smoking eye sockets". Blanche: "Oh. I thought that's what was going on, but I wanted to be sure". Sound FX: [audience laughter from I Love Lucy]
...they find a black monolith at the core of the moon.;P (Yeah, I know... wrong planet and all, but "enigma" and "black monolith" go together so well.)
Q: In what file format does music purchased from Peer Impact come, and how is it protected?
A: Songs purchased in Peer Impact(TM) are provided in Windows Media Application format (WMA) and are protected via Microsoft DRM. Up to three licenses are available for each song purchased.
This, pretty much, eliminates non-Windows OSes at the moment. Since they are doing this to make money, I'm guessing they'll want the biggest possible audience which means Windows users. Since new Macs based on Intel can run Windows (I wonder if Jobs knew about this angle?) natively, this means Mac users won't be excluded as long as they buy a copy of Windows. (I wonder if Apple will have a special bundle to sell dual boot Macs?) For the rest of us *nix, users I'm willing to bet we're out of luck unless we run Windows in a VM or Wine gets some really good support for this. I'm also not too sure of how the transfer to a portable player works. They list a ton of players, and mine (Rio Karma) IS listed. But since they are targetting Windows user, they're going to probably use the most idiot proof method which means USB instead of ethernet. (I use my Karma with the ethernet connection and the Java music manager) But don't despair. Most people who choose to run *nix tend to have far more unique musical tastes and it's likely that this service won't carry those kinds of artists. What's really needed is a music service for the artist's artist. I just turned on to Efterklang which I'm certain that only some of our European Slashdotters may be familiar with. Who the hell listens to Mariah Carey?
Slashdot Mirror
Oh my god! It's true! OSS projects are sexual in nature! ;P (It's a joke for those of you who don't get those kinds of things) Beyond that. What in the hell is a "pumpking"?
Hey, if you're happy being just a user instead of actually running your own services that's fine. But the previous company (Stratos) actually addressed the needs of people like me. Corecomm was only interested in the money to be gained from more customers. On the other hand, Speakeasy has been excellent. I've only had to deal with customer support four times in five years and each experience was handled flawlessly. I'm not the average consumer and don't expect to be treated like one. Corecomm should have known what kind of customers the Stratos user base were when they bought the company.
But, but, but... is everyone involved in making those things happen a believer? If not, then it still doesn't prove a thing.
"thumping" and "wads". Two words that should never be used outside of sexual references. Combining it with the word "cash" is just plain sick and should be illegal. ;P
I'm guessing that you're a libertarian. I do agree with you that companies attacking each other with lawsuits is stupid. Especially when a company has the ability to prove it's worth by making a better product. After all, they are supposed to be competing to see who makes the better product that garners the most customers. However, this world is not ideal. The market is hopelessly broken because the big players have gamed the system in their favor. There is no way that true competition on merit is possible due to the large amount of marketing that has far more success in pushing a product than actual quality.
Huh? Are you saying that your wife is neither reliable nor faithful, or not eye candy? I don't get it.
Well... I remember reading the first few issues of Wired back in the early 90s. They were cool. then They focused more on technology for the masses rather then the people with a lot of money for big ticket items. They focused on people like Jaron Lanier (the "father of virtual reality") who actually contributed something to technology that could benefit everyone. Now they seem to be a mouthpiece for libertarians (they had some nimrod calling for the "breakup" of the U.S. Postal Service industry monopoly a few months back) and their insane schemes to privatize everything. Yeah... that's what I want, replace the well oiled U.S.P.S. with companies that have more in common with all the crappy baby Bells that provide piss poor service for high prices. In the recent issue, they had a *very small* writeup of an expensive device to pull water out of air and make it potable. The unit is $800 for cubicle monkeys. In the past they wouldn't have done a small write up. They would have had an article about how the unit works, in detail, so that more driven people could build their own and make the technology cheaper and more effiecient. Thereby eventually providing a possibly free or low cost alternative to the expensive unit. But now, it's just like some kind of catalog for techno fetishists. Gone is the original "Whole Earth" feel of the magazine. It used to have more of a hippy feeling to it in the early 90s. Now it's more yuppie.
Finally! Someone who feels the same way I do about Wired! I *HATE* Wired magazine. It's not a tech culture magazine anymore. It's a fashion rag for gadget guys. Gadget guys != technologists. We are technologists. We use technology to make lives better and easier for anyone. Gadget guys are the proverbial fools who are soon parted from their money.
Time and Relative Dimensions In Space. AKA T.A.R.D.I.S. How do you spell relief? T-A-R-D-I--ummm-S! Has anyone who doesn't like Doctor Who ever latched onto the fact that the name of his time/space vehicle is awfully similar to the word "retard"? Retardis anyone? (Yeah. Tasteless, I know. But, I'm pretty sure there are a few people out there with mental retardation that WOULD find this comment funny.)
My firewall is a Pentium (non-MMX) 200 with 32 Megs of RAM and 1.2 Gigs of HD and two $5 NICs (remember, unless you're dealing with a really high bandwidth pipe, a 100 Mb/s NIC should be plenty). You could probably grab one of those from a local surplus dealer or eBay for less than $50. Then set up Linux (whatever distro you feel you could deal with except Linspire). I use Redhat myself. :) Do a minimal install but remember to keep devel tools on so you can compile all of your own custom stuff. Spend a few days removing all unneeded commands/services, recompiling the kernel for serial console (so you can ditch ssh and/or telnet), iptables support, etc... Set up your inside and outside interfaces. Put on Snort, Portsentry, what have you for security and auditing. Plug it inline and away you go. I've been running with the same exact config since 2001. The only thing I've had to do is rebuild the kernel a few times due to exploits. Also upgrading portsentry from time to time, or snort. So far no one has hacked my network and I'm aware of every packet that enters or exits it. There is nothing outside except for the one NIC on that box. Cheap, simple, efficient.
Since 1994, I've only bought two systems with Windows. The rest came with no OS. That's typical for the majority of Slashdotters. Why buy from someone like HP or Dell, when you can build a better system for less yourself and load up a better OS (Linux or one of the BSDs)? I currently have one machine that runs Windows here at home. Just one. And it's almost always booted into Fedora Core 3. The reason for the Windows installation is that I still like Sony's Vegas video editor better than anything I've seen on Linux. Other than that, there's not a whole lot of reason to buy Windows anymore.
Hmmm... I got Cedega and was still unable to play Riven or Uru. I also noticed they aren't on the list of games people want to play. But... I want to play them.
So you'd be happy to get a bill for supposed back services after a merger? Who's the idiot here?
This is a rating of the biggest ISPs and it's based on normal consumer needs, not geek needs. You'll notice that Speakeasy (the BEST DSL ISP out there) is not on the list. That's because most consumers don't need static IP. How many of you hear actually use dynamic IP? I don't. Even with dialup I only used ISPs that allowed me to have a static IP and run servers. That would probably speak for 90% of the Slashdot population.
Many of the ISPs listed in the report don't allow you to run servers either. What good is that? We've got services to provide dammit! I, for one, don't trust anyone with my e-mail but myself. I have 500 GB of space for mail with mail archived back to 1990 (from the old Cleveland Freenet days). Why on earth would I want an ISP that wouldn't let me run my own secure and reliable mail server? Same goes for DNS. When I had a static dialup account (Stratos Internet Services in Cleveland who got bought out and all customers fucked over by the shitty ISP Corecomm), I didn't run my own DNS. When Corecomm took over, I needed a DNS change made ASAP for mail. They screwed up the DNS change even though I was completely clear about what needed to be done. It also took a week for them to make the change. After that it took another week to fix the error THEY made. So I had two weeks without mail because I didn't run DNS. Never again. Now I do it all: mail, DNS, web, it's all on my systems and nothing on my ISPs systems. That way *if* I have to switch ISPs, I can carry all my data with me and just change DNS myself.
I'm sure most of you can relate and run all those services yourself for the same reason; most ISPs IT departments provide pretty poor service for the advanced user. I'm happy running everything myself. I've been doing it for seven years now and have only mysefl to blame if something stops working. Nothing better than that for incentive to keep your systems secure and up to date! This report from PC World does not address those kinds of needs because it's a consumer rag. Slashdot should do it's own survey.
Oh yeah this is OT: I *HATE* Corecom. They fucked me over in so many ways, I can't wait to tell people to NOT buy service from them. Stratos was a decent company that provided unlimited dialup for the reasonable price of $9.95. For static IP, it was $21.95. When Corecom took over, they did the following to me:
1. Stole my e-mail address that I'd had for five years at that point (used to be eno@stratos.net). They told me that when they merged the accounts from Corecom and Stratos that the user at Corecom who was eno@core.com already had the address eno@stratos.net. Talk about lazy admins!!! They fucked me over with mail and I've never forgiven them for that!
2. They took away my static IP. I was trying to hit my system from work one afternoon and wasn't getting any response. I assumed that maybe my dialup connection got futzed or something. When I got home, I found that I couldn't log in, so I called support. They told me that due to the merge I now had to use 'eno@stratos.net' as my login (even after they stole my e-mail address!). So I changed that and they reset my password. After a few tries, I was able to log in. But... lo and behold I had a different IP than the one I normally had! I called them back and asked where my static IP was. They said, "Oh. You have a standard account. You need to talk to sales to get static IP". !!!WTF???!!!! I said that I'd had a static IP for five years and they said that it's something to talk to sales about. So I did. And sales said, "You have a standard dialup account without static IP." I said, "But I'm paying $21.95 a month"! And they said, "Yeah, that's just standard unlimited dialup". Me, "What about the $9.95 rate!!!?" Them, "Huh? We've never offered that. Oh wait. You must be a Stratos customer. Yeah, those rates are gone". !!!????WTF????!!!! Them, "If you want static, you have to pay by the year and it's $360 a year. By the way, it looks like you owe us money for st
Hehehe. Actually, I'm a Linux guy who knows a good deal about Windows. My friend got the hardware firewall before SP2 was out. When he did install SP2 based on my advice, he complained about the warning dialogs that pop up when applications first execute that MS doesn't consider safe. I told him it was a lot like the free firewall he had in Windows 98 (Can't remember the name now, it was the one endorse by Gibson Research). He groaned and then proceeded to work with the dialogs for each program that he wanted to run.
...for a book to be published in 40 or 50 years similar to the 1980's "Whatever Happened to the Future". In that 80s book, they asked the question like:
1. Where's my flying car that was mentioned in Popular Science in the 1950s?
2.How come I don't have a four day workweek now like some science and technology magazines predicted in the 40s and 50s?
3. How come our city streets aren't air conditioned and climate controlled as we were promised in the 50s?
4. Where are the family cars that drive themselves while we play Parchisi in the back?
I just got the latest issue of Wired (one of the shittiest magazines known to man) and they had a special advert insert that shows off what they plan to showcase at Nextfest. All I can say is that this is not for technologist, but for gadget guys. There is a huge difference between the two even though the popular press attempts to equate them. Gadget guys are the first on the block to have the latest technology... even if they don't need it, use it, or understand it. Technologists usually have the technology before the gadget guys, but only because they built it themselves. The main difference between what the gadget guys have and what the technologists have is stylishness and status symbol value. The gadget guys will probably have the nicer looking device with far more status symbol value and a higher pricetag, but not significantly different from what the technologist built or hacked.
As a side note, when I was looking at Wired last night (before I gave it to my kid to tear up at play time) I wondered, "Is there an asshole out there who lives by this magazine an buys ever gadget featured"? It was a chilling thought. Nobody could possily be that stupid. Could they? Imagine living in a house that looked like everything came from Sharper Image. Brrrrr... terrifying.
When a friend of mine got a new Windows XP (Pro, not Home) box, he asked me to help him get it set up. I told him that he should have two accounts: one admin (He has a strong password for his admin account and the username has been changed from default.) and one regular user. I explained the whole issue of how an exploited machine with the user running as admin could cause more problems than if he ran as a regular user. I cautioned him that he'd have to deal with the pain of switching between the accounts whenever he needed to do stuff that required admin rights. Since he's been trojaned before, he agreed. We also set up the Windows XP firewall for extra security since he was directonly connected to the net.
Within a month, I got a call where he said, "Dude! Can we get rid of this admin account and the goddamn firewall? Everytime I want to do anything useful, I have log into the admin account. And I'm always having to log into admin and turn the firewall off to play online games". So, I suggested that he spend the money to get an external hardware DSL/Cable router. He did, and we turned off the firewall. But he still wanted his regular user account to be admin because that's where all his data was. After arguing with him for a bit, I told him we could set it up as an admin user (he didn't want power user because we'd tried that and there were still a few programs he claimed he couldn't run even as power user. CDRWIN was one of them) but that if anything resembling the worm/trojan that hit him in Win98 happened, it would be a full reinstall. I wouldn't try to figure out what happened. He agreed. It's been a year and a half since then. He's really good about applying the latest critical updates and that hardware router has probably saved him numerous times. But I still think he's in a risky position.
Most people just don't want to have to deal with the hassle of switching between two user accounts or learning to use "runas". It will always be this way. End users need full privs on their boxes. The only way around this is to set OSes up so that each user's "desktop" is actually a full VM. Then if it gets hosed by them running as admin, the only thing that needs to be wiped is their profile and that VM's image. Much cleaner than having to do an OS reinstall or a postmortem.
Funny. I've got data that goes all the way back to 1985 and it's easily survived multiple platform moves (Atari ST --> Amiga --> Macintosh --> Windows --> Linux) as well as media moves (360k 5.25" floppies --> 360k 3.5" diskettes --> 720k 3.5" diskettes --> 1.44M 3.5" diskettes --> HD --> Syquest 44 Meg carts --> Iomega 100 Meg Zip disks (they sucked ass but I didn't lose data) --> CD-R --> CD-RW). It all comes down to how careful you are. Now watch... as my system comes tumbling down because I've bragged about it, what I'm doing. ;P
Backup one HD to another. But I would say you probably want to make sure each "HD" is a RAID 5 array. That's where I'm headed soon. Also... you didn't mention the platform you're on. I use Linux and I've found that rsync is the ultimate backup tool. I use it to back up HD to HD with only files that have changed and network to HD for my web/mail server. There really isn't a better way until someone comes up with reliable removable media that can store at least ten times the largest current HD. That would mean 4 TB of storage on removable media since the largest IDE drives are currently 400 gigs. I don't think that will be happening anytime soon because most removable media companies are way behind the times with offline storage. Also keep in mind that the way a lot of big enterprise outifts are moving is:
;P
Disk --> Disk --> Tape Library
HP also has a virtual tape library that really exists on disks. At this point, I think HDs are still the best backup method. Just make sure you have many copies. The ideal if you're going for just HDs:
Data Disk --> Backup Disk --> Backup Archive Disk
The "Data Disk" is where you store all your data
The "Backup Disk" is where nightly backups go
The "Backup Archive Disk" is where you hold the previous week's backups from the backup disk in tar.gz or Zip format.
I would also keep the "Backup Archive Disk" on a separate machine on a separate network (just a cross over cable from your main machine) on a separate electtical circuit. This way even a power surge is not likely to wipe out all your data. The "Backup Archive Disk" should be at least ten times the size of your main "Data Disk". In my case that would be 5TB. Make sure you pay your electric bill too.
As a child, I used to stare at the sun for minutes at a time because I was facinated by the big purple ball that it left behind as an after image. I can see fine (with the exception of needing glasses to correct nearsighteness which is hereditary in my case). I also looked at the sun during an eclipse when I was in college, but that was because I didn't know it was an eclipse. It was a sunny day, without a cloud in the sky, but for some reason it looked omewhat overcast. There were also tons of students sitting on the siewalks holding up these funny little visors. It still didn't click though. So I looked up and noticed that something was partially blotting out the sun. (Doesn't look anything like what you see in the textbooks with the corona spilling out around the moon though) Of course, I was a little busy and somewhat preoccupied since I was carrying $4000 in cash that the student loan center had just given me. They actually just gae it to me wrapped as a wad in rubber bands! I didn't have a book bag on me so I asked if they could give me the money in envelopes. The best they could do was break up the wad into two parts and put each into a standard envelope with the university logo on it. Good thing there was an eclipse happening because no one noticed the little bit of green showing from each envelope. It was a small town... I'm not used to small towns. I'm a city bwah myself.
Actually, politics get in the way. A lot! From what I've seen, HR will as the IT dept. for a job description. The heads of the IT dept. will talk about what they really want, but then they have to take a step back from a lot of it because it might not be "politically correct". For instance:
Manager A: "We want the candidate to know his limits within the department. That last guy had a Messiah complex and he was damn near useless".
Manager B: "Yeah, but we can't really say it that way. Hmmm... how else can we phrase that"?
Manager C: "How about, 'works well with others'"?
Manager A: "Yeah. It's cliched, but it should filter out the people who are god's gift to IT".
Or this scenario:
Manager A: "We need someone who can work on their own with just a little nudging and who has really good Unix skills for this position".
Manager B: "Well, don't forget that this guy will also be managing some Windows servers that interact with the Unix systems because the Windows guy doesn't want to touch them".
Manager A: "Yeah. I forgot about that. Hmmm... cross-platform admin"?
Manager C: "Well, he (or she) is really going to be mostly Unix".
Manager A: "Let's leave out the Windows part".
Manager B: "We can't because it's essential to the job and the Windows guys will have a fit if they still have to try and work with Cygwin".
Manager C: "OK. What about this, 'Must have strong Unix background but be willing to work closely with Windows servers and possibly train or simplify Windows/Unix interaction'"?
Manager A: "That's going to make it sound like a big job. Anyone really think that we'll get a competent Unix admin who would want the job"?
Manager B: "OK. Let's leave out the Windows part and just filter the folks when we get the second interview".
So you see... sometimes, the fault for the generic job listings lie with the politics.
Just buy a Maxtor and all you have to do to destroy your data is... use it. ;P
Blanche: "Eww! Iris, what's the smell"?
Iris: "Oh... tomhudson posted instructions on Slashdot that were crafted to get less intelligent people to look at the sun. You're smelling their smoking eye sockets".
Blanche: "Oh. I thought that's what was going on, but I wanted to be sure".
Sound FX: [audience laughter from I Love Lucy]
...they find a black monolith at the core of the moon. ;P (Yeah, I know... wrong planet and all, but "enigma" and "black monolith" go together so well.)
Q: In what file format does music purchased from Peer Impact come, and how is it protected?
A: Songs purchased in Peer Impact(TM) are provided in Windows Media Application format (WMA) and are protected via Microsoft DRM. Up to three licenses are available for each song purchased.
This, pretty much, eliminates non-Windows OSes at the moment. Since they are doing this to make money, I'm guessing they'll want the biggest possible audience which means Windows users. Since new Macs based on Intel can run Windows (I wonder if Jobs knew about this angle?) natively, this means Mac users won't be excluded as long as they buy a copy of Windows. (I wonder if Apple will have a special bundle to sell dual boot Macs?) For the rest of us *nix, users I'm willing to bet we're out of luck unless we run Windows in a VM or Wine gets some really good support for this. I'm also not too sure of how the transfer to a portable player works. They list a ton of players, and mine (Rio Karma) IS listed. But since they are targetting Windows user, they're going to probably use the most idiot proof method which means USB instead of ethernet. (I use my Karma with the ethernet connection and the Java music manager) But don't despair. Most people who choose to run *nix tend to have far more unique musical tastes and it's likely that this service won't carry those kinds of artists. What's really needed is a music service for the artist's artist. I just turned on to Efterklang which I'm certain that only some of our European Slashdotters may be familiar with. Who the hell listens to Mariah Carey?