Every now and then you could do an image backup with dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/nst0 bs=64k so you're able to restore your drive quickly. Works fine even on a live filesystem if it's the journaling type.
And if you're on Windows, install cygwin first, or boot Knoppix for an image backup.
Oh, of course you'll need a tape drive. Yes, you can do the same with optical disks but I don't trust CDs and DVDs for long term storage.
You can get used tape drives dirt cheap on ebay, like $100-200 for a DLT8000, or $300-700 from normal dealers. Yeah, they're only 40 GB, but you probably don't need to backup your ripped DVDs every day.
you should replace disks as soon as they fail. A double disk failure is rare, but the longer you put off replacing a failed disk, the more likely it becomes. That's what you have (cold or warm) spare drives for. The RAID can start rebuilding on the standby disk immediately if it has a spare. Given the recent results showing that disk failure rate is higher than it was thought, that the bathtub curve doesn't apply, and that failures are correlated, this sounds more and more like you really have to have it.
Depends. Since laziness is one of the main virtues, once you're good at it you'll write line noise regular expressions and lots of map {...} grep {...} sort map {...} @ThisOrThat, something that most folks without Lisp or Perl background have trouble with at first. Or $hr->{this}->[$that]->{$SomethingElse}. It just comes natural.
The basic question is always, is this a one-shot quickie or something that'll have to be maintained. Unfortunately, it often turns from the former into the latter.
If you start out writing legible code, it can be easily done, but it is slower than hacking mode. If not, you'll have trouble understanding your own code a month later.
I think Windows folks need "Minimal Perl" a lot more.
Just remembering by boss's jaw drop when he asked me if I could do a quick analysis of a couple thousand lines of logs and asked how long it would take. "10 minutes." And I delivered. He thought I'd have to fire up VS and write some C code.
He borrowed my Camel book during his next vacation.
Now if IT was always competent and resolved my issues in a timely fashion, I could live with what they do. Unfortunately, this is not usually the case because they have their hands full with the big ticket items like keeping Oracle and Exchange running. So, I have to do my own stuff and run my own little LAN with systems that they'd better not know about. The setup is no different from what I'd run at home.
It's all about Omega-3 fatty acids, or rather the Omega-6 to Omega-3 ratio in our food. See Andrew L. Stoll's "The Omega-3 Connection." A pointer is on the Wikipedia page. Very interesting stuff.
10 replies already and no unbiased, informed, well-mannered discussion of the relative merits of Vista vs. other OSs? Come on, Slashdot, you can do better!
>I'd gladly donate some spare processor cycles, hard drive space, and bandwidth
If it's along the lines of P2P apps, DHTs etc., this could really work. Kad already does a pretty good job of searching. Use something like it to point to Internet content, and use swarming for downloads... There's a Firefox extension waiting to happen.
Well, seeing that the average ass on Slashdot is probably about three to four feet wide, two feet high (from a sitting position) and about a foot deep from front to back, that means at most eight cubic feet of HD DVDs ripped and placed online. According to the Bekenstein bound, the limit on information density goes by surface area, not by volume. Your average Slashdot ass would have a maximum surface area of roughly 28 ft^2, assuming it's rectangular (crude approximation, I know. Doing the calculation for two half-spheres is left as an exercise for the reader.) That's 9.96*10^69 Planck areas, which corresponds to 3.59*10^69 bits. Since a key has 16 bytes, you can put at most 2.81*10^67 keys on a Slashdot ass. Enough for me.
I mean, well over a decade I could download any old UNIX software, untar it, set an environent variable, and just run the damned software You need a viable scripting language or a compiler for anything that's more than trivial. Windows' lack of both is what causes every little program to be bundled into an installer.EXE. And to avoid a million options in the installer, the installation paths are hardwired. Doom ensues.
at age 10 trying to repair a TV that I had screwed up. No, I never got it fixed, but I got zapped big time.
Given that the earth is way more complex than a TV, and we understand way less about it, this scares the hell out of me. Yeah, I love SF too, and all those stories about terraforming and large scale engineering are really cool, but please can we try them out with some other planet first, or at least make sure we have a backup?
>2. Would you (and the rest of/.ers) be willing to purchase 1 of these laptops for $200? Definitely. It will be *the* geek toy for a while. If I have ssh and VNC it'll be worth it. And with a PDF viewer it should be a decent ebook reader - assuming the display is good.
I always wonder why Wikipedia doesn't keep some kind of "merit" number for articles. Registered users could have a merit number based on how long they've been around, how many edits they made etc. Also, registered users could mod authors as well as articles (and, hence, their authors.) That would give each author a semi-reliable merit value. Then you could calculate a merit figure for an article from how much was contributed by whom and any mod points for the article itself.
Slashdot Mirror
Hard? Why?
/dev/nst0 eod /dev/nst0 / --exclude /proc --exclude /mnt --exclude /sys --exclude /media --exclude /dev
mt -f
tar cvbf 512
Every now and then you could do an image backup with
dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/nst0 bs=64k
so you're able to restore your drive quickly. Works fine even on a live filesystem if it's the journaling type.
And if you're on Windows, install cygwin first, or boot Knoppix for an image backup.
Oh, of course you'll need a tape drive. Yes, you can do the same with optical disks but I don't trust CDs and DVDs for long term storage.
You can get used tape drives dirt cheap on ebay, like $100-200 for a DLT8000, or $300-700 from normal dealers. Yeah, they're only 40 GB, but you probably don't need to backup your ripped DVDs every day.
Given the recent results showing that disk failure rate is higher than it was thought, that the bathtub curve doesn't apply, and that failures are correlated, this sounds more and more like you really have to have it.
>woefully tiny amounts of RAM in your computer.
That probably means less than the recommended 1 GB?
Depends. Since laziness is one of the main virtues, once you're good at it you'll write line noise regular expressions and lots of map {...} grep {...} sort map {...} @ThisOrThat, something that most folks without Lisp or Perl background have trouble with at first. Or $hr->{this}->[$that]->{$SomethingElse}. It just comes natural.
The basic question is always, is this a one-shot quickie or something that'll have to be maintained. Unfortunately, it often turns from the former into the latter.
If you start out writing legible code, it can be easily done, but it is slower than hacking mode. If not, you'll have trouble understanding your own code a month later.
What's next? GW-BASIC? COMMAND.COM? EDLIN?
But it sure is retro cool.
I think Windows folks need "Minimal Perl" a lot more.
Just remembering by boss's jaw drop when he asked me if I could do a quick analysis of a couple thousand lines of logs and asked how long it would take. "10 minutes." And I delivered. He thought I'd have to fire up VS and write some C code.
He borrowed my Camel book during his next vacation.
>My IT department guys were kind enough to give me admin privileges on my workstation and on my colleagues workstations in my department.
Mine wouldn't. Thank God for chntpw.
Now if IT was always competent and resolved my issues in a timely fashion, I could live with what they do. Unfortunately, this is not usually the case because they have their hands full with the big ticket items like keeping Oracle and Exchange running. So, I have to do my own stuff and run my own little LAN with systems that they'd better not know about. The setup is no different from what I'd run at home.
It's all about Omega-3 fatty acids, or rather the Omega-6 to Omega-3 ratio in our food.
See Andrew L. Stoll's "The Omega-3 Connection." A pointer is on the Wikipedia page. Very interesting stuff.
Simpler solution: Only allow admin access with the default password for 1 minute after powerup.
Darn, I not even one "+1, Funny."
Huh? What's the European Space Agency got to do with this?
Hey, Windows has a GUI, which is self-documenting, with very informative online help, and even AI help wizards! There's no need for documentation! :)
10 replies already and no unbiased, informed, well-mannered discussion of the relative merits of Vista vs. other OSs? Come on, Slashdot, you can do better!
Let me make a start:
Vi$ta is teh suckage!
MacOS is for wimps!
Linux roxxorz!
>I'd gladly donate some spare processor cycles, hard drive space, and bandwidth
If it's along the lines of P2P apps, DHTs etc., this could really work.
Kad already does a pretty good job of searching. Use something like it to point to Internet content, and use swarming for downloads... There's a Firefox extension waiting to happen.
... a flood of new viruses/trojans all named setup.exe. "Paris Hilton set up. Download the video!"at age 10 trying to repair a TV that I had screwed up.
No, I never got it fixed, but I got zapped big time.
Given that the earth is way more complex than a TV, and we understand way less about it, this scares the hell out of me. Yeah, I love SF too, and all those stories about terraforming and large scale engineering are really cool, but please can we try them out with some other planet first, or at least make sure we have a backup?
They've had mixed crews on the ISS, and there's one right now. Maybe those are test cases?
... as long as I can continue to use my cell phone and iPod while driving. Those pedestrians better watch out.
</sarcasm>
>a $100 fine for using electronic gadgets while crossing the street.
>2. Would you (and the rest of /.ers) be willing to purchase 1 of these laptops for $200?
Definitely. It will be *the* geek toy for a while. If I have ssh and VNC it'll be worth it. And with a PDF viewer it should be a decent ebook reader - assuming the display is good.
I always wonder why Wikipedia doesn't keep some kind of "merit" number for articles.
Registered users could have a merit number based on how long they've been around, how many edits they made etc.
Also, registered users could mod authors as well as articles (and, hence, their authors.) That would give each author a semi-reliable merit value. Then you could calculate a merit figure for an article from how much was contributed by whom and any mod points for the article itself.
extend, ...
You know the rest.
"Our copyrighted video contains the bit string 0001011010100110b, so all videos containing that same bit string have to be taken down."
Or something to that extent.
I hereby claim copyright for the bit strings "1b" and "0b". They appeared in my diploma thesis.