So I ordered a shiny new 150GB 10,000 RPM WD Raptor last Friday to replace my 74GB Raptor. It came in today (yesterday…) and I set about cloning my data to the new drive. Except that the drive kept freezing up during the cloning process. Wiping the drive was problematic too (stupid thing couldn’t unmount, even when I booted from the 10.4.3 DVD). So I try a bunch of stuff to no avail. So I finally Google it and what do I find? G5s can’t handle a bunch of features on newer SATA drives (and as a result, they don’t work too well with them), so the thing is worthless in my G5. The solution is to get a third party SATA controller card. That’s a pretty worthless solution, as I see nothing but problems with those drivers and OS updates. So it’s probably going to sit on my desk until I get around to building that PC for my CS needs in the next month or two. Argghhhh, stupid technology!
Archive for the 'Computing' Category
I prefer the black box approach to computers- they just magically deal in 1s and 0s, no need to know of XOR gates and latches (or my newest nemesis- ALU units!).
Google Plans To Build Machine That Can Pass The Turing Test.
Google is already working on a massive and global computing grid. Eventually, says Mr Saffo, “they’re trying to build the machine that will pass the Turing testâ€â€”in other words, an artificial intelligence that can pass as a human in written conversations. Wisely or not, Google wants to be a new sort of deus ex machina.
I suppose it’s time to decide if we should ban research into artificial intelligence.
I replaced SquirrelMail with RoundCube Webmail today. Despite the fact that it’s currently in alpha (0.1 is the current release) and I’m using CVS builds, I think it’s probably the best free webmail client out there. Parts of the interface are AJAX’d, which makes for a pleasant user experience. It’s got an amazing interface, obviously inspired by Aqua (They’ve got a “Made On Mac” button on their webpage - usually a good sign). It’s a little rough around the edges, most notably in the setup area- but once you’ve got it up and running, it’s a great experience.
Update: My friend Paul Stamatiou has posted a HOWTO for setting up RoundCube here.
I do believe that rsync is the greatest command line application ever, well… maybe next to ssh. I’m no longer spending half an hour waiting for my PowerBook to get every file in my music folder from my G5 so that I have all of my music, instead rsync does an incremental update - it only copies new and changed files. It’s incredibly easy to do as well, I just run this command on my G5 (the master copy/source):
rsync -a ~/Music/ justin@laptop.bellmor.com:~/Music/
Rsync is also particularly useful for doing incremental backups. I use rsync to maintain a backup of my very-expensive-to-replace music collection on the server. Since I have to backup incrementally (otherwise I’d spend two days waiting for the backup to complete), rsync is the only way to go. The only changes I made from syncing my music to my PowerBook were adding two parameters, --delete and --exclude='*.m4v'. --delete will delete anything on the destination that’s not on the source (so if I delete a song from my library on my G5, it’ll delete the song on the server). --exclude='*.m4v' makes sure I don’t back up those massive movies you can get from iTunes. When you combine rsync with crontab and public key authentication, you get completely invisible and automatic backups. Here’s what my rsync command in my crontab looks like:
30 18 * * * rsync -a --delete --exclude='*.m4v' ~/Music/ backup@bellmor.com:/home/backup/Music/ > /dev/null 2>&1
Internet Brownout
Level 3, a backbone for internet traffic, cut off communication with a rival over issues with peering. Some people can’t access parts of the internet as a result. Is Level 3 engaged in a terrorist action by cutting off access to a key element of this nation’s economy? Let’s just label them enemy combatants and send them to Guantanamo before the humane treatment law goes into effect. I’ve been affected by this- I couldn’t access a particular website for an updated Mint plugin and had to SSH into my server to use lynx to download the update, which I then had to SFTP download to my computer. This is like shutting off the power, it’s totally irresponsible and this can’t be allowed to happen again. This also underscores how easy it would be for a real terrorist to strike something so vastly important us.
firstname @ gatech.edu
You can get your alias through GT Passport
Read about Technological Singularities, it’s an interesting prediction.
I’m looking forward to taking CS4002
Plague Strikes Azeroth
Hilarious. So there’s a bug in World of Warcraft (A horrible game that sucks the life out of all who play it) that allowed a poison attack that has an area effect to leave an instance (something closed to other players). It’s spread into the cities and kills lowbies (low level characters) nearly instantly because the attack was only meant to be encountered by high level characters. Blizzard has patched the game, to no avail. They’ve tried to quarantine characters affected, but they manage to enter cities and re-infect clean characters. It’s just so funny. I wonder if they’ll call the CDC and ask for help in dealing with plagues, I mean this would be a great simulation for training, wouldn’t it? These characters are controlled by people and that helps add uncertainty to the whole thing, which makes it more like a real world scenario.
I hit half a million records in our server’s SpamAssassin SQL database. Disturbing to me, but better than storing in BerkeleyDB I suppose.