Sunday, September 30, 2007

Dubai is where it's at!

http://www.oddee.com/item_88597.aspx

Dubai is incredible. Apparently it's like the new world mecca. All the richests of the rich gather to live there free from worries about laws in America, taxes, and legal woes. Dubai does not appear to honor any other countries laws. It's a haven for all the scoundrels in the world that have made obscene amounts of money and now want to live the good life. So companies like Cheney's Haliburton have fled our shores along with many other questionable companies to seek refuge there.

The most important question in my mind... Why the fuck am I not filthy rich and living the good life in Dubai? For that matter why am I so damn poor I can't even buy a decent server and have a bit more spare time on my hands? Damn, living in America sucks.

Wednesday, September 26, 2007

Hardware planning

1) Get my KVM switch back that I lent.
2) Hook in my old box I'll convert over to a dual wan firewall.
3) OCTOBER: Buy a new server box I can start throwing things into including 12 3.5 disks and 2 DVDs.
4) NOVEMBER: Buy a super power supply for it.
5) DECEMBER: Buy a MB/CPU for it capable of holding 16GBs of ECC.
6) JANUARY: Buy a RAID card. I need to make sure it fully supports ubuntu.
7) FEBUARY: Start buying disks. System should be totally usable now as my server.

iPhone Nerds

The news today is all about Apple updating the firmware to prevent people from hacking their gadgets. Apparently hacked iPhones will turn into expensive bricks and Apple is bragging about that. Then there are teams of lawyers who say this may be illegal. Naturally. And iPhone hacker teams saying it's ok, they'll figure out a hack for the firmware.

Don't these people have something better to do? Even if you were a nerd and turned on by iPhones don't you have other things to do? Why support Apple? Why not support the free linux iPhone versions. Then you can modify you nerd toy to do useful things without paying that evil empire called Apple a cent. And if you say MS is the evil company just remember they own Apple. Kind of like the lobbyists own the Democrats and Republicans. So can you guys just get out of my face? I don't want to see anything more about iPhones.

While looking through the news today I saw this article too.
http://resources.zdnet.co.uk/articles/features/0,1000002000,39289595,00.htm

Monday, September 24, 2007

Greenspan

Alan Greenspan talks on DemocracyNow.Org today at http://ia341210.us.archive.org/0/items/dn2007-0924/dn2007-0924-1.ogg.

He says kids in America do well compared to the rest of the worlds kids. However by the time they are in 12th grade they are far far behind the rest of the world. His solution is to let in all the better educated people in the world so the wages of skilled people can go down to the level found in third world countries. This is good capitalism according to him.

Why don't we better our educational system? And why is it good to lower the wages of higher skilled people to that of third world nations? Who gains by this? CEOs? I don't get it.

No wonder Wall Street loved this guy. He seems to be saying it's ok to rape America. No wonder CEOs started at 40x the average salaries pay and now makes over 400x the average employees.

Apparently this guy talks about how he would talk gibberish to the press for his entire time in office so nobody could take him apart. Why can't we immediately get rid of people who make no sense and replace them with people who do. Maybe Greenspan is responsible for most of the countries downfall...

Sunday, September 23, 2007

So many cases...

http://www.tagan.com/index.php?c_id=36&products_id=157&p_cata_id=86
http://www.directron.com/csblackpearl.html#caption
or
http://www.directron.com/pcv2000bplusii.html#caption
http://www.directron.com/fullall.html

It's good to know I don't have to wait for Antec for a quiet case. However I don't have $300 for a case. Not to mention the cost of a top end power supply to run the disks. Or the mother board. And it's memory. And the CPU. And the graphics card. Does the list ever end?

I guess with cases like these I'd be more concerned about making it into a SAN. Extra RAM might be good. I'd move my RAID card over to it and be done.

VisionTek X1050

I ended up going to Frys twice. The first card did not work properly in the linux or xp system. So I took it back and bought the VisionTek 1050. It works in both my linux 1680x1050 LCD and my 1600x1200 XP CRT. It's an AGP 8x with 256MBs, no fan, and a lifetime warranty. I paid $94 or so for it.

I see from here http://computers.pricegrabber.com/video-cards/visiontek/m/36761617/sort_type=bottomline
I could have bought the card for much less. I'm just happy to have found such a good card on short notice. This will be my new AGP card of choice until I move to PCIe cards when I get a new MBs.

Graphics card death

The graphics card on my main computer died this morning. It's lasted me a few years. Unfortunately it had a fan on it that from time to time make noises. I think it finally quit working. So I need to buy a new card. Hopefully much less than the $250 I spend on the old one.

This time around I'm looking for a under $100 graphics card that can handle huge resolutions in full color and has no fan. That is supported by linux too. That takes little power though if it doesn't have a fan it probably takes little power already. I don't play computer games so I don't need anything fancy.

I'll start by looking at tom's hardware reviews.

There's really not much to say about the Geforce 8800 GTS 320MB except that it's incredibly powerful for the price.

Compared to its 8800 GTX and 8800 GTS 640MB brethren, the only notable performance difference appears at resolutions 1600x1200 and above. This does not mean that the 8800 GTS 320MB can't handle some 1920x1200 gaming mind you, the GTX will just be faster.

For $280, there's no better videocard you can put in your machine, period.


Yikes. $280 and a fan. This is from his low cost build it yourself article. Must be a low cost gamer rig or something.
http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/09/17/sbm_low_cost_system/page5.html#video_card_evga_geforce_8800_gts_320mb



This one looks much better and it's only $85!:
We chose Gigabyte's Radeon HD 2600 Pro. It has 256-MB GDDR2 memory running at 800 MHz, a 600-MHz chip clock speed and dual-DVI interfaces. You can always convert DVI interfaces to attach an analog S-Sub display, but you will be thankful to get two DVI ports if you ever want to hook up two TFT displays. Lastly, this graphics card requires little idle power and is passively cooled, which is important if you want the system to be quiet and energy efficient. Make sure your case is properly ventilated to ensure stable operation. If you cannot or if you live in a really hot environment, we recommend investing in a graphics card that has a fan.

http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/09/10/the_500_gaming_machine_2007_edition/page4.html

I see it advertised on google for about $50 more than expected and it has a big hunking fan. What's going on?

Finally found it at newegg. It is not compatible with my system. Grrr. I guess this is going to be harder than I expected. I need an older card...

Friday, September 21, 2007

Gutsy entrails, i.e., the shit

http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/entdev/article.php/3700666

I have been hearing lots of bad things about Ubuntu's latest release. This article, which I haven't yet read, may be summarizing them.

I hear the next release will have fancy windows that giggle when moved. Well, use compiz by default, and lots of other foo foo bullshit, uh nerdshit, turned on by default. Having hung around the Ubuntu IRC channels I expect the worst in this release. Ubuntu is run by a bunch of kids who for the most part don't know how to use vi, edit a web page directly, and think reading Hex would make them cool beyond their wildest dreams. Few have experience coding in C or C++ or any other language. In other words they are losers who only know how to use high level applications. Hopefully they have added some functionality but I fear it will only be UI crap that hopefully can be turned off.

I posted about the dreamliner here questioning its safety, http://seobm.blogspot.com/2007/07/dreamliner.html, and at the time I think I was the only one doing so. It seemed obvious to me. Now others are starting to look at things instead of glossing over them:

http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2007/09/dan-rather-make.html which though reads as a paid by Boeing article refers to others. They keep talking about how particular parts are stronger than older materials. They fail to mention that because they are stronger they use far less of them. They mention some parts are used in other aircraft and such. They fail to mention the nightmareliner, my new name for Boeing's dreamliner, is using the materials in sizes never before tested.

Boeing is being very gutsy. Not many companies would risk everything by trusting lab boy theory without a solid track record grounded in reality. Boeing has. With America spiraling down the toilet in respects to almost all other industrialized countries this is probably a gamble they have to take. Or go out of business. I wish them the best of luck.

Monday, September 17, 2007

Robert Jordan dies, two books unfinished

I can't help but laugh at the Robert Jordan fans who will be heart broken that their favorite series has been left unfinished. The series was basically a sadistic love affair. Readers just wanted to bog down other readers in trying to keep millions of worthless details. I quit reading it after the first few books when I realized it was an unfinished time sink unlikely to ever get finished.

Maybe his readers will be forced to get a life and lose their sadistic ways.

Saturday, September 15, 2007

Mission Bay Boat Race

This weekend they have blocked off most all beaches facing the bay. Putting up fences and forcing people to pay to get in. I did not realize it was possible to do this. Yet as I biked around the bay and through Fiesta Island most all the beaches facing the race were blocked with fences. Despite this the sounds of huge boat engines blotted out even the road noise of all the big SUVs with their RVs towed behind. So many flags too. They all seemed to have big beer bellies and have families so fat and ugly you'd think they'd want to do something other than put lawn chairs up and watch boats race. I don't really get it. Despite their poor physical health and taste they must be doing something right financially to be able to afford all the play toys they have. Big RVs and pickup trucks to haul them along with the assorted toys don't come cheap.

The saddest thing about these slobs and their wasteful ways are what they do to the native birds. I lost count of the injured seagulls with broken wings hiding away from the tourists who damaged them. I wish the people who organized the races would pay for the care of these birds. Judging from the crowd though they'd more than likely just break the birds necks and throw them in the dumpsters justifying it by saying they are mercy killing the birds.

Maybe these spectators are in some way the best of what America has to offer. I just don't get it though.

Saturday, September 8, 2007

Netgear FVS124G Review: Dual WAN, Gigabit LAN, 25 tunnels

My main concern is a fast dual WAN system.
I'm not sure if this would best be accomplished via a Linkysys/netgear/cisco solution or a BSD solution.
Probably the BSD solution is the most robust.
However I'd like to know the options.

THE GOOD
Dual WAN
Gigabit LAN ports

THE BAD
Lousy suppor
Slow Failover on Dual WAN
No Jumbo frame support
12MB/s max throughput

UNKNOWN
QOS up and down?
SPI Firewall? (Stateful Packet Inspection)
Max VPN connections?
Act as a DHCP server?
Supports SNMP?
Anti-virus software?
Where is support located?
What does Newegg and Amazon say?


ALTERNATIVES:
Cisco ASA 5505.
Netgear FVX538 ProSafe VPN Firewall 200