Re: I'm writing an opinion piece for the Concord Monitor -- care to weigh in?
>Man. If FOSS is so great, how come *we* don't have all of that money >to do all of those things? Very simple. Proprietary software is written for investors by non-users. FOSS, for the most part, is written by the customers for the customers. FOSS is written by the people that have "the itch that needs scratching", the community. Sometimes it is written by people who are providing a service (Red Hat, Novell, etc.) but just look at any service businessits "Exit Value" is typically 1.5 times revenue, versus a "Product Company" being 5 times revenue (or more). FOSS, by its very nature, limits profitability. People can not rely on making a product one time, and milking that investment hundreds or thousands or (in the case of Microsoft) millions of times. You are paid for your work, and are then expected to hand it back to the thousands who contributed before you. "We stand on the shoulders of giants who went before." Who loses in a true FOSS environment? The investors. They don't get to invest one dollar and make a million. It is more like investing a dollar and making a hundred.ergo Wall Street hates us. And Wall Street has lots of connections on "K" street in Washington, D.C. Another set of losers? Patent Trolls. And not just the ones that buy patents without having a single thought in their minds, but the people that patent "obvious things" and hope that no one notices "prior art" until they have bludgeoned unsuspecting users for everything they have. Who else loses? IP Lawyers, because with proprietary code the first thing you need is a lawyer to negotiate the contract with the IP provider. With FOSS all you have to do to start a new business is pull down the code, and agree to certain principals when you use the code. No lawyers. No Trolls. No high-powered business negotiators. Gee, look who is on the staff of the International Intellectual Property Alliance: http://www.iipa.com/personnel.html SURPRISE, SURPRISE! Who wins in a true FOSS environment? The customer, who does not have to pay again and again for the code. Society in general, who finds that they can change the code to meet their needs, lowering costs, being more efficient, etc. They take that money they save and they do things like feeding their kids, paying their mortgage, buying their spouse something nice. It is hard for them to figure out they should be donating their money to protect their freedom. After all, that is what the government is supposed to be doing, right? Instead we have a "Supreme Court" that has just given the same rights to a corporation that a living, breathing, bleeding person has. So true FOSS companies that are profitable making FOSS are not "Microsoft profitable", because if they were, others would fork their products and compete with them. But WAIT, America! What is really happening here? Does FOSS really hurt our economy, or just distribute it differently? Does it mean that the small country of New Hampshire does not have to export as much of its money to the country of Redmond-Washington? Does having the source code for our software mean that we can actually fix the problems that are keeping us from moving forward? Does it mean that we can at last close the functionality gap between what we need and what we get, saving at least five BILLION dollars a day as a world economy?(1) The problem, you see, is that five BILLION dollars a day is spent five dollars at a time. If it was not, if it was concentrated and paid to someone (like a company), we could do the same things as the BSA and the "IIPA". I hope I have partially answered your question. There is actually a lot more to this, but I am tired tonight. But remember two things: o FOSS favors the common person o According to the book "Collapse", by Jack Diamond, in the collapse of economy the first people eaten were the chiefs and the priests. Warmest regards, maddog ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: SMART diags (was: Re: mismatch_cnt != 0, member content mismatch, but md says the mirror is good)
P.S.: On Tue, Feb 23, 2010 at 9:32 PM, Michael Bilow wrote: > At this point, an unreadable block encountered on a block device is > handled at a very high level, usually the file system, well above > where things like AWRE on the hardware can occur. Heck, it's not even handled by the filesystem. It usually goes something like this: HDD returns error to the controller, controller driver returns error to the block device layer, block layer returns error to filesystem, filesystem returns error to C library, C library returns error to application, application pukes on its shoes, sysadmin gets a call at 3 AM saying the server is down. ;-) -- Ben ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: SMART diags (was: mismatch_cnt != 0, member content mismatch, but md says the mirror is good)
On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 8:08 AM, Tom Buskey wrote: > They found little difference between enterprise and consumer grade lifetimes. That doesn't surprise me. They're often the exact same hard disk assembly, just with different firmware, or maybe a different PCB. Despire marketing claims to the contrary, I wouldn't expect firmware tweaks to significantly improve reliability in most cases. (*Most*. Reportedly, bad design in the firmware of IBM's DeskStar drives may have causes some of their problems back during the "DeathStar" plague.) > Once drives have errors, they multiply quickly. That much is explained by received wisdom: Modern hard drives are designed with a certain amount of redundency. They use ECC on a block-by-block basis (helping recover from single-bit errors on-the-fly), and they have a certain number of spare blocks. For I/O to start being failed to the OS, the problems have to have overwhelmed the drive's internal mechanisms. (For example, maybe the spare blocks are all used up.) Glitches that previously could be compensated for instead now yield I/O errors. -- Ben ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: SMART diags (was: Re: mismatch_cnt != 0, member content mismatch, but md says the mirror is good)
On Tue, Feb 23, 2010 at 9:32 PM, Michael Bilow wrote: >> Of course, mdstat still calls the array "clean" even after >> mismatches are detected, which isn't what I'd usually call "clean"... > > Ther term "clean" in this context just means that all of the RAID > components (physical drives) are still present. Like I said, not what I'd usually call "clean". :) > ... "md" device operates at a level of abstraction above > block devices that isolates it ... Sure. That doesn't mean the md driver can't follow an algorithm that hopes the drive will do something intelligent, or at least hope that re-writing a block might improve the odds somehow. What are the altneratives? We could fail the whole member out of the array. That could be an overraction, and definately reduces redundency if it's just one bad block out of several billion. Or we could do nothing. I can't think of a situation where rewriting one block could cause serious problems that weren't already about to break loose. No? > Unless a write occurs somehow, though, even > with AWRE enabled the hardware should not reallocate a sector. Right, the drive should remain willing to keep retrying the read as long as you do. >> R3. OS requests write to same logical block. > > Again, exactly what happens is going to vary a lot with the > particular hardware. Older drives, even parallel ATA drives, > generally cannot reallocate a spare sector on the fly ... Sure, on-the-fly relocation is a *relatively* new thing. But it's been around in the IDE world, at least in theory, for what, ten years? Implementation may be inconsistent; that I would buy. But I know I've seen both parallel and serial ATA drives where the "relocated blocks" statistic was non-zero and climbed over time. I've seen the "pending relocations" be high until a "badblocks -w" pass, and then it dropped to zero and "relocated blocks" jumped up. The smartmontools FAQ says modern drives can relocate bad sectors on write; their "Bad block HOWTO" goes into some detail on SCSI drives. Either there's an awful lot of misleading happening, or this stuff actually does work sometimes. :-) I'm not so worried if that 120 MB IDE disk I still have in my closet[1] doesn't do on-the-fly relocation. ;-) [1] = Hey, it might come in handy some day! Perhaps what we should all be worrying about, rather than ancient drives, is the flood of USB flash stuff that's happening. Anyone know how *that* typically does when it comes to self-monitoring and -healing? It'd be a shame if the migration to flash storage sets us back years in that area. >> It make me wonder just what the >> overall SMART health is supposed to indicate -- "Yes, the HDD is >> physically present"? :) > > SMART is just a communications protocol. So, basically, the SMART "overall health" (or whatever it's called) is just reporting whatever the manufacturer programmed the drive to report, and may be completely useless. Good to know. :) >> I did once have the BIOS check start reporting a SMART health >> warning, but all the OEM diagnostics, smartctl, "badblocks -w", etc., >> didn't actually report anything wrong. > > SMART is not designed to predict infant mortality and unusual > failures ... Whatever. :) My point was that the drive seemed to be indicating something was wrong, but nobody[2] could figure out why it was doing that. SMART overall health was reporting failure but everything else seemed to be good. Like I said, it could be the drive knew something that couldn't be reported using other tools, and it actually averted a real failure. [2] = Well, for sufficiently small definitions of "nobody". Me, one tech support guy, and a handful of software tools. :) -- Ben ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: [NH LoCo] I'm writing an opinion piece for the Concord Monitor -- care to weigh in?
On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 4:31 PM, Susan Cragin wrote: > ... the National Security Agency, uses Linux and only Linux ... That's flat-out wrong. Heck, their *web site* runs IIS 6.0. With respect, please check your facts before petitioning the NH government. If you charge in there like a zealot, you'll hurt the cause, not help it. -- Ben ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: I'm writing an opinion piece for the Concord Monitor -- care to weigh in?
On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 4:14 PM, Joshua Judson Rosen wrote: > The US Department of Defense appears to agree with the author [accepting Open > Source] Keep in mind that the US DoD is a huge organization -- one of the biggest in human history. Some factions love FOSS and hate Windows; other factions are the inverse. Great fun for those of us subject to multiple jurisdictions. And change happens at a glacial pace even when it's coming from the top. Still, progress *is* being made, which is good. -- Ben ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: I'm writing an opinion piece for the Concord Monitor -- care to weigh in?
"Jon 'maddog' Hall" writes: > > Yes, we know that it is crap and we know that FOSS is commercial > software, but the enemies of FOSS (and this includes free information) > have lots of money, hire lots of lobbyists, who takes lots of people to > dinner and whisper things in their ear. Man. If FOSS is so great, how come *we* don't have all of that money to do all of those things? -- "Don't be afraid to ask (λf.((λx.xx) (λr.f(rr." ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: I'm writing an opinion piece for the Concord Monitor -- care to weigh in?
Yes, we know that it is crap and we know that FOSS is commercial software, but the enemies of FOSS (and this includes free information) have lots of money, hire lots of lobbyists, who takes lots of people to dinner and whisper things in their ear. It all sounds on the up-and-up. The "Business Software Alliance", the "International Intellectual Property Alliance"...just about the time you think you have debunked one argument, they have three more falsehoodsor the same one re-baked. And these groups sound important because they "represent" 1900 U.S. companies: http://www.iipa.com/aboutiipa.html They are fighting for their livesthey understand that if people start developing the software they need and sharing that development along the lines of FOSS, the whole business model that they have built their companies on will crumble. They publish nice reports like this one: http://www.iipa.com/copyright_us_economy.html and stick them under the noses of our elected representatives, who are now trying to figure out how to create jobs and keep our economy going. And a lot of those jobs are dependent on new technologies and ideas, generally thought of as "IP"so these legislators and representatives tend to listen to them, and lump all "IP", including software, into one large lump. (sigh) Time for another "these folks are crazy" blog. md ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: I'm writing an opinion piece for the Concord Monitor -- care to weigh in?
We need to check to see if the People's Republik of Cambridge is on the list. On 02/24/2010 04:12 PM, Susan Cragin wrote: > http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/3911/125/ > Apparently, Canada is an enemy, too. > When they put Massachusetts on the list, I'm hiding. > > > -Original Message- > >> From: Seth Cohn >> Of interest... >> "When using open source makes you an enemy of the state" >> http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2010/feb/23/opensource-intellectual-property >> >> On Mon, Feb 22, 2010 at 7:06 PM, Susan Cragin >> wrote: >> >>> I'm writing an opinion piece for the Concord Monitor. >>> Title: All NH taxpayer-supported computers and systems should run >>> open-source software. >>> I need examples of municipalities, states, and so on, that have switched to >>> open-source successfully, and what they use. >>> Did you use Drupal to put your town's planning-and-zoning information out? >>> Does your library run Koha? Do your municipal workers use Firefox / >>> OpenOffice / Thunderbird? >>> What about schools that you are connected with? Do they run open-source >>> software? >>> Please feel free to cross-post this. >>> The Concord Monitor has in the past given my articles good exposure, the >>> state is desperate to cut costs, and this could be a good thing for >>> open-source. >>> Susan Cragin > -- Jerry Feldman Boston Linux and Unix PGP key id: 537C5846 PGP Key fingerprint: 3D1B 8377 A3C0 A5F2 ECBB CA3B 4607 4319 537C 5846 signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: I'm writing an opinion piece for the Concord Monitor -- care to weigh in?
>Piffle. > >From that article: > >"I know open source has a tendency to be linked to socialist >ideals, but I also think it's an example of the free market in >action." > >The US Department of Defense appears to agree with the author, cf.: > >http://www.dwheeler.com/blog/2009/10/27/#dod-oss-2009 > > >Also see David Wheeler's essay, `FLOSS *is* commercial software': > >http://www.dwheeler.com/essays/commercial-floss.html Well, in addition, our most paranoid agency, the National Security Agency, uses Linux and only Linux, even though they don't advertise such. They even work on their own flavor. SELinux. And the NSA doesn't answer to anyone. I thought it was funny when Bush's new Homeland Security Agency went with Windows. http://www.nsa.gov/research/selinux/index.shtml Although even the HSA may be changing. Check "state of Mississippi" near the bottom of this. http://www.linux.org/info/linux_govt.html And HSA money has gone into several programs that fund research into curing Linux vulnerabilities, because so much of our critical systems use it. I think our submarines run on it, or partially on it, now that I think of it. ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: I'm writing an opinion piece for the Concord Monitor -- care to weigh in?
Seth Cohn writes: > > On Mon, Feb 22, 2010 at 7:06 PM, Susan Cragin > wrote: > > I'm writing an opinion piece for the Concord Monitor. > > > > Title: All NH taxpayer-supported computers and systems should run > > open-source software. > > > > I need examples of municipalities, states, and so on, that have switched to > > open-source successfully, and what they use. [...] > > The Concord Monitor has in the past given my articles good > > exposure, the state is desperate to cut costs, and this could be a > > good thing for open-source. > Of interest... > > "When using open source makes you an enemy of the state" > http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2010/feb/23/opensource-intellectual-property Piffle. From that article: "I know open source has a tendency to be linked to socialist ideals, but I also think it's an example of the free market in action." The US Department of Defense appears to agree with the author, cf.: http://www.dwheeler.com/blog/2009/10/27/#dod-oss-2009 Also see David Wheeler's essay, `FLOSS *is* commercial software': http://www.dwheeler.com/essays/commercial-floss.html -- "Don't be afraid to ask (λf.((λx.xx) (λr.f(rr." ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: I'm writing an opinion piece for the Concord Monitor -- care to weigh in?
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/3911/125/ Apparently, Canada is an enemy, too. When they put Massachusetts on the list, I'm hiding. -Original Message- >From: Seth Cohn >Of interest... >"When using open source makes you an enemy of the state" >http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2010/feb/23/opensource-intellectual-property > >On Mon, Feb 22, 2010 at 7:06 PM, Susan Cragin >wrote: >> I'm writing an opinion piece for the Concord Monitor. >> Title: All NH taxpayer-supported computers and systems should run >> open-source software. >> I need examples of municipalities, states, and so on, that have switched to >> open-source successfully, and what they use. >> Did you use Drupal to put your town's planning-and-zoning information out? >> Does your library run Koha? Do your municipal workers use Firefox / >> OpenOffice / Thunderbird? >> What about schools that you are connected with? Do they run open-source >> software? >> Please feel free to cross-post this. >> The Concord Monitor has in the past given my articles good exposure, the >> state is desperate to cut costs, and this could be a good thing for >> open-source. >> Susan Cragin ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: I'm writing an opinion piece for the Concord Monitor -- care to weigh in?
Of interest... "When using open source makes you an enemy of the state" http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2010/feb/23/opensource-intellectual-property On Mon, Feb 22, 2010 at 7:06 PM, Susan Cragin wrote: > I'm writing an opinion piece for the Concord Monitor. > > Title: All NH taxpayer-supported computers and systems should run > open-source software. > > I need examples of municipalities, states, and so on, that have switched to > open-source successfully, and what they use. > > Did you use Drupal to put your town's planning-and-zoning information out? > Does your library run Koha? Do your municipal workers use Firefox / > OpenOffice / Thunderbird? > > What about schools that you are connected with? Do they run open-source > software? > > Please feel free to cross-post this. > > The Concord Monitor has in the past given my articles good exposure, the > state is desperate to cut costs, and this could be a good thing for > open-source. > > Susan Cragin > ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: SMART diags (was: mismatch_cnt != 0, member content mismatch, but md says the mirror is good)
On Tue, Feb 23, 2010 at 7:43 PM, Benjamin Scott wrote: > On Tue, Feb 23, 2010 at 6:05 PM, Ken D'Ambrosio wrote: > > Huh -- I actually *have* had SMART tell me things were awry, several > > times. > > Well, that's good to know. :) > > Just curious, did you get a chance to see if any of them actually > started failing soon after? > > Like I said, I did have one case where SMART said something was > wrong, but nobody could figure out why it was saying that, and they > only did an exchange because I insisted. And, of course, since it was > a service contract, I couldn't keep the old part to see if/when it > would actually start showing other symptoms. > > Google released a study of hard drive failures (last year?). Another organization (CERN?) release one at about the same time. It said SMART is 50/50 and not all that reliable as a defect predictor. They found little difference between enterprise and consumer grade lifetimes. Once drives have errors, they multiply quickly. It is definitely worth digging up. ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
