This is a photo taken over looking Rushcutters Bay in Sydney, August 15 2006….
Archive for August, 2006
cool picture….
Aug 16
With the four drive bays, extra firewire and USB ports, a bay for a second optical drive (or even more hard drives?) and the ability to natively run Windows on top of two very fast dual core processors – these machines get a big solid tick of approval with hearty handshake and slap on the bum thrown in for good measure.
If you’re running universal binary apps (Final Cut Pro 5, iMovie etc) then the Mac Pros hoon!
If you’re running PowerPC apps (Adobe CS suite) then expect roughly the same performance as a Quad G5 from the Quad Intel 2.66GHz and about a 35% increase from the Quad Intel 3GHz beast.
According to GeekPatrol the Quad 3GHz Intel Mac Pro is 35% faster than the Quad 2.5Ghz PPC G5. Their tests showed the Quad 2.66GHz Mac Pro to be 7% faster than the Quad 2.5Ghz G5. However this test used only two RAM modules in the Mac Pro and so is probably wrong. See below for explanation.
It is important to note that you will get dramatic speed improvements by striping (RAID 0) discs and these new Mac Pros make that very easy – no need to install expensive hardware RAID cards – just use the available bays.
A really good way to backup all your users home folders is to use Network Home Directories where their entire home folder resides on your server. However if you have a slow server, network or too many users an excellent option is to use Portable Home Directories (PHD).
Using PHD the user’s home directory is synchronised to the server only at login and/or logout. This greatly reduces the network traffic, allows the user to leverage the full power of their workstation while also ensuring their data is backed up. Great for users who primarily use one machine and mobile users with laptops.
The following instructions are taken without permission from the Apple Discussions list. Many, many thanks to Derek (DY-E)!
Here’s a good article on how to finally get shared, editable calendars in iCal – YAY!
hell in a handbasket.
Aug 9
I’m depressed today.
This week our government is trying to push laws through that force all asylum seekers to be processed off shore and another that forces aborigines to swap title over their land for 99 years in return for basic needs such as housing and health.
I believe that reforming the Land Rights Act is necessary but we need more than a one day senate inquiry and disinformation from governement senators to determine what is the best course of action. This is a blatant and immoral attempt to open up the Northern Territory for the mining of uranium.
The Migration Act changes are simply horrible. “…between 1992 and 2005, Australia was the only country in the world to require the detention of both adults and children seeking asylum for the duration of their processing.” Now we’re going to do it again but this time in other people’s countries. We know the damage done to people kept in detention for years (especially children) and we now know that repatriated refugees are often killed.
But what are Australians worried about? The price of oil. Why is petrol so expensive? Well, apart from the fact that it is a scarce and diminishing resource we are also restricting supply from Iraq by maintaining a pointless and bloody war there. Greg Palast has some interesting points on this here. “The rise in the price of oil after the first three years of the war boosted the value of the reserves of ExxonMobil Oil alone by just over $666 billion. (The devil is in the details.)”
So what do you do if you actually care about the greater good and not just your hip pocket? One excellent idea is to get along to www.getup.org.au and sign their petitions. An even better idea is to ring your coalition senator and express dismay at the new draconian laws.
Fight the fear and get involved – these things only happen because we let them happen.
Lightning Protection
Aug 9
…cause a client asked…
There is no Utopia in lightning protection. Lightning may ignore every defense man can conceive. A systematic hazard mitigation approach to lightning safety is a prudent course of action.
http://www.lightningsafety.com/nlsi_lhm/lpts.html
The best you can do to protect yourself from lightning is to have all equipment and power single grounded and install a decent surge filter (or divertor) at your mains power panel. Note that if the house is situated in a dry or rocky area getting a good ground may be problematic. If you are in a heavy lightning area then a copper lightning rod (commonly called air terminals) may be prudent. On top of your low impedance, well-bonded equipotential ground system and mains power surge arrestor you may want to get (from Coretech of course) surge protectors for your computer and data equipment.
If you provide a list of the equipment that you will be using we can get a quote to you for surge protection equipment in your home office. If you want backup battery power included – please let me know how long you’d like to run what in a power outage.
“The importance of a single-point protection ground cannot be stressed enough. All equipment should be bonded to one single earth ground. If you have some equipment on one ground, and other equipment on another ground, it is quite likely that in a nearby strike that there will be a large voltage difference between the two grounds. This means that the equipment will be at different voltages, sometimes high enough to get arcing from one to another.
A Single Ground Rod is Seldom Enough: Tests done over the past few years show that in most cases, a single 6 or 8 foot ground rod is NOT enough, even when the ground is salted to improve conductivity. The problem is, in arid climates with dry soil, it could take as many as a dozen rods to get it down to the 10 ohms ground resistance that is usually accepted as the optimum (25 ohms is the NEC minimum). To get down to the 25 ohm NEC minimum, you may have to use 2-3 10 foot rods, all bonded together with #6 wire and copper wire clamps. However, if you cannot do this, something is better than nothing. In some cases you may have to go so far as to bury lengths of bare copper wire or copper pipe in trenches.”
http://www.windsun.com/Lightning_Protection.htm
Importantly you should also get the telephone circuit protected. Lightning striking 300 meters away will generate a large electro-magnetic field that will fry modems (and maybe computers) connected to phone and power lines – modems are especially sensitive to this. An external modem is usually a good idea (Apple USB External Modem at $79 is excellent value).
Most of the work to protect you from lightning strike should be done by a good electrician who knows the standards. Lightning strikes generate between 10,000 and 30,000 amps in a few microseconds so having a well grounded system is the first and most important step.
What a load of bananas.
Aug 3
The PM & treasurer reckon that oil and banana price increases are behind Australia’s climbing inflation. That’s just bananas.
Austalians normally spend $14 million a week on bananas. Post cyclone Larry we’re spending $7 million per week. Whilst that is an impressively large number of the bendy yellow fruit – here’s a few other items on our weekly shopping list:
- Housing – $1.2 billion.
- Cars – $2.8 billion.
- Alcohol – $180 million.
- Cigarettes – $88 million.
Gee bananas don’t really rate do they? Adds new meaning to the term “Banana Republic.”
Based on 2003-04 ABS and 2006 NRMA figures and with thanks to crikey.com.
Whether or not David Hicks is guilty of a crime has yet to be determined.
He has been kept in a US military prison in Cuba for 4.5 years during which time all other western countries have removed their citizens.
The following from Major Michael Mori’s guest blog at www.getup.com.au
David has been detained for four and a half years without trial, and has been in isolation for the past four months. He sits in a concrete room for 23 hours a day. He is allowed one book per week and one hour outside his cell for exercise in what best could be described as a large dog kennel, and to shower….The Australian government keeps saying we can not prosecute David in Australia. That is simply because David has not violated any law, Australian or international – not that the laws don’t exist. If the charges against David in the commission system were valid international law crimes, Australia could charge him with these offenses. But the charges made up against David by the commission system are not real. Every time the Australian government says “we can not charge Hicks”, they are in fact saying “David Hicks has not violated any law”. But the Australian government tries to use this as a reason to abandon him. It should be reason to stand up for him and bring him home to his family.
There is an extremely important principle at stake here – people can not be held without trial. No matter what your opinion on David Hick’s motives or actions, he is being detained illegally and our government does nothing because most of us simply don’t care.
Get over to www.getup.com.au and sign the petition – we must protect our basic rights.
These sobering figures are from the United Nations:
January: 1,778 civilian deaths
February: 2,165 civilian deaths
March: 2,378 civilian deaths
April: 2,284 civilian deaths
May: 2,669 civilian deaths
June: 3,149 civilian deaths
14,423 in the first half of the year.
What a god-damned mess.