Understanding the accumulation of data
This is part of an ongoing series of longer articles I will be posting every Sunday as part of an experiment in offering more in-depth content. I have long felt that voicemail was archaic. Like fax machines, voice mail systems seem stuck in an earlier era, with arcane controls and so little feedback that the user has [...]
Confirming my observation of longish Windows boot times, Microsoft engineer Michael Fortin today blogged about the booting improvements scheduled for Windows 7. He rightly points out that there are really three different “boot times” to consider: Boot Resume from sleep Resume from hibernate Note that the Microsoft definition of “boot (1)” only gets us through [...]
One of the new features in Xen 3.3, released this week, caught my eye: Paravirtualized SCSI (PVSCSI), which allows a guest OS to directly interact with a SCSI (or Fibre Channel) HBA. This should allow more specialized applications to be virtualized in Xen environments that use SCSI or FC storage without requiring the addition of [...]
Custom drive icons can help you to keep your removable and internal drives straight. It’s simple to do in Mac OS X, but illustrates an odd way in which Apple implemented their split resource/data fork filesystem idea in a GUI.
I once enthused about my favorite travel sites, and among these was Kayak.com, the AJAX-y Web 2.0 travel search engine that I use to find flights. The thing I love about Kayak is that I can literally slide the dials to look for just the right departure time, connections, and even planes to make sure [...]
I’ve been trying to work out how to sync my various data sources into a cohesive whole for a while now, and using the Mac has made it somewhat easier, since it supports a variety of data sources. For users of Microsoft Exchange, one of the most valuable sources for sync data is Outlook Web Access (OWA), because it uses the open(ish) WebDAV standard rather than the (closed) MAPI.
Do you know that need email archiving but just can’t get the project off the ground? I’ll be presenting a one-hour webinar called “Getting Your (Email Archiving) Project Approved” next Wednesday, August 27 at 1 PM Eastern time. The session is presented by Mimosa, but the content is independent, so you won’t hear me pitch [...]
Apple has finally fessed up to the terrifying failure (read smoke, sparks, fire) of their beautiful but fragile MagSafe power connectors. The combination of a slim, flexible cable, tiny but firm-gripping magnetic connector, and inadequate strain-relief causes the wires inside to burst their sheaths, short out, and burn. I suspect that Apple’s built-in winding “ears” [...]
As I posted the other day, my new Cradlepoint PHS300 3G router is just awesome, and I would happily recommend it to anyone. If you do get one, however, be sure to change the default password immediately. The seemingly-strong password is worse than insecure – it’s available to anyone who asks whenever the router is [...]
Make no mistake, the Das Keyboard Model S for Mac is a whole class better than the plastic junk most people use, and the snappy Cherry MX blue key switches are more rewarding than any scissor or membrane keyboard out there, but this is no IBM Model M, so buckling spring fans should look elsewhere.
EMC VFCache (née Project Lightning) is a fairly simple offering: A server-based PCIe flash card that acts as a read cache with no integration with storage arrays or hypervisors. But EMC’s entrance into the host-based flash storage market is a powerful demonstration of the wave of disruption caused by flash-based storage and high-performance computing.
The new Nimbus Data E-Class comes just at the right moment, with 500 TB of capacity, a fully redundant “dual active” controller architecture, massive performance (even InfiniBand), and complete feature set (once VAAI is released).
This week, two blog readers let me know what Google Chrome was warning them of malware on my blog. I dived in and discovered that, indeed, a nasty, obfuscated JavaScript attack had made its way into my site. Although I was disappointed by the lack of clarity about how to fix it, I believe I was able to remove it last night.
Although Clear clearly wants buyers to sign up for monthly service, they also have “secret” on-demand 2-hour, daily, and weekly plans. Here’s how to get online cheap!
HP stumbled mightily in 2011, and it had nothing to do with product or people. Even sales remained strong, though the PC business is changing. HP’s mighty stumble was a crisis of confidence due to a chain of shenanigans at the very top. This culminated with the short reign of Léo Apotheker, leaving HP to reassure the market of its strategy.
For a massive IT company, Dell sure doesn’t get the kind of respect given their competitors. Time and again, I’ll hear the sneers about Dell being little more than a “box shifter” who doesn’t “get” real enterprise IT needs. After a series of acquisitions in storage and networking, Dell is trying to stake a claim as a serious competitor to HP, IBM, Oracle, and the like. But why should anyone take Dell seriously, especially in enterprise storage?
Any time OS X corrects your spelling or (more likely) inserts appropriate accent marks, Dictate loses its mind and can no longer correctly enter some random letter. There are two ways to fix this problem (apart from just restarting Dictate all the time).
Moving cold virtual machine images from system to system, or even across great distances, is one of the main selling points of server virtualization. But it becomes much more difficult to manage movement of virtual machines that are still running, especially outside cluster or across WAN links. When talking about virtual machine mobility, it is important to consider what is being moved, the state it is in, and where it is going.
The difference between American and European mobile phone providers are vast, and the modern traveler is likely to run afoul if they are unprepared, running up a surprisingly large bill! Here’s a rundown of my standard techniques to prepare my American mobile phone for travel abroad.