Stupidity Amazes Me!!!!

I was watching the news and saw the recent peaceful protesters bring firearms to rallies protesting Obama and the Second Amendment and I was amazed at the stupidity of it. How stupid are these people, giving politicians the political fodder they need to use against them?
That is about as smart as going to a bar next to a police station, stumbling back to your car, blowing your horn and driving off. Yes, you can go to a bar, yes you can blow your car horn and yes you can drive home. But it is bringing unneeded attention to yourself and begging for a police officer to pull you over. People like those I saw on TV are like that, they would go in to the bar, drink water, fake stumble out to the car, flip the cops off and drive off. They are sober, so everything is legal and when the cop rightfully pulls them over, they are going to yell that their rights have been violated and are being targeted by the police. Then you get things like ridiculous alcohol level laws and sobriety traffic checkpoints all because some dummies screwed it up for the rest of us (No I don't think that is how blood alcohol tests and sobriety checkpoints were started I am just using a parable here).
I support the 2nd Amendment, probably more than the average citizen, but I would not do anything as stupid as publicly carrying my legal weapon to a protest against the president, basically asking people to take my rights from me. I almost wonder if opponents of the 2nd Amendment paid some of these individuals to show up at these rallies to look stupid; one of the guys with the M4/AR-15 strapped on his back did not look comfortable at all with the weapon, just stupid no matter what and it hurts the rest of us. I know people are saying that is just proof that stupid people are allowed to own firearms and they should be confiscated, but we can not throw away what was given to us by our founding fathers because of a few idiots. If we do then what stops us from losing even more for our own "protection". Likke automobiles for example. I could legally buy a dump truck and drive it full speed through the middle of a crowded stadium during the Alabama vs Auburn or Ohio State vs. Michigan game and chances are I would hurt a lot more people than I could ever get with any semi-automatic firearm. More people are injured by stupid, careless drivers every year than ever get wounded by a firearm.  A true example is where a construction company owner, wielded steel around his bulldozer and took it on a destructive killing spree through the middle of a down town in the Midwest. Yes this has actually happened.  I can still buy a bulldozer of my own though.

Thoughts on Movie Advertisement

While watching TV tonight every station aired commercials for the new Brad Pitt movie every 30 minutes it seemed. The big line is

"We are interested in one thing, Killing Nazis"

I find this kind of funny, it doesn't disturb me at all, they were the enemy of the US during that time period. I saw the original "Inglorious Bastards" when I was about 9 or 10 on HBO (that is the first movie I remember having nudity in it from my youth, it made a lasting impression to say the least) . What does surprise me though, although it shouldn't, is where are all the do gooders who normally come out to say "you can't say that, you are going to offend the Germans", you know, the kind of people Hollywood is made up of. The kind of people who say eating meat is murder to animals.

What would happen if that same line was used every hour advertising for other movies about our wars against the Japanese, Koreans, Chinese, British, Iraqis, American Indians, Philippines, etc. (you name them and chances are high that the US Army has done away with a group of them, we are quite good at that, after all killing is the job of the military whether we acknowledge it or not. Any soldier active or not, remembers standing on the parade field and screaming at the top of their lungs "WHAT MAKE THE GRASS GROW GREEN, ........ THE BLOOD, THE BLOOD MAKES THE GRASS GROW GREEN". That is when the realization of you job duty as a soldier comes to the forefront)

I am just curious as to what would happen if any other former or current enemy of the US was targeted in this manner. Where are the people saying consider the feelings of the Germans, many people living in the US are former German Nazis, they were being loyal to their country at the time. I wonder what they think as they see that commercial hourly and remember their dead brothers who were justifiably slain by the American War machine.  If we can bring up those wounds to the Germans, why is it not ok to show video clips of the attack on the twin towers every hour to make us remember current events and why we need a strong defense and that their are very powerful forces out there who wish death and destruction upon us.

Since there are American Nazis, I do not agree with them by the way, and I think they are a sad ridiculous group (the original Nazis were for national socialism by the way, remind you of  some of our current politicians?), why can we say "We are in the business of killing Nazis" but if someone said the same thing and substituted another group, say Muslims, they would be chastised and branded hate mongers? All Muslims do not wish death and destruction on us, all Nazis did not wish it upon us either. I know an old man who was a member of the former Hitler youth, he says he didn't understand at that time what it was really about, but that he was wanting to defend those around him and be patriotic to his country, not necessarily kill people. He said most of those around him felt the same way he did, it was the radicals that you had to watch out for. Sounds familiar to current events doesn't it? But yet it is OK to label them and wish death upon them.

I am just wondering if anyone else finds it odd. Personally it doesn't bother me, I was just noticing how it seemed unfair for us not to be able to say we are in the business of killing our current enemies when it is okay to glorify our past victories of killing Nazis. As a closing statement I will say that when I joined the U.S. Army at 17 years old, I like every other soldier, swore an Oath to Protect the Constitution of the United States of America from ALL enemies foreign and domestic, so any enemy of the US and its Constitution (yes even domestic politicians) should be fair game. Things are different now then they were in the 1700's; unfortunately we can't tar and feather them anymore and get away with it; the only effective weapon we currently have against those domestic enemies of the Constitution is our vote, so in the next voting year I am going to vote against any incumbent politician (Republican or Democrat) who has voted against what was laid out by our founding fathers when they laid out our Constitution. I am scared I am in a losing battle for the first time in my life. Get on the "We are in the business of Killing Socialism" band wagon and stick up for what so many of our forefathers died for.

Email Attachments - Consider Before You Embed!

I recently received an email from someone in a storage related distribution list. At the bottom of the email it has this bitmap image embedded in the email (I have saved it as a png file to compress it without losing any of its original quality and save space).

The only thing that made me notice it was that the email showed that it had an attachment, the only attachment was this image. I then started thinking, why use an image to say this, that takes up unnecessary space. I looked at the email properties and found that the size of this email was 54 KB. Not too bad, but I looked at another much longer email that had no embedded images or files and saw that the average was 7 KB. I saved the attachment out and found that his embedded image was 28 KB by itself. There again, not a huge amount. Then I looked at how many people were on this distribution list (all of the recipients are on the same Exchange server) and found that there were roughly 2,500 people that received that email and attachment.With that one 28 KB attachment it has consumed around 70 MB of storage.
             28 KB * 2500 =  70,000Kb (68.4 MB)
Still not a whole lot. But, considering that I could go back and see that this same person has sent over 25 emails to this distribution list you now have 1.67 GB of storage consumed it is starting to look like a lot of wasted storage.
             68.4 * 25 =  1,708.98 MB (1.67 GB)
 
I know that I have seen this same attachment on a lot of emails not only from this poster but from others as well. If only 4 other users have this same embedded attachment and they send 10 emails each then they have consumed around 2.67 GB of storage for their attachment only. This does not include any actual useful data.
            4 * 28 KB = 112 KB
            10 * 112 KB = 1,120 KB
            1120 KB * 2500 = 2,800,000 KB (2,734.375 MB) or (2.67 GB)
If over a 6 month period these same 4 users send an additional 2500 emails  that has 10 people carbon copied then they have consumed yet another 2.67 GB bringing them up to 5.34 GB of storage! To put this into perspective an MP3 version of AC/DC's song Back in Black takes roughly 3.95MB of storage. You could store 1,367 copies of that song in the same amount of storage used for the attachment in this email.That is over 136 individual music CDs. If a storage administrator found a single user on this same Local Area Network storing 136 CDs on corporate owned storage it would be grounds for dismissal.

What makes this stand out to me is that this is a distribution for Storage Professionals, people who should understand the implications of extra data embedded into an email, I could understand if these were normal End Users, but not those whose job it is to minimize the amount of money spent on storing data. Maybe they should change their logo to a text version that states:

Consider Your Storage: Only include attachments when absolutely necessary to get your point across! And if you are going to print this email delete it from your inbox.

NYTIMES : New Poll Finds Growing Unease on Health Plan

I wrote about statistics before but, this ending to an article refusing to say anything negative about the president says it all.I which finding the white house will be using.

In one finding, 75 percent of respondents said they were concerned that the cost of their own health care would eventually go up if the government did not create a system of providing health care for all Americans. But in another finding, 77 percent said they were concerned that the cost of health care would go up if the government did create such a system.

Massachusetts Says Encrypt It All!

A law that takes effect in Jan 2010 reads like this

• "All persons that own, license, store or maintain personal information about a resident of the Commonwealth," which presumably means any business anywhere that does business with Massachusetts residents
• Paper as well as electronic records
• Secure user user authentication protocols
• Secure access control measures
• Encryption on all wireless networks linked to personal information repositories
• Monitoring and encryption for all portable devices with personal information
• Firewall protection for any database containing PII
• System security software must be installed and kept up to date
• Education and training is also required

It is pretty restrictive yet it is still open for interpretation and leaves a lot of leverage for prosecutors to go after a company that they want to bring down. If you have ever been involved with the PIN or SAS70 type audits then you know how these rules can be interpreted differently by any governing body. Bottom line is this is going to be VERY costly to many organizations. It is not a bad thing to a degree, but it will be costly and probably abused by law enforcement officials who do not understand how computer technologies actually work.

CBS press Sotomayor about her 2ND Ammendment views and she refuses to answer

President Obama's first nominee to the high court did previously say that she believed Americans do not currently enjoy a fundamental right to bear arms, which echoes her two previous rulings on the topic as an appeals court judge. But now she refused to elaborate on her views about firearms regulations and the Second Amendment, saying she would "make no prejudgments" about future firearms-related cases.

New York Lawmakers

New York House Assembly actually has an annual "Anti-Gun Day" for enacting new laws in the state. This takes place every April 29th.

One of the crazy things being proposed for the next year is a mandate to modify handguns to make it impossible to be operated by children. It would require a 10lb trigger pull and require multiple motions in order to fire the weapon. Another requirement would be to require firearm retailers to carry insurance to cover any criminal acts committed after the sale of a firearm.

Sending email with attachments on UNIX systems

Sending email with attachments on UNIX systems
All of the below examples use the following shell variables. I use MIME type application/octet-stream just as an example. Actual type used will vary depending upon attachment file type. Remember, these are simple examples of the different tools available.

TXTFILE=/tmp/textfile  # A text message with a simple preface message
ATTFILE=/tmp/binary_file # File to be attached and generally requiring encoding
SUBJECT="Your attachment" # Change as needed
MAILTO=user@where.ever  # Ditto

uuencode – This is the original method to send encoded text within a message. It is not an attachment as we think of them today but is still used enough to warrant putting it here. 
uuencode $ATTFILE $ATTFILE | mail -s "$SUBJECT" $MAILTO
(uuencode $FILE1 $FILE1; uuencode $FILE2 $FILE2) | mail -s "$SUBJECT" $MAILTO
 

simple shell commands – For a very simple text (plain or html) attachment with just one file: 
echo "From: $LOGNAME\nTo: $MAILTO\nSubject: $SUBJECT\n\
Mime-Version: 1.0\nContent-Type: text/plain\n" > /tmp/file
cat $TXTFILE >> /tmp/file
 

Find Solaris 10 HBA info

Find HBA’s WWN on Solaris 10

#!/bin/sh

for i in `cfgadm
grep fc-fabric
awk ‘{print $1}’`; do

dev=”`cfgadm -lv $i
grep devices
awk ‘{print $NF}’`”

wwn=”`luxadm -e dump_map $dev
grep ‘Host Bus’
awk ‘{print $4}’`”

echo “$i: $wwn”

done

Or command line: on all versions:

#prtpicl -v -c scsi-fcp
grep wwn (On all versions)

:node-wwn 20 00 00 e0 8b 94 92 8d

:port-wwn 21 00 00 e0 8b 94 92 8d

# prtconf -vp
grep -i ww

port-wwn: 210000e0.8b80fb81

node-wwn: 200000e0.8b80fb81

On Sol 10

# fcinfo hba-port

VMWare VSphere 4i SSH

I haven't verified this, but I found this snippet on a web site earlier today
SSH in vSphere 4i
tweetmeme_url = 'http://www.itstuff.ca/2009/06/ssh-in-vsphere-4i.html';
To enable SSH in vSphere 4i we should do the following steps (similar as esx 3i):
1. First, press Alt + f1 then type “unsupported” and press enter.
2. At the prompt for password, provide the credentials, previously configured, and we will be able to log in to the service console.
3. Do a vi /etc/inetd.conf and look for #ssh. Remove the # and save the file after this.
4. Go to /sbin, and run this command ./services.sh restart

Now, we will have SSH enabled.

Gran Torino

It is official, Clint Eastwood has made two of the best films ever made.
1. The Outlaw Josey Wales
2. Gran Torino

Both movies are a testament to human behavior and how it is molded by tragedy, warfare, ethnic/cultural differences and trust in people that they thought they would never befriend. An entire thesis on social behavior could be written on either movie.

Both movies show an over the top white guy who everyone misjudges on the surface, who in the end, shows that everyone was wrong about him, he is hard to survive in the only way he knows, by the sword. Clint Eastwood has a way of finding stories that show the backbone of America and how things should be. Gran Torino is fabulous and Clint Eastwood is one of the only actors who could have pulled it off without the media blasting him.

Verizon Speeds are so wacky

I don't understand why sometimes I will get around 160Kbps download speeds from Verizon and then I get speeds like this. If I could consistently get these speeds I wouldn't complain about my access.



The connection speeds above are with a cellular direct connect Wilson amplifier. The only problem is the direct connect is subject to "interference" from other providers and occasionally will try to put me on the AT&T broadband and I will lose the connection all together. The speed posted below is with a repeater type amplifier, that is slower, but usually a little more stable. It is still faster than an ISDN line though.



I think I am finally going to break down and get the parabolic grid antenna that I keep talking about.

H.R. 197-- the "National Right-to-Carry Reciprocity Act."

H.R. 197 has been introduced that is a positive step forward to the rights of a citizen to travel with the protection they are granted by the constitution. The bill has 127 co-sponsors in the House. Not surprisingly all of the southern states are sponsoring the bill, but to my surprise the bill is also co-sponsored by Representatives from PA, NJ, IL, CA, IN, MI, ME, and OH.  Keep in mind that there are 435 members of the House of Representatives and not all representatives of each state are in support of the bill. This means that less than half of the House has agreed to support the bill and no major action has been taken on it since 2/9/09. Similar bills in the Senate are S.371, S.845 both have 22 co-sponsors and the latest action on them were on 4/21/09.

This bill would allow any person with a valid carry permit or license issued by a state, to carry a concealed firearm in any other state if the permit holder meets certain criteria. In states that issue permits, a state's laws governing where concealed firearms may be carried would apply within its borders. In states that do not issue carry permits, a federal standard would apply. The bill would not create a federal licensing system; it would simply require the states to recognize each other's carry permits, just as they recognize drivers' licenses.

For more information on H.R. 197, please click here.


To see if your Representative is a cosponsor of H.R. 197, please click here.

Lloyds Bank hit by Obama tax purge

In a struggling economy all we need is for foriegn banking establishments to be scared to accept clients with ties to the United States. The following excerpts from the article are the highlights from the UK Telegraph article:

This week American private client account-holders at Lloyds's received letters informing them of an "important change in policy regarding clients who are resident, domiciled or linked to the United States by property or asset holdings". They were told the bank had "no choice" but to "cease acting as your investment manager."

The Sunday Telegraph reported that British banks and stockbrokers were threatening to close down accounts held by American citizens due to concerns over new international tax proposals could make it too expensive for them to service the clients.

APCIMS, the trade body whose members manage £400bn of Britain's wealth and employ 25,000 people, sent a letter to the US Treasury's Internal Revenue Service (IRS) complaining that the "unfair'' proposals represent "no benefit but . . . significant cost'' to its members.

Joke???

From a June 3, 2009 NY Times interview
“We have a joke around the White House,” the president said. “We’re just going to keep on telling the truth until it stops working — and nowhere is truth-telling more important than the Middle East.”

Was this supposed to be funny? What do you do when it doesn't work? Lie? That sure seems to be the recipe for the attacks on gun ownership, one of the biggest examples of late are the reports on Mexican gun violence being a by product of US gun runners has been a lie. The numbers were directly disputed by reports from the FBI and those published by the Mexican authorities as well. I am not a fan of Bush's last term or his blatant disregard for the Constitiution, but if he would have made this statement the press would have blasted him and labeled him a liar; it would have been headlines across the country. Instead they use this to promote him as an honest President. Time is yet to tell; personally I distrust 99% of all politicians.

Verizon Speeds Again

 I can not determine why my Verizon connection speeds are so good at times but at other times they suck. Today was another good day.


I am surprised at how fast the upload speeds are. I still want to try the Parabolic Grid Antenna.

Virtualization for Dummies

In my job I have to read a lot of Vendor biased documentation, and occaisionally I run across a document that is actually useful for more than just understanding a certain vendors offering and can be applied across the board.

This article on virtualization, actually describes it pretty well and discusses why it is important. Keep in mind it does have a slant toward AMD processors and SUN, but nevertheless a good read of how different types of virtualization works specifically around x86 hardware. This document is mainly geared toward the SMB market and does not address the high end hardware virtualization methods of IBM, HP or even SUN. It is written by the authors of the "For Dummies" series of books so it is fairly easy to read, even if some of the content will make your head swim.

VMWare ESX fails to mount ISO image

I was installing the newest OpenSolaris on VMware ESX 3.5 tonight and I wanted to mounted to verify my disk image prior to the install so I thought simple; mount the ISO and browse the file system and that will show everything is ok. I created the mount point and ran the Linux mount commands and got an IOCTL error.

[root@x4100 x4100:storage1]# mkdir /tmp/isoimage
[root@x4100 x4100:storage1]# mount -o loop /vmfs/volumes/x4100\:storage1/OpenSolaris.iso /tmp/isoimage/


ioctl: LOOP_SET_FD: Invalid argument
 
After a lot of research I found this article. That explains that if you try to mount an ISO image from a VMFS file system you get the aforementioned error. The problem I had is the ISO I was trying to mount is on a VMFS filesystem and the mount command only works for images residing on a Linux filesystem, and vmfs doesn't count as a Linux filesystem. 

I moved the ISO to the /tmp filesystem and everthing worked as expected.

[root@x4100 x4100:storage1]# mv OpenSolaris.iso /tmp
[root@x4100 x4100:storage1]# mount -t iso9660 -o loop /tmp/OpenSolaris.iso /tmp/isoimage
root@x4100 x4100:storage1]# cd /tmp/isoimage/

[root@x4100 isoimage]# ls
bin dev jack pkg.zlib proc root solarismisc.zlib system
boot devices mnt platform reconfigure save solaris.zlib tmp
[root@x4100 isoimage]# cd ..
[root@x4100 tmp]# umount /tmp/isoimage/

GA drivers rank almost last in driver knowledge

According to a recent study performed by GMAC Insurance Georgia drivers rank 47th in the nation in driver knowledge while Alabama drivers rank 26th in driver knowledge.

This is really amusing to me since I live in Alabama but have worked for the last 10 years in Georgia and have heard the sneers and insults from Columbus natives about how backward Alabama is and how bad Alabama drivers are. Anyone who has lived in the Chattahoochee Valley has heard how a lot of Georgians refer to Alabama as inferior in every aspect. I even had a fairly affluent Columbus native tell me that that HWY 431 in Phenix City is the busiest road in Alabama; he claimed it was in the paper. He may have seen that the section of 431 that runs through the Inverness area of Birmingham is the busiest and just have assumed PC.

Oracle Virtualization Strategy

I ran across this article while doing some research tonight and thought you guys might be interested in it. I had not considered this part of the Oracle purchase of SUN. I don't think it has much of a hope if they seriously consider competing with VMware, but then again Larry Ellison knows how to make a buck.
I am really interested in seeing what Oracle does with all of the things that SUN has going on. I definitely think you are going to see some type of Oracle appliance based on Solaris x86 and zfs, with the thought of virtualization thrown into the mix (and from what James is telling me SUN's Virtual Box may be better than VMware server (not esx)) there may some real interesting things come out over the next couple of years. It would behove them to drop "Unbreakable Linux" in favor of Solaris now that he owns it, most of the enterprise installs run Solaris anyway. It would also let him drop his vm hyper visor that hasn't really caught on in favor of Virtual Box if they can get it to run on its own like ESX does. With Oracle marketing a lot of the SUN products could enjoy a resurgence that they couldn't have had on their own and would have been killed by IBM.


http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/server-virtualization/oracle-sun-a-threat-to-vmware/

Virtual Machine Sprawl

This is a good article on Virtual Machine server sprawl. It addresses one of the biggest problems in using VMWare, Hyper-V or any type of server virtualization including those used by P-Series and SUN and how it can quickly diminish any savings you have gained over reduced server count.

Oracle seems to be planning another Database Appliance

From Larry Ellison's comments it appears that Oracle wants to create a database appliance and own all the pieces. It definitely makes sense, Oracle has been delivering "Oracle Linux" for a while now, but Linux is still not in the same league as the Solaris operating system.  The majority of Oracle's enterprise customers continue to run on SUN hardware and the Solaris operating system even after IBM surpassed SUN in hardware capabilites and Oracle started pushing Linux. Here are some exerpts from the article this links to

    "We are definitely not going to exit the hardware business," Ellison told Reuters in an e-mail interview published late today. "If a company designs both hardware and software, it can build much better systems than if they only design the software. That's why Apple's iPhone is so much better than Microsoft phones."
    ...
    Ellison said he believes that by jointly developing Oracle's software with Sun's hardware and SPARC chips, the company can build machines designed for specific purposes that are better than ones pulled together from separate components.
    ...
    "Once we own Sun, we'll be able to plan and synchronize new features from silicon to software, just like IBM and the other big system suppliers," he said.

Coffee Can Wireless Antenna

Neat, cheap antenna from a Maxwell House coffee can.

In this article he describes the complete details for how to optimize the location of the hole in the can for the desired Mhz due to the wave length of each service.

Cellular Broadband Antennas

A fellow known as "Mr. Jim" has an excellent blog titled "EVDO Tips and Tweaks". One of the more interesting series is on using a Parabolic Grid Antenna.
http://evdotips.blogspot.com/2008/10/parabolic-grid-antenna.html
Determinig which band you are using
http://evdotips.blogspot.com/2008/11/850-or-1900-mhz.html
Assembling part 1
http://evdotips.blogspot.com/2009/01/assembling-grid-antenna.html
Assembling part 2
http://evdotips.blogspot.com/2009/01/assembling-and-installing-grid-antenna.html
Assembling part 3
http://evdotips.blogspot.com/2009/03/parabolic-grid-antenna-speed-and-signal.html

I haven't tried this yet, but plan to do so soon. It will be a good test of his theory since I am currently using a yagi antenna from Wilson coupled with a Wilson pre-amp to boost the signal.

Bluetooth Class Action Law Suit

Excellent article on a recent class action law suit against many bluetooth headsets. It shows how the lawyers for the suit profited $2 million dollars, how unnamed non-profit organizations received $100,000 and the supposed plantifs (those who the purchased the product and would be effected) received $0. This is how the legal system is protecting us. The article does not go into the fact, we the citizens of the U.S., know this is happening, yet we continually elect lawyers to political offices; allowing them to continue to screw us. Isn't Obama, the Clinton's, etc all lawyers? The republicans are run by big oil companies and wall street and the democrats are run by lawyers and wall street, we so need another political party in the U.S. that represents the people then we can get back to a government that is "For the People, By the People".

Thoughts on Gun Ownership

I have had several discussions with two different people who have spent very little time around firearms and because these are people who were not extremely right or left wing personalities I wanted to know what their stance was on individual gun ownership and if they had any leanings one way or the other. Not surprisingly both had been influenced by the recent media blitz against guns as well as the shootings that have taken place this year. Both of them had heard the recent numbers of 80 or 90% of the guns in Mexico had been traced to the US, both were surprised to learn the facts behind the myth. Needless to say those numbers alone are not enough to sway an individual though. Both people could recall any stories of law abiding citizens actually using a weapon in self defense, but both had seen the 60 minutes report stating that non-law enforcement people were more likely to harm themselves or others with a weapon during times of danger. When I told them that I could find at least 6 examples of normal citizens using a firearm to protect their family during the last year, both of them rolled their eyes. I just went to "The Armed Citizen" and guess what I found 6 instances where homeowners used their firearms without harming any innocents from last in two months alone. After hearing the arguments from them, I can definitely understand their point of view to an extent. There are many people out there with guns that do not respect them and would not know what to do if something happened.  On the same note their are even more people in this country with a license for something that can be just as dangerous to themselves and others, a car.

I am curious if the answer to gun ownership / the right to carry should be similar to what we do with vehicles. Anyone can purchase a vehicle of almost any type (even an 18 wheeler) and operate it on their own property without a license or insurance. But once you enter the public domain, it is required for that individual to take a written and physical driving test supposedly certifying they know how to operate said vehicle (how some people get a license I will never know).  Should guns be the same? Would this help aleviate some people's concern about an individual's ability to handle a firearm? We already do this for hunting licenses, personally I would not be opposed to a test for the carry permit, but I am opposed to the government stating what I can and can not own in the confines of my own property. Of the two people I talked to 1 said he would support this type of movement, but the other said that there should also be proof of the security of guns while stored in the home and they should be limited to people who have had proper training to handle them.  Unfortunately I beilieve if something of this nature were instituted in today's administration it could not be trusted and would be accompanied by other items limiting our 2nd Ammendment Freedoms. So needless to say I do not want any additional laws, but I can understand some people's concern.

What are your thoughts? I am curious.

Canadian Help?

CNN acts like the US has not been in Afghanistan, just how out of touch are they that they think the US military has not been there from the beginning.

"As U.S. troops begin increased deployments to Afghanistan, the United States can look to its northern neighbor for insights on the frontlines and the home front."

It goes on to say that Canada increased its number of troops last year 2,800 and have had 117 soldiers killed there. The article also says that Canada has invested $1.2 billion dollars there. I don't know how many US soldiers that have been there, but the fact that the US announced that it was sending an additional 30,000 troops tells me that there is more than Canada's 2,800. The US have had 608 KIA in Afghanistan as of October 2008. There should be no surprise that the number of US soldiers that die per year started to rise as soon as we started turning sectors that the US had previously secured over to other countries for security.

Funny Advertisement

"we will ride out these hard times together"

Microsoft finally did, unfortunately it was about 7 years too late

Managing Windows 2008 Server Core Local Settings
About 6 years ago I had the pleasure of a one on one meeting with the director of Microsoft Windows Server development. He was meeting with architects from several Enterprise level customers and taking notes and requests on what we would like to see in future versions of Windows. He also wanted to know key reasons why people did not deploy Windows when there was a choice of Windows and Unix/Linux. I was very impressed with how he handled the interviews and how they sought out the actual workers as opposed to going to management for suggestions. During the interview process he had some of the lead programmers from the Windows Server team on speaker phone so that they could participate in the process. Surprisingly noone from Microsoft were defensive or even agitated when parts of Windows were criticized, they simply wanted to learn as much as they could.

At that time (2000 - 2003) we were heavy in the development and hosting of secure financial systems. We were split about half and half Windows and Solaris (few one off Linux boxes, at that time it was still expensive to run SUN hardware). Even though it was more expensive initially to run Solaris, the ROI was quickly obtained through management and uptime. Our Windows Admins were very good and it was rare we had an unplanned outage on the Windows machines, but the continual need to patch for unnecessary parts of the OS like Windows Media Player or Internet Explorer made 99.9% uptime impossible. My number two complaint was the reliance on the GUI and making it necessary to have a physical keyboard, mouse and monitor on each server was making it difficult to manage as the numbers of systems grew, even when using KVMs to manage multiple systems with a single keyboard, mouse and monitor. I had a few other complaints, but on the number 1 and 2 items Microsoft told me they were being addressed and would be available soon (soon turned out to be about 6 years).

I am happy to see M$ is allowing for minimal installs without the reliance on a GUI. They still have items that need to be addressed, like remote management via a command line login, they are still reliant on RDP (terminal services) to get a remote command line (you can do minimal tasks remotely without connecting to a terminal, but sometimes you have to have a command line). This could be easily overcome by including a SSH server as part of the core install, instead of as an additional download of the Unix tools. If just the minimal (or Core as they call it) install would have been made available sooner; they could have prevented or at least slowed the adoption of Linux by many of their customers.

In many ways Windows Server is better than Linux and Solaris, it still lags in several areas, particularly in remote administration and large multi-processor installs (this still hampers Linux as well). While they have given us a big win with the Core install, the Unix Subsystem in the kernel, an easy to administer firewall, hyper-V virtualization and a host of other items, they are now killing us with hard to administer licensing schemes.

With all of its short comings I still believe Windows is the best choice for most SMBs (Small to Medium Business) with 50 or less servers, but companies with a staff knowledgable in Unix, they will benefit from the implementation of a *NIX OS in their infrastructure, particularly if they are running non DOTNET applications or companies using VLDBs (very large databases, requiring 8 or more processors; there are many considerations when choosing database type and OS). Any company using Java for critical apps, should consider using Solaris, SUN invented Java and from my experience it runs best there, although AIX and Linux is closing in fast. AIX is probably the best choice if the Java or C app is not built from ground up with multi-threading in mind. AIX requires the P processor which has the fastest processor speed allowing for extreme performance on single threads, but if you go that route, be prepared to open your pocketbook WIDE. AIX also has the best hardware based virtualization available.

Half-hearted Apology

Napolitano issued a half-hearted apology last Thursday after naming war veterans as a possible threat to the security of the United States.

"This was an assessment, not an accusation," Napolitano continued. "It was limited to extremists those who seek to commit violence within the United States. And all this was meant to do was to give law enforcement what we call 'situational awareness.'"

A footnote in the report,

"Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling
Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment," said that while there is no
specific information that domestic right-wing terrorists are planning acts of
violence, such acts could come from unnamed "rightwing extremists" concerned
about illegal immigration, abortion, increasing federal power and restrictions
on firearms -- and singled out returning war veterans as susceptible to
recruitment.

She said that this was similar to a report on left wing extremist issued earlier. But there is a big difference; in the earlier report she named specific groups like the Animal Liberation Front and the Earth Liberation Front. Here she named almost all veterans as a possible threat.

"The willingness of a small percentage of military personnel to join extremist
groups during the 1990s because they were disgruntled, disillusioned or
suffering from the psychological effects of war is being replicated today," the
report reads.

She is making a reference to the Oklahoma City Bombing as an example of possible threats. Primarily because this was the only recent example she could find of a veteran doing this sort of thing. Funny that she failed to mention the Washington D.C. sniper who was killing because of his extremist Muslim beliefs (no I don't think all Muslims are terrorists, I know many who are appaled by their extremist brothers). She says she mentions McVeigh because she says that McVeigh received his training in the Army in how to do this sort of thing. I am sorry to inform her, but I have been to US Army Combat Engineer training, and they did not cover blowing up multi-story buildings with truckloads of fertilizer, nor did they cover it when I had my training as an Army Cavalry Scout. And both of these professions cover explosives in great detail as much of their job includes destroying obstacles in both as an offensinve force and as a blocking action in the retreat. While it was effective (Oklahoma City bombing), the military has much better methods of destroying buildings, if you don't believe it just ask the people of Baghdad. So I feel pretty confident that he didn't learn that in the U.S. Army.

If this is the type of person assessing our threat level we are in even more trouble than I thought we were.

Here are some of the official responses to her apology:

"The American Legion is well aware and horrified at the pain inflicted during
the Oklahoma City bombing, but Timothy McVeigh was only one of more than 42
million veterans who have worn this nation's uniform during wartime," Rehbein
wrote. "To continue to use McVeigh as an example of the stereotypical
'disgruntled military veteran' is unfair as using Osama bin Laden as the sole
example of Islam."

House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, also criticized the report,
saying its portrayal of veterans was "offensive and unacceptable."

"Their leftwing assessment identifies actual terrorist organizations, like the
Earth Liberation Front and Animal Liberation Front," House Judiciary Committee
Ranking Member Lamar Smith, R-Texas, said in a statement issued Wednesday. "The rightwing report uses broad generalizations about veterans, pro-life groups,
federalists and supporters of gun rights. That's like saying if you love
puppies, you might be susceptible to recruitment by the Animal Liberation Front.
It is ridiculous and deeply offensive to millions of Americans."

Anyone is a Target including the American Legion

MSNBC Hints GOP a Hate Group Includes Republican symbol on screen during story about right-wing extremism

CNN Smears 'Right Wing' As Nazis
Recycling the mid-1990s liberal smear campaign against grassroots conservatism, CNN has posted an article on the new DHS threat report complete with a Getty Images photo of neo-Nazi and white supremacist flags.

If the report were about Nazi extremists, that picture would be warranted. However, the DHS report warns against an amorphous “right-wing extremism,” failing to mention by name any particular threatening group or intelligence of any planned attacks.

The DHS report did cite returning war veterans as at-risk for recruitment by right-wing extremist groups. It seems strange to think that those men and women who risked their lives to protect this country and their government could be or become Nazis, but that seems to be the implication.

Also note that the unnamed “prominent civil rights organization” that the DHS hit job cites to stoke anti-military paranoia is the left-wing Southern Poverty Law Center — which designated the American Legion a “hate group” for its pro-enforcement stance on immigration law.

Read the American Legion Response here

Radical Right Wing Extremist

I think Michelle Malkin has summed it up pretty well. And you can see by the picture that she is not a lilly white racist like the current administration would like everyone to believe about those who oppose his views.

You Might Be A 'Radicalized Right-Wing Extremist' If... By Michelle Malkin April 15, 2009

What and who exactly are President Obama's homeland security officials afraid of these days? If you are a member of an active conservative group that opposes abortion, favors strict immigration enforcement, lobbies to protect Second Amendment rights, protests big government, advocates federalism or represents veterans who believe in any of the above, the answer is: You.

Married with Children

This is the greatest TV Show ever made! Luckily it still plays early in the morning if you can't sleep. This morning Al started hanging out with a gay guy whose husband is taking Peg out dancing. Al almost falls in love with him, because the gay guy cooks and cleans.

TEA Parties

I am curious to how many Americans actually get out and participate today. I had forgotten about this historic event until my client ( I am in Des Moines, Iowa this week ) told me that he was going to be unavailable from 10:00 am until 2:00 pm because for the first time in his life he was joining a protest against the government. When I go in this morning I am going to check to see if he minds if I join him.

Homeland Security Warns of Returning Veterans with Violent Potential

What is sad is the fact that the government knows what is driving people to extremist groups, but instead of curtailing their behavior they are taking steps to alienate returning veterans and put them on watch lists.

Sharpton refers to Pirates as Somali Coast Guard

In Sharpton's defense (I can't believe I just typed that) the Somali's do consider the pirates as a sort of Robin Hood. But talk to anyone who served in Somalia and you will hear just how much the Somalis hate Americans, so my question is why should I care if they consider themselves Coast Guard, they are still an enemy of the U.S. and all it stands for.

SHARPTON (12:08): You can call me now at 1 877 532 5797, (to say) something about the so-called pirates. They call themselves voluntary Coast Guards in Somalia, which may be more apt. Ah, whatever your view.

MSNBC Live Vote: Give President Obama a grade

This is the real deal from MSNBC. The polling is pretty much split just like I thought the country was. Definitely not the 61% approval the media says he has. I checked at 4/3/09 16:03 Eastern Time and there were 1549106 votes at 16:09 there were 1549894  votes and the percentages were about the same.

At the current moment the polling is as follows:
With 1549894 responses
A - 35%
B - 6.9%
C - 4.9%
D - 13%
F- 40%

How much space does a trillion dollars occupy?

Someone sent me a neat site today that actually lets you visualize a trillion dollars.  When you actually see how much space a trillion dollars takes up in $100 bills it is really amazing. They show different views of the money starting with how much 1 million dollars occupy and working their way up, by the way 1 billion occupies 10 pallets of $100 dollar bills.

What is a trillion dollars? Well, it's a million million. It's a thousand billion. It's a one followed by 12 zeros.

$1,000,000,000,000

Another way of thinking about trillions is as follows: - one million seconds is about 11 days - one billion seconds is about 30 years - one trillion seconds 30 thousand years

Sen. Kerry makes push for tighter gun control

Senator Kerry is pushing for tighter gun control and he states he had been shocked to see killings and beheadings "just a stone's throw across the Rio Grande from where we're sitting this morning."


Once they get the gun control they so desperately want is he also going to push for tighter control of kitchen utensils? Afterall you could cut someones head off with a good quality knife from a butcher block.
 
If Mexico is holding the US responsible for weapons violations, why are we not holding Mexico responsible for drug smuggling.
 
If there is such a large problem with automatic weapons smuggling from the US, how will banning LEGAL weapons stop the smuggling of illegal weapons, obviously the people smuggling those weapons do not care about the laws anyway? Also I have read where Clinton has blamed explosive devices, namely grenades used in Mexico on US based gun runners, get caught with a grenade in the US and see what happens to you. If the problem is real here, what is stopping the flow of weapons from South America, where the Soviets were passing out AK-47s like candy to any country willing to say anything negative about the US. I would be willing to bet those stockpiles of weapons are not nearly as well controlled as they are here in the US.
 
If Mexico would tighten their borders and work more closely with US based immigrations and DEA officials the majority of the smuggling could probably be dramatically reduced. They would do well to look at the model used in Colombia.

The Case is Building

Hillary Clinton is building a case for tighter gun control, which I am sure that is fueled from Pelosi's refusal to cooperate with the administration call for a new Gun Ban a few weeks ago. This statement absolutely amazes me, since the violence problems that the Obama administration talked about earlier was from hand grenades and automatic weapons. The last time I checked both are illegal here anyway.

When meeting with the Mexican government her statement was as follows.

"Our insatiable demand for illegal drugs fuels the drug trade," she said, using unusually blunt language. "Our inability to prevent weapons from being illegally smuggled across the border to arm these criminals causes the deaths of police officers, soldiers and civilians." ... For instance, Mrs. Clinton said, the United States will help supply Mexican law enforcement officers with helicopters and night-vision goggles and other equipment to take on the cartels, which are armed to the teeth.
"We've got to figure out how to stop these bad guys," she said. "These criminals are outgunning the law enforcement officials."

Should we not be blaming the Mexican government for not controlling its own borders and blame them for our drug supply. They are blaming us for their weapons problem, even though the problem is coming from items that are illegal here anyway. I believe what we should do is worry about preventing the drug dealers from crossing the border in this direction, if they do that it would illiminate the supposed gun running from the US to Mexico. I believe Hillary and Obama was against tighter border control anyway. She needs to be quiet and smoke some of her husbands Lewinsky dipped cigars.

Dog Lookout

For those of you who do not know I live in the middle of nowhere surrounded by woods in every direction. I have a great german shepard dog who believes it is his duty to keep watch on our property and ensure that nothing comes near, especially the evil herds of deer. Tonight I let him out so he could do his guard duty, he sits on the front deck giving him a good visible perimeter; all night long he scans the woods (every hour or so he will walk around the house to make sure every thing is safe). Well tonight I looked out the window on the front deck and he was doing his stand, I then walked to the back of the house and looked out, there were 12 deer that I could see and it appeared that the herd even had a lookout that was focused on the area where the dog would come from, it was really comical. Oh well, it is the simple things in life I enjoy.

From Brutus

And It Has Begun

The first of the measures against our freedom as American Citizens have started.

First it was reported by the Washington Times that the Obama administration have secretly begun to revoke the right of pilots to carry a sidearm in the cockpit if a plane after applying for a permit and taking a safety course. Now the second blow to our rights.

On Thursday, March 19, a federal district court in Washington, D.C. granted anti-gun plaintiffs a preliminary injunction against implementation of the new rule allowing law-abiding citizens to defend themselves by carrying a concealed firearm in national parks and wildlife refuges.


In Thursday's ruling, Federal District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly issued the preliminary injunction against the Department of the Interior rule that took effect on January 9, 2009. The revised rule allowed individuals to carry concealed firearms for self-defense in national parks and national wildlife refuges located in states that allow the carrying of concealed firearms.

Consulting World is a Small One

I am in LA doing some work and I got a text from a buddy in Hawaii wondering what I was up to. He was headed to Atlanta and was wanting to hang out at some point while he is down. Turns out he has a 12 hour layover in LA tomorrow, so we will hook up then. It is strange how things turn out some times. I know no one really cares about this, but since this is sort of my online journal to myself I am recording it anyway.

BTW: this is my view from my hotel room

From LA Trip

President's Plan to Charge Wounded Heroes for Treatment

President's Plan to Charge Wounded Heroes for Treatment I really hope this is not true, if so, this is the most disgusting thing he has proposed so far.

Importance of multiple forms of ID when flying

Yesterday I was trying to catch a flight from Chicago to Columbus, GA, I handed my drivers license and credit card to the ticket agent at the Delta counter and in the rush to catch the plane I failed to notice he didn't give my license back to me, just my credit card. Imagine my horror when I went to hand my ID to the security checkpoint and I could not find my Drivers License. I quickly assesed my options and remembered I had my Concealed Carry Permit for my pistol; I thought what the hell it has my picture on it and it is issued by a government agency, I'll try it.

The agent who spoke a very accented English, looked at me like I was crazy while he was trying to figure out what it was. I told him that was all I had, because my license was lost. I couldn't believe it when he asked if I had something else like a SAM's or a COSCO card. I handed him my SAM's card. In the meantime the supervisor noticed that something was wrong and came over to investigate. When the supervisor saw the Concealed Carry Permit, he told the original agent, to let me go, he told the guy that the Concealed Carry Permit was much better than a drivers license since there was actually a background check done prior to issuing it, and if he saw another one let it go by as well.

After arriving in Atlanta I was paged to the Delta counter for a phone call. I was pleasantly surprised when the phone call was from a Delta agent in Chicago who told me she had found my license and I could pick up my license at the Columbus airport the next day.

Pelosi throws cold water on weapons ban

Pelosi throws cold water on weapons ban  unbelievably, the notoriously liberal speaker of the house, came to the aid of law abiding gun owners across the country. Earlier this week Attorney General Eric Holder raised the prospect that the administration would push to bring back the so called "Assault Weapons" ban. A ban that outlawed the selling of many semi-automatic rifles, that are extremely popular today with law abiding gun owners. The ban did nothing to stop illegally obtained automatic weapons that cause so much havoc around the world.

Eric Holder used recent violence in Mexico with automatic weapons and grenades (both of which are illegal in the US) as a reason to bring back the old ban.  But Pelosi (D-Calif.) indicated on Thursday that he never talked to her. The Speaker gave a flat “no” when asked if she had talked to administration officials about the ban. “On that score, I think we need to enforce the laws we have right now,” Pelosi said at her weekly news conference.

Syslog

Recently I was studying the syslog protocol and ran across this statement in the RFC for syslog and I thought it was interesting.

"Since the beginning, life has relied upon the transmission of messages. For the self-aware organic unit, these messages can relay many different things. The messages may signal danger, the presence of food or the other necessities of life, and many other things. In many cases, these messages are informative to other units and require no acknowledgment. As people interacted and created processes, this same principle was applied to societal communications. As an example, severe weather warnings may be delivered through any number of channels - a siren blowing, warnings delivered over television and radio stations, and even through the use of flags on ships. The expectation is that people hearing or seeing these warnings would realize their significance and take appropriate action. In most cases, no responding acknowledgment of receipt of the warning is required or even desired."

                              RFC 3164 The BSD Syslog Protocol.

Communitarian Network

In January, speaking at a meeting of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, former president Bill Clinton praised the Brady Campaign for continuing to lobby Congress for a new gun ban, and suggested that the mood in Washington might be more favorable toward a ban now than it had been during the last eight years. Further in his speech he made the contradicting statement that no one wants to revoke the Second Amendment, but later in his speech made another statement contradicting what he said earlier about not revoking the Second Amendment.

"[W]e're now in a position to begin again," he said. "It's not a leftward movement. It's a forward, communitarian movement."

The Communitarian Network or "Movement" is a relatively new political philosophy that started in the 90's, their slogan is "For Individual Rights and Social Responsibility". This sounds really good. While stating that there are not supporting communism or socialism they also publish the following in their Public Platform.

"Neither human existence nor individual liberty can be sustained for long outside the interdependent and overlapping communities to which all of us belong. Nor can any community long survive unless its members dedicate some of their attention, energy, and resources to shared projects. The exclusive pursuit of private interest erodes the network of social environments on which we all depend"

 Sounds like Utopia, but also a little like Communism or Socialism. If you don't believe it read this paragraph:

"At the heart of the communitarian understanding of social justice is the idea of reciprocity: each member of the community owes something to all the rest, and the community owes something to each of its members. Justice requires responsible individuals in a responsive community  .... Beyond self-support, individuals have a responsibility for the material and moral well-being of others....Beyond self-support, individuals have a responsibility for the material and moral well-being of others."

While stating individual rights as a goal of the movement; they contradict themselves with the statement about the Bill of Rights, in which the United States is based on:

"There is little sense in gun registration. What we need to significantly enhance public safety is domestic disarmament  ...... We join with those who read the Second Amendment the way it was written, as a communitarian clause, calling for community militias, not individual gun slingers."

Mr. Clinton supposedly wants to protect our "2nd Amendment Rights" with the Communitarian Movement. How can this be considering the above direct quote from their platform? On the "Movements" website they state:

"Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled, for over a hundred years, that it does not prevent laws that bar guns."

 Obviously they have not read the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee Report on the subject or many of the Supreme Court rulings that the 2nd Amendment's reference to "The People" is the exact same as the references to "The People" in the 1st and 4th Amendments. They state that it is an individual's right not the right of an organized (state or community run) militia.

The "Movement" likes to quote values of the ancient Greeks like the following.

"The ancient Greeks understood this well: A person who is completely private is lost to civic life. The exclusive pursuit of one's self-interest is not even a good prescription for conduct in the marketplace; for no social, political, economic, or moral order can survive that way."

The "Movement" obviously prescribe to the teachings of Greek philosopher Plato. In Plato's ideal state, the one-man rule of a tyrant is replaced by the one-man rule of a philosopher-king. The king uses a professional military/police class — the Guardians — to keep everyone else in line. Like the people of the former Soviet Union, the common people of Plato's ideal state would be trained periodically (once a month) in use of arms, but would have no right to arms, and arms would be centrally stored in state armories (Plato, Laws).
 

Because it does not fall in the "Movement's" ideals they totally ignore the wisdom of Aristotle. Like Plato, Aristotle considered arms a fundamental source of political power, but unlike Plato, Aristotle wanted ordinary people to possess this power. So it would seem they want to ignore the writings of Aristotle, who authored the Athenian Constitution this is a little odd since the Encyclopedia Britannica states, "Aristotle, more than any other thinker, determined the orientation and the content of Western intellectual history." 
In Aristotle's book, Politics, he argues that each citizen should work to earn his own living, should participate in political or legislative affairs, and should bear arms. 

Arms are essential to any good government: "Let us then enumerate the functions of a state, and we shall easily elicit what we want. . . . thirdly, there must be arms, for the members of a community have need of them, and in their own hands, too, in order to maintain authority both against disobedient subjects and against external assailants" (Book 7, ch. VIII). It was hardly surprising that dictators always disarmed their subjects: "As of oligarchy so of tyranny . . . Both mistrust the people, and therefore deprive them of their arms" (Book 5, ch X).

Aristotle considered the possession of arms synonymous with possession of political power: "when the citizens at large administer the state for the common interest, the government is called by the generic name — a constitution . . . in a constitutional government the fighting-men have the supreme power, and those who possess arms are the citizens" (Book 3, ch VII).

In the Athenian Constitution Aristotle even makes his position on the right to bear arms by explaining that throughout Greek history disarmament of the public was the first step to Tyrannical Rule and in every respect showed a great advance in cruelty and crime.

I compiled the above information from many different sources including but not limited to:
The Communitarian Network
The George Washington University
Communitarianism - Wikipedia
The Second Amendment - Wikipedia
Aristotle vs. Pluto
Arms and the Greeks
The missing guns of Bombay

Failure to Deliver What You Sold

I ran across this on the DSLReports homepage. It is so interesting the way Obama is living up to his nickname of the "Waffle King".

I am hoping Obama does well and pulls the US out of the hole, but I am afraid he is going to be a typical sales person and not be able to deliver what he sold the country. He sold the country on unity and a break from politics governed by special interest. The article below shows another broken promise.

Obama Stocking DOJ With RIAA Lawyers
The more things change, the more they stay the same...
02:12PM Thursday Feb 05 2009 by Karl Bode

Techdirt, CNET and Slashdot all note that the new Obama Justice Department is looking increasingly like a RIAA/MPAA reunion, with a flood of ex-industry lawyers now stocking the DOJ shelves. In addition to Obama's RIAA-friendly VP pick, Obama has hired several of the of the RIAA & MPAA's top lawyers (Tom Perrelli, Donald Verrilli), and the BSA's anti-piracy enforcer (Neil MacBride). Assuming he adheres to them, Obama's own rules would prohibit these gentlemen from working on issues where they've represented the entertainment industry. Still, it's not exactly a comforting development for those who wanted more progressive leadership when it comes to copyright.

Good Day for Verizon Speeds

It amazes me the difference in speeds I get with my Verizon broadband connection with no changes in my configuration. I have seen speeds change from 128kbs to 1549kbps.

Today is the fastest I have seen so far, generally it is around 380 - 450 kbps.


I still wish I could get a DSL connection, but if I could sustain this type of speed I would be content since it is a faster download than the fractional T1 I used to have here at a 10th of the cost. The upload speed is about 1/3rd of the speed I used to get with the T1 but it is still usable for VPN and Terminal Server operations.

SASS Cowboy Action Shoot

You are invited to view Dale's photo album: SASS SASS Crawford, AL - Jan 31, 2009 by Dale Pictures from the first SASS (Cowboy Action) shot held at East Alabama Gun Club View Album Play slideshow If you are having problems viewing this email, copy and paste the following into your browser: http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/sredir?uname=dalesides&target=ALBUM&id=5297673459135359953&authkey=B_rJatV0DNY&invite=CMHA-J8L&feat=email To share your photos or receive notification when your friends share photos, get your own free Picasa Web Albums account.

Disk Drive Types

Intro
I am writing this because of the amount of questions I get from SMB (Small to Medium Business) customers about why there are so many different types of disks and one even asked me, "why doesn't Microsoft standardize on a disk type" (please do not take offense to the example if you are reading this).
Preface
The explanations here are provided as an overview and are intended to be fairly simplistic to allow a greater audience to understand the differences in disk drives. Storage design and architecture can be an extremely complex topic. There are many factors that go into designing a corporate storage infrastructure. Items such as, but not limited to the following: desired performance, footprint or space consumed, uptime, budget, disaster recovery, etc.   
Microsoft
First I will tackle the Microsoft question. Microsoft is a software company not a hardware company (I know they do make some hardware, but it is mainly for the home consumer market). Since they are the 10 ton guerilla in the Operating System arena they do have some input into disks, but they do not set the standards. They take advantage of what is available in the market and work with Storage manufacturers to ensure hardware works with their Operating System (i.e. the windows family). The big boys in storage are Hitachi, Seagate, Western Digital, Toshiba and IBM.
Terms Commonly Used with Disk Drives

• Platter - this refers to the physical platter inside the disk enclosure, all data is read from and written to the disk platter. 
  
• RPM - this refers to the revolutions per minute the disk platter spins. The faster the platter spins the faster the disk head can read and write information to the disk. Disk speeds are available anywhere from 5,400 to 15,000 RPMs
• CACHE - this refers to the buffer mechanism that transfers data from a relatively fast area of the computer (memory or RAM) to the relatively slower areas of the computer (the disk platter). A larger cache will help speed up a computer by buffering information and allowing the computer to continue writing data as opposed to waiting for the data to be written to the platter. Think of it a little like a funnel with a large reservoir allowing you to pour liquid into a container continously as opposed to a little at a time.
• Interface - this refers to the type of connector used to physically connect a disk to the computer most disk types are named based on their interface type
• NAS - Network attached storage, meaning the data is accessed via a network sharing mechanism like a windows share (SMB) or NFS
• SAN - Storage Area Network this is a high end array of disks, that is managed from a central set of software. SANs offer greater management capabilities and superioir performance over other types of storage. This gives business greater control over their data and teriffic disaster recovery capabilities.
  

Older Disk Types
Just as every other technology changes and sometimes improves over time so do disk drives. Take the TV industry as an example; Plasma, Projection, LCD, etc. For many years there were basically 2 major disk types both of which are being phased out for newer, smaller and faster disks.

• IDE (used for desktops and low end servers)
• SCSI -Small Computer Systems Interface (used for servers and high end desktops or workstations)

IDE was used where performance and MTBF (mean time between failure) was not as critical as the cost to purchase; desktops and laptops. Max RPMs are generally limited to 7200 (I have read about 10k but have never personally seen one)
SCSI was used primarily where performance and MTBF was more important than cost; servers, SANs, workstations. Max RPMs as high as 15k
Newer Standards
Although there are more disk types than I am listing I am only going to cover the 4 major players

• SATA 
• Fiber Channel 
• SAS 
• Solid State

SATA is emerging as the defacto standard for desktops and laptops. There are different class SATA drives that offer better MTBF and performance than others, the ones used in desktops are typically part of the lower end classes and seem to be giving SATA a bad rap in the computer industry. Max RPMs for SATA is 10k but typically people will use a 7200 or 5400 rpm drive. There are several reasons for this becoming a standard and some of those are not obvious to anyone outside the hardware industry.

• Transfer speeds are much faster than IDE (meaning data can be read from and written to the disk more quickly via the interface cable connecting the drive to the computer itself)
• Because IDE is going away you will see larger disk drives in SATA than IDE
• Because SATA uses a much smaller cable and connector than IDE it consumes a smaller total footprint allowing better airflow throughout the machine (this gives a lot of advantage to the performance and MTBF of the machine as a whole). 
•  Easier to install, because a lack of jumper settings that were typical of IDE drives.
• I have read they have a higher MTBF than IDE, but this is not evident from what I have seen.
• Newer SATA drives can offer greater cache sizes than IDE
  

Fiber Channel (FC) is and has been the standard in servers and SANS for quite some time. FC drives are typically more reliable than SATA and IDE (I don't have enough experience with SAS to say yet). FC drives also offer much higher speeds than SATA drives, not only from the cables that are used to connect the drives but also through the RPMs they deliver. Although SATA drives have been built to sustain 15k they are rare and I would think the MTBF for those drives would be much lower than FC or SAS drives. Fiber channel connected drives use light to transfer data between devices allowing for very fast transfers, an externally connected FC array of disks will typically provide much better performance than an internally connected SATA disk. FC is firmly entrenched in the majority of enterprise SANs and many enterprises have invested an enormous amount of money in their SAN infrastructure which means FC will be around for the foreseeable future. (See topic below comparing SAS to FC)
SAS (Serial Attached SCSI) is the new kid on the block for mid to high end disk drives. SAS is quickly becoming the disk type of choice for servers, high end workstations, NAS devices and mid range SANs. Many experts believe that SAS will eventually take over the number one spot in SAN disks as well, but there are currently limiting factors that will prevent that from happening in the near future. (See topic below comparing SAS to FC). Max RPMs for SAS is currently 15k.
Solid State Drives (SSD) are the newest rave and rightly so. They don't have moving parts which means the MTBF should be extremely high it also means they do not make noise. Although a lot is being said about the new SSD it is not a new technology, SSD emerged as auxillary memory units during the era of vacuum tube computers where replaced by cheaper drum storage units. Cray, Amdahl and IBM used them as far back as the 70's for specialty computers, but it was very expensive and rarely used. SSDs have extremely fast reads and transfer rates of up to 3 Gbits/s, but delivering better performance because of the lack of a spinning disk. Currently it is still expensive to implement and the sizes are typically small. Toshiba will begin manufacturing a 512 gb SSD this quarter (q1 2009). IBM has announced it tested a 4 tb SSD but not much is known about it. This will continue to be a niche device where speed is of the utmost importance. 

SAS vs. FC
Since it seems for the enterprise the big question is what do I go with FC or SAS, I will list some of the differences.

• SAS spindle speeds are comparable to FC
• SAS transfer rates are slower, FC offers 4 Gbits/s while SAS currently only offers 3 Gbits/s. 
• SAS is up to 50% cheaper to manufacture than FC meaning a lower entry cost
• SAS drives can be smaller (2.5" vs 3.5") and manufacturers claim that the smaller units consume less power.
• FC is more mature
• SAS is limited in the number host ports it can connect, making it difficult to use in larger SAN infrastructures. There are vendors making expanders to overcome this supporting thousands of connected devices.
• SAS is limited to an 8ft connection from its controller. A large 5 frame SAN will have a lot longer runs between the back planes making SAS a non player in that market for the time being. Future development will probably overcome this limitation though.
  

Summary
For desktop and home consumers SATA will continue to be the disk type of choice. Performance oriented individuals will start to use SAS and SSD in niche performance markets. For the SMB market SAS will be the disk type of choice for servers, NAS and SANs. Manufacturers have a large investment in FC and will likely continue to push FC as the disk type of choice for the large enterprise SANs and for the mean time keep the advancements of SAS slightly behind FC, much the same way IBM keeps the P series development slightly behind the mainframe (there is more money to be made on FC for the time being). Consumers will likely force the manufacturers hands over time as smaller players in the storage arena continue to advance the development of SAS. As the smaller players start to consume market space the larger guys like Hitachi and EMC will go balls to the wall to reclaim that space and provide SAS capabilities in the enterprise arrays.

I hope this was of use to some people trying to understand the amount of choices in disk technology.

Storage Trends

Fiber vs. iSCSI
SAS vs. SATA vs. Fiber vs. IDE vs. Solid State
4600 vs. 5400 vs. 7200 vs. 10k vs 15k

Do all of the above make you shake your head and think WHY are there so many choices? Things used to be so easy when all you had was IDE and SCSI drives available. But during those times people didn't expect subsecond response when they clicked on button, then again most business programs didn't have buttons.

I recently had an executive at fairly large company ask me why don't we standardize on things. This same executive asked me at different times, how to get faster response times, how to make a laptops battery last longer, how to make a smaller laptop, how to connect to more storage without adding more wiring and how he could take his video and music collection with him.

All  of the above figures in to the questions he asked.  In future posts I will start explaining the needs and uses of all of those options.

Luckier Today

My fiasco yesterday with my cart got a little better, after pulling out all of the burnt wiring I rewired the system, bypassing the switch to the hydraulic dump bed and I am now able to actually start the cart and drive it. The dump bed is stuck in the up position from yesterday, but I can either take the hydraulic pump out and lower the bed or attempt to reverse the polarity and see if it will come down until I can get a new 3 position switch for it.

Bad news is I can not find a used lift link for my tractor and it is going to cost me $225 dollars for a replacement. But this is better than the $500 - $800 I was forecasting last night. I am sure I can get the switch for the hyrdraulic lift under $25 so it looks like I am going to get away with only having to spend $250.

Sometimes things just don't go your way

Have you ever decided not to do some type of recreational activity simply because you didn't want to spend the money, then because you stayed at home ended up having to spend 5 times the amount that you would have spent? That happened to me on Sunday. I really enjoy shooting sporting clays, this is a shotgun sport that many call "golf with guns" (more on that in a latter post). Sunday I had one of my buddies try to get me to go with him to a Bird In Hand in Plains, GA. I told him I was going to skip because I didn't have the ammo and didn't want to spend the money on the round, buy ammunition and gas, so I thought I would do good and save that $75 and stay at home.

Wrong decision.

I drove my "Golf Cart" (this is one of the converted types with mud tires, lift kit and hydraulic dump bed I use for maintenance chores around my place) over to my neighbors house to check on them. While I was there one of the kids asked if he could take my cart out to check his deer feeders. I didn't see any harm and said sure.

Wrong Decison again

About 1 and half hours later the kid walked back to the house saying he couldn't get the cart started. I thought maybe he ran it out of gas, so we walked back to my house so that we could get my tractor to tow the buggy back to the house if I couldn't get it started.

Wrong Decision again

We went out to where the buggy was sitting, I was relieved to see it wasn't buried in the mud. I tried to start the cart, and it wouldn't even turn over, I thought it must be a loose wire or something, I have had that happen in the past while traveling through wooded areas. I tried to lift the hydraulic dump bed to get to the engine area and the switch did not respond, I also noticed it was stuck in the down position. I said fine and lifted the seat up to get to the battery and electrical connections and I was horrified to see a lot of wires burned beyond recognition. It appeared that either he had his leg sitting on the down switch to the dump bed and he didn't know that the loud whine the hydraulics were making meant something was wrong so he kept driving, after all he had to check those deer feeders. (To my knowledge he has never killed a deer there, he tends to go out and get too wasted to actually go hunting the next morning.) I held my temper and hooked the 3 point hitch lift bar of the tractor to a tow chain connected the cart so that we could tow it back home and I could see how much damage was done.

Wrong Decision yet again

When I turned the tractor and started pulling the cart I heard a loud pop, no it wasn't the chain and there was not a bloody corpse of the boy behind me, but the lift arm of the tractor was now lying in the mud behind me. Because in my haste and frustration I forgot to put the pin in the sway bar and the lift arm broke in half. I then hooked the chain to the frame of the tractor and pulled it back to my house.

Now after trying to save $75 I am faced with $230 worth of broken tractor parts and if I am lucky probably $300 - $500 worth of damage to my cart.

So saving $75 just cost me $800. Moral of the story is if you get a chance to go do your favorite hobby go play. It may just save you a grand and make you feel a hell a lot better than allowing a kid to tear up your tools that you have to replace!

Constitutional Two Faces

Is it not ironic that the same people who rightfully protested President Bush's flagrant disregard of our constitutional privacy laws will willing stand by and even suggest that the new administration enact laws that are so strict that our 2nd Amendment rights are in jeopardy.

Some of those proposed laws are listed below:

• A 400% TAX on ammunition (the price of ammo is already sky rocketing; 6 years ago a single box of 25 shells used for shooting skeet was a little more than $3.00, today that same brand of Winchester AA 12 ga. 8 shot is almost $10 and with the tax it would be $14.00)
• Banning semi-automatic shotguns like those used in hunting, skeet or sporting clays
• Serialization of ammunition and the requirement of individuals to destroy or expend any non serialized ammo by 2012 making the owning of non serialized ammunition a felony.
  
• Banning the personal reloading of ammunition (this combined with the proposed tax would effectively kill shooting sports. A competition shooter can easily shot 200 to 400 rounds of ammo per competition and 50 to 100 rounds per week in practicing. Reloads can cost as little as $3.50 per box of 25 compared to $14.00 with the tax; 200 rounds of reloaded ammo now can cost as little as $28 but with the proposed laws it would cost as much $112 putting the price of shooting competitively out of reach for normal citizens)
• Banning the use of lead in ammunition (this proposal goes to the floor in Washington state on January 26th) (This would also drive the cost of reloading through the roof!)
  
• Installation of a firing pin microstamp that ties ammunition to a certain gun (this is already performed in crime scenes with the use of rifling marks on recovered bullets; this is only requested to drive up the cost of owning a weapon)
• Registration of all firearms to include shotguns and hunting rifles, this also requires individuals to register with the FBI any firearm that is willed or given to them by family members this is currently illegal under federal law
  
• Creation of a national database that will include a photo, fingerprint, address and phone number of anyone owning a firearm. Same as above this is illegal under federal law.
• Make it a felony offense not to report a stolen, misplaced or lost firearm within 72 hours.
  
• Permanent reinstatement of the Brady Bill against weapons considered to be an assault weapon, take it from a former soldier; any weapon, including a common kitchen knife can be considered an assault weapon if someone wants to kill you.
  
• Making the owning of a weapon with a multiple ammunition feeder (i.e. magazines) a felony offense (almost all pistols fall into this category)
• Repealing the newly created law that allows a state's Right to Carry permit for individuals valid in National Parks
• Requirement to make weapons "Child Proof", by appealing to people's sympathy for children, they are attempting to make it almost impossible to make a gun. Can we do the same for cars or alcohol?
• Enacting laws that provide mandatory felony sentences to owners of guns who have their weapons stolen and used in a crime; specifically parents. Does this mean that a parent whose child willingly disobeys their parent and takes the parent's vehicle out and injures someone will be held to those same standards? If we can do this, can we also enforce those same sentences on parents when their children act violently toward teachers or join violent gangs and intentionally harm others during illegal acts?
• Limiting Right to Carry permits only to individuals who could prove that they are in risk of violent abuse or death.

UK Attempts Ban on Hunting

The UK is starting to see a surge in citizens protesting for the right to protect themselves and retain the right to legally hunt.

See this video entitled "The British called - They want their guns back!"  documenting the historical protest. This is something that Americans need to do (stage demonstrations for retaining our rights) now that we have an administration in Washington that wants to bend the 2nd Ammendment to their will.