Cox Crow

Stop for a moment, and consider the disk requirements of .mac — or HotMail, or GeoCities for that matter.

115 MB per person. Not much when considered alone, but consider it in the aggregate. Most people don't use all of their quota, which is a Good Thing.

6:11:55 PM #
categories: Low-Hanging Fruit, System Administration

Grim, Grinning Ghosts come out to Socialize

Larry Lessig just called the Commons "a lawyer-free zone."

Uh-oh. Now there's something we don't want.

4:57:38 PM # Google It!
categories: Law

Me and the Big Guy, we're like this.

4:48:17 PM #

Replicants

If there's one thing about Lotus Notes that really stands out it's replication. It is also one of the hardest to explain aspects of Notes, but that may be because of the terminology.

A replica is an copy instance of the data that becomes more like other instances over time. A copy is an instance of the data at a given point in time. Time is critical in understanding replication: at a given time, n number of replicas are not guaranteed to contain the same data, but they will later.

The fascinating thing about replication is that you can distribute the same data broadly, with little regard to distance. Once distance is eliminated as a factor, you can turn your attention to reducing the time when replicas become more identical. Very similar methods are now used by Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, and LDAP.

I have a similar problem now, but in space and time. I have to distribute files across a wide area, maintaining identical copies at n sites. bangstate's changedfiles looks like what I want, but not all of the systems involved are Linux. rsync won't work because it's not triggered by changes, and the filesystems in question are really deep trees. Hmm. Subversion as a filesystem?

2:58:20 PM # Google It!
categories: System Administration

Ethical Behavior

The other day one of our friends left a $10 bill at our house. We returned it to her.

I would hate to be a friend of the Ebbers, the Lays, the Rigases, or even the Bushes. I think even Tony would behave better. The Buffetts seem like nice people.

2:07:58 PM # Google It!

Safe Havens, or the Ideal Job

You know, of course, of the rule of thumb? That a father, or husband, cannot whack his child, or wife, with a stick wider than his thumb. It helps to have big thumbs.

If you had a hankering to break down doors and ravage a house, who would you work for? Back in the Old Days, you could be a Viking. These days you could work for law enforcement. Real Soon Now, Disney employees can let go the anger hiding under their cheerful facades, and crack open the shiny nuts of computers around the world.

I should prepare for the coming vigilantism, and go buy a nice, strong rope. Do you think cotton or nylon would work better for a lynching?

11:59:59 AM # Google It!
categories: Law, Media

Bees

Thinking about Jon Udell's comments on "information workers" this morning, I don't see why we can't just be "workers," or even better, "people."

"Information workers" brings to mind drones, pushing data, processing it for the Great Machine. Information workers may as well be using green-screen terminals as the latest and greatest trifles from Jeff Raikes' employer.

11:12:05 AM # Google It!
categories: Industry, Language