* Posts by Virag0

15 publicly visible posts • joined 14 Aug 2009

Adjustments will be needed to manage the Macs piling up in your business

Virag0

A lot of people forget Mac OSX is UNIX under the hood. All the FOSS tools work. If you have a competent Systems Admin, they can integrate Macs as UNIX workstations and manage them discretely. The thing is, with Macs, Windows is optional. You do not need AD to manage Macs in any way shape, or form. If you are a Mac shop and have windows server licenses, cash them in and get

a good Sysadmin out of the savings. As for provisioning, onboarding etc, all the tools are there and

If you want to integrate with an all UNIX environment, Macs will do that too. There is no special magic in Macs, just they are underestimated in their enterprise capability.

NBN Co loses the “Co” for AU$700,000

Virag0

The new logo is appropriate, but only because the dots get fainter the further away from the Node, just like Real Life in the Malcolm Turnbull Mode (MTM).

Nesting falcons interrupt £200m Vodafone 4G mast upgrades

Virag0

dual purpose

Why not design towers that both serve data but also accomodate the falcons? A radio mast that is being adopted by the animals is only a step away from being a terriffic side benefit.

Kiss your Glass goodbye: Google mothballs techno-specs (for now)

Virag0

I wish I had one

I can see a lot of practical uses with this. I wish I had one. It would be useful to perform

demonstrations of work such as cooking, or creative work like painting, pottery, gem cutting and music production/perfomance. If I had a set, I would use it just like that - to document a creative

process or as a first person view teaching/training aid to demonstrate a complex task.

BAT-GOBBLING urban SPIDER QUEENS swell to ENORMOUS SIZE

Virag0

I once caught one of those Huntsman which grow rather big and took it outside to release it

on the wall. I slid the glass off the wall and before I could step back, two magpies swooped in and one got the prize. They were onto me before I knew what happened...

NSW to build federated ID management rig for staff, punters

Virag0

Been through this

Have worked with one of the consultancies (the one with a Q in it) on an IDM project in the past in my old job. We did all the hardware, software (DSEE, IDM 8.1) in house & they wrote the business rules in an exquisitely painful XML language called "Xpress". The system worked great at first until some politics got in the way and certain changes to the system made that caused it to do some weird things which I will not go into. As no planning was put into supporting the platform with a budget like other production systems the bugs were left in and I ended up supporting the system on my own from then until I resigned. My greatest technical success and my worst career decision to not fight harder for a support contract from the upper management.

To this day, the funky IDM still does its thing, the DSEE is still serving UNIX logins and the move to Microsoft AD stalled where it was when I left. In the right hands, a sensible budget, the DSEE is a fantastic solution and IDM a great product provided you don't have a committee of 20 on it & have people skilled up enough to understand its inner workings when it starts cranking out duplicate accounts or deletes the CEO's because they went on holidays etc...

VMware builds product executables on 50 Mac Minis

Virag0

It Works!

I am running a setup like this. A 16gb Mac Mini Server runs ESXi and thunderbolt ethernet is used for

iSCSI to run a HP-N54L hosting FreeNAS. I use ZFS for the iSCSI target and run all my VM's on it.

Works great and does not use too much electricity...

Telstra 'snot boxes' challenge Turnbull's FTTN plan

Virag0

So lucky...

We got our NBN order in before the election. We are now totally on an FTTH connection for voice & data. The install of the termination was done to 10 townhouses in our block but so far we seem to be the only ones taking up. Prior we had ADSL2+ costing $130 a month plus a telstra phone & line rental

for about another $40 a month. This is now a single account for $95 a month including voice & data.

We run a VOIP phone with the old number migrated across. The old ADSL was lucky to get 5mbps

out of an advertised "up to" 24mbps. Our new FTTH gets 70/30mbps during peak periods and

about 90/35mbps offpeak out of an advertised 100/40mbps. The equipment installed included

the terminator outside. When they turned up to do the internal setup, they wanted to go right

through the wall where our TV was on the other side. Instead we requested the link to go upstairs

in our home office. There was an issue with cable length associated with this, as it is Single Mode

fibre, But they worked it out and an ONT fibre to ether box and a little UPS plugged into the mains

to keep it up. The cost of this equipment I was told was about $2500 including installation

but it only cost me $50 setup fee via the ISP who arranged the NBN guys to turn up. Excellent

value.

There are downsides to this. We still need a UPS to keep the gigabit switch and

the phone up, as we drive the VOIP off that. The switch we use hangs up sometimes and has

to be restarted or it will not keep VOIP registration going. The ISP we use is non interventionist

and resells bandwidth from big suppliers so tech support depends your own initiative. But the

service is excellent and we are planning to launch a set of small enterprises on it eventually.

rachel

I want to play with VMs

Virag0

ESXi on Mac Mini server 16Gb

I am going to get a Mac Mini server, upgrade to 16GB and run ESXi on it for about 4 VM's.

We are a home shop, so power constraints are my biggest concern. The Mini will only ever

draw 80 watts maximum, so that is within my power allocation with the other computers.

I want to use ESXi as there are benefits down the track if I need to grow the infrastructure more.

Our home systems are all Mac, but as I work in the UNIX realm, need a couple of Linux

and Solaris VM's to work with. The ESX image needs a couple of tweaks to work with the

Mini, but there are images out there already pretweaked - google it!

Party like it's 1999: CDE Unix desktop REBORN

Virag0

long time user.

I was using CDE on Solaris SPARC until January this year, when my Sun workstation was finally

replaced by an iMac with Lion on it. I used to always get comments from various co-workers that I was actually a dinosaur, but consultants were always impressed by my ability to navigate, admin and modify CDE to do

my bidding and look the way I liked...... Now the iMac gets a lot of comment - I am apparently not a dinosaur

anymore but a clueless hipster with aspirations toward wearing black and making everyone else jealous with

the very shiny 27" screen.....

Australia Network tender shut down

Virag0
Devil

No to the Murdoch Empire

I am glad this happened. Regardless of the leaks,

Murdoch does not deserve to represent my country given his

endorsement of Right Wing media politics. I do not want such an organisation responsible

for the message that is sent out to Asia and the region. Such affairs require a fit and proper person,

not an all consuming mogul empire looking for more ways to skin a buck.

Unique imagery of Shuttle docked to ISS released

Virag0

shuttle should stay up there

That looks fantastic. Why don't they keep a shuttle up there, for extra space, additional booster thrust for orbital adjustments and an escape/safety pod for emergencies?

Haven for life found in Mars' Syrtis Major region

Virag0

Martian jewels

Hydrated silica deposits from steam and water vents? I bags staking a claim on the first Martian Opal field.

Monty launches frantic 'save MySQL' web campaign

Virag0
FAIL

Let's just save Sun first

I'm a big user customer of Solaris. I would have to say that I have a career made out of it. I am quite interested in seeing Oracle save Sun as the technology stack Sun has collected over the years is just to good to break out and sell off or obsolete in parts - so that will tell you where my viewpoint will come from.

When Sun bought Mysql, there was a lot of upset in the Open Source community, but I did not see Monty complaining about the payout at that point. I am certain that Sun and the representatives for the Mysql company would have had arduous negotiations prior to the sellout of the IP and branding.

I do not recall at any point reading that the Mysql reps argued about what Sun could/could not

do with Mysql after they bought it, otherwise we would already have seen several lawsuits

for breach of contract or whatever the legal jargon is for when you do a deal and then break

the terms and conditions of that deal. Now I suppose there had to have been a "cooling off"

period prior to the Mysql buyout by Sun and I suppose that has passed.

So that basically leaves Monty with is $1.5b or whatever it was and Sun got something it

probably could have just licensed for a lot less.

Now it is all a moot point. Sun is now in the hands of a bigger fish. Oracle bought Sun,

not a bunch of components. Mysql is a brand but it is also basically just another part of the Sun

product suite now, just like any Sun product that was acquired from another party. The Sun guys I spoke to love Mysql and have suggested that it will remain under a GPL style agreement but I do not know how far that will go.

I think it is unlikely Oracle will rename Mysql in the short term - Sun I believe would have. We would probably see (under an existent Sun) something like "Sun JES 7.5 Application Database Layer 5.1.4" or similar brain numbing nomenclature. Oracle will probably maintain the Mysql

name for a bit and then I reckon it will become something else, perhaps "Oracle Application Services Database" just like they have used Apache to do "Oracle Application Server" and the like.

Monty has a fork. He knows what he can do with it. But he took money for his product

and has to live with that fact. I reckon he's just sorry he didn't ask for more......

The Fail is for Monty - I don't feel sorry for him. I am annoyed that Oracle just have not been given full permission to acquire Sun already so I can stop watching people panic everytime

the hold up is mentioned in the media.

Les Paul dies at 94

Virag0
Gates Horns

A good time to mention

Gibson is now owned by the evil Henry Juszkiewicz. He ruined some big deals in the

music tech industry. Have a look on the web for what Gibson did to Oberheim, Opcode

and a poor person by the name of Lynx Crowe.

Mine is Evil Bill, since Henry Juszkiewicz can't be properly seen in a mirror, or photographed.