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1801

Living Room / Re: Is Linux just a hobby?

« Last post by superboyac on July 18, 2012, 08:22 PM »

Hey! Be nice to the newcomers. 

-40hz (July 18, 2012, 06:38 PM)

Truthfully, this is the primary reason that my Linux exploration ended so early when I did it.  Whenever I tried to go beyond the obvious, if I ran into problems, it was hard to get help.  People would say how great Linux is and recommend that you try it, but when you do and ask a question, you would get derided for your lack of knowledge or ignored.  I know that all Linux users aren't like that... but I ran into enough of them during that time that I just shrugged and reformatted the partition as I didn't see that big of an advantage from the depth I was able to get into it unaided.

-wraith808 (July 18, 2012, 07:32 PM)

It's cool!  As long as I can rag back on all you linux nuts.  Here's one:  I say buttons are easier, you guys say "actually...command line is much easier".  Yes, as long as you've memorized the commands.  That's like a Frenchman telling an englishman that French is easier than English.  no text command is easier than a button with a universal symbol on it.  typing "play" is easy, true.  But it's not easier than clicking the button with the triangle.  It's 4 times harder, actually...you have to press the button that has a "p" on it, then "l", then "a"...etc.   

Honestly, I didn't actually try to install any programs, so I was making a statement based on nothing.   
I'll tell you exactly why my linux experiment died...drivers.  The mouse driver.  I couldn't find a way to make it work as nicely as it did in windows, and that was too annoying for me.  It's not a big deal, but I use it every 30 seconds, and I don't like feeling a little frustrated every 30 seconds.  I'll give linux a little more of a shot when i get a good chunk of time.

1802

General Software Discussion / Re: Drive Extender replacement due out in 2012. It's called Storage Spaces.

« Last post by superboyac on July 18, 2012, 07:10 PM »

Yes, very helpful explanation.  Thanks skwire!

1803

General Software Discussion / Re: Drive Extender replacement due out in 2012. It's called Storage Spaces.

« Last post by superboyac on July 18, 2012, 03:45 PM »

OK, so far it looks like the best solution to try is:
1) SnapRAID for dealing with multiple drives
2) Elucidate, a GUI for SnapRAID
3) Liquesce, the drive pooling for windows (SnapRAID doesn't include this funcionality)

This is the same as 4wd's suggestion.  It's pretty good if it works well.  Everything is free.

1804

General Software Discussion / Re: Drive Extender replacement due out in 2012. It's called Storage Spaces.

« Last post by superboyac on July 18, 2012, 03:42 PM »

tomos, yeah I think something about the parity drive isn't as "linear algebra" as we're thinking.  It seems to be able to do more with less.  Snapraid also claims to be the only one that can potentially recover data in a pool with two drive failures instead of the normal one.  I have the same question for that also; how does the math work out there?

1805

General Software Discussion / Re: Drive Extender replacement due out in 2012. It's called Storage Spaces.

« Last post by superboyac on July 18, 2012, 10:41 AM »

Found another helpful explanation for some of these things:

Now... all that being said. You probably don't want to get involved in RAID 5. You want to look at the new options called "snapshot RAID". The major players are FlexRAID, SnapRAID, DriveBender, Stablebit Drive Pool, and a couple of others.

These products all create a software RAID (Similar to RAID 4, but no striping) that keeps the data intact on the disc (does not stripe across all the discs)... this is a nice feature as you can pull a drive out and put it in another computer and it will act like just another disc. This is impossible to do with real RAID.

Also, since they aren't calculating parity data all the time, read and write speeds are as fast as the individual hard drive will allow (which is usually many times over fast enough to stream multiple files at a time).

The best part about Snapshot RAID is that it provides the same amount of protection as a RAID 5 setup, but you can use any size hard drives that you have. So if you still have a couple of 500GB drives, and say three 1TB drives... you can protect the data on all of those with only one of those 1TB drives used as a parity drive.

In some packages, like FlexRAID, you can pool them all together and combine the 1TB with the two 500GB for a total of 3TB of usable space (one of the 1TB will be used for parity, and it always has to be your largest drive). This gives you JBOD-like ability to make all your drives (minus your one parity drive) appear as one large disk to the OS.

It's also really easy to scrap a snapshot RAID set and start over, or use a different drive for parity, etc... because you are not modifying the data drives at all.

Perhaps this indicates that 40hz's suggestion, SnapRAID is the choice for me.  SnapRaid has gotten really great comments on the web regarding its reliability, I like that.  And it has a GUI in the Elucidate software.  The other option that is reviewed well is Drive Bender.  But Drive Bender doesn't seem to have the reputation for reliability like snapRAID.

1806

General Software Discussion / Re: Drive Extender replacement due out in 2012. It's called Storage Spaces.

« Last post by superboyac on July 17, 2012, 11:15 PM »

Q: Is data protection or media pooling the more important feature for you?

-40hz (July 17, 2012, 07:17 PM)

I'd say media pooling, but I'm not really sure what data protection means.  if it's a backup issue, I'm planning on having two sets of backups for everything, and since they're just files and folders, I'll be using SFFS to do all the backup management synchronization, etc.  But if data protection means something like bad clusters, then I'm interested in that also.  Looks like I have some more studying to do.

I asked one of the network guys at work, and he also said he's looking for something like I'm talking about.  From what I understand so far, it sounds like the "newest" feature in this kind of technology is being able to use a mish-mash of hard drives.  For RAID, you need to have bunches of similar hard drives.  i don't want that.  Some of these other software things I've seen will waste space if the hard drives are not the same size, I don't want that either (they are limited by the smallest drive in the bunch).

I guess I don't need the ability to be adding/removing drives a lot.  But what I don't want is this: let's say a hard drive goes down in a few years, i don't want to have to be forced to find a particular type of drive that is compatible with that bunch.  i want to be able to use whatever is available.  Also, I want to be able to add any kind of hard drive easily, without having to tweak too many things on the existing setup.  Yes...I think that is my #1 feature request: that I be able to use any drive.

1807

General Software Discussion / Re: Drive Extender replacement due out in 2012. It's called Storage Spaces.

« Last post by superboyac on July 17, 2012, 12:53 PM »

As I'm reading more, another option to consider is Distributed File System (DFS):
http://en.wikipedia....stem_%28Microsoft%29

So I'm currently debating:
DFS
Drive Bender
Standalone normal drives
RAID

I'm leaning towards DFS, but I now have to learn how it works.

1808

General Software Discussion / Re: Drive Extender replacement due out in 2012. It's called Storage Spaces.

« Last post by superboyac on July 17, 2012, 12:36 PM »

@SB - I don't know of any general purpose pooled storage system that recommends you add and remove drives as a matter of course. That's more what external USB drives are intended to be used for.

Because these systems need to compute parity data or take snapshots to work their magic, arbitrarily pulling drives out isn't a good idea - even if you can get away with it. Nor is it going to work they way you'd want it to since the minute a drive disappears from the pool, the system will begin reconstructing the missing disk's files on the drives that are still installed. The other thing is the pool manager uses all the resources in the pool. So there's usually no telling on which disk a specific file or directory is located. It could be spread over several physical drives.
 

-40hz (July 17, 2012, 12:26 PM)

What do you recommend as the best way for me to create an enormous 10+ drive pooled system?  I'm trying to avoid RAID because I don't really understand it, and I have disks of all different sizes and models.

How about this?  Do you see anything wrong with this setup:
--don't pool, don't raid, all drives are just regular drives
--let's say i have a "video" folder on two drives and i want them to appear as one, I'll just use the Windows Libraries feature.

That's my ideal setup because then I have regular drives without the headaches of raid or pooling complications.  But I also get to group folders from different drives together.  But if I'm overlooking anything, please let me know.  I'm in the middle of creating my server architecture diagram, so I'm doing this as we speak!

1809

General Software Discussion / Re: Drive Extender replacement due out in 2012. It's called Storage Spaces.

« Last post by superboyac on July 17, 2012, 12:08 PM »

After doing some more research, it seems like the real answer to simply pooling a bunch of drives together is Drive Bender.  This is my favorite feature:

Non-destructive

One of the key Drive Bender features is its non-destructive file system technology. In short, this means that all drives within a Drive Bender pool are utilizing standard NTFS format and file structures. This is to such an extent that a drive can be pulled from the pool and read on any machine capable of reading an NTFS formatted drive. More over, drives attached to the pool can be done so without modification, if a drive is added (not merged) that contains existing data, that data will remain untouched.

And it runs on any version of Windows, so no need to wait for Windows Server 2012, etc.  Unless something else comes up, this looks like the winner.

1810

General Software Discussion / Re: Drive Extender replacement due out in 2012. It's called Storage Spaces.

« Last post by superboyac on July 17, 2012, 09:51 AM »

Another option for Storage Spaces, and the reason why i mention it is to address my issue of "pulling out the drive and using it on another machine" is:
http://www.greyhole.net/

1811

General Software Discussion / Re: Drive Extender replacement due out in 2012. It's called Storage Spaces.

« Last post by superboyac on July 17, 2012, 09:45 AM »

Got some answers to my own questions:

Architecture

A Storage Space operates at the block level while it should work at the file level instead. The benefit of potentially high read speeds (chunks from larger files are stored on different drives and can be read concurrently) is not relevant in SOHO scenarios. But the increased probability of error is.

By splitting files into chunks (called “slabs”) and striping these across disks, it becomes:

    impossible to access a single disk’s data without all other disks being accessible
    (you cannot take a disk from the pool and read its data in another computer)
    impossible to add existing disks to the pool without losing the data stored on them
    (when adding a disk to the pool, it is initialized and formatted – importing data into the pool by adding a new disk does not work)
    impossible to convert between different redundancy types (none, parity, mirror)
    much more likely that the entire system breaks because failure of a single drive destroys all data on all disks (two drives with parity or one-way mirror)
    (in file-based solutions, in case of disk failure only the data on the failed disk is lost, the remainder of the pool remains unaffected)

http://helgeklein.co...gs-and-design-flaws/

1812

General Software Discussion / Re: How can a b/w photo's thumbnail be in colours?

« Last post by superboyac on July 17, 2012, 09:21 AM »

Perhaps this might explain things?

-40hz (July 16, 2012, 07:56 PM)

  -thank you for making your post a perfect start of my day, 40hz   (see attachment in previous post)

-Curt (July 17, 2012, 03:22 AM)

(see attachment in previous post)
 

-40hz (July 17, 2012, 08:21 AM)

That was classic!  Made my day as well.  Man, I used to read that strip every day.

1813

Living Room / Re: Who's up for a DonationCoder talk show?

« Last post by superboyac on July 16, 2012, 09:26 PM »

Do I get to see these notes?

-Stephen66515 (February 16, 2012, 07:48 PM)

Of course, but it will spoil the surprise.  SPoiler alert:

Stephen's SPOILER notes!  Don't Look!

Stephen66515

From the UK

Withdrew EasyNotes from NANY 2012 (boo!)
But made up for it with Treat Yourself Nicely (Heavily Revamped)
--programmed using .NET 4 [rant about .NET versions and stuff]

Has waited for Higgs-Boson all his life

Mobile providers in UK; many more options unlike USA. [rant about mobile carriers]

did a long mini-review Screenshot Captor
[rant about mini-reviews]
[point out that he took screenshots using SC and annoted them in SC...like an enigma, a mystery wrapped in a riddle...is that Seinfeld, or Churchill...same thing]

1814

Living Room / Re: Who's up for a DonationCoder talk show?

« Last post by superboyac on July 16, 2012, 09:21 PM »

Mixxx:
Boy, just the icecast feature is worth the "money" by itself if it works well.  The fact that there are pre-configured buttons and gui makes it unique.  As far as I know, there is only one other icecast software that has a gui, and even that took me a while to figure out what parameters go where.

Pretty sexy looking too:

-40hz (July 16, 2012, 07:48 PM)

Was that an intentional pun...miXXX?   

1815

Living Room / Re: Who's up for a DonationCoder talk show?

« Last post by superboyac on July 16, 2012, 09:16 PM »

Yes!  I'll check it out as well.  Actually, at one point I experimented the talk show thing with some dj tools like traktor, virtualdj, and another one.  What I found attractive was the flexible ways you could route the audio and control the volumes and stuff.

The other cool thing I actually do have working now is using the software Power Mixer in conjunction with my Peavey pc1600x midi controller, which is just a device with a lot of faders and buttons.  But I can control individual application volumes with the fader, which I thought would be helpful for a talk show.

1816

Living Room / Re: What's a good discussion forum for movie buffs?

« Last post by superboyac on July 16, 2012, 07:35 PM »

With regards to your movie question, the sword fight I remember best is the one I saw in the movie Stardust...where the clashing of swords is in the rhythm of the background music.

Just so you know... 

-Shades (July 16, 2012, 05:48 PM)

I'll be sure to check it out.  This is exactly the kind of help I like.  The educational part for me is not if it's good or bad according to whoever, but the fact that it stuck in your memory.  That by itself is significant.

1817

Living Room / Re: What's a good discussion forum for movie buffs?

« Last post by superboyac on July 16, 2012, 07:32 PM »

JoBlo's forum (http://www.joblo.com/forums/ ) used to be pretty active although it may not have the depth you're looking for.

I suppose you could always start one. Best way to get it rolling might be to team up with a few movie sites that prefer to stick to news and clips and don't want to run their own forum. Be forewarned, there's a lot of posturing and nonsense that tends to go on wherever film gets discussed. Probably why some of the most logical sites to have a forum elected not to do one.

-40hz (July 16, 2012, 07:00 PM)

Thanks, I'll check it out.  What is it about movies?  It really seems to bring out the contrarian in people.  I'm the guiltiest! 

1818

General Software Discussion / Re: Drive Extender replacement due out in 2012. It's called Storage Spaces.

« Last post by superboyac on July 16, 2012, 05:08 PM »

This is the thread I've been looking for.  Thanks 40.

Storage Spaces is the technology that I've been dying for.  I'm currently studying the details to learn what is going on.  I have some simple questions:
1) If I pull out one of the disks and plug it into a different computer, is that readable?  That's one reason why I never liked RAID.  I like the idea of pulling out a disk and being able to still read the files/folders there.  if this is not a big deal, I'd appreciate an explanation why.

2) If I already have a disk with stuff on it, can I stick it into the Storage Spaces array and use it without needing to format it or otherwise move/lose the content already there?

3) What happens when a disk goes down?  Does it get rebuilt RAID-style?  Am I restricted on the new type of disk I can replace it with?  If I have another Storage SPace array where the same data is backed up to, do I just recopy the files until they are both synchronized?

1819

Living Room / Re: Is Linux just a hobby?

« Last post by superboyac on July 16, 2012, 01:06 PM »

For me, mainstream Linux use hinges on one factor:
being able to install third party software on any (or most) distros without much noodling or programmer-skills necessary.  like Windows or something as easy.

Most people will argue, however, that that is fundamentally opposed to the Linux way of life.  i don't agree.  I think if people really wanted to, it can be done.  But I get the sense that the Linux crowd intentionally prefers things to be more complicated, even if it doesn't have to be.  This will all happen naturally when the time comes, most likely.  PC users will never become apple users, except for the most light-users.  So the only alternative to hardcore windows users is Linux.  And if Windows continues to piss people off, they'll see more converts to linux.  And as the linux community grows, then this whole fragmentation issue will start getting resolved.

1820

General Software Discussion / Re: A unified solution for note taking and task management

« Last post by superboyac on July 16, 2012, 12:57 PM »

I guess it comes down to finding some form of automatic link/site grabber instead of looking for a RSS tool

-rgdot (July 16, 2012, 12:53 PM)

It's really quite an impossible task.  I wouldn't even attempt to hack a solution.  Google at one point flirted with the idea of using its search engine as an api, but quickly put a stop to it.  Google specifically forbids any kind of crawling.  Most website authors need you to visit their sites, so their feeds are just a line or two.  There's too much resistance for something as nice and convenient as we are talking about.  Because in the end, money wins.  Convenience and user-friendliness only appeals to one crowd: the users.  But the users have no say in the matter here, so in the end the complete opposite happens.  Yay...another reason to be cynical.

1821

General Software Discussion / Re: A unified solution for note taking and task management

« Last post by superboyac on July 16, 2012, 12:33 PM »

Here's a possible, but complex solution:
I've been using ClipMate recently, it's very powerful.  What if you created clipmate filters so that if you copied content from a specified group of websites, all those clips would go into a "newsfeed" folder?  It's not perfect, but at least you can go to each website, copy everything, and then read it inside clipmate.   I don't know, that's pretty klunky...

1822

General Software Discussion / Re: A unified solution for note taking and task management

« Last post by superboyac on July 16, 2012, 12:30 PM »

OK, i just tried FeedDemon's prefetching feature, which is supposed to be the best in the biz.  It sucks.  It's not their fault, it's just the state of affairs.  All of the "success" models for websites today require you to actually visit the site, whether it's a commercial site or a hobby blog.  Hardly anyone is going to make content available in a truly offline way.  You just can't escape the browser application or google quite yet, and probably not for a while.  Here's what prefetching looks like:

Lame, isn't it.

Again, if I have to actually visit the website in the browser for more than half my feeds, having an rss reader to be is pretty worthless.  Why am I going to go through the trouble and configure this sophisticated rss news system for myself only to keep clicking on the actual websites still?  There's no point.

1823

General Software Discussion / Re: A unified solution for note taking and task management

« Last post by superboyac on July 16, 2012, 12:11 PM »

I love how all these rss readers have an option for "summary" and "full article".  It's funny how there isn't much difference between the two.  What...like 2 lines of text more?  Whop dee doo.

1824

General Software Discussion / Re: A unified solution for note taking and task management

« Last post by superboyac on July 16, 2012, 12:10 PM »

40hz

check out Rooster RSS Agent
http://www.drivehq.c...eb/brana/rooster.htm

Ska

-SKA (July 15, 2012, 09:10 AM)

Hmm...Rooster looks VERY interesting.  I'm checking it out now. Lots of options, very lightweight, shockingly flexible!  I'm going to load some feeds and try it out for a few days and see if it agrees with me.

[update]
ok, first issue.  It doesn't look like it has any ability to download full articles, just the stupid rss summaries.  That's my main issue with all these tools.  What's the point of using these hardcore news software, when in the end, you still have to go to the actual site in the actual browser to read it?  If the software can't grab the content to show within it, it loses so much value with me.  Because then it just becomes a link collector pretty much.  I don't need to make more work for myself by opening up a program, clicking two or three times just to send me to a website in the browser.  If I wanted that, all I'd do is get a bookmark manager and start clicking each bookmark one at a time.  It's really not much different.

If anyone made a reader that fulfilled 40hz' specs above, it would be hugely popular and possibly profitable.  The issue I see with it is that it's stepping all over google's toes and also the website owners.  They obviously don't want their articles downloadable, they want you going to their site and looking at 2 inches of article content and 6 inches of ads.

And the software with the built in browser is not much better, like website watcher.  because the browser is most likely inferior to your actual browser that you have all your plugins and ad blockers and stuff worked out so the experience is well suited for you.  Going back to an internal browser without those features sucks ass.

You can see my Rooster screenshot below, testing with the John August feed:


What's the point?  All that wasted space because most good rss feeds have a couple lines of summary and you have to go to the website to read the full thing.  So the software becomes rather useless to me.

1825

Living Room / What's a good discussion forum for movie buffs?

« Last post by superboyac on July 16, 2012, 11:07 AM »

Do any of you know a popular and large movie buff forum?  Somewhere where I can ask:
"What are some of the best swordfighting scenes you've seen?"

and I'll get dozens of responses from all sorts of films?

Thanks.  I did a google seach, but didn't easily find forums that were very active.  Thanks.'

I was thinking of a screenwriter's forum, but I think I prefer a regular movie buff forum.  Screenwriters tend to be a little too contrariany for me.  But I'm interested in good screenwriter forums also.