Posted on by mwhybark

OMG! LJ dark.

LiveJournal.com, for much of today: “Our data center (Internap) lost all its power, including redundant backup power, for some unknown reason. (unknown to me, at least) We’re currently dealing with bringing our 100 servers back online. Not fun. We’re not happy about this. Sorry… :-/ More details later.”

I recall looking at some hosting facilty just when they opened, looking for facilities for our tiny set of boxes. I think we may have gone with them too. I had the stupid role in the movie where the other people get to fiddle with the gear and I answered the cell phone over and over again, hand holding increasingly far-removed-from me upper-ups.

The best one was when we sweet-talked our way past the night-time security guy even though we didn’t have any good credentials or the passphrase, and then talked our way into the on-site tech-staff’s glass room to get a clean test connection to our boxen from outside our class C.

It sounds like a bad movie from the eighties, huh? Apparently we got everyone in trouble there because of this but I went to bat for them, since I could have yanked our account there.

Other things I remember from the hosting center: the deep chill of the rooms, cooled to keep the hardware from overheating. The black-enameled hard wire mesh that enclosed many other clients’ systems, keeping information caged, as it were. The dizzy-headed 3am feeling that somehow we’d become ensnared in some sort of hacker wet dream or pulp novel. Arriving onsite as the sun set and leaving as dawn pinked the sky. The 2001-like all-over flourescent brightness of the space. The plastic-and-lacquer gas-off smell of new computers and freshly installed network paneling.

Posted on by mwhybark

MiliFilter

Battle Lesssons, by Dan Baum, in the January 5 issue of the New Yorker.

In March of 2000, with the help of a Web-savvy West Point classmate and their own savings, they put up a site on the civilian Internet called Companycommand.com. It didn’t occur to them to ask the Army for permission or support. Companycommand was an affront to protocol. The Army way was to monitor and vet every posting to prevent secrets from being revealed, but Allen and Burgess figured that captains were smart enough to police themselves and not compromise security. Soon after the site went up, a lieutenant colonel phoned one of the Web site’s operators and advised them to get a lawyer, because he didn’t want to see “good officers crash and burn.” A year later, Allen and Burgess started a second Web site, for lieutenants, Platoonleader.org.

Fascinating. It would be interesting to look at the sites to see how they are similar to and different from less life-and-death online communities.

This week’s issue also includes a pretty wonderful profile of Miyazaki by Margaret Talbot, in which we learn that the great man is quite the pessimist. Talbot seems surprised by this, as Miyazaki’s films are notable in their lack of mean-spiritedness. This surprises me, as in my experience, it is optimists that create many of life’s small cruelties.

Posted on by mwhybark

iTip

Apple’s Tipping Point: Macs for the Masses is a beautiful visual analysis of Apple’s business strategy by Paul Nixon. Persuasive and elegant, it appears to summarize Apple’s business strategy, and if it’s accurate, presents a strong case for Steve Jobs and company as businesspeople of the decade. Remarkable.

Posted on by mwhybark

Mini

The Mac mini is making a big noise, predictably enough. Rob from Macosxhints had the good sense to shoot a pic with his mitt on the coffee-warmer for scale. Others immediately saw the unit as the long-rumored Mac media center; of course, one question in that incarnation is “How do you get NTSC out to the tube?”

Apple’s thoughtfully provided a DVI-to-Video adapter as an option, although the store’s product page lacks the image seen on the Mini’s product page. Scroll down to near the bottom; it’s on the lower right, and, confusingly, it links to a page touting the Mini’s graphics which also lacks an image of the dongle. Neither page links to the dongle’s product page.

On the Mac Addict forums, the debate centers, as it has elsewhere, on the extortionate pricing Apple reports for a loaded Mini with a full gigabyte of RAM. Adding the memory to the 80gb model results in a price of $1,024, an astonishing jump of over $400 for RAM which can currently be found independently for less than half that cost.

(Updated) Apple is People think Apple is deploying the dreaded “no user-serviceable parts” clause here to milk folks, which is too bad. The purchase documents clearly indicate that installing the RAM yourself voids the warranty, something which is certainly sufficient to keep most folks grubby paws right outen thar.

Eric Sinclair, in the comments, notes that Macintouch remarks that the RAM is user upgradeable, which is in line with previous Apple product and policy. The technical specs are pretty clear, though: “Memory upgrade must be performed by an Apple Authorized Service provider.” For comparison, here is the tech spec page for a G5 tower. Alas, there is certainly no Apple-certified tech restriction on that page, and I’m forced to conclude that the squawking is justified.

Happily, someone at the MacAddict forum dug up a nekkid pitcher of the Mini (from here):

designinsides20050111.jpg

If this image, posted without original attribution, is accurate, I’d have to say that swapping the RAM outgha be a piece of cake. The single stick is the green object on the left face of the item in the photo. Man, I really can’t wait to see the takeaparts of this thing.

Posted on by mwhybark

About time

According to current coverage of today’s Stevenote, iPhoto has added movie support. About freakin’ time!

iChat will have the expected conferencing features: up 10 audio participants and up to 4 video participants. Given how often my family uses iChat video, this is likely to sell some more iSights.

I’ll probably update this after getting some work done.

“Mac Mini” rumors confirmed (quoting from MDN as they are clearly experiencing server issues):


– “Mac mini” height is about half the size of an iPod mini. Ships January 22 in a smaller box than the regular iPod box.

– “Mac mini” better model: UIS$599 with 1.42GHz G4, 80GB drive, combo drive…

– “Mac mini”base model: 1.25GHz G4, 256MB RAM, 40 GB hard drive.

– “Mac mini” will retail for US$499. Jobs, “Priced so that people wanting to Switch have no more excuses.”

– “Mac mini” comes without a keyboard or mouse and uses any industry standard display. FireWire, Ethernet, Modem, and USB. Comes with Panther and iLife ’05.

– The “Mac mini” fits in the palm of your hand and looks like a 3″ tall CD drive. A short cube featuring DVI and VGA connections.

– The Headless Mac is now known as the “Mac mini.”

– “Mac mini” announced. (1:33 PM EST)

It’s the return of the cube! That sounds great! Can you say “media server / internet services box”?

Posted on by mwhybark

Stevenote

MacDailyNews says this URL will be a live-update blog link to the Stevenote Tuesday morning. Apple’s gone to crazy lengths to embargo coverage, though, so I half-expect them to turn off wireless in the auditorium. This year’s rumors are the best of any in recent memory, so who knows. I think it would be hilarious if there is no ‘headless Mac,’ even though I think I buy the concept.

So let me be the first to boldly predict that El Steverino will unveil a mac-branded inflatable hydrogen-fuel cell-powered car.

Posted on by mwhybark

State of the Stats

For a recent project, I was surprised to note a near total-dearth of statistical charts for two areas of internet usage which one would expect to see widely available.

The most surprising omission is the limited reporting available on peer-to-peer network traffic. For something which is widely cited as being the largest single component of internet traffic in terms of bandwidth, there is surprisingly little easily-available consumer-friendly data available online.

BigChampagne currently offers a measly single chart tracking music available for download. The company has come under some fairly stringent criticism for methodology and other things, though.

It appears that Redshift Research once provided something similar, but ceased doing so in summer 2004.

The other area of data which is missing is time-period keyed comparative information concerning blogosphere topics. Technorati and others do a good job tracking real-time stories and links, and provide some gross over-time data.

Presumably, both Daypop and Technorati have plenty of historical data. The specific information I want to see is similar to the information which Google presents every month and end-of-year, but with more contextual data, like film and music metric charts, noting a story’s longevity and motion in-chart.

Ideally, I’d like to see these charts available like this weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annually. If traffic reporting in addition to link reporting could be factored in, that would be even better. Add bandwidth consumption, and I’d say that’s a pretty complete package.

Of course, the same is true for the P2P stats.