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January 31, 2005
Hanging with the farmers this week
Down in Florida ath the National Biodiesel Conference and Expo 2005 - Home this week. Hanging with the Iowa farmers in Florida. I hear Daryl Hannah may be here and Willie Nelson! No Dorthy this is NOT Comdex. Will be blogging it over at b100fuel.com.
Posted by Martin at 5:52 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 28, 2005
Removing more crap
Ok,
running low on the C drive, so deleting some stuff:
Microsoft Money 2004 and teh System Package
Azesus (no idea why I have it)
Age of Empires (never play it)
Picture Gear Studio 2.0
Quicken 2003 New User Edition
About a gig free. Mostly free software that came with the PC that I never use.
Posted by Martin at 2:29 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
January 27, 2005
PeerFlix has a new promotion
My favorite DVD trading site has a new promotion! Peerflix: No DVD Rentals! Trade Your DVDs. Get 2DVD 2 trades when you join now. They also rewrote their site and it is much faster and better. I trade about a DVD a week on there. WAY better than Netflix. Netflix is toast..
Posted by Martin at 10:04 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 23, 2005
Spinners for my Segway
Josh Rubin: Cool Hunting: Segway Spinners Ordering now. The only thing interesting out of CES.
Posted by Martin at 3:27 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 22, 2005
Motherboard RAID chipsets reviewed...
Thanks to Slashdot for this link: Chipset Serial ATA and RAID performance comparison - The Tech Report - Page 1 One month testing of the four major motherboard chipsets for SATA RAID. Awesome. My Asus MB has both the NVidia Nforce3 AND the Silicon Image x2 chip set. The SIS does good in all areas with the exception of CPU Utilization where it is 10-15X worse than the other chipsets. That may be the reason that other reviewers have complained about the SIS RAID controller going hinky when you overclock the CPU (some conflict). But makes me glad that I got a powerful AMD 64 3200, maybe more powerful than a normal file server would have. Also, the Hyperthreading on the Intel chips SIGNIFIGANTLY reduced CPU utilization for chipsets on that platform versus AMD, so there is probably an advantage to using Pentium for a file server. My next box will be Pentium. Here are some snippets: Or you can go straight to Conclusions...
"With a single drive, the SiS964 is king in HD Tach's read speed tests. The SiS964 can't match the maximum read speeds of the nForce3 250Gb and ICH5R, but SiS is out ahead when it comes to minimum and average read speeds."
"The SiS964 maintains its lead as we move to mirrored RAID 1 arrays. This time around, Intel's ICH5R turns in a strong average read speed performance to distance itself from the field and secure second place."
Switching from mirroring to striping, the SiS964's average and minimum read speeds continue to lead the field. Average read speeds are considerably more varied with RAID 0, and VIA's VT8237 turns in a strong performance on both our Athlon 64 and Pentium 4 platforms.
RAID 0 burst speeds spreads the field considerably. Here, the nForce3 250Gb is way out ahead of the competition, distantly followed by the SiS964. Both VT8237 implementations are off the pace, but they're not as slow as the ICH5R, which may be constrained by limited chipset bandwidth.
With RAID 0, the VT8237 finally manages to beat the nForce3 250Gb on the AMD side of things. The SiS964's CPU utilization with striped arrays is particularly high, especially when compared with the other Athlon 64 chipsets. Wow. The SiS964 has some very real CPU utilization issues with RAID 0. Over 20% CPU utilization is simply unacceptable when the rest of the pack is under 2%. But the big story is still the SiS964's RAID 0 CPU utilization, which tops 30% with the web server test pattern.
Our single-drive web server results mirror what we saw with the file server test pattern. Again, the nForce3 250Gb has real problems with single-drive performance scaling under increasing loads.
The SiS964 makes its mark in the Multimedia Content Creation Winstone and lays waste to the Athlon 64 field across the board. The ICH5R is out on top again on the Intel side, too, all the way from single drives to RAID 0 arrays.
My conclusions: Don't use the Silicon Image for RAID 0. I am going to test it for RAID 5 and tell ya. nForce3 looks promissing in the 4 controller configuration (if I can find a MB that uses it with its speedy interconnect). If you just want tried and true, stick with the ICH5R.
Posted by Martin at 9:07 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
already thinking about my next RAID box
The 24 pin to 20 pin adapter didn't arrive today (monday), but I am already thinking about my next RAID box. I want a BIG one with hot swapable drives, 12-16 of them and that will mean having to go with hardware RAID. Tom's Hardware has a current review of 3Ware, Highpoint and Raidcore's newest offerings. Tom's Hardware Guide Mass Storage: Multi-channel RAID for SATA: 3Ware, Highpoint and Raidcore/Broadcom - Conclusion. 3Ware comes out on top due to their hardware implementation of nearly everything leaving load off the processor and allowing you to downsize those parts and make up for the higher costs.
I will design one of these next. In an extensive search today the maximum SATA controllers I found on a Motherboard was 10 (Supermicro) but that only offered RAID 0 or 1. For performance AND security/redundancy you need RAID 5 or better 6. Would be nice if someone put four of the Silicon Image 4 port SATA controllers on a motherboard. They support RAID5. But then you have the problem of spanning controllers to create a single volume. There is software to do that with the 3Ware but I haven't found such software with MB RAID. In fact I haven't found any configuration software for those things yet (but then again I haven't gotten any power in the box either).
Posted by Martin at 8:30 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
RAID 5 testing
What I am really trying to do with the RAID box is to get the cheapest RAID 5 implementation possible. Lots of MBs will have RAID 0 (no redundancy) RAID 1 (very expensive overhead), so I like RAID 5, but dont' want to buy a card to get it. Tom's Hardware Guide Mass Storage: RAID 5 Scaling Tests With Up To Eight Drives - All-around Solution: RAID 5 is a good article explaining RAID 5 from a RAIDCorps card (now recalled). How it works, etc.
Posted by Martin at 10:26 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 21, 2005
Home 1.62TB RAID project update
Ok, so yesterday I started screwing the thing together. Here is a blow by blow:
8:00pm
- Unpacked all the stuff.
- Read all the quick start guides.
- Removed case side cover. They say to just push on the button and push to the back of the case, but forget to tell you to remove the two screws in the back. Quick fix.
- Removed port plate that came with the chassis. Installed the one from the ASUS mother board.
- Removed 2 rear slot covers for the two extra port boards that come with the ASUS. Removed the two closest to the fan since they don't have PCI ports near them and PCI are not needed.
- Installed memory onto CPU. One in slot one one in slot 3. Leave the cooling covers ON with the clips!
- Installed the CPU on the motherboard. Then heat sync. I guess it doesn't really matter which side the securing lever is on, but it may as it gets crowded. I put the fan lead on the side closest to the plug on the motherboard. It wouldn't reach if it were on the otherside.
- Took all the fans out of the chassis for more room. The two by the drives are easy slide outs and two case screws and one thumb screw to remove the mounting plate. The exhaust fan is easy slide out.
- install the stand-offs in the "D" holes in the case. The case has all the holes marked with a different letter. The "D" pattern fits my ASUS ATX motherboard. Nice touch Super Micro.
- installed the motherboard with all screws provided. It is a little trick to get the ports to line up with the port cover. A couple of the cheap tabs I have to break off because they get stuck outside rather than inside where they should be.
- installed the extra firewire card in the slot closest to the fan since it had the most clearance. The Game port and 2USB card had less clearance and was hitting a couple of diodes on the MB, so had to be installed in slot 2 away from the fan to prevent conflict.
- Plugged in the various wires from these two cards to the points on the MB. The male and female parts are color coded to match so it was dead simple to not make a mistake. Good call ASUS!
- I notice with the Game Port that this is really a game motherboard but I don't mind. Hey it has 6 free RAID controllers.
- The chassis comes with a Super SATA 7 port backplane to allow you to just plug in your SATA drives using the hot swap rails and not worry about cables. VERY nice feature if you are building primarilly a storage box and worth the extra money from a standard PC box. Thanks Super MIcro! I connect this backplane to "com 2" on motherboard for control.
- Take out 6 SATA cables and plug 0 and 1 into the NVidia RAID controller and 2-5 into the Silicon Image controllers.
- Connected power to the backplane (two standard floppy/drive power plugs)
11:30pm
- try to connect the powersupply to the Motherboard. OOPS this case has a brand spank'n new 550W STX power supply with a 24 pin power connecter. The MB has a 20 pin ATX power connector. So I have to find out the difference. For a moment I think about just craming it on there (it would fit) and try powerint it up. But I see from the web that lots of plugs have been remapped and think twice about it. I hope I can buy a back-converter at Frys tomorrow. FIRST SHOW STOPPER.
12:00pm
- think about quitting for the night, but decide to press on to see if there are any other show stoppers that will require stuff to be bought at Frys.
- Start screwing in the drives to the handy dandy hot swapable rail system. Drive 0 will be the 10,000 RPM system drive. Drive 1 is the 250GB. I will leave these two separate drives probably. Drives 2-5 are the 300GB and will be RAID5.
- plugged in the LEDs from the case front to the appropriate MB power spots. I am left with Overheat, NMI Switch (what the hell is that?), HDD LED (the backplane has an LED led I already connected so I don't care), and two NIC LEDs left. Apparently SuperMIcro is pulling the old razor and razorblade trick. I bet if you used their motherboard you would have enough power points for all the LEDs they put on the front of their case. The only one I wish I could figure out is the Overheat one. I zip tie the extras up out of the way.
12:30
- installed the DVD ROM. LOVE the false rails on the bottom side. This means that with the case lying on it's side, open, you only have to unscrew two screws on the side that is up and slide out the plug. Remove the false rails from the bottom, put them on your DVD, slide it in and screw in the four screws on the top. You don't have to pick up the case and open the other side to complete the device install as you have to with some other cases. Very thoughtful SM guys!
12:45
- Ok, what am I missing? Well this case has two fans over by the drives and the MB has only one HD fan power port. So I need a splitter to power both the fans. Frys will have that. I pluged the exhaust fan into the plug for the "Power Supply" fan and wonder if that is wrong. There is a 4 hole female connector comming out of the Ablecomm SP5500-LP power supply that has three wires in it that looks like a fan power thing and I have no male connector on the MB for it. AFter some thought I bet it is the Over Heat or Power Supply Failure LED, and I think it should plug into an LED on the front pannel, but no luck. Oh, I just found this: SP550-RP Rev A, PWS-0046, 550W EPS12V Redundant Cooling PSU, for Supermicro SC742T-550 Chassis, +5V & +3V3 Combined 50A Max, +12V1 & +12V2 Combined 40A Max, +3.3V 30A, +5V 30A, +12V1 26A, +12V2 20A, -12V 0.8A, -5V 0.8A, 5Vsb 2A, 24-pin, 8-pin & 4-pin ATX Power Connectors, 5x HDD/CD & 2x FDD Power Connectors, Fan Fail/Over Temp LED, Buzzer Reset Switch, 100-240V AC In & Sanyo SanCooler 80 9A0812S401 Fan on Back of Case, 150mm W x 86mm H x 184mm D. Looks like it is a Fan Fail/Over Temp LED connector, but I can't find where to connect it.
- The exhaust fan doesn't reach the power port, so I have to remove it from it's plastic mounting rack and rotate it 180 degrees to get the lead on the other side so it will reach. Glad you can do this, good design!
12:50
done, go to fry's tomorrow.
clean up
1:00am bed
1:50pm next day:
- bought two 3 pin female to 2 male molex splitters to power all the fans. $3.95 Frys.
- bought a Universal CD ROM cable from Fry's (not included in the CDROM from NewEgg). Oh, by the way all the stuff from NEW EGG was OEM in bubble wrap with NO CABLES. $4.99 for DVD cable.
- Fry's didn' t have the 24/20 power converter
2:00pm
- ordered 24 pin power supply to 20 pin Motherboard connector from ExtremePCGear. $9.99 plus next day air for $38.19 total.
2:15
on hold for power cable.
So the new total for the system is:
Home 1.624TB RAID Server
| CPU | Athlon 3200+ | $199 | Frys 11x multiplier, should over clock to 2.6GHz easily |
| Memory 1GB | Corsair 4400C25 | $269 | Very fast at DDR466 |
| Motherboard | ASUS K8N-E Deluxe | $149.99 | Frys, 6 SATA RAID chips on Motherboard, 3GB memory. Anandtech complains about memory speed and the SiliconImage vs NVidia RAID controller when overclocking, but I am not going to. |
| Case | SUPERMICRO 4U Rackmount Chassis, Model "SC742T-550 Black" | $305 | New Egg. Has 7 SATA backplane built in, redundant 550W |
| DVD+-RW drive | NEC 3520A | $62.99 | newegg the newer model |
| system drive | WD740GD | $156 | NewEgg. 74GB 10000 rpm system drive |
| Data drive | Maxtor Ultra16 SATA 250GB | $149.99 | CompUSA ($.59/gig) could only buy 1 at this price |
| Data drive | Maxtor Ultra16 SATA 300GB | $194.49 | NewEgg ($.65/gig) could buy 4 at this price |
| fan power splitter | Fry's house | $3.95 | Frys bught 2 |
| Unversal DVD/CDROM cable | Fry's store | $4.99 | Fry's |
| 24Pin/20Pin power cable | XPCGear | $38.19 | XPC Gear |
total: $2121.01. Now I am at $1.31/ gig. still a bargin!
Posted by Martin at 10:45 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
The ASA Server quote discected and priced at New EGG.
Basically you are paying about $1,069 for configuration, testing and a warranty. 27.4%. Not a bad premium actually if you value your time and a warranty. If I go this way, I would rather go with a local vendor so I really get support. I wouldn't buy such a thing with phone support or web support. But I like screwing the stuff together myself. I am about 4 hours into my project and am waiting for a cable to come fed ex tomorrow. If I finish in 5 hours, that will be about $200/hour. Not bad.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
QTY ITEM NO. DESCRIPTION PRICE EXTENDED
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Prices from NewEgg.com
1 MB -SMX5DPA-GG SUPERMICRO X5DPA-GG MOTHERBOARD. 277.00 277.00
DUAL GIG LAN AND VGA ONBOARD
2 CPU -XEN2.4-533 INTEL XEON 2.4GHZ 533 FSB 512K 229.00 458.00
2 CPUS INSTALLED
2 MMD -5M21ERLB17 DDR 512MB PC2100 ECC REG LOW PROFILE 97.00 194.00
2 X 512MB PC2100 ECC REG DDR INSTALLED Kingston
1 CS -RMAD4U16B 4U CASE/16 FRONT BAYS/HOT-SWAP POWER. 800.00 800.00
1 CS -RMAD4U16SL SLIDE RAILS FOR 4U 16 BAYS RACK MOUNT 15.00 15.00
7 HDRV-250WDSB WD 250GB 7200 RPM 8MB RE DRIVE 148.00 1,036.00
1 RAID-3W7506-8 3WARE 7506-8 ATA RAID CTRL 8 PORT 385.00 385.00
RAID 5 SET UP
1 CD -SLIMDVD SLIMLINE BLACK DVD. 50.00 50.00
2,830.00
1 OS -CUSTOM CUSTOM OS AS PER CUSTOMER NEEDS/CD 0.00 0.00
1 ASM -200 ASSEMBLY/TEST/SW INSTALL 0.00 1,069.00
3,899.00
SHIPPING AND HANDLING CHARGES WILL BE EXTRA
Posted by Martin at 9:41 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
when I expand my current SM RAID, here is how
This StorCase Technology DE400 nifty little 4 SATA drive case has its own backplane and fits into 3 drive bays. I have 3 drive bays open on my SM case since I only have a DVD ROM in it. So I can buy this and add 4 more SATA drives to my existing 6. Now I just need a PCI RAID card and can't suck off the free MB RAID any more.
Posted by Martin at 9:26 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Actually I would use the Super Micro Case
SuperMicro SC933T-R760 (cse-933t-r760b) Extended ATX Rack-Mountable Case - Find, Compare, and Buy at DealTime. It is $850-$1000 just for the case. But well worth it! has tripple redundant power supply, 15 HD backplane. But I digress. The idea I am persuing is not building the ULTIMATE RAID, but building CHEAP RAID out of PC parts. This is definitely NOT a PC part.
Posted by Martin at 9:24 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Beautiful 16 bay SATA RAID enclosure
If I were not worrying about price, I would consider this enclosure: SecurStor XRS DAS - eXtra Raid Security - RAID 6. 16 hot swappable SATA drive bays with an SATA cableless backplane. Plenty of expansion room.
Posted by Martin at 9:14 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Another RAID quote
Here is the configuration that vendor suggested for a RAID box for my home. The main difference is that he suggests dual Xeon, a SM chassis AND motherboard (good choice to match them) that has expansion to 16 slots, a 3Wire board for RAID instead of MB RAID (probably better), cheaper memory, hot swappable power supplies (which I don't need). But it comes in at $3,899, or $2.60 per gig. And no faster system drive (which I think is important).
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
DATE SHIP VIA F.O.B. TERMS
1/19/2004 PICK UP SANTA CLARA CO
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
QTY ITEM NO. DESCRIPTION PRICE EXTENDED
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 MB -SMX5DPA-GG SUPERMICRO X5DPA-GG MOTHERBOARD. 3,899.00 3,899.00
DUAL GIG LAN AND VGA ONBOARD
2 CPU -XEN2.4-533 INTEL XEON 2.4GHZ 533 FSB 512K 0.00 0.00
2 CPUS INSTALLED
2 MMD -5M21ERLB17 DDR 512MB PC2100 ECC REG LOW PROFILE 0.00 0.00
2 X 512MB PC2100 ECC REG DDR INSTALLED
1 CS -RMAD4U16B 4U CASE/16 FRONT BAYS/HOT-SWAP POWER. 0.00 0.00
1 CS -RMAD4U16SL SLIDE RAILS FOR 4U 16 BAYS RACK MOUNT 0.00 0.00
7 HDRV-250WDSB WD 250GB 7200 RPM 8MB RE DRIVE 0.00 0.00
1 RAID-3W7506-8 3WARE 7506-8 ATA RAID CTRL 8 PORT 0.00 0.00
RAID 5 SET UP
1 CD -SLIMDVD SLIMLINE BLACK DVD. 0.00 0.00
1 OS -CUSTOM CUSTOM OS AS PER CUSTOMER NEEDS/CD 0.00 0.00
1 ASM -200 ASSEMBLY/TEST/SW INSTALL 0.00 0.00
SHIPPING AND HANDLING CHARGES WILL BE EXTRA
Posted by Martin at 2:24 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 18, 2005
My new favorite web radio station
I have gotten tired of the advertisements of Live365 and the constant upselling to their "premium" services. Don't these people know that there are plenty of free alternatives? My new favorite is Energy X radio stream on: EnergyRadio.FM Listen and rock out!
Posted by Martin at 4:23 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
the difference between Technorati Tags and Del.icio.us and PubSub and google.
So alot of people are trying to put a meta layer on top of the web and blogs and other types of data. Technorati with Tags is trying to aggregate blog entries, Flickr photos and del.icio.us entries. Technorati watchlists only search for the keyword you want in blog postings (just like typing in biodiesel on their search box). Del.icio.us serves up web and blog matches in reverse chronological order (and will automatically generate an RSS feed that matches). Del.icio.us only gives you bookmarks that its members have tabbed, they don't do any crawling. Then PubSub gets all the pings and does keyword searching much like Technorati (although the results are different yet again). Google takes web sites and blog entries (no flickr) and applies their page rank to the results.
Technorati Biodiesel Keyword search
So, which do I like better? Well it depends on what I am looking for. If I wanted a javascript sidebar that shows me the latest news/posts about biodiesel, I would stick with Technorati or PubSub since they do a better time with the real time posts. If I were looking for a good list of general biodiesel resources, especially the most authoritative SITES, I would use Google or maybe del.isio.us. Would be nice if I could take any or all of these lists and have them auto javascript sidebared for me. That would be a cool service.
Posted by Martin at 1:27 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Trying out RSS Digest
Trying out RSS Digest: RSS Digest: Show and syndicate RSS and news feed on your Web page with no programming. Basically the site can create a javascript include which will reformat an RSS feed. In a two step process I did this for B100Fuel.com.
Step one. Go to Del.icio.us and create an custom RSS feed on the keyword you want. In my case I created one for "biodiesel". The URL for the RSS feed is: http://del.icio.us/rss/tag/biodiesel
Step 2. paste this URL into the window on BigBold. Click "generate code". You get Javascript, PHP, or iFrame code. Just copy and paste this code to your template in your blog. Check it out on B100fuel.com.
I love web services!
Posted by Martin at 10:04 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
January 17, 2005
Technorati launches "tags" but makes them more complicated than they have to
Dave sent a mail announcing Technorati Tags today. Here is their help page. Technorati: Using Technorati Tags. It sounds like a good idea to have users set their own metadata tags and let the server worry about normalization of the database. I have long been against heavilly structured metadata systems that require everyone to use a pre-defined list of tags. Tagging is a pain enough without having to live in someone else's taxonomy. So Self Taging is good. Then apply some server logic to figure out which tags are probably related or "close enough" to allow people to find things even if they aren't tagged explicitly with the right words you are using to search.
The only gripe I have is that the presenation of the idea was overthought and shrouded in a bunch of techno babble. I got the impression from all the various threads that I had to start doing something new, adding a new tag to the HTML of my posts. But after further research, what they are really talking about is sucking up the category tag and allowing users to search on categories. MT already has tags if you are categorizing your posts! So I don't have to do anything new.
Now on the search part that would be cool. What I would like is a javascript that will pull down posts, pictures, etc. not on keywords but on "tags" or "categories". for example. BioDiesel. What if I wanted B100Fuel to have an auto generated list of posts from around the web on biodiesel? But not every relevant post has the word biodiesl in it. It may be just a pointer to something diesel related. Or crop related. Or tax realted? So working at the category level would be good. I will poke around for that. I bet it is out there somewheres.
Posted by Martin at 2:01 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
January 16, 2005
New Microsoft Anti-Spyware conflicts with Dantz backup
I have been running Webroot SpySweeper, the best anti-spyware program out there. But when Microsoft launched Microsoft Windows AntiSpyware (Beta) Home I had to give free a try. This is just the rebranded version of the software Microsft bought earlier this year. It seems that they didn't bother to do much compatibility testing.
I installed it on both my laptop and my desktop at home. On the desktop computer I run Dantz backup. The laptop and other computers on my LAN have the client software on them. I did not install msSpyware on my wife's Dell laptop. I have a back-up script that runs every night around 2:00am and backs up all the computers on the network to a spare harddrive. After two days I checked the back-up status and noticed that my laptop wasn't being backed up. There were "not sufficient permission" errors and "Can't find back-up client" errors. In windows the two computers can see each other and share common drives. The only thing I changed was adding MS Spyware. Of course the behavior of Dantz could look like spyware. But I didn't even get a message like "program Dantz is trying to access the harddrive". I removed the Ms Spyware from the laptop thinking that it was preventing the back-up program from attaching. The script still failed. So I turned off spyware on the main desktop computer. The script ran just fine. So MS Spyware was not allowing the main back-up machine to reach out and attach to the back-up client and copy down files. Again no message. You would think it would be smart enough to tell the difference between a back-up program and spyware. Bye Bye Msft anti-spyware until you figure this out!
Posted by Martin at 11:08 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
January 15, 2005
Good Zigbee/Zensys FAQ
Well ZWave has formed the Z-Wave Alliance Frequently Asked Questions top combat the Zigbee wave of press around their finalization of the standard. The main difference: ZWave has been in the market for 3 years and has 100 OEMs and works on a proprietary platform that can gaurantee interoperability and works on a different frequency than WLAN (Zigbee experiences significant packet loss with a WIFI network present). I am going ZWave in my house.
Posted by Martin at 10:35 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 14, 2005
Finished A Conflict of Visions, a MUST read
Finished reading before the election. I have thought about it every day since. Rarely does a book provoke real introspection and thought. The subtitle is "Ideological Origins of Political Struggles" and that is not even the half of it. What Sowell describes is the essential duality of man. We are the top of the food chain, the strongest on the planet, yet what makes us different from the other creatures is our ability to think and feel. We are two genders, man and woman. Strength and caring. Sowell lays out the case that our political ideological conflicts are very much related to our family and social structure and our fundamental assumptions about the nature of human beings. He also points out that we can waver from time to time. At times some things are more important than others. Sowell also makes the case that visions about humanity and the nature of man are MUCH more powerful political forces than specific policies. We saw this in spades in the last election. The facts didn't matter as much as the visions of the state of the world and the nature of people in it. If you believed the world is a dangerous place with bad people in it, you probably voted for a strong leader (bush). If you believed the world was basically a good place and it was America's mis-steps that made it dangerous and that if we just sat down and had tea with everyone it would be alright, you probably voted for Kerry. Here are some choice quotes:
There are two dominant visions of human nature: Constrained (Adam Smith, Alexander Hamilton) and Unconstrained (william Goodwin, Robespierre).
Social visions differ in their basic conceptions of the nature of man. The capacities and limitations of man are implicitly seen in radically different terms by those whose explicit philosophical, political, or social theories are built on different visions. Man's moral and mental natures are seen so differently that their respective concepts of knowledge and of institutions necessarily differ as well.
The Constrained (American):
Instead of regarding man's nature as something that could or should be changed, Smith attempted to determine how the moral and social benefits desired could be produced in the most efficient way, within that constraint. One of the hallmarks of the constrained vision is that it deals in trade-offs rather than solutions.
The unconstrained (French):
Goodwin regarded the intention to benefit others as being "of the essence of virtue," and virtue in turn as being the road to human happiness. His was the unconstrained vision of human nature, in which man was capable of directly feeling other people's needs as more important than his own, and therefore of consistently acting impartially, even when his own interests or those of his family were involved. Unlike Smith, who regarded human selfishness as a given, Godwin regarded it as being promoted by the very system of rewards used to cope with it. The real goal was the long-run development of a higher sense of social duty. The "hope of reward" and "fear of punishment" were, in Godwin's vision, "wrong in themselves". Given the unconstrained possibilities of man and nature, poverty or other sources of dissatisfaction could only be a result of evil intentions or blindness to solutions readily achievable by changing existing institutions.
More:
The two great revolutions in the eighteenth century - in France and in America - can be viewed as applications of these differing visions... The underlying premises of the French revolution more clearly reflected the unconstrained vision of man which prevailed among its leaders. The intellectual foundations of the American Revolution were more mixed,... Also including as a dominant influence on the Constitution, the classic constrained vision of man expressed in The Federalist Papers. Where Robespierre sought a solution, Hamilton a trade-off. The Constitution of the United States, with its elaborate checks and balances, clearly reflected the view that no one was ever to be completely trusted with power. This was in sharp contrast to the French Revolution, which gave sweeping powers, including the power of life and death, to all those who spoke in the name of "the people", expressing the Rousseauean "general will".
Which do you believe? Does it make sense why the French were against Iraq? Does it make sense that Kerry wanted a "world test" for foreign policy? Why this scared the Republicans so much?
Required reading.
Posted by Martin at 11:48 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Amazon wins the electronics resale race
So I have this Toshiba portable DVD player I bought two years ago and never used. Thought I would, but just never did. When it was new it was about $500. Now it is around $230. Mine is lightly used so I listed it here: Amazon.com: Used and New: Toshiba SD-P1200 7" Portable DVD Player (Red)
The great thing about Amazon is that they already had ALL the metadata about the player including pictures and technical specs. I didn't have to enter anything. I counted five clicks and my item was up there with a "buy it now" price of $100 less than anyone else. Way more than I would get on Ebay and FAR fewer clicks.
Posted by Martin at 11:01 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
why Linksys sucks and is good at the same time
Well two hours later I finally got my Linksys B router up and running. Product Group : Wireless. My Cisco 340 Aeronet has been running for over a year without a failure. Linksys is great because it is simple. It sucks because it is simple. When you power the thing off, you loose all the changes to the password, SSId, etc. So I spent half an hour trying to get in using a password I had installed before the move back from NYC in 2002. No, the password was reset to the factory defaults (thoughtful in a sadistic way). Then I wanted to change the SSID and that was fine until I pressed reboot. REboot does the same thing as power off. REsets everything to factory settings. Annoying. Also I couldn't use my VPN and configure the Linksys at the same time. There was a device on my VPN with the same IP address (another Linksys router no doubt). The frustrating part was that my passwords were in my outlook file which required connecting to the VPN. So I was had to muck around with the right combination of on/off VPN and reboot of the Linksys to get things working. I still can't get it to switch from Gateway to Router opperaion. When I do that, I forgets where it's DNS server is and can't find a thing. But since it is running in Gateway mode, Newtork Magic doesn't think anything else is connected and gives me nothing for a network map. Well Pure has some work to do....
That is what Beta is for.
Posted by Martin at 12:35 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
January 13, 2005
Try Network magic Beta
Are you the LAN admin of your home? Tired of incompatible systems and no consistent UI? Try out Pure Networks Network Magic Beta (yea full disclosure, it is an Ignition Partners portfolio company). When I first installed it, it didn't work because I am using a Cisco 340 AeroNet router at home, but I have been meaning to slap the Linksys up anyway. Review in a minute after I hook up.
Posted by Martin at 11:17 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Home 1.624TB RAID I am already changing a few little things
I have found a few different parts and have put in the current prices that are actuals that I paid on-line tonight. It is coming in slightly cheaper (who coulda guessed). For data drives I stuck with the Maxtor Ultra 16 SATA drives. They are having a sale on them so they are cheaper than the 8MB buffer ones. The SATA technology has some stuff in it that really takes advantage of the larger buffer so it is worth it. Ebay had some sellers who might have been slightly cheaper on the Maxtor harddrives, but the auctions were ending in a week and I was worried about getting pirated or refurbished drives. Sticking with NewEgg is solid.
Home 1.624TB RAID Server
| CPU | Athlon 3200+ | $199 | Frys 11x multiplier, should over clock to 2.6GHz easily |
| Memory 1GB | Corsair 4400C25 | $269 | Very fast at DDR466 |
| Motherboard | ASUS K8N-E Deluxe | $149.99 | Frys, 6 SATA RAID chips on Motherboard, 3GB memory. Anandtech complains about memory speed and the SiliconImage vs NVidia RAID controller when overclocking, but I am not going to. |
| Case | SUPERMICRO 4U Rackmount Chassis, Model "SC742T-550 Black" | $305 | New Egg. Has 7 SATA backplane built in, redundant 550W |
| DVD+-RW drive | NEC 3520A | $62.99 | newegg the newer model |
| system drive | WD740GD | $156 | NewEgg. 74GB 10000 rpm system drive |
| Data drive | Maxtor Ultra16 SATA 250GB | $149.99 | CompUSA ($.59/gig) could only buy 1 at this price |
| Data drive | Maxtor Ultra16 SATA 300GB | $194.49 | NewEgg ($.65/gig) could buy 4 at this price |
total: $2069.93. Price went up from this afternoon by $136 but capacity went up to 1.624. Now I am at $1.27/ gig for RAID!!! Can't beat this!!! Let's hope it all works.
Posted by Martin at 10:54 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Building 1TB RAID at home, first whack
Thanks Rich for your latest recommendations for High end PCs. While I toyed around with buying RAID from an existing vendor like Iomega, Snap Disk, or a white box guy (look for those reviews soon), I have decided that it would be more fun to screw the thing together myself. Also cheaper. No support, but what else do I have to do with my weekends. Also I decided that I only need Raid 0. I can build two Raid 0 boxes for the price of one professional Raid 5 hot swapable box. For home media I don't need the hot swap. I can write my own mirroring script and get the same level of redundancy. So I decided to buy a PC chassis and all PC parts and just run it as a big file server. Here are the parts I am buying. The only real concession I have from a traditional PC form factor is the 4U rack mounted case just for convenience. Going to install a copy of Suse 9 that I already have.
Home 1TB RAID Server
| CPU | Athlon 3200+ | $199 | Frys 11x multiplier, should over clock to 2.6GHz easily |
| Memory 1GB | Corsair 4400C25 | $275 | Very fast at DDR466 |
| Motherboard | ASUS K8N-E Deluxe | $149.99 | Frys, 6 SATA RAID chips on Motherboard, 3GB memory |
| Case | SUPERMICRO Beige 4U Rackmount Chassis, Model "SC742T-550 Beige" | $307.50 | New Egg. Has 7 SATA backplane built in |
| CD drive | NEC 3500A | $67 | newegg or zipzoomfly |
| system drive | WD740GD | $185 | 10000 rpm system drive |
| Data drive | Maxtor DiamondMax 10 250GB | $149.99 | ($.59/gig vs $.68/gig for 300GB) 5 of these bad boyz |
total: $1933.48 or less than $2 per gig for RAID. Half the cost of white boxes and 1/3 the cost of anything from the channel.
Posted by Martin at 5:18 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
E-Bay drops a bombshell!
Talk about monopolist behavior! When the entire market is yours you have pricing power. And E-Bay is using it. They are raising fees between 28 and 50 percent! Here is my short-hand summary then their announcement they sent by mail today. I wonder if this will draw the attention of the Justice Department. Probably not since it is just a bunch of individual consumers and the prices get passed along anyway in higher prices to consumers. But I wouldn't doubt if the states attorney Generals get involved here. E-Bay is setting itself up for regulation! This is a sad thing to see.
E-Bay price raises
| E-Bay price raises | ||||
| old | new | % increase | ||
| Gallery | 0.25 | 0.35 | 28.57% | |
| Buy it now | flat | tiered | ||
| 10 day listing | 0.2 | 0.4 | 50.00% | |
| e-bay store basic | 9.95 | 5.95 | 37.62% | |
| store inventory listing fee basic % | 5.25 | 8 | 34.38% | |
| store inventory listing fee remaining closing value % | 2.75 | 5 | 45.00% | |
We are writing to let you know that effective midnight PST, February 18, 2005 eBay.com and eBay Motors will be making changes to the fee structure.
The fee changes are as follows:
Gallery
Gallery fees will be raised from
$0.25 to
$0.35 per listing. We will also be increasing the size of the Gallery image on search and listings pages by 56%. This will make it easier for buyers to see details of the item before clicking into the listing.
Buy It Now
Buy It Now fees will no longer be charged at a flat rate, and will instead be determined based on the Buy It Now price. Fees will be charged as follows:
| Buy It Now Price | Fee |
| $0.01 - 9.99 | $0.05 |
| $10 - 24.99 | $0.10 |
| $25 - 49.99 | $0.20 |
| $50+ | $0.25 |
10-Day Duration
The fee for 10-day duration listings will be raised from
$0.20 to
$0.40 per listing.
eBay Stores
The fee for the Basic eBay Store subscription will be raised from
$9.95 to
$15.95 per month. The subscription fee for Featured and Anchor Stores will be unchanged.
eBay Store Inventory format listing insertion fees will remain unchanged. The Final Value Fee for Store Inventory items will change as follows:
| Closing Price | Old Price | New Price |
| $0.01 - $25 | 5.25% of the closing value | 8% of the closing price |
| $25.01 - $1,000 | 5.25% of the initial $25, plus 2.75% of the remaining closing value balance. | 8% of the initial $25, plus 5% of the remaining closing value balance ($25.01 - $1000) |
| Over $1,000 | 5.25% of the initial $25, plus 2.75% of the next $25.01-$1000, plus 1.50% of the remaining closing value balance ($1,000.01 - closing value). | 8% of the initial $25, plus 5% of the next $25.01 - $1000, plus 3% of the remaining closing value balance ($1,000.01 - closing value). |
Store sellers will continue to be eligible to receive 50% off of the Store Inventory listing final value fees for Store Referral credit. Please click here for details.
Insertion and Final Value Fees
The insertion and Final Value Fees will be changing for items listed in certain Business & Industrial categories. More details about the changes for these categories are provided below. The insertion and Final Value Fees in other categories will not be changing.
Business & Industrial Listings in Certain Categories
The Reserve, insertion and Final Value Fees will be changing for select high item price capital equipment categories in Business & Industrial. Please
click here to view the capital equipment categories affected by the pricing change.
The fee changes for these capital equipment categories are as follows:
- Reserve fee: Lowered to $5, refundable if the item sells
- Insertion fee: Raised to $20, regardless of starting price
- Final Value Fee: Lowered to a 1% flat fee, with a $250 maximum charge
Additional listing upgrade fees will remain the same as for eBay.com. Pricing for all other Business & Industrial listings outside the specified capital equipment categories will remain the same as for eBay.com.
eBay will also introduce Buyer Protection covering up to $20,000 per item in these capital equipment categories this spring. eBay will offer this Buyer Protection at no cost to the buyer or seller.
The following fee changes will apply to vehicle listings on eBay Motors.
Fee Changes for eBay Motors Vehicles Listings
Reserve
Reserve will be charged a
$5 flat fee for all eBay Motors vehicles categories except Pocket Bikes. This fee will still be refundable if your item sells.
10-Day Listings
The fee for 10-day listings will be changed to
$8 for all eBay Motors vehicles categories except Pocket Bikes.
Pocket Bikes Category
The insertion fee and Transaction Services Fee will be lowered from $30 to
$3 each.
The following fees will remain the same: Reserve ($2 flat fee, refundable if item sells), Gallery (free), Listing Designer ($5) and Highlight ($5). Motors HomePage Featured fee will be lowered to
$24.95 and Vehicle Picture Pack fee will be lowered to
$1.50. All other fees will be lowered to become the same as those for eBay Motors Parts & Accessories categories.
For more information about these fee changes, please see our Frequently Asked Questions.
Some international eBay sites have also changed their fee structures. To learn more, please check Announcements for the eBay site of interest.
We understand that fees directly impact our members, and take care to ensure that any decisions to change fees are made only after careful consideration of this impact. These changes will help us continue to sustain and develop a thriving global marketplace, while balancing the needs of our buyers and sellers around the world.
Regards,
eBay
Posted by Martin at 9:38 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
January 12, 2005
Thinking NAS again
I am again thinking about building a 1TB NAS for my home. Ran across this PC Upgrade kit called ReByte that looks interesting: reByte Network Attached Storage, NAS and Backup Solutions.
The IOMEGA, Mirra and Snap Server are all too expensive. They are between $2.50 and $6.00 per gig. With the base 7500RPM ATA drives running at less than $0.50 per gig, I can't swallow the premium for integration and a case. The cute thing about the reByte solution is that it is an upgrade kit for an existing PC case. RAID cases are expensive. PC cases are cheap.
I will keep looking.
Posted by Martin at 9:23 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
The new year is a time for change
As the year goes along, I tend to add alot of stuff to my computer. New programs, e-mail list services, whatever. For some reason around the new year I always get the urge to purge. Here are some of my latest purges:
Leaving the mailing lists for;
Expedia travel offers (i never took any of them anyway)
Shavlik technologies vulnerability assessment newsletter (invested in a competitor, Lockdown Networks).
VentureWire alert (never anything I don't already know in there).
Ken Rutkowski's Ken Radio tech news. Ken is great, but I have too much news already.
ClearStation's daily portfolio update (I am no longer trading through them nor doing day trading, this is really a day trader platform).
Network World SOHO technology (the reporting has been soooo bad for sooo long I wonder why I didn't ditch it earlier).
SmartHome newsletter (I am just going to let my contractor do this and these guys are X10 bigots anyway).
Northwest Energy Effeciency Alliance list serve (this is an electricity industry insider RFP announcement thing, never got any new information here).
PaidContent.org's daily news brief (as much as I enjoy Rafat's reporting, I am not going to be doing any deals around microcontent in 2005 so I am over it).
RFID Journal newsletter (at one point I thought about doing an RFID deal, but I doubt I will do one in 2005).
AlwaysOn and anything "new" Red Herring (Never found anything new here and very high signal to noise ratio).
Bose Corporation e-mail (hey guys, I have the headphones, when I need more stuff I will find you).
Classmates.com newsletters (they make it incredibly hard to leave, so I just changed my e-mail address to one i send all the spam to).
Cisco technical support newsletter (i love my AeroNet access point, but have never read the news letter).
comming next... More deleted software and the upside, What I still subscribe to!
Posted by Martin at 8:09 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
One more Apprentice post
This was just too good not to post. Expedia is promoting The Apprentice Legend Cruise. Check out this must have pitch:
After a VIP bon voyage party featuring “The Chairman” himself, Donald Trump, you’ll leave the Manhattan skyline in the distance, sailing for exotic Caribbean ports-of-call. You’ll be entertained in Trump World style with gala events, luxurious receptions and over-the-top parties. Rub elbows with past cast members and get to know thousands of other fans while you test your competitive edge at our “Apprentice-type” activities and contests – come ready to win!
This is unbelievable!
Posted by Martin at 6:23 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Everyone is writing books these days
My friend Gerd Leonhard just published a book on the future of music: Future of Music. My partners Rich and John published The Marketing Playbook. gosh, I better get to work!
Posted by Martin at 5:30 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 6, 2005
I blog therefore I am
Nice article on Venture capitalists that blog today. Venture Capital Journal And yea I am in it.
Posted by Martin at 3:20 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Cool new blog on the Law around alternative energy
thanks Rob for the tip...
Renewable Energy Law Blog Adding to newsgator now.
Posted by Martin at 9:49 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 5, 2005
wow, finally one ruling for the little guy
DJC.COM: News from AP today a court actually ruled in FAVOR of privacy! Can you believe it? In America? Court ruled that ISPs dont' have to disclose digital music downloaders to those who would sue them. Finally some sanity!
Posted by Martin at 1:29 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Spam King Wallace to cease and desist
DJC.COM: News from AP for the time being until the feds prosecute him. I wonder since he is the "king" if we will notice any measurable reduction with him out of service. I doubt it.
Posted by Martin at 1:25 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Six Apart buys Live Journal (rumor)
Here is a juicy one: Om Malik on Broadband � Six Apart to buy Live Journal. Live Journal really doesn't have any options other than getting funding and growing management themselves. With Six Apart already funded by August Capital (a GREAT VC), the shorter route to success is merger. I will back-channel this one.
Posted by Martin at 1:12 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Technorati launches significantly improved watch lists
David and his merry pranksters just keep getting better. Sifry's Alerts: Get your keyword watchlists here!. Now I want that live feed to be a java script include (like a blogroll and the code PubSub lets me put in).
Posted by Martin at 1:09 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 4, 2005
Taking BioDiesel thread off-line to new blog
To decrease the signal to noise ratio on DGC, I have created a new Blog B100Fuel.com for all my biodiesel thoughts. To follow this thread, go here: B100 Fuel, living on BioDiesel
Posted by Martin at 2:51 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Fixing my trackback spam
Going through the clean-up process on track-back spam today on Deep Green Crystals. I had over 1000. The job took me over 2 hours. It should have taken 10 minutes. I run 12 blogs. This management task alone could cause me to publish less..
I like the tool in MT, but it is too hard to use. I noticed some interesting trends. It seems like many of the track-backs were done by the same guy since they came in three waves roughly a month apart. Different IP addresses, IDs, and comments, but definitley in batches. A couple of feature requests:
1. Allow me to "ban the IP" and delete the trackback with one click. Now you have to ban the ip, go back to the screen, select the comment, click delete, confirm delete, then go back again. Too many clicks, should be one.
2. SHould be able to ban an ID as well ans an IP. The spammers change their IP addresses more often than their ID or source blogs. I want to do both.
3. Should have a power editing mode to do the job more quickly.
4. Should integrate some of the blacklist or key-word searching screens on track-back comments. There is NEVER a case when I want someone to put the word "rape" or "piss drinker" or "incest" in a trackback.
5. Since these track-backs are done in batches by a bot, the ability to select by date/time would be good. I could delete the whole batch at once.
In the end, I just requested all trackbacks and selected them all and then unchecked the good ones. That was WAY faster. But I would still like the delete function in that case to ban the ID and the IP address.
Posted by Martin at 10:59 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 2, 2005
upgrading to MT 3.14
Movable Type Publishing Platform : Support
no real features. Just want the latest. I gotta find a way to stop track-back spam though. Would be nice if they had a track-back review feature like they do with comments so you could manage them there and block the IP addresses, etc. With Jay Allen there, I am sure this is in the works sometime.
Posted by Martin at 1:38 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack