http://WWW.sabi.co.UK/ Notes mostly about Linux and computer issues en-GB http://blogs.law.Harvard.edu/tech/rss/ notes {at} notes.for.sabi.co.UK Copyright 2007 Peter G. 14000 AMD Intel Microsoft Nintendo Sony CPU OS VoIP file sytem free software hardware performance system administration videogames virtual memory ALSA Debian Fedora GNU JFS KDE Linux MS Windows 2000 MS Windows XP MS Windows PS/3 RedHat SUSE UNIX XFS Xbox 360 ext3 Tue, 26 Feb 2008 21:30:00 +0000 http://WWW.sabi.co.UK/blog/0712dec.html#071210 AMD CPUs have much better read latency than Intel ones thanks to HyperTransport. But memory sticks are designed to have high latency as Intel CPUs have lots of onchip cache anyhow. architecture hardware AMD Intel http://www.sabi.co.uk/blog/0712dec.html#071210 Mon, 10 Dec 2007 21:30:00 +0000 http://WWW.sabi.co.UK/blog/0706jun.html#070609 Peculiar case where a remote X display using anti-aliased fonts is abnormally slow system administration X11 fonts http://www.sabi.co.uk/blog/0706jun.html#070609 Sat, 09 Jun 2007 22:00:00 +0000 http://WWW.sabi.co.UK/blog/0706jun.html#070602 Software RAID has a very different profile from hardware RAID, both as to performance and administration RAID system administration storage http://www.sabi.co.uk/blog/0706jun.html#070602 Sat, 02 Jun 2007 22:00:00 +0000 http://WWW.sabi.co.UK/blog/0802feb.html#080205 Why WinSCP by default is slow, and general performance issues of bulk data transfer over SSH and solutions or palliatives performance networking Linux MS Windows http://www.sabi.co.uk/blog/0802feb.html#080205 Tue, 05 Feb 2008 21:40:00 +0000 http://WWW.sabi.co.UK/blog/0801jan.html#080122 The number of NFS instances can be a surprising bottleneck, and in the past it exposed a disjointed hardware vs. software design on Sun servers. Linux performance networking system administration http://www.sabi.co.uk/blog/0801jan.html#080122 Fri, 22 Jan 2008 21:05:00 +0000 http://WWW.sabi.co.UK/blog/0712dec.html#071223 Discovered that a popular 1gb/s chipset can transmit but not receive jumbo frames, and how to take advantage of jumbo frames at least for transmitting. hardware networking performance Linux http://www.sabi.co.uk/blog/0712dec.html#071223 Sun, 23 Dec 2007 14:50:00 +0000 http://WWW.sabi.co.UK/blog/0712dec.html#071215b Two network accelerators recently announced, both offloading network processing to onboard Linux. hardware networking Linux http://www.sabi.co.uk/blog/0712dec.html#071215b Sat, 15 Dec 2007 15:10:00 +0000 http://WWW.sabi.co.UK/blog/0712dec.html#071215 A group test of 2.5" hard discs reported significant performance differences among supposedly very similar commodity products. hardware storage performance http://www.sabi.co.uk/blog/0712dec.html#071215 Sat, 15 Dec 2007 16:25:00 +0000 http://WWW.sabi.co.UK/blog/0710oct.html#071010 Amazon's CTO would rather have a technology that be hugely scalable than just 50 times faster, and that to me is not that good an idea, as business is about making money with what you have, not with the hockey stick that you won't have tomorrow. architecture business software http://www.sabi.co.uk/blog/0710oct.html#071010 Wed, 10 Oct 2007 21:50:00 +0100 http://WWW.sabi.co.UK/blog/0710oct.html#071006 So I have sold out and upgraded my PC to 2GB and to avoid the consequences of poor memory management by contemporary OSes and applications. This has been triggered by the purchase of second monitor, allowing me to keep more application instances around. hardware performance storage memory http://www.sabi.co.uk/blog/0710oct.html#071006 Sat, 06 Oct 2007 22:15:00 +0000 http://WWW.sabi.co.UK/blog/0709sep.html#070928 Well reasonable points about how complex SELinux is and how it would be better to fix that instead of providing simple minded wizards in a vain attempt to hide that complexity. software engineering system administration security Linux Microsoft http://www.sabi.co.uk/blog/0709sep.html#070928 Fri, 28 Sep 2007 21:20:00 +0100 http://WWW.sabi.co.UK/blog/0709sep.html#070923b Probably RAID5 makes some sense only in two narrow cases (2+1 array and 4+1 online archive cache array) and only to save a bit of money from RAID10. RAID performance storage http://www.sabi.co.uk/blog/0709sep.html#070923b Sun, 23 Sep 2007 14:10:00 +0100 http://WWW.sabi.co.UK/blog/0709sep.html#070923 because of budget constraints a 48 drive array is deployed as 3x15 RAID5 setups. No surprise that write performance is not awesome, and some doubts about the wisdom of doing yet another RAID5 perversity. system administration RAID Linux http://www.sabi.co.uk/blog/0709sep.html#070923 Sun, 23 Sep 2007 12:35:00 +0100 http://WWW.sabi.co.UK/blog/0709sep.html#070920 AMD/ATi and Intel plan many-CPU chips to accelerate scientific computations, and it looks like that the Cell is going to have several imitators. CPU hardware parallelism http://www.sabi.co.uk/blog/0709sep.html#070920 Thu, 20 Sep 2007 18:10:00 +0100 http://WWW.sabi.co.UK/blog/0709sep.html#070919 The CPU overhead of reading from a fast disk with O_DIRECT is several times smaller than without, because the Linux page cache seems extraordinarly expensive. But then high end CPUs are getting every faster. Linux performance CPU storage http://www.sabi.co.uk/blog/0709sep.html#070919 Wed, 19 Sep 2007 19:05:00 +0100 http://WWW.sabi.co.UK/blog/0709sep.html#070918b AMD have recently launched 4-CPU chips, and now 3-CPU ones. Clever move to improve yields on their single die chips. hardware CPU AMD Intel http://www.sabi.co.uk/blog/0709sep.html#070918b Tue, 18 Sep 2007 22:55:00 +0100 http://WWW.sabi.co.UK/blog/0709sep.html#070918 Sun has just launched a revised version of its highly threaded Niagara CPU chips. it is ever more designed for naturally parallel workloads, and freshly written applications, for which is it well suited, and it seems to perform terribly on general purpose applications and dusty decks. In the meantime for the latter Sun is selling a lot of AMD64 systems. hardware performance CPU AMD parallelism threads http://www.sabi.co.uk/blog/0709sep.html#070918 Tue, 18 Sep 2007 22:10:00 +0100 http://WWW.sabi.co.UK/blog/0709sep.html#070914 Upgrading from Fedora 5 to 7, measuring again the difference between a freshly loaded and a well used and updates root filesystem on JFS. Linux file systems performance JFS http://www.sabi.co.uk/blog/0709sep.html#070914 Fri, 14 Sep 2007 21:35:00 +0100 http://WWW.sabi.co.UK/blog/0708aug.html#070830 Why .ini file style syntax is not good for UNIX style systems and one alternative using .desktop files as examples. UNIX style programming http://www.sabi.co.uk/blog/0708aug.html#070830 Thu, 30 Aug 2007 20:10:00 +0100 http://WWW.sabi.co.UK/blog/0708aug.html#070819b KDE 3.5 translucency works, and has some advantages, but also some significant disadvantags. NVIDIA Linux X11 KDE GUI http://www.sabi.co.uk/blog/0708aug.html#070819b Sun, 19 Aug 2007 13:20:00 +0100 http://WWW.sabi.co.UK/blog/0708aug.html#070819 As someone noticed, eSATA ahs another advantage over USB2 or FireWire, which is power management. hardware SATA eSATA USB2 FireWire http://www.sabi.co.uk/blog/0708aug.html#070819 Sun, 19 Aug 2007 12:35:00 +0100 http://WWW.sabi.co.UK/blog/0707jul.html#070705 Because of various reasons my backups were running with high system CPU time, but the CPU frequency governor was keeping it at the lower frequency. Looks like it does not take into account system CPU time. Anyhow I figured out that it is nowadays better to just use O_DIRECT for backups. Linux storage system administration performance http://www.sabi.co.uk/blog/0707jul.html#070705 Thu, 05 Jul 2007 21:20:00 +0100 http://WWW.sabi.co.UK/blog/0707jul.html#070704 Just discovered a relatively but not so recent way to uncache data pages under Linux other than unmounting. Linux performance storage system administration http://www.sabi.co.uk/blog/0707jul.html#070704 Wed, 04 Jul 2007 21:45:00 +0100 http://WWW.sabi.co.UK/blog/0707jul.html#070701b The Linux NFS client and NFS server codes do not implement NFSv3 delayed writing well, and 'sync' performance suffers, but a fairly reasonable workaround can be applied Linux storage file sysytem NFS system administration network administration performance http://www.sabi.co.uk/blog/0707jul.html#070701b Sun, 01 Jul 2007 20:20:00 +0100 http://WWW.sabi.co.UK/blog/0707jul.html#070701 Not only the semantics of the 'dirty_ratio' and 'dirty_background_ratio' Linux kernel parameters are questionable, their implementation seems to me rather misguided. Linux storage file sysytem system administration performance http://www.sabi.co.uk/blog/0707jul.html#070701 Sun, 01 Jul 2007 17:20:00 +0100 http://WWW.sabi.co.UK/Notes/linuxHelpAsk.html?070528 Some improvements and updates to my notes on how to ask question in Linux help channels, a bit motivated by seeing my notes mentioned in the #Ubuntu '/topic' as "seriously good". Linux IRC http://www.sabi.co.uk/Notes/linuxHelpAsk.html?070528 Mon, 28 May 2007 15:35:00 +0100 http://WWW.sabi.co.UK/blog/0705may.html#070528 Not everything from the UNIX design is good, in particular hidden dotfiles and configuration files hidden in home directories are a poor idea. UNIX system administration architecture filesystem http://www.sabi.co.uk/blog/0705may.html#070528 Mon, 28 May 2007 13:20:00 +0100 http://WWW.sabi.co.UK/blog/0705may.html#070527f A laptop is simpler to deploy, a desktop to upgrade and repair. Simplicity is of course a relative term. hardware system administration http://www.sabi.co.uk/blog/0705may.html#070527f Sun, 27 May 2007 20:20:00 +0100 http://WWW.sabi.co.UK/blog/0705may.html#070527e Compared with HTML Wiki syntax seems simpler, or at least less intimidating. But Wiki text has a number of significant disadvantages, and the single greatest advantage is just that the web server is maintained by someone else. documentation system administration web HTML http://www.sabi.co.uk/blog/0705may.html#070527e Sun, 27 May 2007 19:35:00 +0100 http://WWW.sabi.co.UK/blog/0705may.html#070527d Having attended a sales presentation about a rather subtle networking technique called split trunking I am skeptical: it relies on excessive sophistication in a fully bridged network, and I prefer simple well tested techniques, and routing in general. ethernet networking network administration http://www.sabi.co.uk/blog/0705may.html#070527d Sun, 27 May 2007 19:05:00 +0100 http://WWW.sabi.co.UK/blog/0705may.html#070527c Just noticed a clarification of the way wildcard domain names work, and this is an occasion to describe my spam avoidance scheme which relies on wildcard MX RRs. system administration network administration networking DNS http://www.sabi.co.uk/blog/0705may.html#070527c Sun, 27 May 2007 18:15:00 +0100 http://WWW.sabi.co.UK/blog/0705may.html#070527b There are some narrow cases where a fully bridge network or RAID5 storage are appropriate, like port multiplication or mostly read-only storage caches. system administration network administration RAID storage networking Ethernet http://www.sabi.co.uk/blog/0705may.html#070527b Sun, 27 May 2007 18:10:00 +0100 http://WWW.sabi.co.UK/blog/0705may.html#070527 Both RAID5 and bridged networks are based on the assumption that difficult choices do not need to be made, and free lunches are possible with either: one can have both reliability and low cost without impacting performance with RAID5, and one can have massive flexible internetworks without routing with bridging. system administration network administration RAID networking storage Ethernet http://www.sabi.co.uk/blog/0705may.html#070527 Sun, 27 May 2007 18:10:00 +0100 http://WWW.sabi.co.UK/blog/0705may.html#070520b Having two similar but different LCDs side by side I have noticed that the colour temperature varies with the vertical angle of vision, and the other way round in the two. hardware graphics http://www.sabi.co.uk/blog/0705may.html#070520b Sun, 20 May 2007 21:15:00 +0100 http://WWW.sabi.co.UK/blog/0705may.html#070520 An amusing anedocte where the storage for an NFS server gets configured as RAID500. system administration RAID Linux http://www.sabi.co.uk/blog/0705may.html#070520 Sun, 20 May 2007 21:00:00 +0100 http://WWW.sabi.co.UK/blog/0705may.html#070513b The business model of online sites is often based on stickiness, which rewards incoming but not outgoing links, thus ensuring that large parts of the WWW are text instead of hypertext. Search engines then provide the missing links, too bad for Google that it uses a link based indexing algorithm. business web search engines http://www.sabi.co.uk/blog/0705may.html#070513b Sun, 13 May 2007 13:05:00 +0000 http://WWW.sabi.co.UK/blog/0705may.html#070513 The Sony PS3 is reported as being very good for protein folding. No surprises, it is an embarrasingly parallel problem and the Cell SPEs are well suited. PS3 performance parallelism optimization http://www.sabi.co.uk/blog/0705may.html#070513 Sun, 13 May 2007 11:30:00 +0000 http://WWW.sabi.co.UK/blog/0705may.html#070506c Some advice column deludes games programmers that constant retraining in their own time is the key to getting increasingly scarce programmer jobs. videogames programming business employment http://www.sabi.co.uk/blog/0705may.html#070506c Sun, 06 May 2007 21:30:00 +0000 http://WWW.sabi.co.UK/blog/0705may.html#070506b Virtual machines are a good idea for sharing the same system among completely different platforms, but the operating system kernel should be able to do most of the other common uses of virtual machine. operating systems programming system administration http://www.sabi.co.uk/blog/0705may.html#070506b Sun, 06 May 2007 20:05:00 +0000 http://WWW.sabi.co.UK/blog/0705may.html#070506 A small USA town has switched to IPv6. networking IPv6 http://www.sabi.co.uk/blog/0705may.html#070506 Sun, 06 May 2007 19:10:00 +0000 http://WWW.sabi.co.UK/blog/0705may.html#070505b Some recent host adapter does 2+1 or 4+1 RAID3 (actually probably RAID4). Quite interesting as it is no longer that commonly used. storage hard discs system administration RAID http://www.sabi.co.uk/blog/0705may.html#070505b Sat, 05 May 2007 16:55:00 +0000 http://WWW.sabi.co.UK/blog/0705may.html#070505 Duplicating a 500GB from SATA to eSATA runs at an average of 47MB/s from outer to inner cylinders (thus not peak), which is quite impressive. storage hard discs system administration http://www.sabi.co.uk/blog/0705may.html#070505 Sat, 05 May 2007 16:15:00 +0000 http://WWW.sabi.co.UK/blog/0704apr.html#070429b Just tried some exotic dual sided 8cm DVD-RAM disc and it even all worked writing to it, but slowly. Anyhow usual shoddiness with poor error reporting and design in one of the utilities involved. storage system administration DVD http://www.sabi.co.uk/blog/0704apr.html#070429b Sun, 29 Apr 2007 13:20:00 +0000 http://WWW.sabi.co.UK/blog/0704apr.html#070429 eSATA host adapters usually can do hotplug (at least recent ones, electrically) but the current Linux drivers require module unload and reload, which is a bit disappointing. storage Linux system administration http://www.sabi.co.uk/blog/0704apr.html#070429 Sun, 29 Apr 2007 13:05:00 +0000 http://WWW.sabi.co.UK/blog/0704apr.html#070426c Because it is hard coded in the default kernel 'initrd', Fedora 5 will not boot if the root filesystem has a label other than "/", and that is just as Microsoft would do it. Linux RedHat Fedora system administration http://www.sabi.co.uk/blog/0704apr.html#070426c Thu, 26 Apr 2007 13:55:00 +0000 http://WWW.sabi.co.UK/blog/0704apr.html#070426b Boot drive letter assignments are better changed or restored just using the registry editor. MS windows system administration http://www.sabi.co.uk/blog/0704apr.html#070426b Thu, 26 Apr 2007 13:35:00 +0000 http://WWW.sabi.co.UK/blog/0704apr.html#070426 A smart person has figured out that hard disc early deaths or poor performance were caused by vibrations transmitted via the SATA cable or the case. hardware system administration hard discs http://www.sabi.co.uk/blog/0704apr.html#070426 Thu, 26 Apr 2007 13:20:00 +0000 http://WWW.sabi.co.UK/blog/0704apr.html#070424 Ironically the KDE battery monitor application wastes battery power, easy to alleviate. system administration KDE Linux Fedora http://www.sabi.co.uk/blog/0704apr.html#070424 Sun, 24 Apr 2007 19:20:00 +0000 http://WWW.sabi.co.UK/blog/0704apr.html#070419 A quick test of an eSATA drive returns impressive performance. But because of unspecified ordering of devices which drive appears as which device file is not that fixed. This is not going to change, and unique ids are the only answer storage system administration Linux http://www.sabi.co.uk/blog/0704apr.html#070419 Thu, 19 Apr 2007 20:35:00 +0000 http://WWW.sabi.co.UK/blog/0704apr.html#070410c I just noticed that 3com is no longer selling Ethernet cards, only WiFi and SSL/Firewall cards. networking Ethernet http://www.sabi.co.uk/blog/0704apr.html#070410c Tue, 09 Apr 2007 20:25:00 +0000 http://WWW.sabi.co.UK/blog/0704apr.html#070410b It is not easy to buy long reach optical Ethernet cards, and for 10gb/s many products are not available. Ethernet networking fibre fiber http://www.sabi.co.uk/blog/0704apr.html#070410b Tue, 09 Apr 2007 19:40:00 +0000 http://WWW.sabi.co.UK/blog/0704apr.html#070410 Two interesting disk reliability sites at large site return interesting statistics. system administration storage hardware hard drives http://www.sabi.co.uk/blog/0704apr.html#070410 Tue, 09 Apr 2007 19:15:00 +0000 http://WWW.sabi.co.UK/blog/0704apr.html#070407 The first eSATA products have arrived, and one can buy cheap cards with 4 external SATA ports. One can then build servers with external drives like in the old SCSI days, and they are hotpluggable too. One could with Firewire 800 too, but eSATA just uses standard drives. storage hardware Firewire http://www.sabi.co.uk/blog/0704apr.html#070407 Sat, 07 Apr 2007 10:30:00 +0000 http://WWW.sabi.co.UK/blog/0704apr.html#070406 A small bug in the font table cache utility in Fedora 6 results in the cache not being setup and rather slow application startup times. Using the equivalent package from the the Fedora 7 development repository fixes it. Linux fonts Fedora system administration http://www.sabi.co.uk/blog/0704apr.html#070406 Fri, 06 Apr 2007 11:20:00 +0000 http://WWW.sabi.co.UK/blog/0704apr.html#070401 Simplicity is not a goal in itself, but a consequence of recognizing that unnecessary complexity leads to lower understanding, which impacts maintainability. software networking programming http://www.sabi.co.uk/blog/0704apr.html#070401 Sun, 01 Apr 2007 16:30:00 +0000 http://WWW.sabi.co.UK/blog/0703mar.html#070331d A recent group test of flash storage devices shows that there is a wide variation in performance among them, and that the slowest are devices in the xD format. storage performance hardware http://www.sabi.co.uk/blog/0703mar.html#070331d Sat, 31 Mar 2007 21:30:00 +0000 http://WWW.sabi.co.UK/blog/0703mar.html#070331c Another report on the speed of filesystem checking is that a 5TB XFS filesystem with many inodes took 12 hours to check, which seems quite fast to me. file system performance system administration XFS http://www.sabi.co.uk/blog/0703mar.html#070331c Sat, 31 Mar 2007 19:55:00 +0000 http://WWW.sabi.co.UK/blog/0703mar.html#070331b programing software networking architecture http://www.sabi.co.uk/blog/0703mar.html#070331b Sat, 31 Mar 2007 18:15:00 +0000 http://WWW.sabi.co.UK/blog/0703mar.html#070331 All the major search engines are USA based and owned. The governments of France and Germany are sponsoring the Quaero and Theseus search projects, but where is the beta? internet research http://www.sabi.co.uk/blog/0703mar.html#070331 Sat, 31 Mar 2007 15:10:00 +0000 http://WWW.sabi.co.UK/blog/0703mar.html#070304 Some more comments on the problems with bridged Ethernet composite networks. Ethernet networking network administration http://www.sabi.co.uk/blog/0703mar.html#070304 Sun, 04 Mar 2007 18:10:00 +0000 http://WWW.sabi.co.UK/Notes/windowsNotes.html#wholockme A better MS Windows locked file resolution utility. MS Windows system administration utility http://www.sabi.co.uk/Notes/windowsNotes.html#wholockme?070304 Sun, 04 Mar 2007 16:50:00 +0000 http://WWW.sabi.co.UK/Notes/windowsNotes.html#mcastRoutes Default multicast routes in MS Windows cannot be deleted directly, they must be first re-added. MS Windows networking multicast http://www.sabi.co.uk/Notes/windowsNotes.html#mcastRoutes?070228 Wed, 28 Feb 2007 20:00:00 +0000 http://WWW.sabi.co.UK/blog/0702feb.html#070225d Higher speed Ethernet requires more power, and for 10gb/s Ethernet that can mean 20-30W per port, and with star networks there must be two ports per link... power draw networking http://www.sabi.co.uk/blog/0702feb.html#070225d Sun, 25 Feb 2007 19:10:00 +0000 http://WWW.sabi.co.UK/blog/0702feb.html#070225c Using static ARP entries can be a fairly good idea for nodes in a DMZ network. security networking firewalls system administration http://www.sabi.co.uk/blog/0702feb.html#070225c Sun, 25 Feb 2007 16:15:00 +0000 http://WWW.sabi.co.UK/blog/0702feb.html#070225b Single or dual ring network topologies have some nice properties, and there are even spanning tree algorithms specially designed to take advantage of them. resilience Ethernet networking network administration http://www.sabi.co.uk/blog/0702feb.html#070225b Sun, 25 Feb 2007 15:25:00 +0000 http://WWW.sabi.co.UK/blog/0702feb.html#070225 Some USB network adapters have a 100mb/s Ethernet interface but a 10mb/s USB interface, and are quite unreliable too. hardware networking Ethernet USB http://www.sabi.co.uk/blog/0702feb.html#070225 Sun, 25 Feb 2007 14:05:00 +0000 http://WWW.sabi.co.UK/blog/0702feb.html#070223 It is possible to have multiple interfaces from one node to the same LAN, but it is awkward. system administration networking Ethernet Linux http://www.sabi.co.uk/blog/0702feb.html#070223 Fri, 23 Feb 2007 20:50:00 +0000 http://WWW.sabi.co.UK/blog/0702feb.html#070218 Running multiple subnets (especially if inside VLANs) on the same logical or physical LAN often requires routing and usually impacts available bandwidth. Never mind complicating things and making them more fragile. network administration Ethernet networking http://www.sabi.co.uk/blog/0702feb.html#070218 Sun, 18 Feb 2007 12:30:00 +0000 http://WWW.sabi.co.UK/blog/0701jan.html#070128 Modern laptops are so powerful that they can be not just desktop replacements, but also high reliability and resilience servers, with a built in UPS, and with CardBus or ExpressCard one can add to them FireWire 800 and eSATA host adapters to support fast large external hard drives. system administration storage networking servers http://www.sabi.co.uk/blog/0701jan.html#070128 Sun, 28 Jan 2007 17:10:00 +0000 http://WWW.sabi.co.UK/blog/0701jan.html#070127 Among interesting descriptions of developments in computing at large physics research sites, amusing news about a largish RAID6 based storage system. storage system administration RAID http://www.sabi.co.uk/blog/0701jan.html#070127 Sat, 27 Jan 2007 10:35:00 +0000 http://WWW.sabi.co.UK/blog/0701jan.html#070122 Spotted impressively high prices for ordinary computer cables. Online too. cables shopping http://www.sabi.co.uk/blog/0701jan.html#070122 Mon, 22 Jan 2007 21:00:00 +0000 http://WWW.sabi.co.UK/blog/0701jan.html#070120b A few environment variables can be a nice orthogonal base for configuration space, especially shell-script configuration files. UNIX Linux system administration shell http://www.sabi.co.uk/blog/0701jan.html#070120b Sat, 20 Jan 2007 23:15:00 +0000 http://WWW.sabi.co.UK/blog/0701jan.html#070120 Amazing performance of FireWire 800, where the same disk runs 2-3 times as fast with it than with FireWire 400 or USB2, and at speeds near those of SATA. storage hardware USB2 SATA USB2 IEEE1394 FireWire http://www.sabi.co.uk/blog/0701jan.html#070120 Sat, 20 Jan 2007 09:55:00 +0000 http://WWW.sabi.co.UK/blog/0701jan.html#070115 I have just tried two branded external USB2 hard drives, and they seem to work fine, and fairly quickly, and without the power supply issues that come from underspecified power bricks. But eSATA is going to be hopefully much better. storage hardware USB2 SATA USB2 IEEE1394 FireWire http://www.sabi.co.uk/blog/0701jan.html#070115 Mon, 15 Jan 2007 22:25:00 +0000 http://WWW.sabi.co.UK/blog/0701jan.html#070108 SiCortex has launched massively parallel low power systems based in 6-CPU MIPS chips based on the idea that low power is good and memory stalls are bad. architecture hardware parallel CPU http://www.sabi.co.uk/blog/0701jan.html#070108 Mon, 08 Jan 2007 22:10:00 +0000 http://WWW.sabi.co.UK/blog/0701jan.html#070105 The DNS is a hierarchical linearized scheme for naming interfaces, not computers or other nodes. But people don't think in terms of interfaces, and nodes with multiple interfaces on multiple subnets pose some naming issues. Some alternatives are briefly discussed. networking sysadm Internet DNS naming http://www.sabi.co.uk/blog/0701jan.html#070105 Fri, 05 Jan 2007 21:45:00 +0000