Diary of a Network Geek

Well, the trademark holder of the Dewey Decimal system is suing a hotel for copyright infringment, anyway.

According to this article on Newsday, the Online Computer Library Center, who holds the trademark on the Dewey Decimal system, is suing the Library Hotel which overlooks the New York Public Library. The Library Hotel apparently uses the Dewey Decimal system to label floors and rooms. They even go so far as to match the books in the rooms to the Dewey Decimal system category that mark the rooms. Frankly, I think it’s a neat idea. Unfortunately, they didn’t get a license for the system before going into operation.
And this is the bit that surprised me when I first heard it on NPR, the Online Computer Library Center, who is non-profit, charges libraries a license fee that starts at $500/year to use their system! Who knew! Not my wife, who, ironically, is distantly related to Admiral Dewey, the inventor of the Dewey Decimal system. What a racket! I really need to invent a system like this…

Your privacy has taken another hit!

According to this article on Wired News and this article on Yahoo News, a Federal court in Oklahoma has declared the National No-Call list illegal saying that the FTC overstepped their bounds in making such a list. However, as a reporter on MSN pointed out, this doesn’t have to be the end of it. Call your Congressman, and your Representative, and make it known that you want this to happen! They can make this No-Call list a reality, if you force them to take it seriously. Don’t give up! Don’t let those damn telemarketers win!!

A victory for the American Worker!

Rejoice, my Worker Comrades! According to this article in the Houston Chronicle, Congress has no plans to extend the higher level of H1-B visas currently active in the US. That drops the number from 195,000 to 65,000. That’s 130,000 jobs reclaimed for American Workers! At least, that’s what will happen if they don’t act before October 1. Let’s hope they don’t!

Let me add, though, that I’m all in favor of legal immigration to the United States. I’m not a racist, as I’ve been accused, but a nationalist. Indeed, a patriot. If people from other countries want to come here, become citizens and get jobs, that’s great! In fact, I welcome it! We’re a great melting pot of diversity here, and I like it like that, but I’m against the idea of American companies sending jobs overseas. We should keep American jobs for Americans, no matter where those Americans were born.

Web-based comics are the future!

At least, according to this article on the Sydney Morning Herald, they’re the “rebirth” of comics. Of course, they’ve been around for quite some time, but they’re just catching on with some folks. And, the OZComics 24 Hour Challenge seems to have been what made the Herald make that decision. This contest was so popular that the server got “slashdotted”!
But, it ought to be safe now, so go check it out.
And, enjoy your Friday afternoon!

But, that was what happened.

I took my CNE 5 to 6 Update test today, and failed. Just barely, but still, I failed. I was just too stressed out about not haveing the money to take the test again, which I really can scrape together. And, I was worried about a recurring plumbing issue that I’m having a hard time resolving. I’ll give it one more shot before I call a plumber.
In the mean time, I’ve updated my Self Test Software quiz engine and tests for Novell’s 5 to 6 update. And, I’ll start studying again. I need to really bust my butt on this, though, because I only have until the end of October to get this done. *sigh* It’s gonna’ be a long month.

At least, on the Internet.

Or, so it seems, so far, at least. No, really! According to this article on InfoWorld, the House has passed a bill that ensures the Internet will never be directly taxed. See for yourself! There’s a copy of the bill online.
Of course, I’m cynical, so I’m sure they’ll either kill this in the Senate. Or, years later, they’ll repeal it and tax every packet that flows over the Internet. Mark my words, the blood-sucking politicians will never let a stream of revenue this good slip past them.

Oh, now this is cool!

And, frankly, better advertising for Linux than crashing SCO’s website. I was sure that this was really a Beowulf Cluster, but, according to this article at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, it’s a real super-computer. It was designed by HP and runs over 2,000 Intel Itanium II processors! Wow! That’s some horsepower! Watch that penguin run!!

or tech tradeshow?

You make the call. According to this article on Wired News, the TechxNY technology tradeshow, which was formerly known as PCExpo, was little more than an outsourcing bazarre this year. Representatives from Bulgaria, China, the Dominican Republic, Egypt, Grenada, India, Romania, Russia and Nepal were all there trying to convince American companies to send jobs off-shore to their countries, where workers come cheap. A Russian representative was offering an experienced rocket-scientist at $40K. Frankly, from the description, the whole thing stank of a slave market. (And, not just to me, either. At least one person quoted in the article said the same thing.)
When is this going to end? What will it take to make, and keep, tech jobs in the United States? How long will we, the American voting public, let this go on? When will we wake up and put our neighbors first, before selling them out to cheap labor overseas?
The whole thing makes me sick. And, very, very glad to have a job in my industry. Not many of my tech-worker brothers and sisters can say the same.

No, really, it is possible!

At least, according to this website, it is. Now, I haven’t actually tried this myself, so it could be harder than it looks. And, anyone under 18 should get approval and help from an adult. But, they do have several “recipes” for making lava lamps, including a link to one that has a “Kids Version“. (But, the approval thing sill applies!)

Anyway, it looked like a fun one for a Friday!

in my sleep!

I’ve really been bustin’ my hump the past two weeks cranking out Linux servers. Specifically, I’ve been making, and reconfiguring, Red Hat Linux AS2.1 servers out the yin-yang. I made six in one day. Then spent a couple of days going back and cleaning them up. Then, I had to install the Veritas agents and setup backup jobs for them. Then, we found out that at least two of them had to have shared storage!
So, this past weekend, I had to figure out how to do Linux clustering. And it was working fine, until we had to reconfigure the IP addresses yesterday. Now, it’s wacked. It seems to be centered around something with a piece of external hardware. See, to have good, safe fail-over, the cluster relies on an external power “switch” that reboots the servers. That way, it ensures that only one of them is in control of the shared disk-space and the Oracle database that resides there. Anyway, the cluster config only worked if we left out the section that sets up the power switch. So, Friday, I’ll have to try and reconfigure it. Hopefully, that will let us reconfigure the cluster, but who knows… Ah, on the job experience. Gotta’ love it!