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Comment Re:Could be a great update! (Score 1) 115

Meh, I played around with FreeNAS for a while. I originally thought it was neat, but I kept having problems with it and eventually realized that it was easier to just set everything up myself. The GUI didn't offer that much in the way of ease of use. A short list of my observations.

1) FreeNAS makes it dead easy to set up ZFS...but ZFS is actually pretty easy to setup on its own. Easier than RAID/LVM by far. So no huge gain there, in my opinion.

2) FreeNAS makes it so you don't really have to learn the ins and outs of FreeBSD, but zfsonlinux is fairly mature and works well, so not a big deal for me.

3) This may be my linux bias showing, but FreeNAS is limited by the capabilities of FreeBSD. Hardware support is the biggest one (controllers, nics, etc). For example, plenty of Dell hardware won't work optimally. Also, what the fuck did they do the PAM? Lots of functionality missing (kerberos password changing, mkhomedir, etc). The version of SCP seems to come from a stone age that doesn't know about directory recursion. Just lots of little things that really annoyed me. No NFSv4 support. Seriously, this is like 10 yrs old now, and you still can't authenticate NFS users over Kerberos if you are using FreeNAS. Maybe it is fixed in this version, but not in 9.2.

4) Some aspects of the UI were nice (ex: being able to easily to see appropriate ZFS flags) and other not so nice (ex: the snapshot interface). Yes, FreeNAS supports the ability to replicate ZFS, but this requires a cumbersome setup that even involves saving your ssh private key into the UI (maybe they have changed this since then). It's easier to just set this up in a cron job on your own, in my opinion.

5) FreeNAS makes some things very easy, but if you need to do anything differently, it's a pain to work around the UI. The settings are saved in a special database that writes config files on the fly, so you have to know what to edit to make a change. I spent a lot of time making FreeNAS talk to our domain controller and enumerate groups correctly, because the UI had a generic way that didn't work with our schema and there was no way to just change the necessary settings.

Bottom line: if you want to get a quick NAS running to use as a media server, FreeNAS works pretty well. But if you have special hardware or integration needs, you can probably achieve everything you need much easier by just configuring everything by hand.

Comment Wikipedia the vector (Score 1) 61

Like others I found the headline confusing. I read it as "Researchers are predicting the use of Wikipedia as a vector for the spread of disease". This may mean that:

  • Disinformation and ignorance are diseases.
  • Memes and computer viruses are diseases.
  • Wilipedia contains information that leads to depression.
  • Instructions on Wikipedia lead to substance abuse.
  • This is getting entertaining, fill in your own reason here.

Comment Re:Not a good week... (Score 1) 445

One of the definitions I found was:

One who makes great sacrifices or suffers much in order to further a belief, cause, or principle.

I am sure that fits. While SpaceShip II is mainly intended for a non-exploration purpose, the program has resulted in some significant advances in rocketry and White Knight II has significant non-tourism use. These pilots have been involved in other space efforts, I remember the one who was injured from the Rotary Rocket test flights. There are lots of safer ways for these folks to make as much money as a test pilot is paid. They do what they do to advance our progress in aeronautics and space.

Comment Re:I never ever commented on the SCO issue in any (Score 1) 187

We knew what was going on when you ran your anti-IBM campaign, sometimes even positioning yourself as arguing on behalf of our community. It was a way to lend credence to IBM and MS arguments during the SCO issue. To state otherwise is deceptive, perhaps even self-deceptive.

Florian, you would not be devoting all of this text to explaining yourself if you didn't feel the need to paint your actions in a positive light. That comes from guilt, whether you admit it to yourself or not.

Go write your app, and if you actually get to make any money with it you can give thanks, because it will happen despite what you worked for previously. Keep a low profile otherwise because your credibility is well and truly blown and you can only make things worse. And maybe someday you can really move past this part of your life. But I am not holding out much hope.

Comment Re:Bruce, I know why u r disappointed. Let me expl (Score 1) 187

So, I see this as rationalization.

The fact is, you took a leadership position, and later turned your coat for reasons that perhaps made sense to you. But they don't really make sense to anyone else. So, yes, everyone who supported you then is going to feel burned.

You also made yourself a paid voice that was often hostile to Free Software, all the way back to the SCO issue. Anyone could have told you that was bound to be a losing side and you would be forever tarred with their brush.

So nobody is going to believe you had any reason but cash, whatever rationalization you cook up after the fact. So, the bottom line is that you joined a list of people who we're never going to be able to trust or put the slightest amount of credibility in.

And ultimately it was for nothing. I've consistently tried to take the high road and it's led to a pretty good income, I would hazard a guess better than yours, not just being able to feel good about myself.

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