Category: Technology

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Technology

What I would like from ZFS

You can read the Wikipedia entry here on ZFS to get an idea on what the file system offers and its real eases as well.

From using ZFS on my FreeNAS there is one thing I would like to see added that would really “take it up a notch” in my book: the ability to add a disk to  RAID-Z.

What I’m talking about is this situation:

  • You have four external drive bays
  • You fill three with 2 TB drives and setup RAID-Z
  • You get a fourth 2 TB drive and plug it in
  • You add it to the original RAID-Z and ZFS takes care of the rest

It is a lot like what Drobo has going for it, but on the file system level. You could add an arbitrary number of additional drives and ZFS would resize and just take over from there.

That would be really cool.

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Business Technology

Pragmatism

Marco Arment hits the nail directly on the head with his post Right versus pragmatic.

The media companies can do what they will against file-sharing and other “evils” like streaming and download services, but that isn’t going to change their fortunes.

It is to the “change or die” point now.

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Life Technology

TV Is Broken

Patrick Rhone of Minimal Mac just posted TV Is Broken, and I have to say that I agree. Through the story of his daughter and her encounter with “normal TV”, we learn a lot about how jarring it can be to try and enjoy anything that is currently available on any TV network.

I look forward to a future where we can choose what we want to watch … and all of the choices are there. That future is coming, but it is coming slowly.

One benefit I can already see is that I, as a parent (or my children, as parents, I guess) will have better tools to choose what my kids can watch, when they can watch it, and also more choices as to where they can watch it. That’s something that excites me.

Already we use Netflix more than broadcast TV and we do not subscribe to anything more than “grandma cable” in our house and I feel the better for it (mainly because we save the $40/month to bump up to a higher package).

The main thing I miss out on is sporting events … hopefully we will see the leagues push for no blackouts and streaming-only solutions in the future.

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Technology

Haters Gonna Hate

One thing I will never understand is the need to announce when you are “leaving” something. I know I’ve done it in the past, but I need to stop … and everyone does.

I’m not sure why it has become a common practice to spend time writing up a treatise about why you are leaving a platform/OS/technology for something newer/shinier/ different, but it is depressing.

One really cool thing about technology is that we have choice. It is not just a choice of what we use but a choice to also move onto other things if our interest wane or our needs change.

That’s really cool.

It has not stopped us from still searching out the unicorns in our technology lives. That one magical thing that will forever fix everything that is wrong … be it productivity, popularity, speed, etc.

Then this morning I wake up to Mark Boulton’s Snark and more of the same. More attacking. More complaining. More entitlement. A sad state of affairs.

A little bit of “nice” could go a long way.

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Technology

The World is Not What it Was

Andy Ihnatko has posted a reply to the recent cartoon over at The Oatmeal about piracy.

Whenever piracy comes up, I often think that one thing missed is that one side is wishing for a world we don’t currently have (free content available all the time for all) and the other is wishing for a world they thought they used to have (content only when we allow it to happen).

I tend to trend toward having no sympathy whatsoever for media companies who decide the the best way to make money is to double-down on making it harder for people to get what they want.

Regardless, this is ugly, and the people really getting hurt are the consumers who want to do the “right thing” and just want to watch their movies and shows. Can’t we all just get past this?