Hammer streaming

Matthew Dillon’s committed some initial support for streaming mirroring.  With this, two disks can be synchronized over a network link of any speed or reliability – it can be restarted and immediately begin where it left off, and the amount of bandwidth used can be controlled.  This sounds neat.

Permalinks fixed

Upgrading WordPress to 2.6 yesterday broke the direct links to articles on the Digest.  It’ll be updated in the 2.6.1 release of WordPress, but until then I’ve changed the links to correct for the issue.

What’s broken with pkgsrc

I really like pkgsrc.  It’s a big system that works well for managing a huge variety of software packages, across multiple platforms, and it’s been beneficial to DragonFly for making  a lot of programs instantly accessible.

The issue nobody’s fixed – yet – is that there are plenty of ways to upgrade, some of which don’t work (make update), or involved homegrown solutions that miss the goal most people have: the ability to say simply “Upgrade this” and have it work.  This is why programs with the same functionality but simpler usage become popular.

(Prompted by a number of recent “How do I upgrade pkgsrc?” questions on DragonFly and pkgsrc mailing lists.)

Tools that you should use yourself

Here’s another one of those Flash shakycam presentations: Danny O’Brien talking about Web 2.0 and personal info.  I link to this because it’s interesting: lots of newer web sites like Flickr, LiveJournal, etc have absorbed people’s creativity.  While that’s good, it’s dangerous in a way that’s been seen before.  Having your own system with your own operating system (hint: DragonFly) lets you own your own data and interests.  If you can get past some of the joking at the beginning, the video makes that point at some length.  I post this not to make with the tinfoil hat attitude, but to point out that in some ways, handing your writing or art off to a remote hosting service makes as much sense as renting a paintbrush.

LinkedIn DragonFly group

I’ve created a DragonFly BSD group at LinkedIn, a business networking site.  If you’re already using it, search for that group name and add yourself – I’ll get the request and approve it.  There’s no major purpose, other than getting a group formed.  It is a good place to find potential job candidates…