If you missed it, CNBC will be reairing the "Age of Wal-Mart" documentary. It really was an eye-opener. I always thought Wal-Mart was a rural store which was quite at home in the deep South. However, during the past 10 yrs it has nearly become a Real Estate firm, in that it has consumed huge stretches of landscape in the US.
In fact, there are many cities that have vowed never to allow Wal-Mart to advance into its metropolitan areas. It has become the Evil Empire in many circles.
It appears that they are also struggling with countless lawsuits, relative to its hiring practices and salary inequities.
Perhaps most intriguing, is Wal-Mart plans to use the controversal RFID technology for its merchandise that ships from China and overseas. It has become apparent that other retailers will soon follow.
Is Wal-Mart Good Innovation Really Good for America?
How many do you have in your town?
I'm sure that by now everyone has heard about the fight that broke out during an NBA game between the Indiana Pacers and Detroit Pistons. The most notable combatant was former St. Johns player, Ron Artest. I must admit that I have always been partial to NY born athletes because they always show tremendous heart, grit and determination.
However, I'm sure that Mike Jarvis is getting flooded with calls regarding the incident. Obviously, the news in MI. has been very one-sided and often sensationialized. After reviewing some of the footage, I believe that it could have been far worse. In fact, the following ESPN articleadds a bit of reason to the incident.
Well, not exactly. I won't be writing any rhythmic prose in honor of an inanimate object.
However, I did want to share a recent experience I had in building my first mail server.
A client was unhappy with a Win98 machine whose System Registry had been overtaken with trojan adware. The machine was a 2-year old Dell GX-150 desktop, which had 128mb RAM and 20GB hard drive. Basically, it only ran Office productivity software and a web browser for some of his office staff.
Hmmm. I thought, how could I increase the utility of his current hardware ?
Why yes, I knew the answer was obvious. Once again, I put on my Linux evangelist hat, and unfurled the Open Source banner. I offered to extend the useful life of his existing hardware and provide such useful services as a print server, fileserving, disk duplication and mail server.
Because the client ran a small business, he had very limited resources and really could not afford to upgrade the existing hardware. So, I had very severe design constraints.
The Optiplex chassis is actually used as a desktop PC, not a fileserver, workstation, or mailserver. In fact, the box did not have any room for a second hard drive. So I was a unsure how disk redundancy would work on this limited . Nonetheless, I trudged on undaunted.
After backing up the customer data to a fileserver on my LAN. I went about the business of understanding RAID. Not the roach spray, but Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks. As I mentioned earlier, this particular slim chassis Optiplex would not accept an additional internal hard drive. So, mirroring the disk would prove to be a challenge. I grapped an external USB drive and connected it to the box and attempted to run RAID 1 disk mirroring. I quickly discovered that this was futile as USB was painfully slow and ill-equipped to handle large chunks of data on a consistent basis. Try installing a Linux distribution over USB and you'll understand my point more clearly. I purchased a USB 2.0 adapter card and installed it, as the motherboard was equipped with USB 1.1. The throughput of USB 2.0 is roughly 2.5 times greater than its predecessor.
So, I aborted the RAID campaign and figured there must be a better method of mirroring a disk than software RAID. Enter rsync - another very handy Open Source tool. After reading up on rsync, I decided that I could easily grab some ready made scripts to do the job of mirroring the internal drive to the external USB device.
Next order of business was to decide upon the software components that would become the mailserver. After getting some opinions from more experienced community members, I decided upon Postfix - MTA , amavisd - virus scanner, clamav , and Spamassassin. The collection of these software packages would serve to create virtual mailboxes for the staff and help erradicate email virii.
Installing Postix was fairly trivial with the help of Debian apt-get.
Although I had not actually, built a mail server, I knew there were hundreds of examples that I could use. So I Googled a solution, and used my trustworthy local LUG .
I did run into a few problems with testing the setup behind my firewall. After getting some assistance from a buddy, I figured out that I really didn't need to do any port-forwarding to test the mail server. I also had to add a content filter to help Postfix hand off the incoming mail to the amavisd. Again, this process was manageable due in large part to the apt-get pkg management tools provided with Debian.
The print server and fileserver duties were easily handled by Samba . Security considerations were handled by the firmware firewall found on the existing Linksys router.
Technical book readers be very wary of the overly friendly fellow patron. On two occasions , albeit different establishments, I've received unwanted solicitation from members of a network marketing organization. It happened to me in NJ and MI.
Please be advised that I have tried several different strategies of earning supplemental income, with Network Marketing being one such method.
I suppose another common thread in both instances was the fact that they were East Indian patrons.
It is customary for me to seek out the computer related books in a Borders or Barnes and Noble. So, as I scanned through the O'Reilly DNS/BIND text, I spotted someone approaching with my peripheral vision.
So here is an excerpt from our dialogue, "Are you a software engineer ?", he asked. I replied, "No, I'm a closet System Administrator." "Oh really", he added with a grin. He went on to say that he worked with Solaris and HP-UX systems. I explained to him that I have been known to make spare change with Linux.
The hook: He said, "You know, I too have a business on the side. I'm involved with E-Commerce." He then asked, "What is your name ?"
Without the blink of an eye, I quickly added, "My name is Omar Blackman." I knew exactly where this conversation was headed. We shook hands.
He then asked if I'd be interested in learning more about business opportunities within his organization. My response, "Been there, done that." I do appreciate the offer tho.
I quickly buried my head into the book I was reading, effectively derailing the conversation.
It has become clear that certain network marketers have been trained to frequent certain bookshelf areas, looking for people that have an affinity for networking and technology. I can't knock the hustle, but I'm know the game, like John Madden. To be fair, many of these organizations are making their sales pitch with virtual product clearinghouses and virtual office spaces, etc. So, it would make sense, that they would seek out folks who at least own a computer that is connected to the Internet.
Nonetheless, I will continue to frequent these bookshelf sections of my favorite bookstores.
As I have stated in the past, I was first introduced to the internet in 1992. In fact, it was during my undergrad days at FAMU. We had old token-ring networks and used IBM's PROFs to send email to the rest of the world.
My computing affliction took root (pun intended) when I was introduced to UNIX in 1994. While at Texas A&M, discovered that UNIX was an industrial strength OS that spawned the internet and later the World Wide Web.
Specifically, I was interested in developing webpages, so that I could tell my story to the world. In most cases, I used Sparc Solaris pizza boxes and vi editor to write mostly primitive webpages. Ultimately, I had to learn UNIX to manifest the webpages.
So I wondered, how could I do this cool stuff at home? In 1996, someone mentioned that I could run an OS called Linux. In those days, it was best known as a clone for the x86 platform.
So I wondered, how could I do this cool stuff at home ? In 1996, someone mentioned that I could run an OS called Linux. In those days, it was best known as a clone for the x86 platform. Later, I came across a book called Linux Unleashed(1st-Ed) - Sams Publishing. Inside the book sleeve was CD with the vernerable Slackware distribution (2.2.0) and 1.2.13 kernel. The rest was history.
I've been a Slackware user ever since, and have used Linux at home for the past 10 yrs. During the time I've used Slack, I've come to rely upon the Open Source community for help and assistance with newbie and more technical questions.
I was very honored and pleased to receive responses directly from the founder and chief developer of the Slackware distribution - Pat Volkerding. He usually never had problems offering helpful suggestions to various problems that I experienced. Try that with M$, but I digress.
Although, we've never met, I do consider him among the many cyberpals that I've met during my virtual travels. I believe I owe much to Pat and his Slackware team. His distro helped me learn UNIX and also permitted me to build my earlier websites.
Recently, I learned that Pat is quite ill. In fact, his situation appears to be worsening.
I know there are some of you who are well adept in medicine and antibiotics. Please contact him with any helpful and potentially lifesaving suggestions.
The best part about four-day weekends is the prospect of travelling and of course not going to work on the following Monday. I send this message to you from the sleepy town of Bethany,Tx. Home of the EastTex Telcom Collective. In fact, I'm actually using a 56kb (which connected at ~38.2kb) modem to surf. How repulsive. Well I suppose, that the more things change the more they remain the same.
A dear friend (practically my sister) got married, and she asked me to attend her wedding. So I grabbed my only good fitting suit and hopped a flight to Shreveport, La.
Northwest flight was delayed and the airline route took me through Memphis, TN. Luckily, I changing timezone helped me catch my connecting flight in Memphis. It too was late.
I arrived about 9pm CST. Not too bad considering I left MI. at 6.30p EST.
Haven't seen much of the Shreveport, but I plan to venture out today.
The wedding was nice and discrete. Everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves. I met more of my extended family, so that was very cool.
Not much more to report now. I do hope to update my photo journal with more pics and even some photos of my latest wedding. Hmm. I found a garter belt in my pocket, wonder where that came from ...
As promised, I have continued the wildly successful film critiques. This time I'm breaking away from the norm, in that I am reviewing a film animation.
Why is this any different you ask ? Well, I rarely watch cartoons on TV, let alone the silver screen. Besides, most cartoons are way too advanced for children anway.
The Incredibles are no different. While there was no graphic violence or gratuitous nudity, the story line is very mature indeed.
Without giving away the plot, lets just say it deals with adult themes relative to superhuman achievement. All of the characters were done in good taste. The voiceovers even featured well-known talent. The most notable was Samuel Jackson.
Animation is special because it gives you the perception that all of the dialogue is 'make believe', and you really can't take the characters too seriously. Some of the scenes were absolutely hilarious. Very suitable for children ages 8-12. I wouldn't go much younger than age 8, as the content may not be easily understood by very young kids.
Ever since I attained the rank of 1st Dan, I have been on a quest to broaden my exposure to other martial arts systems. I have been told that the learning begins, at the black belt level. I was a guest at a Tae Kwon Do dojang over the weekend. I participated in a very intense three hour workout. No water breaks, the only breather we were granted, was to adjust our uniforms. The bulk of our time was spent doing basics and hyungs. Although, I'm not a Taekwondo practioner, I can appreciate the level of difficulty associated with their acrobatic tournament style kicking techniques.
I often wonder if they are very practical in a self-defense scenario.
I was encouraged to work out with their advanced class anytime that I am available. Although, I was fatigued, I would certainly take them up on the offer. Yesterday, I worked out with a school that has its root in my system, Tang Soo Do. They happen to focus on sparring and tournament competition. for whatever reason, our school doesn't spar as much these days. So, I travel to other schools to supplement my training. Before sparring, we engaged in some stretching techniques, speed relays, and more stretching.
My last sparring partner was a female. I was very impressed with her kicking technique, she actually made contact with a few of her roundhouse kicks. I often find myself pulling back techniques when I face women. On this particular night, I learned not to do that anymore. Anyway, I know I need to work on angles and fast counters. I'm sure we'll spar again.
Now that the elections are over, I'll have to find a panacea.
Nothing like a new gadget to cure all ills.
It appears that I may have finally found the piece of hardware that would permit me to pipe my huge audio archive to different areas of my home.
I believe the price point is a bit rich for my taste, but it certainly has potential. The device appears to be very extensible and the most importantly the architecture is 'open'. Sending music through the house wirelessly is very cool.
BTW: I accidently fat-fingered a file that prevented submission of comments. Apologies for the technical difficulties.
Yeah, I know its late, but I'm sure of you may find this useful. Better late than never.
Someone shared this information and I figured that I would do the same.
Here is a good non-partisan voter information assistant. Good luck today.
There has been much talk of late regarding a proposal that would empower the racial majority of Detroit.
For those that are not familiar with the Southeast Michigan city, among its many problems, it is perhaps the most racially polarized metropolitan area in the country.
The African-Town proposal offers a means to further develop black-owned businesses and promote a creative entrepreneural zeal equivalent to that of other ethnic groups (ie Arabic, Mexican, and Greek) in downtown Detroit area. At issue, is that funding would be garnered from publicly available funds. Very controversial indeed.
Many groups are outraged, and have sought to block the legislation. The article below expounds on the case.
Afro-Netizen™. Substance.™: Detroit council drops blacks-only loans in African Town plan