We’ve been experimenting with the Seagate Barracuda XT 3000GB on various Macintosh configurations. In the past one could take out, for example, four 500 GB drives and replace them with four 1TB, 1.5TB, or 2TB internal drives.

The result for four 2TB drives configured in RAID 5 is a drive that is about 5.23TB with redundancy.

With the release of 3TB internal hard drives, such as the Seagate Barracuda XT above, many Windows PCs can’t make use of more than approximately 2.2TB due to the use of MBR (see 1, 2). Apple on the other hand, has been using the GUID partition table (GPT) for some time (since 10.4.0 in early 2005) so the Mac OS X should be able to make use of larger than 2.2 TB hard drives.

In some respects the tests so far demonstrate this. The results so far:
1. On a 2008 Mac Pro (MacPro3,1 Quad-Core Intel Xeon, 3 GHz, 2 processors, 8 cores) with RAID Card (1.00, M-2.0.5.5), the drives only show up as 2.2 TB.
2. On a 2008 Mac Pro (MacPro3,1) without the RAID Card, the drives show up as 3.0 TB.
3. On a 2010 Mac Pro (MacPro5,1) with RAID Card (2.00, E-1.3.2.0, 0018) the drives show up as 2.2 TB.
4. On a 2010 Mac Pro (MacPro5,1) without the RAID Card, the drives show up as a full 3.0 TB.

In short, Mac OS X appears to have no difficultly using hard disks that are larger than 2.2TB, except when those drives are connected to an Apple RAID Card.  Apple does warn “Do not assume that the block size is always going to be 512 bytes” and does not support SSD with the current RAID card.  Apple states that “Solid-state drives are not compatible with the Mac Pro RAID Card in either RAID or Enhanced JBOD mode.”  My hypothesis as of now is that Apple did not heed their own warnings on block sizes on the Apple RAID card which is why hard drives attached to the RAID Card seem to be limited to 2.2TB.

Some performance notes on the 3TB Seagate Barracuda’s will follow shortly.

I’ve been running an iPhone 4 with iOS 4.0.0 and 4.0.1 on the T-Mobile USA network for about 2.5 weeks now so thought I’d give an update:

Here are the steps so far:
1. Had to cut down my mini-sim to micro-sim size. That was not difficult. If there is interest, I’ll post the pictures from the process. Took about 20-25 minutes to get it to the correct dimensions, primarily shaving off the last little slivers to make it fit snuggly.
2. Had to get it from Europe (UK) so it was factory unlocked. Not difficult, but not subsidized. However, if you think you spend $70-100 more per month on the plan (about $154 from AT&T to get a plan close to what I have with T-Mobile) it does not take long to make up the difference. And you end up with an unlocked phone so you can use it anywhere.
3. Works nicely except only on EDGE, not 3G – presumably due to the frequency differences. In theory, it should be relatively easy for Apple to open up the new frequency (e.g. no additional antenna/chip needed etc, just tuning to another frequency like a regular radio). Hopefully the chips support it, if Apple wanted to support T-Mobile and it didn’t violate their exclusivity with AT&T.
4. No visual voicemail. Not a big deal so far for me.
5. T-Mobile on iPhone 3GS (on 3.x and 4.0.0) was having trouble receiving MMS, but sending okay (e.g. Google “the media content was not included due to a picture resolution or message size restriction”). Not sure if iPhone 4 running 4.01 is still doing it.
6. Since it uses EDGE and not 3G, I can’t using internet/mail etc while on the phone. Not a big deal for me.
7. Gets equivalent or better reception in the areas (Florida only so far) I use it with iPhone 3GS’s on AT&T – e.g. same areas, bars etc. (EDGE vs 3G of course).
8. iPhone 4 has performed equal or better in reception and dropped calls in the 2.5 weeks I’ve been running it on T-Mobile US as compared to previously with iPhone 3GS.

All in all, it (and 3GS and 3G) have worked great on T-Mobile USA with the exception of 3G vs EDGE so far.

Worth repeating:

Rep. Paul Introduces Legislation to Abolish Withholding Taxes
“There are a lot of questions that people can raise about how the tax system in this country is structured, how the tax code is structured, but that’s why we have a democracy. We have a Congress and everybody has the right to go talk to their congressman or senator about what they like and don’t like about the tax code.”  IRS Commissioner Charles Rossotti, commenting on small business owners challenging withholding tax rules, CBS 60 Minutes II, Tuesday April 3

Congressman Ron Paul agrees with the Commissioner- taxpayers do have a right to present their grievances to Congress. Paul also believes it is time for Congress to Read the rest of this entry »

The United States drops to 8th in the World for economic freedom, 2010, sad for the country that was at one time the freest on earth…http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704541004575011684172064228.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopOpinion

If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater  than the animating contest for freedom, go home and leave us in peace.  We seek not your council, nor your arms.  Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; and may posterity forget that ye were our country men. Samuel Adams  (1722-1803)

I was looking for the DreamWeaver site information file from a complete backup in order to restore without having to re-add all the files.

If you are on a Macintosh, the location is here: ”/Volumes/[your old drive or backup location]/Users/[your old user name]/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Common/9/Sites/Site Prefs”

Or if you wish to copy to the command line: /Volumes/[your old drive or backup location]/Users/[your old user name]/Library/Application\ Support/Adobe/Common/9/Sites/Site\ Prefs

[Note the "/Application\ Support" just means "Application Support" the "\ " just encodes the space so that if you need to copy it to the command line it will work.]

So, hope this helps someone if they can’t find it immediately!

It has become clear over the years that companies do not value your private information.  If I got one or two of these a year, it would be one thing, but I get multiple per day which means it is happening 10s of thousands of times per day.

Why is this a big deal? Companies do not treat your personal information with any care. Companies do not respond to people who try to inform them that they have the information incorrectly. So, the only alternative is to post (without individual’s personal information) the emails that they send.

The problems:

1. Companies do not verify that an email address is yours and so share your information with the world.

2. Companies do not give a method of reporting that they are sending email to the wrong address.

3. Companies state they have a privacy policy, but ignore it.

After spending an hour on the phone with ATT to let them know they were sending someone else’s account information to me and being told that “someone must have accessed [my] email account” in order to have it entered in the ATT database, talking with 7 people only to finally have someone understand the issue and disable that email, we’ll be posting a number of emails per day from companies that do not bother to care for your private information.

We’ll be posting examples daily.  I always try to email back or spend a minute or two contact them to fix their problems, but usually without success.  Since there is no way to contact the companies or the people, we’ll post it here in the hopes that both the people involved and companies will fix their problems.

Some suggestions for companies that want to earn the trust of consumers:
1. Before sending an important email to an address, email addresses should be confirmed.
2. Confirmation emails should include both a “confirmation” link and a link to indicate that the address is wrong.
3. Further emails should include a link to indicate that the address is not correct.

Companies that email us should be aware that doing so subjects them to our terms and conditions:
Remember that if you email us, you MUST accept our terms and conditions.

Any messages and any attachments (with this “message”) are intended solely for the
addressees (which obviously must include the email addresses that emails are addressed to)
and may contain confidential or privileged information. You acknowledge that we may try to attempt to contact you to notify you that you have sent us mail incorrectly, but that if you provide a fraudulently incorrect email address we can not do so.

If you address emails to us, you acknowledge that we are the intended recipients of the email by your own admission and that you grant us rights to publish the email in full or in part in order to bring attention to your inability to keep personal information private.

Update: after getting 10 in one day, I couldn’t keep up, so am rethinking how best to make companies aware that they are doing a poor job protecting privacy.

I had the pleasure of seeing a comedy duo on board the Disney Magic in July (they are also on the Wonder and sometimes on NCL (Norwegian Cruise Line), The BlackStreetBoyz – Alfred and Seymour.  On any of these ships, if they are on board, make sure you go to their shows.  If you are looking for some funny comedy with a good message, these two guys are right on target.  Positive, high-energy, and funny too!  So if you are on the You can see a sample of their show below and check out the BlackStreetBoyz website.

They ended their shows with this message:

We love what we do. … The real reason people don’t have what they want in life is because of what you don’t know. See because when you don’t know nothing you don’t get nothing, that’s the bottom line.

So the next time you get ready to blame race, creed, gender or someone else for what you don’t have, what you do is take a couple of steps back and walk to a library which is free and check out as many books as you can on what it is you’re trying to [learn].

Read, read, read, r-e-e-e-d.

You are all on this planet for one reason.  You know what that reason is?  How many people have you helped along the journey before it is time for you to leave this planet, what we call Earth. Because when you’ve understood there’s one race, it’s called the human race, trust me, your life will be just as cool as ours.

The BlackStreetBoyz, July 12 and July 22, 2009

As with iPhone 2.x settings, the T-Mobile internet settings are in General -> Network -> Cellular Data Network.  For Cellular Data:

APN: wap.voicestream.com

Username or Password are blank.

If wap.voicestream.com does not work, you can try internet2.voicestream.com

The following settings seem to work for MMS messages with T-Mobile USA (I’ve been testing them for more than a week) and they are listed below the Cellular Data settings under MMS:

MMSC: 216.155.174.84/servlets/mms
Proxy: 216.155.165.50:8080
MMS-APN: wap.voicestream.com
User: empty
Pass: empty

You may have to restart the phone for the MMS settings to take effect.  You will see a little camera icon below the text field in the “Messages” application.

Have any more tips?

Next up, tethering your computer via your iPhone on T-Mobile.  ;-)

It looks like you can do it with the instructions here for not just T-Mobile USA, but other carriers:

http://richardlai.xanga.com/704930537/enable-tethering-on-iphone-30—too-easy-worldwide-carriers/

A U.S. penny is 19 mm across. Various websites claim the Southern Hemisphere’s smallest frog is about 9.8 millimeters, Brazilian Gold Frog (Brachycephalus didactylus). This frog beats the Brazilian Gold Frog by about 5 mm – this frog is only approximately 5 mm.   The (previously????) smallest frogs of the Northern Hemisphere is the Cuban Eleutherodactylus iberia, which can be two-tenths of a millimeter smaller, and Eleutherodactylus limbatus, of which fully mature adults as small as 8.5 mm have been found.

Alas, it seems this frog beats those by half.  I’ll post some more pictures and video eventually, but it is here in Florida in the United States and is much smaller.  A record?  I don’t know.  (Found by Lexi Riley, Maddie Johnston and me).

(see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brachycephalus_didactylus)