• Articles and Books

    What's a Podcast?

    I originally posted this at http://www.318.com/TechJournal iTunes Latest Buzz Tops One Million Downloads In First Two Days. Podcasting is the latest evolutionary branch of the iPod. With Podcasting, anyone with an iPod can download and listen to books, editorials, unofficial museum walkthroughs, and a variety of other audio commentaries. In it’s simplest from, Podcasting is simply an audio download from a website. Utilizing a few new web technologies, iTunes now can check the site for new content, and automatically download it into your iPod. Many industries have taken advantage of this technology to provide news services to their clients. For example, several software companies publish Podcasts informing clients of upcoming…

  • Mac Security

    Password Encryption

    I originally posted this at http://www.318.com/TechJournal Logging onto most network resources requires the use of a password. Before passwords are sent over networks they are encrypted. Many different variables and algorithms are used to encrypt passwords. The most common method of encrypting passwords before they are sent over a network uses the seconds and minutes fields of file modification time stamps to build variables. The system doesn’t use the time stamp as a variable directly, but uses them to generate hashes. A hash is a number generated from a string of text. The hash is smaller than the text itself and is generated by a formula in such a way…

  • On the Road

    On the Road: Montana

    The sky here goes on for-friggin’-ever.  The people are nice and a big country, like back home.  I like it here.  Not a lot of Mac guys though…  Nor are there a boat-load of people for that matter…

  • Microsoft Exchange Server

    Exchange: Increase Maximum Database Size

    Exchange has a maximum database size of 16GB.  You can temporarily increase this if you exceed it by editing the registry.  To do so, open a registry editor (Start -> Run regedit) and browse to this location: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetServicesMSExchangeIS Now, find the name of the server whose database you would like to increase the size of and click on it.  Then, click on either the folder that starts with Public- or Private- according to which you want to increase the size of.  Now add a Reg_DWORD with a name of: Database Size Limit in GB Now set the setting for the limit to 17GB (just type in 17) and reboot the…

  • Xsan

    Xsan: What is Fiber Channel

    Fiber Channel is a technology for transmitting data between computer devices similar to SCSI but with networking components based on fiber optics. Fiber Channel is especially suited for attaching computer servers to shared storage devices and for interconnecting storage controllers and drives.  Apple uses Fiber Channel for Xsan, it’s storage virtualization platform.  All of the objects that make up a Fiber Channel network are referred to as the fabric.  These typically include HBAs (the card that goes in a machine), cabling, transceivers, a fiber channel switch and the fiber channel controllers on the storage.