So after I unpack and plug everything in and install the Drobo Dashboard I sit looking at an annoying Drobo Dashboard that just states something like “No Device Detected”. I check the DHCP leases and find the IP of the Drobo, so that looks OK. Pinging the Drobo also turns out as one would expect, replies all around. Even opening the Public share in Windows Explorer works great. Everything except the administration tool seems to actually work. Checking the Drobo Knowledge Base they point to Firewalls being the main cause of these kind of problems. Well, everything is on a closed of LAN, no Firewalls there. Several restarts of the Drobo later I figure I’ll attempt doing a restart of Windows; lo and behold, that seems to have worked.

So time to play around a bit. Installing a few Drobo Apps and see how that works. Well, it kinda doesn’t, at least not as one would expect from a “Plug and Play” device. Downloaded the App, unzipped and copied the TGZ file to the Dobo Apps folder. Oh yea, and then you have to RESTART the Drobo for it to actually install the App? Why the hell that? The Drobo operating system is based on Linux. Why not just call a small script from the Drobo Dashboard, or even with a Cronjob, that does all that unpacking and installing except first doing it during reboot?

Anyway I install DropBear, a small SSH server and client. I reboot the Drobo to get it installed, then I try to SSH into it. Guess it didn’t work; connection refused. Well, I take a look at the log and it seems that generating the host keys didn’t work. Oh well, another reboot of the Drobo solved that. That was 2 reboots just to install one App? Plain stupid.

So finally, after a couple of hours, I have 2 Western Digital 2TB disks installed and are copying data at a whooping 22-27MB/s over a Gigabit network. Oh well, it’s acceptable speed just for data storage. So after a while I add third 2TB drive, the Drobo starts doing its thing. While the Drobo does its thing I copy some more data to it, or so I thought. Suddenly the Drobo apparently drops all connections and Drobo Dashboard can’t find it. I ping it and it responds just fine *sigh*.

So I turn of the Drobo again, and it apparently takes some time, but rather that than loose the data I already copied there, because the third drive I added was the drive that previously contained the data I already copied. After about 5 minutes I see the Drobo finally is turned off and I start it up again. The drobo starts working on protecting the data telling me not to remove any drives because the data currently isn’t protected, or some such. After another 15-30 minutes I notice that the Drobo is reporting the third drive faulty. Worked fine with no S.M.A.R.T. errors on my Windows 7 computer.

After those initial annoyances I might actually come to like the Drobo, even with the shortcomings it have. The fact that I don’t have to expand and rebuild arrays is nice and the Dashboard is only really needed for first-time setup, or so I think. More updates, maybe, when I have played around with it some more.

Det er muligt at mange af irritationerne kan overkommes ved at jailbreak dem, men det er ikke hvad der er tiltænkt fra Apples side, og det er heller ikke noget almindelige brugere skal være nødsaget til at gøre, især ikke når man tænker iDevices der skal bruges i en virksomhed.

• NotifikationerDe er forstyrrende og nogen gange umulige at slå fra. Eks. sidder man midt i at læse et dokument, en e-mail, ser video osv. og pludselig springer der en kæmpe fed og grim besked op midt på skærmen og afbryder hvad man er midt i.

  Alle andre mobile operativ systemer kan finde ud af at levere uforstyrrende notifikationer. Jeg ved Apple kan det samme, hvis man jailbreaker, så hvorfor fanden har Apple ikke nosset sig sammen og gjort det?

• Kun tilknytning til 1 iTunes (1 computer)Jeg har 2 computere (okay, jeg har sådan set 4-5 computere). Når jeg er hjemme foretrækker jeg selvklart at synkronisere med min Desktop computer da det er den jeg bruger når jeg er hjemme. Når jeg så er ude og rejse o.l. vil jeg jo gerne synkronisere med min bærbare computer (MacBook Pro 15″).

  Det gælder især Apps, Podcasts og i et enkelt tilfælde Lydbøger. Det kan man bare ikke. Nej, iTunes vil lige slette alt indholdet på din iDevice først. NEJ TAK. Så nu er jeg nødsaget til at starte MacBook Pro’en op hver gang jeg bare lige vil lave en Sync  med iTunes. Det er til grin Apple.

• Browserens “automatiske” opdatering/refresh.En ting jeg bruger iPad’en meget til er at læse nyheder på internettet. Til det bruger jeg Google Reader med forskellige RSS feeds tilknyttet.

  Google Reader har en rigtig lækker mobil Web grænseflade som jeg har til at vise 100 indlæg af gangen. Når jeg så vil læse hele nyheden kan jeg så klikke mig videre til selve nyhedssiden, og det åbner den jo selvfølgelig som en ny side/fane. Det er alt fint og frydeligt.

  Når jeg så er færdig med at læse selve nyheden går jeg tilbage til den side/fane som jeg har Google Reader åbnet på… PIS så opdaterede browseren lige uden nogen grund. Tak. Så kan jeg starte fra toppen igen og skimme nyheder igennem igen, fordi browseren for helvede ikke bare kunne lade mig selv bestemme om jeg ville foretage en opdatering/refresh.

  En anden ting jeg også gør når jeg læser nyheder, er at åbne selve nyheden, så uden at læse den går jeg tilbage til Google Reader, eller en anden nyhed jeg har åbnet. Årsagen er at nogen gange indlæses siderne langsom, og så kan de lige få lov at indlæse i baggrunden mens jeg læser en anden nyhed. Nej, det kan de ikke og hvis de kan så opdatere browseren jo bare siden når jeg går over til den, så kan jeg sidde og spilde tid på at vente på at den bliver indlæst igen.

• Programmer lukkes uden grundEn anden ting som jeg dog ikke oplever hele tiden, er at nogen gange så lukker programmerne bare på iPad. Eks. sidder jeg og er ved at vise nogen billeder frem fra det ganske glimrende Web Albums app og pludselig lukker programmet.

  Det er jo super fedt hvis nu man står som chef og er ved at fremlægge noget fra et dokument man har åbent og midt i at man lige bladrer lukker programmet. Tak, så kan jeg lige finde dokumentet frem igen og finde ud af hvor jeg var nået til.

• FilhåndteringOg det en iPad skal bruges til er så det som er noget af det mest besværlige, hvis man skal tænke bare lidt sikkerhed ift. virksomhed. Perhaps there’s an App for that

Taken from: http://xkcd.com/627/

In response to that article I’ll write my own Top 20 list. I’ll also tag each extension as either “must-have” (MH) or “nice-to-have” (NtH). MH extensions are extensions that will/should benefit everyone and NtH extensions are those that really depend on each persons individual needs.

1. Adblock Plus – MH
   This extension is without doubt the most important of them all. It increases effectiveness because you don’t have to be distracted all the time by annoying ads on every webpage. Sure, I’ve heard people say they don’t even notice the ads when they’re browsing in Internet Explorer, but give them a week without ads and they’ll never want to go back.
2. Adblock Filterset.G Updater – MH
   This is an extension to the Adblock/Adblock Plus extensions. It uses a central filter list so you don’t have to update and add filters for adblocking yourself all the time.
   Edit: I was contacted by the author of Adblock Plus, who pointed me to this post that explains why Adblock Filterset.G Updater shouldn’t be used. Thanks Wladimir
3. Download Statusbar – MH
   Firefox’s built-in download handling just isn’t that great in my opinion. That centralized download window that pops up just isn’t all what it’s crached up to be. Now this is definitely one of the extensions that’s worth having, gives a nice overview of your downloads, and easy access to them as well while browsing.
4. Image Zoom – MH
   This is one of those that might be a Must Have on a personal level, but I still think it’s very useful for everyone. It adds the ability to right click any image on the web page an either zoom in or out. Very useful if you’re reading a forum where someone posted some super big image that just destroys the readability for all posts on that page.
5. Tab Mix Plus – NtH
   This one is definitly not a “must-have”, this is a personal choice for me over ChromaTabs and Colorful Tabs. It adds some other session features than what is built-in to Firefox 2, and also adds some very nice Tab features, such as locking a Tab. Adding close tab buttons to all tabs, regardless of number and much more.
6. IE Tab – MH
   I guess this could be classified more as a “Nice-to-Have” than a “Must-Have”, but I decided that this extension helps people be more efficient because they don’t need to have 2 browsers open just to be able to browse a site that isn’t developed properly.
7. FaviconizeTab – NtH
   This is one of those nice extensions that doesn’t do much, but what it does helps a lot. I tend to have tons and tons of tabs open at once, this unfortunately lessens the overview of the tabs which can degrade efficiency. Some of all these tabs however, is easily recognizable by it’s Favicon, so why not have the tab take up no more room than the Favicon?
8. Google Toolbar for Firefox – NtH
   I don’t think this needs any introduction, I do however think some of it’s features are overlooked. To begin with I didn’t like this plugin because it took up room, it added an extra toolbar which I didn’t really use. Now, just let Google Toolbar take over the Firefox built-in toolbar and you have one less toolbar to take up room. Then simply use Firefox’s built-in Toolbar customization to add Google functionality anywhere on the other toolbars, especially the highlight/find search words is a near-must-have.
9. DownThemAll – NtH
   I rarely use this one, except if I’m going to download larger files. Being able to resume with this is gold, also being able to use multiple threads increases the speed quite a lot if the server supports it.
10. RSS Ticker – NtH
    If you like to keep up to date on news while browsing, this is a nice addition. Keep a nice overview on the latest while browsing your favorite sites.
11. PDF Download – NtH
    Don’t you just hate when you click a link to a PDF document, and Adobe Reader opens up inside the browser, thereby removing your from the site you were reading? This will help you.
12. MinimizeToTray – NtH
    Sometimes I just have way too many windows open, and aren’t really using the browser (Firefox), in these cases it’s nice to make some room by minimizing the window to the Tray instead of the Taskbar.
13. Tabs Menu – NtH
    This is something I only installed because of Tab Mix Plus. The standard way Firefox 2 handles tabs, is that it makes the tab bar scrollable when too many tabs are open. It also adds a drop-down list of what tabs are open. Unfortunately Tab Mix Plus removes the drop-down feature, this is why this extensions becomes so handy, it adds a new menu entry with the list of open tabs.
14. TinyUrl Creator – NtH
    If you tend to paste a lot of long links, this will make it less of an eye-sore to those that have to see it, just right click the page you wish to get the link for and click “Create TinyUrl for this page”.
15. Favicon Picker 2 – NtH
    This isn’t that great really, more of a cosmetic addition. I like to have Favicons added to my bookmark entries since it gives a better overview, some sites unfortunately haven’t figured out that there exists such a thing as Favicons. This is where Favicon Picker comes in.
16. ColorZilla – NtH
    Wonder what exact color is used in some part of the screen? Just click the eyedropper and select the color. Only really useful for Web Developers and Designers.
17. Web Developer – NtH
    Adds a ton of features that is very helpful to any person who creates websites.
18. Firebug – NtH
    Adds some of the same features as Web Developer, but the real benefit to this baby is that debugging websites just becamse so much easier.
19. Auto Copy – NtH
    This can be both a boon and a bane. If you’re used to Linux Console style copying, or mIRC style copying, then this will certainly be useful. The downside is that sometimes it copies text that shouldn’t have been copied, especially in some Rich Text editing environments such as TinyMCE.
20. Adblock Plus: Element Hiding Helper – NtH
    I haven’t had a chance to use this, yet, but it sounded promising

Computerworld has an article which goes more in-depth of this case.
Addition: BetaNews.com article.

It’s the Internet Service Provider, who has the responsibility for what the users are doing on the net – that’s the courts decision in the case about the users access to the website Allofmp3.com, where the service provider Tele2 was up against the musicindustry IFPI.

I’m more and more glad that I live in Sweden now instead of Denmark. Apparently control of the internet should be privaticed, for that is what APG is, a private organisation. No one should control the internet in such a way, that tells people what they’re should or should not browse.

The Danish Anti Piracy Group, who handles the music- and filmindustry interests in matters regarding illegal copying of copyrighted material, have today applied for an injunction against the ISP Tele2. This is done as part of APG’s endeavour stop the illegal, russian website AllofMP3’s activities in Denmark.

They’re surely growing balls, or are they?

Looking at the statistics for 2005 it shows that there are 31 ISP’s offering xDSL services in Denmark. The statistics also show that the biggest by far is TDC with a whooping 72% of all xDSL subscribers in Denmark, 2nd. comes Cybercity with 13%, 3rd. is Tele2 with 10% and then the last 5% is spread over the remaining 28 ISP’s offering xDSL services.

I would think that if APG really wanted AllofMP3 blocked and was so sure that it would happen as they seem to think, they would have gone after TDC right away, this would certainly block the biggest amound of connections. But I guess APG is just grasping for straws as always.

Addition:

Tele2 have made a response to APG’s injunction:

It’s impossible to close the access to the russian site AllofMP3.com, states Tele2, after The Anti Piracy Group applied for an injuction against the site. “The only way to do this is to close all access to the Internet”, states Tele2.

From my basic knowledge on how the TCP/IP protocol works, the following methods would be how to block a specifik site, and the drawbacks of those methods.

• Using packet inspection/transparent proxy.
  This method is a simple way to check all trafic from the users, checking if it’s directed toward AllofMP3.com.
  The drawbacks to this are
  • Ressources.
    Running a transparent proxy takes a great deal of CPU and Memory, which in turn drains more power, which in turn cost more money. I somehow doubt APG are willing to pay for the extra expenses they’re forcing on the ISP’s.
  • Encryption.
    It’s really easy to set up an encrypted tunnel, where the packet contents can’t be read. That way anyone can get around this method, and the only way to avoid it is, as Tele2 stated, to close all access to the Internet.
• Blocking IP/IP-ranges.
  Changing the A record on the DNS for AllofMP3 is easy and takes a very short amount of time. Once again the only certain way is to block, if not all the Internet, then all IP’s assigned to Russia.

I wonder when APG stops this nonsense.