RoboGeek

Thumper Contest What workloads can you thump with thumper?

Seriously - what's Thumper?  It's the X4500, a server with serious data storage and computation in one box.  Speaking for myself I don't understand why you would separate storage from computation, since computation often requires data to back it up, and you get the best bandwidth to your data if the data is on the same server.  But there's a lot of brilliant minds who came up with the separation between storage and computation, so there must have been a reason.  In any case, having storage and computation in the same box ought to fit some large number of application types.

Seems we've launched a contest asking y'all to think about what kinds of applications work well with Thumper.




And as long as you're here... I found this other video that's pretty funny.
(2006-09-14 12:09:31.0) Permalink

Installing Java 5 on Ubuntu Linux Last fall I installed Java 5 on Ubuntu Linux -- and it seems to work "fine" even though it's not one of our officially supported platforms.  Note: I haven't fully tested it, so can't gaurantee it's completely compatible with Ubuntu (even though we do test on other Linux's, we don't test on Ubuntu, and there may be incompatible Linux differences that interfere with Java compatibility).

I wrote about my experience in a previous blog entry.  But, really, it was as simple as following the instructions on the ubuntu wiki.  Which didn't seem to help this guy and his quest for Java on Ubuntu.  So I'm posting again, another link to the Ubuntu wiki instructions on installing Java on that system.

Unfortunately those instructions don't work for installing Java 6 on Ubuntu (I tried).
(2006-02-18 13:17:10.0) Permalink

Linux inconsistency and resulting confusion I'm thinking of setting up a "webcam" on my Linux system, and the runaround with the howto's is reminding me of what really gripes me about Linux.  It's so bloody inconsistent.

I thought it would be simple ... just google for "linux webcam" and do whatever the HOWTO's said to do.  But the problem is half the information I'm seeing doesn't apply to the specific system I have (ubuntu 5.10 ... I'll note in passing the ubuntu wiki has a page that looks helpful, but I want to demonstrate the general problem).

The first result is Debian Linux Web Cam Server Configuration, and since ubuntu is debian maybe that's the best for me.  Nope.  Okay, it says that for Sarge you can probably just plug the camera in and it will work.  I think 5.10 is based on Sarge, but really don't know that (all these code names tend to obfuscate matters).  In any case the document doesn't describe what to do if the camera isn't automagically recognised.  The document spends a lot of time talking about stuff that isn't on my system, and/or not appropriate for my system.  e.g. modconf doesn't exist on this system, but lsmod does exist and does what the author of that document says modconf would do (I think).  And the problems with the article don't stop with modconf but go on to a a whole slew of low level device configuration, module configuration, trouble shooting and whatnot.

Next is WebCam under Linux which also focuses on Debian Sarge but has a completely set of advice, and focuses on one specific driver.  Why?  It does mention an application at http://motion.sourceforge.net/ which automatically detects motion, which looks like a good security camera feature which I hadn't thought of.

At LinuxDevices.com they have an announcement of a live demo webcam run by someone with an office in Manhattan.  But since the announcement is from 2000, I doubt it's still there.

There's some Webcam Installation Notes which don't mention what Linux system they apply to.  It just dives right into installing software.  My experience with Linux systems is the various distributions are so completely different from one another that you really need to know which one you have, versus the distribution a specific HOWTO author had, so that you can interpolate their instructions for your system.

There's an announcement that development of the PWC driver has halted.  This is important because the PWC driver figures heavily in one of the documents above.

linux.com has a howto on webcams.  You'd think a site named linux.com would have a definitive howto, and it probably is.  Again it dives right into low levels, talking about installing modules, drivers, and whatnot.  Oh, and a large part of the document is about identifying which camera you have, and what drivers will be suitable for it.  This is where I learned of the lsmod command I mentioned above.  But the examples list usb-ohci as a module, whereas on my system this module isn't present, and I don't know whether to be alarmed that it's missing.

The ZC030X Webcam Linux Driver Project page has a warning that this project is inactive, and you should use a different one instead.  Over on that page it has a "Jan 1, 2006" date which gives me a feeling it might be actively maintained.  But I'm beginning to feel like I'm in a maze of twisty passages all alike, but there's no treasure to be found.

The Video For Linux Resources page looks to be a great overview listing the dizzying array of choices.  It's more than a little displeasure that it starts with a long list of driver projects.  I mean, with so many different drivers, it looks like a daunting task to figure out what's what.

And then after that the google results become even less useful so I'm stopping here.

My point is that none of the results I found did a really good job of describing simple steps to take to get a webcam running on Linux.  Most especially none of what I saw gave me a clue to solving the specific thing I want to do, which is videoconferencing.  Instead most of the verbiage I had to wade through was about low level grunty driver talk, and very little about what useful purpose you might have for having a webcam on Linux in the first place.

Along the say I did learn about one idea I hadn't had before ... so this excercise hasn't been a total loss.  The idea of using Linux to run a security camera setup is very interesting.

The results only confirm what I've said before.  The thing hampering Linux's success is the wild differences between linux distributions, the lack of simplicity in using and configuring linux systems.  The differences and inconsistencies only create confusion when someone tries to do something.  e.g. Which HOWTO do you believe?  What resource do you look at for advice?  And why does the HOWTO I'm looking at talk about files and commands that aren't present on my system?

I've been using Linux off and on since 1993.  Most of the time I've been not using Linux specifically because of these problems.
(2006-01-19 12:18:26.0) Permalink

A look at another corporate blogging guideline in mid-development Here's an interesting peek into how another corporation is starting to encourage their employees to "blog".  Corporate Blogging Guidelines, Draft #2  What's most interesting is they apparently are revising their blogging guidelines based on input from the public.  If that's not an exercise in transparency, I don't know what is.  On the other hand it's clear they have a degree of the top-down approach to encouraging blogging, what with a BOC (Blogging Oversight Committee) made (it seems) of executives.

The guidelines themselves appear to be reasonable.  It does contain the typical double message of openness and transparency while guideline #7 admonishes the employee to "keep secrets".  Sigh.  Blogging and transparency are such a challenge to "business as usual" where BAU includes the corporation keeping most of its activities secret ...

I expect the employees reading those guidelines to be just as confused as I am ... just what items of information are we to keep secret, and which are free to be shared?  Confusion like this always comes when there's a double message.  The prototypical double message comes, for example, with your parents claiming "I love you" while at the same time spanking you.  In this case the employee is asked to be open and transparent, but if they're too transparent they'll get a modern corporate form of spanking, and compounding the problem is the line isn't terribly clear as to what's to be kept secret and what isn't.

The most interesting thing about their policy is something they aren't doing.  Rather than host the employee blogs as a company service, they ask the prospective blogging employee to set up a blog using a public blogging service.  Once they have it configured to their liking, they email the B.O.C. who will, if it meets the sniff test, enter it into the company blog aggregator. 

This greatly simplifies the company's  IT requirements, because blog aggregator software is simple to set up and it pretty much runs itself once it's going.  It puts a little burden on the employee, but probably not too great.  The blogging services do a great job of making it simple for people to get started in blogging.

It's an interesting form of outsourcing, isn't it?  They're pushing what could be a corporate expense over to third parties.  It's worth pondering for a few moments whether this (hosting the employees blogs) is an expense which the company should rightly spend, or whether it's "okay" for them to push it off to third parties.

The only solid result I come up with is the loss of inbound links.  As the company's employees make postings they will occasionally get links from elsewhere.  The technical term is "inbound links".  Inbound links help somewhat with search engine ranking.

By having the employee blogs hosted elsewhere the inbound links will help the search engine ranking of the blog host, and not the corporation.  If, instead, the corporation hosted the blog themselves, the inbound links would help the corporation.

Another solid idea that arises is, what happens when an employee leaves the company.  This question comes up from time to time on Sun's blogger email alias.  Do we remove the departed employees blog entirely?  Do we leave it there, but prevent further posting?  Do we allow the former employee to continue blogging?  And, finally, how can we robustly connect employment status with the above decisions?

By having the employee arrange hosting, the questions are simplified.  Clearly when an employee leaves the company they can be easily removed from the company aggregation.  The former employee can continue writing their existing blog without muss or fuss.  I'm wondering what the former employee should do with old postings about their old company?  Leave them there?  That's probably up to the individual, and it's clearly not covered in the policy.

The HR systems which register whether an individual is an employee, or not, may not be easy to connect with other systems.  In fact there may be laws preventing such connection.  How is the IT department to know when the employee has become a former employee?  Hence, when or how will IT know when to remove that former employee from the company blog aggregation?

UPDATE:  I forgot to include a thought.  Perhaps there's a worthy business to pursue in providing a complete corporate blogging service to corporations.  Setting up a blogging service is probably outside the competency of the typical corporate IT department.  Even though it's not terribly hard to get expertise in installing, configuring and maintaining a corporate blogging service, some corporations clearly will want to outsource it.



(2006-01-19 09:31:09.0) Permalink

Corporate IT security at Sun There's this slashdot posting I found interesting:   KoshClassic asks: "What is the right balance between security and productivity, in the corporate IT environment? Looking back at my company, 10 years ago, our machines were connected directly to the Internet, no proxy, no firewall, no antivirus software. Today, my company's proxy server blocks access to: 'bad' web sites (such as Google Groups; our 'antivirus' software prevents our machines (even machines that host production applications) from carrying out legitimate functions, such as the sending of email via SMTP; and individual employees are forced to apply security patches with little or no notice, under threat of their machines loosing network access, if they do not comply by the deadline. On one hand, you can never be too secure, however on the other hand, have we become so secure that we're stifling our own ability to get things done? What is the situation like at other companies?"

Since it's usually pointless to reply on a slashdot thread (you almost always get lost in the noise) I thought to toot a horn or two over here.  What's IT security like inside Sun?  It's really pretty good, a low level of burden, the requirements are very transparent.

I think the main thing keeping Sun from major problem is we simply don't have many Windows machines to begin with.  (Fancy that)  They do exist, especially as some parts of Sun actively develop software for Windows.  They do cause problems from time to time.  (the typical virus attacks)

The IT security team requires we run a script ("XP Neuter") at every bootup which fiddles with some settings meant to keep XP "safe".  I don't know off hand what those settings are.  Maybe they turn off some of the default IIS instances that Windows likes to start.

The other thing IT requires is we use a virus scanner package, and that it automatically update.  There's a corporate license with one of the virus scanner makers, and we get the automatic updates through that arrangement.  However they (IT) aren't as draconian as the slashdot writer describes in that Sun's IT doesn't breath down our necks to make sure the virus scanner actually is up-to-date.

I don't remember there being a requirement to run a firewall or block access to specific ports (e.g. SMTP) etc.  There is a corporate firewall and I haven't been able to determine if they block access to specific sites, since all the sites I look at are available.

The IT security department also checks Mac OS X security, and occasionally issues security advisories for OS X.  The advisories for Windows far outstrips the OS X advisories, however.  There are a surprising number of OS X users inside Sun.

In my case (as is common) my laptop/PC runs Linux ... there is an XP partition that I occasionally boot, but the majority of the time it's in Linux.

(2006-01-18 22:21:31.0) Permalink Comments [2]

Re: iTunes for Linux

Here's an interesting question, When Will Apple Notice Linux? and more directly, when will Apple port iTunes to Linux?  One possible answer seems identical to an answer I gave yesterday to a slightly different question on another of my blogs.  In that case, the questioner asked why Sun doesn't port Java to FreeBSD and only to Linux/Solaris/Windows?  Even as a Sun employee working in the Java group, I don't know the details about why we don't port Java to FreeBSD.  But I see a similar pattern in the iTunes-for-Linux article as in the Java-for-FreeBSD article.  Specifically both articles ascribe all sorts of conspiratorial scheming upon the big bad corporation.

Like I said yesterday about Java on FreeBSD, it could be very simple.  It costs money/resources for a software vendor to support their product on a different platform.  These things don't come for free.  The business needs to see a justification for that expense.

Where does the expense come in?  Well, there's the developers who port the software.  They need to understand how to best use the OS/platform, and in the case of iTunes-for-Linux they would have to make a GUI toolkit for X11.  Oh, and Linux is not at all a simple platform for which to develop software, because there is not just one Linux.  There's a dozen or more Linux distributions, with different installer systems, system config file details, driver details, etc.  And there's testing, where each new platform means a greatly amplified testing cost.  Here again the multiple Linux distributions greatly amplify the testing cost.

If you understand Occam's Razor you know that often the simplest explanation is the best.

Maybe it's just about the money!!  That it would cost some amount to do the job, and they don't see enough return on the investment.  ROI is the acronym used by business leaders worldwide.

In the iTunes-for-Linux article his attitude seems best summed up by "we can all forget about Microsoft doing anything to help Linux".  That he's looking to these large companies to do something to help Linux.

Gimme a break!!

My experience with corporations from having a nearly 16 year career working for them is they are motivated by money, not altruism.  If they see an ROI then they'll do something.  If not, they won't.  How else would you explain the existance of Microsoft Office on Linux?  It's not altruism, it's money, with Office bringing in over a billion dollars of revenue from OS X users.  In the 1980's I was an Amiga fan, and remember in comp.sys.amiga a bunch of angst over the lack of acceptance for the Amiga, and if only we had some major applications on the platform, and someone kept repeating how Microsoft had told them "if there were a million Amiga users we'd consider porting something to AmigaDOS".  That is, again, an example of businesses thinking about ROI, as well as being an interesting echo of what's being said about Linux in the iTunes-for-Linux article.

And, as a Sun employee, I'm rather confused by this:  "...I am saying that without the backing or support of the major software companies Linux on the desktop will never reach anything..." and then suggesting Apple as the savior for Linux.  Uhm...

Sun is a major software company and Sun provides some very interesting and important software packages for Linux.  Where would Linux on the desktop be today if Open Office did not exist???  And there's Java, and all the applications that use Java, which are available on Linux because Sun supports Linux.

(2006-01-10 08:54:51.0) Permalink

Web 2.0 meme spreading The Web 2.0 Revolution Spawns Offshoots...  There's this "web 2.0" idea floating around.  A bunch of hype is being made.  It's another of these marketing-meme waves where a bunch of attention is built around some idea that generally isn't meaning much.  In the early 90's I remember hype around "object oriented operating systems" where one could never figure out what that really meant.  At least with the later wave of "push technology" for distributing content, you could see a practical demonstration with that screensaver product that was so popular in 1997.

The article linked above talks about how there's a movement to 2.0izing a bunch of things.  Like libraries or law.  Sigh.  Somehow he gets through that long blog posting without mentioning that "Business 2.0" magazine.

Speaking of that magazine... I think it predates the "web 2.0" meme, so why does he place the beginning of 2.0itis on the web2.0 wave?  That magazine was part of the .COM hype machine, so maybe he wants to forget it as a bad memory?

I think the idea has been with us for awhile ... why keep things the way they are?  Doesn't technology fundamentally change the way society should be arranged and operated?  Hmm... maybe it does, but for the fact that we are still people and react in human ways. 

So, what to make of this...?  Well, one thing is clear is the blog posting points to trends where the Web, rather than technology in general, is causing change in the areas he points to.  The example of "Law 2.0" is a Wiki sponsored by Cornell University whose topic and scope is Law.  I suppose the "Democracy 2.0" example might be exemplified by Howard Dean's use of web sites and blogging, and in general the rise of bloggers as a political force in 2004.


(2006-01-08 11:22:15.0) Permalink Comments [1]

Transparency and corporations and blogging, oh my Supposedly blogging is about transparency, transparency, and more transparency.  The people who invented blogging like transparency, and espouse that as a core virtue of blogging.  As I've written before, I contend that a blog is a web site and you can use the blog/web-site any which way you want. 

In any case Sun, with blogs.sun.com, is rather famously experimenting with transparency.  Supposedly this has made a great change in Sun's fortunes, as Jonathan Schwartz is quoted in this article: Transparency is the key.

I honestly don't know whether the result (Sun moving from 99th to 6th most popular server vendor) can be ascribed to the blogging, or the fact that we have a more interesting lineup of products.  I tend to think it's the latter.  On the other hand it's real interesting the quality of information we (Sun's blogging engineers) are able to publish.  Certainly we, Sun's blogging engineers, are passionate about Sun (we probably wouldn't still be here if we weren't passionate about Sun), and a core value of successful blogs is passion for what the blogger writes about.

I've been thinking a lot about corporate blogging, and one idea that comes up is how "Transparency" really conflicts with typical corporate procedure.

Typically corporations tell their employees "don't speak to the press", and to direct all press inquiries to the public relations department.  Presumably PR has some genetic mutation that gives them the required super powers to withstand the death ray emanated by the usual "press" person...?

(to any "press" people reading this - that was a joke)

(honest)

It appears the typical corporation practices secrecy.  There's a whole range of reasons for secrecy, such as preserving competitive advantage, the element of surprise, and so forth.  In some cases secrecy also allows the company to get away with illegal activities.

In the U.S. we have "Freedom of Speech" enshrined in the Constitution.  But once you sign an employment contract, your freedom of speech flies out the window.  I learned this one Sunday morning a year ago after writing a blog posting about a legal settlement Sun had lost.  A big-wig at Sun called me, at home, on a Sunday morning, about 30 minutes later saying I'd better take that posting down because it's against corporate policy to discuss ongoing legal proceedings.  Hmmm... but what about my freedom of speech rights?  Well, if I wanted to remain employeed I would abide by the policy, so I did, especially as the particular case wasn't worth fighting over.

That's corporate secrecy in action.

Another example is this new CPU chip with the cool threads technology and whatnot.  The first I heard of that chip was an internal presentation 2-3 years ago.  But could I talk about it to the public?  Nooo... corporate secrecy again.  In this case there's an interesting argument to make, in that as the chip is developed the plans and details might well change.  But if we were to disclose those plans to the public, then it would be harder to change them later.  That's beside the obvious competitive advantage angle, because if Intel or IBM or HP or whatnot company were to have known about the strategic move we're making to lower power density per server, the window of opportunity might shrink as the other companies would then have an ability to match their products with ours much earlier.

Is that transparency?  To keep certain plans secret until they're ready to be revealed?  Hmmm... 

What we're doing with blogs.sun.com is certainly a breath of fresh air.  When we shipped dtrace, for example, our bloggers were in full force writing about how to use it.  I'm sure that had a lot to do with perking interest in Solaris, and helping people learn to use dtrace.

But is what we're doing really transparent?  I don't think so.  A few months ago everybody was required to take a training in protecting "Intellectual Property".  For example there's a whole slew of information we generate inside Sun which aren't to be disclosed.  For example if we have a joint venture with another company, we're supposed to set up intellectual property procedures to ensure everybody in all associated companies are on the same page about keeping the whole ballowax confidential.  This is typical business-as-usual, and I don't see it as being transparent.

But the mere fact that I can be writing this, using company owned infrastructure, is an example of a shift of corporate consciousness.  And I believe this is a positive change.


(2006-01-07 17:15:45.0) Permalink

Blogging CEO's thenewpr.com has a list of Blogging CEO's, and corporations hosting blogs.  I'd also found a list of Fortune 500 companies who host blogs.

What's astonishing is the breadth of industries represented in these lists.  And Jonathan Schwartz was hardly the first CEO Blogger, even though he's most often pointed to as the primo example of blogging CEO's.

It would be one thing if it were just a small handful of geek companies doing this.  Y'know, like Sun or Microsoft or Adobe.  But it's not, it's more widespread as the above lists show.

Let's hope this transparency thing takes hold.  I think one thing that makes corporations seem like the enemy of the individual is the corporate secrecy.  How can you trust an entity that keeps so much secret like corporations typically do?

(2006-01-05 21:00:03.0) Permalink

Corporate blogging I've been blogging about corporate blogging on my personal web site, but I've decided to do the blogging on that topic here instead. 

When I opened this blog on blogs.sun.com, the significance of this didn't really sink.  I thought, "oh, cool, I can blog" but it wasn't until later it was clear what that meant as a culture-changing activity.  But in many ways this presents a challenge to the old norms of employee conduct, speech by employees, freedom of speech, etc.  On my personal site I've written a few thought pieces about this.

To help me see the state of "corporate blogging" I am using the planetplanet aggregator to watch the news (see corporate-blogging.7gen.com).  It's astonishing the quantity of activity on this topic.  There's a lot more "corporate blogging" going on out there than I'd thought.

What do I mean by "Corporate Blogging"?  I think of it as blogging, done by an employee of a corporation as part of their employee role.

In some cases it's very explicit, such as the blog site being run by Telstra (a telecom company in Australia).  My sense of that site when I looked at it last month is it's a great example of fake transparency.  Fake transparency being what happens when the Marketing department puts together a facade that's supposed to be the real thing.

(2006-01-05 20:28:09.0) Permalink

Installing Java on Ubuntu, and why Linux? In earlier postings on this weblog I'd described having installed Java 1.5 on Ubuntu 5.10.  There's a page in the Ubuntu wiki site that describes what to do, and I merely followed the instructions there.  I noticed a posting earlier today by TripLeM about his Java 1.5 installation on Ubuntu 5.10.  What he did is exactly what I did and is more-or-less what's on the Ubuntu wiki site.

FWIW, a couple weeks ago I tried the same method to install the current Mustang build.  It failed in the make-jpkg step.  I gather that between "fakeroot" and "make-jpkg" the JDK installer is being run, but in a way that makes it think it's being run as "root".  As "root" the install script tries to touch some files in /etc which it can't do because it isn't really root, and we wouldn't want it to touch those files anyway.  I'm wanting to see if something can be done so Mustang can be installed on Ubuntu.  Ubuntu/Debian is not a supported platform for Java, but it would still be cool if there were a simple way to get it installed there.

I noticed that "ebernie" had followed up to TripLeM's posting, and had asked "Is there a need to move to Linux".  Well, Bernie, I can only give you my answer, but I'll also note that my home computer runs Mac OS X.  I have Linux/Ubuntu for my work laptop, and OS X for my home laptop, and nary a Windows machine in sight.  Why?  Basically because of viruses, instability, fragility, nit-picky little incompatibilities between hardware and software, having to waste so much time learning how to configure BIOS settings, etc...

You might think "Oh, he works for Sun, and he's been smoking what Scott's been feeding him".  Actually, for me it's the other way around.  I joined Sun (and the Java team) because, at the time, it was the home headquarters of the anything-but-Microsoft camp.  My dislike of Windows stems from what I said above, and predates working for Sun.

I've owned several Windows computers, am relatively comfortable using Windows.  Heck, I have even studied the Windows source code (in a former job I was porting bits of Windows source into the MainWin product).  But what really soured me of Windows was realizing how much of my life was being wasted chasing stupid little inconsistencies in the hardware/software configuration of the computer.  I was spending more time keeping my computers stable than getting any work done.  There was something wrong with that picture, and the thing that was wrong is spelled W-I-N-D-O-W-S.

Since switching to this Mac laptop, I've been a zillion times more productive.  The Mac is so completely reliable and has taken zero fiddling because it just works.  I've learned (as a relative Mac newbie) that "It just works" is the Apple mantra.  Call me a satisfied customer.

But that doesn't answer if/why one should switch to Linux.  Actually I have not settled that question myself.  For my needs at work Linux is the fallback choice.  First, I work mobile often enough to need a laptop.  Second, Sun won't buy me a Mac laptop.  Third, even if they did, my job requirements include Solaris, Windows and/or Linux, and we have no need for Mac use in my department.  Fourth, I'm not going to run Windows on the work laptop if I can avoid it, so that leaves either Solaris/x86 or Linux.  Ubuntu Linux is my current experiment, but if I may switch to Solaris or some other Linux distribution.

Actually I have a somewhat hard time recommending Linux.  The problem is largely that the same stupid little inconsistencies that drove me nuts with Windows also exist for Linux.  I think it's partly because of the x86 hardware environment, that the bits and pieces come from so many different vendors and there isn't enough compatibility.  It seems every time you turn around, there's another driver or something to locate and install, which to me just seems to be a total waste.  And this is true regardless of it being Windows or Linux.

But with Linux there's another twist.  All the distributions are nigglingly different.  So when you go looking for advice on how to configure X or Y or Z or whatnot, you'll find a HOWTO or two or three, but none of them will be for the distribution you have.  Instead the HOWTO will be talking about files not present on your system, or configuration tools you don't have, or maybe you do have them but something is different about the way it's handled on your system, etc.  Which just leaves me frustrated to no end.

And it's not like I'm a newbie to Linux.  The first Linux system I installed was in 1993 (downloaded 20+ slackware floppies, and installed them on a laptop, etc).  In those early days there was a consistency that doesn't exist today.


(2005-12-31 22:22:56.0) Permalink Comments [2]

web2.0 has something in common with web 1.0? Yesterday Hal Stern posted a simplified definition of web2.0:  'read/write web'

I happen to disagree.  As proof he claims that everything in Tim O'Reilly's list has embedded in it "read/write web".  But, how is AdSense read/write?  Or Search Engine optimization?  Or cost/click?  Or syndication?

In other words, I think Hal is missing the part where web2.0 is about aggregating services offered by others.  e.g. the Google Map mashups.  In general there's a number of services that expose an API (google, yahoo, amazon, ebay, paypal, del.icio.us, etc), and other people build something off that API.

Adsense is not read/write, but it's clearly an aggregation of services.  Syndication is also an aggregation of services.  I don't understand why SEO and cost/click are on Tim O'Reilly's list, since both are simple extrapolations of web marketing.

But what has me going to the blog right now is:  Yahoo gobbles up Del.icio.us

What this has me thinking of is partying like it's 1999.  Namely, in the late 90's there were a bunch of startups that founded web sites but didn't have a business model that would gain revenue.  I think del.icio.us falls squarely in that camp.  It's given away for free and there's no clear way for them to charge a fee.  What would you charge for?  Hence, the only way del.icio.us is going to pay off is for them to be bought out ... which is what Yahoo has just done.

That's what I suggest web2.0 shares with web1.0 is the people involved still aren't thinking about how do I make this a self supporting business.

(2005-12-09 16:11:36.0) Permalink Comments [2]

CNET: Power could cost more than servers, Google warns

Here we go: Power could cost more than servers, Google warns

The CNET article is referring to an article published in ACM's Queue: The Price of Performance (ACM Queue vol. 3, no. 7 - September 2005, by Luiz André Barroso, Google) An Economic Case for Chip Multiprocessing

His point is that as system performance is going up, power consumption increases to match.  Hence as system performance increases lets you cram more and more into your data center, the power needs for the data center will increase dramatically.  Eventually, his numbers say, the cost of powering your computers will cost more than the computers themselves.

As I wrote before I'm just happy that the new systems we're selling have lower power needs than previous systems.  I am very interested to have the world I live in be clean, and I know that the more power we humans use the more polluted our world becomes (because of the way we get the power).

I know that one can often do the same work (e.g. light your room) while using less power (e.g. using compact flourescents or LED lightbulbs), which makes me itch for the rest of the humans around me to catch on that they don't need to use as much power as they're using today.

It's about efficiency and I like the way Luiz puts it in his paper.  Performance per watt.

It's also about coming up with the right measurement to capture the desired end goal.  See, the results one gets are always based on the question you ask.  If you ask simply for "give me more processing power" then the easy answer is to make the CPU run faster and faster.  But we've seen with Intel's CPU approach how the faster you make the CPU go, the more power it consumes, the more heat it dissipates, the more you have to spend on cooling systems and the more you spend on power.

But if you ask for a broader picture of "more power at lower cost of ownership" that changes how you approach the problem.  And if you toss in "oh, and it would be nice if it saved the planet" the approach is changed again.

I'm a software guy and if I say anything more I'll probably get in trouble.

(2005-12-09 09:45:07.0) Permalink Comments [0]

Installing Star Office 8 on Ubuntu 5.10 A couple weeks ago I made a couple postings about having a new-to-me laptop, and wondering what OS to use.  I've been using Ubuntu the last couple weeks, and am relatively pleased.  The overall system works well, and it's especially impressive how the update system automatically detects new module versions and offers to download/install them.

Being a Sun employee, Star Office is important to my health.  We use Star Office, of course, as the preferred documentation format and all sorts of company documents and presentations and spreadsheets use Star Office documents.  For example I'm reviewing the Sun PLC (Product Life Cycle) materials, and all of them are in Star Office format.

Unfortunately installing Star Office turned out to be nontrivial, not hard, but not trivial.

First, I should point out that in Ubuntu 5.10 you can easily install Open Office 2.  Run the Synaptics package manater, and you'll find it in the editors section.  Select the package(s) and install just like any other package.

With OOo2 why would I need Star Office?  Well, I have two reasons.  First is there might be some special juju that's in Star Office that isn't in OOo2.  Second is a known example of the special juju, namely the Sun-specific fonts.  Sun has some special fonts we use in presentations, and when using Impress if those fonts aren't available then presentations that require the fonts will be a little screwy.

I could have downloaded just the fonts and worked out where to put them.  But then I would have missed out on any other special juju, plus there wouldn't be a blog posting to write.

Now let's start the process:

Get Star Office information here.  Click on the Get It button and it offers you several ways to get it, including a download.  The download is very large, but the Internet is fast now so it evens out.  This is a paid product so if you keep using it beyond the free trial you'll have to pay some money.

You download an installer.  The System Requirements do not mention anything other than a minimum kernel version number.  So you'd think the installer would just work on any Linux version, yes?

I ran the Intstaller and while the GUI came up and did a few things, it crapped out.  Turns out the installer requires an RPM system, and Ubuntu is a Debian system for which RPM is alien.  When the installer crapped out it left me with a bunch of RPM's in a temp directory.  And that left me wondering what to do.

Inside Sun we have an excellent Linux oriented mailing list to which I turned for help.  The following steps came from there.

Ubuntu has a command, alien, which allows you to install RPM's.  It's not installed by default but a few clicks of the excellent Synaptics Package Manager got it onto my system.

Next you do this: alien -i -k RPMS/*.i586.rpm

Quickly the RPM's turn into installed bits, which you can verify as so:

But then, it didn't automatically show up in the Applications menu.  Further it didn't show up in the "Add Applications" window.  So, how to run the application and where did it get installed anyway?  This part was a little klunky, but there's a decent solution.

First was to find the installation.  I know that one file which is installed is named 'soffice' so that's what I looked for:


Then I tried running it directly from the command line, and it worked fine.  Next the question was how to nicely integrate it into my environment on this computer.

First I right clicked on the top menu bar and select Add To Panel.  The next window gives several sources of things to add, and I selected Custom Application Launcher.  That switches you to a different window into which you enter the Name (e.g. "Star office 8"), the Command (the path found above) and the Icon.  For the Icon a useful one is included with the Star Office installation, just click the Browse button, go to the directory found above and search around for the icons.

That gives you a clickable icon which launches the application.  This is around 90% as useful as entering choices into the Applications menu.

I don't know how to tell Nautilis to associate Star Office with the Open Document file formats.  There isn't any preferences for associating applications with given file formats, and the Preferred Applications system preferences window doesn't cover this issue.

I did get Firefox to remember an association with Star Office.  When downloading a file with Star Office, select the open in application choice, click on Browse, browse to the application as found earlier, and select that.  From then on Firefox will open the Open Document files using Star Office.

BTW, the new OOo/Star Office user interface is fabulous.

(2005-11-17 00:54:20.0) Permalink Comments [6]

The new systems and "eco-responsibility" Okay, we got this new buzzword to attach to computer systems:  eco responsibility.

Hurm, it may sound a little strange to attach that word to something meant to stay running 24/7 regardless of whether it's doing anything useful or not.  Leaving a server running full time is kind of like leaving a lightbulb on all day while you're at work.  That electricity got wasted, you just wasted some money, and the fossil fuel burned to provide that electricity still poisined the air even though it was pure waste.

On the other hand, if you're going to have a machine turned on and doing something it is ecologically responsible to study how to optimize the energy use of that machine.

And, it's not just ecologically responsible, but the power savings will contribute to the corporate bottom line in lower costs.

And just why is this important?  Let me spin your mind back a few years -- California, late 90's, the .COM is booming before the .BUST.  But one of the strange things happening is the rolling blackout phenomenon.  The newspapers are full of stories about the power situation.  It wasn't until later that we learned that GW Bush's buddies at Enron were ripping off California. 

What instead the newspaper discussed was how with the rise of "server farms" the power needs density metrics the electric power industry had lived by were going out the window.  A server farm is a dense packing of servers into a building, with air conditioning out the wazoo to keep it all from melting down.  The power needs of a server farm tended to equal the needs of small towns, in just one building.  THIS, the newspapers claimed, was the source of the blackouts, the rapid rise in power demands.

Clearly the hotter each individual computer runs, the worse the problem is.  Each hot computer heats the room, meaning more air conditioning, and more air conditioning means more electricity required for cooling.  It doesn't take an air conditioning specialist to understand that.

On the other hand if the servers run cool, not as much air conditioning is needed, meaning less power than the hot computers.  That to me, as a part-time environmentalist, is the gold of the Niagra announcement.  That the chip has all those threads and can so gracefully interleave thread execution is great and I'm sure will mean for a huge jump in system performance.  But to also do so with lower direct power consumption, as well as lower indirect power consumption (air conditioning) is the icing on the cake.

See, the fossil fuels that get burned today to create the power we use - that stuff isn't going to be replaced any time soon.  When the fossil fuels run out "we", the modern societies, had better have developed alternative energy technologies that makes sense (and, no, nuke power just doesn't make sense).  If we don't do so, well, let me remind you of the Mad Max movies. 

In fact it appears the world is a lot closer to the oil peak, and perhaps the natural gas peak, than the world's people understand.  I think there's a lot of denial going on, with the SUV problem being a symptom of that denial, and that stupid illegal war in Iraq being another symptom.  (Not to mention the threat to invade Syria and/or Iran).  In denial, "we" the modern societies would continue to wastefully assume the fossil fuel power industries can supply us with power forever, and continue to stupidly refuse to do anything about it.  Witness our idiot President and the oil-laden National Energy Policy.

I for one am glad to work for a company that wants to do something positive about this issue.

There's some web pages to help you understand what the official line on this is.  The official line is obviously not going to be quite as rabid as I am on this issue.
(2005-11-14 08:43:23.0) Permalink Comments [1]