On The Margins

Wednesday June 18, 2008

[ Technology ] PostgreSQL Surveys

PostgreSQL.org community pages contain some interesting surveys.

2008-06-18 00:22:43.0 -- Comments [0] ; Permalink ; Trackback.
databases postgresql software surveys technology

Sunday June 15, 2008

[ Technology ] A PostgreSQL Monitor

Jignesh Shah has implemented a simple PostgreSQL monitor using Netbeans 6.1, which also has facilities to make packaging and distribution of a Java app much easier.

2008-06-15 22:24:14.0 -- Comments [0] ; Permalink ; Trackback.
databases monitor postgresql

[ Society ] Opinions and Social Pressure

Solomon E. Asch's "Opinions and Social Pressure" (Scientific American, Vol 193, No. 5, 1955) was probably one of the best papers I read during an organizational behavior class I took at Haas School of Business during my studies there. (Barry M. Staw has published the paper in his Psychological Dimensions of Organizational Behavior. The 2nd edition had the paper, and I'm sure Professor Staw has kept it for his 3rd edition. )

A BBC radio program gives very good summary of the paper and Asch's other research on social pressure and conformity.

The following video (posted on Youtube) presents a summary sense of one of Asch's conformity experiments:

2008-06-15 13:13:06.0 -- Comments [0] ; Permalink ; Trackback.
evidence ideas opinion pressure social

Saturday June 14, 2008

[ Persian (فارسی) ] II ‍‍پیروزی II‍‍

2008-06-14 12:54:18.0 -- Comments [0] ; Permalink ; Trackback.
پیروزی

Sunday June 08, 2008

[ Work ] Subtle Significance of Job Satisfaction

I quote the following passage from the conclusion to Dennis W. Organ's paper ("The subtle significance of job satisfaction," Clinical Laboratory Management Review, (Jan/Feb 1990) 4, no.1, 94-98):

Management research and theory have taken a long time and a torturous path in catching up with the insights of Chester Barnard. More than half a century ago, Barnard noted the essential condition of the "willingness of persons to contribute efforts to the cooperative system." This quality of willingness "is something different from effectiveness, ability, or value of personal contributions...[it] means self abnegation." Willingness is characterized by "[an] indefinitely large range of variations in its intensity among individuals" and, within individuals, "it cannot be constant in degree." Finally, this "willingness to cooperate, positive or negative, is the expression of net satisfactions and dissatisfactions experienced or anticipated."

Barnard underscored the very nature of organizations as cooperative systems. Rules, structures, policies, job descriptions, sanctions, incentives—they all play necessary roles in collaborative endeavors, but as derivatives of, not substitutes for, the underlying disposition to cooperate. Such a disposition can be sustained only by a sense of organization as a microcosm of a just world. Occasional inequities can be tolerated if there is faith that the system works fairly over the long run, with self-correcting tendencies. When faith leads to a narrowly defined, quid pro quo contractual relationship, the disposition to cooperate ebbs. Surveys show that most of the nation's labor force begins work with a fairly high degree of job satisfaction and that most of the people, most of the time, will describe themselves as "all in all, satisfied." There is a generally prevalent inclination to give the employer the benefit of a doubt—"I'll assume you're treating me fairly until you persuade me otherwise." So the disposition is generally present to render a substantial contribution via OCB [Organizational Citizenship Behavior]. A good-faith effort by managers to provide a "square deal" will do much to ensure the quality of OCB.

2008-06-08 23:04:01.0 -- ; Permalink ; Trackback.
business citizenship civility economics psychology sociology work

Tuesday June 03, 2008

[ Design ] MIT Online Courseware

MIT Online Courseware has gotten better and better with time.

2008-06-03 23:02:46.0 -- ; Permalink ; Trackback.
courseware education knowledge

Monday June 02, 2008

[ Technology ] Community Statistics for Netbeans Database Usage

"The database support in NetBeans allows users to connect to a database and view and modify the database structure and data. These graphs show which database servers users connect to most often." Of particular note, besides the large usage of MySQL and Oracle, is the large usage of Java DB (Derby), and the significant PostgreSQL usage.

2008-06-02 13:20:38.0 -- ; Permalink ; Trackback.
databases development java javadb mysql netbeans opensource postgresql programming server software technology tools

Sunday June 01, 2008

[ Art (هنر) ] Modern Persian Ceramic and Carpets

A friend sent me a link to an interesting video report on a ceramic exhibition by Iranian women artists posted on Jadid ("new") Online. (Interviewees in the report speak in Persian but you can read the English subtitles which provide pretty good translation.)

Jadid Online's report on carpets by the late Iranian artist, Abolfath Rassam-Arabzadeh, contains an amazing display of his works described by his daughter, Zhila, with a sneak view into the museum and workshop built in his honor in Tehran.

Apparently, a Japanese museum had once offered $11 million for one of Arabzadeh's works containing several scenes from Persian poet Ferdowsi's Shahnameh. 

2008-06-01 11:46:43.0 -- ; Permalink ; Trackback.
art ceramics iran persian women

Saturday May 31, 2008

[ Networks ] The tortuous path to Internet research

Oddly, tonight, when I try to find and browse (on my iMac w/ OS-X Leopard) Pew Internet and American Life Project, one of the most credible Internet watchers, using Google Search, I may end up in a place containing a warning that "visiting this web site may harm your computer" or what Google calls a "Malware Warning"—apparently "Google has found that some portion of pewinternet.org/ contains or links to badware or otherwise violates Google's software guidelines."

Now, I used to visit Pew Internet and American Life Project, often, because it has absolutely wonderful papers and research on the use of the Internet.

So, what's all of Google's malware warning about, and what are "Google's software guidelines" which need to be imposed on web sites before Google search would direct the search user to the object of their search, directly and simply?

2008-05-31 01:50:01.0 -- ; Permalink ; Trackback.
information internet

Thursday May 22, 2008

[ Technology ] Sun OpenSolaris on Amazon Web Services

Simone Brunozzi writes about availability of OpenSolaris on Amazon Web Services.

2008-05-22 21:31:38.0 -- Comments [1] ; Permalink ; Trackback.
cloud-computing internet opensolaris opensource services software solaris technology web web2.0

[ Networks ] PGCon 2008

After two days of PostgreSQL tutorials, several evenings of gatherings and a hackers' meeting, PGCon 2008 sessions began today.

Yesterday, Yahoo did make an important announcement having to do with their leveraging of PostgreSQL source base to build a system to run the largest database in the world. Reports of Yahoo's work can be found at InformationWeek ("Yahoo Claims Record with Petabyte Database") and ComputerWorld ("Size Matters: Yahoo Claims 2-Petabyte Database is the World's Biggest").

I wrote this while sitting in Andrew Sullivan's session on PostgreSQL project management. During Q&A, people discussed how to manage various feature proposals.

I should probably note here that a couple of weeks before the PGCon, we heard about a major US research institution looking into 64 bit PostgreSQL on Solaris for a large astronomy project.

(Note: Sun Microsystems already sells PostgreSQL support for Solaris. You can also learn more about OpenSolaris and databases for OpenSolaris, here.) 

2008-05-22 08:53:11.0 -- ; Permalink ; Trackback.
databases opensource postgresql

Monday May 12, 2008

[ Personal ] 10 Patents

Here are some of my patent applications. Of course, there are other places to look for patent information. Google has a nice patent search interface. So, for example, you can look at my patent number 7,000,228.

2008-05-12 17:44:03.0 -- ; Permalink ; Trackback.
inventions

Saturday May 10, 2008

[ Technology ] DTrace Probes for Databases

Robert Lor has listed potential standard DTrace probes for databases and some PostgreSQL-specific probes.

2008-05-10 04:22:10.0 -- ; Permalink ; Trackback.
databases dtrace monitoring performance postgresql probes

Thursday May 08, 2008

[ Sun Microsystems Inc. ] Who Dons the Java DB T-Shirt

Giuseppe Maxia took this picture at JavaOne, 2008, just a couple of days ago. It shows Marten Mickos (MySQL) donning the Java DB T-Shirt and giving a friendly hug to PostgreSQL evangelist Josh Berkus. That's how the story of the three open-source databases from Sun will keep unfolding. Many observers have noted that customers and developers will have great choices to work with: the premier open-source DB for web applications, the premier open-source DB for demanding enterprise and reporting applications, and the premier open-source DB for embedding in Java applications. All from the same company. Sun!

2008-05-08 23:41:34.0 -- ; Permalink ; Trackback.
databases javadb javaone mysql postgresql sun

Wednesday May 07, 2008

[ Networks ] The Self-Ordering Chaos of Communities

In the chaos of their buzz and movement, bees build amazingly ordered nests for their young.  So do many communities of practice.

2008-05-07 23:30:42.0 -- Comments [2] ; Permalink ; Trackback.
bees chaos communities order programming software technology

Tuesday May 06, 2008

[ Media ] Connecting News Sources

As I was driving back from Java One in San Francisco Monday evening, I listened to the BBC report on KQED.

The BBC carried a 5-minute-long report on Iraq, describing the "conflict" there and the immense rise in poverty and lack of basic services, without once managing to mention that taboo word: "occupation".

In the morning, Financial Times carried a picture on the front page describing how sophisticated military equipment was being used to create an exclusion zone around the oil terminals in southern Iraq, from whence 1.5  million barrels of oil were carried away every day on British, Australian and American ships.

For how long can a country be dispossessed of its resources, supply the world with vast quantities of oil and live under military occupation by foreign powers, with vast parts of its population reduced to abject poverty with every passing day?

2008-05-06 22:20:27.0 -- ; Permalink ; Trackback.
digital iraq media news occupation

Monday May 05, 2008

[ Java ] JavaOne 2008

I will be at JavaOne 2008 for most of this week.

2008-05-05 08:05:21.0 -- Comments [2] ; Permalink ; Trackback.
conferences developers java

[ Technology ] PG on Mac

The PostgreSQL 7.3 installation instructions for Mac OS-X also work well for installing PostreSQL 8.3. The changes you need to make to these instructions should be obvious. On Tiger, building PostgreSQL from source will require XCode 2.5 Developer Tools from Apple, which is a free download for members of ADC.

(By the way, if you're using PostgreSQL on Solaris and need support, you can purchase it directly from Sun.)

2008-05-05 00:39:46.0 -- ; Permalink ; Trackback.
mac postgresql

Saturday May 03, 2008

[ Persian (فارسی) ] Lunch with Great Grandma

Lunch with Great Grandma, Tehran, Iran (July 2006)
Originally uploaded by M.Mortazavi

My younger daughter, when 8, prepared these side dishes and salads for a lunch with her great grandmother.

The photo, two years old, fills the space with freshness.

When I was a child, my grandmother used to take me shopping for these types of ingredients.

The baskets would get full, and I would insist on carrying some of them.

2008-05-03 23:30:59.0 -- ; Permalink ; Trackback.
family food persia travel

Monday April 28, 2008

[ Technology ] Java DB 10.4.1

The 10.4.1 version of Java DB, the world's most advanced Java database, has some really cool features -- asynchronous replication, table functions and JMX capabilities.

Sun engineers worked within the Apache/Derby community to develop these features: A great team. A great product. A great community! 

If you're a serious user of Java DB (and/or of Apache Derby) and plan to use this product in your business, you should consider the multi-platform, software support services for Java DB -- Sun's distribution of Apache Derby -- available at some amazing bargain prices at various service plan levels.

Sun provides support service plans for Java DB, which is, for all practical purposes, identical to Apache Derby.

2008-04-28 18:05:26.0 -- Comments [3] ; Permalink ; Trackback.
databases java services software support technology