If you're in the SF Bay Area check out http://geeksessions.com/ where Gleb Budman from Backblaze will be speaking about the Storage Pod and their approach to Network & Infrastructure scalability along with engineers from Zynga, Yahoo!, and Boundary. This event will also have a live stream on geeksessions.com.
The source of funds is very important. Paid Ads would implicitly mean corruption and sponsor controlled information.
What's important here is not "Jimmy's Begging Mug vs. Ugly Teeth Whitening Ads". Both are unpleasant to look at but the Ads implicitly cause corruption. Period...
Thanks about it: Pepsi spends a lot on advertising, Pepsi owns Taco Bell. If Taco Bell uses an ingredient which is suspected to cause cancer, I'd like to read about that on Wikipedia! I WONT BE ABLE TO if PepsiCo is funding Wikipedia! Then Wikipedia is just like every other 0wned source of information. Untrustworthy.
Wikipedia isn't perfect. As some have said, humans are flawed. We all try to make it go our way. We all try to "game" the system. Maybe Wikipedia's information is biased by editors with an agenda, but adding the automatic corruption of corporate sponsorship is not the answer.
The reasons to write an OSS app for Andriod or iPhone are the same as any other open source software.
I developed an Open Source game for the iPhone called Dark Nova. We're looking at porting it to Andriod right now. The game is based off Space Trader for the Palm which is itself GPL.
Dark Nova is open source. We build the retail app from the Google Code repo. We charge $1 for the game in the App Store. So far this has worked out pretty well. We've had an OSS developer contribute some helpful code. Starting with a port instead of from scratch lowered the initial risk/investment for a 1st time app developer.
Our game is for sale and we're making money on it. The code is under the Apache License. The graphics and music are copyrighted and the name is trademarked. I think it's a great model and holds true to the path laid out by Red Hat and others. If someone wants to take the trouble the "roll-their-own" they can have the game for free. Most folks just pay the dollar. If someone wants to use the code. It's up there. If someone wants to help, they can.
Of course the motivation of this post is a shameless plug. This is my first OSS project and I could use any help/advice I can get with development or management of the project. The Dark Nova Google Code site is here
This tech was described in a fair amount of detail in the 1990 book "Earth" by David Brin.
Quote from Earth: "She took a subvocal input device from its rack and placed the attached sensors on her throat, jaw, and temples. A faint glitter in the display screens meant the machine was already tracking her eyes, noting by curvature of lens and angle of pupil the exact spot on which she focused at any moment.
She didn't have to speak aloud, only intend to. The subvocal read nerve signals, letting her enter words by just beginning to will them. It was much faster than any normal speech input device... and more cantankerous as well. Jen adjusted the sensitivity level so it wouldn't pick up each tiny tremor - a growing problem as her once athletic body turned wiry and inexact with age. Still, she vowed to hold onto this rare skill as long as possible."
The next geekSessions is on this topic. If you're interested in hearing about alternatives to RDBMS in and using them in practice, take a look at the site. The event will be held on October 2nd in downtown SF and will also be available via webcast. In addition to the presentations, we'll have a Q&A session along with some food and FREE BEER.
Speakers at the event are:
Josh Berkus from the PostgreSQL core team
Paul Querna from Apache and Bloglines (wrote his own filesystem for Bloglines)
Chad Walters from Powerset who is implementing BigTable there.
Easy there fella. Yes, there are a lot of damn fine, very smart people living in Wyoming. That was never in question. Some of them are relatives of mine in fact. But that's not the point.
Having a computer doesn't make you smart, nor does the absence of one make you stupid.
I'm simply saying that people in certain areas have more accessibility to technology than in others. Additionally, I do strongly believe that we "ain't seen nothin'yet" in terms of internet use.
Cheap powerful accessible hardware, ubiquitous broadband, and the maturation of web technologies will kick off a 2nd stage boost in net usage that will make the last 10 years look like a snail trail.
I live in San Francisco where you'd think the Internet was as pervasive as the air we breathe, and to some degree it is. But I'm originally from Wyoming, (no broke back mountain jokes please) and I can tell you that most people there don't have computers.
What they do have however, is Playstations and Xbox's. The reasons why are numerous. Cost, lack of options, etc.
I believe that the next generation consoles, particularly the PS3, along with Ajaxy Web 2.0 and the continued proliferation of broadband to the home, will truly start to bring the Internet to the masses.
A computer is still intimidating and a tough sell to a lot of these people... but a $300 game machine that your 4 kids are begging for, that's an easy sell.
Once they discover that it has a decent web browser and that there's a whole new world of communication and content out there... then things will start to really grow.
Before we had the awesome MPEG4 based DIVX encoder format, there was Circuit City's DIVX, a "Pay-Per-View" or limited-play DVD scheme that was introduced in 1997 and failed had by 1999.
DIVX in its day was irrelevant at best and hated at worst. Good to see MS is still willing to throw good money after bad.
Here's all you'll ever need to know about the original self destructing DVD format:
These technologies can not be compared in an apples-to-apples fashion. Clustering solves performance AND reliability problems. Fault Tolerance just solves reliability issues.
Performance + Reliability = Clustering
Reliability alone = Fault Tolerance
-Jim
"money is the purest form of energy on this planet"
Hmm.. so your environment is Cisco, but there are no Cisco classes in your area... but on the other hand, Cisco education is much more widely distributed than any other type of networking training... Wait... why don't you just go to Cisco training again?
Sure, there's Juniper, etc. But the reality is that Cisco still has the most comprehensive, practical, network training on the planet.
Classes aren't good for much except the Lab. In the lecture they basically read the book to you, so if you can read for yourself, you might save some money by hitting Ebay for your lab equipment and Amazon for your training material.
Well, after leaving San Francisco in 2000 to start my own software development firm, I returned in August of 2003 after said development firm went belly up.
I was "shocked" and "awed" at the carnage in the bay area from a job perspective. Friends that still had jobs hadn't had a raise in 3 years. Most people either didn't have jobs or had moved to other areas to find work.
I was repeatedly shocked at how hard it was to find a job and how long it took each company to evaluate potential candidates. It would often take several interviews that spanned months before hearing a "We'll keep you in our database" from a prospective job.
My ego broken, I considered ending it all... and going to work as a caffeine pusher for Starbucks. An hour later I was talking to a Sys Admin friend who mentioned that he had just been turned down for a job a Starbucks due to "lack if Barista experience". This man has a Computer Science degree from Berkeley and he couldn't get a job serving coffee. That's how bad it was my friends.
Shortly after my lowest point something changed. I could feel myself getting closer. I revamped my resume AGAIN and tripled my application output. Then, suddenly, almost a full year later, it happened. I got 3 job offers in one day. After a year of nothing, 3 in one day. I did what any starving animal would do. I took all 3 positions. but that's a whole other story...
Anyway, things have definitely changed. I'm now working for a consulting firm for close to my Y2K salary. The firm I work for is hiring about 5-10 techies a week and that number seems to be increasing.
Aeron chairs and jacking around at work is part of what put the hose out in the first place. I'm happy to have a job, happy for a 2.5 hour round trip commute, and happy yo do whatever it takes to stay in the circles of the gainfully employed.
All in all, I'd say it's a whole lot better than it was and is still improving.
Buhahaha... The reality is that Microsoft has continuously failed in EVERY new venture it has ever attempted when it us unable to force feed it to users via it's OS monopoly. Period.
Case in point:
Windows CE - After many years and many many Palm still dominates PDA's, not to mention Linux in the embedded market!
MSN - A large cost center that only gets hits until people figure out they can change their start page, or better yet their browser!
Ultimate TV - MS to own your living room. What happened to that?
Microsoft Money - Despite MS giving it away, EVERYONE still uses quicken.
Xbox - Another financial retard, still born and being kept alive by Daddy Gates deep pockets.
The list goes on and on... the fact is that outside of the core monopoly, they've never seen a financial success. Despite their best efforts. Given that history tends to repeat, I don't think Sony has much to worry about. At least not from MS. Sorry Steve.
IMHO the place that these distro's keep missing the target is when they try to do too much for too many.
Linux is massively customizable by its very nature regardless of how it's packaged. So let the people that want to customize every little aspect of their system figure it out for themselves.
A desktop disto should be a windows workalike or work-better. Like Mozilla's Thunderbird or Firefox. That's how you steal market share... work better.
The desktop distro should be able to do (and do well) everything that a windows box can do from a default install. Workalike interface, SMB networking, browsing, mail, music and video, brainless hardware detection and configuration, printing, and IM. Out of the box, default install.
Anyone who has an answer to the question "KDE or Gnome?" does not need this sort of distro, But the rest of the world does.
If you want to see unix working better than windows on the desktop then you need look no further than OS X. OS X has it's problems too (like being handcuffed to Apple hardware), but it can do all of this out of the box, it's *nix and my grandma can (and does) use it.
### fictional code comment snipet ###
"The PhatBot team would like to shout a big thanks to the US Department of Infrastructure for their help in beta testing PhatBot!"
Yes... that guy is very sharp. But moving from 2D vision (tetris) to 3D vision (terrain) is a very big jump. It's just this kind of thing that has traditionally been very difficult for computers to handle well. Then try it at 60 MPH!;)
-JE
The challenge here is real-time processing of vision data to handle obstacle avoidance, etc.
They say that you can use "public navigation signals. So a GPS (and backup) receiver, along with a Digital Elevation Map of the area would be half the battle. But real-time stereoscopic vision is a bitch. The nice thing is that you can fit a whole lot of computing power into a medium sized car.
I suspect another big problem will be colliding with other bot cars... I'm thinking about running a Ford Pinto, which due to the placement of it's gas tank, will explode on impact. At least that away the other robot cars will FEAR mine and stay away;)
-JE
"You're always going to have problems moving a body in one piece" -- Brick Top
First off, you said your self that you work for a big ISP. That means that they have the resources to pay someone like you to monitor this type of thing. That's not the case for "Joe 4U" that just has a couple of boxes in a rack.
Second, I said DOS... and I said INCOMING. If someone pulls your subnets from ARIN and starts doing variable UDP DDOS attacks against oh.. I dunno say your DNS servers... what are you going to do? Shut down DNS? Block all UDP? I think not.
The point key point I'm making is that I can make you eat a packet. If it's UDP, I can spoof my source address, so good luck blocking it by IP. Give me you're IP's and I'll show you want I mean;)
I own a small networking company that subleases space out of Exodus locations. And I'm telling you, it's not feasible to ask the average CoLo customer to do 24hr bandwidth monitoring, and real-time assessment of threats / packetshaping. When "Joe 4U" is asleep for 8 hours and his box is getting 100Mbits per second in DDOS traffic. There's a problem.
The ISP has the resources and the expertise to solve the problem. It amounts to signing users up to an agreement that allows the ISP to "automatically" take action to prevent this type of unintentional bandwidth usage in the even that they can not contact the customer. Then you block it upstream and Joe 4U doesn't have to take you to court for his $10,000 bill.
The problem with billing for excessive inbound traffic is that the user has absolutely no control over what they receive.
You can have the most sophisticated firewall on the planet, but due the immutable laws of IPv4 you can NOT drop a packet until you see the packet. At which point you've already used the bandwidth (and incurred the cost) required to transport the packet that you're just going to drop.
This has nothing to do with patching your server. If you don't patch your server, and you get hit with a worm, and your box starts consuming huge amounts of bandwidth to attack other hosts, then it's your fault, and its OUTBOUND traffic, and you absolutely should pay for it. But having your server patched does not stop you from receiving inbound packets. They may not harm your server when they get to it, but you already paid for the transit.
BTW, This is why it's illegal for a telemarketer to call you on your cell phone. Because in theory you had to answer the call (and incur expense) BEFORE you knew who was on the other end.
This is a similar issue, except that we're not talking about telemarketers... which are businesses that more or less follow the rules. We're talking about script kiddies that don't care about the rules. Or in a worse case, we're talking about a competitor, or enemy, or rival that just wants to DOS you for a month until you go out of business because of all the excess bandwidth charges you're paying!
The technology limits the liability of the consumer. The ISP must take some responsibility here and put systems in place that protect the consumer.
Slashdot Mirror
If you're in the SF Bay Area check out http://geeksessions.com/ where Gleb Budman from Backblaze will be speaking about the Storage Pod and their approach to Network & Infrastructure scalability along with engineers from Zynga, Yahoo!, and Boundary. This event will also have a live stream on geeksessions.com.
Full Disclosure: This is my event.
50% discount to the event (about $8 bucks and free beer) for the Slashdot crowd here: http://gs22.eventbrite.com/?discount=slashdot
The source of funds is very important. Paid Ads would implicitly mean corruption and sponsor controlled information.
What's important here is not "Jimmy's Begging Mug vs. Ugly Teeth Whitening Ads". Both are unpleasant to look at but the Ads implicitly cause corruption. Period...
Thanks about it: Pepsi spends a lot on advertising, Pepsi owns Taco Bell. If Taco Bell uses an ingredient which is suspected to cause cancer, I'd like to read about that on Wikipedia! I WONT BE ABLE TO if PepsiCo is funding Wikipedia! Then Wikipedia is just like every other 0wned source of information. Untrustworthy.
Wikipedia isn't perfect. As some have said, humans are flawed. We all try to make it go our way. We all try to "game" the system. Maybe Wikipedia's information is biased by editors with an agenda, but adding the automatic corruption of corporate sponsorship is not the answer.
Duh... all that and I don't include the code link. CODE IS HERE!!! aka https://code.google.com/p/darknova-iphone/
The reasons to write an OSS app for Andriod or iPhone are the same as any other open source software.
I developed an Open Source game for the iPhone called Dark Nova. We're looking at porting it to Andriod right now. The game is based off Space Trader for the Palm which is itself GPL.
Dark Nova is open source. We build the retail app from the Google Code repo. We charge $1 for the game in the App Store. So far this has worked out pretty well. We've had an OSS developer contribute some helpful code. Starting with a port instead of from scratch lowered the initial risk/investment for a 1st time app developer.
Our game is for sale and we're making money on it. The code is under the Apache License. The graphics and music are copyrighted and the name is trademarked. I think it's a great model and holds true to the path laid out by Red Hat and others. If someone wants to take the trouble the "roll-their-own" they can have the game for free. Most folks just pay the dollar. If someone wants to use the code. It's up there. If someone wants to help, they can.
Of course the motivation of this post is a shameless plug. This is my first OSS project and I could use any help/advice I can get with development or management of the project. The Dark Nova Google Code site is here
Quote from Earth: "She took a subvocal input device from its rack and placed the attached sensors on her throat, jaw, and temples. A faint glitter in the display screens meant the machine was already tracking her eyes, noting by curvature of lens and angle of pupil the exact spot on which she focused at any moment.
She didn't have to speak aloud, only intend to. The subvocal read nerve signals, letting her enter words by just beginning to will them. It was much faster than any normal speech input device... and more cantankerous as well. Jen adjusted the sensitivity level so it wouldn't pick up each tiny tremor - a growing problem as her once athletic body turned wiry and inexact with age. Still, she vowed to hold onto this rare skill as long as possible."
Once again Sci Fi pwns reality...
The next geekSessions is on this topic. If you're interested in hearing about alternatives to RDBMS in and using them in practice, take a look at the site. The event will be held on October 2nd in downtown SF and will also be available via webcast. In addition to the presentations, we'll have a Q&A session along with some food and FREE BEER. Speakers at the event are:
Josh Berkus from the PostgreSQL core team
Paul Querna from Apache and Bloglines (wrote his own filesystem for Bloglines)
Chad Walters from Powerset who is implementing BigTable there.
Hope to see you there!
Having a computer doesn't make you smart, nor does the absence of one make you stupid.
I'm simply saying that people in certain areas have more accessibility to technology than in others. Additionally, I do strongly believe that we "ain't seen nothin'yet" in terms of internet use.
Cheap powerful accessible hardware, ubiquitous broadband, and the maturation of web technologies will kick off a 2nd stage boost in net usage that will make the last 10 years look like a snail trail.
SHON
I live in San Francisco where you'd think the Internet was as pervasive as the air we breathe, and to some degree it is. But I'm originally from Wyoming, (no broke back mountain jokes please) and I can tell you that most people there don't have computers.
What they do have however, is Playstations and Xbox's. The reasons why are numerous. Cost, lack of options, etc.
I believe that the next generation consoles, particularly the PS3, along with Ajaxy Web 2.0 and the continued proliferation of broadband to the home, will truly start to bring the Internet to the masses.
A computer is still intimidating and a tough sell to a lot of these people... but a $300 game machine that your 4 kids are begging for, that's an easy sell.
Once they discover that it has a decent web browser and that there's a whole new world of communication and content out there... then things will start to really grow.
DIVX in its day was irrelevant at best and hated at worst. Good to see MS is still willing to throw good money after bad.
Here's all you'll ever need to know about the original self destructing DVD format:
DIVX Bites The Dust
These technologies can not be compared in an apples-to-apples fashion. Clustering solves performance AND reliability problems. Fault Tolerance just solves reliability issues.
Performance + Reliability = Clustering
Reliability alone = Fault Tolerance
-Jim
"money is the purest form of energy on this planet"
You gotta love a Zombie that plays by the rules...
It'll be interesting to see how this effects ISP's Service Agreements:
"The customer, nor any device connected to the customer's network will not for any reason, send emails regarding 'P3n15 Enl4rgm3n7!!!', etc.. etc.."
Buuhahaha...
Hmm.. so your environment is Cisco, but there are no Cisco classes in your area... but on the other hand, Cisco education is much more widely distributed than any other type of networking training... Wait... why don't you just go to Cisco training again?
Sure, there's Juniper, etc. But the reality is that Cisco still has the most comprehensive, practical, network training on the planet.
Classes aren't good for much except the Lab. In the lecture they basically read the book to you, so if you can read for yourself, you might save some money by hitting Ebay for your lab equipment and Amazon for your training material.
Well, after leaving San Francisco in 2000 to start my own software development firm, I returned in August of 2003 after said development firm went belly up.
I was "shocked" and "awed" at the carnage in the bay area from a job perspective. Friends that still had jobs hadn't had a raise in 3 years. Most people either didn't have jobs or had moved to other areas to find work.
I was repeatedly shocked at how hard it was to find a job and how long it took each company to evaluate potential candidates. It would often take several interviews that spanned months before hearing a "We'll keep you in our database" from a prospective job.
My ego broken, I considered ending it all... and going to work as a caffeine pusher for Starbucks. An hour later I was talking to a Sys Admin friend who mentioned that he had just been turned down for a job a Starbucks due to "lack if Barista experience". This man has a Computer Science degree from Berkeley and he couldn't get a job serving coffee. That's how bad it was my friends.
Shortly after my lowest point something changed. I could feel myself getting closer. I revamped my resume AGAIN and tripled my application output. Then, suddenly, almost a full year later, it happened. I got 3 job offers in one day. After a year of nothing, 3 in one day. I did what any starving animal would do. I took all 3 positions. but that's a whole other story...
Anyway, things have definitely changed. I'm now working for a consulting firm for close to my Y2K salary. The firm I work for is hiring about 5-10 techies a week and that number seems to be increasing.
Aeron chairs and jacking around at work is part of what put the hose out in the first place. I'm happy to have a job, happy for a 2.5 hour round trip commute, and happy yo do whatever it takes to stay in the circles of the gainfully employed.
All in all, I'd say it's a whole lot better than it was and is still improving.
Now thanks to that statistic the hired goons of the MPAA and RIAA will be trying to break the Donkey's legs.
"Knock, knock, who's there?
Goons.
Who?
Hired goons.
punch-beat-pummel-club-club-stab..."
Case in point:
Windows CE - After many years and many many Palm still dominates PDA's, not to mention Linux in the embedded market!
MSN - A large cost center that only gets hits until people figure out they can change their start page, or better yet their browser!
Ultimate TV - MS to own your living room. What happened to that?
Microsoft Money - Despite MS giving it away, EVERYONE still uses quicken.
Xbox - Another financial retard, still born and being kept alive by Daddy Gates deep pockets.
The list goes on and on... the fact is that outside of the core monopoly, they've never seen a financial success. Despite their best efforts. Given that history tends to repeat, I don't think Sony has much to worry about. At least not from MS. Sorry Steve.
IMHO the place that these distro's keep missing the target is when they try to do too much for too many.
Linux is massively customizable by its very nature regardless of how it's packaged. So let the people that want to customize every little aspect of their system figure it out for themselves.
A desktop disto should be a windows workalike or work-better. Like Mozilla's Thunderbird or Firefox. That's how you steal market share... work better.
The desktop distro should be able to do (and do well) everything that a windows box can do from a default install. Workalike interface, SMB networking, browsing, mail, music and video, brainless hardware detection and configuration, printing, and IM. Out of the box, default install.
Anyone who has an answer to the question "KDE or Gnome?" does not need this sort of distro, But the rest of the world does.
If you want to see unix working better than windows on the desktop then you need look no further than OS X. OS X has it's problems too (like being handcuffed to Apple hardware), but it can do all of this out of the box, it's *nix and my grandma can (and does) use it.
### fictional code comment snipet ### "The PhatBot team would like to shout a big thanks to the US Department of Infrastructure for their help in beta testing PhatBot!"
Damn! I knew I should have kept working on my Volkswagon bug with The Club based steering system and the Brick based throtle control.
Someone needs to cut the "Bush Asshole Mosaic" into some new military silicon... Let's put that money to good use!
So that's it! The question and answer to life, the universe and everything...
Q: "How many days does it take for spam output to double?"
A: "42!"
Douglas Adams would be so proud...
-JE
-JE
Yes... that guy is very sharp. But moving from 2D vision (tetris) to 3D vision (terrain) is a very big jump. It's just this kind of thing that has traditionally been very difficult for computers to handle well. Then try it at 60 MPH! ;)
-JE
The challenge here is real-time processing of vision data to handle obstacle avoidance, etc.
;)
They say that you can use "public navigation signals. So a GPS (and backup) receiver, along with a Digital Elevation Map of the area would be half the battle. But real-time stereoscopic vision is a bitch. The nice thing is that you can fit a whole lot of computing power into a medium sized car.
I suspect another big problem will be colliding with other bot cars... I'm thinking about running a Ford Pinto, which due to the placement of it's gas tank, will explode on impact. At least that away the other robot cars will FEAR mine and stay away
-JE
"You're always going to have problems moving a body in one piece" -- Brick Top
First off, you said your self that you work for a big ISP. That means that they have the resources to pay someone like you to monitor this type of thing. That's not the case for "Joe 4U" that just has a couple of boxes in a rack.
;)
Second, I said DOS... and I said INCOMING. If someone pulls your subnets from ARIN and starts doing variable UDP DDOS attacks against oh.. I dunno say your DNS servers... what are you going to do? Shut down DNS? Block all UDP? I think not.
The point key point I'm making is that I can make you eat a packet. If it's UDP, I can spoof my source address, so good luck blocking it by IP. Give me you're IP's and I'll show you want I mean
I own a small networking company that subleases space out of Exodus locations. And I'm telling you, it's not feasible to ask the average CoLo customer to do 24hr bandwidth monitoring, and real-time assessment of threats / packetshaping. When "Joe 4U" is asleep for 8 hours and his box is getting 100Mbits per second in DDOS traffic. There's a problem.
The ISP has the resources and the expertise to solve the problem. It amounts to signing users up to an agreement that allows the ISP to "automatically" take action to prevent this type of unintentional bandwidth usage in the even that they can not contact the customer. Then you block it upstream and Joe 4U doesn't have to take you to court for his $10,000 bill.
-JE
The problem with billing for excessive inbound traffic is that the user has absolutely no control over what they receive.
You can have the most sophisticated firewall on the planet, but due the immutable laws of IPv4 you can NOT drop a packet until you see the packet. At which point you've already used the bandwidth (and incurred the cost) required to transport the packet that you're just going to drop.
This has nothing to do with patching your server. If you don't patch your server, and you get hit with a worm, and your box starts consuming huge amounts of bandwidth to attack other hosts, then it's your fault, and its OUTBOUND traffic, and you absolutely should pay for it. But having your server patched does not stop you from receiving inbound packets. They may not harm your server when they get to it, but you already paid for the transit.
BTW, This is why it's illegal for a telemarketer to call you on your cell phone. Because in theory you had to answer the call (and incur expense) BEFORE you knew who was on the other end.
This is a similar issue, except that we're not talking about telemarketers... which are businesses that more or less follow the rules. We're talking about script kiddies that don't care about the rules. Or in a worse case, we're talking about a competitor, or enemy, or rival that just wants to DOS you for a month until you go out of business because of all the excess bandwidth charges you're paying!
The technology limits the liability of the consumer. The ISP must take some responsibility here and put systems in place that protect the consumer.
-JE
Anime and The Matrix! Two Great Tastes That Taste Great Together! I even Shutdown eMule to download this ;)
-JE