Sigil.us

Life :: Todo

Well the weather has turned which means (in Michigan anyway) productivity reigns. In addition to my normal work I would like to accomplish the following by June:

• Write one webscale application in Grails
• Write one webscale application in Ruby on Rails
• Write some horribly convoluted shell app that demonstrates all features of bash shell scripting as an exercise
• Apply for a design patent on the idea backing the Grails application
• Complete RHCE RedHat Certified Engineer certification
• Complete SCSA Sun Certified System Administrator certification

I think the only really irritating item on the list is the SCSA cert. I will need to buy a crappy sparc box to get used to openboot again. Wish I could afford a T1000 at least I could use that for something when I was done. Also not a huge fan of Solaris 10 but it will pay to be certified because I would imagine most contract work would involve Solaris 10 -> 11 migrations or Solaris 10 -> RedHat (bummer).

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Monetary Theory :: The power of the dollar

Last night at a Traverse City commission meeting I had the pleasure of listening to Michael Moore digress about free market economics in relation to a contract monopoly Carmike Cinemas has on mainstream movie showings in the Traverse City area. I will paraphrase his statement as I cannot remember the exact wording:

We cannot show <mainstream flicks> due to the contract monopoly held by a certain theater company in garfield township. However we operate in a free market. How this is possible in a free market is beyond me <MM>. We should be able to show these movies, and in a truly free market we would be able to do so.

Statements like this truly perplex me. I will not put words into Mr. Moore’s mouth but of course he is referring to a government solution to the problem. IE monopoly busting. Again for all the talk about community involvement and community organization and community freedom, the very thought of using community to solve this problem seems to have eluded him.

In a free market it is not government, it is not free enterprise that has the power, it is the consumer. No one has more power than the consumer. Every dollar you spend is a vote. The freedom to spend that dollar as you will is the best way to regulate free enterprise at the community level NOT the government level. The consumer has the ultimate power to ruin any organization that is behaving in an unfairly competitive fashion.

By stating that a government solution is required to solve this issue Mr. Moore is stating that he has no faith in the community to organize to crush the monopoly. I am sorry, but if the community can resurrect a structure as dilapidated as The State Theatre it can also crush a geographical monopoly. We have in this age an unprecedented number of community tools that can aid communication and organization of such an action. The action just requires a little direction.

The real problem here is the individual. Americans have forgotten what it was like to sacrifice pleasure and entertainment for sound principles. If this is the true demon that Mr. Moore is targeting with his statements, I would tend to agree. In this day and age Americans deny themselves nothing, and at what cost?

So let’s experiment shall we? Fan this page if you think you can deny yourself the indulgence of the endless stream of crap flowing out of hollywood for long enough to make a difference:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Just-say-no-to-Carmike/179669213324

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Cloud Computing :: Companies to watch

Cloud Computing the latest tech buzzword. When discussing CC there are, for the most part, two types of companies. Those that allow you to build your own scalable web platforms on their ummm platform, and those that have their own scalable platform on which you can deploy your application.

Joyent
Joyent would fall into the first category. You can use their accelerator technology as building blocks for your own custom cloud based deployment.

What they are doing right (brief):

• NO VIRTUAL DISKS. Unlike amazon you are NOT going to have IO issues at Joyent. virtual disks are not used, all file system access is native.
• NO CONTRACTS. Turn up. Turn down yay!
• PERFORMANCE. Since the Joyent platform is based on OpenSolaris/Solaris Zones performance is quite a bit better than other solutions. Zones outperform Xen/xVM and Vmware by quite a large factor.

Rackspace
Rackspace has several interesting offerings: Cloud Sites, Cloud Servers, and Cloud Files. All of these services are accessible from the same control panel. Which is really quite nice. Cloud Sites is the scalable application hosting service (although that doesn’t really do it justice). Cloud Servers is a Xen based VM host. Cloud Files is similar to amazon S3.

What they are doing right (brief):.

• NO CONTRACTS. Turn up. Turn down yay! (Cloud Servers)
• AFFORDABLE. Host all the sites you want on Cloud Sites starts at $100 a month (Usage is metered upwards after a certain point)
• GREAT MANAGEABILITY. The Rackpace control panels are excellent and all services are accessible from one interface

Google
Google’s appengine product falls into the application hosting category. Pretty much the only cloud python host. They also have a Java environment. There are some limitations to deploying on Google however as time goes on we are seeing many of these limitations disappearing.

What they are doing right (brief):

• NO NEED TO MANAGE THE PLATFORM. This is a boon to developers that just are not platform engineers. Write, then deploy. Done.
• APIs. Google provides a lot of valuable APIs for integration with their services, and utility right out of the box.

Engine Yard
Engine Yard falls into the application hosting category. They would be the premier Ruby on Rails app host. Everything about this company impresses me.

What they are doing right (brief):

• NO NEED TO MANAGE THE PLATFORM. This is a boon to developers that just are not platform engineers. Write, then deploy. Done.
• SLICK MANAGEMENT INTERFACE. I have never seen such a great management interface for a hosting platform. Great job!

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Grails :: Finally I am home

There is no such thing as an application development panacea. Having stated that, I have decided that Grails solves most of the issues I have to deal with on a daily basis and makes complex software development fun again.

Reasons to use a JAVA platform language:

• FREE and now Open Source
• Platform independence
• JDK7 lots of improvements, especially in regards to dynamic languages
• The JAVA mail API is the best mail API in any Open Source language period
• 1000s of Open Source / Free libraries Apache Commons is pretty epic
• For most libraries you don’t have to maintain a C level module, you can add a JAR to the classpath and not have to modify your operating environment. Totally frustrating when you update a C module for other dynamic languages in your distro and it breaks your application. You can skip this with JARS and upgrade them when you feel like it

Reasons to use Grails for web application development:

• WAR versioning: I love the package -> deploy approach. If there is a problem roll back to a previous version
• Lots of plugins. Focussing right now on the graniteDS plugin because I am productive in Flex, however I might explore other RIA front ends soon
• Most of the benefits of RoR
• Take the pain in the ass out of JAVA and you have groovy: nuff said
• There are lots of options for creating scalable applications. Most JAVA appservers are easy to cluster. If you use some SQL server as a datastore and your session store is accessible to all nodes, throw in a load balancer and you are all set
• The development methodology is pretty rigid, however since all of my data structures are typically normalized this really doesn’t pose any problems and in fact is really kind of nice

I am just getting started. I will probably write more as I move forward with the two web scale applications I plan to write using the platform/framework. So far though I am feeling very positive about it, and the advantages offered over a C based dynamic language VM platform.

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DATING: How not to be an enormous douche when you are getting to know a woman.

This is just a short note inspired by a recent outing with several women during which I was able to observe several men and their subsequent failures at impressing or inspiring interest in these women.

DISCLAIMER: Shamefully I must admit to violating two of these rules at some point in the past. I learned, some people never do. (A special thanks to a certain Mongoose for reminding me of one rule)

1.) SINCERITY If you can’t act or speak with sincerity then just don’t. Nothing is more unattractive. If you don’t mean it, don’t say it. Don’t try and make yourself up to be something you are not. She will know, and she will laugh her ass off at you later.

2.) STFU Don’t talk about yourself too much, if you must expound upon your latest and greatest exploit don’t be a braggart. Make the story entertaining, short, and the ending should lead into a question you would like them to answer about themselves. You are trying to get to know them. Rattling your bonebox about yourself all night shows women one thing: your complete and utter lack of interest for anyone but yourself.

3.) BE A GENTLEMAN Your actions speak louder than your words. You are being examined most likely under a hell of a lot more scrutiny than your feeble mind could manage in her direction. She is paying attention to how you are moving, your facial expressions, and especially how you treat and speak of other people. You are a man act like one. Be respectful to those you come into contact with. Stand up when she approaches the table if you are sitting. Take her jacket. Open doors (car doors too lazy ass). Pay for her drinks. Should she decide to thank you, her company and continued tolerance of your dumb ass should be thanks enough. Nothing is more disgusting than expectation of compensation monetary or otherwise.

4.) OTHER WOMEN Don’t talk in any amount of detail about other women. Ever. The only exception: how much you love your mother (don’t take that too far either lest she confuse it for an Oedipus complex). Contrary to what you might think she doesn’t want to hear about how well you treated the last woman that dumped your dumb ass. She also doesn’t care how many other women think you are great. All that matters is her attention, and you won’t be getting it talking that way because again it only enhances the appearance of your own self interest. Seriously this is a great way to move a girl from love interest to permanent friend status real quick. You will know this has happened when they start telling you about their exes.

5.) MANNERISMS Show your interest by maintaining eye contact. Yes eye contact. You may let your eyes stray across her features on occasion, but nothing will class you as a pig faster than you staring at her body. Move with confidence and intent. If you are going to do something do it with aplomb. If you fear a fiery crash you will create one. Don’t. Women can read facial cues much better than you. Nothing is more disgusting or sad than a man who looks at a woman with needy desire written all over his face. I saw it sitting there, that means she saw it 10 fold. You can get away with a lot of facial expressions, but needy/unsure is not one of them.

6.) TOUCH Don’t grab women. Ever. If she wants you to touch her she will invite you to. When you decide to take this invitation touch should be light, fleeting, and it should be directed toward a respectful part of her person. Her arm, shoulder, hands, neck, and for the bold her face. Again if you can’t do this with confidence just don’t. Confident movement and sincere intent is the difference between desirable contact and disgusting groping. Gentleman don’t grope women.

Anyway if you are an ENORMOUS DOUCHE and have read this note, hopefully you can get over yourself and realize that sincere intent trumps posturing bravado and can lead to an actual relationship as opposed to… well whatever the hell else you might manage on your own. In so doing perhaps you can shed your previous title and become a real man. Good luck!

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SX:CE EOL: THANK GOD

I have been following this discussion closely and most perspectives voiced have been those of long time Solaris users or those that have invested in SX:CE for production deployments (why you would choose to do so is beyond me entirely, considering that the intent to discontinue SX:CE has been well known for quite some time, and the original purpose of the release was for early access/testing). So I would like to relate my perspective as a Linux convert and general server OS/Management critic. I use Linux/OpenSolaris on the server as a server OS, I use OS X on the desktop.

From Linux to OpenSolaris

When we first started building our hosting platform in 2000 I already had pretty strong background using RedHat Linux and OpenBSD for a significantly sized deployment at a fulfillment house that hosted some rather large web applications. Back then (1997) RedHat didn’t have yum so package management was a very manual affair. Although it was better than just compiling and installing software. RedHat decided to make the shift to the Enterprise distro and for $300 a year per machine you could get paid updates using up2date. Neat, we ran on RedHat 7.3 until they announced EOL on the updates. The fact is RPM package management was not good enough to pay for. Even with yum, installation and removal of dependencies are regularly mangled. If you are building and deploying your own packages this is even more pronounced. You can FORCE it all to work but I really am not into that. Good bye RedHat.

Next stop Debian. Debian was pretty great. Apt was pretty amazing. I really wish I had started using Debian from the start. Nearly flawless dependency addition and removal on package install uninstall and upgrading to a new release was very easy if I decided to do so. Nearly every open source package I used was already built for Debian and in the release repository. Everything was 2 commands away. The problem with Debian: no regular release schedule. I could never plan on having x feature at x date and I had no idea when the security/errata updates would cease for a given release. This was a huge problem for platform development and management. Good bye Debian.

Next stop Ubuntu LTS. Great! I now had a release schedule, and I knew exactly how long security/errata updates would be supplied for a given release.

The Linux draw: a summary

• Not having to build packages due to a huge software repository and 3rd party trusted repositories: TIME SAVED
• Ease of setting up internal repository:  TIME SAVED
• No need to manually resolve package dependencies: TIME SAVED
• Keep all systems up to date with latest security updates, two commands: TIME SAVED
• Deploy a new system install with just a required package list: TIME SAVED
• Not having to setup and maintain a custom system deployment architecture: TIME SAVED
• Regular release schedule and errata/security update time line: FUTURE ASSURED

On Solaris: I had never really been interested in Solaris until sun decided to open source the OS. Prior to that I had to maintain a pile of Solaris 8 machines for a client that was heavily invested in Coldfusion. This experience had pretty much soured my view of the OS. The package management was terrible. Installing patches was painful. Installing software was painful. What good is instant deployment if managing the system after install is so damn time consuming? At any rate managing Solaris 8 and later 9 was far more work than managing RedHat pre version 7.0 and that was only involving keeping the security patches on the systems current.

The OpenSolaris project pulled me into Solaris land again. Why? IPS, ZFS, Zones, SMF, DTrace, and all the goodies that make OpenSolaris a compelling storage platform. I started using OpenSolaris for storage only. I really liked the uniform nature of the admin utilities. I decided to also deploy Sun Communications Suite on OpenSolaris. Although I had to play a little bit with the installer and hack up patchadd to allow patches to be applied to comms I am happy with it.

OpenSolaris over Ubuntu: a summary

• IPS/PKG is like a nextgen APT/DEB with ZFS integration. beadm, is great, being able to apply updates to a new boot environment and activate that environment, then rollback if there is an issue is priceless. I also like the IPS repo system better than APT’s
• ZFS
• Zones, sorry KVM doesn’t cut it.
• Crossbow (can I dump OpenBSD for firewall/VLAN management/VPN concentration/routing? Time will tell)
• SMF
• DTrace
• OpenSolaris management utilities are far more uniform than the Linux equivalents
• OpenSolaris seems to perform quite a bit better for certain streaming applications
• Sun’s JDK/JRE is available in the release repo
• I haven’t benchmarked this but I swear that Java server daemons (in this instance a custom SMTP server) process requests faster on OpenSolaris than on Linux

As you can see with OpenSolaris I can have my cake and eat it too. With OpenSolaris I see the future perfect server OS. I could run ONE OS on all my server hardware and not have to deal with the issues of managing Ubuntu LTS, and OpenBSD based on their independent strengths. Now obviously there are issues that need to be resolved and the developers at Sun have said these will be resolved.

Issues: a summary

• GNU userland vs Solaris userland shell path: Please stop with this, I really don’t care either way the matter is so trivial so simple to change it just isn’t something that should justify all the attention that it receives
• Automated Install: So far this seems like a slick setup. I haven’t evaluated it much due to the fact that a simple package list install from a repo is fast enough to satisfy my needs. In any event the developers have stated they are working on polishing the feature
• IPS needs polishing: So far all the issues I have with IPS have been acknowledged as such, or there is an existing RFE
• No Text installer: Next release will have a text installer
• Sparse Zones: This is an issue for me and I would like to see it resolved. However for some reason inherit pkg-dir umm seems to work for me for my Java server apps??? I even see the loopback mounts and everything runs? Haven’t really looked into it much past that…
• Updating Zones: The process of updating a zone’s packages via image-update is too convoluted this needs to be much easier.
• Sun enterprise repo. I would like to see the comms components packaged for OpenSolaris and updates enabled via IPS instead of SVR4 patches (yuk)
• Stable release schedule and at least security updates and severe errata updates in the release repo. I am assuming this is a resource related issue and that it will be resolved after the next release.

Going Forward

EOLing SX:CE is the best possible choice going forward. Obviously Sun’s developer resources are limited. If those resources can be devoted to resolving the issues with OpenSolaris we can move forward out of the SVR4 nightmare that inhibits the adoption of Solaris by users THAT WILL NEVER GIVE UP SANE PACKAGE AND UPDATE MANAGEMENT.

I am sick of looking over the listings on career builder and dice and seeing all the jobs involving Solaris to RedHat migrations. More of the same will not curtail the mass exodus from Solaris to RedHat. That is what SX:CE is; more of the same.

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Virtual Worlds :: Web 3.0

Back in the day

Today I was remembering back to the mid to late 90s when the VR craze was all the rage on the fledgling Internet. People were going nuts over giant head mounted displays (yeah you couldn’t hold your bloody head up wearing one), and crappy spacial interfaces utilizing hacked up Nintendo power gloves. Don’t even start with the graphics, low polygon count multi colored tron like landscapes were the best that were managed. Affordable 3D hardware was still out of reach of the average individual, and would be until Nvidia took on SGI in the courtroom.

So here we are 13+ years later, still surfing the web utilizing the same keyboard and mouse, still consuming all of our Internet and game content by staring at a monitor (although at least now they are flat). Why? What is the story? The average American internet user has access to ridiculous amounts of compute power and yet the 3D immersive future of the net still eludes us.

So what do we have?

The 3D hardware and rendering engines are here. The physics engines are here. The hardware to run the software is already in consumer hands. The bandwidth and technology to distribute 3D assets is widely available. There are also some viable light weight head mounted displays in the $300 price range on the market.

If you look at what has been accomplished by companies like Bioware, Blizzard Entertainment, and id software you will recognize that the visual aspect of immersive virtual environments is good to go.

So what are we missing?

It’s the interface dummy!

As of yet all the slick new 3D games and environments are designed for the keyboard and mouse, and rightly so! You have to design the game for the target market and all computer users have a keyboard and mouse. Sadly, until a modern 3D + headmounted display and gesture driven interface is a standard feature this will most likely continue to be the case. The tech is there to create it, and the components are affordable it just needs to happen.

An open platform

Probably the number one reason for the fast growth of the web has been the HTTP standard and the open source project the apache httpd web server. In order to make the transition we will need an open world server and a client. Sorry the webGL stuff just doesn’t cut it, and either does HTTP for immersive client interaction. The client and the world server should support plugins so individual operators can add value to their world/service/application. We will also need a full world building suite.

A universal protocol

The net today has become far too complicated in relation to a pretty simple task: data exchange. The world server and client (as well as client to client P2P) should interact with a universal protocol. This protocol should encapsulate the following functionality:

• Strong identity management/validation/authorization the user/client can opt to give worlds/clients access to certain personal data and or files. These profiles will need to be manageable, and the data sets and data types extensible. Worlds should also be able to define roles and profiles for users that are consuming them.
• IM & Voice user to user and user to group instant communication.
• Mail should be an IM extension for communications that have been missed or not accepted at the time of transmission.
• File Transfer user to user and user to world file transfer instant or point in time
• Asset Download extension of file transfer service possibly relying on P2P distribution and download of bits
• App Services apps delivered via world server with 3D interface

Damn! How long will all that take?

Well the tech is there to do it all, however I don’t think we will see much happen until we have the aforementioned 3D interface. As far as the platform goes I see a lot of toys out there, some have some promise but I really think it is going to take an industry leader or a group of industry leaders to put together the platform and the client and make it available for others to use. I would definitely like to see one standard world server architecture that everyone can build their apps/games/worlds on as opposed to every shop re-implementing their own server and client for every project. The problem is that the business cases are not very strong for doing such a thing. Perhaps lowering the barrier to entry via an asset download vs a full client download and install could enlarge the target market for a given project.

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Men, Jewelry, The Chronograph

During the course of a recent social event I was queried as to why I was not wearing a wrist watch. Surely, the young woman had reasoned, such attire would be accompanied by an equally impressive chronograph, and yet my wrist lay unadorned.

My tendency toward minimalism coupled with the advent of the modern pocket size cell phone had helped me along to my current view on the chronograph. I don’t particularly care for jewelry (even though most modern males swim in it) unless it has a function, the cell phone had replaced that function. So what reason for wearing this item, other than the fear of being seen with a nude wrist, can be found? The answer is item bound emotional significance.

Many women associate items of jewelry with special events. The items are as varied as the events. For the male this item has frequently been the chronograph. For me personally the chronograph has been a symbol of love presented to me by the object of that love. With loves passing I have retired that particular piece. Though they have all been quite nice, given what they have represented, I really don’t care to wear any of the retirees. Being that I am not seeing anyone at the moment, this has left me bare wristed for the time being.

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OpenSolaris :: 2009.6 (111a)

After setting up several new machines with intention of migrating them to the official release in June, I have to say this is the best OSOL release ever!

• IPS is snappier
• CIFS sharing seems to work a LOT better
• I am not sure if it is better driver support or what but disk and network IO seem to be that much better (Areca, intel)
• The whole OS just seems more polished

Anyway I will write more as I continue to work on my platform, but if this is an indication of what we can expect of future OSOL releases, I predict a bright future indeed! Great job to everyone working on the project!

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Sun Support :: Happiness

Ok, now that I am through the sales process:

Sun support is good. Very, Very good.

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