c0t0d0s0.org - General

Outsourcing mal anders

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 01:30:46 +0100

Mit einem freundlichen Gruss an die Schweizer Kollegen, die eine Reihe vor mir im "Emerging Technologies"-Track sitzen : Der Präsident der Sicherheitskommission des Ständerates hat vorgeschlagen, das man das Air Policing der Schweiz an groessere Länder (beispielsweise Deutschland) outsourcen koennte.

Eigentlich eine gute Idee, wenn man bedenkt, was moderne Kampfflugzeuge in Anschaffung und Unterhalt kosten sowie der Unwahrscheinlichkeit in zwischenstaatlichen Konflikten genutzt zu werden. Die Realitaet ist: Man bekommt nicht mal eine einheitliche europäische zivile Luftraumüberwachung hin .... wo Raketen im Spiel sind, geht das natuerlich noch viel weniger ...

Behind the scenes of the Fishworks development

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 19:28:00 +0100

Bryan Cantrill put together some thoughts and anecdotes about the development of Fishworks in Fishworks: Now it can be told. He writes in regard of the dtrace based appliance analytics:

So not only does analytics bring the power of DTrace to a much broader spectrum of technologists, it also -- thanks to the wonders of the visual cortex -- has much greater utility than just DTrace alone. (Or, as one hardened veteran of command line interfaces put it to me, "this is the one GUI that I actually want to use!")

ACK!

SunCEC2008 - Day -1: Death Valley

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 16:09:40 +0100

SSDs for Mysql

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 18:12:24 +0100

The usage of SSDs has an really big impact on the performance of mysl. Kazuho Oku wrote about his experiences with the Intel X25-M ssd in "Benchmarking SSD for MySQL". Looks really promising.

25 Jahre c't

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 19:07:58 +0100

Dieser Tage ist die c't 25 Jahre alt geworden. Auch aus meiner Richtung ein "Herzlichen Glückwunsch!" nach Hannover. Ich bin zwar immer noch der Meinung das die c't nicht mehr den Glanz alter Tage hat, dennoch muss ich mich bei dieser Zeitschrift eigentlich bedanken: Ich habe mir meine erste Ausgabe der c't vor vielen, vielen Jahren (über 20, um genauer zu sein ... ich war damals 14) in Oldenburg gekauft. Tagesausflug mit der Klasse. Ich glaube Aufführung im Staatstheater und anschliessend Auslauf in der Fussgängerzone der Stadt. Meine Erinnerung ist da ein wenig verwaschen. Aber an eines erinnere ich mich noch genau ... in dieser Ausgabe wurde ein System getestet, das auf einem Prozessor der 680x0er Baureihe von Motorola basierte. Der Hersteller: Sun Microsystems.

Mark Papermaster

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 09:11:53 +0100

There was much hassle in the media about the part-time job of Andy at his new company. I think IBM has a bigger problem: It looks like they will totally loose an really important person :

Until recently, Papermaster was IBM's vice president of microprocessor development and had been at the company for 26 years.[...]
According to the complaint, Papermaster informed IBM that he'd accepted a senior executive position at Apple that involves working closely with CEO Steve Jobs, providing technical and strategic advice

Whereas Andy will still work for Sun on a part-time basis, this looks like a large area of scorched earth, as IBM and Papermaster are already in lawsuit mode about the new job at Apple. Papermaster is important for IBM, as he was the guy who oversaw the development of Power proccesor line and recently the development of IBMs blades.

CRM bei der Bahn

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 20:35:59 +0100

Also irgendwie muss die Bahn noch ein wenig an ihrem CRM System arbeiten. Ich habe meine Nachfolge-Bahncard im Abo erhalten:

[...] natuerlich mit allen exklusiven Vorteilen, von denen nur unsere besten Kunden profitieren. Denn ab sofort geniessen Sie den bahn.comfort Status"

Hmm ... find ich ja auch toll das ich in die Lounge darf ... aber ab sofort ... ich glaube ich bin schon seit 2003 in diesem Frequently-Delayed-Programm ....

Outright depressing ....

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 21:07:22 +0200

The good thing ... we´ve still more than enough money to get through the financial crisis and i wouldn´t wonder, if we still have positive cash flow .... (besides of effects like stock buy backs)

Nokia Sports Tracker Beta

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 16:17:47 +0200

One of the nice features of my new Nokia E71 mobile is the integrated GPS receiver. So i searched for a tool to use it as a GPS tracking device for geotagging of photos. I found such a tool ... it´s even from Nokia. This tool was developed for tracking sport workouts, but it allows you to export your tracks as GPX or KML files as well, so you can use it for photo geotagging (for people like me).

Yesterday evening i´ve decided to walk from cinema to home instead of using the subway and played around with the tool. You can directly upload at home. You can even activate "Life Tracking" so other people can look at your workout while you are at workout. I didn´t use this feature. I´m not a fan of this kind of exhibitionism and obviously it´s a security risk. It tracks speed, altitude, position and allows you to look at some analytic screens while tracking (for example time/speed, time/altitude and similar graphs)

You can share your tracks with friends of with anyone. I opened up the track from the picture above for everyone, so you can take a look at the data collected by the tool. The application for your mobile and additional informations are available at the website of the Nokia Research Center

The Register about future SPARC developments

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 20:26:10 +0200

TPM wrote an article about some comments of Sun and Fujitsu executives and enriched it with some speculations - Sun and Fujitsu hint at Sparc futures:

As part of the launch of the Sparc T5440 midrange server this week in San Francisco, top brass from both Sun Microsystems and Fujitsu spent some time assuring customers that the companies' chip and systems partnership going strong and that both were working away on Sparc processors that would end up in future systems.

Heise.de über die Sun SPARC Enterprise T5440

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 13:23:36 +0200

heise.de hat einen sehr wohlwollenden Artikel über unsere neuen Server auf Basis des UltraSPARC T2+ prozessors veröffentlicht: Suns Enterprise-Server T5440 mischt die Szene auf:

Mit dem neuen Vierprozessor-Server SPARC Enterprise T5440 stellen Sun und Fujitsu unter Beweis, dass mit der SPARC-Architektur in der Serverwelt weiterhin zu rechnen ist.

und

Mit solchen Ergebnissen haben Sun und Fujitsu eine gute Chance, verloren gegangenes Terrain im HPC- und Supercomputer-Bereich wieder zurück zu erobern.

John Cleese: Michael Palin isn´t the funniest Palin anymore

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 08:33:54 +0200

(via: Egghat)

Credit default swaps - oder wie kamen die Riesensummen zustande ...

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 07:51:28 +0200

Ein Kommentar beim Rebellmarkt erklaert, wie diese absurden Summen an ausstehenden CDS zustande kommen: Die Magie der CDS. Dieser Kommentar erklaert den Irrsinn ziemlich gut.

links for 2008-10-14

nospam@example.com (del.icio.us) — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 13:00:11 +0200

Mysql and ZFS compression

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 06:48:35 +0200

Don gave an update to his article about mysql on Opensolaris. Now he published an update to his article with ZFS & MySQL/InnoDB Compression Update:

Conclusion? Unless you care a great deal about eking out every last byte (using a RAM disk, for example), LZJB seems like a much saner compression choice. Performance seem to improve, rather than degrade, and it doesnt hog your CPU. Im switching my ZFS volume to LZJB right now (on-the-fly changes - woo!) and will copy all my data so it gets the new compression settings. Ill sacrifice some bytes, but thats ok - performance is king.

Compression

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 16:44:43 +0200

Tim Cook wrote about some interesting observations in his blog: The Seduction of Single-Threaded Performance:

Data compression utilities are a classic example of a seemingly mature area in computing. Lots of utilities, lots of different algorithms, a few options in some utilities, reasonable portability between operating systems, but one significant shortcoming - there is no commonly available utility that is multi-threaded.

First media coverage about the Sun Fire T5440

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 08:22:32 +0200

The Sun Fire T5440 isn´t announced so far, but there is already some media coverage about it. The Computerworld cites in Sun doubles processing power of UltraSparc T2 Plus servers:

Jean Bozman, an analyst at IDC, said that although Sun's overall server revenue has dropped off, sales of systems based on the multithreading UltraSparc chips "have seen dramatic growth." Bozman also said that she is seeing evidence of Sun gaining new customers via the multithreading technology.

By the way: Jeremy Barnish did a nice interview with two guys of the Sun Fire T5440 development team: "Sun's Batoka Launch - "The Way of the Future".

The dark toy

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 10:47:42 +0200

Solaris and the GNU (tools)

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 21:00:15 +0200

The ever reoccuring customer criticism in the Q&A part of my presentations is: "Your command line tools are really strange in regard of the options. Why does your ps has different options than the Linux ps. By the way: You didn´t cleaned up your operating environment as i found multiple versions of tool xyz. But i still didn´t found any GNU tools. I have to reinstall every tool on my own".

Well ... i want to talk about this criticism. It comes down to the following questions: Why are the Solaris tools different to GNU. Why are there several versions of the same command in Solaris? Where are the GNU tools?
Continue reading "Solaris and the GNU (tools)"

Weeeeeerder Breeeeeemen ....

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 18:07:06 +0200

huepf ... freu ... jubel ....sing .... zweizufuuuuueeenf .... zieht den bayern die lederhosen aus ... die lederhosen aus .... huepf ....

Strange day ....

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 20:57:53 +0200

This was really a strange day ... it really tried hard to annoy me. I have to start in the morning to tell the complete story. This morning i woke up much earlier than nescessary, thus i decides to take an earler train to my customer site. I initally planned to plan the time without margin. But as i was awake anyway, i thought could take out risk out of my itinerary.
Continue reading "Strange day ...."

Wanted: A netbook without a camera

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 17:05:17 +0200

I have one customer, who has a strict "no cams" policy in place. And "no cams" means "really no cams", not in your mobile, not in your notebook and digicams are especially bad. Besides of the fact, that this rule is security theatre (cams are so small today, you have to do a strip-search to find them), it´s one of my prefered customers, so i respect this without further complaining. But i have some problems with presentations. I have a notebook without a cam, but it´s an old one and don´t even think about doing a multi-VM Solaris presentation with it.

This is the reason, why i look at this cheap Netbooks. And some are really great the tasks i want to have one. There are even some working for almost the complete flight from Frankfurt to New York and still cost under 450 Euro. The problem: They all have cameras. So they don´t solve my problem. I hope, i´m not the only one who wants such a netbook without a lousy cam. And by the way: Dear Apple ... a MacBook Pro without a build-in iSight would be nice.

Virtualbox 2.0 released

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 14:54:11 +0200

We have released the 2.0 release of Virtualbox. You can download it from the Sun Download Center. The release notes describes a lot of changes in this version:

Continue reading "Virtualbox 2.0 released"

links for 2008-09-03

nospam@example.com (del.icio.us) — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 13:03:49 +0200

HOWTO: Create a Solaris 10 RAM Disk Image :: Col´s Tech Stuff

(tags: ramdisk sysadmin)

Herzlichen Glückwunsch!

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 19:02:01 +0200

An dieser Stelle möchte ich meine Glückwünsche an meine Schwester Solveig und meinen Bruder Jens richten. Solveig hat heute ihren Bachelor in Frühpädagogik mit hervorragender Benotung geschaft. Jens hat am Donnerstag sein Diplom als Wirtschaftsingenieur mit ebenfalls sehr guter Benotung erlangt . Euer grosser Bruder ist stolz auf euch

Faked fireworks

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 18:16:13 +0200

There is some discussion about the faked fireworks sequence of the Olympic opening celebration. Was there really someone really, who believed that this was a real sequence? The flight of the chasing plane was much to stable for a real one and the light wasn´t correct. That was pretty obvious.

Kindergarten revisited

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 11:08:05 +0200

Wer einen Kindergarten in Reinkultur sehen moechte, moege sich bitte mal die Diskussion rund um blastwave auf heise.de angucken. Schily und Fefe prügeln sich da verbal wie die Kesselflicker auf einem niedrigen Niveau ("Lern du mal was ein Integer overflow ist","Lern du mal programmieren") ... eben Kindergarten revisited.

Proof reading

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 20:31:34 +0200

Sorry for writing nothing the last few days, but i´m occupied with the proof reading of the bachelor thesis of my little sister. Arguing about some phrases with her can be quite embarrasing ...

Back from NYC and a first New York photoset at Flickr

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 20:43:41 +0200

I´m finally back in Hamburg. Was a good flight back to Frankfurt and further to Hamburg.

Additionally i´ve uploaded some unedited photos to a photo set at flickr.

You can view the photoset by clicking on the photo.

Child of fortune ...

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 10:36:05 +0200

I just came back from checking in my luggage. I´ve got an exit-row seat for the flight to JFK. Not business-class comfort, but much more space for my legs and that´s all i want from my seat