[Fri Jan 30 15:38:16 CET 2009]
Ah, the joys of hoaxes spread
all over the place thanks to email! The problem is even worse in a place like
Spain for what I will explain below. Today, a good friend sent me an email
with a link to a video showing how a few people manage to make popcorn
pop by using their cell phones. The message is obvious: imagine what
these devices will do to your brain! Sure enough, it's a hoax. A simple
search turned up a few documents here, here amd here, among many others. So, what makes netizens in Spain more prone to fall for this sort of
blatant hoaxes. Simply the fact that most websites that offer information
about them are written in English. Food for thought in this global
medium.
{link to this story}
[Thu Jan 29 15:15:28 CET 2009]
CIO magazine publishes an article about the 5 things that Mark Shuttleworth has learned about organizational change while
in charge of Canonical, and some sections of the article make for an
interesting read. For instance, the section on the limits of the wisdom of
crowds:
The crowd can easily turn into a herd. When companies adopt the same tools,
the same practices and the same suppliers as their competitors, it becomes
more difficult for them to stand out from the crowd, and it introduces the
risk that everybody assumes somebody else did the analysis to determine that
they are on the optimal course.
Organizations with a clear idea of what they do differently, and why, are in
a better position to pull away from the crowd. The current financial crissi
clearly demonstrates the risk in simply following without being willing to
question the fundamental value of an approach or an offering. Everyone
assumes, "Somebody must have thought about this," when perhaps no one did.
In other words, if you do the same thing as everyone else, you are going to
get the same result as everyone else. You won't stand out. Be conscious of
the things you do differently.
The same could be said of his thoughts on individualism and teams:
Many of th best ideas, concepts, prototypes and innovations come from a
single person's insight. You get these amazing bits of work from inspired
individuals who have the freedom to act, when they have the tools and
knwoedlge they need.
But to scale any operation takes the work of teams, and more often than
not, teams of teams. Leaders inpsire that flash of genius and also make
those individuals want to work together. Great teamwork is a real skill.
Finding a way to nurture individual passion an dpride while at the same time
creating a spirit of teamwork is a hallmark of the leaders I admire most.
Pulling off both of those in the same organization is magical but essential.
Hardly anything earth-shattering, true, but some food for thought nonetheless.
All too often one finds experts and consultants who try to sell us the
magical silver bullet, their preferred pet solution
du jour. At
least one has to concede that
Mark Shuttleworth doesn't appear to be that type of guy. It's
something I like, both in business people and politicians.
{
link to this story}
[Wed Jan 28 20:39:48 CET 2009]
To this day, I continue using (needing is more like it) vim as my editor of choice. However, I must admit that
certain other editors are also quite attractive alternatives. Yesterday, for
instance, I readthis piece about 13 plugins to
make Gedit a more useful text editor. Some of them look quite useful,
actually, although I seriously doubt I will abandon vim, which also has plenty
of "plugins" of its own. I suppose what I'm trying to say is that I'm not
dogmatic when it comes to editor, really. Whatever works. There is no need
to become a fantic of yet one more itty bitty thing. There is plenty of that
out there already. So, please, no Emacs versus vi or
KDE versus GNOME wars with me. Thank you very much.
{link to this story}
{link to this story}
[Wed Jan 28 20:32:10 CET 2009]
Browsing around, I came across the Ubuntu Pocket Guide and Reference, which has been
released in PDF format and can be downloaded for free. It's merely an
introductory book, but... hey, it's free!
{link to this story}
[Tue Jan 27 12:00:37 CET 2009]
As famous as Eric Raymond is and I had never heard of Rootless Root: The Unix Koans of Master Foo until now, when I
came across a post
titled The Way of the Hacker published on Tech Source from Bohol. Here is, as a sample, one of the stories, titled Master Foo and the Ten
Thousand Lines:
Master Foo once said to a visiting programmer: "There is more Unix-nature in
one line of shell script than there is in ten thousand lines of C."
The programmer, who was very proud of his mastery of C, said: "How can this be?
C is the language in which the very kernel of Unix is implemented!"
Master Foo replied: "That is so. Nevertheless, there is more Unix-nature in one
line of shell script than there is in ten thousand lines of C."
The programmer grew distressed. "But through the C language we experience the
enlightenment of the Patriarch Ritchie! We become as one with the operating
system and the machine, reaping matchless performance!"
Master Foo replied: "All that you say is true. But there is still more
Unix-nature in one line of shell script than there is in ten thousand lines of
C."
The programmer scoffed at Master Foo and rose to depart. But Master Foo nodded
to his student Nubi, who wrote a line of shell script on a nearby whiteboard,
and said: "Master programmer, consider this pipeline. Implemented in pure C,
would it not span ten thousand lines?"
The programmer muttered through his beard, contemplating what Nubi had written.
Finally he agreed that it was so.
"And how many hours would you require to implement and debug that C program?"
asked Nubi.
"Many," admitted the visiting programmer. "But only a fool would spend the time
to do that when so many more worthy tasks await him."
"And who better understands the Unix-nature?" Master Foo asked. "Is it he who
writes the ten thousand lines, or he who, perceiving the emptiness of the task,
gains merit by not coding?"
Upon hearing this, the programmer was enlightened.
I know any "real programmer" (which, by the way, I'm not) is supposed to
show disdain for Eric Raymond accusing him of being "too fluff" and "full of
it", but I cannot help it. As a communicator of the UNIX wisdom accrued throughout the years, he is just the
best. Not everything in the world should be programming.
{
link to this story}
[Mon Jan 26 14:49:59 CET 2009]
Today, I came across an article on Levent Serinol's blog about the
demidecode, which allows a Linux user to obtain
information about the memory banks installed on a system. Here is an
example when I run it on my old Dell Latitude D610:
$ sudo dmidecode -t memory
Password:
# dmidecode 2.7
SMBIOS 2.3 present.
Handle 0x1000, DMI type 16, 15 bytes.
Physical Memory Array
Location: System Board Or Motherboard
Use: System Memory
Error Correction Type: None
Maximum Capacity: 4 GB
Error Information Handle: Not Provided
Number Of Devices: 2
Handle 0x1100, DMI type 17, 27 bytes.
Memory Device
Array Handle: 0x1000
Error Information Handle: Not Provided
Total Width: 64 bits
Data Width: 64 bits
Size: 512 MB
Form Factor: DIMM
Set: None
Locator: DIMM_A
Bank Locator: Not Specified
Type: DDR
Type Detail: Synchronous
Speed: 533 MHz (1.9 ns)
Manufacturer: AD00000000000000
Serial Number: 00003246
Asset Tag: Not Specified
Part Number: Not Specified
Handle 0x1101, DMI type 17, 27 bytes.
Memory Device
Array Handle: 0x1000
Error Information Handle: Not Provided
Total Width: 64 bits
Data Width: 64 bits
Size: No Module Installed
Form Factor: DIMM
Set: None
Locator: DIMM_B
Bank Locator: Not Specified
Type: DDR
Type Detail: Synchronous
Speed: Unknown
Manufacturer:
Serial Number:
Asset Tag: Not Specified
Part Number: Not Specified
The interesting thing is that the same command can also be used to obtain
information about the processor too:
$ sudo dmidecode -t processor
Password:
# dmidecode 2.7
SMBIOS 2.3 present.
Handle 0x0400, DMI type 4, 32 bytes.
Processor Information
Socket Designation: Microprocessor
Type: Central Processor
Family: Pentium M
Manufacturer: Intel
ID: D8 06 00 00 FF FB E9 AF
Signature: Type 0, Family 6, Model 13, Stepping 8
Flags:
FPU (Floating-point unit on-chip)
VME (Virtual mode extension)
DE (Debugging extension)
PSE (Page size extension)
TSC (Time stamp counter)
MSR (Model specific registers)
PAE (Physical address extension)
MCE (Machine check exception)
CX8 (CMPXCHG8 instruction supported)
APIC (On-chip APIC hardware supported)
SEP (Fast system call)
MTRR (Memory type range registers)
PGE (Page global enable)
MCA (Machine check architecture)
CMOV (Conditional move instruction supported)
PAT (Page attribute table)
CLFSH (CLFLUSH instruction supported)
DS (Debug store)
ACPI (ACPI supported)
MMX (MMX technology supported)
FXSR (Fast floating-point save and restore)
SSE (Streaming SIMD extensions)
SSE2 (Streaming SIMD extensions 2)
SS (Self-snoop)
TM (Thermal monitor supported)
PBE (Pending break enabled)
Version: Not Specified
Voltage: 3.3 V
External Clock: 133 MHz
Max Speed: 1800 MHz
Current Speed: 1733 MHz
Status: Populated, Enabled
Upgrade: None
L1 Cache Handle: 0x0700
L2 Cache Handle: 0x0701
L3 Cache Handle: Not Provided
Other interesting options are:
dmidecode -t cache and
dmidecode -t bios.
{
link to this story}
[Fri Jan 23 11:55:02 CET 2009]
Ubuntu 8.04.2
LTS has been released, including over 200 updates and an updated
installation media and I still have to find the time to configure it to do
all my work on it. The main obstacle on my road to migration is the Cisco
VPN client. Yes, I know there are posts here and there with directions
on how to install the software and get it to work but I gave them a try a
few months ago, things didn't work out very well and haven't been able to find
the time to play with it again. In the meantime, Ubuntu 6.06 Dapper it is.
{link to this story}
[Fri Jan 23 11:40:26 CET 2009]
I read on OStatic that Red Hat's capitalization is about to surpass that of
Sun Microsystems. The author wonders how this could even happen and to
what extent it makes sense, and I cannot avoid it viewing it as a mere
rhetorical question. I mean, after all that's happened in the past couple
of months, is there any doubt that the stock market is anytyhing other than a
huge casino where very large sums of money are played without much regard for
what the so-called experts like to label as "company fundamentals"? As a
matter of fact, the author answers the question himself:
The valuations of many public companies in America make very little else at
the moment, and there is some nonsense in the valuations of both Sun and Red Hat. Back in November, I questioned the
valuations of both these companies, based on the fact that they sold for
approximately the amount of cash they both have.
Well, exactly. What sense does that make? What sort of "thermometer" of our
overall business and economic situation is this? Let's be honest. The stock
market stopped being a real expression of what happens out there a long time
ago. In that respect I disagree with the author of this piece. It's not
something that is happening "at the moment". It's been going on for a long
time. Not to talk about the ease with which stock prices go up or down
based solely on mere rumors and hype, instead of "fundamentales" of any kind.
Said that, as the author himself recognizes, there is an explanation for the
surge in the price of Red Hat stock:
Red Hat's share price has nearly doubled, while Sun's has fallen. The
main differnce between the performances of the shares came from Red Hat's
continuing success with its model of getting revenues from service and
support for free software. Red Hat just turned in yet another
sterling quarterly financial performance.
I still remember when I joined
SGI back in 2000 and found plenty of managers who argued that
there was no way to make money with open source and
Linux. Eight years later, Red Hat has been making a
profit for quite some time, while SGI was delisted from
NASDAQ, filed for bankruptcy and still has to show
a profit. The ironies of life.
{
link to this story}