c0t0d0s0.org

links for 2010-03-19

nospam@example.com (del.icio.us) — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 20:00:39 +0100

Gedanken eines Fliegenden: Freikoerperkultur

Gruende warum man auf die Lektuere der Zeit in den USA momentan verzichten sollte

(tags: usa aviation)

Russia agrees to Oracles acquisition of Sun

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 16:20:24 +0100

Reuters reports, that Russia's FAS has agreed to the Oracles acquisition of Sun:

Russia's Anti-monopoly regulator (FAS) said on Friday it has approved [...] takeover of Sun Microsystems JAVA.O by Oracle (ORCL.O) on condition that Oracle continues to develop Sun's MySQL database. "FAS has reviewed the application and ... has decided to approve the application," the regulator, said in a statement, [...]

Informationweek about the speculations surrounding Sun/Oracle merger

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 09:21:24 +0100

There is a paragraph in Infoweeks recent "Global CIO: Why Oracle's Earnings Will Improve With Sun" article i can comply with wholeheartedly:

Few acquisitions sparked more ill-informed speculation than Oracle's takeover of Sun: from the angst of the EU's anticapitalists, to SAP's and Microsoft's delusional attacks on Larry Ellison's hardware strategy, to the UBS analyst who said Oracle will fire 14,000 Sun employees, to the Motley Fool blogger who said it's a bad deal because Oracle doesn't understand hardware (yes, he really said that).

Amen!

Landungsbrücken

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 20:20:41 +0100

Vortrag auf dem 11. HHOSUG Meeting

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 08:14:11 +0100

Der Hauptvortrag auf dem 11. HHOSUG-Meeting steht nunmehr fest. Heiko Stein wird einen Vortrag zum Thema Live Upgrade aus der Perspektive des nahezu täglichen Benutzers halten. Neben der Theorie wird der Vortrag auch Tricks und Verfahrensweisen im Umgang mit LU enthalten. Es verspricht interessant zu werden. Anmeldung via hhosug11@joerg.moellenkamp.org bzw. via XING.

Ich bin angewidert ....

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 13:10:54 +0100

Die Bremer Universität war meines Wissens mal dafür bekannt, im linken Spektrum noch einen Platz an der Wand einzunehmen. Das scheint sich irgendwie erledigt zu haben. Zumindestens wenn man sich einen Kommentar eines Bremer Sozialpädagogikprofessors in der FAZ durchliesst, über den Telepolis berichtet: "Das unwerte Hartz IV-Leben". Ich übernehme hier einfach mal das Zitat, das auch Telepolis bringt:

Während deutsche Frauen außerhalb von Hartz IV im Durchschnitt nur ein Kind haben und leistungsstarke Migrantinnen sich diesem Reproduktionsmuster nähern, vermehrt sich die vom Sozialstaat unterstützte Unterschicht stärker - mit allen Folgeproblemen. So sind in der Hartz-IV-Musterkommune Bremerhaven die Jungen in Sozialhilfe mit einem Anteil von rund 40 Prozent an der männlichen Jugend für mehr als 90 Prozent der Gewaltkriminalität verantwortlich. Solange die Regierung das Recht auf Kinder als Recht auf beliebig viel öffentlich zu finanzierenden Nachwuchs auslegt, werden Frauen der Unterschicht ihre Schwangerschaften als Kapital ansehen. Allein eine Reform hin zu einer Sozialnotversicherung mit einer Begrenzung der Auszahlungen auf fünf Jahre statt lebenslanger Alimentierung würde wirken - nicht anders als in Amerika.

Wie weit ist es bitteschön von diesem Sprachgebrauch, von dieser Forderung, bis zur chemischen Sterilisierung während des HartzIV-Bezuges. Vielen Dank, Herr Prof. Heinsohn, ich dachte, diese Zeiten hätten wir hinter uns.

Ansonsten fallen mir dazu zwei andere Paragraphen ein, als die von Telepolis genannten: §5 Absatz 3 "Kunst und Wissenschaft, Forschung und Lehre sind frei. Die Freiheit der Lehre entbindet nicht von der Treue zur Verfassung." und §20 Absatz 1 " Die Bundesrepublik Deutschland ist ein demokratischer und sozialer Bundesstaat." Das möge sich Herr Professor mal vor Augen halten.

Im übrigen: Wenn man schon mit diesen Begrifflichkeiten argumentieren möchte, könnte man zu einem wesentlich effektiveren Mittel kommen. Wenn das Problem die Bildungsferne des Milieus ist, dann könnte eine Ganztagsschule (somit eine Entfernung und Entfremdung des Kindes aus dem bildungsfernen Milieus) nebst individueller Förderung mehr bringen, als die Fortpflanzung des Bildungsschichten durch Aushungern zu unterbinden. Denn nichts anderes schlägt dieser Herr vor. Allerdings: Die Aktivierung des bildungsfernen Milieus und somit die effektive Ausnutzung des Humankapitals aus eigener Aufzucht würde zunächst einmal eine Investition bedeuteten. Bevor wir in Exzellenzzentren investieren (was sich so ausnimmt wie das Wegräumen von Eisbrocken auf dem Deck der Titanic), braucht unser Land erst mal eine Investition in die Grundlage.

Belohnt würden wir mit Fachkräften mit einer wesentlich höheren Bindung an unser Land. Jemand, der in Deutschland geboren ist, wird wahrscheinlich weniger Anfällig für ein Abwerben sein, wie jemand, der sein Heimatland schon mal verlassen hat, den Willen das Heimatland der Karriere wegen hinter sich zu lassen schon demonstriert ha.t Wenn man dann auch noch dazu kommen würde, das deutsche Bildungssystem durchlässiger zu machen, und so auch bildungsfernen Gruppen eine Chance zu geben, dann wäre uns weit mehr geholfen. Stattdessen holt man sich lieber die Eliten aus anderen Ländern, wohl in der Hoffnung, das diese zur Rente dann wieder in ihre Länder zurückkehren.

Hard disk cooling for home servers?

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 22:02:22 +0100

I get more more and more news about hard disks that yield checksum errors with ZFS. However even my RAID set of cheap hard disks didn't yielded any error so far, despite being significantly loaded by the Family Member Wide Area Network. I found this a little bit strange and asked a few people for location and cooling situation. One common denominator of other systems was that they used internal bays, but without any fans for the hard disk. My home server has an independent set of two 12cm fans for the harddisks. At the moment i just a assumption, but i think, that those low-end el-cheapo disks need significant cooling to work longer than just a while without errors, at least significantly more cooling than most people allow them to get. Perhaps you should consider this point for your home servers.

To get some additional data i want you to ask some question. In the case you use ZFS, did you experience any checksum errors while scrubbing? Do you have independent cooling for your hard disks?

Marriage is a graph

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 20:34:26 +0100

Storing a marriage in a database can be really mind-bogling when you want to store every possible way to marry a significant other in a database: Gay marriage: the database engineering perspective. Excellent read.

links for 2010-03-15

nospam@example.com (del.icio.us) — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 20:00:43 +0100

Recommended Listening: Animal Collective - My girls

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 18:38:43 +0100

It's just a single track i want to recommend today: It's Animal Collective's "My Girls" from their album "Merriweather Post Pavillion". I heard this track yesterday while watching a documentary about the free solo base jumper (climbing hills without ropes and doing a base jump instead of falling to death) Dean Potter. Somewhat strange music, but i like it ... especially the second half.

Mac, supported usb/serial adapter but no terminal program available?

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 16:06:36 +0100

There is a neat trick in the case you have an serial adapter, but no terminal programm at your disposal, your mobile data plan don't allow a larger download. Well, just open a shell:

screen /dev/tty.

At least for a Sun ILOM serial mgnt port it works right out of the box.

PS: Don't use the original MacOS X driver for Prolific based USB/Serial converters, the open-source variant is a much better alternative (implements BREAK, installer doesn't freeze) . You can download it from the sourceforge project page.

links for 2010-03-13

nospam@example.com (del.icio.us) — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 20:00:45 +0100

EsoWatch » Ein bisschen homöopathische Brustkrebsforschung, oder: Wer haette gedacht, dass Alkohol so giftig ist?

(tags: medizin)
BFU-Bericht zur Seitenwindlandung einer Lufthansamaschine waehrend eines Sturms in Hamburg

Am 01. Maerz 2008 hat eine Lufthansamaschine eine Seitenboee abbekommen und mit einer Tragflaeche den Boden touchiert. Hier der Untersuchungsbericht.

(tags: BFU aviation)

Who are you?

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 10:19:04 +0100

Once in a while Kris ask his reader who they are. This remembers me each time, to ask the same question in my blog. Kris asked this question yesterday. And of course this remembered me about asking my readers, so i want to ask the same questions: Who are you? Why are you reading c0t0d0s0.org? What do you like about this blog? What do you want to see improved? Which topics would you like to see in the next 12 months?

PS: Answers in english or german are welcome. Other languages would go through Google Translate, so don't be so astonished when i'm insulted by the stuff pouring out of the translator

Business as usual

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 21:50:13 +0100

Peter Judge of eweek visited one of the events taking place to welcome customers and partners of Sun and it looks like that he was a little bit astonished:

The most surprising thing about the event was the complacency. Many of the delegates suggested that this merger, billed as one of the most cataclysmic ever (in a good way or a bad way), might simply lead to business as usual, with the products and support coming from the usual partners and executives, and the roadmap continuing.

In my personal opinion, most customers in IT have a very laid-back view in perspective to our industry and especially in regard to the cat fights between the competitors in our industry. Neither they don't buy in to every nice image a market player tries to paint nor they believe in the images of doom the competitors try to paint about technologies, other companies or just ideas. And most of them take every media coverage with a really large grain of salt. Most customer have a simple approach: "Prove it". Thus i'm not really astonished about the comments in the coffee breaks. It's just the way the business goes in reality.

Fast Reboot for SPARC

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 21:20:07 +0100

I've reported about the PSARC case a while ago, but now it's in the code: This putback introduced the fast reboot feature to SPARC. It's implemented a little bit differently at the moment, as it doesn't totally circumvents POST, but it shorten POST substantially by skipping parts of it.

links for 2010-03-12

nospam@example.com (del.icio.us) — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 20:00:41 +0100

How are ATM skimmers installed? - F-Secure Weblog : News from the Lab

HHOSUG 11

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 13:14:15 +0100

Nur um sich schon mal den Tag im Kalender zu reservieren: Am 8.4.2009 findet von 19:00 bis 22:00 (man lernt ja ) das 11. HHOSUG-Meeting statt. Ich bin noch bei der Themenfindung, werde also noch nachreichen, welche Vorträge auf der Agenda stehen. Trotzdem könnt ihr euch via hhosug11@joerg.moellenkamp.org oder via XING für die Pizza anmelden.

Machtgefährdend

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 12:36:14 +0100

Das Wort, das FDP-Generalsekretär Lindner wahrscheinlich verwenden wollte, war machtgefährdend, das er eigentlich meinte, als er anmerkte, das Kritik an Westerwelle demokratiegefährdend ist. Kritik an Herrschenden ist gerade das, was Demokratie ausmacht. Alles andere nennt sich Diktatur. Wenn man einen Politiker nicht mehr uneingeschraenkt kritisieren und jede seiner Aktionen hinterfragen darf, sind wir einen Schritt zu weit in eine Richtung gegangen, in der wir schon mal waren.

More in-depth info in the wake of the 2010.Q1 release

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 21:03:38 +0100

More interesting articles were published in the wake of the 2010.Q1 release of the S7000 software.
Roch Bourbonnais published an interesting article about the performance aspects of deduplication. In passing he explains many details of deduplication. A must read.

Another blog entry written by David Lutz highlights changes to the 2010.Q1 to improve OLTP performance:

As mentioned already, the end result of these changes and other enhancements in the new software update were a 50% improvement in average OLTP throughput for this workload, and a 70% reduction in variability from run to run. Roch also reports a 200% improvement on MS Exchange performance, and others have reported substantial improvements in performance consistency on iSCSI luns.

Sun Storage 7000 2010.Q1.0.0

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 06:37:14 +0100

The new firmware for the Sun Storage 7000 is available for download. The Fishworks team announced this last night in a blog entry. You can download the new software at the download denter. Release notes are available in the FishWorks wiki.

Bryan Cantrill wrote an interesting article regarding the history of this release. Paul Monday wrote in his blog about the new Microsoft VSS provider, Eric Schrock about the multiple pools feature. Dave Pacheco gives some insight into the new replication framework.

Hate days like this one ...

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 21:44:13 +0100

When you like to work with bleeding edge technologies or alpha or beta versions, you have often the problem, that problems haunt you nobody had before. You get the hits first. No problems with that.

Perhaps i'm getting old, but sometimes i would like to see a really smooth ride through an installation, especially when it's otherwise a trivial stunt and you just need one additional feature.

I'm sure i will stay awake all night until i have an idea or until my alarm clock thinks it's time to get up. Especially as i consider such situations always as a personal defeat.

PSARC/2010/006 - removal of iSCSI Userland Target

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 12:43:26 +0100

The COMSTAR target is in OpenSolaris for several versions. So a PSARC case was introduced to remove the userland implementation of iSCSI in Opensolaris. Today the change found it's way into the codebase. There is just one thing that i don't like about it: There is no shareiscsi=on anymore, as the new administrative model doesn't really fit into such an option. But otherwise the new implementation is much better and versatile.

Mutually assured destruction

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 10:32:31 +0100

Jonathan Schwartz opened the curtain to high-level management for all armchair-CEOs (like me) and gave a good example why software patents work pretty much like the nuclear doctrine of the mutually assured destruction. He writes in "Good Artists Copy, Great Artists Steal":

I understand the value of patents offensively and, more importantly, for defensive purposes. Sun had a treasure trove of some of the internets most valuable patents ranging from search to microelectronics so no one in the technology industry could come after us without fearing an expensive counter assault. And theres no defense like an obvious offense.

Really an interesting read.

SolarOS

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 06:46:27 +0100

A reader with much better eyes than mine (think i should really visit my ophthalmologist) found an interesting reference to Solaris/SunOS in the new Tron Legacy Trailer:

It's at 1:12 in the trailer. SolarisOS 4.0.1 Generic_50203-0un4m i386 Unknown.Unknown The architecture is interesting: sun4m. That's something in the range of a SPARCstation 4 to SPARCstation 20, several Lunchbox systems had the same architecture and finally SPARCserver 630MP, 670MP and 690MP were sun4m, too. The production of those systems started in 1989.

I know what i will do on December 16th ...

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 20:16:40 +0100

Watching this movie:

(click here to view)

Drearily

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 14:54:57 +0100

3720 days

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 12:06:38 +0100

Okay, just got an even higer uptime result. A reader sent me a screenshot of one of his older systems: 3720 days, i assume this system was rebooted because of a Y2K procedure because 3720 days ago we had the 1.1.2000.

The October 2001 is a little bit strange from that perspective. So i'm not sure about the real uptime, perhaps the system booted with the wrong clock.

OpenSolaris Build 134 available for download

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 07:16:57 +0100

Build 134 of OpenSolaris was made available in the repository yesterday evening for an update via the Update Manager. The ISOs for this release are available at the usual location.

2371 days

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 21:43:26 +0100

Stefan Hinker presents in his blog the screenshot of a Solaris 8 system up and running for 6 years 5 months 29 days. So this system was booted the last time on Wednesday, September 10, 2003. It's a safe assumption that this system is totally downrev.

Flickr-Set: Hammer Park under snow

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 08:33:41 +0100

(click here to view)