Archive for January, 2005
outta here
it’s 2:10am. i’m done packing. i just finished watching Enterprise (grrr…nothing worse than watching an episode of a show that’s “To be continued…” the night before you’re leaving for a month)
i’m off to Taiwan for 2 weeks where i’ll still be working on the usual stuff. got some more NUMA stuff to finish up, and i’m still working on the OpenSolaris thing.
but after that, i’ll be going off to Cambodia & Thailand for 2 weeks. can’t wait to see Angkor Wat, and Phnom Penh. i’ve spent the past few months reading books about the complete destruction (physically, culturally, psychologically, and socially) that the Khmer Rouge rained down upon Cambodia. i’m both excited and scared to finally see the place. one side note i should mention, this is an especially personal trip for me since my mother’s family was basically wiped out (leaving only her and a brother) by the Khmer Rouge… it should be a pretty powerful experience.
1 comment January 30th, 2005
cuddle up with CDDL
Thus, there are strong grounds for concern that Solaris contains Windows interoperability code licensed from Microsoft, raising the possibility that Microsoft may at some point exercise its intellectual property rights to block further implementation of Open Solaris.
Hrm. I must first preface this blog entry with a very explicit “these are my own personal thoughts, and have nothing to do with the fact that I work at Sun”. If anyone misquotes me here, may the curse of a thousand violent cudgel-wielding monkeys befall you.
Honestly, I have these same concerns. I’ve been a fan of open source for a long time, and an employee at Sun for a relatively short time. That being said, I’m ecstatic that Sun is jumping into the deep end of the pool with the whole OpenSolaris effort (disclaimer: I’m working on the OpenSolaris project right now, read into that however much you want).
I want OpenSolaris to succeed as much as, if not more, than anyone else. I want so desperately to be able to turn to my Linux and BSD friends and convince them of the goodness that is OpenSolaris. That being said, I think the biggest problem with open source is the polarisation of the community. There are just too many damn licenses out there. BSD, GPL, MPL, EPL, CDDL, etc. We’re creating all these cliques of open source license followers. It’s like we’re building an open source community, and then putting in HUUUUGE fences to partition it up.
“Come on over and play with me! But if you play with me, I must demand that you not play with anyone else!”
People are dissing the CDDL for this reason. To be fair, it’s not CDDL’s fault. The GPL is just as guilty of this exclusivity, it’s just that the GPL was first - and it happens to be the darling of all the blind Linux followers on /. who worship the ground Linus Torvalds walks on. Honestly, I’d be happiest if everyone just licensed their stuff under the BSD license.
All that said, however…. in the end, I’m paid to be an engineer. Likewise, the people at Red Hat are paid to code, the people at IBM are paid to code, etc. etc. our salaries come from our companies, and our companies make their money off products. Is it selfish of Sun to force exclusivity with the CDDL? Yes. Is it wrong to be selfish and look out for yourself? No. I don’t think it is. It’s fine if you’re an individual contributor to the open source world - GPL that code, toss it out there for the good of mankind, and don’t worry about it — because you’re not expected to answer to the public… to the board… and to the shareholders. As a corporation, we are.
Would I rather that our code be given out freely to all who want it? Sure, the idealist in me wants that. But the part of me that sees a direct deposit every two weeks wants to see SUNW succeed, and if that means having to build another community to support a license in order to protect our interests: then so be it. I can deal with that.
I really truly do believe that Solaris 10 is the best operating system out there. Let the technology speak for itself. If the technology is good enough, then a community can be built, TRUE technology enthusiasts will flock to it. I don’t want the /. lamers who bitch and whine and have nothing of worth to contribute to join our community. I DO want the innovative, brilliant engineers (who also do hang out on /., to its credit) to join our community. It’s darwinism, baby. The strong will survive… and I do think S10 is the strongest OS out there.
1 comment January 28th, 2005
manu commentary
the only link i can think to give… but i was listening to the BBC radio commentary of the game, and by far the best commentary of the game was when the announcer, criticising Drogba’s dive, said
announcer 1: “Drogba gets a 6.9 for artistic merit.” announcer 2: “well… Drogba doesn’t look too happy…” announcer 2: “doesn’t seem like he likes the 6.9″ announcer 1: “well, it’s out of 7!!”
Add comment January 26th, 2005
open open open open…
flashback to cheezy Mervyn’s California advertisements…
i’m happy to say that the stuff i’ve been working on lately is now out there (well some of it anyway). go check it out.
1 comment January 25th, 2005
roundup
if you read chester’s blog, you’ll know we went boarding over the MLK weekend. i’ll just say it was great snow, great cabin, and great people. we had a lot of fun.
last night, upon Geoff’s recommendation, Jason and I went to go see Lemony Snicket. wow! what a great movie! the visuals were amazing… for those of you waiting for it on DVD: don’t. watch it in a theatre - your home TV won’t do it justive (unless you really have an amazing TV, in which case, i’m jealous - stop reading my blog). the set designs are amazing, the special effects just incredible, and the characters were amazing.
Add comment January 22nd, 2005
damn the blind
worked in the San Francisco office of Sun today, so i could go out to a really nice lunch with the rest of the NUMA/HLS team to celebrate our project putting back.
on the way there, while riding BART holding my cup of coffee, a guy walked into the train and ran straight into me causing me to spill coffee all over my jacket. i was startled out of my U2-mp3-player-induced-stupor and was about to say “hey asshole, watch where you’re going” or something to that effect until i realised he was blind.
damnit. you just can’t bitch out the blind.
random funny quote of the day: the other day at lunch, one of my friends who shall remain nameless said “you know my old Sony VAIO? they fixed it!” i asked, “what was wrong?”, to which she replied “the stick thingy was broken”
right. the stick thingy. uh-huh.
2 comments January 13th, 2005
music association
music association is a funny thing. i’m working at home today which has the benefit of letting me blast music as loud as i want, and through speakers infinitely better than the cruddy freebie Harmon Kardon/Dell speakers in my office. Boyd Tinsley just came on, and I suddenly got a weird flashback to a couple of years ago when I would be sitting in Espresso Roma (the coffee shop at UCSD) from 6:30am until 5 or 6pm every day working on my thesis.
ahh…those of you who knew me then knew it was a dark time. quite depressing actually. i thought many a time that i should simply give up, take my BS i’d already earned, find a real job and quit this whole “academics” thing. anyway, i listened to Boyd Tinsley quite a lot during my thesis time as it gave me that good ‘ol DMB just chillin’ groove. it was comforting in a time of, quite frankly, some pretty strong despair. hearing it again now just suddenly flooded me with those same emotions, two years later.
anyway. interesting experience. just wanted to share (and take a break from work) 
(and the album is called “True Reflections”. never got great reviews, but i happened to like it)
Add comment January 11th, 2005
top down vs. in order replying
Here’s an idea, and I’d like feedback on why this does or doesn’t suck.
I’m torn between whether I should do top down email replies or whether they should be written in order. By this I mean, top down email replies are when a replier prepends his reply before the original body.
Confusing isn't it? > This is. >> What is top down replying?
Whereas chronological replies are:
>> What is top down replying? > This is. Not as confusing... but then you have to scroll
I prefer chronological replying, but it can be annoying to have to scroll through replies to long emails. I try to fix this by trimming emails as I reply to them - but not everybody does this. What’s more annoying is when you get threads with multiple recipients who then do things in different order:
Bush > George Bush >>> Who were the last few before him? >>>>> Who is our current president? >>>> George Bush >>Bill Clinton, and then George Bush before him
yeah. annoying. the thing is, when I’m replying to an email that is recent, I prefer top down because I already have the context of the email conversation in my head (to be geeky: it’s in my cache and hasn’t been paged out). But for looking at older threads (more than a week, let’s say), I prefer chronological ordering because that’s how I can catchup and jog my memory.
What I would really like is to have all replies be attachments with a timestamp, I could then configure my email client to order them top-down if they are less than week old when I view the emails…. but if they’re older than a week, then it can order them in chronological order.
Does this sound like an unreasonable idea? What do you think? If a user prefers one vs. the other, they could opt to always show them in a strict order.
The only problem is you’d never be able to enforce that everybody reply in the proper format (i.e.: replies as attachments)
2 comments January 11th, 2005
insomnia
i’ve figured out why i’ve been having trouble going to sleep the past couple of nights.
it has a strange correlation with 24, season 4, coming back on TV and having 2 hour episodes the last two nights.
goddamn, it’s impossible to go to bed after watching 2 hours of the most intense suspenseful TV around. damn you jack bauer.
1 comment January 11th, 2005
swsusp (suspend) finally works..
ahh…finally. I installed Kevin’s FC3 patched kernel RPMs with software suspend, and I can finally suspend my Inspiron 700m. woohoo!
so now i believe everything on my laptop works as it should aside from the SD card reader, which is a minor shame - but not a huge deal since my digital camera uses smartmedia anyway.
yay. i just suspended in the middle of writing this blog, resumed, and my wireless connection reconnected automatically
yes, i know all you normal laptop readers out there (yes i’m talking to you Geoff, and your slick little piece of work Powerbook) are probably laughing at me since you all have been suspending since day 1. but this is a big deal to a linux laptop user like me.
1 comment January 4th, 2005
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