links for 2006-11-30

Thursday, Nov 30. 2006  –  Category: Linkage

a steaming pile of p.o.o.

Thursday, Nov 30. 2006  –  Category: OpenSolaris

there was a somewhat heated debate about p.o.o. last night on #opensolaris. glynn seems to be taking some flack for maintaining it, mainly on 4 points:

  1. it duplicates information already available on opensolaris.org/os/blogs
  2. it’s elitist, or the “why won’t you add MY blog?” dilemma
  3. it’s got non-OpenSolaris related blog entries in it
  4. it’s not community-driven

so, for the record, i’m firmly in support of the planet. i think it rocks. there, that’s out of the way. you may proceed to read the rest of my biased blog post now.

it duplicates information already available on opensolaris.org/os/blogs

rebuttal: some of us find it frustrating to read blogs on opensolaris.org/os/blogs because it only shows excerpts rather than the full entry. additionally, not to disparage it, but there is a lower barrier of entry to opensolaris.org/os/blogs. it’s more inclusive of anyone in the opensolaris community. p.o.o. is about aggregating blogs of opensolaris.org contributors, rather than participants. this is an important distinction to make. and lastly, os.o/os/blogs contains non-English blogs. again, this is fine for the main site - but it detracts from my reading experience as a retard-who-can’t-read-any-other-language-other-than-English.

it’s elitist, or the “why won’t you add MY blog?” dilemma

this one bugs me. glynn has said from the beginning, there is an editorial policy in place. the nature of editorials is such that they tend to be polarising. you can’t please everyone all of the time. and this is why i don’t envy glynn in his position of maintaining the planet. he has, and will continue to have to make, hard decisions on who he adds to the planet. and undoubtedly, he is going to piss some people off. again, it’s the difference between a contributor and a participant… and there’s not always a clear line of distinction between when you cross from being a participant to a contributor. yes, he may not always get it right… but tough - that’s the decision he makes, and he will draw flack for it for being in that editorial role. the best you can do is convince him otherwise. point out that your blog entries serve a valuable role to the OpenSolaris community. point out all your mailing list discussions. point out the fact that you hang out in IRC and give stevel flack for all the times he kills the os.o website. this is contributing. it’s not always just about code.

it’s got non-OpenSolaris related blog entries in it

p.o.o. says at the very top-right-hand side: “Planet OpenSolaris is a window into the world, work and lives of OpenSolaris hackers and contributors.” it’s not an aggregation of OpenSolaris related blog content. it’s an aggregation of OpenSolaris contributors’ blogs. i find this stuff totally valuable. yes, there might be (is?) a need for a planet of purely OpenSolaris-related technical content, but i find the non-OpenSolaris content to be extremely valuable in providing context into who a person is, what they’re like, and what they do. i love reading Jim’s blog entries about Japan with all his photos. i like reading Dennis’s diatribes and rants about Linux. these provide context into who Jim and Dennis are… it’s insight into the people, and thus it’s insight into the community of contributors and hackers.

it’s not community-driven

now this one just pisses me off. glynn did this in his spare time. he’s not paid to work on OpenSolaris website stuff… that’s the tonic-team (which i’m on). he’s a JDS hacker. yes, he works for Sun; but he did this as a community thing - and we hosted it on grommit before we got eventual approval to host it on the main site. if anyone else in the community had had the same idea, i believe 100% completely that we would have ended up with the same result. it would just have a different editor. the nature of a Planet is such that it’s either going to be a free-for-all-add-everyone aggregation (which IMHO is what planetsolaris turned into) which devalues it to its readership; or it’s going to follow a selective editorial policy…. which again, will inevitably piss some people off - but provide continual value to its readership.

so there. that’s my counter-rant to the various p.o.o. arguments i’ve seen over the past couple of days.

i for one, welcome our new p.o.o. overloads

btw, on a tangential note: if you want to see all the hackergotchis, you can view them here

pos has become poo

Monday, Nov 27. 2006  –  Category: OpenSolaris

glynn got official blessing for Planet OpenSolaris. where once it was known as ‘pos’, it has now become ‘poo’ following the usual abbreviations of opensolaris.org sites.

you can now find it at planet.opensolaris.org

links for 2006-11-27

Monday, Nov 27. 2006  –  Category: Linkage

seoul photos, now with new and improved context

Friday, Nov 24. 2006  –  Category: OpenSolaris, OpenSource, Photos

I finally got around to captioning and describing all my photos from my trip to Seoul for Tech Days from two weeks ago.

links for 2006-11-20

Monday, Nov 20. 2006  –  Category: Linkage

links for 2006-11-18

Saturday, Nov 18. 2006  –  Category: Linkage

opensolaris databases community

Wednesday, Nov 15. 2006  –  Category: OpenSolaris

i have an interesting relationship with the databases group here at Sun. i met Francois at fisl 7° last year, and helped him get Solaris up and running on his laptop.

from there i helped David Van Couvering get Solaris up and running on his laptop.

so it’s great to see them get a Databases Community up and in the open on opensolaris.org. i was excited when we got Postgres integrated in Solaris, and Francois’s JavaDB/Derby demo blew me away at FISL (in fact we’ve briefly talked about using it in the webapp)…

so head on over and see what they have to say. i promise they’re smart guys ;-)

pos live!

Tuesday, Nov 14. 2006  –  Category: OpenSolaris

i love that glynn decided to keep it abbreviated ‘pos’

anyway, planet opensolaris is now live… and on grommit no-less. :-)

the seoul shuffle

Monday, Nov 6. 2006  –  Category: Photos, Travel

had a fun day exploring seoul yesterday with my buddy raghu, who coincidentally happened to be out in seoul this very same week.

the day was gorgeous out (thankfully the weather forecast lied and it was completely sunny and warm). i’m a huge war buff, so we headed out to the Seodaemun Prison History Hall to see some exhibits on the Korean independence movement, and to learn a little more about the Korean War. along the way, we saw the requisite bit of engrish, and ended up walking around seoul for the rest of the day asking each other “didn’t you see my panty?”.

we wandered around the Insadong street shopping area, and had lunch at a place famous for its “doughy potato noodles” (they taste amazingly better than they sound), and an oyster pancake (also better than it sounds).

the famous hammering man statue was well… a hammering man. slightly underwhelming, and not worth the 2km walk.

we saw a street vendor with some pokemon puppets that were bouncing up and down to music. it was amazing. raghu and i stared and stared and could not for the life of us figure out how the thing worked. we plunked down 3000 won to buy one and see how it worked. after what seemed like an eternity of watching (though really probably about 10 minutes), we finally saw the tiniest thread of string running horizontally between the two speakers. the pokemon puppets were then attached to the string, which went into the speaker, and i presume were attached to the actual cone. so as the music played, the cone would vibrate, which sent waves through the string… which in turn caused the puppets to bounce.

amazing. and totally better than the hammering man.

stores/malls seem to have parking lots which have these little booths at the exits with cute girls in them. the girls wear a headset and have a huge speaker system, from which they bow and thank every car that leaves the parking lot. wow. i mean… just wow.

we also saw a really cool performance of an electronica/techno classical violinist in a metro station. he was accompanied by a gaggle of hot russian girls. go figure.

in the evening around dusk, we headed to seoul tower where we got some incredible 360° views of the city in the evening. we took the fun cable car ride up and down. on the way back, we wandered around the Myeong-dong subway station area trying to find this specific restaurant mentioned in the Lonely Planet that serves samgyetang (korean ginseng chicken soup). it was mentioned as being on the second floor, with no korean or english sign - but only chinese lettering. i can’t even begin to tell you how impossible it was to find this place. after 30 minutes of wandering around trying to map an out of scale map against the streets - we actually finally found the place.

the soup was amazing. totally worth the hunt.

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