Everything is a Freaking DNS problem

Don Marti is bloging on Linuxworld how he thinks Qumranet has a future, just not the future they might be looking at now.

Don claims that a software project will fail if someone orders a tool to be used that he himselve is never going to use, as he will never figure out what features are important and which ones are just irrelevant. People who actually use the software should be able to decide.

He gives a good pointer to where MySQL is heading and where they came from. Typically an organisation did't decide on using MySQL after a zillion meetings an a couple of purchacing procedures before to run out to the shop and buy it. No, people just needed a working rockstable database, they took what they had available, started using it and were pretty happy about it.

That's where opensource easily gained acceptance over the past decade, but how will the future go when more and more incompetent mangers will have to decide on keep throwing money out of the window for licenses of products that their people don't use or as an alternative have their people choose , waste less money and go home with a bigger bonus at the end of the year. We'll nobody has ever been fired for buying useless software right ?

I've read people claiming that Qunranet is going to compete with Xensource, I wonder how, Yes they are both in the virtualisation market, but for me they are in two totally different but complementary areas At least Don understands that I wonder, does he know what they are up to or is he just really or has he just a smart guy with some good ideas on the future.

The biggest advantage of moving to a new place and leaving your old email addresses behind is the fact that you leave all the spam behind also.

Wondering how long it will take..
Also wondering if I should disable trackbacks because of all the spam I get there :(

Seklos just posted a story on his Oracle blog on how he installed Oracle 10something in less than an hour.

I found the story hilarious. why . because about a decade ago .. when I was still into database & webdevelopment, Oracle first started shipping Oracle for Linus (somewhere in 99)
Back then some collegue had been struggling for a couple of days already to setup up Oracle on a Windows box and was thinking to just use SQL server.
So I went home found the famous CD with the typo (or did I really get the CD that should have been shipped to Finland ?) in my mailbox and as I had a new Siemens Server sitting in my basement, I installed a fresh RedHat and on a machine I never had seen before (that's the ninetees I`m talking about so no fancy just install it on most common hardware and it will work like we have these days) and then went on installing an Oracle version I had never seen before and guess what .. I completed that task in about just less than an hour.
So when I arrived at the office the next morning with an up and running Oracle on Linux server the crowd didn't believe me untll they fired up their SQLPlus clients and started creating their tablespaces and tables.

So now about 8 years later it still takes an experienced Linux and Oracle guy about an hour to install a basic Oracle ? What have they been doing ?

I bootstrap a fully operational MySQL server from blank disk to replying to queries in about 5 minutes.
Maybe I should move back to Oracle because as a consultant I get paid by the hour and if a similar job takes me about 10 times as long as I`m used to .. can you imagine ..

Now all joking aside .. the problem isn't with Oracle, the problem isn't with RedHat and not all the solutions are with MySQL, the problem is with people with little or no system experience trying to do a job they should grow in to over time, and failing to get proper help or guidance their first time.

Just one final thought.. with Unbreakable I really would have expected Oracle to go one step further not requiring the runInstaller thing anymore but just providing their customers with cleanly packaged software so a yum or apt-get install oracle would actually work.

Because as Luke learned us . If your computer can't install it .. the installation procedure is broken.

So Qumranet is out stealthmode , they have news on their website regarding their product.

Qumranet is a leading provider of virtual computing solutions and offers the industry's first truly integrated desktop virtualization solution, Solid ICE. Solid ICE enables enterprises to host Windows and Linux virtual desktops in KVM virtual machines on servers in the corporate data center, and allows users to connect to them via a remote protocol called SPICE. The benefits for IT include centralized provisioning, management, policy enforcement and compliance for desktops. In addition, due to the KVM and SPICE combination, Solid ICE delivers a superior end-user experience, especially with respect to graphics and multimedia.

I've just been Zattood, meaning that I can now watch real time local TV on my computer.

There is both an OSX client and a Linux client and some weird OS client for those who care too
I just tested it and it seems pretty fast an usable for someone who has an IP connection and sporacdially wants to watch TV.
However I couldn't care less .. I have cable and I never watch realtime TV anymore.

MythTV does that for me .. and I watch the shows weeks later :)

So LinkedIn is repromoting it's groups feature. So what groups should I try to create ?
* A couple of Alumni groups for companies/holdings I worked for ?
* A couple of Conference groups ? (Fosdem/LinuxTag/UKUUG ?)
Or should I just wait till someone else does that for me ? I`m lazy right ? :)

The thing with a new laptop is that you have to transfer your data again and again and again .. and that you forget to install packages you installed once..

All the theory about large scale installs and reproducability isn't worth a dime on a tool you install stuff to on a daily base.

Anyone has a good recipe to manage his own workstation t?

Serge asked me to organise the next edition of our famous
Geekdinners in my backyard, Antwerp

I have 2 potential locations but the most important thnig we need today is an idea of which date suits most people best.

We're using Doodle to vote for an appropriate Date .
Vote here

So Sun bought ClusterFS. I`m wondering what their focus will be now. What will be the prime platform on which Lustre will be developed Solaris or Linux ? Will other efforts in the open source cluster filesystem area react on this ? Will Lustre development speed up ? Will management become less complex ?
Time will tell .. I`m keeping an eye on it

Dear Future self,

The next time you run into PHP Fatal error: Call to undefined method DB_Error::query() and you are pretty sure all the correct libraries are installed , check if you can connect to the database with the username / password you have configured. Just as today you might have migrated to a new mysql server and forgotten to update the connection string.

thank you for your attention.