• Solaris Zones: Solaris Zones technology is in the Operating System Virtualization category, which enables software partitioning of a Solaris 10 OS to support multiple virtual independent operating systems with independent process space, allocated resources, and users. In the same category, there are also FreeBSD Jail and Linux-VServer, to name a few. Zones induce a very low overhead on CPU and memory by running non-global zone processes in the same kernel via a kernel dummy process. Currently a maximum of 8191 non-global zones can be created on a single machine.
• Solaris ZFS File System: Sun claims that the ZFS file system is a revolutionary new file system, including features, such as high storage capacity, integration of the concepts of filesystem and volume management, a novel on-disk structure, lightweight instances, and easy storage pool management. My understanding that ZFS is an OS-level software RAID solution, providing data management and protection from the loss of data due to file corruption. Performance wise, it is better than existing journaled file systems and it is compatible with other software raid solutions. There are articles even saying that it outperforms hardware RAID. Apple is rumored to integrate ZFS into its next operation system — OSX 10.5.
• Fault Management Architecture: Fault Management Architecture (FMA) introduces a new software architecture and methodology for fault management across Sun’s product line. The Solaris FMA model provides error handling, fault diagnosing, and response. A response is an event for corresponding agent(s) to take actions, which might include taking a CPU off-line, retiring memory pages, sending information to syslog, or restarting an effected server process.
• The Service Management Facility: The Service Management Facility (SMF) delivers a unified Solaris serice configuration infrastructure capble of accurately modeling any Solaris service and its interaction with Solaris and other servies. SMF starts services in parallel according to dependencies, which allows he system to bot faster, and reduces dependency conflicts.
• DTrace: DTrace is a comprehensive dynamic tracing framework, which is an observability technology that allows people, for the first time, to answer virtually every question raised about the behavior of the systems and applications. The framework introduces low overhead and its use cannot induce unexpected fatal failure. No wonder Apple has ported it to OSX 10.5.
• Performance Management: This is about the kstat utility that reports OS related performance-relevant data.
• Monitoring Tools: Tools include sar, vmstat, iostat, mpstat, netstat, nfsstat, cpustat, cputrack, proc utilities, such as pargs, and prstat.
• Viewing and Setting Tuning Paramenters: This is talking about tools such as sysdef, mdb, ndd, /etc/system and routeadm.

It is a must-have course for system administrators and/or operation supporters.

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Web 2.0 is a phrase coined by O’Reilly Media in 2003 and popularized by the first Web 2.0 conference in 2004. It refers to a new generation of Internet full of social-networking sites, wikis and folksonomies. Given the successes of 2.0 from companies like YouTube, MySpace, and Facebook, it is understandable that people want to jump ahead of the game, catching the next wave, even by speculation. There is an interesting diagram worth noticing, called 2007 Web Trend, which includes Web 2.5 applications.

Fortunately, our seasoned speakers shed lights on the 3.0 myth.

• Internet was created to connect people together, which has been carried on as the fundamental base from Web 1.0, 2.0, to 3.0.
• Internet connectivity is important. Watch out for technology advances, better availability, and policy improvements. For example, 2.0’s success is partially based on broadband network.
• Web standards are important. More importantly, who will drive the adoption of standards? Obviously, open source society will play a major role.
• Web technology will further expand into everyday life, which will largely change social behaviors of human society. Apple iPhone could be a good start.
• Browsers and browser like applications will prevail with enhanced security capabilities as they control both content delivery and application delivery.
• New business models and new ecosystems will be created for 3.0, just as Google Adsense and virtual currency from online gaming and virtual worlds for 2.0.
• Web 3.0 is still in its infancy. The judgment call will be made by Internet users. As a good example, there are 400 copycats of YouTube in China. Only the ones that satisfy the end users the best will eventually survive and prosper.

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Here are my notes:

• It is expensive to run a company in US, but the return is also more lucrative.
• Generally speaking, labor cost is cheaper in China but not true for skillful engineers.
• Successful business models from US Internet companies form a good start point for their Chinese siblings but that’s far from enough.
• Google AdWords is a good way to lure customers to the site but it is not the only way, and it is not necessary the best way. Most time, it is not.
• Chinese companies face more challenges to keep company secrets.

The moderator was Richard Lim, who is a veteran VC. He felt pity that Google Adsense came out too late. Otherwise, one of the companies that his firm invested could be saved during bubble bust since the company had fantastic page view growth. In that sense, Google’s eco-system helped Web 2.0 boom.

Overall, it is an interesting panel discussion for these that have strong entrepreneur spirits in their bones to enjoy!

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in 1999 as a B2B trading company, Alibaba survived the Internet dark age, and becomes a leading Internet player in the world. In 2003, Alibaba launched consumer ecommerce site Taobao, which eventually became the dominant C2C platform in 2005, surpassing eBay China. In August 2005, Yahoo! Inc. paid $1 billion in cash for a 40 percent stake in Alibaba, along with its China assets. In 2007, Alibaba entered business software service area by announcing Alisoft.

John Wu, full of wit and humors, gave us a deep inside look at Alibaba’s successes.

• Be cost conscience: Alibaba was among the earliest to cut cost in 2000 with the bubble bust on the horizon. Being local, they started to leverage Chinese high-tech workforce long before outsourcing became a hot topic in Wall Street.
• Be adaptive: Localization is the key to the success of international companies while, most of the time, it is easy to say than get done correctly. It is fatal to be ideological. The success of Alibaba’s B2B and C2C platforms are deeply rooted in its understanding of Chinese culture.
• Think out of box: When Alibaba entered C2C market in 2003, Eachnet (or eBay China) conquered more than 90% of the market. Out of the box, there were more Chinese who wanted to trade via some Internet C2C platform and who were not on Eachnet yet.
• Stay paranoid: In IT industry, only paranoids could survive. It is important to stay ahead of competitors. Through the Yahoo-Alibaba deal, Alibaba could leverage Yahoo’s technologies to support its further growth.
• Catch the China wave: Given its population and growth rate, China’s potential is still not fully fledged. A rich China means more ecommerce. There are bigger waves coming.

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So, what’s the hype behind all the craziness to put 4 more weeks under DST? I know that DST stands for Daylight Saving Time. Mysteriously, it doesn’t save any energy in my life. As a typical software engineer, I spend most of the time sitting before a computer inside a building. Since I cannot afford a fancy house with big windows and/or glass walls, I have to keep lights on to protect my eyes, regardless of outdoor weather conditions.

Did I mention that the new DST doesn’t save energe? The quote below is taken from Section 110 of the energy bill:

Amends the Uniform Time Act of 1966 to extend standard daylight time from March to November (currently it runs from April to October). Requires the Secretary to report to Congress on the impact of this extension upon energy consumption in the United States. Retains the right of Congress to revert Daylight Saving Time back to the 2005 time schedules.

Folks, I am really sorry. I need to save more energy under DST. Because, if this year’s setup doesn’t work out for our nation, we have to revert everything back next year. Damn it! It was so easy for us to save energy in the good old days. More, we didn’t have computers to worry about.

References:

• Daylight “Saving” Time…What Does It Save, Anyway?
• Seed: Don’t Bank on This Savings
• Y2K’s Revenge? Not quite, but DST change will cause trouble!

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You can download the tool as a zip file here, which contains two files: MyDBGraffle4.py and MyDBGraffle4.scpt. It is recommended by Paul to use Script Editor to save the *.scpt as an *.app and placing it in the dock or on the desktop. After its there, you can double click it and follow the popups.

Here, I use a tagging system schema to show you how to use this tool. I name the database as TagSchema.

1. Launch MyDBGraffle4.scpt in Script Editor and run it:

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2. Input the location of MyDBGraffle4.py:

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3. Input the application name of OmniGraffle:

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4. Input the MySQL database server host name:

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5. Input the MySQL database server port:

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6. Input database user name:

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7. Input the database name:

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8. The tool generates the beautiful schema diagram in OmniGraffle:

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Note that in order for this tool to work, you only need to setup a local MySQL 5 server with passwordless user root. Then, you load the database schema(s) that you want to have diagrams generated in OmniGraffle. Make sure that there are no overlapping between foreign key(s) and primary key(s) and foreign key(s) are defined before indexes. Of course, foreign keys only work for InnoDB tables under MySQL.

Feel free to report bugs and requirements as comments here.

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About 99 percent of Google’s revenue comes from advertising. …… Not only does Google depend on ads, it relies on one source—AOL—for about 12 percent of its AdSense revenue. If AOL terminated its contract, Google would feel some pain and its stock price could take a significant hit. …… For a company that depends so much on a single type of revenue, Google has stretched itself awfully thin.

However, Adam missed an important point, which is that online ad revenue is growing faster and faster, from 25% in 2007 to ~40% this year. As the market leader, Google could enjoy the growth even without doing anything.

The second article — Google love waning: Has Google peaked? — is from Donna Bogatin at ZDNet and is published in October 14th, 2006. Obviously, Donna missed the fact that Microsoft’s financial success is based on its monopoly position. If Google behave as bad as Microsoft, Google will do very well financially in the next few years. Every company would behave like Microsoft when they have monopoly positions. which has been approved by the history. That’s why we have anti-trust law. Donna is right that Google is not the Good Witch. As its position secured, it starts to play evil.

Google’s biggest problem is on its own success. First, it grows too fast. According to its own public data, it has grown from 682 in 2002 to 9,378 in Q3, 2006. Any company growing that fast could have management issues in the long run. The company could end up lack of necessary processes for a sustainable long-term growth. We had Gmail Disaster near the end of 2006, which caused the loss of user emails. The good news is that the fast-growth issue is not only for Google, but also for Microsoft. Techcrunch has a good article about it.

Second, Google needs to upgrade adsense to 2.0. The problem for the current version of adsense is that it requires that one homepage ONLY contains one topic. Otherwise, the homepage wouldn’t be classified correctly. Thus, I keep getting useless ads on this blog site.

All the above concerns are for the long-term. Google’s near-term future is very bright. Its stock chart shows that it will break through in this year, at least reaching $600. What’s your bet?

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I have the following plugins installed:

1. Adsense-Deluxe+: This is for Google adsense and Yahoo publisher network.
   
2. CaptCha!: This helps avoid spams.
3. Gallery2 Integration
4. Inline Google Maps
5. Snap Preview Anywhere Plugin: This generates pop-up snapshot of web pages.
6. Social Bookmarks
7. Spelling Checker

I will keep blogging!

Update: I have replaced Adsense-Deluxe+ with Adsense. I have added WP-Amazon. I turned off visual rich editor.

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Finally, I choose Captcha! since it is easy to install and my web host has GDlib pre-installed. In order for the plugin to work, one needs to download some twisted TTF fonts freely available from this site.

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It is a revolutionary breakthrough in the sense that it makes things much easier for manufacturers to deliver preinstalled softwares bundled with external storage. It also make end users’ life much easier since they only need to take care of one device instead of mutiple PCs, which also ease the processes of both data backup and data encryption. The pontential is definitely unlimited. However, I DO have to point out that they have a software compatibility list. Please check the list out and make sure that one’s daily applications are covered by the list before jumping into the hot water. For example, any softwares require kernel support don’t run well within Mojopac, which includes both Adobe Acrobat and Norton Anti-virus.

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1. Launch Disk Utility:

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2. New an disk image under user’s Documents directory from the CD/DVD-ROM:

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3. Create the disk image

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4. The disk image is ready for copy

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5. Wait for the blank disk

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6. The blank disk is ready to burn

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7. Burn the disk

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8. The disk is ready to go

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Since crunch time is unavoidable, how could we deal with it? I would like to share some personal experiences here:

1. Get up early. It keeps one’s body clock right enjoying the sunshine. It helps maintain a positive attitude during the long day.
2. Take a morning shower to help the body wake up.
3. Prepare extra clothing for early morning or late evening if one lives in an area with large temperature diference between day and night. Cold will at least cause headache.
4. Take a nap from time to time whenever one feels sleepy.
5. Have enough exercise to keep the blood flow. However, don’t over-exercise to exhaust oneself.
6. Keep energy bars or snacks handy in the working place. Don’t have energy crisis!
7. Have good quality food!

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Staying focused is one issue; that’s the problem of information overload. The other problem is information underload. Being flooded with information doesn’t mean we have the right information ……

What we need is intelligence in the Internet age, which, IMHO, contains two faces:

One aspect is presented by a good article from CNet. Technologies make knowledge much easier to access and make collaboration across the world much easier. However, it still depends on human beings to make things happen. The partial answer to it includes social network web applications, which enhance collaboration among people across the whole world. There are plenty of successful stories already: digg.com, youtube.com, del.icio.us, and flickr.

The second aspect is still on the technology side. We need a smart information aggregator, which, based on our daily behaviors, crawls and mines information automatically. It would like our personal secretary, helping us focus on the right information and/or the right communication. I believe that search technology is only the start of the wave, and more will come, which will form the core of Web 2.0.

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Of course, I am very happy about Apple’s smart move. To reward the change, I bought a Mac mini Intel myself.

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Though, every change has a loss embedded in it. First, all the Mac OSX softwares must be recompiled into universal binary to enjoy the power of Intel CPU. Second, there is still a missing link between PC/Windows and Mac OSX.

Apple’s answer to it is bootcamp beta, after hacker made Windows XP working on Mac Intel machines.

The second solution is provided by parallels, inc. The product is more similar to vmware instead of Microsoft Virtual PC. For example, CISCO VPN client only works within paralles guest OS. Another example is that parallels is faster than virtual PC. Further, in order to make parallels work on Mac mini Intel, one needs to upgrade the firmware to enable Virtualization Technology (VT-x).

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But, still, it is important for me to extract passwords out of Mozilla and backup them a little more properly this time. By searching on-line, it took me less than 5 minutes to find this guide.

The path of Mozilla/Firefox password file is {Profile Root Path/{Profile Name}/{Random String}.slt/{String}.s. Each site block text contains 6 lines:

1. Site address containing host and optional port
2. Form login input name
3. Base64 encoded login name wrapped around by ~ and =
4. Form password input name
5. Base64 encoded password wrapped around by ~ and =
6. A period to end the block

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Due to the recent cold weather, I lost the Internet connection from Comcast, which gave me a good opportunity to enjoy life without the Internet. Amazingly, I had much more time to read books, to exercise and to think about the true meaning of my ow life. Then, I realized that how much time I have wasted everyday through the Internet.

The real problem is that we are lack of tools to help us rate homepages, filter out junk information and find what we want. One good comparison is between Internet news (Google news and Yahoo news) and normal newspapers. Newspapers have opinions while Internet news are still lack of. Yes, you can do a search based on key words but you cannot get what you want. In the real world, you have the basic ideas of what you get when you open Washington Post or New York Times. Then, we end up doing a lot of editing job by ourselves.

Let’s see how far Web 2.0 will go!

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AV 500 weighs 9 ounces and measures 3×4.9×0.7 inches. It is a little bit larger than a normal PDA. Its 16×9 4-inch wide screen has the resolution of 480×272, which has more horizontal lines than the famous Apple iPod Video (320×240), but less than the new Creative Zen Vision and Espon P-2000. The latter two both have 640×480 and have relative smaller LCD screens. Will higher resolution play a major role in such a small display area? You guess.

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As a PVR, AV500 deals with JPEG, WAV, WMA, MP3, AVI (including DivX, for both NTSC/PAL). It is bundled with bunch of sample image/audio/video files. It could output video at the best DVD quality when hooked up with external displays. It is designed to transfer video in a tranditional VCR fashion. Hook it up with a video output via its TV docking pod. Start to record video on AV500. The recording time is 1:1.

AV500 has two USB ports: USB A is used for accessaries, such as a memory card reader; USB B is for computer connection. USB A is operated as USB 1.1 (full-speed USB 2.0) while USB B is hi-speed USB 2.0. In my test, it took 8-9 minutes to transfer 424MB data from a hi-speed USB memory card. It is much better than iPod, but still behind EPSON P2000. Its battery life is superb — 4.5 hours for video on built-in LCD — far better than 2-hour from iPod Video and 3-hour from P2000. It is definitely not a storage device for pro-photographer, but amateurs definitly could enjoy its much lower dollar to gigabyte ratio: < $5 per GB.

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First, I installed Treo Palm Desktop. It has conflicts with garmin ique 3600. Be careful if you’ve already installed garmin version of palm software, which is an old one. I don’t. So, everyting went through smoothly.

Second, I installed Intellisync for Yahoo! since I solely depend on Yahoo! mail to management my personal information.

1. Log in by my Yahoo! account into mail.yahoo.com.
2. Click Calendar to the left.
3. Click the Sync link to the right.
4. Click the Install Now button at the left-bottom to download the software and to install it.
5. After the installation, disable the default conduit via HotSync Manager so that, respectively, there is only one conduit associated to address, calendar and notepad.

Third, I played with VersaMail. It is very easy to set up standard email accounts, including both Yahoo! Mail and GMail. Remember not to configure it in the way to download all the emails. I set it as manually syncing up with my email accounts and downloading subjects only.

Treo’s keyboard really makes the difference. I have played with PDAs for years, starting from Palm 5. It is always a headache to deal with stylus, which never works for me. The wireless data network from cellphone providers also helps in the sense that broadband network is still not as reliable as wireless cellphone network.

In the end, I list my daily applications as the following:

• VersaMail: THE email client
• Blazer: THE web browser
• Contacts
• Tasks
• Memos
• Calendar
• World Clock
• Calc
• Mundu IM 3: the best IM client on palm

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