Category Archive

VMmark is a virtualization throughput benchmark developed by VMware to test its products’ performance on compatible hardware configurations. Its job is to stress the CPU/memory subsystem of a server hosting virtual machines and index its performance at its maximum acceptable workload. Vendors document VMmark tests with VMware products (normally ESX) on a given hardware/software configuration and submit the results to VMware, who publishes them on a web site.

VMmark came out of beta with version 1.0 in July 2007. To date, Dell, HP, IBM, and Sun have submitted results that have been published by VMware. The results cover the AMD Opteron and Intel Xeon server platforms, which all four server vendors now provide to varying degrees. It’s been a useful resource for me, since the competition between AMD and Intel the last few years has resulted in each vendor taking turns leading in virtualization performance in the 2-socket and 4-socket x86 server spaces. Regardless of which vendor submits a VMmark result for a particular processor/memory/chipset combination, the result can usually be inferred to be similar to what would be obtained on another vendor’s implementation of that combination. Based on a recent conversation I had with HP, they expect that customers will make that inference. I had approached them twice about HP’s lack of up-to-date VMmark results for their flagship virtualization platforms, and was told that they hadn’t submitted recent benchmarks due to their reluctance to publish results with non-production VMware ESX builds and/or hardware that wasn’t yet available to customers. Because other vendors were publishing results on current or upcoming platforms sooner, HP apparently didn’t see much return on going though the trouble and cost of performing and documenting VMmarks on their implemenation of similar platforms.

Note that when I described VMmark, I mentioned compatible, not supported, hardware configurations; that’s because VMware has published results from vendors that used pre-release, unsupported software and/or hardware. I think this is the most likely reason Dell was the first to release a quad-core-Opteron-based VMmark. If you look at the disclosure for that submission, you’ll see that it was run on a PowerEdge R905 with 2.5GHz quad-core Opterons (model 8360 SE), a processor model that isn’t available for purchase in that server today. The fastest available R905 today has model 8356 (2.3GHz) processors. Dell’s submitted results for their PowerEdge R900 with Xeon 7350 processors used a beta version of VMware ESX Server v3.5, build 62773, and was tested on November 16, 2007: a few weeks before the production release of ESX 3.5, build 64607, on December 10th. In fact, of the 16 total VMmark results published as of today, the only vendor who submitted results with hardware or software unavailable at the time of publishing is Dell.

To better reflect the version and status of hardware and software used to obtain the published results, I think VMware should:

• refuse to publish results that use pre-release hardware and/or software
• clearly state the availability and/or versions of the tested hardware and software in the system descriptions on the results page

That would allow customers like me to better determine the veracity of a published score without having to be a detective. As VMmark evolves and future SPEC-sanctioned virtualization benchmarks come to market, it would be nice to be able to see more, relevant benchmarks from more vendors rather than gamed, dubious benchmarks from a few.

I sent my Gmail account a 53kB AMR sound file (about 1 minute of audio) from my phone and when it showed up in my Gmail inbox the attachment was a ~512kB WAV file (mono, 8-bit).  I checked my phone to make sure it hadn’t auto-converted the file before sending it and it says it didn’t.  This means Gmail could be a handy part of an AMR-to-podcast solution.  Besides its conversion and email gateway roles, it would serve as a handy data archive.

Hat tip to Psychophil for occasionally encouraging the use of CFLs. I replaced a new hanging light fixture in the kitchen last weekend. The old one used a single, large 40-watt globe. The new fixture used three smaller G25 globes. I put in 40w incandescent G25 bulbs I had in stock for our bathroom lighting. The extra brightness was nice, but I figured this would be a great opportunity to try CFLs. I got some 9w G25 soft-white CFLs and put them in today. I was pleased at their instant start-up and lack of visible flicker. The kitchen table was illuminated perfectly. I’ll be looking to put more of these in other multi-bulb, non-fader circuits and fixtures around the house. The next two applications will be the recessed lighting in the kitchen (currently six 60w halogen floods) and the basement (six 75w lights on one circuit).

Scott and I recently started recording weekly “Zubritsky’s Corner” podcasts, both to talk about sports in general and to prepare for the third full season of the BDFL podcast. This week was a watershed moment in our podcasting history. After I suggested that Scott and I could greatly improve the quality of the ‘cast by having each of us record our side of the Skype call with separate mics at CD-quality and then mixing the results together, he quickly purchased a decent recording kit. After setting it up with Audacity and sending me a test WAV, we were all set.

I haven’t sung the praises of REAPER in a while. It’s software I purchased last year that’s been my main audio recording/editing tool ever since. I used it to record my side of last Friday’s conversation; the signal chain was my venerable Radio Shack mic plugging into my Mackie 1202-VLZ mixer, which was monitored by my M-Audio Audiophile 24/96 card. It was very easy to monitor my recording level in real-time with REAPER. Once we were done I saved out the new REAPER project. The next morning I received Scott’s recording and after about 15 minutes in REAPER I’d cut, cued, and panned our conversation. In another 15 minutes I’d pulled in our intro/outro music (Brad’s “Look and Feel Years Younger”), spliced it in with fades, set all the channel levels and applied the excellent W1 Limiter to the mix. Then it was simple work to render the project as a FLAC and hand it off to Foobar 2000 for tagging and MP3 conversion. The results are here. Compare it to our podcast from the previous week. To my ears it’s a dramatic improvement. What do you think?

Since their announcement about five months ago, I’ve eagerly awaited Dell’s first AMD-Opteron-based servers. The PowerEdge 6950 was released today. I’m quite familiar with HP’s ProLiant DL585 boxes; I think they’ve been the best VMware ESX hosts on the market for the last few years. With the PE6950 release I compared its specs to HP’s latest DL585, the G2. Beyond the badges and management software/interfaces, here are the major differences I see:

• The PE6850 utilizes Broadcom chipsets; the DL585 G2 uses nVidia plus AMD. Until I saw the Dell specs, I wasn’t even aware Broadcom made system chipsets. Their ServerWorks division does; perhaps it’s the first time system chipsets have been marketed as Broadcom since the acquisition. I know nVidia’s been making AMD system chipsets for some time. Advantage: HP.
• The DL585 G2 offers one more PCIe x8 slot than the PE6950 and two PCI-X slots that aren’t present in the Dell. Advantage: HP.
• A sweet config with four 2.6GHz processors, 32GB of RAM (16 x 2GB DIMMs), a RAID controller with four 72GB drives, and a DVD-ROM drive lists for $22,560 from Dell, and $23,624 from HP. Advantage: Dell.
• This is Dell’s first enterprise product with Opteron processors; HP’s been doing Opteron for a few years now. Advantage: HP.

Old camera: Sony Cyber-shot DSC-P51
New camera: Canon PowerShot A530
Old camcorder: Sony Hi8 CCD-TRV66
New camcorder: Canon MiniDV Elura 100

These things use coffee pods, you know…

When we heard Cingular was going to impose what amounts to an “old technology” tax on TDMA and analog customers, Melissa and I decided to find different plans. We both ended up staying with Cingular. I got a work-sponsored GSM phone and Melissa got one of the GoPhones, also GSM. We’ve both noticed that call quality is not superior to the TDMA service we gave up. We’ve heard the same thing from others who have done the same thing. Has anyone else out there experienced the same thing after switching? After hearing all the GSM hype, I’m underwhelmed. It’s nice to have a new, smaller phone, but what’s the point if the network isn’t better at handling voice calls?

rsa-704-rm.py runs 1% faster per clock cycle on Woodcrest vs. Opteron.

As a guy who works with Dell and HP servers every day and prefers AMD’s Opterons, my initial take is that Dell’s announced plans for a 4-socket Opteron server are the first real salvo they’ve fired at Intel for lagging in that part of the server space for several years now. The primary comparison in this space isn’t individual processor speed, it’s how fast data can moved around in the system, between disks, memory, processors, and back. The direct connect memory archecture of the 4S Opterons has been superior to Intel’s single- and dual-front-side-bus architectures of their 4S Xeon MP solutions. IBM recognized this a while back and instead of building 4S Opteron servers, engineered their own chipsets for the Xeon MP to address Intel’s shortcomings.

I suspect the Dell offering (a PowerEdge 6955?) will have feature parity with the HP ProLiant DL585, but I wonder what they’ll improve on besides perhaps the price. News more interesting than this would be a Dell 2U, 2-socket Opteron server to compete with HP and Sun in the higher-volume server market. With two dual-core processors and 16 to 32GB of RAM per server, these are fun boxes for the price.

About a week ago I received an email from Pawel Kondratiuk of Poland; he had taken my RSA-704 algorithm and ported it to C++. After a brief discussion about efficiency, he’s worked up version 0.3 and has invited me to share it here. It’s a source package with a makefile and a little documentation; he’s also included a convenient startup script for Gentoo Linux. I’ve compiled it on Fedora Core 5 and have it running on one of my lab servers.

If you end up solving RSA-704 with this stuff, please think of Pawel and I when you collect your $30,000.

Download file

I won’t post the text of the scripts here, but I’ve improved the RSA-704 “Lottery” script with Phil’s suggestion. I also created a variant that uses a Rabin-Miller-inspired module to try to more intelligently create the large possibly-prime numbers being used as trial factors. Think of it as “aim and shoot” as opposed to the massive amount of wild, flailing trial factors generated by the Lottery script.

The new scripts:

• RSA-704 Lottery v1.1
• RSA-704 R-M v1.0

Since I found out that RSA-640 was solved, I’ve been thinking about altering my script for RSA-704. I made a number of changes:

• Focusing on generating binary numbers with exactly half the digits of RSA-704. Both RSA-640 and RSA-576’s factors had that property.
• Used join() to concatenate the binary number string elements instead of +=’s.
• Used Python’s native base-10 conversion instead of baseconvert.
• Decided to calculate the primes below 2000 and check these against the generated number, since that might save compute cycles versus trying every number against RSA-704. It seems like it makes things go faster.
• Improved the output.

Here it is: download text version

#!/usr/bin/env python

# rsa-704-rand.py:

# RSA-704 Factoring Challenge "Lottery Solution" by Alex Harden

# Version 1.0: 05-Apr-2006
# Copyright (C) 2003,2006  Alex Harden (http://alexharden.org/blog/)
# This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or

# modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License

# as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2

# of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
# This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,

# but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of

# MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the

# GNU General Public License for more details.
# You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License

# along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software

# Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA  02111-1307, USA.
# Find the GPL online at: http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html
# Info about the RSA Challenge Numbers:

# http://www.rsasecurity.com/rsalabs/challenges/factoring/numbers.html
# Interesting fact about the solutions to the RSA-576 and RSA-640

# challenges: both factors were 50% of the number of digits of the

# challenge number's total digits. (Both binary and decimal.)
# RSA-576 numbers: for reference and testing:

# x=18819881292060796383869723946165043980716356337941738270076335642298885971\

# 5234665485319060606504743045317388011303396716199692321205734031879550656996\

# 221305168759307650257059L

# y=39807508642406493739712550055038649119906436234252670840638518957594638895\

# 7261768583317L

# z=47277214610743530253622307197304822463291469530209711645985217113052071125\

# 6363590397527L
# RSA-640 numbers:

# x=31074182404900437213507500358885679300373460228427275457201619488232064405\

# 1808150455634682967172328678243791627283803341547107310850191954852900733772\

# 4822783525742386454014691736602477652346609L

# y=16347336458092538484431338838650908598417836700330923121811108523893331001\

# 04508151212118167511579L

# z=19008712816648221131268515739354139754718967899685154936666385390880271038\

# 02104498957191261465571L
# For RSA-640 (193 digits), I concentrated on generating random odd numbers

# that had 96-98 digits (est. 319-321 binary digits).  The solution numbers

# each had 97 digits and were each 320 binary digits (the middle of the

# estimated range).
# For RSA-704 (212 decimal digits), I'm concentrating on generating

# random odd numbers that have 352 binary digits. (106 decimal digits)
# Let's try to make likely prime numbers using a neat method:
# Reference 1: http://www.maths.abdn.ac.uk/~igc/tch/mx3015/notes/node157.html

# - create random bitstring of 352 binary digits (make first and last

#   values "1")

# - convert it to decimal long int

# - if it's not divisible by any of the primes  0 :

    i+=1

    slist=['1']

    pos=1

    while pos 

We recently brought in a number of HP Proliant DL385s with dual-core Opterons and 16GB of RAM. I’ve borrowed one to do some testing for about week or so and I’m having fun.

I installed Fedora Core 5 for x86-64 and played around with that a little bit, tweaking and running my upcoming RSA-704 Python script to generate some load, creating a few hundred million randomly-generated possible factors of the challenge number. The default FC5 environment is laid out quite nicely, and might make a nice day-to-day machine if/when I can dedicate one to GNU/Linux. I plan to check out Ubuntu at some point as well, since I’ve heard good things about it.

I installed Windows Server 2003 x64 edition as well, and loaded up IronPython, .NET 2.0 (x64 native), and the ActiveState Python 2.4.2 distribution for Win-x64. ActiveState’s Python ran my RSA-704 script faster than IronPython. On this config I’ve also loaded up the newly-announced (and free) Virtual Server 2005 R2 x64, which is pretty slim compared to VMware’s ESX Server, but slick. However, VMware’s upcoming free host-based product looks like it’ll be better. It’ll have support for x64 guests and will support dual-processor VM’s. VS2005R2 doesn’t.

These times between patching cycles are when I really enjoy my job. I like trying out new stuff.

Foobar 2000 version 0.9 is officially released. Highly recommended. Note that the plugin architecture isn’t backwards compatible, so if you’re currently using 0.8x with third-party plugins, you may want to check for new versions of the plugins.

Thanks to Peter and the other developers for this awesome software.

An emailer named Stan found my RSA-640 entry from a few years back and asked a few questions about my assumptions. I hadn’t thought about the challenge in a while, so I was surprised when I found out the challenge number was factored last November. Validating my theory about the factors’ length, each was 97 digits.

The next-highest challenge number is RSA-704. I’ll publish a new lottery script for it, perhaps with some new tricks, soon.

I requested a Hi-MD as a Christmas 2004 gift when I learned that Sony’s SonicStage software would allow analog recordings to be uploaded without loss of quality to a computer. In the last year, it’s been my podcast-recording device of choice, and is a great portable music solution. I think its audio quality and tweakability are superior to the iPod, but the iPod is certainly easier to use.

As Minidisc adoption has waned over the last few years, Sony has been enabling more features and usability to the line. I just got the news from the Minidisc Community Forums today that SonicStage 3.4 is out and has enabled the following features that I’ll definitely use:

• New ATRAC3plus bitrates: Bitrates now range from 48kbps to 352kbps with 9 increments (132kbps ATRAC3 is a 10th setting). Not all can be transferred to Hi-MD, but the 352kbps one is a new high (256kbps (Hi-SP) was previously).
• HQ compression: Normal (default) or high quality compession modes are available.
• Non-copy-protected uploaded tracks and digital and analog recordings are all able to be transferred directly to a computer without DRM. This finally allows full use of the capabilities of the device and enables content portability between computers and Hi-MD devices. I believe the timing of enabling this is at least partially the result of the bad publicity from the Sony/BMG “Rootkit” fiasco.

I think the Minidisc portable recorders are still the best-featured devices that don’t require proprietary or non-removable batteries. I currently use the iPod Nano more for day-to-day listening of podcasts and some of my new music, but my Hi-MD (the MZ-NHF800) is still the crown jewel of my portable music and recording arsenal. Thanks to Sony Electronics for making it even more useful.

Ryan and I are visiting my parents today; they live west of DC, in Virginia. Since I’m in the market for a new case for the Nano, and our local Best Buy insured me they won’t carry any until Christmastime, I suggested we hit the Apple Store in Tysons Corner. It was quite a sight. My favorite part was playing around with iTunes and GarageBand on one of the new dual-core G5’s with a 30″ Cinema Display and a kickin’ Klipsch audio system. Ryan liked playing with some of the games on the iMac G5’s at the kids’ table. Quite a mecca for all things Apple.

Unfortunately, the case I want wasn’t in stock. It looked like the only non-Apple Nano cases that were there were the Belkins. I’ll order the case through the web store.

I’m a Windows-Server-kinda guy. It’s my job. I also administer VMware ESX Servers and I dabble in Linux. One of my
specialties is specifying and configuring hardware solutions, so I
keep up on the x86 server hardware front. I’d been alerted to the
pending debut of the Sun “Galaxy”
Opteron-based servers (which occurred Monday), so I checked them
out.

Read the rest of this entry »

My favorite droid makes a great computer.

After having niche uses for two different 32MB USB thumb drives I’d received from vendors, I knew at some point I’d want to get one of the larger ones for easily hauling around podcasts and other transient multimedia. I finally pulled the trigger and got the 512MB Cruzer Micro from Sandisk. I haven’t checked out any of the included software yet, but I did transfer 256MB of MP3s to it in under a minute, so I know it works and is fast. Recommended.

Scot Hacker speaks thoughtfully about his experiences trying to fight MT comment spam. He’s dealt with it first-hand as a multi-blog MT host. I did turn off unregistered commenters for a while when TypeKey came out, but then turned them back on when MT 3.1 and MT-Blacklist 2 came out, not realizing that MTBL would need the resources it does to filter out a comment spam storm.

Seeing as comment spammers are the reason why I’ve received nastygrams from my host, I will probably follow Scot’s lead and require TypeKey authentication. Scot’s the first person outside of Six Apart that I’ve read who had such a thorough dissection of the problem and the steps needed to combat it. I’m only dealing with a single blog here (MHS doesn’t allow comments - yet), but I’m getting spammed often enough that it’s gotten to be a real annoyance cleaning up.

I just published the Python app for my day job that I mentioned I would be working on. It turned out quite a bit differently than I thought it would.

The goal: grab events from our Active Directory domain controllers from around the world and parse them against our network subnet information (specifically, what building a subnet is deployed in) to provide a list of IP subnets that should be added to Active Directory and assigned to a site.

The tools: one slightly dangerous CS grad, ActivePython, Winbatch, Sysinternal’s PSLogList, and a W2K3 server.

The method:

• Put PSLogList on each DC along with a shell script that is scheduled to run it weekly. The command used: psloglist -s -d 14 -i 5778 > c:\5778logs.csv outputs the last 14 days’ 5778 events with comma-separated values and puts them in a text file. PSLogList can remotely query servers, however its performance over WAN links is much slower than just running it locally and copying over the results.
• Wrote a Winbatch script that gets a list of all the current AD DCs, and attempts to find and copy down their CSV files. After it’s done, it puts them all together into a single CSV file.
• Wrote a Python script that reads in a CSV file with network subnet information (network address, subnet mask, and building info are used) and then iterates through each 5778 event, associating a network subnet to each referenced client’s IP address. I used a bit of brute force to calculate the correct subnet. Our network has a lot of variety, with plenty of subnetted Class B and C subnets, so this calculation takes awhile for the thousands of 5778 events that are being parsed. There are probably more elegant ways of doing this, so this part of the process will improve over time. (The Python script I wrote is in the extended entry.) The script outputs a formatted text file that includes information about every unassigned subnet.
• Created a shell script to wrap this all up and run weekly after the runs of the DCs’ scheduled PSLogList jobs.

Read the rest of this entry »

I just published the Python app for my day job that I mentioned I would be working on. It turned out quite a bit differently than I thought it would.

The goal: grab events from our Active Directory domain controllers from around the world and parse them against our network subnet information (specifically, what building a subnet is deployed in) to provide a list of IP subnets that should be added to Active Directory and assigned to a site.

The tools: one slightly dangerous CS grad, ActivePython, Winbatch, Sysinternal’s PSLogList, and a W2K3 server.

The method:

• Put PSLogList on each DC along with a shell script that is scheduled to run it weekly. The command used: psloglist -s -d 14 -i 5778 > c:\5778logs.csv outputs the last 14 days’ 5778 events with comma-separated values and puts them in a text file. PSLogList can remotely query servers, however its performance over WAN links is much slower than just running it locally and copying over the results.
• Wrote a Winbatch script that gets a list of all the current AD DCs, and attempts to find and copy down their CSV files. After it’s done, it puts them all together into a single CSV file.
• Wrote a Python script that reads in a CSV file with network subnet information (network address, subnet mask, and building info are used) and then iterates through each 5778 event, associating a network subnet to each referenced client’s IP address. I used a bit of brute force to calculate the correct subnet. Our network has a lot of variety, with plenty of subnetted Class B and C subnets, so this calculation takes awhile for the thousands of 5778 events that are being parsed. There are probably more elegant ways of doing this, so this part of the process will improve over time. (The Python script I wrote is in the extended entry.) The script outputs a formatted text file that includes information about every unassigned subnet.
• Created a shell script to wrap this all up and run weekly after the runs of the DCs’ scheduled PSLogList jobs.

Read the rest of this entry »

My usual programming language at work is Winbatch, since it’s geared towards automation and administration on the Windows platform. Today I took a fresh look at our Active Directory site definitions, which are a combination of the mapping of IP segments to site objects and the linking of the sites according to the network routing topology. I realized that if I could pump out the IP addresses of clients that reported they weren’t in an AD site, I could concatenate and compare them to our list of segment/building mappings and produce a list of IP segments (and possibly entire buildings) that need to be added to the site definitions. Based on all the string manipulation I’ve done with Python with ICYG, I figured as long as I could get both the event logs and the network information in flat text files I could breeze through them with a quick Python script to produce the list.

But first I had to export the AD domain controller event logs into a predictable text format. Enter MS’s recently revved Log Parser, which I had heard about, but hadn’t yet played with. After a trip to the Log Parser forums and four attempts to get the syntax right for what I wanted to do (export the event messages for all events with ID 5778), I had a CSV with the relevant client info created. I quickly scraped together the network info text files from some webpages and have everything set up to script against tomorrow morning.

And here I thought I’d never get a chance to use Python at work…

After years of creating iterative Python scripts, I’m finally diving into it. The deeper water feels fine. Thanks to Mark Pilgrim for providing such a great resource.

This week’s BDFL podcast was the first time I’d recorded using the Hi-MD Walkman I received for Christmas. It has a thick manual and does quite a bit more than the Walkman it’s replacing. I have a pretty good handle on its interface and software now, and was able to record, edit, and encode the podcast in the following manner:

• Conducted my conversation with Scott via Skype, routed through my UB802 mixer; the Hi-MD was connected to the mixer output via its analog line in. It had a 1GB Hi-MD disc in and was set to record in PCM mode (which provides lossless CD-quality audio).
• Connected the Hi-MD unit to my computer via USB and used Sonicstage to bring the recording over to the computer digitally. About 820MB of data was transferred, and it took about 45 minutes. This is about 2x faster than the recording time of around 1.5 hours.
• The resulting file on the computer was wrapped with Sony’s OpenMG DRM, but they recently released a WAV conversion tool that lets you convert original analog recordings to an unlocked WAV file. This worked pretty quickly.
• At this point, I edited and mastered the WAV file as I normally do in Sound Forge, and used the FB2K command-line converter with the LAME 3.96.1 DLL to create and tag a final 22KHz mono MP3 file for the podcast.

Even dealing with the DRM issue, this is still faster than transferring the recording over in real time in analog, and the quality of the recording is preserved in the process. The MZ-NHF800 has been enjoyable to use so far; I’m still scratching the surface of the NetMD-generation capabilities like group folders. It also supports a range of bitrates, so I’m testing different encoding & transcoding scenarios to see what I prefer. It gets a thumbs-up so far.

While reading this article on German automakers developing standards for car-to-car wireless networking, I remembered Cringley had proposed that concept in one of his columns. Good call; that article was from over a year and a half ago.

I’ve been using SharpReader on a daily basis at work for a while now and it’s usually performed fine. It’s a bit of a memory hog for the ~100 feeds I have it monitoring currently, but it had never kept me from doing my work. Recently, though, it’s started showing new items in the wrong folders, and this has got me looking to finally make the move to Bloglines as my main feed reader. I was thinking of using Thunderbird 1.0 in this role, but two things make that a non-starter: no support for importing my subscriptions OPML file (or OPML export, for that matter), and no easy way to toggle proxy server settings as I can with Firefox and SwitchProxy. I’ve synched my SharpReader subscriptions with it for a while now, so all I really have to get used to is Bloglines’ interface. I think SharpReader’s text display is more efficient, but Bloglines’ accessibility and utility will probably make my feed reading more efficient and easy than before.

Another reason I’m moving away from SharpReader is the fact that it hasn’t been updated to support RSS enclosures. As a Net-based app, Bloglines doesn’t have settings for automatically downloading enclosures, but I’m using Doppler for that on my server, since I want to download my subscribed podcasts to only one location.

A happy by-product of shifting to Bloglines means that I can more easily read my feeds at home and other locations. I’ll post about this again if I have any serious usability issues with Bloglines.

My favorite programming language has been updated. Thanks to the developers who continue to improve Python.

Bands Debut Dual-Sided CD/DVD Hybrid

This seems pretty cool, especially if the consumer isn’t gouged by the price. Playing surfaces on both sides mean careful handling is required.

I’m checking out RC1 of Doppler, a .NET app for downloading podcasts. I’m interested in seeing if its scheduling works. (I haven’t been able to get iPodder’s to.)

It looks and acts cool; I like being able to drag and drop URLs from Firefox to Doppler. I also like its initial feed parameters; it lets you tell it how many of the most recent enclosures to download, and if you want to specify a maximum enclosure size for the feed.

Thanks to some of my family and friends accepting my Flickr invites yesterday, my account was upgraded to a pro one for three months. I’ll continue to test the service and post about my experience. I’ll also try to integrate some of their features into this site.

There’s been some buzz about Flickr, so I decided to check it out and uploaded a few photos from our Disney trip. If you think you’d like to sign up and check it out, please give me a chance to invite you to the service - they track referrals.

Contrary to what may be popular belief, I do work for a living. I haven’t blogged much about work in the past, but when I have to really dig to find some nugget of info or experiment to find something out, I figure publishing the info might be useful in the future. (At least, to me. ) That’s why I’m posting this.

We’ve been using VMware GSX Server on two relatively large development/test systems for almost two years. We just bought an HP Proliant DL585 (the demo Opteron server I blogged about previously) to run VMware’s ESX Server product. While I’m waiting for the additional hardware I need to productionize the server for ESX, I’ve installed the software to play with it. One of the things we’re going to want to do with it is move some of our existing virutal machines (VMs) from our GSX servers to our ESX server. However, after I looked at the fine print, I found it wasn’t going to be so easy.

Update (28-Jun-2006): In preparing for our implementation of ESX Server 3, I’ve been in the VMware Knowledge Base quite a bit. It looks like they’ve documented an IDE->SCSI virtual disk conversion process that obviates the need for these procedures.

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I’ve just upgraded to the new Firefox release - grab it over at Mozilla.org. The most noticable thing so far (besides some component compatibility issues) is the display of an “RSS” button on the right of the status bar when the browser detects feed-related metadata on a page. Apparently, at least Atom, RSS1, and RSS2 feeds are supported, as that’s what I’m seeing options for when I navigate to my home page. You can then select to subscribe to a particular feed by clicking on the RSS button. The bookmark for the feed is a folder of links to the feed’s entries. Pretty cool stuff.

Update: Ross just posted an entry that points to a webpage that references the feed support I was describing, and he expounds upon the support that the new Thunderbird 0.8 has for feeds as well. Good show.

This tip just gave me back about 15-30 seconds of each work day. Thanks to John for the tip.

The referenced “Optional” folder is nearly empty by default, with only a readme.txt that declares:

Put unused plug-ins in the optional directory.

I bet if I install Google’s Gmail Notifier I can avoid getting this nasty login prompt:

Apparently, this breaks the fine Gmail Notifier I’m already using and liking.

The hazards of open betas and free lunches, I guess…

Update (31-Aug-2004 8:35am): It appears that they removed this change. The Gmail Notifier Mozilla Extension is working again.

Update (1-Sep-2004 1:47pm): I spoke too soon. The change is back.

Update (2-Sep-2004 6:15am): They changed it again; now the Gmail Notifier is working again.

Mark Cuban’s been blogging about basketball lately, but over the weekend he wrote an interesting entry regarding the current state and future of digital video. He cites experiences both as a digital video consumer and as the co-founder/owner of HDNet. It’s refreshing to hear a broadcast exec who’s not afraid to address the possibilities of legally and flexibly space-shifting commercial DV.

Computers already produce too much hot air; why would someone want to it to stink as well?

Via Slashdot: The Mozilla Foundation has released a beta of a new calendaring application in the vein of Firefox/Thunderbird called Sunbird. I’m going to download and check it out today.

On my home workstation “Earthshine” I’d been hearing some clicking coming from the 4-year-old 30GB hard drive that the OS was installed on. The XP installation was probably about 2 years old, and performance was becoming slow. Also, I found the main cause of a major frame-drop issue I had trying to capture our Hi8 tape archives to the computer for DVD archiving; the NVidia-supplied drivers for the GeForce2 card. Even when going back to the MS-supplied ones, things weren’t superb. So I decided to re-use the 60GB drive that had just come out of the machine when I put a 160GB drive in as the new OS drive.

I had just finished up making and testing an integrated-SP2 Windows XP Pro CD at work, so I used that to build the new instance, with a 30GB C: volume on the 60GB disk. Leaving off the NVidia drivers, my video capture problem was solved. I was able to migrate our Firefox bookmarks/preferences and Thunderbird email folders to the new OS instance relatively easily since they appear to just looks for well-formed files and directories in the proper places. Other core office and multimedia apps were installed, and the system is running quite nicely now.

I know, it would have been more liberating to scrap Windows and run Linux; but that’s what I think the remaining space on the 60GB drive is for.

Testing Meme Propagation In Blogspace: Add Your Blog!

This posting is a community experiment that tests how a meme, represented by this blog posting, spreads across blogspace, physical space and time. It will help to show how ideas travel across blogs in space and time and how blogs are connected. It may also help to show which blogs are most influential in the propagation of memes. The dataset from this experiment will be public, and can be located via Google (or Technorati) by doing a search for the GUID for this meme (below).

The original posting for this experiment is located at: Minding the Planet (Permalink: http://novaspivack.typepad.com/nova_spivacks_weblog/2004/08/a_sonar_ping_of.html) —- results and commentary will appear there in the future.

Please join the test by adding your blog (see instructions, below) and inviting your friends to participate — the more the better. The data from this test will be public and open; others may use it to visualize and study the connectedness of blogspace and the propagation of memes across blogs.

The GUID for this experiment is: as098398298250swg9e98929872525389t9987898tq98wteqtgaq62010920352598gawst (this GUID enables anyone to easily search Google (or Technorati) for all blogs that participate in this experiment). Anyone is free to analyze the data of this experiment. Please publicize your analysis of the data, and/or any comments by adding comments onto the original post (see URL above). (Note: it would be interesting to see a geographic map or a temporal animation, as well as a social network map of the propagation of this meme.)
INSTRUCTIONS

To add your blog to this experiment, copy this entire posting to your blog, and then answer the questions below, substituting your own information, below, where appropriate. Other than answering the questions below, please do not alter the information, layout or format of this post in order to preserve the integrity of the data in this experiment (this will make it easier for searchers and automated bots to find and analyze the results later).

REQUIRED FIELDS (Note: Replace the answers below with your own answers)

1: I found this experiment at URL:
http://www.webjones.net/

2: I did not found it via a Newsreader Software (name of Newsreader Software)

3: I posted this experiment at URL: http://alexharden.org/blog/

4: I posted this on date (day, month, year): 03/08/04

5: I posted this at time (24 hour time): 13:37:00 (EDT, U.S.)

6: My posting location is (city, state, country): Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, USA

OPTIONAL SURVEY FIELDS (Replace the answers below with your own answers):

7: My blog is hosted by: 1&1 Internet

8: My age is: 33

9: My gender is: Male

10: My occupation is: IT Operations Analyst

11: I use the following RSS/Atom reader software: SharpReader

12: I use the following software to post to my blog: Movable Type 3.01D

13: I have been blogging since (day, month, year): 19/07/02

14: My web browser is: Firefox

15: My operating system is: Windows XP Pro

Via Lessig Blog: One of the substantial noninfringing uses of Bittorrent is to find out more about the INDUCE Act. A Torrent of digital video of congressional hearings regarding the Act is available here. Once I have it downloaded I’ll be checking it out.

I previously blogged about the INDUCE Act.

After signing up at Gmail4Troops.com a few weeks ago, I finally received three requests for accounts. I’ve sent them invitations, thanking them for their service to our country.

I still have a few invitations; time to go donate some more to the cause…

Via Exchange Security: Mozilla Vulnerability Timeline. Impressive.

Paul (Robichaux, who publishes the Exchange Security blog) criticizes Mozilla on a few things, such as not having “a robust system for notifying people of updates and, optionally, pushing them to affected machines.” I’m running Mozilla FireFox, and even after upgrading to 0.9.2, I have a red square in the bottom-right of the browser that says critical updates are available. When I went up to Mozilla.org to download the 0.9.2 package, I experienced no delays and the setup was smooth. And this is for free software that’s technically in beta, but embraces standards better than IE.

I think one of the benefits of documenting the patching of this vulnerability is to show a counterpoint to the “security through obscurity” that Microsoft relies on in many instances in the time before they’ve published a security patch.

Via Slashdot: Anandtech has an article that compares the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows XP, Fedora Core 2, and SuSE 9.1 on an Athlon 64 PC config. It’s an OK read, but a little dissappointing if you’re looking to move to 64-bit for gaming or multimedia. I have to say that FC2 on the Opteron Server I’m testing is quite compatible, but I haven’t really benchmarked it against anything else. If you’re looking to put together a new Linux server, I think an AMD64 platform is probably the best current option.

The first idiot to rip Feedback didn’t look at either the track listing on the back of the jacket or listen to the tracks before submitting the track names to FreeDB. Reminds me of a “FIRST POST!” on Slashdot. I’ve submitted a correction.

Read the rest of this entry »

I think I know what I want the ICYG website to look like, but I’m having a hard time molding the site’s CSS to what I’m thinking. I originally started from scratch (to learn CSS from the ground up), and then I started using elements of the MT 3.0D style. Now it’s a little bit of a mess. I think I’m going to head over to the CSS Zen Garden for some pointers and re-think the darn thing.

Input is welcome.

Via Lessig Blog: Cory Doctorow, whose works I’ve been meaning to read, gave a speech to Microsofties about the downside of DRM. He manages to entertain me through the sheer amount of references he makes to the history of copyright in support of his points; much more than just Valenti’s “Boston Strangler” zinger (an easy target, but included for completeness). If we are to retain the freedom to do with our digital media as is our right, it’ll be greatly helped by the reasoned expressions of people like Cory. And our own evangelism (and action) in the trenches.

In this Slashdot discussion about the DRM on the new Velvet Revolver CD’s copy-protection, there is this comment by blincoln:

Backups are simply not an issue for the mass market.

Backups are not the issue for audio. Making custom mix CDs or transferring the music to a digitial audio player is.

Any CD that goes in my car is a CD-R for several reasons:

- I don’t want the originals to be stolen/melted by the sun/scratched/etc.
- I can condense the music off of 50-100 CDs down to 10 or so CD-Rs because I *really* only want to hear maybe 1-2 tracks off of each one when I’m driving, and almost no pre-pressed CD I own is a full 80 minutes in length.

I also rip tons of my CDs to Ogg Vorbis at work for similar reasons - I have something like 100 albums on my hard drive there, so I don’t have to keep lugging CDs back and forth and hoping they don’t get broken in my bag.

If a record company wants to prevent me from making mix CDs and ripping to Ogg, they won’t get any business from me. I think that once more people realize that that’s their goal, it will seriously impact their sales figures. Not everyone I know rips music to their hard drive, but everyone makes mix CDs.

I do use some original CD’s in the car, but other than that I am aligned with blincoln. The RIAA needs to decide whether they’re going to sell media or licenses. In the digital age, the two don’t cleanly mix.

Update: Reading a little more about this, it appears that as long as you don’t allow Windows to auto-run the DRM software included on the VR CD, your access to the digital audio isn’t impeded.

• HydrogenAudio Forums discussion of VR DRM
• Analysis of the MediaMax CD3 Copy-Prevention System

I think it’s ironic that Fedora Core 2 for x86-64 fully supports the hardware I’m evaluating, yet the Windows Server 2003 x86-64 beta version doesn’t (at least, it doesn’t appear to support the server’s on-board RAID controller). I’ll contact the manufacturer about this, but based on the fact that I haven’t found any info or support online, I think this is a no-go for now.

Update: I reinstalled Fedora to the server and have both Zope 2.7.0 and Zope X3 beta 1 built. Cool stuff.

At work I’m doing testing on an dual-processor Opteron server we have on loan for a few months. I’m mainly testing our “bread-and-butter” 32-bit Windows Server 2003 (while waiting for the x86-64 beta version to be sent to me), but I also have another set of disks that I installed Fedora Core 2 for x86-64 to. I brought it up with Gnome - pretty cool stuff. It’s my first Fedora experience - most of my recent Linux work has been with Mandrake.

Anyways, I figured I’d post about this if any of my Unix/Linux buddies would want me to test out any applications on this platform as an informal part of my eval. I plan on testing some PHP/MySQL stuff, as well as current and beta versions of Zope. I don’t know how much of the software that comes with FC2 was compiled for 64-bit use, but since the server only has 2GB I don’t think that’s a huge issue. The server’s use of the Hypertransport bus and the Opteron’s onboard memory controllers give it some advantages over the comparable Xeons even with 32-bit stuff.

While we were busy with our yard sale yesterday, the other shoe dropped. I don’t believe all of the excuses, but I can appreciate the fact that changes and clarifications to the licensing were made quickly as a result of user feedback. I’ve read elsewhere that 6A doesn’t have PR skills and should invest in that area; indeed, it’s hard to communicate price increases without upsetting your customers (well, perhaps not so hard for some).

I think my take on the whole MT3 licensing situation was tame compared with some of the caustic comments and boycotts out there (many trackbacked on this page). I’ve only been an MT user for nine months, but I’ve grown quite accustomed to it. It’s done well for me. I think there’s a very large group of us out there that like MT but haven’t donated for our use. We’ll see how that shapes up for me once I reach my one-year MT anniversary and (hopefully) MT3 Gold is out there along with a host of new & updated plugins.

I’m not looking to take bread off of anyone’s table, but at the same time I’m keeping the costs and flexibility of this particular hobby in check. I stand by all the comments I made in my earlier post.

Thanks to Six Apart for continuing to provide one of the best blogging platforms out there for free.

I was surprised to read the announcement from Mena at Six Apart (makers of Movable Type) that the forthcoming free version of MT3 will have a more limited feature set than in the past. The limits of one author and three weblogs for free fit with my current use of the software, but there are plenty of users, many of whom helped beta-test MT3 without being informed of this change, who exceed these limits. 6A has every right to charge for their software or its use as they see fit, but the secrecy about this particular change is disappointing.

I went back through the major news items from 6A about MT3 (listed below) and none of them mention the specific change I’m referring to, nor do they mention the tiered pricing structure of the MT3 Developer Edition. The different pricing options for MT3D are listed here.

• Movable Type 3.0 (December 2003)
• Alpha Testing To Begin Soon (January 2004)
• Testing Begins & More Info about 3.0 (March 2004)
• Movable Type 3.0 Beta Testing (April 2004)

Will I continue to use this software? Time will tell. I’ve really grown to like it and have enjoyed helping to beta-test it. Let’s see how 6A responds to this inital wave of reactions. Another item that concerns me is how “Personal” and “Commercial” uses of MT will be further defined; does my use of Google ads mean that I’m running a commercial site?

Update: “Push button publisher“? I prefer the term “weblogging hobbyist”. Tim makes some good points, but I don’t think I’ll be moving over to TypePad anytime soon.

Update: I must have misread something. I thought they weren’t releasing the free version of MT3 yet, but it’s currently available for download. I’m reading around that the author/weblog limits of the free version are on the honor system. I’ll definitely be checking it out.

Microsoft To Say Recommended Hardware Platform For Longhorn OS Will Include Dual-Core CPU

Intel Drops Single-Core CPU Development To Focus On Dual-Core CPUs

But, AMD Has Been Planning Dual-Core CPUs For Some Time

Is it just me, or does Intel look like the follower here? Between this and their reverse-engineering and adoption of AMD64 extensions, they’re doing whatever they can to remain relevant.

I appreciated the irony that David Carradine’s Alias character “Conrad” was killed in last night’s episode, the same week as all the Kill Bill buzz. We watched KB Volume 1 over the weekend. I thought it was excellently made, but it sacrified plot and character development for action to an extent I don’t usually like. Maybe Volume 2 will round things out for me; I’ll find out when that comes to video. BTW, the anime sequence in the movie is superb. I’m not much of an anime fan, so it usually finds me. I don’t know how KB’s anime compares to other current anime. I liked the Matrix-related anime that came out last year, too.

Last night’s episode of The Practice was essentially the first episode of the spin-off. New characters at the Crane firm were introduced (including a great “ice queen” performance from Rebecca De Morney) that I hope are fleshing out what we’ll see in the fall. Shatner was funny once again. I’m liking the balance Kelley is striking with the spin-off. However, it’s sad to see original “Practice” whimpering out this way; hopefully it’ll pick up before the final episode.

I just received a Dell 1901FP (19″ LCD monitor) at work today to replace my old Compaq P70 (17″ Trinitron CRT). It’s like I put on a new pair of glasses that not only made things sharper, but increased the clarity of colors as well. What a huge improvement.

I’ve been impressed by my higher-res 14″ LCD on my work notebook, but the size and the brightness of the 1901FP makes it my favorite of the two. I may have to consider an LCD display vs. flat-screen CRT when it comes time to replace my primary monitor at home. However, my venerable Samsung 17GLsi shows no signs of quitting anytime soon.

A question about DVD authoring on Linux over at Slashdot prompted this excellent reply. I think there’s some great under-the-covers info there about the control logic of the DVD-Video spec.

Unreal Tournament 2004 has gone gold. I just ordered my copy yesterday from EBgames.com. Now I just need to bone up with the demo version. It’s been a while since I played UT2003.

Well, it’s happened. SCO is suing AutoZone for using Linux, which they allege includes their allegedly copyrighted UNIX System V code, without a license from them. It takes quite a few springy steps to make the leaps they’re making. SCO has also announced their quarterly earnings (actually a loss, again) and Darlth is saying they’ll start making money off SCOsource “real soon now.” Riiight.

I’m surprised the FTC hasn’t yet sued SCO for selling non-refundable licenses to something they haven’t proven they have any ownership of. Or that the SEC hasn’t fined SCO for making false statements to boost their stock price. Hopefully reality will set in before too long.

321 Studios was smacked down in federal court and they’ve launched a campaign this week to bring traditional fair-use rights to digital media. Here’s a link to their Protect Fair Use website:

Enter ZIP Code

Groklaw has published a transcript of FSF counsel Eben Moglen’s remarks and Q&A at Harvard on Monday. I’m finding it’s an excellent read.

Update: My favorite quote so far:

Music and movies and various other forms of culture are being distributed better by children than by people that are being paid to do the work. Artists are beginning to discover that if they allow children to distribute art in a freehanded sort of way, they will do better than they do in the current slavery in which they are kept by the culture vultures, who do, it is true, make a good deal of money out of music, but they do so primarily by keeping ninety-four cents out of every dollar and rendering six to the musicians, which isn’t very good for the musicians.

We purchased a Canon i860 printer over the weekend. We have a Brother HL-760+ laser that’s been a good performer for many years, but we’ve been wanting to do some color printing. Mainly color graphics, but also some photo printing. We narrowed it down to the HP Deskjet 5650 and the i860. The Canon won because of several things:

• Five separate ink cartridges, as opposed to two on the Deskjet. At Circuit City the replacement HP tri-color cartridge (17ml of ink total) is $35. Each of the three Canon color inks (13ml each) are $12. How the Canon should have cheaper ink costs in the long run is left as an exercise to the reader.
• A straighter paper path; the Deskjet is more ergonomic but has a 180° turn.
• A separate photo-paper feeder.

I’ve just started using it, but the setup was very easy. The first photo I printed on the complimentary 4×6 photo paper looks amazing. If I encounter any problems with the printer or its software I’ll post about them. At this point it looks pretty solid.

Sam Ruby blogged about an application under development at Nokia called PhotoBlog, which implements the Atom API and enables one to post to a blog via a cell phone. That would be really cool and would probably inspire me to get whatever reasonably-priced phone supported it, once MT implements the API. (Hopefully, version 3.0.)

Update: Oops. Nokia isn’t developing PhotoBlog; Futurice is. Nokia’s CTO introduced the application at a trade show.

• Mozilla Firefox 0.8 (optimized Win32 builds)
• Mozilla Thunderbird 0.5 (optimized Win32 builds)
• XviD MPEG-4 Video Codec RC2 (Jambo) (discussion)
• Foobar 2000 0.8 Beta (discussion)

Good stuff.

Just read on Slashdot that Xiph has released Icecast 2.0. I’ve been using the alpha and beta versions on Win32 for quite a while and they’ve been very stable. Good stuff. I guess I should get to work on those Icecast IDs I mentioned…

Those of you that know me know I’m a big fan of MiniDiscs. I’ve been using them for about six years now, and they’ve kept me from considering solid-state- and hard-disk-based portable digital music players. I’ve been wondering for the longest time when Sony would increase the density of MD media. Yesterday they announced Hi-MD, storage and player technology based on a 1GB version of MD media. To put this in perspective, original MD media, which has been around for over 10 years, holds about 140MB.

I have yet to digest all the reports about this, but it looks like the initial slate of portable recorders they’re releasing have features many MD users have been requesting, like digital uploads from MD to PC. It also looks like they’ll support linear PCM, which would be the first lossless format supported on MDs. ATRAC’s SP (standard) mode has sounded great to my ears ever since I first started using MDs, but it will be nice to have a small MD player that is capable of playing back CD-quality audio.

Sources: HydrogenAudio, MiniDisc.org.

I’m beta testing VMware GSX Server 3.0 today; it’s pretty cool. I’m also about to get my hands on a copy of MS/Connectix Virtual PC; it will be neat to compare the two VM platforms and see how they stack up. The Virtual Server product (beta release next quarter) will be more interesting to me, since it should compete directly with GSX Server.

Anyone reading this a user or fan of x86-based virtual machines?

Lessig blogged about a new open letter from Darl McBride of SCO; it purports to communicate SCO’s current position on the legality of the GPL. In the process, it groups open-source advocates with those who propose to limit or eliminate software patents and copyrights. Admittedly, there is an overlap between these groups, but to say that someone who wants to work on an open-source project is against the concept of copyright (which is what I’m taking away from this letter) is pure nonsense.

If the IBM/SCO trial is going to continue to play out in the media, Mr. McBride should expect even more of the vehement opposition he complains about in the letter. SCO/Caldera seems intent on rewriting their history of being an open-source champion. The fact that they won’t even bother to take down online references to their past support of Linux shows me a company with a severe personality disorder.

Reading both McBride’s letter and Lessig’s response is recommended if you’re interested in this.