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April 5, 2012
When I recently installed Fedora 16 on an experimental server at work, it felt like dealing with a whole new platform. Prior to version 16, my last install was version 14 and things seem to have been in their familiar places. With 16 I was suddenly dumbfounded, like starting to learn Linux anew. I am not even referring to the GUI here, not a big fan. Windows is fine with me there.
For starters, there's the new Grub2 boot loader to learn. Then there's NetworkManager which tries to sniff out and configure everything when I was just happy with the plain old network startup. Related to that is what’s known as Consistent Network Device Naming. My ethernet adapter was suddenly labeled p1p7 instead of the familiar eth-0.
But the worst offender of all is the startup hell known as systemd. In a not too distant past the daemons and other startup processes were housed under /etc/init.d/ and then configured via chkconfig. Those were the good days of SysV. No more, now we have the purported super-polished, parallelized, speedy and advanced systemd, managed via the systemctl command. random symbolic linking here and there and strange file extensions. Even worse, old commands like chkconfig are hacked to call the newfangled systemd functions. I'm still trying to figure out the systemd craziness.
I know some of these changes started with previous versions and these changes were supposedly introduced to take advantage of new architectures and simplify, streamline, and accelerate operations, but that doesn't alleviate the shock and confusion of finding oneself in an unfamiliar terrain so unexpectedly.
Maybe I'm too old and set in my ways. And perhaps I should understand that Fedora is free and experimental and radical changes are par for the course. But there's a lesson Linux can learn from its nemesis, Windows. Microsoft hasn't scrapped Service Control Manager or Device Manager with every successive release of Windows. They improved them and added more features but the core functions remained the same and that goes a long way to allay users' and admins' fears of upgrading to new versions.
April 1, 2012
As I started to watch the clip about YouTube collection I thought, wtf? Why would anyone order a DVD collection of all YouTube videos?
As the April Fool's joke quickly dawned on me, I wondered how much data YouTube actually has and how many DVD's it will fit on. I certainly have no idea, but could it be like 1 million DVD's? That will be like 4 petabytes or so of data.
Perhaps it can be used as an interview question, along with other dumb questions like how many golf balls in a bus or pencil-sized man trapped in a blender 
March 15, 2012
I have been fascinated with the Dharun Ravi bias case since I read about it a few weeks ago on The New Yorker. The fact is that this case hits close to home for many who are or have been to college because no doubt many of us were involved in similar cases or at least been close witnesses and didn't think much of them, let alone being accused criminally.
This is not strictly a gay bias issue. College (in this case, Rutgers) is where young people from varied backgrounds are thrown together and trusted to navigate the social challenges that comes with that environment. College is a sample of what is to come in the real world.
Being a student form Iran arriving in the US a few short years after the hostage crisis, I myself experienced many of these challenges in high school and then college. Young people will be young people. They judge, they ridicule, and they play stupid pranks. At times I was the target and other times I was the instigator but through it all, even when I was raging mad, I found little evidence of bias or malice in myself or others.
I consider myself a social liberal. Gay, straight, white, black, male, female, whatever, makes little difference to me. Of course we all carry some prejudice. Mine is mostly in the area of education. I tend to favor educated people. The point is that I have no respect for bigotry and prejudice but the Ravi-Celemete case doesn't appear to be one, at least going by what I know about the case.
Bad judgment, yes. Distasteful prank, yes. Immature teasing, yes. I see all those in Ravi's actions and in countless other young people around the world. Sorry but I don’t see bullying and bias intimidation and gay-bashing in this case to hang a man's future on. In the end this is a tragedy of a young man taking his own life in a moment of misplaced personal agony or shame. He should have never been ashamed of who he was. I wish he had the strength to stand up for his way of life and to handle the offensive (but not criminal, in my opinion) actions of his roommate in a more direct way.
Update: As we know now, Ravi was convicted of the charges and now he will be facing prison time and possible deportation. I'm sure there will be appeals and I hope he's not deported. Some may feel that the jury was too harsh, but the jury most likely followed the letter of the law and it's the New Jersey law that may be too harsh.
March 5, 2012
Hard to believe it's been over 4 years since being struck with a herniated disc. As known to most, herniated discs don't heal, but with some luck they shrink and take pressure off the spinal cord. For me, there are the occasional flare ups and annoying tingling down the left leg, but other than those, life has been pretty normal.
I avoid lifting heavy objects, do conditioning exercises every morning, and walk daily. There's plenty of running too every other day, like 12 hilly miles this past weekend. I ran a marathon last year in Hartford, CT with no ill effects on my back and this year I'll be running the New York City marathon.
I guess the point is that a herniated disc doesn't necessarily mean having a disability, at least based on my 4-year track record so far. If you have it, be patient, treat it with care, and with some luck it'll just be an occasional minor inconvenience.
Past herniated disc posts:
MRI, Back Pain, Herniated Disc, and Running - Feb. 2008
Herniated Disc, on Steroid - Feb. 2008
Herniated Disc, Six Months Later - Aug. 2008
Herniated Disc and Half Marathon - Sep. 2008
February 21, 2012
"All I know is I’m a sinner, and that God has forgiven me of my sins." says Rev. Franklin Graham.
It's true. God whispers that in his ears every night. He also tells him that Obama is a Moslem and is hell-bound.
Thank you reverend for sharing such spiritual revelations with us. Now where do I send the check?
Rev. Graham: Obama seen as 'son of Islam'.
February 10, 2012
Here's an interesting piece found on the Chrome browser (v17). Fire up Chrome. Browse to chrome://credits/, scroll down to SQLite and click on "show licence" and this little praise pops up:
The author disclaims copyright to this source code. In place of a legal notice, here is a blessing:
May you do good and not evil.
May you find forgiveness for yourself and forgive others.
May you share freely, never taking more than you give.
May I echo Chrome's sentiments on SQLite? It’s a superb and versatile database software deserving of every blessing thrown its way
January 22, 2012
Sometimes I don't know how companies get away with their sleazy tactics, but I guess it's because they are loaded and consumers have little power to stand up to them.
Q - If you are Comcast how do you make sure your business customers don't leave you?
A - Lock them into long-term, fixed-price service contracts.
Q- How do you raise your prices on them, despite the fixed-price contracts?
A- Force them to use your equipment and then silently raise your monthly equipment fee.
That's exactly what Comcast has done starting in the new year. Brilliant.
Business Class Equipment Fee
January 16, 2012
Here comes another attack on the free and democratic way of life.
the SOPA/PIPA bill sponsored by congressman Lamar Smith is about to be voted on by the legislators. On the surface, the goal is to protect copyrights and intellectual property rights on the Internet.
In reality this law is created to bring the Internet under complete control and censorship of the US government. In other words any site can be blocked and any site owner or user can be charged for almost any reasons.
Let's face it, the proposed rules are so loose that just about everyone is automatically in violation of the potential law already. Who needs to go to China to enjoy arbitrary criminal charges and censorship, when you can have all that fun right in the USA.
Stop American Censorship
December 11, 2011
It doesn't seem to be breaking any laws but it's certainly unfair and anti-competitive. This time Amazon is asking its customers to use its Price Check shopping app on products in retail stores and then turn around and buy the same items from Amazon and receive perks in the forms of discounts and credits. Of course people have the right to shop wherever they want, but asking people to troll stores and then robbing those stores from potential sales seems a bit sleazy
Amazon could argue that people could browse its web site just the same and then shop elsewhere but that is hardly a fair comparison. Amazon's costs are much lower and it's not saddled with collecting sales taxes in many states. A brick and mortar store has a multitude of cost factors to bear in order to accommodate its shoppers. Amazon has only a fraction of such costs in comparison because of its online nature.
Is Amazon's tactic of using the physical stores as showrooms fair? It doesn't seem to me. And if one insists on shopping online, why not use eBay instead? It has more selections, better prices, supports small business much more widely and probably pulls fewer dirty tricks.
December 5, 2011
A pair of interesting space stories today.
Voyager1 launched in 1977 is now 11 billion miles away from earth. It's in an area thought to be the final barrier between the solar system and the inner-stellar space which is outside the sun's sphere of influence. Who knows what sorts of stuff lie beyond the barrier or if the spacecraft will be able to transmit anything once the barrier is crossed.
Also discovery of a new planet was confirmed orbiting its sun in the so-called Goldilocks zone where liquid water and therefore life become possibilities. It's about 600 light-years away which means if we're being observed from there right now, they see the Forbidden City being completed in China and the Ottoman empire in its infancy.
Now just imagine if Voyager ever makes it to this planet and the aliens scratch their heads (if they have fingers or even heads) trying to figure it out. It'll be their version of a UFO I suppose. We'll never know of course. Even if Voyager was headed towards the planet, it'll be some 300,000 years before it'll arrive. By then, humans are either gone as a race or perhaps morphed into different beings.
As a kid I marveled at these types of news, imagining myself aboard a spaceship visiting far-flung worlds. Now that I'm an adult, well, I still imagine myself aboard that spaceship.
Blame it on Star Trek
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