Tech Observer: Linux And Open Source

I use a cordless telephone headset for a POTS line during the day. It is convenient the sound is actually quite good and it has worked well for almost two years.

Today the headset would not hold a charge so I opened it up the part is serviceable, and Part No. 65358-01 is carried by amazon:

The newest model is a CS70

Prediction for Apple's forthcoming product.

I am privy to no inside info nor do I have contacts that have this information. What I intend to discuss today is the design and ecosystem for Apple's next product introduction.

In retrospect, the iPhone was a brilliant compromise of form and function with technical limitations, but what has cemented its lasting power is the vibrant application store and the developers that support the platform with nifty, innovatiove or just plain obvious functionality.

A new device would have to have a similar design methodology and ideally be supported by such an ecosystem.

I believe the next logical market for the iPod generation is college and the teens who grew up with iPods will be used to consuming media and information in a format as mediated by the iTunes store.

Analysts See iPod Market Share Gains Among Teens

Piper Jaffray analysts Gene Munster and Michael Olson on Wednesday released the results of their tenth bi-annual teen survey, which showed gains in iPod market share from the spring numbers. Specifically, 74% of the teens who possess an MP3 player said they own some type of iPod[...]

Based on this assumption and the fact that the RESALE market for textbooks allows most students to recoup some of the money spent on textbooks albeit at the expense to the publisher of a lost sale; I believe that Steve Jobs and Apple have negotiated hefty discounts from the publishers on content sold electronically based on the assumption that each student will buy a book and it will not be resellable.

That in itself would be enough to have a winning product, an ebook that eliminates the stack of books required for an education.

The game changer will be, a general purpose computing platform, most likely NOT x86 compatible and a partnership with a VoIP provider such as Skype to allow unlimited domestic calls and sms.

By teaming three such important features, books, applications for any area of education and the always on VoIP and SMS functionality they would have an obvious winner.

I predict that the icing on the cake will be that it will have full media support for itunes songs and movie downloads.

Although a student may need a laptop for some content creation, for class, for notes for reading and studying and for communicating with peers I think the niche that Apple serves with a new tablet will be a real game winner for Apple and establish Apple as the preeminent educational brand.

This document explains in a comprehensive and methodical method the way to lock down, secure and harden a VMWARE installation. Although updated for ESXi or 4 the methods and critical areas are usefull for your reference.

VMware ESX Server 3 Configuration Guide Enterprise Applications Division of the Systems and Network Analysis Center (SNAC) Information Assurance Directorate National Security Agency I733-009R-2008

If you haven't heard, the BSDmag switches to a free online format. In the past they have offered in depth and feature articles on all flavors of BSD from NETBSD to OpenBSD to FreeBSD this is an outstanding resource and I'm glad to see that the magazine will continue!

I'm excited to see this and will be looking forward to the next issue February!

I ordered a Blue Yeti Microphone - it is a USB Powered Condenser Mic which is in my opinion the BEST deal in a USB Microphone.

Previously I've tested a G-Track from SAMSON but the unit I received before the Holidays was defective and would FADE OUT while I was recording vocal tracks with it. I sent it back as defective and ordered the BLUE Yeti Mic when I found out it was coming out. I considered the RODE Podcaster instead but realized it was a Dynamic mic and preferred the sound I got with a Condenser so went with the yeti.

The Zero Latency Monitoring works on Windows XP but not Under Ubuntu 9.10 and an ASUS EEE PC netbook. I'm not sure what the difference is so I'm pasting in to this post the lsusb -v output for the device in case anyone has an idea.

I bought a stand and pop filter subsequently and with the isolating earbuds I have this is a great low-end quasi studio sounding setup on the cheap.

Very pleased with the results and would buy another for remote sites if I needed it.

I found the specs for and bought and tested this memory on a desktop I have, total memory installed currently is 6GB!

So far a good buy!

Error on my Citrix Xenserver 5.5 test box... seems like the storage subsystem cannot be expanded further. Not sure why...

11/3/2009 5:23:47 PM Error: Creating 'Debian Etch 4.0 (1)' by cloning 'Debian Etch 4.0' - The provision call failed because it ran out of space.

I have seen some of the photos of the Terahertz waves scanners, similar to xrays but supposedly only penetrates the surface materials... Unsettling is that new research indicates that the damage to dna strands may be subtle yet potentially of concern. My first thought is that the eyes should be shielded in any automated scanner.

The technology is still new and in the next decade or two we will know more about what the long term effects are.

How Terahertz Waves Tear Apart DNA

the forces that terahertz waves exert on double-stranded DNA are tiny, in certain circumstances resonant effects can unzip the DNA strands, tearing them apart. This creates bubbles in the strands that can significantly interfere with processes such as gene expression and DNA replication.

OK this was a incredible headache, but with care can be recovered at least to get your data off.
I think I replaced the kernel with a non-standard ie not a xen kernel.

You will need:
systemrescuecd

from the console of the xenserver:
xe vm-list
xe vm-list name-label=YOUR-CORRUPT-VM-NAME params=uuid
xe vm-param-set uuid=c37623c8-2d38-04a0-19d3-792630865172 HVM-boot-policy="BIOS order"

Go to the General Tab of your corrupt vm
click Properties
click Startup Options
adjust Boot Order For systemrescuecd.iso in virtual drive you have mounted with the CIFS ISO library option under the GUI for the xenserver console.

reboot the VM
hit enter at the systemrescuecd splash screen
at the console type this:

net-setup eth0
dhcpd eth0
mkdir /mnt/sda1
mount -t ext3 /dev/sda1 /mnt/sda1
cd /mnt/sda1

you now have a sshd server you can sftp data off of

Need to check boot performance on my laptop, found that there was a app called bootvis.exe which Microsoft put put as a developers bootvis.msi package. The other alternative is bootchart on the linux side, but this is a Windows XP laptop.

Found one copy online and am getting errors on running it of :
"Number of Physical drives in the trace file is 0 Trace file has invalid system configuration information"

Went looking for other copies and found these hashes:
f654f8841f465cfaf25a9260cbc13a2f bootvis-1.3.37.0.msi
0d4567e929a20c4c601e8754a4cbf128 bootvis-2nd.msi

the second one appears bogus, the MSI installer is not signed by Microsoft and I did not perform a install with it, scans came up clean but who knows.

I think the error I am getting may be because of hard drive encryption on the laptop.

I still need a perf tool to measure boot performance...

Banged my Head against this for half the afternoon, debugged to the fact that using ruby1.9 you MUST install the gem1.9. using gem defaults to 1.8 when you install ruby...
# aptitude install rubygems1.9
# gem1.9 install sinatra
etc etc

When calling ruby state the version you want:
# ruby1.9 ./sinatra.rb


Remember that the gem libraries are in separate paths... on my system this is /usr/lib/ruby/gems/
for getting gems to update behind an NTLM proxy server remember to set your environment:

export http_proxy=http://username:password@hostname-of-proxy:8080

in `': undefined method `get' for main:Object (NoMethodError)
from ./sinatra.rb:1:in `require'
from ./sinatra.rb:1:in `

I found this meta-markup language which outputs to a variety of formats, including pdf, ps, LaTex, HTML etc etc. Very interesting idea and includes a whole other level of complexity with database output support! If you're familiar with LaTeX you know that it is very flexible and very powerful but occasionally can be a little obtuse. I found the best introduction is The Not So Short Introduction to L ATEX2ε

Using markup applied to a document, SiSU can produce plain text, HTML, XHTML, XML, OpenDocument, LaTeX or PDF files, and populate an SQL database with objects 3 (equating generally to paragraph-sized chunks) so searches may be performed and matches returned with that degree of granularity (e.g. your search criteria is met by these documents and at these locations within each document). Document output formats share a common object numbering system for locating content. This is particularly suitable for "published" works (finalized texts as opposed to works that are frequently changed or updated) for which it provides a fixed means of reference of content.