Rich Teer's Blog

The World's Most Advanced OS?

2009-10-28T10:43:00.002-07:00

A while ago Jenny bought herself a new laptop. There was no way we consider wasting money on a laptop running Windoze (you try buying a non-Apple laptop without paying Windoze tax!), so a MacBook Pro it was (I had some say in the machine's specs).

The Mac has some interesting features, and I like the way everything Just Works. MacOS is a bit different from Solaris, but it's really easy to pick up. So what's the point of this post? Apple touts Mac OS as "the world's most advanced OS", and that patently isn't so. Don't get me wrong: I like Mac OS (although I still find the idea of paying for an OS to be a bit grating), but the world's most advanced OS it isn't.

I'll raise just a couple of points to support my view.

1. Until the recent release of Mac OS Snow Leopard (10.6), Mac OS was a 32-bit only OS (Snow Leopard is apprently 64-bit--I can't confirm this cause I haven't got round to installing it yet). Colour me unimpressed: Solaris has been 64-bit clean the launch of Solaris 7, well over a decade ago! Also, Solaris' 64-bit kernel is quite capable of running brand new 64-bit apps and ancient 32-bit apps side by side. I don't know if Mac OS supports that.

2. Mac OS is based on (IIRC) FreeBSD. Not exactly the first OS that comes to mind for multithreaded scalability. How scalable is Mac OS? I guess we won't know because the biggest machine Apple sells is a piddly dual-socket, quad-core desktop. Big deal! Solaris scales from tiny single-core tiny laptops to massive 64-socket, quad-core behemoths that supports up to 4TB of RAM. And that's from the same OS binary.

3. Apple recently announced the dropping of ZFS, arguably the world's most advanced file system. If your OS doesn't support an adavanced file system like ZFS, then it is not a contender for the world's most advanced OS. It's just that simple.

4. Solaris has support for HW hot swapping that Mac OS can only dream of. In the right machine, if a CPU board dies, you can just replace it on the fly. No downtime, no interruptions.

I could go on, but I think I've made my point. Mac OS is a fine OS and is leagues ahead of Windoze, but the world's most advanced OS it isn't. That crown belongs to Solaris.

Wither Solaris x86 (again)?

2009-09-10T12:48:00.005-07:00

So, there's a message to Sun's customer's in the Wall Street Journal, highlighting some of Oracle's plans should their acquisition of Sun be approved (at this writing, the deal is pending EU approval). The ad states that Oracle plans to:

1. Spend more money developing SPARC than Sun does now;

2. Spend more money developing Solaris than Sun does now;

3. Have more than twice as many hardware specialists selling and servicing SPARC/Solaris systems than Sun does now;

4. Dramatically improve Sun’s hardware performance by tightly integrating Oracle software with Sun hardware.

Notice that mention of Sun's AMD and Intel x86 systems is suspiciously absent (and has been absent from all public words I've seen from Oracle). Does this mean anything? Sun tried to can Solaris x86 (concentrating on big SPARC systems) a few years ago which resulted in a massive backlash which forced them to reverse their decision, so one would hope that Sun's new owners wouldn't duplicate that mistake...

Rhetorical questions are fine, but let me ask a direct question to those in the know: What are Oracle's plans for Sun's x86 hardware support if/when they take over? Given their silence on this issue (as far as I've seen, anyway), I don't think it's an unfair question.

If Oracle has no plans to drop support for x86 (hardware or software), perhaps they should be a bit more vociferous about it.

Lots of old Sun stuff free or cheap to a good home!

2009-09-01T16:56:00.002-07:00

Well, the time has come for a long-overdue clear out and tidy up of my office, and regretably some stuff has to go. :-( It would be much easier to just chuck this stuff away, but given that at least some of it might have some historical curiosity, I wanted to see if anyone was interested in it. I don't want much, if anything, for this stuff (although I ask that interested people pick up the tab for shipping), provided it's to a good home.

Here's a partial list of the stuff I'm disposing of (there are still boxes of stuff I need to sort through). If interested, drop me an email!

* Insignia Solutions SoftPC 1.1 for Sun 3 systems. Complete package as far as I can tell.

* Pretty much complete SunOS 3.5 manual set. No binders, and most of it is still shrink-wrapped. Still in it's original shipping carton!

* SunOS 3.5 Export for the 68020, on 5 QIC 24(?) tapes.

* UK Sun Express catalogues, Issue 2 to Issue 20.

* SunOS 4.0.3 Export Upgrade, on 2 QIC24 tapes.

* Various old SunSolve and Catalyst CD ware CDs.

* Various Solaris media kits (mostly different Solaris 9 releases IIRC).

I'd really like the SunOS 3.5 tapes and manuals to go to a Sun museum if at all possible. I'll be listing more stuff in the coming weeks/months, so stay tuned!

Alas poor Orac (I knew it well)

2009-05-26T13:30:00.003-07:00

Wow. I can't believe it's been 18 months (give or take) since I last posted to my blog. What a slacker!

Much has changed in the last 18 months: I found a great programming job here in Kelowna only to be downsized about 18 months later (damned economy), and Sun is in the process of being acquired by Oracle! And to top it off, my beloved shiny red Acer Ferrari 3400 laptop died last Thursday. I tried all sorts of reset incantations, removed the battery, etc., etc., no no avail. I am now the proud owner of a shiny red brick (whose hostname was orac, hence the title of this blog entry).

I started looking at various laptops, with the intent of buying one to run Solaris. Windoze is still not an option for me! Finding an appropriate one was kinda hard, but the problem was solved when The Boss (that'd be Jenny, my wife) mentioned that she was hankering after a Mac so that she could hook her iPhone up to iTunes. She had some birthday money to spend, so (to cut a long story short) last night we ordered a 15.4" MacBook Pro with a 2.66 GHz CPU, 4 GB of RAM, and a 128 GB SSD (the speed increase of my Ferrari was phenominal when I installed an SSD into it, so there was no way I was going to order a new computer without one!). It should be here in the next week or so...

Third PAM article published

2007-10-14T12:32:00.000-07:00

My 3rd article about PAM on Solaris was recently published. I'm currently working on the fourth (and final) part.

Enjoy!

Happy Birthday to me!

2007-09-18T11:44:00.000-07:00

Well, today I reached the big four-oh. Yep, it's my 40th birthday today. To celebrate, Jenny and I treated me to a shiny new 80GB Playstation 3, plus accessories (i.e., an additional SixAxis controller and the Bluetooth Blu-ray remote control).

I also got a bunch of movies on Blu-ray, a couple of movies on UMD (for my PSP), and the game Ridge Racer 7. I'm addicted to Ridge Racer on my PSP, so the latter should provide endless hours of entertainment! :-)

I have a new job!

2007-09-11T21:02:00.001-07:00

A couple of weeks ago, I started a new job at a company called Signalink Technologies. It's a bit of a departure from my more recent Solaris sysadmin gigs--I'm back to my C programmer roots!

The stuff I'm working on is about as far away from Solaris servers and workstations as one can get: I'm developing software for embedded systems, where resources are scarce (the chip I'm working with has a massive 6K of RAM!), and bit twiddling and register shuffling are the order of the day.

So far, it's great. I'm working with a great bunch of guys, doing some interesting work (which will only get more interesting as time passes), in an environment that suits me just fine (think Silicon Valley style start up). The job is well paid, and best of all, it's a mere 10-minute drive away in my own town of Kelowna! No more travelling to God knows where to earn a few shekels; hurrah! :-)

Despite being far removed from the Solaris world in my current professional capacity (though I hasten to add that I'm running build 70 of Nevada on my desktop--no Windoze for me!), I'll still be involved with the OpenSolaris community as much as I can. And I intend to keep writing articles for SDN, so it's good job the days are getting shorter (relaxing in the sun becomes less of a temptation when it's dark out!)...

Blu-ray Disc vs HD DVD: End the format war now!

2007-08-17T14:51:00.000-07:00

I really like watching movies, especially in the comfort of my own home, so I received the arrival of DVD with open arms. Although the picture and audio quality (PQ and AQ respectively) is much better than those available on VHS, DVDs are still a low-res format (here in North America, they have 480 lines of resolution). Add to that the fact that the DVD market is pretty much saturated, and it seems clear that a new generation of home video is called for.

Enter Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD, the two competing next-gen formats. Blu-ray is driven by the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA), and HD DVD is driven by Toshiba. Given that on the surface both seem to be the same (both offer up to 1080p resolution and 7.1 channels of high def sound), why would one choose one of the other? (N.B., in this article I'm only considering playing movies; other stuff like data archival is out of scope.)

This blog article explains my rationale for picking one, in what is intended to be an objective manner. To that end, I'll get my biases out of the way: I am not a gamer (though I will admit to owning a PSP), and I have no feelings either way towards Sony, Toshiba, or any other consummer electronics (CE) company out there. The only company I despise is Microsoft. At the time of writing, I have neither a Blu-ray nor an HD DVD player: I have invested $0 in either format.

In the interests of fairness here are links to the Wikipedia articles about Blu-ray and HD DVD.

Right, with that out of the way, let's take a look at the pros and cons of each format. I'll start with the technical stuff because it's the least disputable objective stuff, and because I'm a techie. :-)

We've already dealt with the resolution and audio availablity (despite all Blu-ray players being 1080p and some entry-level HD DVD players being only 1080i, I think we can pretty well call this one a tie), so what else is there?

The most obvious criteria is storage capacity: Blu-ray has a 25GB/layer capacity whereas HD DVDs is 15GB/layer. Dual-layer machines are universal, so we have a practical limit of 50GB for Blu-ray and 30GB for HD DVD. More space means that there's more room for extras, and, from a videophiles point of view, that lower compression ratios can be used for better PQ. IF you think compression ratios don't matter, take two big pictures with your digital camera: one at the lowest compression and one at the highest. Now compare them; the picture with the most compression will be noticably worse than the other one. So, advantage Blu-ray.

Not so obvious to the non-techie, but just as important as capacity, is the available bandwidth. Put simply, bandwidth is a measure of how much data the format handle per second. The higher the bandwidth, the better the potential PQ and AQ is. Audio and video information must be presented at a certain rate, otherwise it wouldn't be TV! Given the finite amount of time available to show each frame, it follows that a format with higher bandwidth can use a smaller amount of lossy compression, resulting in better quality.

Compared to DVD (which has a peak audio+video bandwidth of 10.08 Mb/s), both HD DVD and Blu-ray offer much better bandwidth: 30.24 Mb/s for HD DVD and 48.0 Mb/s for Blu-ray (dedicated video bandwidth is 29.4 Mb/s and 40.0 Mb/s respectively). So, Blu-ray handily has the upper hand here, too.

Arguably less important technical features include support for Picture in Picture (PIP), and Internet connectivity. Support for these features has been mandatory for HD DVD since day one, but only option for Blu-ray. That said, PIP support will be mandatory for all Blu-ray players launched after October 31 2007. Internet connectivity will still be optional for these so-called Profile 1.1 players, but is mandatory for players claiming to be Profile 2.0 compliant. So, advantage to HD DVD, although that advantage will be much reduced starting in November. Note that although HD DVD players must have an Ethernet port, nothing requires that these players are actually connected to the Internet. (I don't have network connectivity in my TV rack; do you?)

Blu-ray also mandates the use of a hard, anti-scratch coating on discs, making them very durable. Advantage Blu-ray.

Blu-ray unfortunately carries the idea of "Regions" over from DVD; all HD DVD platers are Region free. Advantage HD DVD, although it should be noted that several studios demanded support for Region encoding which is why it is part of the Blu-ray feature set. Also, the BDA has stipulated that only the first pressing of a movie can be region coded. Subsequent runs must be region free; many older titles are also region free, so (much as I hate region encoding) the situation on Blu-ray doesn't seem as dire as it could be.

Summarising the above: each format has its pros and cons, but purely from a technical point of view, Blu-ray is indisputebly the superior format. I don't think anyone who compares the technical specs with an open mind can think otherwise.

Of course, home movie viewing requires two things: a player and a disc to play. In other words, a format needs support from CEs for the players, and studios for the discs (movies) themselves. A player without movies is as useless as a disc without a player. This is where it starts getting interesting.

At the time of writing, HD DVD players are available from Toshiba and Microsoft (the latter being an add-on for the Xbox360). Onkyo has announced an HD DVD player due out in the next couple of months, but that is reportedly a rebadged Toshiba... Blu-ray players are available from Sony, Samsung, Pioneer, Philips, and Panasonic. Models from Denon and Sharp have been announced. So, consumers have much more choice when it comes to Blu-ray players than they do HD DVD players. I'm always a fan of competition, so advantage Blu-ray.

But what about the movies? HD DVD is supported by Warner Bros., Paramount, and Universal (the latter is an HD DVD exclusive). Blu-ray is supported by Warner Bros., Paramount, Disney, Fox, and Sony Pictures, of which Disney, Fox, and Sony (and their subsidiaries) are Blu-ray exclusive. So advantage Blu-ray, which arguably has more content availablity.

Blu-ray is technically superiror, has a greater choice of players, and has the support of more studios. So why is there a format war (at least in North America)?

HD DVD players were available months before the first Blu-ray player, which was also plagued with problems. Some of the early Blu-ray releases (most notably The Fifth Element) were also less than ideal, so Blu-ray got off to a shakey start while HD DVD justifiably started out well. (Sony have since redemed themselves by issuing a much-improved remastered version of The Fifth Element, and will replace all earlier versions for free.)

Early Blu-ray players were also very much more expensive than HD DVD players (even today, HD DVD players are cheaper than their Blu-ray counterparts), the cheapest one being $1000 US. Then, in November 2006, the shit hit the fan. Sony released their much-anticipated PS3, which used Blu-ray as its software medium. The PS3 also had the distinction of being hundreds of dollars less than other Blu-ray players, so it quickly became the biggest selling Blu-ray player. By February 2007, total Blu-ray movie sales passed HD DVD's, and so far this year, Blu-ray has outsold HD DVD every single week.

This is where I start getting speculative. People only have so much disposable income, so early adopters who bought into HD DVD don't want to see that investment go to waste. Hence they continue to support HD DVD (though many have also acquired Blu-ray players, senseing the end for HD DVD is nigh). Other factions, mostly gamers it seems, support HD DVD because they detest Sony. Fair enough, but if they like movies, why don't they buy a Blu-ray player from one of the other CEs? Admittedly, Sony still get some royalties on those players, but I'm pretty sure that those Sony bashers listen to CDs. Are they even aware that Sony co-developed CD, and therefore gets royalties on every CD player and disc sold?

So, Sony hatred is one reason that the format war drags on. Some people have suggested that the format war is a good thing, because it encourages competition and gets prices down. I agree: the format war was useful. But the time of its utility has passed: many potential high def player buyers are waiting for the war to end before they purchase, for fear of buying into the losing format. IMO, the format war is now harming the market by keeping it artificially small.

Some people advocate that both formats can survive side by side. I think this is wrong. There has recently been a (lower profile) high def audio format war, with SACD on one side and DVD-A on the other. The situation was much the same as it is now (although the split was nearer 50:50 for software and hardware, and universal players became quite prevalent): neither side wanted to give up, and most people sat on the sidelines until a winner was declared.

The result was that neither format gained mass-market acceptance, and both have essentially been relegated to niche status. In other words, neither format won, they're both dead, and consequently we're still listening to low res 16/42 CDs when we could be enjoying a high def 24/192 format. I really don't want the same thing to happen to high def video, so the sooner the war is declared over, the better. With the onslaught of titles coming up between now and Christmas, Blu-ray has a very good chance of winning. If you're considering getting into high def movies, I strongly recommend you buy into Blu-ray. Yes, HD DVD is much better than DVD, but why settle for second best? It's rare than the best technology wins, but in this case, the best technology (Blu-ray) has a real chance of winning!

If you bought into HD DVD in the past, you have my condolances. You probably bought them when the outcome of the war was truely up in the air, so you made your best bet. But I can't for the life of me understand why anyone would buy into HD DVD now. Blu-ray is outselling HD DVD by more than 2:1 (and that ratio is increasing), and I'd say the former has a 99% chance of winning the war, so why buy into the losing side? Buy into Blu-ray, and lets get this stupid war over and done with! (Incidentally, Blu-ray sales are even further ahead of HD DVD's elsewhere in the world, almost to the point that as far as their concerned there is no format war (Blu-ray has already won), or if there is, it's a State-side phenomenom only.)

Some pro-HD DVD people point to the cheaper players, claiming that HD DVD is the cheaper format. Bit of a shame the average HD DVD movie price is more than the Blu-ray one, isn't it? Over time, HD DVD is the more expensive format!

Well, FWIW, I've said my piece. I've no doubt that this article will get ripped to shreds by HD DVD FUD spreaders. In case it isn't obvious, when funds permit, I'll be buying a Blu-ray player.

Second PAM article published

2007-08-13T11:43:00.000-07:00

The second article in my series about PAM has been published on SDN. In it, I introduce PAM and some of the API functions.

[Tags: Solaris OpenSolaris]

Why I hate watching movies on TV

2007-08-13T11:24:00.000-07:00

I love watching movies, but I (as a rule) hate watching them on TV. Why? There are three reasons (in no particular order):

They're not shown in their original aspect ration (OAR), which means that I miss almost half the movie. To add insult to injury, many channels put up the disclaimer "This film has been reformatted to fit this TV". Well, the last time I checked, I had a widescreen TV, so reformatting the picture to 4:3 does nothing for me. I want to see the movie as the director originally intended. If that means I get some black bars, so be it.

Adult language is altered, or just dubbed out. If I'm watching an adult-orientated movie, I want to hear everything, OK? Hearing Samual L. Jackson calling people "Melon Farmers" just doesn't cut it for me! Worse, many channels put up warnings "This show contains scenes of violence and course language. Viewer discretion is advised", and still delete the swearing. Now, I think those warnings are great, because they let viewers know that they might not like the content. But having issued the warnings, the least the networks can do is show the movie sans dubs.

Adverts really get on my nerves. Not only do they interrupt the flow of the movie, the also mean that most films are edited for time. Fortunately, I watch most stuff in "time slip" mode (think Tivo), so the commercials are easily skipped.

The above are the main reasons why I tend not to watch movies on TV, and have a reasonably large DVD collection. But I've more or less stopped buying DVDs now because I see a high definition player in my (hopefully not-too-distant) future. I'll expand on my reasons in another post, but for now, suffice it to say that I'll be getting a Blu-ray Disc player.

New article published

2007-07-29T13:16:00.000-07:00

My latest article, User Authentication on the Solaris OS, was recently published on Sun Developer Network. It's the first in a short series of articles I'm writing on this subject. Give it a read!

Sysadmin stuff

2007-07-29T13:08:00.000-07:00

Well, it's been aeons since I last updated my blog, and a lot has happened (most of which probably isn't of interest to you, gentle reader). Friday July 27 was Sysadmin day, so hello fellow admins everywhere!

I received my August copy of Sysadmin Magazine a few days ago, and I wondered why it felt a bit thinner than usual. The answer was to be found in Amber's editorial: Sysadmin Mag has ceased to be. It is bereft of life, it's pushing up the daisies. It is an ex-magazine! I'll miss it--I've been reading Sysadmin for years, and I've even had an article or two published in it.

Close, but no cigar

2007-04-17T15:11:00.000-07:00

A while ago I lamented that Sun's low end storage offerings were somewhat lacking. Well, today Sun announced the StorageTek 2500 Array, which looks like it might be a great product. But it's still a way-too-expensive overkill for entry level needs. (In fact, it looks very much like the big brother of what I envisioned in my original posting.)

Sun, please release two truly entry-level, inexpensive, 1U high JBOD storage array: one using SAS disks, and the other using SATA (by inexpensive, I mean costing less than the entry-level servers one would connect the arrays to!). I'm talking about the modern day equivelent of the Netra D130 storage array: just a metal box, a power supply or two (hot swappable preferably), and any necessary relatively dumb interface electronics. No cache, no hardware RAID.

I think the combination of an entry-level server using ZFS on Solaris 10, plus one (or more) of these arrays would be a competition killer.

Behind every great man...

2007-04-16T09:12:00.000-07:00

... there's an even greater woman.

I'll leave the question of my greatness (or lack thereof) for others to ponder, but the woman behind me, my wife Jenny, really is great. She supported my dreams of writing my first book Solaris Systems Programming by being the only bread-winner in our family for more than 3 years, despite the enormous stress it placed on her, and the huge pile of debt it (writing SSP) got us into.

More recently (when I got back from my 7-month contracting stint in Edmonton), she has supported us while I spent the last 18 months or so working on my latest business, My Online Home Inventory (MOHI). I look forwward to the day that MOHI and my other business ideas are successful enough to be able to repay her (she's always wanted to take a vacation in Hawaii, and that seems to be more than fair compensation for what she's done)...

Today is her birthday. I won't tell you how old she is, but let's just say she's celebrating the 11th anniversary of her 29th birthday. :-) Because it's her birthday, I thought now would be a good time to say a very public "thank you", so here it is: Jenny, many thanks for your love and support over the last few years. I couldn't have achieved all that I have without you, and I can't wait to be able to repay you.

If any of my readers wants to send her a thank-you note (or wish her happy birthday), please send her an email at: jenny dot teer @ rite - group dot com.

[Tags: OpenSolaris : Solaris]

We will Rock you!

2007-04-12T15:38:00.000-07:00

I see from Jonathan Schwartz's blog that the first samples of the next-generation SPARC cpu for the data centre, codenamed Rock, have arrived. Congrats to everyone at Sun and their partners who made this happen!

For my fellow geeks, here's a picture of the CPU:

(You'll have to read Jonathan's blog for a peek at the bottom!)

Rock, like Niagara, has multiple cores, each of which can run multiple threads. The first release of Rock will have 16 cores, each of which can run an unspecified number of threads. My guess is that they'll run at least 4 threads per core, which means that we're effectively talking about a Starfire (E10000) on a chip!

As AC/DC's Brian Johnson might say: For those about to Rock (We compute you)!

Hasta la Vista, Baby!

2007-04-01T11:13:00.000-07:00

I had a couple of spare hours this weekend, so I decided, at the behest of my good friend Avril Dummkopf, to install Windows Vista on my Ferrari 3400 laptop. I'm glad I did: the power and usability of Vista far exceeds my usual OS of choice, OpenSolaris.

Vista's hardware requirements are a little more intense than Solaris', so I had to upgrade my laptop. I upgraded the CPU to the latest dual core AMD Mobile Athalon64 processor, and doubled the RAM to 4 GB. I also decided to upgrade the hard drive to a 15K RPM 250 GB one (which was kinda hard to find in a 2.5" laptop form factor).

I'm security conscious, so I turned Vista's new security policy doohickey up to maximum. It got quite annoying for a while, answering questions from it every time I wanted to do something, but no I'm really glad I'm protected from viruses and the like. Solaris sure doesn't have security like this!

Although I still have a bit of a learning curve ahead of me, I really think that Vista Ultimate was worth the $300 I paid for it. So much so, in fact, that I'm gonna switch to it for all my computing needs. Next on my shopping list is a copy of Office 2007—I can't wait!

OGB Election results are in!

2007-03-27T09:37:00.000-07:00

For the last couple of weeks, the Open Solaris community has been voting on two important issues:

The ratification of the OpenSolaris Constitution; and
The members of the new OpenSolaris Governing Board (OGB).

There are 268 Core Contributors which means that we needed at least 135 affirmative votes to ratify the constitution. I'm very happy to say that we received a thumbs up from 145 people, so the Constitution is officially ratified—hurrah!

As for the OGB elections, there were 18 candidates running for 7 seats. Even though the voting finished at 24:00 Pacific yesterday (Monday March 26), the results are already in. With no further ado, the members of the 2007-2008 OGB (in alphabetical order) are:

James Carlson
Alan Coopersmith
Casper Dik
Glynn Foster
Stephen Lau
Rich Teer
Keith Wesolowski

Many congrats to all, and note that I seem to have the somewhat dubious honour of being the only non-Sun employee on the OGB...! :-)

More seriously, I'd like to thank everyone who took the time to vote in this important poll, especially those who voted for me. I'll do my best to live up to the task to which I've been elected.

OGB Elections—Have You Voted Yet?

2007-03-22T17:20:00.000-07:00

We (that is, the OpenSolaris community) are in the midst of the first OGB election to take place since the one in the Pilot Program, which elected the inaugral CAB community members.

If you're eligible to vote (i.e., you're an OpenSolaris Core Contributer), and haven't done so already vote now! I'm one of the candidates up for consideration, so I won't try to sway your vote. But I do strongly recommend that you vote "Yes" to ratifying the Constitution. It's not a perfect document (and it was never intended to be), but it is an excellent set of rules and procedures by which we can bootstrap ourselves.

Why are you still reading this? ssh to polls.opensolaris.org now and vote! :-)

Recruiting firms that just don't get it

2007-03-21T09:15:00.000-07:00

I was bemused, yet disappointed, to receive the following (trimmed) details for a job in Vancouver, from an individual from Globaltech who shall remain nameless to protect the clueless^Winnocent.

Job ID Job Title Job Type Location
Job-0564 Junior Desktop support/Office Technologies Analyst Permanent Downtown Vancouver

Please send your resume as a word doc.

TECHNICAL SKILL REQUIREMENTS:

You have 1-3 years experience supporting users.

o Hardware Support
o Intel Pentium Class workstations, laptops and servers
o LAN technologies (fiber, CAT5, Ethernet hubs and switches)
o Tape backup systems
o Software and Software Platform Support
o Microsoft Windows Workstation and Server (NT 4.0/2000/XP and up)
o Microsoft Office Products (including Project and Visio)
o Microsoft Exchange 5.5 and higher
o VirusScan Enterprise 7.0 and ePolicy Orchestrator 3.0.1 or higher
o ARCserve 2000 Advanced Edition or higher
o Partition Magic and Norton Ghost for configurations
o Redhat Linux
o Voice
o Nortel BCM PBX and voice sets
o Asterisk PBX and voice sets
o PDAs
o Palm Pilot Versions III and up.
o Blackberry all models
o Web Application Developing Skills (Optional)
o Microsoft Front Page and Macromedia Dreamweaver
o HTML and ASP/JSP preferred. PHP (an asset)

Look at all those Windoze skills in there! I mean, don't these people even read the skill suammaries of people on their books?! I intimated as much in my reply:

On Tue, 20 Mar 2007, XXX wrote:

> Below you will find a list of immediate job openings.

I appreciate the email, but why on Earth is Globaltech asking me to
consider Windoze positions? One glance at my resume would indicate
that I'm a senior UNIX admin/developer, with 0 interest in Windoze!

> Please send your resume as a word doc.

Sorry, I don't do closed, expensive, proprietory formats. I suggest
you guys switch to ODF (OpenDocument), which is free, open, and platform
independant.

What really made my day, though, was the one-line reply to the above email: "Are you applying?"! You can't blame 'em for trying, but I think these people would be doing themselves and their clients a favour by actually reading the CVs/resumes they have on file, thereby increasing the odds that they'll find someone qualified for the positions they're trying to fill...

In case any recruiters/head hunters are reading this: yes, I am interested in talking about job opportunites (preferably contract), especially in my neck of the woods. But in case it isn't obvious, I'm an Open Solaris guy; I don't do Windoze, and I don't send out resumes in Word format. Send me an email (plain text, please)!

Sun's new Chief Operating Platforms Officer

2007-03-19T19:22:00.000-07:00

I read with interest today that Ian Murdock has joined Sun as Chief Operating Platforms Officer. Despite not being intimately involved with the Linux community, I thought I recognised his name. It turns out that Ian founded Debian and was at the Linux Foundation.

I wish him well in his new position, but some statements in his blog give me pause. For example, "... I’ll be advocating that Solaris needs to close the usability gap with Linux to be competitive...". Given that both Solaris and Linux use GNOME (and KDE et al), I'm not sure what Solaris needs to do to improve. (Apart from, I guess, more multimedia capability (e.g., playing DVDs) out of the box, which might be hard given the US' laws.)

Even more disquieting for me was this: "[A]s I believe Solaris needs to change in some ways, I also believe deeply in the importance of backward compatibility; and that even with Solaris front and center, I’m pretty strongly of the opinion that Linux needs to play a clearer role in the platform strategy." (emphasis added). I can't believe this. A few years ago Sun almost blew it by embracing Linux at the expense of Solaris x86, and it seems now that history might repeat itself.

Let me be clear: I've no problem with Sun ensuring that their products run on Linux and vice versa, but I strongly disagree with the notion that Sun needs to make Linux play a clearer role in their platform strategy. Sun has the best OS on the planet--Solaris--and there's no need for it to be distracted by Linux again. It's not for me to second guess Sun's executive managament, but if you ask me, someone with more of a Solaris bias should have been appointed to this position. And isn't Debian the Linux distro that refused to allow any CDDL licensed stuff in, on the grounds that the CDDL isn't "free" enough? Obviously one can't blame one person with the position of a community, but it just doesn't feel right.

That said, I'm all for giving people the benefit of the doubt, so I'm not writing Ian off yet. I wish him all the best, but I doubt I'll be the only one watching what he does very closely...

MOHI at the Penticton home show

2007-03-14T20:04:00.000-07:00

Last weekend (March 9 - 11) my new business, My Online Home Inventory, exhibited at its first home. The show was in Penticton, a sleepy little retirement town about 50km south of Kelowna, on the southern shore of Lake Okanagan.

It's the first time I've exhibited at a show, so I was glad it was a small one. The show was quite successful: we spoke to many people about MOHI, including a handful of insurance agents who were very interested. We even made a sale or two! :-) The next step is to attend a larger show, either here in Kelowna, or perhaps Kamloops. More people, with better demographics (hopefully) means more sales!

The only downside was the live entertainment (Elvis impersonators and the like). Great for the punters, I'm sure, but not so great for us exhibitors who had forked out a lot of cash to be there...

Bruce (my business partner) and I stayed in the Penticton Lakeside Resort and Casino, in a room facing the lake (their web site is pretty lame; it doesn't even work with Firefox on Solaris...). When we arrived on Friday afternoon, the sky was a beautiful blue, so I took a few photos to show off the view to Jenny. Good job too, 'cause not long after, the clouds rolled in and it was overcast the rest of the weekend.

Check out MOHI's web site and sign up today because the only thing worse than losing everything you own is not knowing what you've lost...

My new business venture

2007-03-08T11:39:00.000-08:00

For the last year or so, I have been hard at work implementing my latest business idea. It's a web site where one can manage one's home inventory, and is called My Online Home Inventory (MOHI for short).

I got the idea for MOHI back in 2003, when a third of Kelowna's ~100K population was evacuated because of the Okanagan Mountain Park Fire. My mum was one of the evacuees, and we quickly ran round her house grabbing the most important stuff. One of those items was a notebook containing a rudimentary inventory. A great idea, I thought, but keeping it on a piece of paper ain't so great: paper tends to burn when the house in which it is is on fire, it's hard to update, and it's just too fragile a medium for storing so important. Being the geek I am, it didn't take long to come to the conclusion that storing one's inventory on a secure web site was ideal. (Don't talk to me about those inventory programs you install on your computer: what are you going to do when that computer is destroyed or stolen?)

Before you say "it'll never happen to me", check out this photo:

If this was your home, would you be able to remember everything that was in it, especially when you're trying to cope with the grief such an event would engender? If you have contents insurance (and who in their right mind doesn't), doesn't it make sense to have an accurate inventory so that you can replace everything you're paying to insure? The only thing worse than losing everything you own is not knowing what you've lost...

I was busy writing my book, Solaris Systems Programming at the time, so the idea got put on back burner. But in November 2005 I started thinking about MOHI again, and started writing a business plan. I started writing the code in February 2006, and we launched on March 1 this year. Tomorrow we're exhibiting at our first home show, in Penticton.

I'll spare you the heavy sales pitch, but I invite all my readers check out
www.myonlinehomeinventory.com. Take the online tour, or try the read-only interactive demo account (log in as the user "demo", using "demo" for the password too) which I used to create the tour and help pages.

Techie notes: the site runs on a Sun Fire X4200 running Solaris 10 (of course), and makes use of Solaris' many innovative features, including Zones and ZFS. Yep, I put my money where my mouth is: as far as I was concerned, Solaris on Sun hardware was the only sensible option!

Saw Meat Loaf in concert last night

2007-03-07T19:21:00.000-08:00

Last night (March 6), Jenny and I went to see Meat Loaf in our local concert arena, Skyreach Place. We were expecting a good show, butit was even better than we thought it'd be! Sure, he's gettin' on a bit (aren't we all?), but what a showman!

He performed for about two hours, singing numerous songs: old favourites as well as material from his latest album, Bat out of Hell III. He came back for not one, but two encores, doubtless to the chagrin of the impatient people who left after the main show or first encore. :-) The only (minor) complaint I had was that the sound mix wasn't that great. Meat Loaf's vocals were often lost in the mix.

It's the 3rd time we've been to Skyreach for a show: we've previously attended gigs by Bryan Adams and local comedian, Herb Dixon. We had a great time, though our throats and heads are a little worse for the wear!

OGB Nomination

2007-03-02T10:27:00.003-08:00

It's been far too long since I last updated my blog. I've been feverishly beavering away on a new business, more of which anon...

The OpenSolaris Governing Board (OGB) elections will soon be upon us, and after much thought and careful consideration, I have decided to nominate myself for a position on the board. I am a long-term [Open]Solaris advocate, and was among the first dozen or so people to join the OpenSolaris pilot (Jim invited the Solaris Cabal to participate in the pilot sometime in September 2004 IIRC).

I'm the author of the Sun Press book, Solaris Systems Programming, and numerous articles about Solaris, a Solaris developer and sys admin, and I was one of two community members elected by the Pilot participants to the inaugral CAB (Al Hopper being the other). I think it would be useful if at least one current CAB/OGB member was on the new board, if only for the sake of continuity.

I don't work for Sun (though I did do some consulting for Sun UK a few years ago): I'm an independant consultant, and I've recently launched a new business called My Online Home Inventory. I've also built my own kernel. :-)

Farewell, ARA...

2007-01-09T19:27:00.000-08:00

I've just read in the latest issue of TAS about the passing of SME's founder, Alistair Robertson-Aikman (fondly abbreviated to ARA by his friends and colleagues). Although I never met him, I did have the pleasure of receiving a letter from him (personally signed, no less).

SME is a manufacturer of high end turntables and tonearms. If I had the money, top on my audition list for turntables to replace my Forsell Air Force One Signature is the SME Model 30/2. I once had the privilege of owning an SME Series V tonearm, mounted on my Roksan Xerxes (the turntable I had before the Forsell). The Series V is a beautiful piece of engineering, and still highly recommended.

Farewell, ARA, and I hope that the operas are fantastic where you are...