Yesterday, I’ve been visiting the Linux World Conference & Expo 2006 in San Francisco for the first time. Astonishingly, the event wasn’t as big as I imagined it to be.. the booths are all located on the ground floor of Moscone Center North – which is in area comparable to one of the many floors of the Orbit/iEX in Zurich and much much smaller than the CeBIT in Hannover. I wonder whether this is really the largest Linux exposition in the world?
The number of exhibitors and presentators met my expectations however as most of the players in the Linux ecosystem were there [Update: big names missing are RedHat and Sun]. The focus of Linux World is clearly on the commercial apects of Linux, dominated by big companies such as AMD, Intel, HP, IBM, Oracle and Novell (my current employer). Apart from talking to representatives of many companies I particularly enjoyed the chance to meet with some Gentoo fellows in the .Org pavilion. Note that a usable Gentoo Linux Installer (including graphical front-end) is part of the Gentoo LiveCD for quite a while. This is a great opportunity for less experienced users to install (and hence productively use) Gentoo too, so don’t hesitate to give it a whirl! :)
Some “Web 2.0” news from “Web Montag” in Palo Alto
Thanks to the short notice of Johanna I could attend an inspiring little gathering called “Web Montag” (web monday) in the premises of Socialtext in Palo Alto. Unfortunately, I arrived a bit late as I was traveling by public transport (which was not such a good idea, will rent a car starting tomorrow ;). Also, I was quite in a hurry making it back to Berkeley on time. Nonetheless I learned about some interesting new things brewing in the “Web 2.0” space.
Gernot Poetsch is currently developing a MacOS “Leopard” based rich client aggregator which is capable of handling multimedia feeds (anticipated release is in early 2007).
Eugene Eric Kim presented HyperScope, a project that builds on the ideas behind Doug Engelbert’s first hypertext system (NLS/Augment) and promises to enable better deep linking in hypertext documents (among others). Mark Wubben quickly demoed Plazes and how it could leverage RFID (synergies to Christof Roduner‘s research in the area of ubiquitous computing?). I missed the presentation about mnemomap, but from what I can judge this looks like a very interesting project too. Note that some of the projects are looking for contributors!
Read more about the event in the summary by Peter Kaminski and Mark Wubben.
[Update: Germans interested in the “Web 2.0” might also be interested in attending the “Web 2.0 – the next generation” conference at the University of St.Gallen on Oct 4, 2006. As a side note, I can’t help feeling that “Web 2.0”, as usual with “technologies” (it’s more of a buzzword than a specific technology, actually) entering the hype curve, are highly overrated in the short run (i.e. right now), but probably underrated regarding long term implications]
ScatterChat – secure, anonymous instant messaging
ScatterChat is a HACKTIVIST WEAPON designed to allow non-technical human rights activists and political dissidents to communicate securely and anonymously while operating in hostile territory. It is also useful in corporate settings, or in other situations where privacy is desired.
It is a secure instant messaging client (based upon the Gaim software) that provides end-to-end encryption, integrated onion-routing with Tor, secure file transfers, and easy-to-read documentation.
Its security features include resiliency against partial compromise through perfect forward secrecy, immunity from replay attacks, and limited resistance to traffic analysis… all reinforced through a pro-actively secure design.
Will evaluate it ASAP
Literally “tired” of poor seating on long-haul flights? Try SeatGuru.com
A good source for airplane seating information: SeatGuru
(mobile version for on the go: http://mobile.seatguru.com/)
Relay – A free AJAX file/directory manager AND Gliffy
The home page of Relay: http://ecosmear.com/relay/
The online demo: http://ecosmear.com/relay/demo/
Cool stuff, comes close to one of my long-standing visions (no details at this point ;). Would be an interesting base for extensions, once they have open sourced it. (Credits for the pointer: superdeluxe.ch)
Some other interesting AJAX links:
How to Make Your AJAX Applications Accessible – 40 Tutorials and Articles
Gliffy.com – Create and share diagrams online
(Credits for the pointers: weblogger.ch and yoda.ch)
Eclipse Callisto release on June 30, 2006
If you missed the rumors so far.. tomorrow Friday, Eclipse Callisto will be released :)
Astonishingly, centralization seems to be the only reliable way to ensure plugin compatibility within the Eclipse ecosystem.. considering that one of the design patterns gurus, Erich Gamma, is a major driving force behind Eclipse.
I hope I’ll find the time tomorrow to quickly test-drive it regarding support of JSF/Java Server Faces (so far, I used Exadel Studio most of the time, but meanwhile, I’d expect WTP to be ready for JSF as well)
Yep.. going strong as always ;)
While trying to process my to-do list (lower prio things will have to wait, as usual) I just noticed that Andres and Pascal have blogs too for quite a while.
Regarding my own blog, I still need to finalize the migration to wp. As you guessed, there are lots of higher priority tasks that need to be done first. Of course I’d also have lots of interesting things to blog about. Let’s see whether I can again share some of the findings and experiences with you from time to time..
Server (almost ;) migrated
I’ve finally managed to migrate this server from the Via Eden barebone to the new, powerful Dual-Xeon EMT64 server :) Now it runs as a Gentoo Xen domU guest on a Gentoo dom0 host with LVM2 (If in doubt, use LVM2 instead of a flat file for performance reasons). It’s neither fully operational nor fully optimized yet (I will do another migration in the background), but it does its duty for now.
New server will arrive soon..
Finally I’ve ordered a new server to replace the not-so-reliable barebone Mini-ITX server that runs this site. Initially, I actually wanted to build the server all by myself, assembling the best SME server components I can get. As it turned out, I would have had to import most of the components from different suppliers, making do-it-yourself assembling a very time consuming and risky (ad)venture. I thus decided to order a nice (but not cutting edge), hopefully well-tested, pre-built server from Dell.
It’s a customized variant of the Dell PowerEdge 1800 with the following specs:
- 2 x Intel Xeon Irwindale 3 GHz with EMT64 (the Intel analogon of AMD64), HTT and XD/NX-bit support, 800 MHz FSB [ UPDATE: Dell upgraded the two Xeons to 3.2 GHz for free! Thanks! :) ]
- 2 x 1 GB DDR2 SDRAM
- SATA RAID Controller PCI Card (seems to be an Adaptec RAID controller)
- 2 x 160 GB 7200 RPM SATA hard disks for HW RAID 1
- Remote Management PCI Card
All that for about 3.2k CHF which is a reasonable price (not counting a 500 GB SATA II HDD for incremental backups I will buy elsewhere as Dell has only 250 GB HDDs).
If I would have assembled a server myself, I had probably chosen AMD Opteron CPUs, an ASUS K8N-LR motherboard, a 3ware 9550SX SATA II RAID controller and two fast 500 GB SATA II HDDs. But it’s very difficult to get these components in Switzerland, not to mention getting them from a single supplier. Further there’s the risk that the components don’t harmonize once they have been assembled.
The server will arrive on April 21 and I expect that migration will take at least another 1 to 2 weeks (as I need to recompile Gentoo and adjust the settings for the new environment).
Portable Firefox
Portable Firefox is the popular Mozilla Firefox web browser packaged with a PortableApps Launcher as a portable app, so you can take your bookmarks, extensions and saved passwords with you.
Neat :)