Phil Windley's Technometria

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April 30, 2007

Yum Hangs

I have an instance of Fedora Core 6 in VMWare that would hang every time I ran yum, the auto-updater. The only way to kill it at that point was with a SIGKILL. Yesterday I got to the point where I really wanted it to work, so I dug around a little and found a solution.

The bottom line is that it's waiting for a lock to clear that never will. Doing this (after killing yum):

rm -f /var/lib/rpm/__db.*

solves the problem. Apparently this has been a problem since Redhat 9. I can't remember quite how I debugged these kinds of problems before Google, but it must have been ugly.

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April 26, 2007

Adobe Open-sources Flex

Yawn...

I'm not sure what the excitement is all about.

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April 25, 2007

Jeannette Wing on Computational Thinking

Tonight is Jeannette Wing's general interest talk as part of her Organick Memorial Lecture at the University of Utah. The talk is on computational thinking. Here's an article she wrote for ACM Communications. These slides are close to the ones she used tonight.

Computational thinking will be a fundamental skill, like reading, writing, and arithmetic, in the 21st century. Computational thinking enables what one person cannot do alone. There are two components: abstraction and automation. CT involves thinking at more than one layer of abstraction at a time. Automation mechanizes the abstraction layers and their relationship. These allow the ability and audacity to scale.

She goes over several examples of computational thinking including how difficult is a problem, thinking recursively, reforming problems, interpreter code as data and data as code, using abstraction and decomposition, type checking, understanding sychronization, understanding pre-fetching and caching. In short "CT is taking an approach to solving problems, designing systems, and understanding human behavior that draws on concepts fundamental to computer science."

Computational thinking is revolutionizing statistics--some schools put the statistics department in the school of computing. Computation is the big bet in biology. CT influences economics (game theory), chemistry (nanocomputing), and physics (quantum computing).

But computational thinking isn't just for scientists. It's for everyone.

CT is conceptualizing, not programming. CT is how humans think about computing. CT is a fundamental skill, one that every human being needs to understand to function in modern society. CT complements and combing mathematical and engineering thinking. It draws on mathematics, but is constrained by the machine. It draws on engineering, but builds virtual worlds unconstrained by physical reality.

CT is about the ideas and not the artifacts. Computing is engaging and challenging. It's not just programming. One can major in computer science and anything--just like English, political science, or mathematics.

Jeannette goes through a number of examples of research problems in other fields that are computationally based, including examples from biology chemistry, geology, astronomy, brain science, mathematics, and engineering. Beyond the sciences, she gives examples in economics, social sciences, law, and entertainment. See her slides for details.

Universities should start with freshman-level intro courses by teaching how to think like a computer scientist (aka Principles of Computing), rather than "intro to programming." The K-12 curricula needs to be reformed as well. This has to be a collective effort.

Don't stop at the freshman year. Upper-division courses and graduate-level courses are needed as well. CMU has a program called CS4All to reach high school teachers and counselors and show them that there's much more to computer science than programming.

What could be in such a course?

• Thinking recursively
• Thinking abstractly (e.g. data abstraction and representation shows layers)
• Thinking ahead (caching, pre-fetching)
• Thinking procedurally
• Thinking logically
• Thinking concurrently
• and so on...

Paper and pencil as well as programming exercises. She discusses some topics along with how they could be explained by every day activities: sorting and searching, intractability, computational size, undecidability, data as code and code as data, correctness, caching, pipelining, concurrency, and distributed computing.

Some additional ideas came up in the Q&A session: privacy and fallibility.

She finished by talking about some deep questions of computer science and with a call to action: spread the word.

A few interesting links:

• Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• ESP Game

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Building Emacs

I was building Emacs on a virtual machine today and realized that I've been building Emacs on various machines for nigh on twenty years. The first machine I built Emacs for was an IBM RT running AIX 2.1. That was a tough build--no one had done it before that I could find. This was before the standardized configure scripts that figured everything out for you. I learned a lot.

Things have gotten considerably easier. I find that building Emacs is easier than trying to find the right thing pre-built and isn't that hard. Here's what you do.

1. Use the following line to grab the latest source:

   cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.sv.gnu.org:/sources/emacs \\
       co emacs
   

   Note that this is the latest snapshot. If you're not adventurous, find a stable release. On the other hand, I've never had any trouble. This is a code base that's on version 22, after all.
2. This will create a directory called emacs in the current directory. Go into it: cd emacs
3. Configure the package: ./configure. If you're building on OS X, use ./configure --enable-carbon-app
4. Do a bootstrap make: make bootstrap
5. Do a make from the bootstrap: make
6. Install it: sudo make install

The bootstrap takes a long time to build, the second make is quick. The installation takes some time. When it's done, you've got the latest emacs on your machine.

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Mikko Hypponen on Emergent Virus Threats

F-Secure is one of the leading companies devoted to the study and prevention of computer viruses, spam, and other types of malware. Last week we were lucky enough to get Mikko Hypponen, the company's Director of Anti-Virus Research, to join Scott and I in a discussion of the current status of the virus problem.

Mikko first reviews his background and how he became involved in the study and prevention of malware. He discusses some of his experiences with both worms and early viruses and reviews some of the problems trying to prevent spam. He talks about how spammers are still successful enough to stay in business, usually because users continue to be taken in by their schemes.

Mikko shares his experiences on how new viruses are handled as they appear and assesses the chances of ridding the tech world of malware completely. He also gives some suggestions on how to combat some of the biggest problems that affect the average user.

This was a fascinating interview to conduct and I think you'll enjoy it whether or not you're a security geek.

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Virtual Screensavers

I've never been a big fan of screensavers, but on a virtual machine they seem to be a particularly bad idea. Virtual screens don't need saving, they move and are thus distracting, and they waste CPU cycles.

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April 24, 2007

Speeding Up Crypt::DH

I was installing Crypt::DH, the Perl Diffie-Hellman library today. The tests took 20 minutes on a Macbook Pro. Then I noticed a comment on an OpenID forum about "making sure the GMP Perl bindings were enabled" to speed things up.

Specifically this means install Math::BigInt::GMP, as I found out, after some searching. The same tests ran in less than 10 seconds using the GMP library. That's impressive.

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Welcome Sploggers!

Chuck Knutson accidentally put out the welcome mat for sploggers and got a lot of unwelcome visitors.

The first big problem was that we had installed the multi-user version of WordPress. Why did we do that? I teach a class called Computers and Society, and I have students deliver their thoughts and reactions as short posts on actual blogs in the actual blogosphere. It's an interesting experience for students to submit their homework to the world where the instructor and TA are two of a potentially larger number of random readers (including the entire class). Strangely it tends to generate higher quality work.

We've tried different approaches in the past, but this Fall I was determined that we should host blogs on our server for any students that didn't already have one, and that we would make the process for them to set up a blog very easy (courtesy of multi-user WordPress). What we failed to grasp was that this was very much like going into a really bad neighborhood, leaving your front door wide open, the keys in the ignition of your car, and a sign on the front lawn reading, "FOOD IN THE FRIDGE!"

From Dr. K's Software Ruminations - The blogging nightmare of the apocalypse
Referenced Tue Apr 24 2007 10:55:56 GMT-0600 (MDT)

Ouch!

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Feedback for the News (and Podcasts)

Over at Scripting News, Dave is positing a system for giving feedback to the media about what stories you want to see and which you don't. This in an effort to get more personalization in the news stories we see.

I've had similar thoughts about podcasting (as has Dave and others). At IT Conversations, there is a feedback mechanism. Relatively speaking, no one uses it. Part of the problem is that when you're listening to podcasts you're probably not at your computer. Part of the problem is that people don't understand the benefit.

We have a recommendations engine that works off of your personal ratings. So, if you take the time to rate shows, you should see things you like in your personal recommendation queue (RSS feed enabled). Still, while I think the idea is great, the execution might put some people off.

We've grown accustomed to systems (the Web in general, but even systems like Amazon and NetFlix) that watch what we do and give us better results in the future as a result. Podcasting and the media haven't emerged with that natural feedback in place. Apple (following industry trends) conceived of the iPod as a "display" device--strictly one-way. Whatever feedback the device may do, Apple isn't sharing that information with anyone else.

In 2007, however, I think it's silly to build anything that isn't capable of two-way communication.

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Macbook Pro Memory Woes

Sunday my Macbook Pro (Core 2 Duo) downloaded a software update and wanted to reboot, so I said "OK." When it started back up, I got three beeps and then the power light flashed. Obviously it didn't boot--it had failed the power on self test with a RAM error. Not good.

I tried reseating the memory, no joy. Finally, I discovered that I could put either SIMM into the top slot and it would boot, but putting anything in the bottom slot failed. So, I booted with just the 2Gb card and made a clone of the machine to another Macbook Pro I had sitting around. Whew!

The next morning I put both cards in with the intent of taking it in for repairs, but it booted fine. I swapped them. It booted fine, but only showed 1Gb of RAM. I rebooted and saw all of memory.

I decided to try the Apple Hardware diagnostics (boot with the OS disk that came with your machine while holding down the "D" key). No problems found. I thought maybe it was a heat issue, so I downloaded something to exercise the CPU and get the heat up. Still, it boots fine.

At this point, I've got a machine that seems to work that I don't trust. Argh! Any ideas?

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April 23, 2007

Q and A With Mac Hacker

At last week's CanSecWest conference in Vancouver, British Columbia, Dino Dai Zovi (DDZ) successfully hacked into a 15 inch Mac Book Pro in response to a challenge to find exploits on the machine. Ryan Naraine has published a Q and A interview with DDZ. Interesting stuff.

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License Plates as Identity

Finding cars online (click to enlarge)

The other day I was walking through the Novell parking lot and came upon the car pictured at the right. If you look at the larger image, you'll notice that the bumper sticker on the car says "Use my license plate to find me on the Internet" with the large URL: license-plate.com.

Maybe it's just my bias, but I thought that this was a Web site that allowed license plates to be used as general purpose identifiers, allowing license plates to be linked to email and Web addresses. I wasn't sure what use that would be, but I was intrigued.

Turns out that its a car selling site. You register a car you have for sale at the site for free and then people can use your license plate number to find your ad. If you spend $10, they'll send you the bumper stickers and "upgrade" the listing.

There's no indication how many listings the site has. Probably not many. A wildcard search in Utah resulted in 9 listings total--most fairly old. There were zero in California.

I like this idea, but think the execution is a bit off. First, I had no idea that this car was for sale. Maybe the bumper sticker ought to say "for sale" to give people a clue. I also didn't like that the search used a POST instead of a GET, meaning I can't link to a particular result. All the links on the site are wrapped in Javascript alerts, so they don't take you anywhere--just pop a dialog box.

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April 20, 2007

CTO Breakfast Report for April 2007

Today was bring your child to CTO Breakfast day. Not officially, but with today being Spring Break, there were a few here. I brought my son so he could visit a friend who lives south.

Scott Lemon just got back from Web 2.0. The first thing he talked about was Instructables, a step-by-step collaboration site. There are all kinds of plans for creating guns with K'Nex. There are also other things, of course. You can get the slides from the talk here.

He was also pretty juiced about Joost, the P2P video application from the creators of Skype.

I announced the Jeannete Wing Organick Memorial Lecture that's happening last week. I also made sure people knew about the effort to get Seth Godin to Utah. Go pledge now!!!

We talked about good ways to record thoughts in the car. Voice memo recorders don't generally give good quality. Jott, is something we talked about last month which might work. An iPod with a recorder might work better. I'll have to try it. I've got a new Giant Squid mic that I want to try out.

Tyler Whitaker filled us in on the result's from Berkeley Data System's latest Programer Deathmatch, a programming contest. I used to do these in grad school (ACM programming contest) and they aren't easy. Solving, optimizing, and doing it all correctly under time pressure is a challenge even for good programmers.

We also had some good discussion of large scale systems, Twitter, virtualization, and Web 2.0 technologies. Here's some links:

• The Social Value of Twitter
• My Twitter friends
• Twittervision shows tweets from around the world
• MySpace scaling story
• Replicate Technologies uses virtualization to set up testing environments on demand.

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April 18, 2007

The Perfect Business

Scoble has a video showing one man's implementation of the perfect business. What's the perfect business? Simple:

• No inventory.
• No employees.
• No marginal cost of production.
• No rent.
• No business cards.

It's all online and almost run itself.

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CTO Breakfast This Friday

Our monthly CTO breakfast will be held this Friday at 8am in the Novell Cafeteria, Building G, Provo Campus. Check the CTO Breakfast page for directions and future dates.

What's been on my mind lately is Seth Godin's hopeful visit to Utah in May, virtualization, and Twitter. Bring whatever topic's been gnawing at you and we'll have a good conversation. We always do.

Remember, the event is free (you pay for your own breakfast) and anyone interested in high-tech companies and products is invited. You don't have to be a CTO.

If you're hesitant to drive all the way down to Novell's Provo campus, I've been told that the drive actually takes less time that leaving the freeway and driving into Canyon Park.

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April 17, 2007

Harnessing Decentralized Resources in Disasters

By now we know that the gunman responsible for yesterday's carnage at Virginia Tech was a South Korean student. A video-game crazed South Korean student, if you believe the other Dr. Phil. It's not too early to think about what we could do differently in the future, however.

Yesterday, I received an email from David Stephenson, who's blog is still broken with some of his ideas of the role Web 2.0 technologies could play. I'm sure he won't mind me giving them broader exposure here and commenting. David said:

There's NO PLACE in our society that should have been more on top of real-time, location-based info sharing about something of this sort than a college campus, because of their high concentration of tech-savvy users, let alone a technology one:

• the media, especially CNN, have been full of photos shot by students with their cameraphones. Along the lines of what NYC is developing, the university should have had a process in place for students to submit their photos and videos, which would have given situational awareness.
• the SquareLoop technology would have let the authorities broadcast alerts that would have automatically been received by every cell phone on campus (without the students having to register for the service)
• the various social networking apps such as Boostloopt, Dodgeball.com, etc. that Carolyn Johnson wrote about recently would have allowed the students to share info instantly.
• while I'm sure the university had a crisis plan, when things spiral out of control, as they did in this case, a wiki would have allowed real-time, collaborative planning of ad hoc responses.
• the iFind project at MIT would have allowed instantly identifying students' locations...
• the "presence dashboard" developed by Zingerang would have allowed instant networking among all involved to plan response
• Portland's "Connect and Protect" would have allowed two-way 911 information sharing..

Yada Yada -- there's a lot more, but it adds up to the stark reality that the first incident should have resulted in an immediate lockdown, and the second round of shooting (unless there's something that hasn't been reported yet...) should never have happened.

David's suggestions are a great start at a list of technologies that campus planners could use to improve their situational awareness and their ability to communicate to students, faculty, and staff. I'm sure there are dozens of others we could add to the list with a little more brainstorming.

Of course, we were all shown video of the event over and over again that was recorded by student Jamal Albarghouti with a cell phone camera. Jeff Jarvis has a good discussion of how this changes newsrooms. Student blogs, aggregated at Planet Blacksburg provided real-time, eye-witness accounts of the event as it unfolded and now provide after-event peeps into the feelings of those who experienced it, directly and indirectly. Students are using Facebook to organize vigils.

Note that the things that are happening in Blacksburg are emergent and decentralized. They are not being organized by some central administration (although surely there's plenty of that as well). There will be plenty of hand wringing over what can be centrally organized when disaster happens. What David's suggesting is that planners ought to also consider how to harness the decentralized, emergent opportunities that the Web, mobile phones, cameras, and the like present.

Large campuses are like small cities in size and infrastructure, but very different in the sense of common purpose and shared goals. And even though most students come to school as adults in the eyes of the state, parents look to schools to provide safe environments where their children can continue to grow into maturity. Simply put campuses have a unique responsibility to plan effective responses to disaster--man-made or otherwise.

In this age of near constant interruption and instantaneous communication we ought to be able to do better reaching members of a community and empowering them to help mitigate disasters--even harnessing their emergent behavior in a positive way. I'm sure a lot of university administrators will be asking themselves what they can do differently over the coming weeks and months. I hope they don't ignore the decentralized resources available to them.

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Technometria on Virtualization

This week's Technometria podcast is an interview with Bogomil Balkansky on virtualization. Bogomil is director of product marketing at VMWare. We had a good discussion of who's adopting virtualization now and why. We talked about virtualization in the datacenter and the desktop. I enjoyed the conversation.

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Barnett from PopTech!

I just finished watching Thomas Barnett's talk from PopTech! I like reading Barnett, but watching him is another thing altogether. He's a very good presenter and very entertaining. If you want a gentle introduction, watch the video. I don't think the audio would do this talk justice.

There are some other talks on that page that look pretty interesting. Friedman is always good--I had breakfast with him one day at the Governor's mansion when I was Utah's CIO. I heard Juan Enriquez at the Governor's mansion during the Olympics and read his then new book, As the Future Catches You. His latest is a look at a possible future of the US.

Sometime I'd like to have a relaxed conversation with Barnett. I think he'd be very interesting to just hang with for a bit. That's maybe one of the best, overlooked perks of being governor: the convening power that allows you to spend time with interesting folks and learn from them.

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Alan Kay's Early History of Smalltalk

If you're interested in programming language design, this history of Smalltalk by Alan Kay from the 1993 HOPL conference is worth reading. That was the second HOPL conference. The third is happening June 9-10 in San Diego. I'd go if it wasn't on a weekend. I refuse to do weekend conferences. Still, it looks like a great program.

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Pravda on Imus

I really hadn't intended to write any more about Imus, but then I saw a pointer to a Pravda story on Doc's blog. You'll remember that Pravda was the feared organ of state propaganda under the Soviets. Now, it appears (by the links that surround the story) that it's becoming Russia's version of Weekly World News.

But, to the US War Leaders, Don Imus represented the most serious threat, to date, of the growing assault against them by America's media personalities threatening to expose the truths behind the events of September 11, 2001 and the Iraq/Afghanistan Wars; and to such an extent that another American media personality, Rosie O'Donnell, has expressed concern that US Military Leaders could actually imprison Mr. Imus.

From our past research of the tactics used against those threatening America's War Leaders, the likelihood of imprisonment for Don Imus would only occur should he persist in his threats to undermine their authority, and which appears, at this time, unlikely after the public disgrace he has had to endure.

From Pravda.Ru
Referenced Tue Apr 17 2007 08:21:55 GMT-0600 (MDT)

I guess as I think about it, Pravda and Weekly World News were always pretty similar in their technique. Only their goals were different.

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April 16, 2007

PodCorps.org

Doug Kaye, the man behind IT Conversations is launching PodCorps.org. Th goal is to create a network of podcasting stringers and event producers who can record and publish important spoken-word events anywhere in the world. One of the goals is to cover events related to the 2008 election in the US.

Right now, PodCorps.org is recruiting stringers. Later, event producers will be able to tap into that pool of talent to get their events recorded. See and FAQ for more details.

If you have the ability to record events and your willing to volunteer your time, take a minute and sign up. By the way, after you register, be sure to update your profile so PodCorps.org knows where you are.

Follow up: Jon Udell has a good discussion of the power of visible demand and simple tags as it relates to PodCorps.org.

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New York to Paris, Google Style

Google can give you directions to help you get from new York to Paris. On second thought, maybe there not as much help as I originally thought. Check out line 23.

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April 13, 2007

Imus and Speech

Today on NPR, Juan Williams was dissecting the Don Imus imbroglio, including his firing, and the discussion turned to why Black rappers can get away with saying things Imus can't. Lots of pop-psychology, history, race relations, and the like were discussed, but I think it all makes this much more complicated than it is. The issue is very simple.

The topic of free speech is moot in this case. This isn't a free speech issue; it's a commercial speech issue. Imus' customers (also called advertisers) are no longer willing to pay to hear him say what he did and the customers for Rap music are willing to pay to hear it.

All the rest is window dressing--including the outrage of Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson who would both be very sorry to see race become a non-issue in this country since they both have vested interests in seeing poor race relations continue.

A while back, Doc talked about kindness and how we can help or we can hurt. If you or I support, through our actions or our pocketbook, people who make their living by inflicting pain on others, even in jest, then we're part of the problem.

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Finding Seth Godin in Utah

Phil Burns wants to bring Seth Godin to Utah to speak. That would be cool. Seth's promoting his new book, The Dip. Here's the deal (from Seth's blog):

In each city I'm able to get to, if you buy 5 books (in advance), you get to come hear me give a speech for free. OR, if you prefer to think of it differently, if you pay $50 to hear me speak, you get five books for free.

From The Dip by Seth Godin: The Dip Tour
Referenced Fri Apr 13 2007 10:47:38 GMT-0600 (MDT)

The catch is that before he'll commit to come to a city, 500 people have to take the plunge (and, with it, The Dip--actually five of them).

Phil's set up a page at PledgeBank where you can pledge to buy five books to get Seth to Utah. I've pledged. You should pledge too. Any companies or organizations out there willing to buy books for their employees? That would make this a lot easier.

Of course, this is just the sort of fascinating Internet marketing that Seth Godin is famous for. An amazing way to sell some books and, more importantly, get his message out. I probably wouldn't have blogged about his book otherwise. And if he comes, I've got 4 books to give away...

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April 12, 2007

Install the Parallels Tools!

Yesterday I did something in Parallels that I'm embarrassed to say I hadn't done before--it made a huge difference. I installed the Parallels tools in some guest OS's and compressed and defragmented their disks.

The guest OS tools allow the guest OS to play better with the host. The biggest difference you'll notice is that the mouse "rolls" from the guest to the host OS without the need to push funny key combinations to "release the mouse." Not only that, drag and drop and cut and past work. Hurrah!

Compressing my disk images cut them in half (6Gb to 3Gb) and while I didn't do any scientific study of their performance they seem zippier. Warning: compressing takes a long time, but it's automatic. Turn it on before you go to bed. And be sure to install tools and compress images before you clone them.

The bad news is that while this works fine in Windows XP, there are no tools for Fedora (I don't know about Redhat) and I don't believe the compressor works on Linux distros. As long as we're on the subject, Fusion has a set of guest OS tools as well and those are available for Fedora in addition to Windows.

The lesson: a little tuning of your virtual image, done automatically, can dramatically affect your experience.

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Is Your API Too Fat?

Kode Vicious offers a nice, short tutorial on API design in this month's ACM Queue. Getting the right balance is never easy. I face this question all the time with students in my large scale distributed computing class.

KV holds up the UNIX API set for file manipulation as the classic example of good API design:

The classic, and perhaps now cliché, example of a good API is the Unix open, close, read, write, ioctl set of system calls for performing file I/O. Unix cheated, in a way, by saying that all files were just streams of bytes without structure, but nonetheless it stands as a good example because with those five APIs most programmers can do most of the things they need to do with file I/O.

From ACM Queue - APIs with an Appetite
Referenced Thu Apr 12 2007 11:18:48 GMT-0600 (MDT)

KV goes on to talk about the importance of ioctl as an escape valve--allowing programmers to pass data down into the bowels of the OS, bypassing the API. To be more specific, the UNIX file API assumes everything thing is a stream of bytes. ioctl allows devices that are not represented by streams of bytes to be controlled in a device-specific manner.

I find that people have trouble knowing when to be impure. For example, in EJBs, the pure way to access data is through entity beans, but if all you want to do, for example, is get a list of all the records that meet a certain property so they can be displayed, using the entities is really slow. The answer is to--gasp!--just use some SQL from the session bean. Experienced EJB programmers do this all the time, but n00bs frequently dismiss it as improper.

As KV says in closing, API design is iterative. As you see people doing things with the escape valve over and over, then its probably time to provide that functionality in the API proper. That way your API will be neither too fat or too thin.

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April 11, 2007

2.9 Million Georgians at Risk for Identity Theft

ZDNet news reports that "A CD containing personal information on Georgia residents has gone missing, according to the Georgia Department of Community The CD was lost by Affiliated Computer Services, a Dallas company handling claims for the health care programs, the statement said. The disc holds information on 2.9 million Georgia residents, said Lisa Marie Shekell, a Department of Community Health representative."

When I was Utah's CIO, identity theft on this kind of grand scale didn't make the news as much as it does now. If I were in that position today, I'd be very scared. It's not so much that you know about bad data handling practices in the various agencies, but the fact that you know nothing about them. What are the chances it's all going well with no oversight and no accountability? Zero.

In this case, ACS was a private contractor and is likely to get the blame, but that's not the root of the problem. The root of the problem is that the state agency trusted them with that data. What reviews were done? Any audits of security and data handling practices? To what standards? Was the data encrypted? Ugh.

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John Hagel on IT Conversations

Last month, at ETech, Doug Kaye introduced me to John Hagel. At the time, I happened to be reading a paper he and John Seely Brown had written called From Push to Pull- Emerging Models for Mobilizing Resources because it had been recommended by Werner Vogels. We had a delightful conversation over lunch.

This morning I was looking at John Hagel and John Seely Brown's latest book (2005) The Only Sustainable Edge. One of the concepts is "dynamic specialization." When I googled dynamic specialization, the number two link was an IT Conversations presentation by John Seely Brown from Supernova 2005.

I happened to remember that John Hagel had been on IT Conversations as well, so I went and looked that up. He's been on several times. Once interviewed by Doug and once as a guest of Moira Gunn on TechNation. These are all great legacy programs from IT Conversations that you'll enjoy listening to again if you've got an interest in business strategy and globalization.

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April 10, 2007

Twittering Leads to Connectedness

I've been playing with Twitter since the last CTO breakfast. Interesting to go back and look at that post and realize it was before Kathy Sierra stopped blogging. Since then I've had a number of people ask me about Twitter, what it is, why it's useful, and so on.

Right now, I think Twitter is more useful as an example than a tool. I've learned something about how networked applications can create a sense of presence that goes well beyond IM.

The group of people who are my friends on Twitter right now are all people I know (I don't go in for adding people just to add them), although none of them were people who I was in close contact with day to day. I saw them once every month or two, caught up, exchanged occasional emails, and sometimes IM'd.

However, since being on Twitter and being frequently updated on the goings-on of their lives, I've come to feel much closer to them. For example, I care that Phil Burns is going to have to spend all night installing servers tonight. I feel sorry for him. I would have always had empathy for him, but I didn't know. Now I do.

Part of the reason groups work is because they work together. One of the hardest parts of building virtual organizations is that you lose all the subtle, incidental interactions with people that cause you to feel connected with them, form bonds with them, care about them. Twitter has shown me that some of that can be done electronically--something I would have never before supposed.

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The World's Largest Particle Accelerator

I heard a two part show on NPR yesterday about a new $8 billion particle accelerator that will go into operation this November at CERN. I love this kind of thing--always have. When I was a kid, I grew up next to the National Reactor Testing Station (now the INEEL) in Idaho. There are over 60 nuclear reactors there (only a few are still operational). Names like the Experimental Breeder Reactor were common in my childhood and I just grew up being fascinated by all of it.

The new accelerator is simply amazing. Of course, the US doesn't do this sort of thing anymore. That makes me sad. David Kestenbaum does a great job with the story.

• Part I: Massive Particle Accelerator Revving Up
• Part II: The World's Largest Particle Accelerator

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Miguel on Mono

In this week's Technometria podcast, Scott, Ben, and I talk with Miguel de Icaza, the founder and force behind the Mono project. We had a great discussion about the project's history, purpose, and architecture. We also got into some discussion of programming languages in general. I think you'll enjoy it.

One program note: Matt Asay, who has been a co-host on Technometria for many months has had to pull back on his involvement. Ben Galbraith, a good friend and great technologist, has joined Scott and I in our weekly show.

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April 9, 2007

TechNation Audio Mixup

The audio for last week's TechNation and BioTech nation shows were identical due to a naming problem. That problems been corrected, so if you're a fan of either program, I encourage you to download them again and make sure you've got the right shows:

• Kim Stanley Robinson - Global Warming
• BioTech Nation - Stem Cells & the BioBank

My apologies for the trouble.

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April 6, 2007

Barnett's Grand Unifying Theory

Thomas Barnett, who I interviewed on IT Conversations 18 months ago is in Alaska and writing some very good stuff. I love to see his spin on the news--of course that's because I agree with him so often! The very definition of genius.

Just read a few of the postings from April 4th. For example:

• Those who protest Nixon's trip to China...
• Plant the flag and give 'em the vector
• Economic freedom trumps political freedom

As I've said before (I think) Barnett's work provides a backdrop on which you can pin a ton of seemingly unrelated global events and see it start to make sense. If you don't agree with him, develop another theory that works so well as his. I haven't found such a theory or such an eloquent proponent.

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Cloning Machines and Race Conditions

While I've been playing with VMWare Fusion, I've simultaneously been doing some testing of NextPage's Document Retention product for an InfoWorld review. I needed two machines, so naturally, I used virtual machines (in Parallels, as it turns out).

Being lazy, I did as much set up on one machine as I could before I cloned it. I recognized that I needed different identities on these machines for my test, so I got two different activations from NextPage, but if I hadn't, would the software have worked, seemed like it worked, or failed completely?

I'm not talking about "work" in the sense of would it run. This isn't a licensing issue (although that's a related question). I'm wondering whether the different instances that all thought they were acting on behalf of me would have been able to cope with the issue of having multiple copies running.

This isn't just a NextPage thing. It's true of most software. For example, if I set up a mail client and then clone the machine, I could have some of my mail being downloaded to one machine and some to another depending on the interleaving and how mail arrives. The mail client seems to work, but it's probably going to mess me up at some point. We've got a race condition that is not being handled.

On the other hand, I'd expect the C compiler on both machines to continue to function just fine regardless of being cloned. The compilers operate completely independent of each other.

It seems that any software that has a dependence on some other networked service will have to adjust to the widespread adoption of virtualization technology. Sometimes, like with NextPage, the answer will be "don't do that." But other times, machine cloning is going to run afoul of this problem where the user has a perfectly legitimate reason for running the software on cloned machines.

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VMWare Fusion Beta 3 Released

I downloaded the 3rd beta release of VMWare Fusion today and spent some time playing with it. Fusion is the desktop virtualization application from VMWare for OS X. You can download it here and try it out for yourself for free, it you like.

I wrote up my thoughts about VMWare Fusion and posted them at Between the Lines, if you're interested.

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Provo Second on Forbes List

Forbes magazine lists Provo Utah as second on their list of Best Places For Business And Careers. Raleigh, NC was number one and Boise, ID was third. That's good company.

After listening to Richard Florida on IT Conversations a few years back, I bought his book The Rise of the Creative Class. Provo gets a mention there as well as a good place for doing business. Florida talks a great deal about what metropolitan areas can do to become magnets for creative people. Forbes is capturing a lot of that in their list; here are the components:

1. Colleges - Measure of 4-year colleges in area with extra credit for highly rated schools.
2. Cost of Doing Business - Index based on cost of labor, energy, taxes and office space.
3. Cost Of Living - Index based on cost of housing, utilities, transportation and other expenditures.
4. Crime Rate - Crimes per 100,000 residents.
5. Culture & Leisure - Index based on museums, theaters, golf course, sports teams and other activities.
6. Educational Attainment - Share of Population over age 25 with a bachelor's degree or higher.
7. Income Growth - 5-year annualized figures.
8. Job Growth - 5-year annualized figures.
9. Net Migration - 5-year annualized figures.

When the legislature works to reduce the over all tax load and says they're doing it in order to attract businesses or the mayor of a city works for a new soccer stadium or cultural center, it's hard to see the connection to those things and economic prosperity. Of course, making a list and reality aren't the same thing.

One thing that stands out to me is that the leaders aren't "the best" or even in the top five in any of the categories, but they all do consistently well in all areas. That's important. It's great to toot your horn and say "our city has the highest number of BS degrees per capita" but what really matters is doing good enough across the board.

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April 5, 2007

Top Ten IT Conversations Shows for March 2007

Here's the top ten shows on IT Conversations (by total number of downloads) for March 2007. The ratings are included as well.

1. Robert Sutton - Tech Nation (Rating: 3.67)
2. Outsourcing BioTech Panel - Tech Nation
3. Peter Barth, Francis Chan - Tech Nation (Rating: 3.33)
4. John Voelcker, Glenn Zorpette - Tech Cars Roundtable (Rating: 3.17)
5. Doc Searls - Technometria: The Giant Zero (Rating: 3.83)
6. Ken Majer - Productivity and Profitability
7. Lonn Johnston - Technometria: High Tech PR (Rating: 3.71)
8. David Lawrence - Instantly Irresistible and Perfectly Passionate (Rating: 4.25)
9. Dr. Richard Ho & Randy Scott - BioTech Nation (Rating: 3.71)
10. Social Data Face-Off - Where 2006 (Rating: 2.80)

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2007 Organick Lecture: Jeannette Wing

This year's Organick Lecture at the University of Utah will be delivered by Jeannette Wing, President's Professor of Computer Science and Head of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. In keeping with tradition, the lecture consists of two parts, a general interest lecture and a research lecture.

The general interest lecture, entitled "Computational Thinking" will be on Wed April 25, 2007 at 7:30 p.m. in the 220 Aline Wilmot Skaggs Biology Research Building on the University of Utah campus. The research lecture will be on "Automatic Generation and Analysis of Attack Graphs" and will be given on Thursday, April 26, 2007 at 3:20 p.m. in the same place.

Last year, Alan Kaye was the lecturer and delivered two great talks one on The 100 Dollar Laptop and one entitled is Computer Science and Oxymoron? The year before I listened to Vint Cerf give a very good lecture on Internet Challenges.

If you're in Utah and interested in computers, it's silly to let preeminent computer scientists come to town and not go listen. Past Organick Lectures have been extremely valuable to me. I view this as one of the premiere tech events in Utah each year. See you there.

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Squinting at Your Browser

Dave and I are about the same age. Maybe that's why his post wishing for per-site text-size options in browsers struck a nerve. We're both at the point where small type just looks like too much work. The answer seems to be the minimum font size option in Firefox. Set it in preferences under Content -> Fonts & Colors -> Advanced. Following Dave's lead, I set it to 13 and life is better.

9:52 AM | Comments (3) | Recommend This | Print This

April 4, 2007

My Backup Script on OS X

It's sysadmin script day on Technometria. Earlier, I posted and explained by script for cleaning up unwanted files in Linux. Later this afternoon Kelly Flanagan asked me how I did backups, so I decided to clean up my backup script and post it for all to see.

First, let me explain that my goal here is to produce a copy of my files. I'm not trying to do imcrementals. This protects me from disk failure, but not my own stupidity. I used to use Synchronize! Pro for backups. It had a few really nice advantages. First if created an image and second, it only copied the files that had changed. But it got flaky and would hang, complain about "non-deletable" files and so on. Those problems, combined with the fact that it's expensive, made me look for another solution.

I started using rsync several months ago to back up my wife's photos. rsync has been around for years and was actually the result of someone's dissertation research in the 80's, if I remember right. I used to use it as a grad student in the 80's to backup my files form one machine to another. It works across a network, if necessary, and also only copies what's changed. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised to find out that Synchronize! Pro was just a fancy front end for rsync.

This script takes a user name as a parameter, and backs up that user to a drive using rsync. The script automatically mounts and unmounts the drive because I hate having the drive spin up every time I go to open or save a file.

#!/bin/bash

USER=$1

echo "Backing up ${USER}"

# backup volume
VOLUME='/Volumes/PantherBackup'

# Get device using  'diskutil info ${VOLUME}'
DEVICE='/dev/disk1s3'

if [ ! -e ${VOLUME} ]
then 
   echo "Mounting ${DEVICE} as ${VOLUME}"
   /usr/sbin/diskutil mount ${DEVICE}
else
   echo "${VOLUME} already mounted"
fi

SRC="/Users/${USER}/"
DEST="${VOLUME}${SRC}"

echo "Backing up " ${SRC} " to " ${DEST}

sudo rsync -av --timeout=120 --delete ${SRC} ${DEST}

echo "Unmounting ${VOLUME}"
/usr/sbin/diskutil eject ${VOLUME}

The script is intentionally chatty and OS X specific. For example, the disk mounting and unmounting uses the OS X diskutil command. To mount the device, you need the device name. You can get that with diskutil (or it's graphical sibling DiskUtil) by asking for the "info" on the volume when it's mounted.

Note that I run rsync as root since there are some root owned files in my directory space (from CPAN). I modified the /etc/sudoers file (with visudo) so that I can run rsync as root without a password. Be careful if you do this. It's easy to make a mistake in the sudoer syntax and make it so you can't use sudo anymore.

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Java and IP Addresses

A few weeks ago, I cut over my blog and several other Web sites to a new, much fast server. I don't know that it's made much difference in how fast people retrieve my blog since it's mostly static, but it's made a great deal of difference to me in posting speed and other back office functions.

What's been curious to me is that the old server continues to get a few hits. I did a little exploring today and discovered a few interesting things.

First, all of the hits are for RSS feeds of one kind of another.

Second, all of the clients still hitting the old server are implemented in Java. Here's a list (from the user-agent data in the log): Rome, Jakarta Commons-HttpClient, Java/1.5.0_06, and knLiveJava/3.0.

Can someone explain this to me? Is there a bug in some Java library that caches IP addresses for too long or is this just coincidence?

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Drummond Reed on XRI and Identity

This week on the Technometria podcast, Scott and I talk with Drummond Reed about XRI, the eXtensible Resource Identifier. With respect to the podcast, Drummond says:

Last week I had a long talk about XRI with Phil Windley and Scott Lemon that they just posted as an IT Conversations podcast. If you ever wanted to know the full XRI story from start to finish (verbally, at least), this is the podcast for you. Phil tends to draw out the details from me, so there's quite a bit of "verbal whiteboarding" (I live for whiteboards), but altogether it amounts the most comprehensive oral summary of XRI I've ever done.

From Equals Drummond » Talking XRI with Phil Windley and Scott Lemon
Referenced Wed Apr 04 2007 15:19:19 GMT-0600 (MDT)

I enjoyed the talk very much and think you will to. Listen here.

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Open Source Conversations

After an experiment of almost a year, Gigavox Media has decided to fold Open Source Conversations back in IT Conversations. Frankly this is a decision I've hoped for for some time. At the time Open Source Conversations was created, there was a lot of open source shows coming to IT Conversations and Gigavox was anxious to create sister channels for IT Conversations.

I like not splitting things up, but I also recognize that as more and more material is published on IT Conversations, listeners have a tough time figuring out what to listen to. I didn't want to lose the ability for someone who's interested in open source, for example, to lose the focus that OSC provided.

Consequently, we've created what, for now, I'm calling a "special collection," in this case for open source podcasts on IT Conversations. Now any show on IT Conversations that has open source as a topic will show up in that collection, in addition to showing up on the IT Conversations homepage and in whatever series it's part of.

This let's us offer the advantages of OSC--people just interested in open source can visit the open source conversations collection or even subscribe to an RSS feed of open source podcasts--without foregoing the general content on IT Conversations.

In the future, I'll be looking for other topics that people might like us to create collections around, with their own RSS feed, and adding them to the list. Things like GIS, telephony, and Linux come to mind. If you have suggestions, please contact me.

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Defrag Conference

Eric Nolin, who helped organize and build Digital Identity World with Phil Becker is starting a new conference with Phil and Brad Feld (of Mobius VC) called "Defrag." From the "About" page:

Defrag is the first conference focused solely on the internet-based tools that transform loads of information into layers of knowledge, and accelerate the "aha" moment. Defrag is about the space that lives in between knowledge management, "social" networking, collaboration and business intelligence. Defrag is not a version number. Rather it's a gathering place for the growing community of implementers, users, builders and thinkers that are working on the next wave of software innovation.

From DEFRAG:\ About
Referenced Wed Apr 04 2007 11:09:18 GMT-0600 (MDT)

IT Conversations is one of the media partners for Defrag and will host the audio from the event after it occurs (Nov 5-6) in Denver. Leading up to the event, we'll also be doing some pre-conference interviews with some of the keynoters and other interesting people.

I don't know Brad, but Phil and Eric know how to put together interesting, useful conferences. I'm excited about this one. For updates, follow the Defrag blog.

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Cleaning Up Unwanted Files in Linux

One of my grad students just went to remove some unwanted, automatically created files in his directory and accidentally deleted some things he wanted. I use a script to do clean ups to prevent these kinds of silly errors (which we're all prone to). Here's the script:

#!/bin/bash

if [ ! -e $HOME/.rmd ]
then mkdir $HOME/.rmd
fi

find $HOME  \( -name '.rmd' -prune \) -o \
  \( -name '*~' \
     -o -name ',*' \
     -o -name '#*#' \
     -o -name '*.bak'\
     -o -name '*.backup' -atime +5\
     -o -name 'core'\
  \) \
  -print -exec mv -f {} $HOME/.rmd \;

find $HOME/.rmd -atime +5 -exec rm -f {} \;

The script creates a directory called .rmd if it doesn't exist, finds files matching a certain set of patterns to that directory, and finally removes things in that directory that were moved there more than five days ago. It's not perfect--files with the same name are just moved over the top of each other.

I name it "clean" and put it in my personal bin directory. You might add or delete individual line items depending on what kinds of files your programs create. When I was a grad student, disks were expensive, and worked on a system that enforced quotas, I ran it in a cronjob once a day. Now I just run it whenever things look ugly--the same approach I have to dusting.

Building or modifying a script like this can be dangerous since a bug could cause things you care about to be systematically removed. I recommend testing it on an account that doesn't have anything you care about in it before you blindly trust it.

One last thing: I used Linux in the title, but this will obviously work in anything with bash and find including varieties of Unix and OS X. These days I'm running it on OS X rather than Ultrix or 4.3BSD. Not all versions of find have a "prune" option.

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April 2, 2007

Kathy Sierra, Chris Locke, and Due Process

The post I made about Kathy Sierra's harassment at the hands of trolls continues to see considerable traffic from Google. Over the week end, Kathy and Chris Locke (who was linked to the harassing posts in Kathy's original post, but never shown to be directly involved) published a coordinated statement prior to a joint appearance on CNN today. I haven't found the CNN piece--it was probably pre-empted by the tsunami news--but will update this post with a link when it airs. Here's Kathy's statement about the statement.

Alan Herrell was also linked by Kathy to the incidents. As this note from Alan (posted on Doc Searl's blog) shows people react to hate with hate. In the name of defending Kathy, people harassed Alan, even though, like Chris, he was never shown to be directly involved. There's a reason that civilized societies have a concept of due process. It's a shame that we seem to need that civics lesson over and over again.

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Interview with Innovators with Jon Udell

Jon Udell's been doing his Friday Podcast for some time now. For almost as long, I've been trying to get him to do it on IT Conversations. He was willing, but there were some hurdles. I'm happy to report that the last hurdle was cleared a few weeks ago and last Friday I published Jon's first show, an interview with Phil Libin, in a new series on IT Conversations.

Jon won't be a stranger to longtime IT Conversations listeners who will remember him as regular member of the original Gillmor Gang. Jon also appeared recently on Technometria with Scott Lemon and I.

When we got ready to launch, Jon recognized that "Friday Podcast" was maybe too generic for IT Conversations, so Jon's calling the show Interviews with Innovators. I think it's an apt name. Jon's always had good conversations with people at the front of their fields. His gentle, persistent manner is backed up with a unique understanding of technology and a deep interest in its impact on society. Listen a few times and I'm sure you'll be a regular.

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