commentary on SWiK

F.A.T. -- Epic Failout!

Wed, 01 Oct 2008 10:25:58 -0700

"Install this Firefox plugin and go visit your favorite economics blog! Epic Failout!"

Wanted: GUI developer for MySQL Enterprise Monitor

Tue, 30 Sep 2008 09:13:35 -0700

One of the great things about working on great products is that you get to meet such intelligent and interesting people. I can apply that to everybody that I work with, but there are some teams where not only are they working on great products, they are also all great people just to spend time with.

I have had the good fortune of working with the MySQL Enterprise Monitor team as an advisor, and more recently in writing the documentation, for the last 18 months. We’ve had some great fun at meetings in Amsterdam, Heidelberg, Santa Cruz and recently Riga. In the meeting rooms we are professional, but fun. But in the evenings we’ve gone out and just had plain good fun. Unless you’ve experienced a full day, or even week, of non-stop meetings for 12 hours a day you have no idea how important it is to kick back in the evenings. That, as a team, we are still able to have a good time at the end of each day while still being in the same room together is a good indication of how well we all get on.

Why am I telling you this? Because there is an opportunity to come and work for MySQL Enterprise Monitor team as a GUI developer, and if you are going to join us, you need to be as much fun at the dinner table as you are in the meeting room.

We are looking for talented people, obviously, and you are going to need to be good both with the design and the programming aspects of the GUi development. We use frameworks like Hibernate and Spring, and build our interfaces using DHTML and AJAX. If you know about MySQL and scale-up/out environments, that would be even better.

If it sounds like a good fit for you, and you just happen to want to have a good time to boot, apply here.

What they don’t tell you on the official pages is how much you will be expected to also get on with the rest of the team. It’s really important, because when we have those meetings we’ll be looking to the new guy to provide us with entertainment and interesting stories, at least until the next guy comes along.

Linux Today - Editor's Note: What Linux Can Do That Those Big Proprietary Innovators Can't

Tue, 23 Sep 2008 21:09:49 -0700

Alright you drooling idiots!

Sat, 15 Sep 2007 14:16:36 -0700

Jem Matzan thinks we technical writers treat you as stupid drooling idiots.

Do I? I can honestly say I don’t. I write for the competent computer user who has switched to Ubuntu. Anything that 90-95% of the people who formerly used Windows or Macs, and are competent enough to help others won’t be published here. Guaranteed. I can say that since I have a target audience of one - myself before I knew what I wrote here. I write so that, some day in the future, when I search for a solution to a problem, I get the pleasure that only a goojà vu (google + déjà vu :)) can provide - finding something you wrote as the result of a Google search is priceless.

There are some authors of blogs that write tutorials and guides that cover all and sundry. The installation of some software that should be pretty straightforward to install, and so on, ad nauseum. I understand that the pleasure of earning a check through Google’s adsense can be great, and I wish these authors good luck. There are also the book equivalent of these sites that really do treat Ubuntu users as dunces.

But Jem, what’s the problem with any of that? The world needed a “Linux for Dummies” - something that is inanely simple to install, setup, use and maintain - and that is exactly what Ubuntu is. Power users don’t need to fear it since it does not take away anything in doing that. So there you are - a Linux-based OS that is simple enough for the stupid and as (if not more) flexible and powerful than the best OSes out there. It’s not like there aren’t books out there that don’t address the intricacies of subjects that are technically complex. The wiki and the Official Ubuntu Book, not to mention all the documentation and books out there for Debian all address the power users’ documentation needs.

I was happy to read that article, especially the parallels drawn with how Mac users were once perceived the way the author perceives Ubuntu users now. I was happy because it is a sign that we are moving in the right direction - towards a “Linux for Human Beings” (regardless of IQ).

untangling the future... " Blog Archive " Why are email and calendaring so hard?

Mon, 08 Sep 2008 18:02:09 -0700

Life as a consultant: my crooked arm for a pillow

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 08:57:22 -0700

Sometimes there are funny communication styles between people who are geographically distributed and working together all the time. Recently one of our team members echoed back to me some answers I gave over a chat session: Q: Is it OK for me to buy quad-core servers? A: The old man walks slow but carries much, whilst [...]

Trolltech Labs Blogs " Workflow and switching to Git, part 2: The tools

Sun, 31 Aug 2008 11:56:38 -0700

MacMost: Apple Macintosh, iPod and iPhone News, Reviews and Commentary

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 22:05:16 -0700

Using BASE instead of ACID for scalability

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 16:50:21 -0700

My editor Andy Oram recently sent me an ACM article on BASE, a technique for improving scalability by being willing to give up some other properties of traditional transactional systems.

It’s a really good read. In many ways it is the same religion everyone who’s successfully scaled a system Really Really Big has advocated. But this is different: it’s a very clear article, with a great writing style that really cuts out the fat and teaches the principles without being specific to any environment or sounding egotistical.

He mentions a lot of current thinking in the field, including the CAP principle, which Robert Hodges of Continuent first turned me onto a couple months ago. It has been proven formally, though I have not read the proof myself.

One of the most important concepts he advances is giving up the illusion of control. As programmers and DBAs, I think we may tend to like control too much. Foreign keys are a perfect example. I think the point here is that these things make you feel safe, but they don’t really make you safe. Just as with so many things in life, recognizing our inability to really control the systems we build is key to working with their strengths — instead of trying to bind them with iron bands.

Another great point is idempotency. This is a great way to help avoid problems with MySQL replication, by the way. I’ll leave the “why” as an exercise for the reader, but let me just point out that the file MySQL uses to remember its current position in replication is not synced to disk, so it will almost certainly get out of whack if MySQL dies ungracefully. (Google has solved this problem.)

A highly recommended read — worth more than most case studies about how specific companies have scaled their specific systems.

ACID, ACM, Andy Oram, BASE, CAP, Continuent, foreign keys, mysql, replication, Robert Hodges, scaling, transactions

Coding Horror: XML: The Angle Bracket Tax

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 01:58:21 -0700

Coding Horror: XML: The Angle Bracket Tax

Tue, 22 Jul 2008 18:53:33 -0700

These things I believe. " Not The User's Fault

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 04:46:26 -0700

These Things I Believe

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 01:51:29 -0700

Update: Why Microsoft Silverlight Will Fail - 1 Year Later | Visualrinse | Design and Development by Chad Udell

Fri, 30 May 2008 07:53:25 -0700

Thoughts on why Silverlight will fail.

MySQL 6.2 is GA, but 5.1 is RC and 6.0 is alpha

Fri, 23 May 2008 21:13:58 -0700

MySQL’s version numbering is getting harder and harder to understand. In fact, it’s getting surreal.

Let me state up front that there’s probably a lot I don’t know here. But if I don’t know, how on earth can the general public figure it out?

Before we begin, let’s define terms: GA is completely done, ready for use. RC is a release candidate: don’t change anything, just fix bugs because we’re charging towards a release here. Beta is possibly unsafe code, use at your own risk. Alpha is known to have significant bugs, but if you’re curious please play with it.

Now for the releases/versions game. Let’s recap:

5.0 has version numbers that leapfrog each other in features and functionality. SHOW PROFILES — now you see it, now you don’t.
5.1 has been “… released to general availability [as] a near-final release candidate,” whatever that means.
5.1 has just had drastic changes in the RC stage. (Remove Federated in 5.1.24, remove RENAME DATABASE, remove Cluster.) And it’s going to have more changes before it’s released, too: Federated will be added back in 5.1.25.
5.2 doesn’t exist. Last year at the MySQL conference, someone made an abrupt decision to skip 5.2 and inflate the version numbers to 6.0, which has big changes in the query optimizer and other areas.
6.0 is alpha, but it includes Falcon, which is beta even though Falcon has extremely bad bugs that its developers claim are not bugs.
6.1 doesn’t exist as far as I know.
6.2 not only exists, but it is GA. Not only that, but it just… appeared as GA, as far as I know. No RC stage, no nothing — at least, nothing on the MySQL website that I see (certainly no manual version). It went from nonexistent to GA instantaneously as far as I know. It was created by extracting the Cluster code from 5.1.
6.2 is GA, but 5.1 is RC.
6.2 is GA, but 6.1 doesn’t exist as far as I know.
6.2 is GA, but 6.0 is alpha. (Hopefully you see the pattern here.)
6.2 is GA, but presumably does not include the changes made in 6.0, since it was derived from 5.1’s code.

What is going on here?

How is this an improved release model? What is improved about this?

How in the world can anyone figure out what versions of the software have what features? Who can make an educated decision about what product to use in this situation? Are people supposed to just rely on the sales people to help them figure out what to use? Boy, is that trusting the fox to guard the henhouse.

Why didn’t they just release 5.1 Cluster as GA separately, if that reflected the reality in the code? They certainly missed an opportunity to show some progress on 5.1. As it is, 5.1 got robbed of its chance to have at least some of its code go GA after more than 2.5 years in development. Now 5.1 looks like even more of an embarrassment — hey 5.1 team, how come you can’t get anything out the door when these 6.2 people are releasing GA products? Not to mention 6.0 — you guys look bad now too! (Just kidding.)

I tried to draw a timeline of MySQL’s release history, in some detail in the 5.0 history and in very basic detail in the 5.1 and 6.0 and 6.2 trees. You can take a look at that. It’s worth studying for 5 minutes or so, even though it’s kind of ugly. There are lots of oddities to notice about it. Enjoy:

The inmates are running the asylum. This gets more and more amusing as time goes on.

humor, Kaj Arno, mysql, MySQL Cluster

Why is MySQL more popular than PostgreSQL?

Sun, 18 May 2008 13:14:59 -0700

There is much discussion of why MySQL is more widely adopted than PostgreSQL. The discussion I’ve heard is mostly among the PostgreSQL community members, who believe their favorite database server is better in many ways, and are sometimes puzzled why people would choose an inferior product.

There are also many comparison charts that show one server is better than the other in some ways. These don’t really seem to help people with this question, either!

I can’t answer for everyone, but I can put it in the form of a question: if I were to replace MySQL with PostgreSQL, what things do I rely on that would become painful or even force a totally different strategy? The answer turns out to be fairly simple for me: replication and upgrades.

Replication

Love it or hate it, MySQL’s built-in replication is absolutely key to much of what I do with MySQL. I can truthfully say that it has lots of problems and limitations. But I can also say this about it:

It’s included by default with the server. PostgreSQL’s have historically not been included. (I think this is about to change, but I’m not sure.)
It is conceptually very simple. You could call that a weakness and a limitation, but you could also say that it enables a tremendous amount of flexibility. I tend to hold with the latter view. PostgreSQL’s replication technologies have a very different complexity profile. That scares me.
It is easy to set up (it takes just a couple of commands) and is easily scriptable. This is mostly due to its simplicity. I am happy because I know it inside and out.
It is generally very low overhead. PostgreSQL’s main replication system is built on top of triggers and is said not to scale very well. (Disclaimer: this is only what people have told me; I haven’t battle-tested it. But I’m afraid of it.)
There is only One Way To Do It. PostgreSQL has lots of different replication systems. That in itself is a pretty significant deterrent for me.

Regardless of the technical strengths and weaknesses of each database’s replication systems, it is my perception that MySQL’s ultimately lets me do incredibly flexible and useful things; in general it is Just Enough and has just the right combinations of qualities for lots of purposes. And each of its weaknesses is easily avoided or worked around, or just sidestepped — because MySQL replication’s simplicity and flexibility lets me easily choose a different approach.

In-Place Upgrades

MySQL’s files are extremely portable between versions, between operating systems, and even between platforms most of the time (unless you have a system that doesn’t use IEEE floating-point format, but who does these days?). That means an upgrade is dead simple.

This may not seem like a big deal, but I work with a lot of data. When you do that, you have to consider the alternatives: what if I couldn’t upgrade in-place?

That’s the current state of PostgreSQL. You have to dump and reload your data, and when you have a terabyte of data, that’s no fun. The workarounds usually involve replicating your data to another server, switching to the other server, upgrading, and switching back. But why should you have to have another server just to upgrade your data?

I see this as a significant — even critical — sticking point. It’s something I just don’t have to think about most of the time with MySQL

Are PostgreSQL’s other strengths enough?

Not for the systems I work on. These two problems seem extremely difficult for me to work around. I rely so heavily on MySQL’s replication and in-place upgrades that it feels too daunting to live without them.

What I’m trying to do here is give some psychological insight into what makes me feel happy with MySQL, and afraid of the thought of having to solve these problems with PostgreSQL. It may or may not apply broadly; my sense is that these are concerns for others as well, but I could be wrong.

If I were primarily a PostgreSQL user, I’m sure there would be similar feelings the other direction. This would explain why some people in the PostgreSQL camp seem to recoil away from MySQL. I’d be interested to hear why that is, too.

mysql, replication, upgrades

Like it or not, it is the MySQL Conference and Expo

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 17:18:21 -0700

The conference that many of us just went to is called the MySQL Conference and Expo, but a lot of people don’t call it that. They call it by the name it had in 2006 and earlier: MySQL User’s Conference. In fact, some people say (or blog) that they dislike the new name and they’re going to call it the old name, because [… insert reason here…].

I call it by the new name that some people dislike so much. Why? Because it is a conference and expo, not a user’s conference. There’s no reason to pretend otherwise. The conference is organized and owned by MySQL, not the users. It isn’t a community event. It isn’t about you and me first and foremost. It’s about a company trying to successfully build a business, and other companies paying to be sponsors and show their products in the expo hall. Times have changed.

I’m not saying any of this is bad. Being successful in business is a good thing, and having sponsors and partners is fine too. I’m just pointing out that trying to make it be a user’s conference, just by calling it one, isn’t going to work.

If community members want a community conference, we’ll have to make one. MySQL/Sun cannot do this for us, because then it wouldn’t be a community conference.

There’s a simple test of whether people want this: if it happens, then the community wanted it badly enough to do something about it.

The PostgreSQL East 2008 conference I went to a few weeks ago was a great example of how this works. And the attendance fee was $75, not thousands. A conference doesn’t have to be expensive.

Who wants a conference by, for, and of the community?

Community, conferences, mysql, mysqluc08

MySQL UC 08 Keynote Videos

Wed, 16 Apr 2008 12:18:20 -0700

I’m pleased to say that I was able to see these in the flesh, but if you aren’t lucky enough to be here (or just want to watch them again), Zack has posted up videos on YouTube of the opening keynote presentations:

Sadly these are only snippets, but if you like what you see, make sure to book your place for next year’s conference early!

MySQL Community Member of the Year

Tue, 15 Apr 2008 11:17:35 -0700

MySQL just gave me an award at this morning’s keynote, along with Sheeri Kritzer Cabral (for the second year in a row!) and Diego Medina, for my code contributions to the MySQL community, specifically Maatkit, which makes it easier to make MySQL reliable, fast, and robust. It’s an honor to be recognized. And while I could leave it at that, I’d like to say a word or two more.

The economy, community, and ecosystem that’s building around Free Software can often be very rewarding financially. This is a great motivation; being rewarded for your efforts is one of the chief virtues of a culture of entrepreneurship, along with the idea that to try and fail is just as noble as to succeed. But I find that isn’t enough. If I were only rewarded financially and with recognitions such as this morning’s, I would quickly become bankrupt at a deeper level. I would become focused on external measures of success, such as accolade and wealth.

That’s why it’s so important to be of service to others and to work for the good of all. This is one of the strongest counterbalances for me. It helps keep me humbler and more open.

In the end, Free Software is all about this. It reminds me always that we are all interconnected, and that to work for your highest good is to work for my own.

I believe we all need at least these three things deeply:

To chart your own course in life.
To be of service to others.
To make the most of what you have.

Does proprietary software offer you the chance to do this? No, it does not. It makes you beholden and dependent, not free. To pursue these three goals to their maximum extent you need freedom. “Make the most of what you have” doesn’t imply that you have to just accept what’s given to you; you can also take some time to see what your choices are, and choose something that gives you more freedom if possible. That’s what I did years ago when I moved away from using proprietary software.

I hope you’ll give this a try yourself: contribute what you build internally in your company, and put in the extra effort to make it really high quality and useful for everyone. This is how Maatkit started. Don’t wait for others to make it happen: chart your own course.

This morning’s award is most important to me because it reinforces that I’m serving others well.

Diego Medina, Sheeri Kritzer Cabral

Stock images are too popular

Thu, 27 Mar 2008 20:48:44 -0700

I have an ingrained (possibly even genetic) aversion to stock images. Actually, not all stock: just the vacuous kind. You know what I mean: like the politically-correct, gender-balanced, racially-balanced, age-diverse ones where people are all smiling and pointing at a computer screen you can’t see. Ugh!

(Photo credit: istockphoto.com)

There are many reasons not to use images like this. I guess it’s okay in some situations — for example when you just want a smiling, attractive woman with a customer-service headset to reinforce that you’ve come to the right place for support. However, even these really don’t have to be stock images. One of my former employers used their own employees for such photos, almost exclusively, and it made the site much more real. And there are plenty of examples of companies that use photos of their own employees and get “realness” as a result. If I’m not mistaken, Title Nine does so except for certain things, such as underwear models (for obvious reasons).

However, one great reason to eschew stock: other people will re-use the same image. A famous example from a few years ago: the cover image of Head First Design Patterns was a stock photo that also appeared in a commercial for a feminine hygiene product.

This incident was actually pretty widely linked on the Internet at that time. So no one will ever make that mistake again!

Or will they? Witness: the cover of the MySQL 5.1 Cluster DBA Certification Guide, the xTuple Home Page, and the cover of the MegaRAID Management Suite documentation.

Interestingly, I ran across all three over-usages of this image in one day, completely by accident. Are there other places this image is used? I’d bet there are.

Who cares? Well, the images that go on the cover of your book, your brochure, or your website become part of your image. If someone else then uses the same image, they can (accidentally or otherwise) exert some control over what people think of your product or company.

If this matters — and it almost certainly does — you should just get some of your own employees, hire a good photographer, and go into your own server room (or beg a friend to let you into theirs) for a photo.

On the subject of image, I’ve just gone to a photographer for some new portraits of myself, and I’m also hiring someone to design a logo for Maatkit (for a new website, and for t-shirts to give away at the upcoming conference). I’ll post more about that later.

Head First Design Patterns, images, LSI Megaraid, mysql, MySQL Certification, MySQL Cluster, OReilly, stock, stock photos, Title Nine, Vagisil, xTuple

Comparing 32-bit/64-bit MySQL on OpenSolaris

Mon, 25 Feb 2008 02:43:42 -0800

I’ve been working with the folks working on OpenSolaris for a few months now providing advice and input on getting MySQL and the connectors (C/ODBC and C/J) installed as a standard component. Having got the basics in, the team are now looking at adding both 32-bit and 64-bit packages.

The question raised at the end of last week was whether OpenSolaris should enable 64-bit builds by default in 64-bit installations, and whether there was a noticeable performance difference that would make this worthwhile.

I did some initial tests on Friday which showed that there was a small increase (10-15%) of the packaged 64-bit installations over 32-bit under x86 using snv_81. Tests were executed using the included sql-bench tool, and this was a single execution run of each package for 5.0.56. Transactions are missing because I hadn’t enabled transactions in the tests.

Test (x86, binary packages) 32-bit 64-bit +/-

ATIS	20	17	17.65%
alter-table	18	15	20.00%
big-tables	14	11	27.27%
connect	134	121	10.74%
create	348	348	0.00%
insert	1038	885	17.29%
select	399	257	55.25%
transactions
wisconsin	10	8	25.00%

There are some significant differences there (like the 55% increase on SELECT speeds, for example), but a single execution is never a good test. Also, it’s unclear whether the differences are between the compilations, the platform or just pure coincidence. This requires further investigation.

As a coincidence, Krish Shankar posted these notes on using SunStudio 11 and SunStudio 12 and the right compiler flags to get the best optimization.

I decided to do 10-pass iterations of sql-bench and compare both 32-bit and 64-bit standard builds, the 32-bit standard builds against Krish’s optimizations, and finally 32-bit and 64-bit optimized builds.

Some notes on all the tests:

All builds are 5.0.56

All tests are run on SunOS 5.11, snv_81

Tests are executed on the same OS and machine running in 64-bit. The SPARC tests are on an UltraSPARC IIIi@1.28GHz Workstation with 1GB RAM; x86 are on a Dell T105, Opteron 1212 with 4GB RAM. Of course we’re not comparing machine speed, just 32-bit binaries over 64-bit.

All results are in seconds; lower values mean faster performance.

In all tests I’m using the built-in defaults (i.e. no my.cnf anywhere) so as to simulate a standardized installation.

Let’s first look at x86 and the 32-bit standard and 32-bit optimized builds:

Test (x86, 32-bit) 32-bit (standard) 32-bit (optimized) +/-

ATIS	15.4	21	-26.67%
alter-table	15	16.3	-7.98%
big-tables	13.7	12.5	9.60%
connect	77.6	133	-41.65%
create	343.7	350.6	-1.97%
insert	760.3	1043.8	-27.16%
select	394.8	384.2	2.76%
transactions	10.8	18.6	-41.94%
wisconsin	6.6	10.1	-34.65%

The standard build uses gcc instead of SunStudio, but I don’t get the same performance increases that Krish saw - in fact, I see reductions in performance, not improvements at all. I’m going to rebuild and retest, because I’m convinced there’s a problem here with the builds that I’m not otherwise seeing. I certainly don’t expect to get results that show a 27% reduction in insert speed. That said, a 10% big-table increase is interesting. I’ll redo these builds and find out if the slow down is as marked as it here.

Here’s the comparison for standard builds between 32-bit and 64-bit standard builds on x86:

Test (x86, standard) 32-bit

64-bit +/-
ATIS	15.4	13.5	14.07%
alter-table	15	10.6	41.51%
big-tables	13.7	10.6	29.25%
connect	77.6	76.4	1.57%
create	343.7	346	-0.66%
insert	760.3	681.6	11.55%
select	394.8	254.8	54.95%
transactions	10.8	10.7	0.00%
wisconsin	6.6	5.8	13.79%

There are some incredible differences here - more than 50% increase in SELECT, and 30% for the big-tables test show that there is some advantage to having the 64-bit builds on x86 enabled.

Unfortunately I’ve had problems with the 64-bit optimized builds on my machine, so I haven’t completed optimized test comparisons.

On SPARC, Sun Studio is used as the default compiler, and the standard 32-bit and 64-bit show little difference:

Test (SPARC, standard) 32-bit 64-bit +/-

ATIS	28.6	27.5	4.00%
alter-table	27	26.7	1.12%
big-tables	26.9	29.4	-8.50%
connect	166.3	173.6	-4.21%
create	155	143.1	8.32%
insert	1577.3	1572.3	0.32%
select	807.4	761.6	6.01%
transactions	19.5	18.75	4.00%
wisconsin	11.1	11.4	-2.63%

Overall, a pretty insignificant difference here.

Now let’s compare the standard and optimized builds using Krish’s flags on SPARC:

Test (SPARC) 32-bit (standard) 32-bit (optimized) +/-

ATIS	28.6	27.75	3.06%
alter-table	27	26.25	2.86%
big-tables	26.9	25	7.60%
connect	166.3	162.5	2.34%
create	155	145.25	6.71%
insert	1577.3	1551.5	1.66%
select	807.4	769.625	4.91%
transactions	19.5	16.875	15.561%
wisconsin	11.1	10.875	2.07%

The tests here show little significant difference between the standard and the optimized builds, although 6-7% would probably be enough to prefer an optimized build if you wanted to build your own.

Now let’s compare the optimized, Sun Studio 12 builds running in 32-bit and 64-bit:

Test (SPARC, optimized) 32-bit 64-bit +/-

ATIS	27.75	27.3	1.65%
alter-table	26.25	26.6	-1.32%
big-tables	25	25	0.00%
connect	162.5	162	0.31%
create	145.25	154.3	-5.87%
insert	1551.5	1535.1	1.07%
select	769.625	771.2	-0.20%
transactions	16.875	19.1	-11.65%
wisconsin	10.875	10.7	1.64%

The differences are virtually non-existent, and taking the reductions and increases in performance overall, there’s probably little difference.

The overall impression is that on x86 the improvement of 64-bit over 32-bit is significant enough that it’s probably a good idea to make 64-bit the default. On SPARC, the difference in the optimized builds is so slight that for compatibility reasons alone, 32-bit would probably make a better default.

I’ll probably be re-running these tests over the next week or so (particularly the x86 so I can get a true comparison of the 64-bit optimized improvements), and I’ll try the T1000 which I upgraded to snv_81 over the weekend, but I think indications are good enough to make a reasonable recommendation of 64-bit over 32-bit.

Henceforth, I dub thee GLAMP

Thu, 21 Feb 2008 05:43:55 -0800

I've decided to start replacing L with GL in acronyms where L supposedly stands for Linux.

I'm not a big user of acronyms, because I think they are exclusionist and they obscure, rather than revealing. (This wouldn't matter if I wrote for people who already knew what I meant and agreed with me, but that's a waste of time). However, LAMP is one that I've probably used a few times, without thinking that it is supposed to stand for Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP/Perl/Python. In fact, it doesn't refer to Linux, it refers to GNU/Linux. Therefore, it should be GLAMP.

Why does this matter? I try not to say Linux, unless I'm referring to a kernel, because a kernel is not an operating system. I try to be pretty careful about saying GNU/Linux when I'm talking about an operating system. An exception is a recruiting event yesterday at the University of Virginia, where I compromised my principles because of the noise. Trying to explain myself at that decibel level was just beyond my willingness, so I said we use Linux. If the potential recruits hire on with us, they'll get to hear me say GNU/Linux. And if they don't, maybe they'll attend Richard Stallman's upcoming talk at the engineering school there on March 27th or 28th (sorry, it's not listed online, so I can't link to it).

And you'll see GNU/Linux used conscientiously if you read the book I'm helping to write, too.

GNU matters. A lot. You may not think so, but if it ceased to exist, you'd find out. That applies equally even if you don't think you are a Free Software user. You have no idea how much you rely on Free Software in your daily life. And the GNU project has been and continues to be a keystone in that arch of freedom.

Thanks to MySQL's Brian Aker for snapping me out of my LAMP carelessness.

Heard the Latest About Podcasting? - eMarketer

Mon, 04 Feb 2008 18:39:01 -0800

[from eggywat] Buy Gold Bullion Today ▷ Buy Gold Online At Live Spot Gold Prices - BullionVault.com

Fri, 01 Feb 2008 09:11:16 -0800

Impressions Of Changes Made In The World Of Podcasting

Sun, 20 Jan 2008 12:48:51 -0800

InfoQ: Debate: JSON vs. XML as a data interchange format

Tue, 15 Jan 2008 08:26:19 -0800

negatives: no namespace, no validator, not extensible

InfoQ: Top 10 Adobe Flex Misconceptions

Mon, 10 Dec 2007 06:49:36 -0800

Top 10 Flex misconceptions.

Ubuntu Just Sucks Less

Tue, 06 Nov 2007 11:08:03 -0800

With the cursory hat tip to Marketing Pilgrim who does a sentiment analysis for firefox Vs. Internet Explorer, lets get started on Ubuntu and Windows. Sorry folks, I just could resist plugging in the words and let them duke it out.

Most interestingly, according to opinmind, 87% of all bloggers who have blogged about Ubuntu like it, as opposed to 67% for Windows. Opinmind seems to be a real neat tool - wonder how many people use it, and in what innovative ways.

Ok, now for the next step, technorati has 1116 results for “Windows Sucks” and only 62 for “Ubuntu Sucks”.

Almost no one thinks Ubuntu sucks, as opposed to a higher of people who think the contrary about Windows, (in the year 2006) according to Google Trends.

Enough with the negative stuff already. One might say that Windows has been around longer, is a market leader, and therefore has more critics than Ubuntu has. Sorry, I couldn’t overlook this myself - so I had to ask Google: What rocks more? Windows or Ubuntu?

3,340 votes for “Windows Rocks” as opposed to(hold your breath) … 21,200 votes for “Ubuntu Rocks”. The 1.5 million odd results for switch to Ubuntu provide a stong hope that this number will keep rising.

Amazing, eh? Now maybe you can pardon me for stealing someone’s idea and creating an article much like the original.

The Structured Web - A Primer

Mon, 05 Nov 2007 12:47:22 -0800

excellent web3.0 essay from readwriteweb

commentary on SWiK

F.A.T. -- Epic Failout!

Wanted: GUI developer for MySQL Enterprise Monitor

Linux Today - Editor's Note: What Linux Can Do That Those Big Proprietary Innovators Can't

Alright you drooling idiots!

untangling the future... " Blog Archive " Why are email and calendaring so hard?

Life as a consultant: my crooked arm for a pillow

Trolltech Labs Blogs " Workflow and switching to Git, part 2: The tools

MacMost: Apple Macintosh, iPod and iPhone News, Reviews and Commentary

Using BASE instead of ACID for scalability

Coding Horror: XML: The Angle Bracket Tax

Coding Horror: XML: The Angle Bracket Tax

These things I believe. " Not The User's Fault

These Things I Believe

Update: Why Microsoft Silverlight Will Fail - 1 Year Later | Visualrinse | Design and Development by Chad Udell

MySQL 6.2 is GA, but 5.1 is RC and 6.0 is alpha

Why is MySQL more popular than PostgreSQL?

Replication

In-Place Upgrades

Are PostgreSQL’s other strengths enough?

Like it or not, it is the MySQL Conference and Expo

More MySQL UC 08 Videos

MySQL UC 08 Keynote Videos

MySQL Community Member of the Year

Stock images are too popular

Comparing 32-bit/64-bit MySQL on OpenSolaris

Henceforth, I dub thee GLAMP

Heard the Latest About Podcasting? - eMarketer

[from eggywat] Buy Gold Bullion Today ▷ Buy Gold Online At Live Spot Gold Prices - BullionVault.com

Impressions Of Changes Made In The World Of Podcasting

InfoQ: Debate: JSON vs. XML as a data interchange format

InfoQ: Top 10 Adobe Flex Misconceptions

Ubuntu Just Sucks Less

The Structured Web - A Primer