Bach's blog

On crowding the human brain

2011-05-11T16:15:00.000+05:30

As seen in a fortune cookie -

"You see, I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty
attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool
takes in all the lumber of every sort he comes across, so that the knowledge
which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with
a lot of other things, so that he has difficulty in laying his hands upon it.
Now the skilful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his
brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing
his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect
order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and
can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every
addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of
the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out
the useful ones".
-- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, "A Study in Scarlet"

Sankey road : "developed" into a desert stretch

2010-04-18T18:14:00.009+05:30

Even as the city is reeling under sweltering heat, the powers that be come up with yet another proposal to reduce the city's greenery. This is in addition to the war memorial taking several trees for victim. The claim is that cauvery cinema junction to yeshwanthpur will be made a "signal free" corridor. You would have to be exceptionally dimwitted to fail to notice that the only signals along the corridor are the ones at bhashyam circle and cnr rao circle. And any commuter who uses that stretch regularly will tell you that traffic piles up around bhashyam circle alone but the rest of the corridor is a breeze. Despite the spurt in traffic over the last 5 years, you never hear of a “jam” along that corridor due to the “narrowness” of the road either near malleswaram 18th cross or near palace orchards. While work in already on at cnr rao junction, bhashyam circle is expected to get a "magic box". With these signals removed, pray help me understand what bottleneck remains? Where is the need to widen any road along that stretch, least of all lop trees, when trees in the vicinity of IISc have already been destroyed in the name of development? As per the Deccan Herald article, the plea of residents of Malleswaram has been met with a deaf ear and a response in the form of “we like greenery but we're in favor of development”. In this particular case, the greenery does not come at the cost of development. In fact, the signal at bhashyam cirle could be removed with little (if any) loss of tree cover. That would suffice to ease the traffic along that corridor.

The citizens of Bangalore brought the local government to power in the municipal elections hoping for sensible administration - not to be deprived of greenery and clean air to breathe. It makes you wonder if the decision makers are so obsessed with “development” that they don't mind eroding Bangalore's real heritage - the trees - and turning it into a maze of concrete & asphalt, while turning a blind eye to the citizens' fervent appeals. On the other hand, taking a balanced view of development and restoring the city's lost greenery could win them accolades from all quarters instead of earning the people's scorn this way. We have reached a stage where the city records all time temperature high's in summer with people being forced to purchase air conditioners (and maybe even water in the near future). Do we need to pay a even bigger price for development that we don't need? Are the voices of the people being heard?

Some great quotes that I found today

2010-03-13T16:08:00.002+05:30

"Joy, temperance, and repose, slam the door on the doctor's nose. "

"Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing, only a signal shown, and a distant voice in the darkness; So on the ocean of life, we pass and speak one another, only a look and a voice, then darkness again and a silence. "

"Sit in reverie and watch the changing color of the waves that break upon the idle seashore of the mind. "

By Henry Longfellow

My take on BGGA closures

2007-12-16T16:49:00.000+05:30

For the record - http://infinitescale.blogspot.com/2007/12/bgga-closures-end-of-many-java-careers.html

A lonely walker's tale

2007-10-21T22:32:00.000+05:30

[ From the literature network ]

Good Hours

"I HAD for my winter evening walk--
No one at all with whom to talk,
But I had the cottages in a row
Up to their shining eyes in snow.
And I thought I had the folk within:
I had the sound of a violin;
I had a glimpse through curtain laces
Of youthful forms and youthful faces.
I had such company outward bound.
I went till there were no cottages found.
I turned and repented, but coming back
I saw no window but that was black.
Over the snow my creaking feet
Disturbed the slumbering village street
Like profanation, by your leave,
At ten o'clock of a winter eve."

-Robert Frost

Good quote

2007-10-04T23:14:00.000+05:30

"Never be afraid to try something new. Remember that a lone amateur built the Ark. A large group of professionals built the Titanic."
- Dave Barry

Couldn't agree more. If you're afraid to experiment, prefer to be a conformist, and have no strong opinions of your own, chances are that you'll end up being an obscure, insignificant also-ran.

Dedicated blog for tech stuff

2007-09-30T15:44:00.000+05:30

Despite the fact that my posts have become infrequent after I moved out of Sun a few months ago, I've decided to have a new blog for technical content. Hopefully, this will encourage me to post more on the dedicated blog. (Wishful thinking, eh?)

Quote by Robert Frost

2007-04-22T19:38:00.000+05:30

Excellent quote :
The reason why worry kills more people than work is that more people worry than work.

Robert Frost

Closures and adding complexity to Java

2006-11-23T14:20:00.000+05:30

Just for the record, here's the comment I posted on java.net regarding the new closures proposal by Neal Gafter et al:

"Speaking of Closures, its hard not to agree with Josh Bloch on the new Closures proposal. He expressed serious concerns in his interview about further changing an already complex type system just to accommodate Closures. The current proposal seems more like engineering for the sake of it without thinking about the learning curve for a newbie. Open sourcing java will be mostly futile if we go the C++ way by introducing unnecessarily complex changes to the language based on the whims of theorists (even if they happen to be the pioneers in language theory). We need a more pragmatic solution that keeps in mind (the barriers to entry for) the average "Joe Java" as Josh says. The same way in which generics weren't over engineered to ape C++, we need a more practical approach to implementing Closures instead of merely looking to satiate the engineering appetite of a few individuals. "

The power of Java lies in its simplicity. We'd be killing the language by dragging it along the C++ path.

Renaming Bangalore to a toilet

2006-11-19T22:18:00.001+05:30

I'm a Kannadiga, a native of Bangalore, born and brought up here. And the farthest forefather in my family tree I've known also lived here. So, theoretically speaking, I'm as Bangalorean as one can get. Good, bad or ugly, polluted, crowded by an immigrant population, bursting at it seams, plagued by infrastructural issues and all that, it remains dear to me - my home. The love of my life, really. I've also loved it for its colonial history and the resulting tinge of cosmopolitan quality that its always had. At the same time, its a city that's home to some stalwarts in Kannada literature, theatre, and cinema. And irrespective of what the immigrant population has called the city over the decades (yes, hard to believe, but Bangalore's weather has always attracted a sizable number of outsiders right through the 20th century), we have always called it Bengaluru. And even if you go by the Brits' version of it, I can't imagine a name more charming than Bangalore. And now, as if the rape that the city is being subjected to at the hands of the JDS government, greedy land developers (bringing down historical buildings every day to construct apartments to cater to the engineered real estate boom) and other parasites was not enough, that politician U.R. Anantha Murthy desperately seeking attention (having lost out in an attempt to win a seat in the parliament) proposes a change of name Benga-loo-ru ostensibly to make outsiders pronounce the city's name the way the locals do, and "restore pride in Kannada". Think of this for a second: try as you might, can you pronouce "Allapuzha" like a mallu, or the expansion of DMK like a true tam? Do you care? Do they care that you cannot? No. Because you cannot. You need not. You're not a local. On similar lines, I have enough pride as a Kannadiga & a Bangalorean to not be bothered about how outsiders pronounce the name of my city as long as they respect the city and its culture (which, by the way, has nothing to do with the spelling of the city). A language or a culture is too great in itself to require help from ordinary mortals in "deifying" it. It would've been a continued tribute to Bangalore's culture if it had two equally charming pronunciations used by different sets of people. But no - the attention seeking avaricious "guardians" of Karnataka have now come up with a spelling that has Bengal and loo in it. (I would've even settled for Bengaluru despite that name having bengal in it, but having a toilet in the name is a little too hard to digest. Gives me a constipation ).

From being a world renowned technology center (that never lost touch with its culture, mind you), we are now the laughing stock of the world with toilet in the name of our city. Not to mention the crores of rupees spent on the exercise. The possibilities of using the same cash for developmental efforts in a city groaning under its own weight are, to say the least, countless. Instead, the taxpayers money will now be swindled in the name of restoring Bangalore's pride. And this proposal comes from the same %$^* writer who also opposed English as an additional language in lower primary schools. The one person who's being doing Kannada and Karnataka great service, Mr.N.R. Narayana Murty, has exactly the opposite view on English in schools. But his exhortations fell on deaf ears. The greatest asset of the tech population (including locals) of Bangalore is the ability to converse in English effortlessly. And we will now be isolating ourselves from the rest of the world by imposing such draconian rules. We're marching towards being an incompetent, narrow-minded and, oh yes, "proud" culture.
I'm now well and truly embarrassed of my "culture".

Blackbox: "shipping" your datacenter

2006-10-24T12:17:00.000+05:30

Gosh!! Is this cool or what...

R.I.P, vold

2006-10-24T10:36:00.000+05:30

The troublesome and buggy volume management daemon in Solaris is history and has been replaced in the latest nevada build by (the weirdly named) Tamarack, the removable media enhancement to solaris. More details here .

Google's awesome quarterly results

2006-10-20T13:10:00.000+05:30

70% increase in profits!! Take that, Yahoo!! And for wise guys spreading FUD about Google, this one's for you. :-))

One at Sun

2006-10-14T12:14:00.000+05:30

Four days ago, I completed a year at Sun Microsystems. Its quite been an eventful year that has witnessed change in the leadership at the top (a new CEO/COO), change in the site leadership where I work, a new manager for our team, a new release of the product I work on and a reduction in work force, among other things. I was told before joining Sun that there'd never be a dull moment here - and indeed its been an insanely "adventurous" year that has taught me (both on the technical and professional front) much more than I learned the year before (which is what keeps you at Sun). A mixed bag of year, and hopefully, the first of many to come.

Swing painters, filty rich clients and "Ajaxified" Swing

2006-09-25T11:51:00.000+05:30

A collection of (slightly old) writeups and presentations from the Aerith/SwingX folks:

Joshua Marinacci introduces painters
Romain Guy's clients get filthy rich
Richard Bair speaks of the marriage between XMLHTTPRequest and Swing

Interesting quote on performance improvements

2006-09-22T15:08:00.001+05:30

Interesting quote from Bryan Cantrill on performance improvements:

"...More than anything, what we (or at least I) learned
from DTrace is that if you want to get big wins, you don't make it
incrementally faster to do existing work -- you eliminate work entirely by
addressing its source higher in the stack of abstraction."

Finding open locks in Postgres

2006-09-14T13:46:00.000+05:30

Found a useful query to find open locks in postgres:

select pg_class.relname,pg_locks.* from pg_class,pg_locks where pg_class.relfilenode=pg_locks.relation;

India an economic super power? Fat chance.

2006-09-03T21:08:00.000+05:30

This blog links to an interesting article on the economies of India and China. I especially liked the comment posted at this blog by Danese Cooper (Formerly open source community manager at Sun, now will Intel. She also gave a talk at FOSS.in this year).
She says, "Still, I'd rather live in a future where India keeps China's rapacious growth in check."

Its rather ironical that the world expects so much from India when we're going from bad to worse - caste based reservations in universities, poorly taught undergrads being churned out by the ten thousands every year by the universities, corruption, red tape, lack of access to good quality higher education, fast vanishing flora, fauna and natural resources, attempted withdrawal of the right to information act etc. Such pseudo democracy is only slightly better than communism country. Only slightly.
Just this evening, it took me 2.5 hours to negotiate 12 KMs because a huge rally was organized by the ruling Congress party in Bangalore. Villagers were brought in 9000 buses to "participate" in the show of "strength" by that political party. Apart from the physical stress I went through, my car also suffered a few scratches thanks to the bumper to bumper traffic. TV channels reported a 40 KM long traffic jam on the highway connecting Bangalore and Tumkur(60 KM away) due to this event. Even the cops were mute spectators (as usual) to this event.
Some democracy we have. Who the hell would want to live in such a country?
And we hope to give China a run for its money, huh?

Technorati tags: India, China

USB devices in Solaris 10

2006-09-01T19:50:00.000+05:30

Good post on managing USB devices in S10 . Not all of it may work with the FCS release though. vold is severely broken in that release. I'd recommend disabling it ("svcadm disable volfs") and manually mounting your USB stick instead. With update 2 however, vold and hot plugging of USB devices work like a charm.

Technorati tags: Sun, Solaris, USB

The state of Indian cinema

2006-08-21T19:04:00.000+05:30

You shouldn't expect to see a movie review (of all things) on my blog. But there are exceptions :-) Anyways, I happened to watch a movie named "Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna" (Never say Goodbye) made by a production house known for high-emotion, low intellect melodramatic movies. To me, this genre of movies represents the worst of Indian Cinema (and shows the Indian audience in poor light). So, I was expecting nothing better when I was forced (yes, forced) into the movie hall by my friends. But I was pleasantly surprised by what was dished out. So much so that I wrote a review of it on IMDB (that has, by the way, rated it at 4.5/10 - a big deal considering the previous track record of the director in dealing with complex topics). The music, by the way, blows the doors on any recent music churned out by the Hindi film industry. Good - Indian cinema (and hopefully the audience) is growing up by the day.

A perfect evening in T.G. Halli

2006-08-12T20:58:00.000+05:30

Hows that? I'll let the picture describe the evening. No words will do. :-)
(This place is 30 KM west of Bangalore, by the way)

Google's hiring process: Boon/Bane?

2006-07-17T16:30:00.000+05:30

Interesting digg on Google's messed up hiring process. Can't help but sympathize with some of those guys, especially after hearing the tale of a friend (from school): This guy goes through the the usual process (for a developer's position) - lotsa prepping, anxiety, sweating, mental stress, and tons & tons of tricky questions that made up the grilling technical interviews. He does reasonably well and is told ,"You're through with the tech rounds. Your profile's being reviewed". As is the case with most people, he begins to dream. Then... days & weeks pass... blank. No response. Then one day, he's told (something to the effect of), "Sorry, but your college background isn't good enough. You're not from an "elite" college. Besides, you could've scored better in your theoritical papers". The question to ask is, what were the technical interviews for?
What was the resume submitted for? Couldn't those guys look at the college name/marks right then and figure out that his "pedigree" was "good enough" for them? Why waste his time, effort and mental energy on this futile exercise and shut the door in my face?
Moral: Don't dream of goog unless you're from an elite college and you've maxed all your exams in college. You'd be wasting your time.

digg story

Thus sang the cuckoo...

2006-07-16T11:25:00.000+05:30

...outside my window, that is. :-)

More Argentine match replays: Maxi Rodriguez's goal

2006-07-10T18:57:00.000+05:30

The brilliant goal by Maxi Rodriguez against Mexico. Again, as this video proves, Argentina played some of the best soccer on display in this world cup & atleast deserved a place in the finals, if nothing else. But pekerman had to make that tactical blunder...

The goal of the world cup

2006-07-10T14:24:00.000+05:30

The 24-pass goal by Argentina with a touch of magic from Hernan Crespo.

Green lost in the gray

2006-07-08T13:12:00.000+05:30

A must read - Green lost in the gray. Explains why eco conservation in the cities is as important as that in the countryside.

Microsoft to support ODF!

2006-07-06T15:41:00.000+05:30

Believe it! Microsoft "Expands" Document Interoperability says their press release. Obviously, market pressure can work miracles.

World cup soccer rewind: Argentina 1986

2006-07-06T13:29:00.000+05:30


The other goal that defined Maradona. This one seemed to use the feet of god himself.

Soccer World Cup '06 is over

2006-07-01T11:58:00.000+05:30

...to me atleast. When Germany undeservingly won over Argentina by way of penalty shootouts. A team relying heavily on purchased, imported players (Klose,Podoloski...) "defeated" a truly talented side through what has come to be a lottery (that's what penalty shootouts are). I hope justice will be done and those *$!#^ Germans will be beaten hollow in the years to come, while Argentina claim the cup the next time atleast. In this gloom, one can seek recourse to this legend: “The Pope is German. God is Argentine — Diego X.” Argentina's time shall come.

Messaging is just degenerate RPC?

2006-06-27T12:20:00.000+05:30

I hate to use expletives to describe this guy's writeup since he's done a remarkable job with the cajo project. But I couldn't help laugh at this claim of his:
"Messaging is degenerate RPC: If you want messaging, by all means, go for it! It is a very useful technique. However, it must be seen for what it is; degenerate synchronous RPC: i.e. a tiny subset of the functionality that is possible with distributed objects."

It's good to be passionate about the remote invocation approach that your project uses, but its plain daftness to make silly claims like "this is the right way of implementing a distributed system". For the same reason, I won't pass a judgement. I'll let you consider a few points and arrive at a conclusion for yourself:

1)Could google's apps have scaled with synchronous RPCs?
2)What's better for a high perf distributed system - blocking on a synchronous RPC call or continuing processing until the response to a remote message interrupts you on another thread?
3)In a supply-chain kinda web app, once you receive order confirmations, do you make RPC calls to place orders for shipping each component, or simply queue up the request in a message queue (which a "down-stream" app could just read off and dispatch orders)?
4)Ever heard of "decoupling" applications?
5)What's easier - a 1:n messagetopic (in JMS) or a similar rpc invocation on 'n' remote objects?

I could give you a zillion more examples like this where async messaging scales much better. And "what if the underlying implementation uses rpc's" or "email is just rpc" are very lame refrains: you're generalizing an implementation approach adopted by a messaging system used by humans and extending it to apply to those used by fast applications relying on asynchronous messaging. How're you so sure that the 2 must be implemente similarly?

Digg inside firefox

2006-06-23T18:31:00.000+05:30

A firefox extension to digg a link you find interesting - Digg This!

Get Duked!!

2006-06-11T12:01:00.000+05:30

The Java Duke logos are now available for use in your blog. Show your love for java!!

Go Duke!!!

The sinking "Itanic"

2006-04-30T22:52:00.000+05:30

The news just keeps getting better & better all the time...

Itanium’s support ebbing away

Technorati tags:
Itanium
HP
Sun

Scripting langs for Java: A dozen of them (and some more) !

2006-04-18T11:59:00.000+05:30

Check out the scripting project home page !!

Getting the java plugin to work on firefox/Solaris

2006-04-17T17:00:00.000+05:30

Real useful

Java for the Browser

2006-04-17T14:01:00.000+05:30

Yahoo's Ethan Nicholas writes about why Java is still the best browser based technology available, and how its distribution can be improved. A must read.

Classifieds with Google Base

2006-04-07T17:04:00.000+05:30

Firstly, my apologies (to no one in particular) for the looong hiatus . Sheer laziness. Anyways, on to the main topic - did you know such a thing existed- Google Base ? It's a place to post/search for classifieds of all kinds. Yes - all kinds. Been discovering quite a few low profile changes with the goog goodies. The bookmarks for example - they now let you bookmark like delicious does, while giving you the choice of keeping bookmarks private or sharing them. Real cool.

Cool Quote

2006-02-24T18:47:00.000+05:30

Every great work, every great accomplishment, has been brought into manifestation through holding to the vision, and often just before the big achievement, comes apparent failure and discouragement.

Sun's technologies: New perceptions/trends

2006-02-06T18:38:00.000+05:30

Some good writeups on the changing perceptions & positioning of Sun's technologies.

http://www.redmonk.com/jgovernor/archives/001247.html

http://www.redmonk.com/sogrady/archives/001251.html

Mining at Kudremukh:Why the SC should stand firm

2006-01-08T23:17:00.000+05:30

It was quite disheartening to see the Karnataka Bar Association appeal to the SC to reconsider its decision on the KIOCL in Kudremukh. The landmark judgment of the SC that asked the KIOCL to close operations - based on the evidence of immense environmental damage caused to Kudremukh’s pristine rainforests by KIOCL’s operations - promises to be an example in eco conservation. Yes, I can only imagine the plight of the 20,000 individuals who have been displaced as a result. But remember, it’s the KIOCL’s responsibility to find them a suitable alternative. After all, it was the most profitable government owned mining undertaking in the country. It’s time for the cash-rich government to now find alternative employment for its employees. I hope the CM Mr.Dharam Singh succeeds in his endeavor. But, at no cost should the mines be allowed to reopen and cause any further damage to the environment. Just to refresh one’s memory:
1) The Kudremukh range is home to three rivers – Bhadra being one of them.

2) The reclusive Lion tailed macaque, whose numbers are fast dwindling, is found primarily in the Bhagavathi range of Kudremukh.
3) The KIOCL, since its inception has damaged hectares of virgin rainforests of this range and believes that creating rose gardens or eucalyptus groves amounts to “reforestation”.
4) Tons of iron ore sludge was leaked into the forests due to the company’s oversight.
5) All rivers starting at Kudremukh are now witnessing increased levels of contamination in various forms. – Check this PDF.

Speaking of point 2 above, one might ask, “Why does preserving any animal species assume such importance? We just need enough green cover, right?” – Wrong.

There is such a thing as ecological balance, wherein the flora and fauna are equally important to each other’s (symbiotic) existence. Take out one from this feedback loop and the other vanishes. And if the forests vanish, so do the rains (remember, the ocean currents are not the only ones that bring us rainfall) and the rivers that are fed by them. With that ends our source of water, energy and the climate control that the Western Ghats are - which brings me to the point of our flawed understanding of “Human rights”: as much as the 20,000 in Kudremukh have a right to 2 square meals a day, future generations have a right to clean air, water and food – which only a balanced ecosystem can guarantee us for centuries to come (I’m just quoting from articles (this and this) by Bittu Sahgal – and he should know?). So, it’s imperative that we do our bit (for our own good) to preserve what is a basic necessity for a flourishing civilization (and economy). When you see a greedy businessman plotting to wipe out our future in the name of “development”, stand up in whatever way you can against such a force. Express your opinion through the media that matter, lend your voice to the few frail voices that now dare to oppose the “development” cartel and lend your spare time for a worthy cause. Don’t expect someone to lead you by the finger and answer questions for you like “Where do I start?”

If we have the will to stand up & be counted, intend to lend a meaning to our self-centered lives, and amount to something, we will find the means to achieve a worthy goal. Merely saying, "I love nature" or "I'm an avid trekker" amounts to zilch. What have you given back to the forests that have played host to yourinnumerable treks all these years? So, start now, write about it in your blog, write to people who you think can have a significant influence on decisions in future, persuade people, contribute through your time (or money - one can subacribe to magazines like sanctuary wherein the subscription fee will be used for the field work of these organizations).

(Meanwhile, our cities choke on their own excesses… that’s another story, another blog)

AIX > Solaris? ROFL!

2005-12-22T13:42:00.000+05:30

This one makes for a real good holiday time joke -

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Murphy/?p=491∂=rss&tag=feed&subj=zdblog

Technorati tags: Sun, Solaris, IBM
AIX
HP

Pet peeves at work

2005-12-16T11:51:00.000+05:30

Some things I have no patience for in a work environment (more relevant to the indian scenario):

Type 1]"I'm taking a break => so must you"

This is the number one kind of pest in the Indian corporate setup that you can come across. People who keep peering at their screens for hours at end, finally decide they need a break. So, what do they do? Barge into someone else' cubicle, nose around, pass comments in general, play the fool and expect the other person to reciprocate. Remember, that person has no work except to entertain this moron.

Type 2] "What's he doing to get an edge over me?"

This kind of a pest has NO RESPECT WHATSOEVER FOR ANYONE'S PRIVACY. Has to keep peeping into everyone's screen, finding out what great tech article the other guy is reading (& getting an edge over this moron?Who cares? ) They constantly have this insecurity that they're losing the edge & the other guy is going one up over this loser. So, whether you're writing code ("it's our product's code that he's keying in - i have a right to see it too"), reading an article ("this guy refuses to waste time on orkut like i do. Doesn't he have a life?") or composing a mail("ah, finally"), he must look into your screen. My response is generally one of these:

1)That's none of your business sucker.
2)You call yourself a professional?
3)"Etiquette" - ever heard of it?
4)"Self respect" - not heard of this either?
5)I'll tell you when you're allowed to play sherlock & look over my shoulder.
6)Do your own thing
7)Spending a year in the industry doesn't make you "experienced". It takes mental maturity to understand how a professional work environment functions. This isn't your college. Time to grow up/
8)(And if push comes to shove..) Go fly a kite.

Type 3] Hypocrisy

The same pest who has admirable qualities 1] & 2] also talks of how the Indian IT industry "isnt't professional enough compared to that in the US of A " - look who's talking.

The bottom line -you need to mature dear, and mature fast. Poke your nose into other' biz only when you're asked to. Don't impose your schedule, your mood & your state of mind on others. Do your own thing. If your feeling bored, go to the rooftop,get some fresh air or even better, fly away from there. But learn to be professional, for christ sakes. This isn't your damn college!! Get the message, yes?

The Niagara thunders down in full force

2005-12-07T13:35:00.000+05:30

The enormity of Niagara's processing capability & it's power efficiency are simply overwhelming every other system in it's class built to date. The amount of buzz it's deservingly generated is quite amazing, to say the least. And HP, as usual, has shown it's class by resorting to FUD. Alan Hargreaves has responded fittingly. Some more information on the niagara boxes & the records that they've been setting. btw, Sun's open sourcing the design & validation code for the UltraSparc T1 (Niagara). More links:

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1896866,00.asp

http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/dagastine?entry=ultrasparc_t1_screams_running_java

http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/jclingan?entry=simply_refreshing

Technorati tags: Sun, Sparc, Ultrasparc
Niagara
HP

Capturing Screenshots in GNOME on Solaris

2005-11-17T16:11:00.000+05:30

Ever tried capturing a screen shot of a menu in an UI application on GNOME? Notice how the menu gets de-selected (or loses focus & disappears) as soon as you hit the print-screen button. The way to get around this is to use the gnome-panel-screenshot command at the console with the --delay= option. This switch makes the screen capture occur automatically after the specified delay, by which time you can "prepare" your application UI for the screen shot.

Technorati tags: Solaris, GNOME, JDS

22 Dell Boxes = 2 Galaxies

2005-11-14T11:33:00.000+05:30

That's right. A former dell shop just replaced 22 of it's servers with 2 four core galaxy boxes.

Technorati tags: Sun, Galaxy,Dell

Created a new technorati profile

2005-11-14T11:25:00.000+05:30

This is my profile. Go fetch!

"Titanic" Itanium

2005-11-07T18:36:00.000+05:30

Itanium's "titanic" characteristic - of going down in cold waters - is becoming more obvious by the day.
Sun responds .

Technorati tags: Sun, Itanium,HP

netbeans 5.0:What's cooking?

2005-11-03T16:48:00.000+05:30

Charles ditzel writes about some cool new additions to netbeans 5.0

Fleeing temptation..

2005-10-28T15:32:00.000+05:30

"Those who flee temptation generally leave a forwarding address."
- Lane Olinghouse

Brilliant quote, isn't it? :-)

Meeting Geoff Arnold

2005-10-27T16:23:00.000+05:30

This is why i just love working at Sun. If you swear by distributed computing, could you ask for anything more than a meeting with one of the Jini Engineers? That's right, I got to meet Geoff Arnold. I mustered enough courage to ask him about decentralized discovery in Jini and querying/aggregating partial results in a distributed computing system (like project neuromancer). He was in Bangalore to talk the JBI folks, and set aside some time for a talk on "the future of distributed computing". Need i say that it was nothing short of enlightening and inspiring? And does someone have to tell me that I'm working at exactly the right place? :-)

Correction: I had previously (erroneously) stated that Geoff Arnold was one of the *original* Jini team members. (See the comments.)
Sorry about the gaffe, Geoff. :-)

Update: Geoff Arnold has since moved to Amazon

Cool quotes

2005-10-24T18:28:00.000+05:30

Found these on my (custom) google home page -

The only thing that sustains one through life is the consciousness of the immense inferiority of everybody else, and this is a feeling that I have always cultivated.
- Oscar Wilde

My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular.
- Adlai E. Stevenson Jr.

Preserving health by too severe a rule is a worrisome malady.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld

The best car safety device is a rear-view mirror with a cop in it.
- Dudley Moore

Town hall with John Fowler

2005-10-21T16:57:00.000+05:30

Just came back from a town meeting with John Fowler at the cafeteria. Man, does he speak fast. He probably provides a stiff competition to Bryan Cantrill in speed of speech. And he really is earning is salary - every cent of it. The fact that he's an Engineer-turned-manager showed up on several occasions when he answered technical questions in the Q&A with great ease (including a rebuttal to HP's claims on cache pollution in the Niagara). He must've been a good engineer. But is he a good orator ! He had the audience in a trance during the whole session, treating us to delightful technical tidbits, interesting stats, marketing theories and an amusing old story on how he first me Andy Bechtolsheim.
Sun is in good hands - you can be sure of that.

The Sun cares for Planet Earth

2005-09-22T15:09:00.000+05:30

Some environment friendly initiatives by Sun highlighted here

Java trivia

2005-09-02T14:45:00.000+05:30

Brilliant piece of Java trivia
I could figure out the answer (wink wink). Could you?

Feel the power (outage) of Dell

2005-08-30T10:49:00.000+05:30

Good analysis of power consumption by Dell machines.

A verse very relevant to me

2005-08-23T11:00:00.000+05:30

Found the complete text of Robert Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" here:

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

Linux trademarked

2005-08-22T13:43:00.000+05:30

I hope this isn't a rumour.
Cry, my dear zealots on slashdot :-)

If you can't join them

2005-08-16T11:05:00.000+05:30

"If you can't join them, beat them." - They didn't want me to join them. Granted. I'll now beat them whenever we face-off. That's a promise. I'll make them regret this. Promises to be fun.

Grid offerings compared

2005-08-09T11:22:00.000+05:30

Gird offerings compared

Good Quote

2005-07-21T15:20:00.000+05:30

Found this excellent quote on the google home page:

"Getting ahead in a difficult profession requires avid faith in yourself. That is why some people with mediocre talent, but with great inner drive, go much further than people with vastly superior talent."
- Sophia Loren

Application Versioning

2005-07-15T13:33:00.000+05:30

Tom ball explains how class loading can be used to achieve simple application versioning -

Versioning, which I'm defining for this entry as how a Java application manages its external library dependencies, has been a tough issue ever since Java first released. Back when Java was born, the vision was that each machine would have a single Java runtime and standard libraries which would always be fully backwards-compatible. The reality has been that for most apps, the only reasonable alternative to testing a full matrix of released JREs and libraries is to instead package everything the app needs, install the whole hairball on each customer's system and use a custom classpath to access it. The problem with a custom classpath is that it is easy for your customers to break in subtle (and not so subtle) ways, which makes them cranky and can drive your tech support engineers crazy. Some work has been done in the JDK via its Package Versioning Specification and API, but there are still times when your app really needs to keep specific libraries under tight control.

NetBeans has this problem with its javac bridge, which allows its editor and refactoring modules access to javac's error checking and parsing support. The problem is that javac doesn't have a public API, so while a tool can leverage a specific version of javac, it cannot rely on whatever is on the customer's machine since its internal API may be radically different. We have a recent version of javac that works with our bridge, but just adding it to the NetBeans classpath won't work for two reasons:

NetBeans supports many different JDKs, each of which have their own version of javac; and
The Mac OS X includes the javac classes in its bootclasspath (and supportable products shouldn't whack the bootclasspath if possible).

The solution proved fairly trivial to implement while being quite robust: define a ClassLoader to isolate the bridge's use of javac classes from the rest of the IDE. Here is the ClassLoader implementation we use; NetBeans has several similar loaders for specific modules, but Tomas Hurka wrote this Factory class for the javac bridge:

    private static class GJASTClassLoader extends URLClassLoader {
      private final PermissionCollection permissions = new Permissions();

      public GJASTClassLoader(URL gjastJar) {
          super(new URL[] {gjastJar}, Factory.class.getClassLoader());
          permissions.add(new AllPermission());
      }

      protected Class loadClass(String n, boolean r) throws ClassNotFoundException {
          if (n.startsWith("com.sun.tools.javac") || n.startsWith("org.netbeans.lib.gjast")) {
              // Do not proxy to parent!
              Class c = findLoadedClass(n);
              if (c != null) return c;
              c = findClass(n);
              if (r) resolveClass(c);
              return c;
          } else {
              return super.loadClass(n, r);
          }
      }

      protected PermissionCollection getPermissions(CodeSource codesource) {
          return permissions;
      }
  }

As you can see, we rely on URLClassLoader to do all the heavy lifting. Our version isolation support is in loadClass(), where a test is made of the requested class name to see if it is in one of the packages to be isolated (here, we test whether the class is a javac or bridge class). If it is an isolated class, URLClassLoader.findLoadedClass() and findClass() look it up in the jar file we supplied in the constructor; otherwise we let URLClassLoader.loadClass() delegate to the parent classloader.

Now, we need to interact with classes loaded by this classloader. What works best for us is to define a simple interface which the versioned classes and their client code shares, and a factory class that uses reflection to load the class which implements that interface (in 1.0, you needed a default constructor and used Class.newInstance()). Here's a simplified example (from the same Factory class):

public interface ErrorChecker {
  int parse() throws CompilerException;
}

public final class Factory {
  private static Factory instance = null;
  private static Constructor newErrorChecker;

  public static synchronized Factory getDefault() {
      if (instance == null) {
          instance = new Factory();
          Class[] newCheckerTypes = new Class[] {
              ECRequestDesc.class
          };

          File gjastJar = InstalledFileLocator.getDefault().locate("modules/ext/gjast.jar", "org.netbeans.modules.javacore", false);
          try {
              ClassLoader loader = new GJASTClassLoader(gjastJar.toURI().toURL());
              Class c = Class.forName("org.netbeans.lib.gjast.ASErrorChecker", true, loader);
              newErrorChecker = c.getConstructor(newCheckerTypes);
          } catch (Exception e) {
          }
      }
      return instance;
  }

  public ErrorChecker getErrorChecker(ECRequestDesc desc) {
      try {
          return (ErrorChecker) newErrorChecker.newInstance(new Object[] { desc });
} catch (Exception e) {
    Throwable t = e.getCause();
    throw new RuntimeException("Cannot create errorChecker: " +
                                     t != null ? t : e);
}
  }
}

In the above, we fetch the ASTErrorChecker constructor via reflection, then use it whenever the client requests a new ErrorChecker implementation. Because the interface doesn't directly or indirectly reference any class types in our private javac copy (CompilerException is also shared), objects created using its classes can interact with the client without conflict.

There is one thing to watch for (there always is), however: sometimes you can find yourself pondering the impossible, like I did yesterday:

What caught me off-guard is that the debugger shows the type of "ex" is EmptyScriptException, but if it were that type then it should have been caught by previous catch block. Worse, a "(ex instanceof EmptyScriptException)" watchpoint returns "false", when it "obviously" should be true. The issue is that a class isn't just defined by its bytecode (the classfile's contents), but by the combination of bytecode and classloader. Here, there were two copies of EmptyScriptException loaded: once by Jackpot's private classloader, and once by the NetBeans one. Instances of one class copy will fail instanceof and catch tests with the other. I frequently forget this subtlety until reminded by a few head bangs against my monitor. The fix is to add the class to your list of classes which your classloader ignores and therefore shares with its parent classloader.

Over time, I have learned the value of this behavior (the classes not mixing, not the head banging). Since I'm pretty lazy, the extra work required to share classes between classloaders means that my designs do as little class sharing as possible. It is easier to maintain a really strict isolation with only a few, simple interfaces, than it is to maintain a big list of shared classes and deal with the headaches of managing their dependencies. A nice bonus is that this sort of isolation lends itself to distributed and parallel designs, where the more lightly coupled remote objects are to each other, the better they work together. Besides, it's hard to convince your manager you need the latest fire-breathing multi-processor workstation if your design is hopelessly interlocked.

This blog entry is way too long. I hope however that it dispells the idea that writing a classloader is rocket-science or limited to a few obscure uses. Managing application versioning is a problem many application teams face, and some judicious classloading can make it much easier.

Remember, no rocket science, this. :-)

Eclipse craves for matisse

2005-07-12T15:04:00.000+05:30

Eclipse users are desperate for an answer to netBeans' "Matisse" gui builder. But there's no solace and no respite in sight.
I want to hear the eclipse zealots respond to this one.
Here's the bug report that begs for it. (Sadistic pleasure, this.)
The old order changeth. :-)

Task queues in Solaris

2005-07-08T12:00:00.000+05:30

Good blog on deferred processing of kernel level tasks in Solaris.

MIT Blog Survey

2005-07-07T14:47:00.000+05:30

Found this survey on one of the sun blogs. Will make for interesting stats, I'm sure -

Sun's truce with IBM (for now)

2005-06-28T14:28:00.000+05:30

InfoWorld reports -
In detailing IBM’s renewal of its Java agreement, Schwartz acknowledged that there has been “a little bit of a chill” in the relationship between the two vendors. But IBM and Sun announced an 11-year extension to their Java technology agreement. IBM will continue to license Java technologies from Sun including the Enterprise, Standard and Micro editions of Java as well as Java Card technologies. IBM also will continue participating in the Java Community Process.

In addition, IBM will port its DB2, Tivoli and WebSphere middleware to Sun’s Solaris 10 OS. The agreement, said Robert LeBlanc, general manager of the WebSphere product line at IBM, shows that IBM and Sun are in Java for the long haul.

Peace - and prosperity - for the community

Positive reviews for the Sun App Server 8.1

2005-06-28T14:12:00.000+05:30

Good review/comparison with WebSphere

Eclipse's "external" contributors

2005-06-24T11:24:00.000+05:30

A good flame war on IBM's hypocritical claims of "the huge number of external contributors in Eclipse"

Good DTrace introduction (flash)

2005-06-10T18:11:00.000+05:30

http://snpnet.com/sun_DTrace/dtrace.html

netBeans Abbreviations

2005-06-10T16:44:00.000+05:30

You can add your own abbreviations (i.e editor shortcuts) to NB by creating/modifying the abbreviations.xml under [user-home-netbeans-dir]\4.1\config\Editors\text\x-java\.
Roman Strobl explains.

NetBeans overtakes Eclipse

2005-06-09T17:31:00.000+05:30

NetBeans has surpassed Eclipse on the Daily Traffic Rank Trend on June 7th.
Here's the evidence.

Contributing to the J2EE SDK (RI)

2005-06-09T13:16:00.000+05:30

If the title interests you, this is where you should be headed - https://glassfish.dev.java.net

Sun CTO on divergent processor ISAs

2005-06-08T19:32:00.000+05:30

Worth a read

Tree felling around Sankey

2005-06-08T15:35:00.000+05:30

I was alarmed to see trees lining the walking-track around Sankey Tank being felled this morning. But, on enquiring at the Deccan Herald office, I found out that they're following a carefully laid-out development plan for the peripheral areas of the lake. A committee is supposedly in place to carry out the planning & implementation of this. The reporter was kind enough to provide details about this. He even said that 2 new trees will be grown in place of every OLD tree chopped there. But, when I asked him if such "committees" were not acting as per their own whims & fancies, he just said, "We're hopeful that that's not the case & that all this is not an eyewash.We're keeping an eye on developments".
In retrospect, the press is probably the last powerful institution that's capable of protecting Bangalore's ecological balance. (Sigh)

A Mac laptop running on Niagara?

2005-06-07T19:25:00.000+05:30

Read this blog on ZDNet that goes like-

"So what can Apple do? What they should have done two years ago: hop into bed with Sun. Despite its current misadventure with Linux, Sun isn’t in the generic desktop computer business. The Java desktop is cool, but it’s a solution driven by necessity, not excellence. In comparison, putting MacOS X on the Sun Ray desktop would be an insanely great solution for Sun while having Sun’s sales people push SPARC based Macs onto corporate desktops would greatly strengthen Apple.

Most importantly, SPARC is an open specification with a number of fully qualified fabs. In the long term Apple wouldn’t be trapped again and in the short term the extra volume would improve prospects for both companies. Strategically, it just doesn’t get any better than that.

Niagara rocks. You want low power use for a laptop? How about an eight way 1.4Ghz SMP core with TCP/IP and cryptography done in hardware - at 65 watts flat out. There are some serious software issues, but get past them and you’ve got eight to ten Xeons in the box - at 65 watts.

Sun’s president, Jonathan Schwartz, put a nice invitation for you in his blog last Sunday. Maybe you should think about it..."

Sun folks(you need to pursue this...) & Apple folks, ARE YOU LISTENING??? Isn't this worth a try?

Sun:leading everywhere

2005-06-06T11:49:00.000+05:30

Some really heartening developments :

1)The E20K kicks IBM's 32 way power 5 based server and one from HP that has a similar (but in the end - inferior) configuration.

2)The new netBeans gui builder simply rocks!!!

3) netBeans draws level with eclipse

4)Sun acquires storagetek to add to the procom IP acquisition and tarantella(on the secure,remote desktop front).

Hopefully, all these will see sun hitting back hard at its competitors in the quarters to come.

Why clone is slower than newInstance

2005-05-31T15:35:00.000+05:30

Ken Russell from the Java HotSpot VM Group, Sun Microsystems writes in java.net forums:
"Actually in the HotSpot JVM Object.clone() is not currently heavily optimized, while new instance is. You can feel free to file an RFE about this in the bug database. You can work around this problem by overriding clone() and manually allocate the new instance and assign the data into it. In fact, I think this is already probably necessary once your data structures get more complicated, which is why slow performance of Object.clone() hasn't shown up on our performance radar.
P.S. Here's a revised version of your test case which gets rid of startup transients:"

public class Main {
private boolean flag = true;
private String string = "Hello";
private int i = 0;

static class Child extends Main implements Cloneable {
private boolean flag2 = false;
private String string2 = "World";
private int i2 = -1;
}

private static int count = 1000000;

public static void testClone() throws CloneNotSupportedException {
Child child = new Child();
int res = 0;
long startTime = System.currentTimeMillis();
for (int i = 0; i < count; i++) {
Child child2 = (Child) child.clone();
res += child2.i2;
}
long stopTime = System.currentTimeMillis();
System.out.println("" + count + " clones took " +
(stopTime - startTime) + " ms (dummy result = " + res + ")");
}

public static void testNewInstance() {
int res = 0;
long startTime = System.currentTimeMillis();
for (int i = 0; i < count; i++) {
Child child = new Child();
res += child.i2;
}
long stopTime = System.currentTimeMillis();
System.out.println("" + count + " new operations took " +
(stopTime - startTime) + " ms (dummy result = " + res + ")");
}

public static void main(String[] args) throws CloneNotSupportedException {
testClone();
testClone();
testClone();
testNewInstance();
testNewInstance();
testNewInstance();
}
}

Slashdot: In 72 Hours, Your Ban Will Be Lifted

2005-05-27T13:28:00.000+05:30

Has this happened to you?
"Your Headline Reader Has Been Banned".Your RSS reader is abusing the Slashdot server. You are requesting pages more often than our terms of service allow. "Do Not Bother Contacting Us For 72 Hours".Very funny.
The faq page says this

Cartoon blogging

2005-05-25T11:56:00.000+05:30

This is simply fantastic. This guy's got talent.

McNealy'isms - real cool

2005-05-20T12:45:00.000+05:30

Quite amusing, this

Netbeans mobility pack ROCKS!!!!!

2005-05-19T17:44:00.000+05:30

Sat through the Sun tech days session on writing MIDP apps with netBeans. Chuk-Munn Lee simply rocks!! Now, the NB mobility pack is an amazing piece of software -beautifully crafted and shockingly productive. It made me want to give up J2SE dev & take up J2ME full time. :p

More on the J2ME capabilities of NB here and here.

Good Q&A on Jini

2005-04-29T16:26:00.000+05:30

An interview with Jim Waldo
An old one, but answers a number of questions that people continue to ask even now.

btw, he blogs here

The first Dual core Opteron servers are out.

2005-04-25T14:52:00.000+05:30

Sun announces V40z's with dual core opterons. Sets performance records with the new irons.

netBeans build

2005-04-25T12:39:00.000+05:30

Just built netBeans from the sources on my machine. :-)
Check these links for more info...

http://www.netbeans.org/kb/articles/buildAndRun.html#adding_modules
http://www.netbeans.org/kb/articles/start_dev_NB.html

DTracing Java

2005-04-21T16:36:00.000+05:30

If you're a java developer & you haven't read this entry of Bryan Cantrill's blog, you really have missed something.
One word - IT ROCKS!!!
Such level of profiling & so many intricate details of the method calls, all in a very comprehensible manner is, like the blog says, without precedent.

Yet another tp survey

2005-04-13T12:17:00.000+05:30

A survey that tries to guess "What kind of a movie you belong to"...

I belong to....
Pirates of the Caribbean!

What movie Do you Belong in?(many different outcomes!)
brought to you by Quizilla

2005-04-13T11:55:00.000+05:30

Took a toefl-like quiz that measures the extent to which one's english is americanized (read polluted). I didn't do very badly, actually, considering my exposure to american claptrap - ;-)

English Genius
You scored 92% Beginner, 100% Intermediate, 100% Advanced, and 93% Expert!

You did so extremely well, even I
can't find a word to describe your excellence! You have the uncommon
intelligence necessary to understand things that most people don't. You
have an extensive vocabulary, and you're not afraid to use it properly!
Way to go!

My test tracked 4 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender:

You scored higher than 37% on Beginner

You scored higher than 72% on Intermediate

You scored higher than 88% on Advanced

You scored higher than 98% on Expert

The Commonly Confused Words Test on Ok Cupid

Why slashdot plays home to the anti sun flame-throwers

2005-04-07T11:44:00.000+05:30

This is the first plausible reason you'll find when you try figuring out why the slashdot editors so readily approve anti-sun posts - like this anonymous comment at Grisanzio's(opensolaris community manager) blog suggests -
"I think Slashdot has been specifically targetting Sun, lately, probably because their behind-the-scenes financial interests revolve around Linux." Isn't that obvious?

Excerpts from Tom Ball's Blog: Exceptional Debugging

2005-04-06T18:48:00.000+05:30

A rather clever way of checking whether a class exists in the current class path:

public boolean classExists(String name) {
String resource = name.replace('.','/') + ".class";
return getClass().getClassLoader().getResource(resource) != null;
}
This was suggested by a java.net use "brucechapman" in response to Tom Ball's latest blog entry - Exceptional Debugging

Solaris Sys admin guide collection

2005-03-24T11:31:00.000+05:30

Useful link if you want to tune a few parameters for your app (not that i do.. :-) )
Sys admin guide collection
Here's a good collection of Zone demos.

Why Eclipse users are moving to NetBeans

2005-03-15T11:53:00.000+05:30

Good read...http://cld.blog-city.com/read/1126337.htm
No surprises there. Eclipse's SWT sucks on Linux while NetBeans behaves like the angel that it is even on Windows. Why? NetBeans' UI It's pure java. No native code at the Window Manager Level. It doesn't try to make native calls for showing every small widget (like SWT does). SWT, that wy, is an antithesis to the java philosophy (where you have all the native code only at the VM level and avoid, to the extent, possible, native calls at your app level to keep your code truly class platform). Naive windows users fall for the "oh so windows-like" look and feel on exlipse on Windoze. Try it on Linux or Mac and you'll know the difference (in speed & LAF) between Eclipse and NetBeans. Eclipse looks broken & frayed on all other platforms except Windows. And if like Eclipse's "native" LaF so much, i'm afraid, you're tending towards an C++ based Java IDE like MS J++ (and you have not right to call yourself a true blue Java dude).

Vintage Jonathan!

2005-03-14T13:53:00.000+05:30

Jonathan is simply awesome in his latest blog.

I'm quoting the entire entry here, just for the reader's benefit...

Quoted blog Begins:

The Economies of Scale - The Scale in Economy

One of my best friends in life started his professional career at Carnegie Mellon University, where for a while he worked (back in the 80's) on the challenges surrounding parallel computing. Back then, it was a relatively esoteric field, in which one of the challenges was finding problems that lent themselves to parallel approaches, and another was trying to build programming models that made those problems tractable.

Spooling forward about 20 years (yipes), during the recent Boston Red Sox victory, MLB.com served 100,000,000 page views to 10,000,000 unique visitors. Each doing roughly the same thing. Talk about massive parallelism, it's in front of our eyes. The internet itself has yielded the world's largest parallel applications - from instant messaging, to bidding on beanie babies.

Now Sun has long been an investor in parallelism. First, we built systems capable of managing tremendous load (we're honored to supply the infrastructure under America's baseball addiction); and as importantly, we built an operating system that knew how to manage multiple threads of execution. Managing parallel "threads," historically one per CPU, is key to scalability - simply put, the more work you've got to do, the more CPU's you throw at the problem. And having an operating system that knows how to run efficiently across 100's of cpu's is a handy thing, at the core of Solaris's reputation for "scalability." Standing on the shoulders of giants, the Java platform was built with parallelism in mind, too.

Now oddly enough, despite the crises introduced when businesses have insufficient capacity, more often, businesses have too much capacity - average utilization in a datacenter is something like 15%. Which means most businesses waste enormous sums of the money on systems (not to mention the concomitant waste in power to keep dormant systems on, cooled and housed). Mainframes, historically, had very high utilization. Why? They were (and are) incredibly expensive, but they also have a feature called "logical partitioning" (LPARs) which allows big systems to be divided into many smaller mainframes. Until this year, no non-mainframe operating system offered logical partitioning. (Paraphrasing Gilder, "you waste what's cheap." Jonathan's corollary, "Until you build your whole datacenter out of it.") That is, until a few weeks ago.

One of the key features in Solaris 10 is just this - "containers" are logical partitions that allow a single computer to behave like an unlimited number of smaller systems, with little/no overhead. Reboot a partition in 3 seconds, keep disparate system stacks on the same computer, assign different IP addresses or passwords to each, treat them like different computers, and use them to consolidate all those otherwise 15% utilized machines - sky's the limit (on any qualified hardware platform), and with it, customers can now drive utilization through the roof. With no new licensing charges. (And personally, I'm a fan of 3 second reboots.)

But back to baseball. One thing to recognize with businesses like MLB.com (and Google and Amazon and eBay) is that system level performance is now all about parallelism - defined as the art of behaving well when 3,000,000 baseball viewers (or searchers or shoppers or bidders) arrive to use your service. Sun, in fact, saw two years ago what Intel saw this year, that the gigahertz race was over. So we biased our entire system roadmap to "thread level paralellism," and started designing systems with many, rather than one, thread per CPU. Most SPARC systems now ship with two threads of execution per socket (standard in all UltraSPARC IV systems). But that's just a baby step toward true parallelism.

How parallel can we get? Niagara chips, built into our upcoming Ontario systems, will feature 8 cores, each with 4 parallel threads of execution - 8 times 4 yields a 32 way system - on a single chip. These systems will consume far less electricity and space than traditional system designs - and will be optimized for MLB.com style applications: thread sensitive, big data, throughput oriented apps. Moreover, they'll drop our customers' power bills and real estate costs - which may not sound like the class of problem today's CIO cares about... until you actually talk to a CIO. Massive power and space bills are a big problem, and the physics of cooling a space heater is a more popular topic than you'd think. (btw, a dirty little secret - remember California's power crisis a few year's back? One of the leading suspects? Computers chewing up huge amounts of power, and producing heat, which required air conditioners, which chewed up even more power...)

As we scale out these systems, it's perfectly reasonable to expect greater and greater levels of parallelism. And the good news is not only do Solaris and Java (and most of the Java Enterprise System) eat threads for lunch, but with logical partitioning, we can deploy multiple workloads on the same chip, driving massive improvements in productivity (of capital, power, real estate and system operators).

But let's not stop there. Simultaneously, much the same inefficiencies described above have been plaguing the storage world. A few years back, "SSP's," or storage service providers, began aggregating storage requirements across very large customer sets, providing storage as a service. Most SSP's found themselves stymied by the diversity of customer they were serving. Each customer, or application opportunity, posed differing performance requirements (speed vs. replication/redundancy vs. density, eg). This blew their utilization metrics. Before the advent of virtualization, SSP's had to configure one storage system per customer. And that's one of the reasons they failed - low utilization drove high fixed costs.

So that was the primary motivation behind the introduction of containers into our storage systems. The single biggest innovation in our 6920's is their ability to be divvied up into a herd of logical micro-systems, allowing many customers or application requirements to be aggregated onto one box, with each container presenting its own optimized settings/configurations. This drives consolidation and utilization - and when linked to Solaris, allows for each Solaris container to leverage a dedicated storage container. Again, driving not simply scale, but economy.

On top of all this, the same challenge has plagued the network world - diverse security requirements, and a desire to partition networks into functional or application domains, have driven a proliferation of "subnets" for applications, or departments. HR, Finance, Operations and Legal, for example, each require their own VLANs (virtual local area networks), the result of which is a gradual increase in partitioning, paired with a creeping inefficiency in network utilization - as the static allocation of subnets outpace anyone's ability to manage them. (If you recall, prior to their downfall, Enron - one of the beneficiaries of California's power crisis - was setting out to create a market for surplus network capacity - nice idea, turned out to be tough to execute).

This was the primary motivation behind Sun's building containers in to our application switches - the devices that now sit in front of computing and storage racks, to help optimize performance of basic functions (network partitioning, security acceleration and load balancing, for example). The network itself can be divided into individual network containers, or virtual subnets, and programatically reprovisioned as loads change.

Meaning that a customer can now divide any Sun system into logical partitions or containers, each of which draws on or links with a logically partitioned slice of computing, storage and networking capacity. Which presents the market with an incredible opportunity to drive utilization up, and exit being one of the most inefficient (and environmentally wasteful - where are the protests?).

Which is a long way of saying the internet is the ultimate parallel computing application - millions, and billions, of people doing roughly the same thing, creating a massive opportunity for companies that solve the problems not only with scale, but with economy. A unit of computing has been detached from a CPU, to whatever a baseball fan wants at MLB.com. Or a bidder wants at eBay. Or a buyer at Amazon. Can you imagine how big a datacenter MLB.com would have to build if we were still in a mode of thinking each customer got their own CPU?

Just think about that power bill.

_________________

Some other thoughts:

What happens to software licensing in a virtualized world? What's a CPU in a per-CPU license when the system you're running has 32 independent threads? An anachronism in my book. Can you imagine if MLB.com charged by the CPU? That's why all software from Sun, from the OS to the middleware, will be priced by the "socket" or employee. We believe the rest of the industry should move in the same direction.

Who's the ultimate beneficiary of this mass virtualization? In the short run, customers who can now both recover dormant capacity and boost productivity (consolidate to Solaris 10, UltraSPARC IV, our 6920's or our app switches - have yourself a "look at all this capital I freed up!" experience, and guarantee yourself a spot at your CFO's summer party).

But the ultimate beneficiary may be the company that deploys all these systems - and can link together, as well as dynamically provision across, it in its entirety. The combinatorics are staggering - thousands of containers, against thousands of threads against the same orders of magnitude in storage and network partitions. That's some serious scale. Requiring some serious economy in provisioning and operation.

So what business could possibly require or operate infrastructure at that scale? Sun's Grid, of course. No reason to think we won't be serving one of the largest markets in the world - driving utilization to be both prudent, and responsible.

(End of quoted Blog)

This man has SOME talent, doesn't he? How can you not be his fan???

S10 installtion walkthrough

2005-03-14T11:41:00.000+05:30

There's a nice walkthrough (with screenshots) of S10 installation here. Really cool.
btw, i installed S10 on friday on a test machine at office. Absolute bliss. That's the phrase. More on that later...

Arrogance is still the #1 characteristic of IBM

2005-03-10T11:53:00.000+05:30

Author/Freelancer Dave Taylor writes:

But then Gerstner comes across as remarkably arrogant and elitist as he shares the "tedious obligation" of having to go to formal fundraising events for major charities, the experience of having a fancy multi-story apartment in a chic area of New York City and a second house on the beach in Florida. Yet when he joins IBM, Gerstner complains about the stodginess of the executive team but has no compunction flying around on the IBM corporate jet or having his "driver" show up in the morning to chauffeur him to the office.

I realize that when you're the boss of a multi-billion-dollar corporation, there are certain perquisites that not only go with the job, but are expected, but it seems awful disingenuous to talk about cutting costs, rethinking executive reporting structures, and maximizing the cash reserve of a company when you can't hop on a commercial flight or drive yourself to work...

On the plus side, the book is compelling, interesting listening so far, and Gerstner shows that he had a keen eye for corporate dysfunction and that IBM really was a company on the rocks, stifled and drowning in a frozen bureaucracy rife with "lifers". His description of how senior management meetings were nothing so much as the IBM version of multinational diplomatic negotiations is quite fascinating, for example.

Hmm.. any surprises there? The dinosaur is still the most arrogant animal in the forest (if only prehistoric & irrelevant).

The Solaris album of white papers.

2005-03-08T12:20:00.000+05:30

An excellent compilation of articles on Solaris' implementation of various OS sub systems.

Published by Sun's Ozan yigit> :

Shared Libraries in SunOS

Virtual Memory Architecture in SunOS

SunOS Virtual Memory Implementation

Realtime Scheduling in SunOS 5.0

SunOS Multi-thread Architecture

Beyond Multiprocessing: Multithreading the SunOS Kernel

Implementing Lightweight Threads
Symmetric Multiprocessing in Solaris 2.0 [link not found]
Proceedings of the thirty-seventh international conference on COMPCON,
San Francisco, California, 1992

Vnodes: An Architecture for Multiple File System Types in Sun
UNIX

Evolving the Vnode Interface

Efficient User-Level File Cache Management on the Sun Vnode Interface

Extent-like Performance from a UNIX File System

Design and Implementation of the Sun Network Filesystem

The Sun Network Filesystem: Design, Implementation and Experience

Virtual Swap Space in SunOS

Profiling and Tracing Dynamic Library Usage Via Interposition

tmpfs: A Virtual Memory File System
The Translucent File Service [link not found]

The Automounter
The Automounter: Solaris 2.0 and Beyond [link not found]

The Autofs Automounter

Enhancements to the Autofs Automounter
Removable Media in Solaris,
Proceedings of the Winter 1993 USENIX
Technical Conference, San Diego, California,
USA , January 1993.
USENIX Association.

Zero-copy TCP In Solaris
The Process File System and Process Model
in UNIX System V
[link not found]
Evolution of the SunOS Programming Environment,
Proceedings of the Spring 1988 EUUG Conference,
Cascais, Portugal, 1988.

Implementing Berkeley Sockets in System V Release 4

Secure Networking in the Sun Environment

Fast Consistency Checking for the Solaris File System

System Isolation and Network Fast Fail Capability in Solaris

CPU Time Measurement Errors

Solaris Zones: Operating System Support for Server Consolidation

Solaris Zones: Operating System Support for Consolidating Commercial Workloads

The Slab Allocator: An Object-Caching Kernel Memory Allocator

Magazines and Vmem: Extending the Slab Allocator to Many CPUs
and Arbitrary Resources

Automatic Performance Tuning in the Zettabyte File System

Existential QoS for Storage

Dynamic Instrumentation of Production Systems

FireEngine - A New Networking Architecture for the Solaris Operating System

Some of these papers are like chapters from a book on modern OS concepts. Brilliant.

S10 beats Linux on network performance

2005-03-01T16:29:00.000+05:30

A comparison between the network performance of Linux(RHEL) and S10. Evidently, S10 beats Linux, except in the low end single cpu(32 bit) category, by a good margin. Cheerio!!

Oscillating between literature and music

2005-02-25T11:34:00.002+05:30

This came as a bit of a surprise to me, but the blogthing questionnaire says:

Your Dominant Intelligence is Musical Intelligence

Every part of your life has a beat, and you're often tapping your fingers or toes.
You enjoy sounds of all types, but you also find sound can distract you at the wrong time.
You are probably a gifted musician of some sort - even if you haven't realized it.
Also a music lover, you tend to appreciate artists of all kinds.

You would make a great musician, disc jockey, singer, or composer.

What Kind of Intelligence Do You Have?

I was totally taken aback; shocked, in fact. But, guess what, I went back to the questionnnaire and changed just one answer to indicate that i enjoyed writing more than i did singing a solo, and this is what turned up -

Your Dominant Intelligence is Linguistic Intelligence

You are excellent with words and language. You explain yourself well.
An elegant speaker, you can converse well with anyone on the fly.
You are also good at remembering information and convicing someone of your point of view.
A master of creative phrasing and unique words, you enjoy expanding your vocabulary.

You would make a fantastic poet, journalist, writer, teacher, lawyer, politician, or translator.

Thank you, thank you. Now,that's a relief.Whewww!!

Sun #1 Unix seller in 2004

2005-02-24T13:19:00.000+05:30

This article quoted the yearly gertner report that just came out, stating:
"Sun retained the top Unix sales position, with $5.14 billion in sales, compared to HP's $4.89 billion and IBM's $4.32 billion. If IBM's current 7 percent Unix growth rate for 2004 holds and HP's and Sun's Unix sales continue to shrink by their respective 7.8 percent and 5.3 percent, Sun will still be the number one Unix vendor in 2005, but HP will drop to number three behind IBM."

And the report corresponds to a time when Sun hadn't even unleashed the power of Solaris10. Hopefully, things can only get better hereon. What will HP & IBM do? Run for cover and take refuge under Linux and Windows to escape the wrath of Solaris.The battle has only just begun (with Sun changing the rules of the game, again) :-)

A parody on HP

2005-02-22T16:45:00.000+05:30

This site is the most hilarious spoof i've read/watched. Especially these pages -

1) Corporate news
2)New CEO candidates
3) Brand strategy
4) Offices of the future

Simply brilliant. What else can I say?!!

Some real good quotes from fortune

2005-02-21T13:42:00.000+05:30

1)Q: How many Micro$oft programmers does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: 472. One to write WinGetLightBulbHandle. One to write
WinQueryStatusLightBulb. One to write WinGetLightSwitch-Handle...

2)On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog.
-- Cartoon caption

3)It may be bad manners to talk with your mouth full, but it isn't too
good either if you speak when your head is empty.

4)
"I made the decision to name the Justice Department building after Robert
Kennedy because he's deservant."

George W. Bush
November 20, 2001
Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office about his decision to name the
Justice Dept. building after former U.S. Attorney General, Robert Kennedy.
Aired on CNN.
(NOTE: I'll be updating this particular entry with new quotes as & when i find them.)

James Gosling on SWT

2005-02-18T11:16:00.000+05:30

Some good points by Gosling on why SWT is a fast, light weight way to (porting) hell...

"The SWT thing was just…it pissed me off beyond words. So, if you wind back the clock a few years, the original toolkit in Java was this thing called AWT, the Abstract Window Toolkit. It’s still there, and it’s a fairly simple, straightforward toolkit, and it’s based on using the widgets from the underlying (inaudible). It had a wide variety of really, really ugly problems, things like how to get semantics consistent from platform to platform, and some of the little fringe things like cut and paste. Trying to get cut and paste to operate correctly between text widgets, like between the Mac text widgets, the Motif text widgets and the Windows text widgets. When you’re actually trying to use those text widgets in their native homes, it’s just a nightmare. How do you deal with things like subcopying, how do you make a button extensible? How do you deal with the more advanced features that people want, like being able to do tables where you can control the rendering of components and cells and that kind of stuff?

A lot of those things were completely precluded by the AWT architecture. IBM in particular was really upset about the way that the AWT architecture had gone, and they were one of the leading agitators that caused Flame to be created. In fact, about half of the engineers on the Flame team were actually from IBM -- they actually got IBM pay cheques. IBM built Apple Flame, and actually then Swing was quite successful, it’s been successful for quite a while. The biggest problem with Swing was that it can do so much that it’s kind of become like the 747 cockpit if you like APIs. There’s a lot of complexity there, and the hard part is figuring out how to use it. It’s in this weird situation where pretty much anything you can want to do in Swing, you can do easily. But what’s hard is to figure out the easy path through all of the different options, the different ways you can do things. Once you figure out the one true path to get what you want done, then it’s pretty easy. People often say “Why don’t you just make it easier by simplifying it?”, and say, “so you simplify it in this way, it would make my life better”. But then for the next guy it would be worse, because he wants to not go there, he wants to go on this particular path. So it’s been difficult to manage the complexity right.

So, wind the clock forward a few years, and there’s (inaudible) from IBM (inaudible) “Swing is too complicated, let’s do AWT all over again”, and if you look at the SWT architecture, it’s almost exactly the same as AWT. It has all the AWT problems: it’s way simple, it doesn’t port very well. And its API is somewhat different, because essentially what they did was they made the Windows version really easy by making their API pretty much a clone of the Windows API. And then on Linux, they tried to make Motif look like the Windows toolkit. They’ve got those mapping layers that are just like, really horrible, and it only kind of works. And same thing in OS X, their porting problems from platform to platform is a nightmare, their consistency (inaudible) is a nightmare. And it’s sort of like, “You were there seven or eight years ago. It was a bad place to be, don’t go back!”. The problem is that IBM is like three hundred and some-odd thousand people, so there’s like a cluster of people. Most of the people we were working with back then were in North Carolina and New York State, like Westchester, and they actually understood things pretty well."
Original Q& A transcript - James Gosling Q & A