0xfeedface Tech musings and rants

I just ordered business-class Internet at my home at 22mbit down and 5mbit up. Once the line is active, I'll be transferring this site (and a few others) over to the server at my home. With the transition, I'll look at upgrading to Drupal 7.

UPDATE 2010-03-09 2:17 PM: Just got an email from the ISP. They'll install the line on Thursday. The transition will take place Friday night or Saturday morning.

I own a rooted MyTouch 3G and a Nexus One. I promised myself that I would keep my Nexus One unrooted. Well, I broke that promise last week and I couldn't be happier. It runs so much faster now--and it already was plenty fast. Tethering is awesome on it. I can listen to Pandora while tethering at work, developing at normal pace. I was lucky to keep my IRC connections alive while running a SQL query at work with my MyTouch 3G. I'm plenty happy now that it's rooted.

Verizon's CDMA Nexus One is supposed to be released on 23 Mar 2010. HTC has been sued by Apple for twenty patent infringements. I wonder if this lawsuit will affect the release and future sale of the Nexus One. We all know that this lawsuit is not about HTC, but it's about the exhilarating OS and framework by Google that's poised to outsell and pass Apple this year: Android.

After Oracle's complete acquisition of Sun, certain OpenSolaris users doubted OpenSolaris would survive. However, in a recent blog post, we are assured OpenSolaris will continue to be open and will receive the same, if not more, devoted development time. I'm happy to see Oracle not killing OpenSolaris. What I would love to see is for them to stop development of Linux's BTRFS and to relicense ZFS with a GPL-compatible license and port ZFS to Linux. I'm also excited for the day when KDE4 is stable and officially supported, complete with a KDE version of Gnome's TimeSlider. For now, we will have to wait and see how this turns out.

The following is an excerpt of what I said in a Buzz conversation a friend and I are having about Windows Mobile 7:

I just saw a few WinMo 7 pics and I think what I saw was really, extremely ugly. Granted, when I switched from iPhone to Android, I thought Android's interface was a bit on the ugly side and I love Android's UI now. Maybe I'll have to wait till my diehard Microsoft fanboi coworkers update their phones to WinMo 7 to really judge it. After having had my Nexus One for a few days, though, I gotta say that Android has now surpassed iPhone OS's capabilities and now delivers a better OS and framework. Given that Microsoft has been behind the game for over a year now, Microsoft is going to have to work hard to bring their OS up to speed with Android's.
You did point out that Microsoft has a major marketshare in smartphones and I agree with that. However, Android's growth has been climbing; soon Android sales will outperform iPhone sales--growth trends have been pointing this way for six months now. With a larger userbase, Google will ramp up its even now rapid development of Android. With the Nexus One being directly supported by Google, Google will roll out OTA updates with new Android versions fast to its proud Nexus One userbase. Android will eventually win the war unless either Microsoft or Apple open their technologies like Google has done with Android.
Openness is key here. Being able to switch carriers--and even phones--while all your data, apps, etc. all come over painlessly and automagically is where Android wins. Besides, the Nexus One will probably come to AT&T 3G either later this year or early next.
Overall, WinMo 7 might be a decent start for Microsoft to re-enter into the smartphone wars, but Android is where it's at. I predict that a good percentage of WinMo users will switch to Android this year, even with Microsoft now trying to hit mobile technologies harder. I'm curious, too, if WinMo 7 integrates with the Zune marketplace and what the average Zune marketplace user thinks about DRM and vendor-lockin.
I haven't held a WinMo 7 device, yet, but expect to soon. My somewhat-biased opinion might change given time. ;)

Note: Android growth table available here (opens in new window).

I just received my Nexus One today. After a sleepless night of excitement and nervousness, having the Nexus One in my hand feels reassuring about how well technology is progressing. The Nexus One is a big improvement over my last two Android phones (first the G1 then the MyTouch 3G).

The Nexus One feels sturdy. I love that it doesn't have the chins the previous Android phones I've owned had. The chin, in fact, can be detrimental to the phone: my MyTouch 3G started chipping on the top chin. I dislike where the lock/power button is. Being a right-handed user, the lock button is hard to get to.

The phone's processor, the Snapdragon, is faster than I had anticipated. With the MyTouch 3G, I couldn't even send a text while using Pandora (my most used application). Grooveshark on the MyTouch 3G seemed impossible to run and hogged the CPU even worse than Pandora. However, this isn't a problem in the slightest with the Nexus One. I can run Grooveshark and multitask just fine. I have yet to use Google Maps while using Pandora or Grooveshark.

Overall, this is the best phone I have ever laid eyes on, let alone owned. Over the past two years, I've owned five phones (LG EnV, iPhone 3G, G1, MyTouch 3G, and Nexus One) and this one passes all previous phones up by miles. I'm excited to see what this phone can do and push it to the limits. I have yet to fully explore it.

Overall, Sun xVM is easy to configure and run. Setting up a virtual machine on a headless VirtualBox installation takes a lot of thought. Setting up a VM with xVM takes a single command with virt-install. In OpenSolaris Build 133, you will be able to have the VM automatically start upon booting up the host OS. I'm very glad I switched from VirtualBox to xVM. xVM appears to be stable and fast.

I have only to gripes about xVM. First, my server has only 4GB RAM installed. xVM limits my host OS to 2GB memory. Since ZFS loves to use all available memory when it's not needed by other applications, I notice that ZFS performance has degraded slightly. Second, xVM uses VNC for remote controlling VMs. VNC is an antiquated, insecure, and inefficient protocol. I prefer the RDP VirtualBox offers over xVM's VNC.

From an administrative perspective, xVM beats VirtualBox hands-down. When combined with ZFS snapshots, xVM offers a complete solution I am looking for in a VM server. xVM has a lot of potential, especially when mixed with other OpenSolaris technologies like Crossbow.

In the end, xVM wins over VirtualBox for server environments.

I've been using VirtualBox on my NAS for a while now. The problem is that it's hard to administer on a headless server. There's so many commands you have to do in a specific order to just create a new VM. I'm going to be installing xVM on my NAS. I'm going to see how xVM runs compared to VirtualBox and how easy it is to administer on a headless server. I can hopefully get it done this weekend. I'll give a report when I've made the switch.

I've hit my first goal of the year. I paid off my car today. I'm waiting for the new title to come in the mail. I'm way freaking stoked. My car is now officially mine. I can use it and abuse it as I please. Now to save for two weeks to get the Nexus One as a celebration present. I recently watched a video that Phil did on his YouTube channel called Like Totally Awesome about the Nexus One and I am so freaking excited. I might start doing Android development once I get it. Looks like Android 2.1 not only is a serious competitor to iPhone OS, but it might have surpassed it in features and functionality.

Hulu is an online service which allows people to view their favorite TV shows and movies. I love the service Hulu provides. I don't have TV service at home and Hulu enables me to watch shows like The Office, The Daily Show With Jon Stewart, and The Colbert Report. However, around two to three weeks ago, Hulu stopped working for me. I run OpenSolaris almost exclusively at home. Hulu hasn't worked for 64bit Linux and UNIX users for the past two to three weeks. There is a thread (opens in new window) on Hulu's support forums with over 3,000 views and 150 or more replies by some of Hulu's most dedicated viewers running 64bit Linux/UNIX. Hulu has not responded to those that have commented in that thread. Hulu is simply ignoring not only the problem, but its most intelligent users.

As Linux/UNIX users, we have the ability and willingness to help Hulu debug and potentially fix the problem free-of-charge. If Hulu would acknowledge us, I would definitely help them solve the problem. However, since Hulu is ignoring us, I move that we boycott Hulu until action is taken by them. I'm grateful for the service Hulu has provided me; however, ignoring dedicated customers is not a good business practice.

Please join me in boycotting Hulu until they fix the problem.

Around a month or two ago, I decided to halt all hobbyist programming. I do enough programming at work. I've been doing hobbyist C programming for around eight to nine years. Lately, I've been getting really sick and tired of programming. Programming used to be exciting and challenging. Now it's dull and boring. Instantiate this variable, write this loop, code that conditional statement. Maybe I'm bored of programming because I've spent these last eight or so years writing in C or C-based languages.

However, two days ago, I decided that the most efficient way for a hacking community with which I associate to have IRC statistics is to write an IRC bot. I already had code for an IRC bot lying around from a few years ago. I decided to pick up the old code and, since I don't comment hobbyist code, figure out how to write plugins for my IRC bot of old. I've really enjoyed working with this bot. Picking up this old project has rekindled the dwindling flame. I'm excited to finish this project.

For those who are interested, you can view the source at http://svn.retoros.org/retoros/lattbot/trunk. I'm not really looking for help on the project, nor is it ever going to be officially released. But if you'd like to help, I'd gladly accept it. There's definitely areas that need to be cleaned up.