We've been measuring how our server software performs on Sun T series servers against the older V series.
The results with the T series have been very encouraging. For comparable servers the T series performance is around double the throughput of the V series. We're very pleased with this. This is good news because comparable T series cost less than V series and power consumption is lower. With Sun SPARC binary compatibility all the applications still run the same.
I'm very impressed with the T series. One component of our application runs on Tomcat. I wasn't sure how a busy Tomcat would run on a T1000 with a load test. It ran really well. I guess the JVM threading implementation does a good job of utilizing the T series multicore architecture.
The Sun T series is a very interesting architecture. Just one physical CPU with a clock speed in the modest range of 1-1.2 Ghz. The multicore architecture with many CPUs and independent execution threads on the single chip is remarkable.
You can now try out some advanced Sun technology like the T series servers for a free trial using Sun try and buy program.
I've worked with Sun hardware and over the last decade and I've always been a fan. I hope Sun and Solaris can continue to innovate prosper and stay around.
Sunday, January 27, 2008
Friday, January 11, 2008
Private domain name registration
I bought a domain name from Yahoo domains recently. It was for a site I was helping my son set up. It's a basic setup. It just uses Blogger to post content. It's working out OK so far.
I didn't realize that you can just buy a domain name from within Blogger now so knowing that I might have done things differently. Still Yahoo domains has a good user interface and it was interesting and not difficult to get it all set up.
One thing that was interesting about domains that I noticed from Yahoo and other providers I checked out like GoDaddy is this private registration option. When you register a domain you have to provide whois information about the domain owner. The whois information includes address, phone number, and e-mail. Registrars like Yahoo warn you that this is public information and spammers and other undesirables will be able to find you when it is posted.
The registrars have a service called private domain information. In this case they offer to substitute their own information in the whois so that you do not have to provide your own personal data. This is an extra cost service. For Yahoo private registration costs almost as much as the domain name itself so it's not really cheap.
I decided not to purchase private registration. First of all I realized that my personal information is public anyway. My phone number is listed and I can be looked up in canada411.ca and elsewhere easily enough. So there's nothing in the whois which isn't already knowable.
The other reason I didn't purchase it is because it is unnecessary. With Yahoo the whois stuff is just a form you fill in. It seems you can enter whatever you want into this form and just manually obscure your identity that way. There doesn't seem to be anything preventing this.
So my tip is to save your money on domain registration and pass on the private registration option since you can just directly type in whatever you want anyway for the whois so you don't need to purchase separate private registration.
I didn't realize that you can just buy a domain name from within Blogger now so knowing that I might have done things differently. Still Yahoo domains has a good user interface and it was interesting and not difficult to get it all set up.
One thing that was interesting about domains that I noticed from Yahoo and other providers I checked out like GoDaddy is this private registration option. When you register a domain you have to provide whois information about the domain owner. The whois information includes address, phone number, and e-mail. Registrars like Yahoo warn you that this is public information and spammers and other undesirables will be able to find you when it is posted.
The registrars have a service called private domain information. In this case they offer to substitute their own information in the whois so that you do not have to provide your own personal data. This is an extra cost service. For Yahoo private registration costs almost as much as the domain name itself so it's not really cheap.
I decided not to purchase private registration. First of all I realized that my personal information is public anyway. My phone number is listed and I can be looked up in canada411.ca and elsewhere easily enough. So there's nothing in the whois which isn't already knowable.
The other reason I didn't purchase it is because it is unnecessary. With Yahoo the whois stuff is just a form you fill in. It seems you can enter whatever you want into this form and just manually obscure your identity that way. There doesn't seem to be anything preventing this.
So my tip is to save your money on domain registration and pass on the private registration option since you can just directly type in whatever you want anyway for the whois so you don't need to purchase separate private registration.
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
Happy 25th Commodore 64
Here's a couple of links around the 25th anniversary of the Commodore 64 [1], [2].
I started out programming on the Commodore in junior high school in the early 80s. Those were the best times to be into computers and programming. The Commodore 64 was a great machine with sprite graphics, sound, and 38911 Basic Bytes free.
I had the Commodore dot matrix printer and easy script word processor that my sister used in university. At that time she was about the only one printing her essays. In word processing things like cut and paste were sensational advanced features.
I had a 150 baud modem which cost over $100. The 2400 baud Hayes modem sold for over $1000 at the time.
Commodore brilliantly made their joystick port compatible with the Atari 2600 so it was easy to get controllers from the Atari and use them for gaming. And we spent many hours playing games on the Commodore64. Some of the best were Mule, Archon, Summer Games, 7 Cities of Gold, and on field football.
I started out programming on the Commodore in junior high school in the early 80s. Those were the best times to be into computers and programming. The Commodore 64 was a great machine with sprite graphics, sound, and 38911 Basic Bytes free.
I had the Commodore dot matrix printer and easy script word processor that my sister used in university. At that time she was about the only one printing her essays. In word processing things like cut and paste were sensational advanced features.
I had a 150 baud modem which cost over $100. The 2400 baud Hayes modem sold for over $1000 at the time.
Commodore brilliantly made their joystick port compatible with the Atari 2600 so it was easy to get controllers from the Atari and use them for gaming. And we spent many hours playing games on the Commodore64. Some of the best were Mule, Archon, Summer Games, 7 Cities of Gold, and on field football.
Monday, December 03, 2007
A choice in the matter
We recently missed our quarterly targets and had to preannounce. As often happens after a miss there was a round of downsizing. I'm fortunate and happy that I got through it OK.
This round was different than other RIFs with this company and other companies I've worked for. The timing was such that the downsizing was done in the late stages of a big development project. As a result the affected individuals will be staying on for a while longer until the big project finishes. Historically during a downsizing people would kind of just disappear like Syme in 1984.
Another thing that was different was that in the reorganization some individuals were offered new roles in the company. However they had the choice to decline the new position and be laid off instead with the same severance and access to unemployment insurance as those who didn't have a choice.
Almost all of the people who had a choice chose to stay on. However two individuals chose to take the severance and leave. Those who chose to leave have some similarities. One guy said that if they tighten up their expenses a little bit then he will be cash flow neutral on his wife's salary. The other guy is married with no children and his wife has a good job.
The people who seem to have a bit of a financial backstop to afford being out of work for potentially a while have chosen to take the severance. I don't believe they have new jobs lined up, they are just going to take their time and explore new career opportunities.
If you can afford it then it makes sense to take the severance if you are at all on the fence about staying. It would suck to decline severance today and then leave voluntarily in say six months and get nothing. Also all things being equal they should be confident they will find a comparable job at comparable pay in a reasonable time. The local tech economy is pretty robust right now. With a financial backstop they can afford to "gamble" that they can find something else quickly and pocket the difference in severance.
This round was different than other RIFs with this company and other companies I've worked for. The timing was such that the downsizing was done in the late stages of a big development project. As a result the affected individuals will be staying on for a while longer until the big project finishes. Historically during a downsizing people would kind of just disappear like Syme in 1984.
Another thing that was different was that in the reorganization some individuals were offered new roles in the company. However they had the choice to decline the new position and be laid off instead with the same severance and access to unemployment insurance as those who didn't have a choice.
Almost all of the people who had a choice chose to stay on. However two individuals chose to take the severance and leave. Those who chose to leave have some similarities. One guy said that if they tighten up their expenses a little bit then he will be cash flow neutral on his wife's salary. The other guy is married with no children and his wife has a good job.
The people who seem to have a bit of a financial backstop to afford being out of work for potentially a while have chosen to take the severance. I don't believe they have new jobs lined up, they are just going to take their time and explore new career opportunities.
If you can afford it then it makes sense to take the severance if you are at all on the fence about staying. It would suck to decline severance today and then leave voluntarily in say six months and get nothing. Also all things being equal they should be confident they will find a comparable job at comparable pay in a reasonable time. The local tech economy is pretty robust right now. With a financial backstop they can afford to "gamble" that they can find something else quickly and pocket the difference in severance.
Thursday, November 08, 2007
Code and Content
In this product release I spent a good bit of time implementing quite a few reports. Our product has a reporting engine and the report content can in theory at least be created by anyone. For the out of the box reports "anyone" turns out to be the programmers on the software development team.
Most software products to some extent at least allow individuals other than the original programmers to add on content to extend the product and make it better. The reporting engine in our main products is an example of this. Generally it's good to have this. It allows more people to be involved with making the product better. It also allows the programmers to focus on the underlying core functionality and allows others with more domain knowledge to work on those areas.
One part of software development that really uses this is games. Creating a commercial quality game is a large undertaking. The number of people involved in putting a release together is huge. I've noticed that the programmers are only a small percentage of the people invovled in getting a game ready. Far more people are involved putting together the content around the game. One of the programmers jobs is to set it up so that as much of the work as possible can be done by non-programmers, the creative content people. The content people will do things like design levels, add player information, create storyboards and such.
A good example of this is the park editor in the Tony Hawk underground games. This game has a park editor feature where the end user can design their own skateboard park. The game itself ships with hundreds of parks already created. The park editor is an example of where there can be a real nice separation between the code and the content. The programmers were responsible to create the park editor itself and make sure it worked properly and was easy and intuitive to use. The content people actually designed all of the parks in the game using the park editor. With good communication, the content people will be eating their own dog food and providing feedback to the programmers about how to make the park editor better and easier to use.
Most software products to some extent at least allow individuals other than the original programmers to add on content to extend the product and make it better. The reporting engine in our main products is an example of this. Generally it's good to have this. It allows more people to be involved with making the product better. It also allows the programmers to focus on the underlying core functionality and allows others with more domain knowledge to work on those areas.
One part of software development that really uses this is games. Creating a commercial quality game is a large undertaking. The number of people involved in putting a release together is huge. I've noticed that the programmers are only a small percentage of the people invovled in getting a game ready. Far more people are involved putting together the content around the game. One of the programmers jobs is to set it up so that as much of the work as possible can be done by non-programmers, the creative content people. The content people will do things like design levels, add player information, create storyboards and such.
A good example of this is the park editor in the Tony Hawk underground games. This game has a park editor feature where the end user can design their own skateboard park. The game itself ships with hundreds of parks already created. The park editor is an example of where there can be a real nice separation between the code and the content. The programmers were responsible to create the park editor itself and make sure it worked properly and was easy and intuitive to use. The content people actually designed all of the parks in the game using the park editor. With good communication, the content people will be eating their own dog food and providing feedback to the programmers about how to make the park editor better and easier to use.
Wednesday, November 07, 2007
PureText
This is a very handy utility for just moving text between applications and cutting off the formatting cruft that messes things up. When I'm copying a number from Word into Excel or code from Eclipse to Outlook I almost always just want the text. The formatting from the originating application is no use in the target application. Before I had to use tedious options such as paste special or do the paste then select and reformat the text in the new application.
It turns out this is not necessary thanks to PureText. With PureText I copy in the usual way then use Windows+V to paste and all that gets pasted is the text without the formatting. Slick. Thanks for doing this Steve Miller.
It turns out this is not necessary thanks to PureText. With PureText I copy in the usual way then use Windows+V to paste and all that gets pasted is the text without the formatting. Slick. Thanks for doing this Steve Miller.
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