VelociPeek

Wow. There’s been a lot of great stuff in the news lately: Apple SDK, IE 8 beta, AOL/Bebo deal, Safari update.

I’ve been out of pocket lately due to an illness, and the subsequent backlog of things to catch up on, but hope to get the blogging back on track.

So where to start this fine Friday?

Well, today, I was caught by Apple’s second banner ad blitzkrieg against Vista! You may remember one of the first attacks on Vista last November. Typically, I don’t like big, interactive ads, but I do like these. It’s gotta be because they combine the TV ads with the online ones: familiarity, good theme, funny.

They are showing up on the WSJ Online (wsj.com), CNET (news.com), and NY Times (nytimes.com); however, they may be elsewhere.

The gist is that the Mac and PC guys are musing over the banner ad, which reads (with hunted down references):

Vista…one of the biggest blunders in technology. — CNET.com

So the PC guy, hits the banner refresh switch to discover:

It’s time for a Vista do-over… — PC Magazine

…emergency banner refresh switch…

Mac OS X Leopard: A perfect 10 — InfoWorld

…give up.

Surely, this will continue to irk Microsoft. However, I agree with Adrian from ZDNET, about what is hurting Microsoft most: Microsoft. I blogged about the horrors of the Vista upgrade process for consumers in January 2007. Not much better since.

It just wasn’t ready for consumer use IMHO, not even close. So now they continue to pay the price. Eventually, it will fade, but Apple doesn’t appear to be letting them forget about it any time soon, or consumers.

Song of The Day: What’d I Say - Artist: Ray Charles

So how could one blog today in tech and not mention the unsolicited offer to buy Yahoo! for $44.6B from Microsoft.

Quote from the WSJ Online:

Microsoft offered to buy Yahoo for $44.6 billion in a cash and share deal, a move designed to help both companies compete against industry leader Google. Yahoo said it will “evaluate this proposal carefully and promptly.” Yahoo shares soared 50% in premarket trading, while Google shares were down 8%.

I really don’t see this happening, and if it does for some lottery chance, or working for one reason alone: culture. Two completely different approaches to, well, everything.

I’ll leave it at that. I would expect other bids from Google and maybe Time Warner before this comes to a conclusion.

Tags: Eric O’Laughlen, Yahoo! Acquisition

Song Of The Day: She Blinded Me With Science - Artist: Thomas Dolby

So this morning I decided to fill up at the gas station, at a Sunoco station, because my fuel gauge was running low.

This is typical for millions of people around the world, but it seems like such a hassle to stop and fill up. When I do, that’s when I wished I lived in a city where I could jump on public transit. For example the Bay Area is wonderful with things like BART and Muni. For a few bucks you can get most anywhere. $6.50, gets from the airport and back–at least it used to.

Okay. Anyway. Back to my somewhat non-public transit world of Northern Virginia! :) Sure. We have Metro, but for local, practical purposes, it is still easier, and more convenient, to drive a car around.

So filling up is one of those minor annoyances in life I guess; and of course, there always seems to be some additional nuances to prolong the pain :)!

For example, outside of the obvious issue of dipped, but still high prices, anyone else ever miss the touch screen option “Would you like a car wash?” As you’re standing there wondering why the gas isn’t pumping, the winter wind blustering around, it’s prompting you “yes” or “no.” You think, “Damn it. Will it just start pumping!”

Well, today, I was in such a situation; except now, there is something new to pass the time away: Sunoco TV!

With advertising and broadcasting blasting (i.e., the volume pretty loud) I fingered away at the screen to press “no,” again, for a car wash, all the while wondering why anyone would want to endure such an annoyance. Okay…so maybe I’m being harsh, but that was my initial impression as I battled the gas-pump elements.

And guess what, it’s not just Sunoco who is assisting the gas station TV future: CES 2008 presented Pumptop TV–coming to a gas station near you. The one associated with Sunoco TV is GSTV (Gas Station TV), which broadcasts programming from CBS, etc. It’s just recently started branching out after being in pilot mode for some time.

I didn’t care much for the broadcasting today, showing some advertising and short CBS news clips, but I could see traffic and weather reports being useful during my 4 1/2 to 5 minutes (see GSTV demographic info below):

Reference: Gas Station TV

More after the jump…

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Song Of The Day: Bulls On Parade - Artist: Rage Against The Machine

The short answer is: they’re still focusing on something other than the customer.

So last night I decided, more for nostalgic purposes I guess, to click on the AOL icon that still existed in the dock after an upgrade from OS X Tiger (10.4.x) to OS X Leopard (10.5.x).

The version of the AOL all-in-one software was 10.2.6, quote old, but decided to see if would still work.

The software fired up, then displayed the following splash screen:

Now for anyone that knows anything about AOL, and it’s past initiatives, the software is basically an all-in-one connection and communication application. Also, most know that the company went advertising based a couple of years back in an attempt to transition from its subscription-based revenue model. The company transition and client software message is all fine and good by me, so far.

So why the entry and headline today? More after the jump…

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Song of The Day: Extreme Days - Artist: tobyMac

So it’s been about a week since MacWorld and Steve Job’s keynote presentation, but thought I’d still write a few thoughts. The major gadget introduction was the MacBook Air. However, the reviews have been mixed, but I think some miss the point of the new product.

There are probably 3 ways of looking at it:

• Consumer View
• Investor View
• Strategic/Business View

I can understand a little about the consumer view. For example this CNET Crave blog entry compares the MacBook Air with the G4 Cube: “Overpriced and underconfigured.” Although I understand, that doesn’t mean I have to agree. To be honest Crave’s post is non sequitur, apples and oranges really. More always seems better than less by default, but for the record one is a portable while the other a mini system. Hello? It’s better to compare the Mac mini with it. I wonder if the reviewers are using Apple products when I read stuff like that. Also, complaining about no ethernet port when there are USB-to-RJ45 adapters? Isn’t mobility about defaulting to less while having add-ons for more? The price is a little easier to understand on complaints, but I guess that’s the price when getting a simplistic, elegant 3.0lb laptop with full keyboard, 13″ screen, 802.11n, BlueTooth EDR, and OS X Leopard.

Anyhowzy.

I am a little surprised by the investor view, mostly because the product bodes well for the future of Apple.

More after the jump…

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Song of The Day: Future Shock - Artist: Herbie Hancock

So most have probably heard or read the reports about the Activision-Blizzard merger controlled by Vivendi. Since it appears that Morhaime describes the merge as a merger of equals (below), really an investor term, still leaves a bad taste for me regardless.

The structure is like a merger of equals. The corporate name “Activision Blizzard” is not a replacement for the publishing labels Activision or Blizzard Entertainment. Individual products will continue to be developed and marketed under the appropriate Activision or Blizzard Entertainment brands. The name “Activision Blizzard” will also be used by centralized services within the organization like sales, distribution and finance, which would service both brands.

AOL Time Warner’s merger was a merger of equals. Two assets that looked good on paper, but ultimately failed because of culture clashes, power struggles, and broken promises. Needless to say, I’m not as enamored by mergers of equals when it comes to intellectual property involving software and services.

It would be interesting to hear from other folks on this, via comments or whatever, but software is part plumbing and part craft IMHO. With gaming I would say it’s 75% craft, resembling art techniques and creativity. So merging these two to me seems like saying we’re going to merge Van Gogh and Monet, call it Van Gogh Monet and create an impressionist colossus. Okay. Maybe that’s stretching it, but I think it’s a better analogy than saying we’re merging something like oil pipelines, or plumbing, to create Exxon Mobile, or some telecommunication concern.

All too many times business rationales–or more like balance sheet ones–supersede other important aspects within software companies: culture, management structure, true evaluation of merger assets.

Although there are some similarities (e.g., media companies) between the AOL Time Warner merger and Activision Blizzard’s merger, there are, granted, a lot of differences. This merger may be more like AOL of old merging as an equal with Road Runner or Time Warner Cable. Or maybe the Netscape, AOL merger is a better example of software merging going awry. Maybe a more gaming-centric company…. I won’t get into all that now with a brief blog entry, but why my cautious outlook? In a nutshell this synopsis and comment, comment by the respectable Robert Kotick, seems to get at my concern:

Even as Activision was enjoying success with its top console games, the firm’s Chief Executive Robert Kotick said the success of World of Warcraft made him eager to get into online games. But he couldn’t figure out how Activision could do it on its own. “It has always been my aspiration to be the No. 1 videogame company,” Mr. Kotick said. “This gets us to be No. 1 in revenue, profitability and position.”

– WSJ Article

AOL couldn’t figure out how to get a successful broadband play in 2000 and merging with Time Warner didn’t help that. IMHO if one cannot gain limited success alone, before a merger of equals, then there is not much reason to believe that bringing them together, under the leader that didn’t have success, will ultimately improve the probability. Interestingly, if AOL had stopped obsessing about broadband pipes and obsessed more about delivering quality software services over existing “unowned” pipes, there may have been a different story today.

Perhaps Mr. Kotick was just being coy and the article too high-level, but it made me wonder: would some other arrangement have been better? Sure you can put the puzzle pieces of the MMO capability of World of Warcraft together with Tony Hawk, or something and it may work. However, with a software craft should Activision have licensed the tech, and revenue shared, before deciding a merger was appropriate? The lure of #1 too much? Perhaps there is some of this in the history that I’m unaware, but don’t know if it would change my pessimistic inclinations.

However, time is always the best judge of these things; we’ll leave it to the pundits. As a consumer, as long as they continue to produce great games, I will buy them; revenue will continue to climb and shareholders will be happy as a result.

Tags: Eric O’Laughlen, Activision Blizzard Merger

Song of The Day: 3 Strange Days - Artist: School of Fish

So the last couple of blog posts were about OS X Leopard’s installation and 64-bit support. This entry delves into Time Machine.

Although I had a few initial challenges setting up Time Machine to work, the new feature of Leopard truly, I think, brings backups to the Apple masses.

For my backup device I already had previously purchased a Western Digitial 320GB My Book with a FireWire connection for video. Since it had an extra 200GB available, I figured it would work (i.e., have enough capacity and be fast enough).

Time Machine required a reformat of my My Book

I expected to be able to connect it up to my Macs, then configure, and then copy way. However, that wasn’t the case. The Time Machine configuration required a reformat of my WD HD with the Mac OS Extended filesystem or HFS+. Since I already had about 100 GBs of data on the disc, which was using the default FAT32 filesystem, the reformatting process was a BIG pain. So much so, that I would recommend buying a new drive for backups if you can do that!

Although I consider the Mac’s filesystem to be far better than FAT32, I still would have preferred the FAT32 for my backups to spare me the problems of transferring those files.

However, after transferring the data off of the hard drive, I was able to configure Time Machine and start the backup process without a hitch. The backup process took about 5 to 6 hours for approximately 120GBs of data.

I started my iMac G5 in the morning before work and it completed by the time I came home. My laptop worked the same way, but I watched while it backed up the data one evening while comet gazing.

Afterwards, the typical MyBook orange icon turned into a Time Machine green icon.

New Time Machine icon for My Book drive

Furthermore, as a note, I could still place spurious files onto the drive with the remaining space available.

The only other issue I had during the entire process for both computers was an error dialog box when I clicked the Time Machine icon on my MacBook Pro.

One issue when configuring Time Machine

Upon investigation it looked to be related to the way I initially set up Time Machine on my laptop. I had previously configured Time Machine to use the My Book, but then disconnected the drive before the backup could start and complete due to the reformatting requirement. The reformatting never happened, and the backup, but Time Machine was still enabled. Somehow it got into a broken state.

After hitting System Preferences, disabling Time Machine, and then reconfiguring it again with the reformatted My Book, it worked correctly.

The UI, once everything is set up, is very slick. Apple lately just seems to get the user interface for applications right. :) Overall, a couple of challenges, but now both of my Macs are backed up, which were infrequently, and never entirely, backed up before.

Tags: Eric O’Laughlen, OS X Leopard, Time Machine

Song of The Day: Mickey’s Countdown - Artist: Mickey Mouse

Night time shot of castle and statue.

During the 4th week I was fortunate to be able to take a land and sea trip to Walt Disney World and Castaway Cay. Although the park amusements and beach trip were great, and the time with family equally wonderful, I was particularly struck by Walt Disney’s continuing impact and legacy. It really is quite amazing.

In his early twenties he goes to Hollywood with a little money (i.e., supposedly $40 dollars) and a half-completed animation. Ends up having some success just to have it all “owned” by someone else. This leads to the creation of Mickey Mouse; he introduces synchronized sound and Technicolor to cartoons; the rest is pretty much history. However, there were numerous ups and downs along the way.

Walt Disney Theatre on the liner Disney Wonder.

Made me reminisce about the Wonderful World of Disney on Sunday nights, which “Uncle” Walt would host and introduce the night’s movie. I had no idea at the time that he had passed many years previous.

Continues to inspire all these years later.

Tags: Eric O’Laughlen, Disney

Song of The Day: Available - Artist: Moving Units

So it’s been a while since I’ve posted. Don’t mean to let my blog slip, but I’ve been pretty busy lately. For one I took a graduate class in fault tolerant computing that started in January. That class has been awesome; however, now that I also started a new job with Corporate Technology Partners, Inc. I’ve had little time for anything else :).

I’m sure there are some that would be interested in knowing what I’m doing at CT Partners, and possibly how that all relates to VelociPeek.com LLC. Rest assured, I’ll make some sense of it all in future posts. For now I’d like to delve a little into reliability. And I don’t mean job reliability, silly! :) Today, I mean computer system reliability.

What’s interesting to me is that there used to be debates about system’s reliability and availability within AOL concerning certain, unnamed, systems (um, those systems will remain anonymous). It’s amusing, somewhat, to ponder this all now. I mean most technical folks understood–mostly OPS folks–the relation of: (Availability = MTTF/(MTTF+MTTR)); however, I wonder how many truly appreciated the field of study and theory behind it all. I appreciated the field and usefulness, but my current class has given me an opportunity to delve a little deeper into the field of research. Because of my experience and current study, I thought I’d share a few thoughts about it now.

So what is reliability?

Reliability is the probability that a particular system will be running up to a given time. Given some failure rate (FR or λ), a unit number, and a mission time (T), we can define reliability (R) as: R(T) = e^[-(λ * T)]. e = the base of the natural log = ~2.7182.

So isn’t that availability?

Well, not exactly. Availability, or what we’ll call operational availability (Ao), is the probability that a particular system will be operational at a particular time. Many people use these interchangeably, but technically and mathematically, they’re different. Reliability is about probability of failure within a system; whereas, availability is about the probability of overall operation. Mathematically, Ao = MTTF/(MTTF+MTTR), or the proportion of the mean-time to failure to the sum of the mean-time to failure and the mean-time to recovery. There are varying definitions of availability (e.g., does it include planned maintenance, etc.); however, this formula will suffice for most discussions. Regarding MTTF within Ao, some refer to MTTF as reliability; however, that doesn’t fully describe it.

Perhaps an example is best to illustrate.

FR provides the fraction of units that failed within a given time period. For example, let’s say out of 2 computer chips 1 failed in 10 hours. This would yield an FR = { 1 chip failed/(2 chips * 10 hours) } = 1/20 or .05/hr. The inverse of the FR is the MTTF (-(λ) or (1/λ)), MTTF = 1/(.05/hr) or 20hrs.

Given this metric, what is the reliability of this 2 chip system?

Well, you can plug things in: R(T), T = 20, λ = .05, then R(20) = e^[-(.05)*20] = ~36% reliable in 20 hours. So far FR = .05 and MTTF = 20 hrs. If we pick an average recoverability of say 1 hour, we have Ao = 20/(20+1) = 95%. If our failure rate increases (e.g., FR = { 1 chip failed / (2 chips * 1 hour) } = .5) then our reliability and availability go down: .004% for a mission T=20, and Ao = 66%, respectively. Hopefully, that helps to show the relationship between the terms.

So how does this all relate to those previous debates?

Well, ignoring all those other complications regarding the theory of reliability and availability for a moment, one can derive a correlation between failure rate, cost per failure, and cost of a reliable and available system. For a business this type of understanding can help improve communication (e.g., expectations) and total cost of ownership (TCO). Hmm…that does appear useful :).

Well, that’s enough for this entry. Since there is a lot more that could be written, I may have to revisit this later for series and parallel configurations. Both topics are interesting and useful. For a good reference on some of this, check out START Volume 11, Number 5.

600) )4j

Tags: Eric O’Laughlen, Reliability

Song of The Day: Here It Goes Again - Artist: OK Go

That’s right. Although I preferred the Xbox 360 for consumer reasons, John prefers it for “developer” reasons. Read all about the CES interview here.

GI: You talked a lot about the Xbox 360. What are your thoughts on the PlayStation 3 now that you’ve had more time on it?

Carmack: We’ve got our PlayStation 3 dev kits, and we’ve got our code compiling on it. I do intend to do a simultaneous release on it. But the honest truth is that Microsoft dev tools are so much better than Sony’s.

[segment deleted]

I think the decision to use an asymmetric CPU by Sony was a wrong one. There are aspects that could make it a winning decision, but they’re not helpful to the developers. If they make the developers say that Sony is going to own the main marketplace, let’s make them develop toward this and build it this way, it would somewhat downplay the benefits of the Xbox 360 and play to the PlayStation 3’s strengths. I suspect they’re not going to overwhelmingly crush the marketplace this time, which wasn’t clear a year ago. A lot of people were thinking it’s going to be a rerun of the last generation, and it’s now looking like it might not be. I’ve been pulling for Microsoft, because I think they’ve done a better job for development support, and I think they have made somewhat smarter decisions on the platform. It’s not like the PlayStation 3 is a piece of junk or anything. I was not a fan of the PlayStation 2 and the way its architecture was set up. With the PlayStation 3, it’s not even that it’s ugly–they just took a design decision that wasn’t the best from a development standpoint.

This isn’t that surprising to me. This is dated, but when I developed on a Net Yaroze way-back-when for prototyping purposes, it had some familiar tools like a GCC cross compiler for Windows 95 and other helpful tools and libraries. However, they were all fairly “rough” for compiling, creating objects, converting meshes, and transferring assets to the console. At the time I coughed this up to buying the “prototype machine” versus the $20K version. Also, there wasn’t the Microsoft comparison. Now, the comparison comes to light because of Microsoft’s pre-XBox mission and “culture” of catering–or trying to cater–to developers. Although Microsoft hasn’t gotten too many points on aesthetic appeal or on certain technologies, they have tried to be developer friendly. Being able to use Visual Studio and MSDN-type help for Xbox development has to be nice for some folks. Sony was new to broad developer support back in the PS1 days and still is relatively new to the developer support game overall. Oh, and of course I believe Carmack (image below) :).

The asymmetric CPU issue caught my attention as well. Supposedly, a Sony 3D artist was fired for complaining about the difficulties with the PS3/development environment on his blog. As far as the CPU model, here is a decent overview of the advantages and challenges with the asymmetric design. If I find a link to other PS3 IDE challenges I’ll post them. Regarding asymmetric designs, so much time is spent making symmetric multiprocessor designs more deterministic (e.g., locking), I don’t even want to think about a model even “more” indeterministic :). May be faster on instructions and I/O, but there is more to consider IMHO (i.e., like getting Carmack-like folks as fans).

On a non sequitur note I bet Apple is working, or will eventually work, on a game “capable” home theatre machine. There are just too many points of leverage (i.e., OS X, good graphics, Apple TV, good developer support, and good hardware) for them to stay out of the market.

Tags: Eric O’Laughlen, John Carmack, Xbox 360, PS3