Draconis Software Blog

Yesterday, Apple dropped the price on the 8gig iPhone (that killer, must-have gadget that’s apparently been selling like crazy since being introduced), along with new product announcements in their iPod lineup. Unfortunately, it looks like this price break puts a lot of us early adopters in a tight spot: those of us who shelled out the full $600 for the 8gig models are now realizing the price of purchasing early: about $200.

If you’re not already aware, if you bought your iPhone within 10 days of an announced price break, you’re entitled to receive the difference from Apple (provided you claim this within another 14 days of the announcement).

Should Apple reduce its price on any shipped product within 10 calendar days of shipment, you may contact Apple Sales Support at 1-800-676-2775 to request a refund or credit of the difference between the price you were charged and the current selling price. To receive the refund or credit you must contact Apple within 14 business days of shipment.

Sadly, we at Draconis bought out iPhones 16 days before the announcement: 2 days later and we would have qualified for that rebate. But I’m not bitter over it: I love my iPhone, was willing to part with the full price without expecting any kind of rebate, and anyway, these things are out of our control. Anyone else in the same boat as us?

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The latest and greatest Linux kernel (2.6.22) has just been released. Of the numerous interesting new features, I’m especially excited about two things: a new way to measure approximately how much memory a process is using (via the process footprint measurement facility), and the ability to measure file timestamps using nanoseconds for greater precision.

In addition, there’s a new wireless stack, a new Firewire stack (very cool), and a slew of new drivers and other changes. Check out details about this release here, then download the kernel. Enjoy!

There’s a great, in-depth review (via Engadget) of the new MacBook Pro 15inch, which was released just a few days ago. The reviewer notes “I’m new to Mac computers, new to OS X, but I am one happy switcher”, which echoes a sentiment I had not too long ago.

One of the big new features is the introduction of the LED back-lit screen:

LED back-lighting is touted to provide a more evenly lit screen with sharper images and colors without sacrificing battery life. All these I find to be true, the screen is without a doubt the best i’ve ever seen on a laptop, and better than a lot of desktop monitors I use. With the brightness up to full, even in the most well lit rooms, solid whites are almost blinding, which allows you to turn down the brightness and use less battery.

I was originally a Mac guy, switched to Linux as my desktop du jour, and then switched back with the MacBook, and I’m very glad I did.

I recently saw an article about the DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) draft being accepted by the IETF as an official proposed standard (even though it happened back in February). I really hope the acceptance of this takes off, though the article seemed to show many large companies (who could probably benefit from it) non-committal.

DKIM is a simple means for verifying the origination of an email in an attempt to better track (and fight) spam and phishing messages. The method is simple: the sender encrypts the message body using it’s private key and stores this in the message header (non DKIM receivers, then, can safely ignore it and still deliver the message). A DKIM-enabled receiver looks up the originating domain’s record and extracts the public key. From Wikipedia: “The receiver can then decrypt the hash value in the header field and at the same time recalculate the hash value for the mail body that was received, from the point immediately following the “DomainKey-Signature:” header. If the two values match, this cryptographically proves that the mail did in fact originate at the purported domain, and has not been tampered with in transit.”

(Read the article)

I’ve generally been a fan of certification programs for systems administrators as a means for providing at least a basic idea of the competency of a potential hire. After reading this article at Linux.com, I’m not particularly surprised to see the number of certifications expected to increase (especially for GNU/Linux programs), though I have to wonder about it: the best sysadmins I’ve known didn’t have a single certification and weren’t particularly interested in getting one.

I see the whole certification process as having two main flaws (as least on the part of companies certifying their own products): (1) little pressure on the part of the certifying company to make the tests difficult or otherwise accurately prove a taker’s skills, and (2) lots of pressure on the part of the company to test the applicant’s knowledge of vendor-specific aspects. It seems to me that it’s in the interest of the certifying company to have lots of certified engineers out there who know the ins-and-outs of that company’s products and little about any competing products.

So, as someone who needs to hire a competent sysadmin, how does this help me? A potential sysadmin who’s certified as an MCSE or RHCE or whatever shows they can take a test and know the basics of that particular company’s product, but what about the millions of other things that sysadmin would be responsible for? Really, it seems these certifications are good for large companies interested in a sysadmin to manage many exact-same boxes and little else. For the majority of employers, especially startups and growing companies, I’d think someone who is more well-rounded in things they’d need to manage is much more useful (for instance, can a sysadmin fill in for a network admin should the need arise? do they understand infrastructure needs to make recommendations for expansion? etc). The best skill a sysadmin can have is the ability to learn as they go and adapt to changes. Having a certification in a particular OS doesn’t particularly help if its a heterogeneous network.

I think certification is a useful process but I’d like to see programs that are more comprehensive, easier to afford, and focus on general skills regardless of environment. What do you think? Have you gone through a certification process and, if so, how has it helped you? In the past, I’ve thought about getting certified myself, but never went through with it primarily for these reasons (as well as the cost).

RHEL 5 has just been released today, and has a number of interesting new features (here’s the announcement). The main focus of the release has been around virtualization and security, as well as doing away with the ES, WS, and AS monikers, replacing them with more generic (and less confusing) terms such as RHEL Advanced, Desktop, etc. Coming 2 years off the last release, I think RHEL is due for an upgrade.

Check it out. Though we don’t use RHEL on our production machines, a number of large IT departments do. Be sure to post your reactions here.

There’s been an interesting debate going on about free vs. pay-per-use WiFi that I’ve found intriguing: the idea is to draw customers into shops at times that normally wouldn’t see much action, but at issue is whether too many people are mooching off the free service and hurting the business. A number of people have likened it to the air conditioning incentive offered by movie theaters a number of years ago. Of course, I and most other customers would probably rather have it free, but I can certainly understand shop owner’s oppositions.

Every so often, I like to head out to a Starbucks (which costs a couple bucks for the TMobile service they provide, plus a Venti cup of whatever’s brewing) or a FreshCity (where it’s free), take my MacBook, and get some work done. I find it’s often good motivation when I pick up and move to some other place – different environs give me a nice motivational push. What’s your take? Do you think offering WiFi for free at Starbucks, Panera, FreshCity, McDonald’s, and other places would be harming or helpful?

(Read the article)

There’s an interesting article in the NY Times about Google’s infrastructure strategies.  As it’s been the talk of many folks for a while now, Google has spent a lot of time and brainpower creating their own infrastructure more or less from scratch: they build their own computers, they have their own file system, etc.  From the article:

In many ways, it still has the head of an graduate-school project grafted onto the body of an multinational corporation. The central tenet of its strategy is that its growing cadre of world-class computer scientists can design a network of machines that can store and process more information more efficiently than anyone else.

Mr. Reynolds estimated that Google’s computing costs are half those of other large Internet companies and a tenth those of traditional corporate technology users.

Interesting, but before you start thinking of building your own servers and file systems, remember that Google can benefit greatly from economies of scale: the extra time spent building those thousands of servers translates into greater savings; for most organizations, you might save a few hundred or thousand bucks going the DIY route, but you’ll be spending even more money in researching/building the five or so systems yourself to not make it worthwhile.

Anyway, a good read if nothing else for the WOW factor.