Corruzione silenziosa dei dati

Una ricerca del CERN (vecchiotta, risale al 2007) effettuata per valutare l'affidabilità dello storage dellla elevatissima mole di dati che gli esperimenti di LHC avrebbero generato ha evidenziato come le probabilità inizialmente piccole di corruzione dei dati implichino invece un significativo numero di errori data l'enorme quantità di dati che stiviamo sugli HD al giorno d'oggi (1Tb di dati significa avere qualcosa come 3 files corrotti).
Robin Harris, in questo articolo, sottilinea come le tecnologie utilizzate oggi sui sistemi mainstream (in particolare i file system) siano assolutamente inadeguati, al contrario invece dei sistemi di classe enterprise (come ad esempio ZFS).
Naturalmente i sistemi in grado di preservare la consistenza dei dati hanno un costo (elevato), pertanto la loro applicazione deve essere valutata in funzione del valore dei dati che si vogliono archiviare.

Penso che nel prossimo futuro farò un utilizzo sempre più consistente ed esteso di ZFS:

• http://openindiana.org/
• http://www.freebsd.org/it/
• http://www.nexenta.org/
• http://www.freenas.org/
• http://zfs-fuse.net/

Per quanto riguarda Oracle:

• http://www.oracle.com/us/products/servers-storage/storage/nas/overview/index.html

Enjoy your freedom

E' disponibile l'ultima release di Kubuntu (http://www.kubuntu.org/): un'ulteriore passo avanti nell'UI e nella responsività del sistema.
In questa release vengono introdotti (tra gli altri) LibreOffice 3.3.2 (bello!), Firefox 4 e GCC 4.5.2.

Macbuntu

Mac OS X Transformation Pack. Macbuntu is an open-source program, designed to transform Linux’s appearance and layout into a Mac OS X environment. Although Macbuntu is dedicated to Ubuntu Linux OS, it could be used in other OS based on Debian/GTK


http://sourceforge.net/projects/macbuntu/

Fonts per lavorare

Un font monospaced eccellente per sorgenti e terminali:

http://www.levien.com/type/myfonts/inconsolata.html

Tech 2010

On a previous post, I wrote about what I was goint to expect this yeas, "from an IT (strictly personal and professional) point of view": well, did a good job on that, as most of my expectations were accomplished. So let's start talking about what 2010 is going to be starting from what we've seen in 2009: activity under Linux has increased, and the latest Ubuntu/Kubuntu release is impressive. Karmic is mature, stable, fast, and the latest KDE 4.3.3 has drammatically improved responsiveness and performance, becoming, from my point of view, one of the best overall desktop environment - well, it still needs some strengthening, but it's going to become as good as OS X. In my previous post I wrote about my intention of going for an iMac "but I'm waiting for Snow Leopard to see if it's worth the price"... well: it's worth the price: my new 27" iMac is simply impressive, Mac OS X is absolutely great, and prices are affordable enough (here in Italy, Macs are much more expensive than is the US... 1500€ vs 1598$, which is something like 50% more!!) to compete with the windows world.
Well, actually now I would not buy a new PC with Windows, as I would choose a Mac for a high grade or professional machine and Linux for anything else.
In my personal hit parade, windows is in the last place.
So, what is going to happen next year? Windows Vista is most likely the worst OS in the MS history (evening the score with ME), so Seven will easily be a better overall system. From now on, 4 Gb of RAM will be the minimum wage, and XP is out of the game; new systems will be loaded with 64bit OSes.
Of course, except for netbooks. Netbooks are going to be the trend, next year, and I expect Apple to enter the netbook arena soon. I am not going to use a netbook, as I need more power when I work with PC class software, and more portability when I need a PIM. My notebook is powerful and portable enough for serious stuff, and my smartphone is smaller than a netbook and runs all the PIM stuff I need.
But anyway, netbooks are going to be a very big affair: and Chrome OS is going to be a main actor, along with Ubuntu in its netbook edition. Google's OS is more innovative, but a lot of people still want to use its portable PC during the home-work-home bus trip, not necessarily paying an UMTS connection. So there is still place for traditional OSes; and probably a lot of users will chose some stripped version of seven.
C++0x hasn't been released yet, let's hope next year will be the One. But now that Nokia has acquired it, the Qt framework is getting really really hot: I await a lot of new applications running under different OSes builded with Qt.
The new CPUs are all heavily multicore, so software will become more multithreaded, and tecnologies such as Apple's Grand Central Dispatch will help a lot. Anyway, nothing new under the hood.
My word for 2010? "Mac".

Primi passi con Glade e gtkmm

Oggi ho cominciato a fare qualche piccolo esperimento con Anjuta, Glade e GTKmm.
Dopo aver creato una form con due pulsanti, ho creato un gestore di eventi minimale:

struct Gestore
{

   Gestore(Glib::RefPtr<Gnome::Glade::Xml> &the_xml)
   {
      dynamic_cast<Gtk::Button*>(the_xml->get_widget("button_due"))->signal_clicked().connect( sigc::mem_fun(*this, &Gestore::on_click_due) );

      dynamic_cast<Gtk::Button*>(the_xml->get_widget("button_uno"))->signal_clicked().connect( sigc::mem_fun(*this, &Gestore::on_click_uno) );
   }

   void on_click_due()
   {
      cout << "Click sul bottone DUE!!!" << endl;
   }

   void on_click_uno()
   {
      cout << "Click sul bottone UNO!!!" << endl;
   }
};

A questo punto, ecco il main (generato da Anjuta) con l'aggiunta del mio gestore:

int main (int argc, char *argv[])
{

   Gtk::Main kit(argc, argv);
   Gestore *gestore;

   //Load the Glade file and instiate its widgets:
   Glib::RefPtr<Gnome::Glade::Xml> refXml;
   try

   {
      refXml = Gnome::Glade::Xml::create(GLADE_FILE);

      gestore = new Gestore(refXml);
   }
   catch(const Gnome::Glade::XmlError& ex)
   {

      std::cerr << ex.what() << std::endl;
      return 1;
   }

   Gtk::Window* main_win = 0;
   refXml->get_widget("main_window", main_win);

   if (main_win)
   {
      kit.run(*main_win);
   }
   delete gestore;

   return 0;
}

Svn integration on nautilus

http://naughtysvn.tigris.org/ should be something like TortoiseSVN, but integrates with Nautilus!
It's just version 0.0.1,and I didn't see any new release in the past year... I hope the project is still alive!

Have a look at this post about using subversion not only for source code.

Wine 1.0

Il Wine team è felice di annunciare la versione 1.0 di Wine! Dopo 15 anni di sviluppo ora abbiamo la prima stable!
Su http://appdb.winehq.org c'è una bella listona degli applicativi funzionanti.
Mi aspetto che anche ReactOS faccia un bel salto in avanti...

Compiz oltre compiz

Sul blog di uno dei tipi di compiz fusion, c'è un post veramente tonante: con Octopus abbiamo sempre discusso la possibile innovazione di un interfaccia uomo-macchina veramente 3D. Questo è un passo significativo.
Ora però bisogna trovare gli occhiali...

gDesklets

Per installare le gDesklets su Ubuntu, è sufficiente andare su Applicazioni->Aggiungi/Rimuovi, cercare il package ed installarlo.
Per poi mettere il demone gdesklet in startup automatico, Sistema->Preferenze->Sessioni, click sul bottone aggiungi, ed inserite "gDesklets" nella casella nome, e "gdesklets start" nella casella comando; ad ogni startup vi ritroverete le vostre desklets attive!
Inoltre, in caso di pasticci, per "ricominciare tutto da capo" è sufficiente cancellare la cartella ".gdesklets" dalla vostra home. Da provare assolutamente la "StarterBar" e le "StickyNotes"!
Facile, bello, utile?

Ubuntu 7.10

Doxygen&graphviz

Per creare la documentazione del codice, disponibile sia per Linux che per Windows, l'accoppiata doxygen + graphviz permette di generare files HTML, LaTex, RTF con tanto di diagrammi UML. Imperdibile!

Imperdibile!

Ubuntu e' diventato obbligatorio!!!
Ubuntu Satanic Edition: Buzz, non hai piu' scuse, questo lo *DEVI* installare!

My next Linux distro

I'm thinking about setting up a Linux DAW...
http://demudi.agnula.org
http://ubuntummc.com
http://ccrma.stanford.edu/planetccrma/software/
I'd like to get a nice codec set (even if they aren't open source), I would like a low latency kernel, LADSPA, ALSA, Ardour and wathever I need for usual office work (Open Office... nothing else!). I'd like to have AIGLX and Compiz as well, and Sun's JDK 5 and NetBeans... we'll see...

Linux drivers

I should practice my English, so I'll try to write some posts in English from now on.
I've plugged my Logitec web-cam in my Fedora 6 laptop, hoping that the OS would recognize it. Sadly it didn't happened, so I went on Logitec's site, but they don't supply Linux drivers. I haven't tried my Epson Photo R300 printer yet, but I guess I won't get the same printing results as in windows, because of the lack of an Epson's specific driver. Why are all this hardware vendors not suppling Linux drivers? Is it a matter of licenses? If so, why are they giving out free drivers for win and mac? ATI and nVidia have closed-source drivers for Linux, so I guess it's not a question about licenses. Maybe they don't care about Linux users, they think that spending in the development of Linux drivers won't give a return in investment... the solution could be letting the community develop the software, by exposing the hardware specifics, but that would let competitors to learn about the technology used. So is this a no solution problem?
No. In object oriented programming, there is a parading which enables a programmer to expose only something about its work – that is the “interface” – while hiding the implementation, the algorithms behind a piece of software: the information hiding paradigm. Can this paradigm be used in another context, precisely in the software interface between the operating system and a hardware device? Well, actually it IS used, exactly in this precise context! Think about all the PROTOCOLS used between devices, some of which are even OPEN PROTOCOLS... maybe the community itself could provide open protocols between devices! Imagine a “universal printer protocol” which relies on one or more well know communication layer (via USB, or parallel port, or even over a network adapter) that includes all the PostScript and PCL features, and adds some special features like color calibration or else (the availability of this optional features could be negotiated between the devices by the “universal printer protocol” itself). Or a “universal A/V protocol”, which includes bidirectional audio and video streaming over an open compression format (ogg?), or without compression on simpler device (am I thinking about my web-cam?), every thing transported over a well known connection layer (of course USB 2, or firewire, or even a wireless or hard wired network protocol). The vendors could even enhance these open protocols, by proposing or adding features, and the same protocol could be used by every operating system (Linux, Windows, Mac, but also Symbian via infrared or bluetooth, or by cell phones). And easily a device could expose the implemented features, and higher versions of the protocol could provide new or enhanced features as well: a printer protocol 1.0 could provide black and white printing, while 2.0 could provide colors, and 2.1 even more colors...

Java 5 won't work with Compiz

E subito brutte news...
Ho scaricato l'ultima jdk 5 con netbeans 5.5 (vedi qui), ma purtroppo non funziona con Compiz. Ho letto su qualche newsgroup che la jdk 1.4.2 non ha questo problema, e anche che i ragazzi della Sun ci stanno lavorando su. Ma merda... ah, naturalmente su winzozz funziona, e tra l'altro sembra anche "molto bbuonoo".
Tra l'altro ho avuto qualche prob anche con Eclipse con il CDT scaricato con l'apt-get, ma rimuovendo il package apt e installandolo come plugin di eclipse, funzia (vedi qui come fare).
Bonci.

Composition manager

Da qualche giorno ho installato Ubuntu e Fedora sui miei PC, per provare Compiz, e per capire se il prossimo anno varra' la pena aggiornare a Vista per usufruire del nuovo tema grafico. Sono sempre stato un fan di Xgl, ed ho sempre una live di Kororaa in borsa!
Seguendo un Howto ho installato i driver proprietari di nVidia per il desktop su cui gira Ubuntu per poter attivare AIGLX e Compiz, mentre sul portatile Anaconda ha riconosciuto la ATI Mobility senza battere ciglio, installando gia' di default Compiz (basta solo abilitarlo da una voce nel menu' di preferenze). Il risultato e' fantastico, non ne posso piu' fare a meno, e win non mi era mai sembrato cosi' brutto!
Pero' pero' pero'....
1) Gnome e' piu' lento del front end grafico di win
2) JBuilder non si installa, e' configurato per qualche release precedente di librerie (ma qui approfondiro')
3) La webcam Logitech non va di default, quindi anche qui dovro' approfondire
4) Eclipse e' cosi' lento che ti passa la voglia di programmare
Ora sto scaricando NetBeans, sperando di trovare un ambiente di sviluppo Java soddisfacente, mentre per quanto riguarda il C++ dovro' ancora fare qualche esperimento.