Googley Phrases

From Doug, an ex-Googler who was G's brand manager for quite a while: "A few key phrases to know if you ever attend a meeting in the GooglePlex."

Ev calls it as he sees it.

I really hope people don't actually follow Ev's "Ten Rules for Web Startups". It's much easier to compete against companies who are too scatterbrained to really focus and put out a decent product!

I didn't know that Ev actually followed GTD but I remember that he went to the David Allen seminar we had at Google back in 2003.

fluxiom delivers?

"fluxiom - capture, manage, access and deliver content across your enterprise" Despite how the demo might seem, it's browser-based and not Aqua.

Ian Murdock on the Nexenta/Debian row.

Ian Murdock’s Weblog :: No good deed goes unpunished: "One of the big Debian stories of the week is that a company called Nexenta Systems has made a version of Ubuntu that’s based on OpenSolaris rather than the Linux kernel. Personally, I find the emergence of a Debian-based OpenSolaris distribution exciting, as it promises to vastly improve Solaris installation, packaging, and overall usability."

...

"And, so, I’m more than a little embarrassed at how certain members of the Debian community reacted to Nexenta’s work. The vitriol surprised even me, knowing as much as I know about how, uh, strongly the Debian community feels about certain issues."

I've used Nexenta and it's really very good for a distribution as young as it is. As soon as it integrates ZFS, I will switch my Solaris 10 system to Nexenta.

Application 2.0 musings

Application 2.0 musings | Doc Searls' IT Garage: "There's no reason for closing a web browser to lose information with AJAX. There is no reason why an application can't keep its state stored on the server, where it belongs. Closing the wrong browser window should never lead to a trail of tears."

Java 6 to have epoll support

Alan Bateman : Weblog: "To poll or epoll: that is the question: One of the updates in build 59 of Mustang (JavaTM SE 6) is that the New I/O Selector implementation will use the epoll event notification facility when running on the Linux 2.6 kernel. The epoll event mechanism is much more scalable than the traditional poll when there are thousands of file descriptors in the interest set. "

This is great. Blackdown has had epoll support for a while now but I've not used it.

Hessian 1.0.1 Specification

Hessian 1.0.1 Specification: "Hessian is a compact binary protocol for connecting web services."

Write a filesystem in Java

FUSE-J: "Java bindings for FUSE (Filesystem in USErspace) is a Java API that uses JNI bindings to FUSE library and enables writing Linux filesystems in Java language."

You know, one that you can run "ls" on, not just abstractly treat like a filesystem (e.g. GFS).

Jockey

"Jockey is a user-space library for recording and replaying an execution of generic GNU/Linux programs. It is a debugging tool especially for long-running networked servers that suffer from bugs that are difficult to reproduce."

A Picture Share!

Somebody (not me) got a new BMW. A nice ride, I have to say.

Sam Ruby: Sometimes the dragon wins

Sam Ruby: Sometimes the dragon wins: "I believe more strongly than ever that internationalization is an excellent litmus test as to whether or not that flashy startup has an expensive rewrite in their future."

Also in that post: "At the present time, Java is better than Python, PHP, Perl, and Ruby in handling Unicode."

Unfortunately, very true.

• In Python, the disconnect between a string and a unicode string is very frustrating. Python 3000, come save us!
• Correct me if I'm wrong but in Ruby, you need an extension (!!!) to use Unicode.
• In Common Lisp, there is some promise because a character is defined as a non-negative number. Note: Not bounded on size.

But in the meantime, you are better off writing in Java or even C++ if you expect to have to deal with lots of Unicode. Python will get there but God help Ruby as there are some nasty politics in play because of Han Unification.