I'm glad to see some positive news coming from Oracle. Solaris is a great OS and I'm thankful that I can keep using it for free on my servers at home.

Now if we could also get full ZFS support for Linux, that would be great.

I remember AT&T slapping on $10 of "government fees and taxes" to my $60 plan, without specifying what those fees and taxes were.

I really hope they get to pay for that one day...

It all depends on what you look like and where you are. Technically, you're probably supposed to carry your passport as a foreigner in a ton of countries. But if you stay out of trouble and look like you're there for a reason, you've got nothing to worry about. Countries with lots of tourists don't want to annoy tourists for no reason.

I've travelled and lived in a large number a few countries over the last 15 years, including the US. Let's take the US as an example. If you speak good English, you'll never have a problem, except maybe getting into bars. If you don't speak good English and look like you're from somewhere else, carrying your passport would probably be a good idea.

As someone else pointed out, bringing your foreign driver's license is usually fine. As long as you've got some kind of ID, they can give you the benefit of the doubt.

Google is working on a translation system that's based on the massive information they've gathered off the internet. To get an idea of how this works, have a look at the 2009 Google Wave developer presentation. Fast forward to about 1h 12min
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_UyVmITiYQ

In another demo (which I can't find right now) they show how the translation engine understands the context of the conversation.

It's easy to see how this could be applied to a phone call using the right voice recognition software.

I've been using 1.1.1.1/8 at home for years. It's by far the quickest to type and remember.

I'll probably keep using it for a while, until I need to reach any of those officially allocated addresses in 1/8. Hearing they got allocated in Africa and Latina America is really good news, since I rarely go to African and Latin American websites.

My Linux server is in our basement too. Even in our warm climate (Australia) there's more than enough cool air without some fancy cooling solution. I don't see why the guy needs extra cooling. Isn't his basement not cold enough for a few computers ?

I just did the opposite. I got a number of wireless access points and connected everything in a WDS setup, thinking that would cover all my network needs.

Last weekend, I wired the whole house with gigabit ethernet. For some things, like streaming large files and IP based phone systems, wireless just doesn't cut it. Laptops and phones connect to the wireless network and everything else use plain reliable ethernet.

I've been to Siggraph a number of times. There are always a lot of creative display devices, virtual reality setups, 3D displays, etc, so that doesn't surprise me. But the scratchable input device is actually really cool: I wish I could get ahold of the source code for that one. Just imagine what you could do to automate your house:

1) Put one in your favorite TV chair and get rid of the remotes
2) Get rid of locks and door handles. Only the correct tap or gesture on the wall opens the door. When you've got friends over, you can semi-quote Back to the Future: "Door handles ? Where we're going, you don't need door handles..."

Technically, I don't think mail order is a loop hole as much as it is a tool of free trade. I think the origin to this "loop hole" is a free trade agreement between states established by the federal govt. Not having taxes between states benefits competition in the market place.

In CA, the state charges a tax on everything that is sold. This tax is paid by the business for the privilege of operating in CA and of course passed on to the consumer. If I live in CA and buy something from another state, I'm technically supposed to declare "use tax" for the goods bought elsewhere, but used in California. Of course, no one does that, but that's another problem.

Within the European Union, there is a similar free trade agreement. Countries are no longer allowed to tax goods and services coming from other country. The difference to the US is that EU countries are better at collecting the "use tax".

When I bought a prepaid sim card in Switzerland last year, they wouldn't give it to me unless they got my passport information etc.

In Australia, you need to call to activate your prepaid sim card. When you do, they ask for your name and address under the pretext that they need it for emergency services.

I can't be bothered making up any in Soviet Russia jokes, but I'm sure someone else will :)

Looking at the youtube videos, there's a different iPhone application for each device (TiVo, Sonos, TV, ...)

So instead of having N remotes on my coffee table to choose from, I only need to download and install N different applications on my iPhone ? How modern and convenient.

Wake me up when there's a UNIVERSAL remote application for a smart phone.

I am writing this from my 8 core Intel box running Linux with 8GB of memory. This is the FASTEST computer I've ever had and the first time I've noticed a big leap forward. I normally don't care about cpu speeds, graphics cards, etc. Hardware tends to be fast enough for the current generation of software (I run Linux) and that's usually all you need. But this 8 core thing is different.

I develop and run very heavy graphics applications, where cpu tends to be the bottleneck. In my world, you used to rely on extra cpu from render farms or clusters to get the job done.

This world is changing. Shorter kind of jobs that require a quick turnaround, can now be done locally instead of sending jobs to the render farm. This is massive. As people start doing more jobs locally, it also frees up space for the longer running batch jobs, so they get done faster too.

When I first got the machine, it had Windows installed and it felt just as slow as a regular (single or double cpu/core) box. That should be of no surprise to anyone around here. But Linux sure knows how to use the multi core magic.

Although Oracle specific, I would also add "Effective Oracle by Design" by Thomas Kyte to the list of good books about database application design and performance optimisation.

I read this book while working with Oracle, but now apply the concepts to my current job with Postgres.

She'd just explain it all as she knows all there is to know about technology.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4d4rdat3HdA