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Comment Re:Who is This Helping? (Score 1) 445

by swsuehr (#36534742) Attached to: No Additional Firefox 4 Security Updates

Can you cite any examples where something worked in Firefox 4 but not Firefox 5?

Asking what is broken within *this* particular version is completely missing the point. The point is that someone needs to now go back to their PHB and say that FF is now at new version. Resources for the business need to be taken to examine what changed and how those changed bits will affect the organization's web site. And now this process needs to be repeated every six weeks.

At some point, something major *will* change between versions. In the past, one could look at it and say "ok, version 4.0.1 came out, probably just addressed something minor. Version 5 just came out, must be a major new release, we should look at what changed." The new numbering scheme and release schedule makes it much more time consuming to support Firefox because now every release needs to be examined with the care and attention previously only reserved for major versions.

Well-publicized schedule? New version every 6 weeks.

You missed the word "sane" in my post. Six weeks != sane release schedule for major versions of this software. And yes, the version number incrementing *does* indicate a major version.

You're right again in that people don't want to update their software, that's why Firefox (again like Chrome) does it automatically.

Hmm. Not sure if FF actually does update automatically between major versions, I didn't think so. In any event, major version changes in Firefox have broken add-ons which is a failure for the user.

I don't care if Mozilla releases every 6 weeks, every 3 weeks, or every 3 hours. I do care about supporting the browser on multiple web sites and having to work with developers and users alike. Keeping the version numbers on a major/minor/bug fix scheme actually does work; it wasn't a broken model. This version number bouncing is not for the benefit of the user. Seems to be Mozilla with a case of version number envy; their number is smaller than IE and Chrome and they want to fix it, regardless of whether it benefits anyone.

Comment Who is This Helping? (Score 5, Insightful) 445

by swsuehr (#36531686) Attached to: No Additional Firefox 4 Security Updates

Who, exactly, is the rapid release schedule helping? It's certainly not helping web developers and organizations who try to list their supported browser versions and actually try to code towards those versions. The quickest path to get the corporate PHBs to stop supporting your browser is to have the IT staff say "Guess what, the next version of Firefox is already out so we need to make updates." At some places, support for browsers other than IE is tenuous at best, so making it more difficult to support these browsers only hurts the browser manufacturers.

Want to gain more support? Release a stable product, with wide support for standards and add-ons, and do so on a sane, well-publicized schedule. People don't care about version numbers; updating software isn't something people want or like to do. Why are you making it more difficult and cumbersome for users to use your product?

Comment Er, Why use Version Numbers At All? (Score 5, Interesting) 336

by swsuehr (#34944230) Attached to: No More Version Numbers For HTML

I broke the cardinal rule and read TFA. From TFA:

"Hickson mentions that the group will be dropping the HTML5 name immediately, but it we have not received a confirmation that this will happen over at the W3C as well."

So WHATWG will no longer be using numbers? WHATWG can call it "Hullapuhjelpus" as far as I'm concerned as long as W3C still continues using version numbers. Version numbers provide excellent reference points to featuresets and are useful to implementers, developers, and end users alike.
From the WHATWG Blog:

"However, shortly after that we realised that the demand for new features in HTML remained high, and so we would have to continue maintaining HTML and adding features to it before we could call "HTML5" complete, and as a result we moved to a new development model, where the technology is not versioned and instead we just have a living document that defines the technology as it evolves."

Because there's demand for new features you no longer want to use a numbering scheme? Many standards are evolving. Why not just increment the minor version when new features are added? HTML version 5.1 added this cool thing, 5.2 this cool thing, etc.

If we're dumping version numbers then why bother calling it Internet Explorer 6, 7, 8, and 9? Why not just call it "Internet Explorer"? We all know that each of those versions render pages the same, right? Hmm. I just realized that I invoked Internet Explorer in a discussion about standards. Mea Culpa.

How does removing the version number help the people who need to implement and work with the standard?
Book Reviews

Submission + - Book Review: The Book of Xen

Submitted by swsuehr
swsuehr writes: The Book of Xen (Takemura and Crawford, No Starch Press, 2009) provides an excellent resource for learning about Xen virtualization. I frequently need to create test environments for examples that appear in various books and magazine articles (in the interest of full disclosure, I've never written for the publisher of this book). In the days before virtualization that meant finding and piecing together hardware. Like many readers, I've been using virtualization in one form or another for several years, including Xen. This book would've saved hours searching around the web looking for tidbits of information and sifting through what works and doesn't work in setting up Xen environments. The authors have done the sifting for me within the ~250 pages of the book. But far beyond, the authors also convey their experience with Xen using walkthroughs, tips, and recommendations for Xen in the real world.

"The Book of Xen", "A Practical Guide for the System Administrator"

As stated in the subtitle, The Book of Xen is written with the system administrator in mind; someone who is comfortable with tasks like installing Linux and working with the command line. While it wouldn't be impossible for someone completely new to Linux to accomplish the tasks in the book, a bit of experience would go a long way to both visualize and complete the installation and configuration steps shown in the book. As stated in the introduction, the book is organized "(mostly) alternating between theoretical and practical discussion [because] an admin needs both practical experience and a firm theoretical ground to effectively solve problems..." (xxiii).

The authors do an excellent job of explaining what Xen is and where it fits in the virtualization landscape. This explanation begins with the introduction where the reader gathers a brief history of virtualization along with Xen's place in the landscape. Xen's limitations and reasons for using Xen are also covered right in the introduction, along with an overview of the book.

Chapter 1 begins with a high-level overview of Xen. This discussion is excellent if only to get the readers on equal footing for the discussions to come later in the book. Included in this chapter is a discussion of various techniques for virtualization including Full Virtualization, OS Virtualization, and Paravirtualization. The section on Paravirtualization leads nicely into some of the underlying details of scheduling, interrupts, and memory, and other resource management which are handled by Xen and discussed later in the chapter.

Chapter 2 sends the reader down the path of installing and using Xen. It's a short chapter, coming in at about 9 pages, and the reader is expected to be able to handle an install of CentOS with just a bit of guidance from the authors on specific options to select. This is a key point for those among us who have a preference for a certain Linux distribution. The book isn't tied specifically to a single distro, as the authors note in the introduction, "[w]e've tried to keep this book as distribution- and version-independent as possible, except in the tutorial sections, where we try to be extremely specific and detailed..." (xxiv). The base or host system upon which the examples run is based on CentOS, which the authors acknowledge and highlight in Chapter 2, "[f]or the purposes of this chapter, we'll assume you're installing CentOS 5.x with the server defaults and using its built-in Xen support. If you're using something else, this chapter will probably still be useful, but you might have to improvise a bit" (13). There is discussion of the Xen-tools package in a later chapter which shows its installation under Debian Linux too. So far from being tied to one distro, the book is refreshingly neutral in this regard.

By the end of Chapter 2, the reader has a working Xen host system and a domain 0 or dom0 host upon which to provision virtual machines. Included in Chapter 3 is a discussion of how to provision guest operating systems, known as domU in Xen-speak. The authors devote a good number of pages to making this task clear, and work through examples of basic domU installation and the use of package management systems and Debian's debootstrap to create domUs. Additionally in Chapter 3 the reader learns how to convert VMware disk images to a format usable by Xen.

Chapters 4 and 5 examine details of the Xen backend, including storage and networking. Chapter 4 stands out for its recommendation of blktap and LVM (Logical Volume Manager) as the storage backend as well as an overview of LVM itself, along with the use of networked storage for Xen.

Chapter 6 looks at tools for management of Xen, focusing on Xen-tools, libvirt, and Xen-shell while Chapter 7 gives advice for hosting untrusted users with Xen. Chapter 8 discusses the use of Xen with Unix-like operating systems and includes sections on Solaris and NetBSD.

The ability to migrate the virtual machine from one physical machine to another is one of the advantages of virtualization. As pointed out by the authors, a virtual machine might be migrated to take advantage of newer hardware, to perform maintenance, or any number of other reasons. Chapter 9 is of interest for its discussion of Xen migration. Cold and Live migrations are examined and Footnote 1 on page 126 is interesting for its reference to the Kemari Project and Project Remus which are projects to add hardware redundancy to Xen.

Tools and techniques for the measurement of Xen performance are shown in Chapter 10, which walks the reader through basic usage of well-known tools such as Bonnie++, httperf, UnixBench, and others. More importantly for the Xen admin is the discussion of Xen-aware profilers like Xenoprof which is "a version of OProfile that has been extended to work as a system-wide profiling tool under Xen..." (151).

Chapter 11 covers the Citrix XenServer, which is the enterprise-grade commercial Xen product from Citrix. The authors summarized it best in the review of Chapter 11: "Can Citrix's product replace the open source Xen? As always, the answer is maybe. It offers significant improvements in management and some interesting new capabilities, but that's balanced against the substantial cost and annoying limitations" (174).

Chapter 12 begins the discussion of Hardware Virtual Machines (HVMs), which are virtualization extensions that enable "an unmodified operating system [to run] as a domU" (176). This means the ability to run an unmodified version of Microsoft Windows as a guest OS within a Xen environment. The HVM discussion in Chapter 12 leads nicely into Chapter 13, "Xen and Windows".

The main chapters of the book end with Chapter 14, "Tips", and Chapter 15, "Troubleshooting". Both chapters draw on the experience of the authors and provide value to the book for their recommendations. Though the tool of choice for troubleshooting is the nearest Google search box, it's still helpful to glance over the content in the Troubleshooting chapter if for no other reason than to maybe remember that it's there when you receive the dreaded "Error: DestroyDevice() takes exactly 3 arguments" error.

The Book of Xen is almost certainly a time-saver for anyone looking to implement Xen or virtualization with Linux. The back cover states "The Complete Guide to Virtualization with Xen". The book lives up to that statement and more.

Submission + - Working Totally In The Cloud As a Web Developer

Submitted by tedcarew
tedcarew writes: Lately, with or without realizing, everything is moving to the cloud so fast. I no longer use MS office software or have a 2nd harddrive to backup my data. They are all in the cloud.

After reading an inspiring article: "100% Web-Based Working For Web Designers", realized that it is already so possible to work in the cloud without the need of any software but only an internet connection.

There is an alternative for every desktop application in the web: file management, image editing, storage, etc. Working in the cloud does not only mean portability but also a huge decrease in the licensing costs of softwares used, no need to purchasing stronger computers every year and so. What do you think, is it worth and possible?
Microsoft

Submission + - Seattle CTO and OpenSource... NOT (wordpress.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: This post by the CTO of the City of Seattle is vehemently pro Microsoft. What is amazing is just how much so. Consider the opening rationale: "Microsoft provides 40,000 jobs in my area" and then another gem: "But I’m somewhat baffled that any CIO of a large government would seriously consider using open source software for our mission critical systems and services. This seems a little bit like using cell phones to dispatch police officers and firefighters or outsourcing your help desk to India. It will save money in the short term and work pretty well “most” of the time "

Submission + - So where are my technology e-books? 1

Submitted by darkeye
darkeye writes: With e-ink and e-books coming of age, it would be kind of obvious, that the first adopters of this technology would be tech enthusiasts themselves — who, for the most part, will be reading thick technology books, and also using them as reference. Anyone who has tried to travel with his tech books knows the weight of dead trees in their backpack, and would appreciate all that info in a single e-book, to be read on an e-book reader or on a laptop.

But — where are these e-books? Why is the paper edition still the default? Looking at major online book stores, either you're being forced into proprietary hardware & software like the Amazon Kindle http://www.amazon.com/Kindle-Wireless-Reading-Display-Generation/dp/B0015T963C/ref=amb_link_86172951_2?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-1&pf_rd_r=1PQRCJAZ1HS0S6YHSB0G&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=502000191&pf_rd_i=507846 , or you're not offered an e-book at all (Barns & Nobles, http://search.barnesandnoble.com/ , despite having their own e-book reader, the Nook, http://www.barnesandnoble.com/nook/ ), or you're stuck with viewing online and downloading a limited number of inconvenient watermarked chapters for a subscription fee (Safari online, http://www.safaribooksonline.com/ ). Publishers direct online stores usually don't offer e-books at all. It's only InformIT (http://www.informit.com/) that offers you e-books, at about a 20% discount when compared to the paper version.

So where are the e-books? When is it, that the default is going to be the environmentally friendly and convenient way of sharing written information? When are the reduced costs of this form of dissemination shared with the readers themselves?
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft to switch focus to Windows 8 in June

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Ars Technica:
Microsoft will be switching internal focus from Windows 7 to Windows 8 in fiscal year 2011. Microsoft's fiscal year starts in July, which is only eight months away. According to Microsoft's roadmaps, the release of Windows 8 is scheduled for release in 2012.
Book Reviews

Submission + - The Book of Xen

Submitted by swsuehr
swsuehr writes: The Book of Xen (Takemura and Crawford, No Starch Press, 2009) provides an excellent resource for learning about Xen virtualization. I frequently need to create test environments for examples that appear in various books and magazine articles (in the interest of full disclosure, I've never written for the publisher of this book). In the days before virtualization that meant finding and piecing together hardware. Like many readers, I've been using virtualization in one form or another for several years, including Xen. This book would've saved hours searching around the web looking for tidbits of information and sifting through what works and doesn't work in setting up Xen environments. The authors have done the sifting for me within the ~250 pages of the book.

"The Book of Xen", "A Practical Guide for the System Administrator"

As stated in the subtitle, The Book of Xen is written with the system administrator in mind; someone who is comfortable with tasks like installing Linux and working with the command line. While it wouldn't be impossible for someone completely new to Linux to accomplish the tasks in the book, a bit of experience would go a long way to both visualize and complete the installation and configuration steps shown in the book. As stated in the introduction, the book is organized "(mostly) alternating between theoretical and practical discussion [because] an admin needs both practical experience and a firm theoretical ground to effectively solve problems..." (xxiii).

The authors do an excellent job of explaining what Xen is and where it fits in the virtualization landscape. This explanation begins with the introduction where the reader gathers a brief history of virtualization along with Xen's place in the landscape. Xen's limitations and reasons for using Xen are also covered right in the introduction, along with an overview of the book.

Chapter 1 begins with a high-level overview of Xen. This discussion is excellent if only to get the readers on equal footing for the discussions to come later in the book. Included in this chapter is a discussion of various techniques for virtualization including Full Virtualization, OS Virtualization, and Paravirtualization. The section on Paravirtualization leads nicely into some of the underlying details of scheduling, interrupts, and memory, and other resource management which are handled by Xen and discussed later in the chapter.

Chapter 2 sends the reader down the path of installing and using Xen. It's a short chapter, coming in at about 9 pages, and the reader is expected to be able to handle an install of CentOS with just a bit of guidance from the authors on specific options to select. This is a key point for those among us who have a preference for a certain Linux distribution. The book isn't tied specifically to a single distro, as the authors note in the introduction, "[w]e've tried to keep this book as distribution- and version-independent as possible, except in the tutorial sections, where we try to be extremely specific and detailed..." (xxiv). The base or host system upon which the examples run is based on CentOS, which the authors acknowledge and highlight in Chapter 2, "[f]or the purposes of this chapter, we'll assume you're installing CentOS 5.x with the server defaults and using its built-in Xen support. If you're using something else, this chapter will probably still be useful, but you might have to improvise a bit" (13). There is discussion of the Xen-tools package in a later chapter which shows its installation under Debian Linux too. So far from being tied to one distro, the book is refreshingly neutral in this regard.

By the end of Chapter 2, the reader has a working Xen host system and a domain 0 or dom0 host upon which to provision virtual machines. Included in Chapter 3 is a discussion of how to provision guest operating systems, known as domU in Xen-speak. The authors devote a good number of pages to making this task clear, and work through examples of basic domU installation and the use of package management systems and Debian's debootstrap to create domUs. Additionally in Chapter 3 the reader learns how to convert VMware disk images to a format usable by Xen.

Chapters 4 and 5 examine details of the Xen backend, including storage and networking. Chapter 4 stands out for its recommendation of blktap and LVM (Logical Volume Manager) as the storage backend as well as an overview of LVM itself, along with the use of networked storage for Xen.

Chapter 6 looks at tools for management of Xen, focusing on Xen-tools, libvirt, and Xen-shell while Chapter 7 gives advice for hosting untrusted users with Xen. Chapter 8 discusses the use of Xen with Unix-like operating systems and includes sections on Solaris and NetBSD.

The ability to migrate the virtual machine from one physical machine to another is one of the advantages of virtualization. As pointed out by the authors, a virtual machine might be migrated to take advantage of newer hardware, to perform maintenance, or any number of other reasons. Chapter 9 is of interest for its discussion of Xen migration. Cold and Live migrations are examined and Footnote 1 on page 126 is interesting for its reference to the Kemari Project and Project Remus which are projects to add hardware redundancy to Xen.

Tools and techniques for the measurement of Xen performance are shown in Chapter 10, which walks the reader through basic usage of well-known tools such as Bonnie++, httperf, UnixBench, and others. More importantly for the Xen admin is the discussion of Xen-aware profilers like Xenoprof which is "a version of OProfile that has been extended to work as a system-wide profiling tool under Xen..." (151).

Chapter 11 covers the Citrix XenServer, which is the enterprise-grade commercial Xen product from Citrix. The authors summarized it best in the review of Chapter 11: "Can Citrix's product replace the open source Xen? As always, the answer is maybe. It offers significant improvements in management and some interesting new capabilities, but that's balanced against the substantial cost and annoying limitations" (174).

Chapter 12 begins the discussion of Hardware Virtual Machines (HVMs), which are virtualization extensions that enable "an unmodified operating system [to run] as a domU" (176). This means the ability to run an unmodified version of Microsoft Windows as a guest OS within a Xen environment. The HVM discussion in Chapter 12 leads nicely into Chapter 13, "Xen and Windows".

The main chapters of the book end with Chapter 14, "Tips", and Chapter 15, "Troubleshooting". Both chapters draw on the experience of the authors and provide value to the book for their recommendations. Though the tool of choice for troubleshooting is the nearest Google search box, it's still helpful to glance over the content in the Troubleshooting chapter if for no other reason than to maybe remember that it's there when you receive the dreaded "Error: DestroyDevice() takes exactly 3 arguments" error.

The Book of Xen is almost certainly a time-saver for anyone looking to implement Xen or virtualization with Linux. The back cover states "The Complete Guide to Virtualization with Xen". The book lives up to that statement and more.
Google

Submission + - Is Google abandoning Gears? (technologizer.com)

Submitted by harrymcc
harrymcc writes: When Google announced its Gears technology for giving Web services offline capabilities in early 2007, it looked like it could have a huge impact in speeding the transition from traditional software to the cloud. But Gears never got an outpouring of support from Web-service companies--even Google's own support in its own products has been scattered and incomplete. Now the company seems to be saying that developers who like the Gears concept should focus their attention on HTML5, which will bring Gears-like features--eventually. Is the Gears dream over?

Comment They *still* don't get it? (Score 2, Insightful) 468

by swsuehr (#30201236) Attached to: Murdoch-Microsoft Deal In the Works

Microsoft seems to have a long history of not understanding the Internet. Witness them being very late to the party with Internet Explorer, and then not being smart enough to figure out that they should set a default home page to their sites with early versions of IE. And then the various attempts at lock-in and biased search results over the years.

I can't help but think this is yet another example of Microsoft attempting to make the Internet into something that they want it to be, something that benefits only them, rather than something that benefits society as a whole. People won't change their habits so easily, they'll just use whatever sites come up in Google. This will be a boon to those sites that remain in the Google index.

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