technomomster

Android Dev links

2012-01-26T13:18:00.000-08:00

Taking mobile development class. Barely keeping my head above water, since I don't have extensive Java Development, and haven't done much for almost two years AND it is an ECE class - much different mindset than MIS.

Fascinated by the idea of using ad-hoc wifi, or other p2p 802.11 wireless with android devices. It looks like there is a new standard from API for android
WifiDirect

Some other interesting links:

LAN-Based peer to peer using Adobe Air
and this http://blog.immanuelnoel.com/2011/08/11/p2p-apps-for-mobile-devices/

Frostwire Peer-to-peer filesharing for android via WiFi https://github.com/frostwire/frostwire-android

This is not exactly in same class but awesome I want to explore more: http://wiki.daviddarts.com/PirateBox_DIY

Bio Rad Social media

2011-04-16T11:28:00.000-07:00

bio rad 6,500 employees
Genomics:
> Amplification/PCR/qPCR (http://www.bio-rad.com/PCR)
> Transfection (http://www.bio-rad.com/transfection)
> Cell counting (http://www.bio-rad.com/TC10)
> Spectrophotometry & Fluorometry
> Nucleic acid electrophoresis (http://www.bio-rad.com/subcell)
> Nucleic acid sample preparation

youtube video to promote new 1000 platform
almost 1 million views. "pcr when you need to find out whose your daddy"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5yPkxCLads&feature=player_embedded
GTCA - 120k views.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQEaX3MiDow&NR=1
FB page
http://www.facebook.com/BioRadGenomics 353 fans marketing 6,500 employees
customer interaction - product discussion
http://www.facebook.com/BioRadGenomics?sk=app_2373072738#!/topic.php?uid=315474864939&topic=13782
customer service/ pre-sales
http://www.facebook.com/BioRadGenomics?sk=app_2373072738#!/topic.php?uid=315474864939&topic=14160
marketing
http://www.facebook.com/BioRadGenomics?sk=app_2373072738#!/topic.php?uid=315474864939&topic=14356
Twitter
http://twitter.com/BioRadGenomics 1000 followers

B2B social media - Communities in Medical Industry

2011-04-13T10:43:00.000-07:00

I have been researching:

Should a B2B Medical diagnositics company start a professional community site for a group of users? Within this are questions:

ROI of social media, specifically

ROI of professional community sites

Direct Revenue from site
ROI from increased sales as a result
Other measures which influence sales

Increased Brand image, Trust -> customer retention
Increased Trust -> increased customer testimonials

Decreased Customer support calls,
Increase in marketing data collection at decreased cost
Increase in ability to hold and record conversations with end users

ROI of other B2B social media (facebook, twitter)
Costs of implementing

Community site
Other social media program costs

Examples
Concerns about regulated industry what can be done

B2B, Medical and Lifesciences diagnostics; case studies and best practices examples

Key is Utility, Value, Entertainment "because they believed in the power of their strategies, they went ahead without compromising and focused their efforts and resources in developing best in class executions. Unfortunately, diminishing initial creative ideas is a mistake that still happens too often due to the difficulties in evaluating return on investment in social media." BurgerKing, BestBuy, Gap, Canon EOS (community photos ) http://jyesmith.com/social-media/4-case-studies-in-utility-value-and-entertainment/
Indium - 15 engineers blog: 70 blogs. http://socialmediab2b.com/2009/09/b2b-social-media-example-indium-blogs/ - Rick Short Indium

There is also a statement that these are personal opinions, rather than company positions.

Mayo clinic
You tube channel - community - testimonials from patients, talks by docs
http://www.youtube.com/user/mayoclinic#p/a/u/0/3N-2v-fjCB0
Thought Leadership: Mayo Clinic center for health social media
http://socialmedia.mayoclinic.org/

Social Media tools for analysis:
Listening: http://socialmediab2b.com/2010/06/b2b-social-media-tools-4/

Industry segment: life sciences diagnostics
biorad genomics FB -
They also have some amazing youtube video
http://www.facebook.com/BioRadGenomics
http://www.facebook.com/BioRadGenomics#!/topic.php?uid=315474864939&topic=14356

Sigma-Aldrich
Facebook
http://www.facebook.com/SigmaAldrich

Roche xcelligence
http://seekingalpha.com/article/140515-bio-rad-sparks-video-war-among-lab-supply-companies 20k views
Roche also has twitter pages (multiple)

Applied Biosciences
PCR - Amplitaq 360
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISGQt9WJi5k&feature=related

Illumina - Genome analysis machines
900B revenue / 124m income 2010

Real-Time PCR (qPCR) uses various fluorescent detection chemistries to monitor a PCR reaction as it progresses, allowing samples to be characterized at the point when amplification is first detected,

twitter https://twitter.com/illuminaqpcr
http://twitter.com/illuminainfo

ROI
Compendium on ROI case studes http://barnraisersllc.com/?p=2504

Cisco saved $100k on product launch costs through investment in social media instead of in traditional media http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/cisco-social-media-product-launch/
ROI and internal community and Social media strategy: IBM

Has SM guidelines, but does not police employees
Provides and internal platform for Inside co social media with 17,000 blogs, internal wiki with over a million daily page views.
Crowd-sourcing identified 10 best incubator businesses, which IBM funded with $100 million
$100 billion in total revenue with a 44.1% gross profit margin in 2008
http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/how-ibm-uses-social-media-to-spur-employee-innovation/

Community sites:
presentation on why brand communities? Benefits:
http://www.slideshare.net/agentwildfire/it-takes-a-community-to-raise-a-brand-not-a-campaign-presentation

Hispanito http://www.socialmediaportal.com/Research/2008/04/How-to-build-and-grow-a-Hispanic-Social-Network-the-case-of-www-Hispanito-com.aspx
Oracle Partner Network:Gartner report http://www.gartner.com/technology/media-products/reprints/oracle/article134/article134.html

Nurse one
http://nurseone.ca/

List of patient and practitioner communities
http://www.doseofdigital.com/healthcare-pharma-social-media-wiki/
review of physician communities, July 2010
http://careers.bmj.com/careers/advice/view-article.html?id=20001227
Top 5: doctors.net(175k) sermo.com(112k) doc2doc.bmj.com (28k) doctorshangout.com (17k)

Vitabotics ROI from community site
http://www.freshnetworks.com/case-studies/social-media-case-study-vitabiotics

The UK's leading health supplement manufacturer used social media to learn more about the health and beauty needs of their customers. Created a community site with forums, blogs, beauty experts to answer questions. 13,000 community members, 1000 women apply for product trials which get a 95% completion rate.

learn more about customers
find customers to test and trial products and get feedback
Promote products to target audience
Responses from customers feed into new product development

Platforms

Jive is used by Cerner (ucern), Netapp, Charles Schwabb
see book
The 2020 Workplace - in depth discussion -
Company Goals, commmunity, transparency, collaboration -"bottom up" culture
"community gardners" - from corp learn ing who moderate. Internal launch 2009 - point systems. helpful employees get points from participating online which leads to + performance reviews. system is integrated into workflow not separate.
http://www.jivesoftware.com/#

Netapp community http://communities.netapp.com/index.jspa

Charles Schwabb http://activetrader.schwab.com/research/TradingCommunity.aspx
trading community. "Share ideas, ask questions, and find ways to improve your trading - plus network, socialize, and learn from other Active Trader clients, Schwab and third-party experts. "

Customer Development for Startups

2011-04-13T10:11:00.000-07:00

What is it? It's a way to develop a new product/startup through frequent interaction with your likeliest early customers.

Bottom line, it's based on the radical idea that you can find out more about "the market" for your "product" by getting out and talking to customers than from complex market research. And it gives hints and structure for these conversations.

It focuses on the "pain" the product meets (the use) - And on narrowly targeting the "earlyvangelists" (people dying to use your product) for these conversations.

Some concepts:

Lean Startup

Some people:

Steven Blank http://steveblank.com/
Eric Ries http://www.startuplessonslearned.com/

Some links

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0982743602/
I love how clearly Cindy Alvarez writes http://www.cindyalvarez.com/best-practices/customer-development-interviews-how-to-finding-people
http://www.cindyalvarez.com/learning/faq-customer-development-for-product-managers

Unrelated, but since this post is on startups - On 5 slide venture pitch
http://knowledgeissocial.com/365-days-10-million-3-rounds-2-companies-all-with-5-magic-slides/

Google apps marketplace - Security, Privacy

2010-09-08T00:18:00.000-07:00

I like http://insight.ly - it seems like a sweet app, a simple but good CRM/ Project Management application, and amazingly its FREE!
But is there always a catch?
Think about it.

It's a Customer Relationship Management application. That means you give it all kinds of private information, your contacts, your documents, your plans and the vendor doesn't even provide YOU with a mailing address and phone number on the insight.ly website. Hmmmm. But surely they are ok?

I mean... this is a Google Marketplace App... So the great and powerful Google must vet these folks, right?
Let us consult the oracle.
Sayeth Google: " NO! "

You are solely responsible for any compromise or loss of data that may result from using a Marketplace app....you should be cautious and install applications only from vendors that you trust.

Caveat Emptor! Sez the great and powerful Google!

Think about it.
If someone walked up to you on the street and asked for all of your email contacts, and the contents of all of your documents, and the phone numbers off of your cell phone, would you do it?

Higher Edu Ch ch ch changes - Anya Kamenetz

2010-08-17T11:15:00.000-07:00

"There are people out there who are extremely talented and valuable, who don't have the resources to succeed in the current system. In a crass sense, they are undervalued talent. They're non-credentialed talent. Is there a way for them to prove their talent in order to succeed? ... they're going to get hired by forward-looking companies who are going to underpay them because they don't have a credential, and then those companies are going to succeed wildly. So that's the opportunity that the Silicon Valley group sees. And I think that's going to be a growing opportunity until it evens out. "

The foundation of the value of higher education is institutional trust -- The institution prints paper we call "degrees." Just as paper money is backed by "the full faith and trust of the US government," degrees are backed by the full faith and trust of the institution. A degree costs more than a piece of paper because of the public trust of the institution - its reputation. We trust that the institution has made sure that students know enough before they graduate so that they won't go out and be an embarrassment to the institution -- Accrediting bodies police schools as well. The system is necessary cause a lone individual has no way to show the world what they know or have done. Oh, wait - what about the internet? What about blogs, videos, websites, etc...?

This is what I was talking about. A school certifies two things:

What knowledge, skills, abilities and accomplishments are "good" - i.e. important, useful, relevant, necessary

In a particular field
In general

Who knows that stuff - or is smart/dedicated enough to learn that stuff.

Higher Ed is pretty close to losing its monopoly on 2) - I am not sure about 1).

Article about Anya Kamenetz here.
Read a chapter of her book here http://diyubook.com/read-the-book/

gorillaz

2010-08-16T18:45:00.000-07:00

Just Ship It

2010-04-21T12:01:00.000-07:00

For fun I've been reading interviews with Ward Cunningham. (Inventor of Wikis, and a big influence on modern software development) He says:

[so] much time is spent worrying about decisions that don't matter. To just be able to make a decision and see what happens is tremendously empowering... "

He explains that it is easier and works better to have a plan for recovering from mistakes than to prevent them.

Seth Godin talks about bypassing the lizard brain (deep seated fear of failure) through Just Shipping It. (Whatever IT is)

7 steps:

1. Connect
2. Be generous
3. Make art
4. Acknowledge the lizard
5. Ship
6. Fail
7. Learn

Now I guess I better get to work.

Open source collaboration, safety and enemy images

2010-04-02T12:31:00.000-07:00

Two guys who started the subversion project talk about how their community works. I guess they work for google now doing open source development.

Enjoyed hearing about how they keep projects on track. After taking a semester-long course in project management, replete with all of the PMBOK high-falutin' language, I like the practical 'lessons-learned' wisdom here. Though the title and a part of the flavor of the presentation bothers me, "surviving poisonous people," the approach they describe is actually fairly flexible.

"poisonous people" is a judgment. A poisonous person is a "thing" in your imagination. A scary thing. Immutable, fixed. An enemy. And that is not useful. I'd prefer to think about "people patterns which threaten a project." (This is not as pithy as poisonous though) Maybe they could call it poisonous patterns instead or dangerous patterns.

To summarize what I understand :

As open source software project leaders we are afraid of the threat of dissolution of our project, the frustration of our desire to make something awesome . If this were to happen we would lose respect, maybe money, and the fun, inclusion, connection, and sense of competence we get from being part of the project community.

We need safety to work well. We are going to tell you about some common dangerous people patterns which have threatened us and got us all distracted, frustrated and disconnected, and how to keep the community safe from community death (falling apart).

Groups do need freedom from distractions - e.g. too many ideas, and/or arguments, (What NVC might call needs for: "ease","harmony", "stability" "clarity" and "order") - But they also need to be open and welcoming to new ideas, new members to keep "alive" (needs=growth, stimulation, learning, spontaneity) -- and fair and collaborative in decision-making to survive...seems like a tall order to balance all of that!

It thrills me to learn more about collaborative forms of software development - though I have been involved in evaluating, installing, configuring and using open source products for over 10 years -And have even done bug reports, I have never contributed code to a project.

The thing that thrills me is that if I can pull some of my enjoyment of group process, improv and Non-violent Communication practices together with my tech background it would be lots of fun.

Marshall Rosenberg (NVC founder) on enemy images: - Hearing what people feel and need instead of what they "think" when they label you as a powerful technique to get to communication. Someone calls him a "murderer" (sees him as very poisonous) - he is able to get past that to communication. His distinction between violence and protective use of force is very clear here.

Amazon Cloud Computing: EC2 and EBS-Booties

2010-03-27T23:30:00.000-07:00

The Google App Engine is a "cloud-based virtual hosting" platform. Pluses are: Free, no configuration necessary, and cool tools. Minuses are: proprietary - you use what they have, not what they want. (ie. bigtable vs mysql) - lack of flexibility - i.e. you can't install a languge, or specific php libraries to play with them.

We selected Amazon EC2 instead because we already knew and understood mysql, and we wanted to be able to install anything we wanted as the project developed because we were not sure in advance what tools would fit our needs - in fact as we worked we ended up writing non-http backend php/shell scripts to process xml files - which would have been more difficult without a command line interface.

More than the usual number of Acronyms and terms in the Amazon Cloud. To wit:

AWS = Amazon Web Services - Amazon's various "cloud computing matter"e.g.:
EC2 = Elastic Computing 2 "duh compute cloud" (Xen-based?) (presumably EC1 sucked?)
EBS = Elastic Block Storage (Closet to keep bouncy blocks of permanent "disk" ;)
AMI = Amazon Machine Image = Similar to a VM Image. A "file" which contains an 'EC2' bootable image of a particular OS.
Instance = When you "boot" an AMI that running image is an instance.
EBS-boot AMI = Traditionally instances evaporate without a trace when you terminate them, .i.e. any changes to the file systems are ephemeral. EBS-boot AMI's are new and have two stop conditions. terminate (ephemeral) and stop (persistent) = So they behave more like a "real" machine, ie. storage(disk space) sticks around when you shut them down.

Having fun doing a project in "duh cloud." I chose EC2 as opposed to a hosting service because I like having full root/admin access and being able to load or remove whatever packages we want instantly. Note that it is easy to get ssh access to your "instance". Root access uses "keys" and it is pretty simple.

Project: PHP/MySql Web application. I am using an EBS-boot LAMP server = This link is a good summary of LAMP install on EC2 - But it uses EBS for additional volume (not for boot/root volume).

(I have to say that the term "Elastic Block Storage Boot" sounds more like goofy footwear you are ashamed to wear, so you keep it in a closet than a computing service) ------>

This is an intermittent project. So EBS-boot made sense because it allows us to just "stop = shutdown" the machine & not pay for compute, only storage, which is purty cheap. I just grabbed the available Fedora 8 version which amazon has published. See this useful overview of EBS-boot.
And nice Step-by-Step guide which I used.

Next time I would probably try Ubuntu - I have no idea why Amazon uses Fedora and the version is so old. Here is a link to information on ubuntu EC2 AMI with EBS-boot

I also tried out Elasticfox - a Firefox plugin which allows you to do all kinds of things more easily than the AWS http console does.

<--- (Long LOLcat seeks ElasticFox)

Pricing summary for small instance Elastic gob= ~2Gb memory, 1 cpu, 160 GB disk limit.

45 days use total includes 20 * 24 hrs + 25 days "off"

EBS storage:    15 GB @ .10 per GB/month = $1.50/mo
CPU:    .085/hour x 24 hrs * 10 days = ~ $20 *2 = $40
"Elastic IP" (= static IP continues when you turn it off)
     = .24/day * 25 = ~$5
Data in = free ; Data out: est 10 Gb at .15 per GB (first Gb free) = $1.40
Total price = $40 + $1.5 + $5 + $1.4 = approx $50 for 45 days "up" ~ 40% of the time.

(And by the way, yes "elastic gob" is a technical term - it's just my private technical term)

Lettuce in the Dish-rack

2010-03-24T18:38:00.000-07:00

Part 1

A friend told me how "cute" and "funny" it is that I dry lettuce in the dish-rack. -- I had never really thought about it before. It just seems sensible not to purchase one more piece of plastic crap just to dry lettuce.

I guess I enjoy creative reuse. That elegant solution that jumps at you when you turn your head sideways. Iron-clad categories drive me crazy. Why let what someone else calls it limit your possibilities? Why can't it be a lettuce-rack?

Part 2

I found the above picture in Google images by searching: dry+lettuce+in+the+dish-rack
It's the only real match. I don't know whether this is comforting or disturbing. What does it mean when it's easier for me to get a picture of lettuce in a dish-rack from google images than to bother to take one myself?

A weasel in dog's clothing:online communities, trolls and sockpuppets

2010-03-15T11:05:00.000-07:00

It looks like I will be helping a small firm with their online social media presence a bit. I have been blogging since around 2004/2005 (and involved in all kinds of usenet/listserv communities since long before that.)

I like this presentation on the "power of artifacts." Kim mentions that online conversation always produces an artifact.(i.e. a "thing" - a blog post, a discussion thread) and he discusses how powerful this can be.

I don't like the fact that the presentation dies before the end and asks you to fill out a form to see the rest. Annoying. Like a slap in the face with a wet sock. And speaking of socks...

Kim also does not discuss what I consider to be THE big issue with building online community - Trust. On the internet no one knows you're a dog. You could be a trolling sockpuppet - a weasel in dog's clothing.

Building a community when participants are anonymous is difficult because one bad weasel can upset the applecart. EG: Kathy Sierra death threats --very violent/sexual and graphically illustrated threats were made to a prominent professional blogger. I remember the blogosphere discussion. Some bloggers fervently dissed Sierra's fearful reaction, and supported the "right to free speech" of the anonymous poster.

The troll or sockpuppet can hit and run or quietly insinuate -- engage in guerrilla warfare. The anonymous troll wields asymmetric destructive power. He knows a lot about you. You don't know anything about him.

Online communities are groovy but also risky.

I will gladly play you Tuesday

2010-03-10T11:15:00.000-08:00

For a Hamburger today.

I wish I had known about Kahn Academy when I was taking Financial Accounting and learning about Present Value and Net Present Value.

The disruptive effects of the internet on Higher Ed have barely been felt yet.

The main disruption of the internet is: Information. The cost of publishing and the cost of finding have both dropped dramatically. (Think e-journals vs browsing stacks. - Google vs card catalogs.)

Higher Ed has held a virtual monopoly on the certification of quality knowledge. The institution's value lies in its ability to deem "What knowledge is good, real, useful and new" and "Who knows that stuff." That is why people pay so much for a MBA or PHD.

This knowledge is still mostly handed down in personal interaction, classes, and to grad students (apprenticeships). But Universities will have to compete for students, and be forced to become more efficient as internet-based education continues to get better,cheaper, faster, stronger.

Printing to Windows 7 printer from OSX 10.5

2010-02-07T22:15:00.000-08:00

Recently upgraded home machine which serves our printers / file shares from XP -> Win 7 Professional - after nasty spyware infection. (That's another story. I would just say - having a boot disk of Ubuntu to restore the registry was great - Since we did not have XP restore console, or restore XP boot disk) However, even after I was able to use kewl tools like Malwarebytes and Counterspy and Combofix to remove the vast majority of the crap (Along with a bit of Hijack this, and diligent observation with Process Explorer... Things were stable, but we still did not trust the resulting system... Plus it was heavily loaded and sagging due to 6 years of built up cruft. Thus the move to Win 7.

Post-upgrade, OS X machine would not print to Win7 direct connet printer, or browse shares on the Win7 box. A few things seemed to help fix this problem.

Re-share printer - less than 15 characters in share name, no blanks.
Edit Local policies->Security -> Network Security- set:

"Send LM & NTLM -- use NTLMv2 session security if negotiated" and
Turn off "require 128 bit encryption"

In Win 7 Network sharing center

Turn off Win 7 networking option ~~"homeboy"~~ "homegroup"
enable Network Discovery and File and Printer Sharing.

Make sure that OS X has the proper workgroup set in sys prefs -> network -> advanced -> wins
Reboot Windows 7

Later I discovered that some had fixed the problem by sharing the printer from windows via lpd.
http://social.answers.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7performance/thread/bd920e46-dbeb-4bb2-a38e-8791facd0608 As obsessive as I am about figuring things out, I did not try this yet.

Messing around with Java & Eclipse

2010-01-04T09:52:00.000-08:00

I already had Java installed from Apple site I have latest version of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard(10.5.8) with recent Java updates installed on a core 2 duo Mac.
Need to run Java 6 EE with Eclipse EE version.

Useful info:

Make Java 1.6 the default Java execution environment: Run Java Preferences.app (in Finder -> Applications -> Utilities). I changed the Java versions to default to using Java 1.6 by drag Java SE 6 to the top of the application and applet lists.
Which java version am I running?: In a terminal window use: /usr/libexec/java_home
When creating a Java project, Eclipse prompts for the desired JRE version in the new project dialog box. To ensure that Eclipse tracks the language differences between versions, also select the desired version in Preferences->Java->Compiler->Compiler compliance level to match your project.
Use the 64-bit Cocoa version of Eclipse 3.5.1.

Thanks to http://excitedcuriosity.wordpress.com/2009/11/16/java-1-6-eclipse-on-mac-os-x
OTOH, see http://eclipse.dzone.com/articles/eclipse-galileo-mac-cocoa-or

Meraki and Aerohive - Meraki bad whitepaper

2009-12-10T16:03:00.000-08:00

I had an assignment to design a wireless network for a mid-sized hotel.
The specification was for Cisco, but IMHO Cisco Controllers are bloatware for this kind of situation

Small amount of in-house IT at client site +
Big cost of Cisco controllers (+ possible ongoing configuration and maintenance needs)
= bad choice

I have been out of the 802.11 game for a year or two doing other things, so thought I'd read up. Hotels are an interesting application - especially in a business hotel - you have a potential for very high spiky usage at conferences. Security might be deemed unimportant, however to conserve precious bandwidth you need to restrict access. Plus here are the ineresting questions of what is the easiest way to distribute and manage logins, and if you can protect guests from each other that might not be a bad idea. So some kind of built-in easy radius server would be good.

I looked into meraki and aerohive -
The "fat AP is out" right? Thin is in.. OOps - not anymore. These APs look like they do a fair amount of processing, but are in some way "collaborative" and "self-managing" (WRT sharing the airspace and routing traffic at least). So I would call them "fat and sassy" APs- But the preferred term by vendors seems to be "Smart".

I am still reading up and playing with Aerohives nice online demo tool. Meraki looks like they have really geared their product to exploit Cisco's pricing in this area - in terms of ease of manageability and price - they even have a Meraki vs Cisco calculator. -Which admittedly has list prices for Cisco stuff that you will never pay.

Even so, their "cloud controller" option makes sense for hotels and other public access networks.

HOWEVER. Reading Meraki's product literature, (a network security whitepaper) I was bothered by evil half-factiods, which made me wonder if they are sloppy or sleazy in other ways.

Quoth Meraki"

WPA2-Enterprise, also known as 802.1x,

WPA2-Enterprise is not known as 802.1x - Maybe you mean 802.11i ?

is considered by many to be the “gold standard” of wireless security. In this architecture, each client(known as a supplicant) uses a unique username and password to authenticate on the wireless network.

Um, WPA2- Enterprise - using 802.1x/EAP can do a number of different types of authentication, including certificates.

The client’s username and password are checked against any Active Directory or LDAP server that supports the RADIUS protocol (and most do).

You really don't need to mention Active Directory here, because that has nothing to do with it.
Also Radius is not really necessary, though almost always used. I would reword this as:
"The most common form of WPA2-Enterprise uses 802.1x authentication to to allow the access point to check user and password information for each client against an authentication server. This authentication server is almost always a RADIUS server "

Meraki supplies an integrated RADIUS server that companies can use instead of a stand-
alone server if they wish. The primary advantages of WPA2-Enterprise are that it is highly secure and scales well. IT administrators can re-use their existing authentication
infrastructure, so as employees come and go they are automatically added and removed from the wireless network. There is also no need to VPN. Since 802.1x is a relatively new standard,

Whoa! 802.1x has been around before wireless lans. It is not so new.

client support is still evolving. As of 2009, support is common on most laptop and PC operating systems. However, support for PDAs, scanners, and other devices still
varies. In addition, client configuration can sometimes be complex.
While implementation of 802.1x has often been highly complex, Meraki
has simplified the process significantly. 802.1x takes just a few clicks to
deploy, and is no more difficult than implementing WPA2-PSK.

I am not sure on the preceeding because there is some legitimacy to what they are saying here.
But I think it should be worded "implementation of 802.1x authentication in WPA2" to clarify.

Am I just being picky? or maybe my understanding of the issues is rusty?

xkcd

2009-12-08T23:14:00.000-08:00

I just wasted about 3 hours reading through 250 xkcd comix and classifying onese I like into categories. no time to make links now, (maybe that task is best
Forthwith: done with vi, not blogger)

Good but unclassified as of yet
http://xkcd.com/434/
http://xkcd.com/426/ href=http://wiki.xkcd.com/geohashing/Main_Page> OMFG - build it and they will come...
http://xkcd.com/420/
http://xkcd.com/419/
http://xkcd.com/416/
http://xkcd.com/413/
http://xkcd.com/481/
http://xkcd.com/482/
http://xkcd.com/492/
http://xkcd.com/489/
http://xkcd.com/497/
LOL funny " however on review of your qualifications, we've decided to sentence you to death...
http://xkcd.com/498/
http://xkcd.com/539/
http://xkcd.com/550/
http://xkcd.com/576/ read the mouseover text last!
http://xkcd.com/604/
http://xkcd.com/646/
http://xkcd.com/649/

Tearjerker
http://xkcd.com/502/

I resemble that remark. things i think about or / what a good idea, i cant believe I didnt think of it/do it
http://xkcd.com/503/
http://xkcd.com/525/
http://xkcd.com/529/
http://xkcd.com/539/ statistically significant other - I wish I had thought of that.
http://xkcd.com/539/ - this is something I (occasionally) agonize over :) ! (or is it !:) (personally I like to insert a space-- ;) )
http://xkcd.com/559/
http://xkcd.com/609/ - This is me. I suffer from terminal tab sprawl
http://xkcd.com/616/
http://xkcd.com/635/ - I thought about this when I read Enders Game recently. What a book.
http://xkcd.com/666/

what is a roomba dueling harness?
http://xkcd.com/506/

;)
http://xkcd.com/511/
http://xkcd.com/535/
http://xkcd.com/565/
http://xkcd.com/585/
http://xkcd.com/588/ - how I really felt at pep rallies growing up
http://xkcd.com/589/
http://xkcd.com/605/
http://xkcd.com/611/
http://xkcd.com/645/

ones I put up at work
http://xkcd.com/528/
http://xkcd.com/612/
http://xkcd.com/619/
http://xkcd.com/627/

True
http://xkcd.com/538/
http://xkcd.com/554/
http://xkcd.com/651/

Good web sites:
There are 56,929 articles on the Simple English Wikipedia today http://xkcd.com/547/

Recovering from "database cleaning" - mySQL - innoDB

2009-11-17T09:23:00.000-08:00

OR: "How to cover your ass when your belt snaps and you forgot to wear your braces. (Proof of the wear clean underwear rule.)
OR: When work is a little like duck hunting with Dick Cheney.

Today we had a bit of a scare. Someone decided to "clean up the databases".

Who needs to worry about this:

When you can just do it yourself :

mysql> drop foo;

"oh... you mean that 'foo' was in use ? ? I was sure it was useless."

Rule 1: Always backup before you delete.

Always. Always. Always.

Memorize this: # mysqldump -u username -ppassword database_name > FILE.sql

Thankfully the db was for an app with only a small amount of data. So though a loss would be sad, it would not be catastrophic. The other saving grace is that the app involves undergrad students, not say, Vice Presidents, or Dept heads. This is good as undergrad students are slightly above janitors in the pecking order.

I was training a new person when I got pulled in to the issue. So she got to experience the heavy breathing and waving of hands. Now that she has been exposed to the dark underbelly of our procedures on her first day, If she decides to stay, at least she has seen the worst.

This brings us to:
Rule 2: Backups are nice, but Restores are nicer.

It turns out that the restore plan was to copy all the files back in to place in the database directory in question. We kept restoring the files from backups, and guess what, they all had the original creation date still. No data! We questioned our backups. But something seemed fishy to me, so I poked around and noticed that the other database directories had additional files, e.g. .myi and .myd files - and this directory had only .frm files.
From this I discovered -(thanks Google: )

That it was an innodb database not a myisam db, and so the data was stored elsewhere (by default in an ibdata1 file, in the directory one level up)

So I was pretty much able to restore the ibdata file and not lose anything. And Someone was pretty happy.

Win 7 - VMware Fusion - sloww..

2009-11-15T15:33:00.000-08:00

[UPDATE] +2G memory later... problem resolved...

My darling little MacBook with VMware Fusion/Windows 7 when intially installed was unconscionably slooow.
I had all the settings on the VM decently set. 1 processor and 1 GB mem for Win 7,
no 3D graphics. Set Win user exeperience to optimize for performance in GUI.

But after installing VMware tools (If you can't figure that out you should be shot in the head because Fusion prompts you about 11000 times to do it.)
...And installing piles of windows updates and rebooting a few times, things seem better. This makes sense, because windows generally has to load lots of patches after an install. I have seen windows grind to a halt in if you download the windows updates, and install, but don't reboot. My hunch is that the cause has something to do with memory use.

We'll see....

-----
Model Name:    MacBook Pro
Model Identifier:    MacBookPro5,5
Processor Name:    Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed:    2.26 GHz
Number Of Processors:    1
Total Number Of Cores:    2
L2 Cache:    3 MB
Memory:    2 GB
Bus Speed:    1.07 GHz

OS X version 10.5.8
build 9l31a

VMware Fusion 2.0.6

Windows 7 Virtual Machine under VMware Fusion

2009-10-22T10:31:00.000-07:00

I recently got a new MacBook Pro. I have used various flavors of VMware in the past (VMware workstation under Windows and Linux desktops; VMware Server and ESX 3.5 ; VSphere) - But never Fusion.
It's pretty darn easy to install. However, the version of VMware fusion I have installed (2.0.6) does not have a virtual machine type for Windows 7 In the past It seems that you can use another VM type with an unsupported OS with good results.. In fact the VMware Team fusion blog recommends using Win 2008 server virtual machine.
Other salient points they suggest:

Disable 3D Acceleration
Disable Shared Folders

...Wah, my .iso file was corrupt. See you in 4 hours afer I get another copy. ...two weeks later
Well it turned out that the version of Windows 7 that I was entitled to was an "upgrade" version. And therefore crippled and not bootable. I could have gone through a whole install of Windows XP, and then upgraded it. But what a waste. But how to make it bootable?

The most straighforward brain-dead way I found is to copy the .iso to a windows machine, and use a program microsoft provides which will make my .iso file into a bootable DVD or USB : http://store.microsoft.com/Help/ISO-Tool . However, this is an annoying and inelegant solution. All I really want to do is to graft one little boot loader file into the .iso which is already on my disk. To accomplish this I have to burn my non-bootable iso to a dvd or otherwise copy it to a windows machine, and then burn it to a dvd or bootable usb stick there, and then bring it back.? Wah.

Yikes. I would much rather spend 5 hours learning about how to do this smarter than spend 1 hour doing something dumb.

Hmm! Boot sectors and bootloaders and .isos oh my!

I got some inspiration from this post:
http://milliamp.org/2009/windows-7-64-bit-on-an-aluminium-macbook-pro/
To look at mkisofs on OS X as the means to slam that boot sector into my existing .iso file.

Steps:

Download mkisofs, from helios: http://www.helios.de/news/news07/mkisofs.phtml
Open a terminal window (terminal.app) and copy the executable into somewhere in your path (e.g. /usr/bin or /usr/local/bin )
Find the existing .iso file in finder and double click it to mount it as a file system.
Use mkisofs to create the new .iso file by copying all the files from the mounted .iso file together with the new boot sector file:

mkisofs -v -hfs-unlock -N -U -udf -no-emul-boot -no-hfs -nolimit-pathtables -ignore-changed-files -b boot/etfsboot.com -c boot.catalog --osx-hfs -iso-level 4 -o /Users/yournamehere/yourshinynewisofile.iso /Volumes/thenameofoldisofile

not sure that all flags are necessary (e.g. -ignore-changed-files, --osx-hfs, -nolimit-pathtables?). The key discovery was that etfsboot.com is the boot image in /boot on the non-bootable iso, which is written to the boot sector (-b flag) by mkisofs.

And guess what it worked!

Desktop Fedora -> Ubuntu - Thunderbird problem

2009-10-21T17:45:00.000-07:00

After changing my desktop from Fedora to Ubuntu my thunderbird profile disappeared -
When I started up thunderbird, instead of seeing all my old accounts, I saw:

No! I don't want to freakin' import 3 mail accounts, and my assorted local folders! Guess again!

We use nfs to mount /home directories, so it should JUST WORK. Right....

I looked in my .thunderbird directory - and there was my sweet little old profile, just like always:

xxl@foo:~$ ls -l .thunderbird

total 11
drwx------ 7 xxl dept 37 2009-10-21 16:55 1bn7kwbx.default
-rw-r----- 1 xxl dept 335 2009-10-21 14:42 appreg
-rw-r----- 1 xxl dept 94 2008-04-07 11:33 profiles.ini

But whoa.. what's this?

drwx------ 8 xxl dept     10 2009-03-17 13:10 .mozilla
drwx------ 3 xxl dept      4 2009-10-21 17:23 .mozilla-thunderbird
drwxr-xr-x 2 xxl dept      8 2008-11-07 11:14 .mplayer

...

Ok then, take this you impostor!
xxl@foo:~$ rm -r .mozilla-thunderbird
xxl@foo:~$ mv .thunderbird/ .mozilla-thunderbird

And just in case I might want to use a fedora desktop again

xxl@foo:~$ ln -s .mozilla-thunderbird/ .thunderbird

Ok, That's better.

Kind of.Except for the hours of email to get to.

See forums.mozillazine.org
for a discussion.

Interview tips

2009-10-21T00:32:00.000-07:00

How to navigate technical questions
nancy amato texas a & m

Erin Chapple, Microsoft
group program manager. data management

I don't have alot of time. Want to read quicky. In first page. Who are you . Why would I want to interview you.
Gabby Silverman. Research at CA

Do you know us, What are you looking for, why do you have the qualification

Sue Dragich, Director SW engineering Global communications,

Clarity!!!!!
Simple looking Easy to get through
What are you passionate about. Hook. If you are excited

Nancy Amato Texas A&M

Researcher. Publications, but where were they, quality

Lindsay
Concept management

Specific results, Saved money, got great grade

Lynn Pastori Enterprise technical services. Data Center

What was your role, what did you do
Action words

Ellen Spertus, Mills

Experience, including in class projects.

Tracey Intuit.

Talent development.

Mock interview
technical questions
interviewing the interviewer
behavioral questions

Comments from the panel
Fictitious companyd. 500 people. Software engineer.

Looking for software development.

Good. Used whiteboard.
Talked aloud about her thought process.
You know an answer .
sounded confident as she worked through. s

Could have done better.
Be cautious about saying "NO" or hedge.
Get more information make sure you ask up front.

How do theory and algorithms act with machine.
Interviewee ask questions.

How to prepare for this question. Be a flexible person.

Syntactically correct compilable code.
Common language. Can you write in a well known language

Improvements

don't think in silence think aloud.
you can use pseudo code to map out what you would do
Test your code for boundary conditions yourself

Behavioral
Can you think of a time you have had to try a new approach to people.

Customer surveys, drive alongs.

As interview probe for specific situation. Past performance is a good indication of future performance. Quantify success, reflection on past performance and continuous improvement.

How would someone work with a team, how do they speak about teammates.
Do they acknowledge others contributions as well as own contributions. Be upfront about your own contribution.

Did you have difficulty ever working with someone.
More detail of how worked out.

So admit mistakes. What would you do next time to change this.
Be specific. what was the situation. What action did you take. What was the result.
Even if it didn't work, tell people the result. show that you learned.

------------------------------------------
She mentioned the code change. This is a do-over. Chance to correct that.
This is ok. good to mention. Able to mention mistake.

--------
How much do you want the candidate to know about the company
THIS WILL MAKE YOU STAND OUT.
---
Passion
Core values of the team.
What is the team looking for.

Tell me about the Mentoring program. formal? informal?

Ask Questions

IT industry: why women leave?

2009-10-21T00:29:00.000-07:00

Presenter Sue from Sudo coaching (what a great business name)

50% of women who leave go to non-industry jobs.
30% to non-SET industry jobs
20% stay at home.

Why?
39% Extreme job pressure 62 hours a week US, 72 hours India, China
38% Job not woman friendly
27% Compensation

Other ?'s
46% Career stalled
47% lack carere paths,
84% lack sponsors 47% mentors. role models 40% Senior men don't want to pal around with young women.
38% Isolated

Women More Risk averse leads to fewer high profile success.
Less credit if you take a risk. because you don't have a sponsor

More helper roles.
Don't get credit.

Discrimination/Macho culture
66-64% experienced sexual harassment
44-46% perceive bias in performance evaluation
23-27% "believe women are seen as less capable"

What helps?

10% female management
Flexible workday and career track timing
shock you actually get more work out of people.
Career paths, mentoring programs, sponsorship
Opportunities for altruism (Athena)
On-ramps - have way to take off and come back.

Catalyst study

- workers at tech company
- boomers say "not having a mentor" is important impediment to success

More likely to have barriers if
- work for large company, have MS/PHD
- have fewer women at company

-----------
Few differences between women and men

but across the board tech women and tech men, men were happier with supervisor.

51% of men have partner primarily responsible for home and kids (13% women)
62% - 82%

HIgh level women are more likely to have a CS degree - Tech partner - partner responsible for home and kids (24 -13%)

Women managers are being perceived as less technical. how much is this because of bias?
by 50% - 30

Toot tech horn.

WHAT CAN I DO

Find coach, mentor, group combat isolation
Find a place with 10% women managers
have a career goal
build and demonstrate tech skills
ask for high-profile & risky assignments "women don't ask" http://www.womendontask.com/

What can Co do

on ramp/off ramp
provide training for supervisors

The grace hopper conference is amazing

2009-10-21T00:24:00.000-07:00

Grace Hopper conference is amazing.
Notes from one session.

Don't be afraid to fail. Maria.
The importance of coaches and mentors. Would help with structure.
Write down where want to be and when.

Writing it down helps you to see the next milestone.

If you do a good job and get everything done it will be recognized? NO.
That is not how it works. You need to speak up for yourself.
How to do this. Book by Peggy Klaus. The art of brag: How to toot your own horn without blowing it.

You can get pigeonholed into a role where you are good at what you are doing.
Read Deborah Tannen. The power of talk:
Female communication styles and Male communication styles. the dynamics at work. Read bout this, and get coaching. practice this.

Betty.
Networking. Do a great job. People will recommend you.

Alicia.
Write your own obituary today. What do you want to do by the end of your life.
How do the pieces fit in that goal. What matters to you. What are you passionate about.
Know yourself. What do you want to do.

Install gn03 on Macbook Pro (Leopard)

2009-10-20T13:14:00.000-07:00

I found an excellent post on configuring Gn03 for mac. However if you are still running leopard (10.5) you need to make some changes. This post updates crimson silos with new links.

1. Install Xcode

Get Apple Xcode (Info on xcode ) - 10/20 - Latest version: 3.2.1 NOT FOR Leopard. So you must either:

Install an older version of xcode from your OS X install dvd.
Or ( join Apple Developer Connection (free)) and then download Xcode 3.1.4 which runs on Leopard.
Apple makes it hard to find the old download page. To find it log in to ADC -> Downloads -> Developer tools (right nav bar) -> scroll down to xcode 3.1.4 -> download and install. Default install is fine.

2. Install Macports

Macports is basically a package management system for Macs. For info see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macports .

Go to http://www.macports.org/install.php , and select dmg download for Leopard.

In my case I had this installed. so I simply make sure it was updated by opening a terminal window and typing "su root" and then

Software soul

2009-10-02T11:35:00.001-07:00

Mala Devlin (Cisco)
Hong-Chung Tsou (Intuit)

Mina Kaul-Basu
HA solaris cluster - worked in Bangalore 12 years
Manages global teams, Germany, UK.
Remote teams. Globalization is real.
Have teams participate in events locally.

Hire right team
Not just like yourself, not just good engineers
learn and teach team culture.
set roles use chat, webconference, webex etc to communicate.
approach disagreements openly
trust team. take risk.

Divya Kolar
Diversity
Hired as part of an all male team. was I a diversity hire?
"Coexist slide"
Diversity - art of thinking together independently.

2005 joined intel hiring freeze, intel encourage diversity. Manager gave full time offer. Did I get offer as being female? NO - I hired you because you bring skill diversity to team.
Being from research lab, always looking for funding, present, convince, persuade value of project. Had to speak to CEO - can I get the funding for the team? Our team did get funding.
Research in security. If the team is happy it reflects on the company
Diversity brings

Understanding - better understanding of customer, IE netbook style PC cheap. worked in india. Who knows needs in India, Indonesia?
Credibility - Having a clear connection with customer
Connectedness Book "The Software Soul" e.g. Henry -from Asian country. In company no Asians higher than Sr Engineer. He left because he could not make connection

Classmate PC idea came from understanding the market, the country, India.
Mosaic, not melting pot.

Karin Catin
Project Manager

How can you identify the "Zen" soul of software release. 1996. web exploding. people used text editors. some tools, professionals used text editors. I was working for macromedia. saw market for wsywig for web developers. Kevin Lynch "19 dreams" whitepaper of web developers. Zen/mantra. 19 dreams -> dreamweaver -> product. Engineers got excited. Active advisory council to have meetings. Hired Web developer sat with Engineering team.

E.G. "Round-trip HTML" - the HTML in did not look like the HTML out. The HTML was reformatted by the tool on the page. or "Dont touch my layout"

Dave George "I found the round-trip HTML motivating because we were solving
remember first co wide demo, when lynch showed the round-trip demo, and audience broke into spontaneous applause I felt proud"

When we introduced our project - Engineers said "HTML is like postscript no one wants to edit it by hand."

NJ /Ben had a discussion of how to do the database. should we use attribute/ value pairs or efficient

Zen --> bartending. Program manager as a bartender. We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen as much as we speak.

We need more bartender personalities at work. Cube the place you want to stop by. Find out about life.

Veep she knows, still use this technique. "Hows it going" "I have to run, have some extra budget to spend on creative suite project, gotta run."

Had problem with no cash for tools project. There is a budget we can get.

If you are not a good listener. Here is how to do it. I did it wrong and learned.
Bob comes in to ask question. I answer.
Bob says "please take hands off keyboard, turn around and listen" Watch good bartenders.

Get zen statements. Assign one to each team.

Happier teams work better. A good culture unleashes great productivity.

Establish a network. make friends. What do you want. Ask direct questions to friends about the teams they are members. Networking is key.

Don't underestimate your influence speak up.