Matthew's Weblog

I’m really interested in ZFS but I don’t want to use OpenSolaris and would rather not use BSD, though I will in a pinch. As an alternative the Slashdot discussion suggests using OpenFiler (CentOS-based appliance).

Hmmm…

Good links in this discussion theoretically about MythDora 4.0 that actually ranges far and wide…

Startupping Lessons Learned forum – RSS is broken but posts are interesting.
Puppet – system configuration automation system.
How to utilize S3 standby correctly to save power in your Windows system(s).
OpenNMS won the 2007 Gold Award in Network and IT management Platforms.

A quick article about the problems of Linux packaging (specifically the cross-distribution incompatibilities and the multiple option confusion), which is really only interesting because of its reference to a writeup of Conary, a package manager with revision control built in. That addresses my major gripe which is that you can’t roll back a package (RPM, DEB, etc) to a previous state and that is ridiculous in this day and age! Even Windows OS patches have uninstalls that revert back to how the system was before… and they even work more often than not!

I wonder how it will tie in with another distro than rPath Linux…

A great comment on how to prepare for a presentation where you want to communicate to a non-technical audience and come to a successful conclusion (note: not necessarily your conclusion, just a successful one)…

I’ve been a fan of the careful construction of alternatives when offering people choices, but now I learned that there is an actual marketing theory based on that system. It’s known as the Decoy Effect. I’ve seen it applied to my own sales patterns, to technical discussions, and now it’s being explained in terms of politics.

Good to know the research behind the practice…

An article and two sidebars from CIO magazine about how to manage telecommuters and to make it most effective for the company and the worker, including equipping the roadwarrior and what skills are needed to make the employee effective. It also references an article from a Sun employee’s experience which is has useful tips.

A Microsoft blogger describes a clear example of why, when you’re trying to build secure transactions, you keep all interactions secure. That means the screen where you type in your password as well as the actual application.

Direct from the Google Chief Culture Officer

Apparently Business 2.0, the magazine, lost their layout for an entire issue when their server crashed and the backup server hadn’t been working. Having had my laptop stolen and my (usually weekly) backups been… ummm… overlooked… for a month, I’ve got to say that backups are more important than I’ve given them credit for. It’s time for me to take them seriously.

As soon as I have some spare time…