February 7th, 2009

Posted by Dana Blankenhorn

cialis discount price border=”0″ title=”monty-widenius” width=”175″ height=”197″ />Michael “Monty” Widenius (right), author of the original mySQL, has left the company to launch a new start-up, Monty Program AB.

He joins former CEO Martin Mickos on the outside looking in.

This has led to much wailing and gnashing of teeth, not just here but elsewhere in the computer press.

Please excuse me if I don’t join in.

For me this is a case of deja vu all over again. One of the first stories I covered here involved the acquisition of the JBOSS framework by Red Hat and the subsequent leave-taking of its founder, Marc Fleury.

As with many today I was certain this was the end of JBOSS, possibly of open source itself.

I was wrong.

Some in the old JBOSS team did leave, and pretty quickly, after Marc did. But they landed on their feet. Some went to their own start-ups, others became key men within other open source companies. JBOSS survived, too. It took time to digest, and it found new competition along the way, but the ending is not an unhappy one.

With the perspective of time I suspect things will be the same in this case. The only surprise to me is that Mickos and Widenius stayed as long as they did.

Entrepreneurs are a special breed, not built for suits and hierarchies. They can’t handle people over them saying no, and they should not have to.

They’re too precious as what they are. Open source needs more great entrepreneurs, and to have two with experience back in the fray is very exciting. The mySQL deal was worth $1 billion. Money won’t be a problem for their next projects.

All Monty has so far is a Wiki page, where he talks about building a transactional storage engine for mySQL dubbed Maria, and a branch of the language supporting it. That’s good, for him, for us, and for mySQL. A project becomes powerful as it builds an ecosystem which supports it, and no ecosystem can be contained within four corporate walls.

Besides, if Sun messes up with mySQL, remember that it’s open source. The code still lives. Mickos and Witinius could then fork it and it would continue moving forward. I hope they don’t have to, because working on cool new stuff is always more fun than maintaining the old stuff.

The JBOSS deal worked out great for everyone. I think the mySQL deal will do the same. So, too, will its founders. And so will all of us.

February 8th, 2009

Posted by Robin Harris

If the economy has made you put off buying a faster system, you aren’t alone. The good news: you can make your current system much snappier with faster storage – DRAM and disk. Here’s how – and why.

Your CPU speed is fixed. So is your network and memory bandwidth. Only new storage can give your system a performance boost.

Even better news: storage prices are at all-time lows. There’s never been a better time to upgrade.

The basic strategy
Start with #1, then look at #2. The 3rd option isn’t cost-effective for most people today and you have to be careful cialis daily generic to avoid some really awful 1st and 2nd generation products – buyer beware!

1. Add main memory – also known as DRAM, RAM, DIMM or SO-DIMM.
2. Install a faster and/or higher capacity disk drive.
3. Install a flash-based Solid State Drive – which doesn’t make sense for most people.

RAM or disk
There are 2 kinds of storage or memory in your system: DRAM or RAM – Dynamic Random Access Memory – fast electronic storage; and disk or hard drive storage. If there isn’t enough DRAM for the work you want to do, the operating system uses the disk memory as a substitute.

That works OK for light use, but disk drives take a million times longer to access data than DRAM, so as you get busier your system gets slower. For maximum performance you want to minimize disk I/O.

First
To minimize disk I/O increase your DRAM. More memory reduces disk I/O in 2 ways:

• Entire programs and data can be loaded into DRAM and run without having to swap parts in and out. For example, Photoshop maintains several copies of any image you are working on. For a 50 MB image Photoshop will run best with ~250 MB free DRAM. Your OS and other programs need DRAM too, so the demand quickly adds up.
• When DRAM runs short, Windows or Mac OS start using the disk drive as “virtual memory.” Since disk drives are so slow compared to DRAM, this slows your system down. Too many outstanding I/O requests will overflow the on-chip memory, further slowing your system.

Typical desktop systems support up to 8 GB of DRAM – check the specs – and more is better. Doubling the amount of DRAM you have now – assuming you aren’t at full capacity already – is a good rule of thumb for maximum bang for your buck.

How much better? I went from 5 to 8 GB DRAM on my quad-core Xeon Mac Pro and was amazed at how much snappier and stable the system became. The added DRAM almost eliminates disk swapping.

I typically have a couple of dozen programs open – often including I/O intensive video, image and audio editors – so if all you do is surf the web, read email and type a few letters you won’t need 8 GB – 2-4 GB will be fine. One caveat: a 32-bit OS, which includes most versions of Windows, won’t support more than 4 GB of RAM, even if the hardware will.

Later this year I plan to upgrade to 16 GB of DRAM. When I do I’ll let you know how it goes.

Disk drive upgrade
I recently upgraded my system disk from a 7200 RPM disk to a 10,000 RPM Western Digital VelociRaptor. It made a HUGE difference in machine performance.

1/3rd faster boot times. 3 GB swap files that I didn’t notice. Snappy app loads. It’s like a new system.

You’ll see similar results upgrading a 5400 RPM notebook disk to a 7200 RPM disk. Either upgrade offers a 30-40% improvement – one you will certainly notice.

If you edit much video, a 2nd drive can help. Keep the project on the 2nd drive and render to the system disk for greater speed.

Even if you don’t upgrade to a faster drive, a much more dense drive – for example, moving from 80 GB to 500 GB – will give performance gains. The higher bit density means large reads and writes are faster and average seeks shorter. Not as dramatic as a 10k drive, but noticeable.

Performing the upgrade
Most memory upgrades are user installable. Check your vendor’s web site for instructions. For the best prices I check out dealram.

Many notebook drives are upgradeable as well. If you have a plastic MacBook check out my 1 minute guide. Otherwise consult the vendor web site.

Tower systems vary in their expansion ease. The Mac Pro is really easy. Most Dell’s and other towers are ok, but expect to spend some time. Or find a friend who’s done it before and learn with them.

The Storage Bits take
I/O bottlenecks slow systems down. Faster and more abundant storage speed them up. With RAM and disks so cheap, upgrading storage is a great mid-life kicker.

Comments welcome, of course. If your hard drives more than 3 years old, replacing them is a good idea. They are mechanical devices and simply start to wear out.

Yes, I ignored overclocking. If you want to overclock, do it right!

Ever since the Google Street View program was released in May 2007, many people have been complaining about the privacy issues associated with it. Apart from seeing their houses on Google's Web site, people have reported seeing themselves on the Internet as well. Now, I'd say that's taking it a bit too far. If you agree, here’s how you can keep your home and yourself a little cialis daily 5mg more private!

1.) If you don’t want your house to show up in the Google Street View program because of privacy issues, all you have to do is click on the Report a Concern button, shown below.

2.) Next, choose Privacy Concerns for the reason why you don’t want the image shown in Street View.

3.) Now, describe why you don’t want the image in Street View and then enter in your e-mail address.

4.) Next, move the Street View image until the red rectangle is centered over your property.

That's it! Google will then review your concerns and delete the image if they agree with you. Yes!

Are you an MS Office user who likes to customize your workspace?

Specifically, do you do a lot of toolbar customizing?

(Obviously, most of the 2007 programs don't have toolbars, so this doesn't apply to those. However, Outlook and Publisher 2007 still use the old menu and toolbar system and it does work for them).

Here are a couple of quick tricks for you. These are anytime customizations that may help you along your way.

• To cialis da 5 mg copy a toolbar button, press Ctrl + Alt while dragging the button to a new location.

• To remove a toolbar button, press the Alt key while dragging the button into the document. When you release the mouse button, you'll find that it disappears. (A great way to make extra space is by getting rid of the things you just don't use).