10 New Reasons to Virtualize Your Infrastructure

Source: 10 New Reasons to Virtualize Your Infrastructure

1. Common Management Interface

2. ILO Not Required

3. Easy "Hardware" Changes

4. Snapshots

5. Prototyping

6. Fast System Communications

7. Easy Decommissioning

8. Templating

9. Fast Deployment

10. Dynamic Capacity

職場衰人收入較多

【明報專訊】俗語有云：「善有善報，惡有惡報」，不過此話在職場未必是定律。一項研究發現，表現惡形惡相的「衰人」員工收入明顯比友善的「好人」員工多，其中以男性情况特別明顯，「衰人」的年收入可比「好人」多9772美元（約7.6萬港元）。

美國康奈爾大學、聖母大學及加拿大西安大略大學的人力資源管理專家，做了一項名為「人善是否被人欺？」（Do Nice Guys-and Gals-Really Finish Last?）的研究。研究分析了20年間由3項問卷調查蒐集得的數據，涉及約1萬名來自不同行業、年齡薪酬各異的受訪者，當中受訪者需自評友善程度。

惡男每年多掙7.6萬

研究人員分析數據後，發現友善程度低於平均值的惡男員工比友善的男員工平均收入多18%，年收入相差達9772美元（約7.6萬港元）；而惡女員工亦比友善的女員工平均收入多5%，年收入相差1828美元（約1.4萬港元）。另外，研究人員在另一研究中亦邀請460名商科學生，模擬人力資源經理，透過簡短的描述，篩選應徵顧問的人員，結果發現，被形容為非常和善的男士較少獲取錄。

友善者少爭取好待遇

研究員利文斯頓博士（Beth A. Livingston）稱，實驗結果顯示好人受到「不公平」待遇。


Reference: Yahoo News - 職場衰人收入較多

New website of Pharmacy and Poisons Board of Hong Kong launched

Healthcare

1. 4 Jul, 2011 - New website of Pharmacy and Poisons Board of Hong Kong launched
1. http://www.ppbhk.org.hk/eng/index.html
2. 24 Jun, 2011 - Google Health will be discontinued as a service
1. http://www.google.com/intl/en-US/health/about/

General

1. 20 Jul, 2011 - (Video) 蘋果告侵權 谷歌力挺宏達電 (不如睇下動新聞)
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DGMnTv23S4
2. 14 Jul, 2011 - Postmortem : Google Java App Engine outage
• http://googleappengine.blogspot.com/2011/07/postmortem-java-app-engine-outage-july.html
• Summary
• On July 14, 2011, beginning at 7 PM US/Pacific time (PDT/GMT-7), a subset of Java App Engine applications were affected by a service outage, which gradually increased in magnitude over time. During this period, affected applications would have experienced high latency and error rates. Approximately 1.9% of total App Engine traffic was affected at peak ...
• Root Cause and Analysis
• The main lesson learned is to improve our live traffic testing as a relatively minor bug triggered a corner case for some of our customers. The bug was in a new release of the infrastructure in the App Engine Java execution environment. During development, testing, and qualification, this bug was essentially hidden from view because it only manifested itself under specific load patterns …
• …
• Timeline
• July 14, 2011 - 11:30 AM US/Pacific - The new Java execution environment is released to production.
• July 14, 2011 - 5:00-6:00 PM US/Pacific - The previously scheduled Master/Slave read-only maintenance period occurred.
• July 14, 2011 - 8:00-9:30 PM US/Pacific - Monitoring shows error rates and latency for Java applications in the Master/Slave system are slowly increasing across the entire system. Investigation reveals that the new Java execution environment is malfunctioning …
• ...
• Remediation
• Faster notification on our status site and downtime-notify mailing list
• More live traffic stress tests for new releases
• Better black box monitoring to detect small impacts more quickly
3. 7 May, 2011 - Why The New Guy Can’t Code
• http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/07/why-the-new-guy-cant-code/

Jasper Tutorials

1.    http://jasperforge.org/website/jasperreportswebsite/trunk/documentation.html
2.    http://kristantohans.wordpress.com/tag/tutorial-jasper-report/
3.    http://ireport-tutorial.blogspot.com/
4.    http://kristantohans.wordpress.com/2010/03/01/new-to-jasperreport-build-your-first-impressive-application-part-2/

Using iPad as menu to order food

User can use iPad2 camera to scan the 2D barcode to order food. 

Reference: http://diningcity.com/china/

FREE Android apps outnumber FREE iPhone apps

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/04/28/shocker-free-android-apps-outnumber-free-iphone-apps/

Android TV-Out for presentation

I have do a study for how to connect android phone to projector / TV. HTC Desire HD and Samsung Nexus S (like most android phones) do not support TV-Out.

Until now, only Samsung Galaxy S has TV-Out function in Hong Kong. However, we cannot use Samsung Galaxy S as our development phone. Because we have used some Android 2.3 API for our Barcode Scanning customization and Samsung Galaxy S is used Android 2.2.

(p.s. HTC Desire HD is used Android 2.2 platform.)

An alternative solution - Android Screen Cast - it can mirror your app screen to your notebook and connect to a projector. The function is work, but the quality is not good (may be poor).

BTW, Samsung Galaxy Tab has TV-Out function and many of Android tablets have HDMI out. I am thinking that we can port our app to those devices for presentation only. But it may have extra effort for development.

(p.s. Samsung Galaxy Tab is also used Android 2.2 platform.)

All comments are welcome. Thanks!

Reference:

1. TV-Out on the Nexus S?
2. TV-Out on HTC Desire?
3. HTC Desire to tv or a projector?
4. http://code.google.com/p/androidscreencast/

DenyHosts

Features

1. Parses /var/log/secure to find all login attempts and filters failed and successful attempts.
2. Synchronization mode (new in 2.0) allows DenyHosts daemons the ability to share data via a centralized server to proactively thwart attacks.
3. Can be run from the command line, cron or as a daemon (new in 0.9)
4. Records all failed login attempts for the user and offending host
5. For each host that exceeds a threshold count, records the evil host
6. Keeps track of each non-existent user (eg. sdadasd) when a login attempt failed.
7. Keeps track of each existing user (eg. root) when a login attempt failed.
8. Keeps track of each offending host (with 0.8+ these hosts can be purged if the associated entry in /etc/hosts.deny is expired)
9. Keeps track of suspicious logins (that is, logins that were successful for a host that had many login failures)
10. Keeps track of the file offset, so that you can reparse the same file (/var/log/secure) continuously (until it is rotated).
11. When the log file is rotated, the script will detect it and parse from the beginning.
12. Appends /etc/hosts.deny and adds the newly banned hosts
13. Optionally sends an email of newly banned hosts and suspicious logins.
14. Keeps a history of all user, host, user/host combo and suspicious logins encountered which includes the data and number of corresponding failed login attempts.
15. Maintains failed valid and invalid user login attempts in separate files, such that it is easy to see which valid user is under attack (which would give you the opportunity to remove the account, change the password or change it's default shell to something like /sbin/nologin
16. Upon each run, the script will load the previously saved data and re-use it to append new failures.
17. Resolves IP addresses to hostnames, if available (new in v0.6.0).
18. /etc/hosts.deny entries can be expired (purge) at a user specified time (new in 0.8)
19. FreeBSD support (added in 0.7)

References

1. http://denyhosts.sourceforge.net/
2. http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/rhel-linux-block-ssh-dictionary-brute-force-attacks/

Red Hat Directory Server

Features Overview

1. Centralizes management of people and their profiles, reducing administrative costs
2. Acts as a central repository for user profiles and preferences, enabling personalization
3. Allows 4-way multi-master replication of data across the enterprise, providing a centralized, consistent data source available to enterprise applications
4. Enables single sign-on access with a partner solution
5. Provides scalability for massive numbers of users by containing the information control required for developing extranet applications
6. Provides full support for 64-bit HP-UX, Solaris and Red Hat Enterprise Linux platforms
7. Provides the foundation for strong certificate-based authentication when used in conjunction with a Red Hat Certificate System

Reference:

1. http://www.redhat.com/directory_server/

HTTP accelerator

1. Varnish
2. Squid

p.s. The Norway biggest online news provider use 3 Varnish machines replace 12 Squid machines. Wikipedia is planning to use Varnish instead of Squid.

Virtualization

1. Xen
2. VMware
3. VirtualBox
4. KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine)

With ConVirt you configure, monitor and automate your Xen and KVM deployments and private clouds from a single at-a-glance dashboard. Open source virtualization is now a real option for enterprises!

Reference

1. http://www.convirture.com/

p.s. RHEL 6.0 Beta already remove Xen and may use KVM for virtualization.

Infrastructure Monitoring

1. ZABBIX
2. Xymon
3. Hinemos
4. Nagios

	ZABBIX	Xymon	Hinemos	Nagios
License	GPLv2	GPLv2	GPLv2	GPLv2
Programming	C, PHP	C	Java	C
Admin GUI	Web	Web	Eclipse client	Web
OS	Linux / UNIX	Linux / UNIX	Red Hat Linux / Solaris (Admin GUI running on Windows XP)	Linux / UNIX
Support Monitor OS	Linux / UNIX / Windows	Linux / UNIX / Windows	Red Hat Linux / Windows XP	Linux / UNIX / Windows
Popular	NO	YES	NO	YES

Novell Cloud Manager

Infrastructure Manager

Novell Cloud Manager support Xen, Hyper-V and VMware.

Novell Cloud Manager can estimate cost.

Reference:

1. http://www.novell.com/products/cloud-manager/

Joke

There is an old joke I enjoy, that I think has a lot of relevance to software.

There was a guy who always cut his pot roast in half before cooking it. His wife was curious as to why he always did it that way. He replied that this was the way his mother had always done it. His wife went to her husband's mother and asked her why she did this. The mother replied that this was the way that her mother had always done it. Finally, the wife went to her husband's grandmother and asked her why she did this.

The grandmother replied, 「It was because I didn't have a dish large enough to put an entire pot roast in!」.

iPhone Mini Microscope is Born!!! Just buy this $1,500 (USD) iPhone Case!!!

Check out the handyscope, a plug-and-play conversion case for the iPhone 3GS or iPhone 4. Just buy this $1,500 (USD) iPhone case.



Previously, I found a article of iPhone mini microscope from Geeky Gadgets. For details, pls click here.

Reference:

1. http://www.handyscope.net/
2. http://www.engadget.com/2011/01/24/handyscope-attachment-turns-your-iphone-into-a-dermatoscope-no/
3. http://www.medgadget.com/archives/2011/01/handyscope_turns_iphone_into_professional_dermatoscope.html
4. http://www.geeky-gadgets.com/iphone-mini-microscope-mod-09-09-2010/
   

Best Jobs in 2011 (and the worst jobs in 2011)

Software Engineer is the best job in the nation, according to the CareerCast.com Jobs Rated Report which came out today. Roustabout, a person whose job involves heavy unskilled work (someone who works on an oil rig) was ranked as the nation's worst job.

Best Jobs in 2011 vs. How They Fared in 2010:
1. Software Engineer (up 1 spot)
2. Mathematician (up 4)
3. Actuary (down 2)
4. Statistician (up 4)
5. Computer Systems Analyst (down 2)
6. Meteorologist (up 6)
7. Biologist (down 3)
8. Historian (down 3)
9. Audiologist (up 34)
10. Dental Hygienist (no change)

Worst Jobs in 2011 and How They Fared in 2010:
200. Roustabout (no change)
199. Ironworker (down 1)
198. Lumberjack (up 1)
197. Roofer (down 18)
196. Taxi Driver (down 2)
195. Emergency Medical Technician (down 9)
194. Welder (up 2)
191. Painter (down 32)
191. Meter Reader (up 1)
191. Construction Worker (up 2)

To see the 2011 rankings of all 200 best and worst jobs, click here.

To review the 2011 Jobs Rated Report methodology, click here.

Reference:

1. http://www.careercast.com/jobs-rated/2011-ranking-200-jobs-best-worst
   
2. http://www.jobacle.com/blog/2011/1/5/best-jobs-in-2011-and-the-worst-jobs-in-2011.html
3. http://moneywatch.bnet.com/economic-news/blog/daily-money/the-10-best-and-worst-jobs-for-2011/1920/

iPhone Blood Pressure Monitor

Withings (www.withings.com)

Price: 129 USD

Related News:

1. http://www.engadget.com/2011/01/04/withings-fittingly-debuts-iphone-connected-blood-pressure-monito/
   
2. http://chinese.engadget.com/2011/01/05/withings-fittingly-debuts-iphone-connected-blood-pressure-monito/
   

iHealth (www.ihealth99.com)

Status: Available

Price: 99.95 USD

Related news:

1. http://www.engadget.com/2011/01/04/ihealth-blood-pressure-ipod-dock-another-sort-of-apple-to-keep/
   
2. http://chinese.engadget.com/2011/01/05/ihealth-blood-pressure-ipod-dock-another-sort-of-apple-to-keep/

iPhone Heart Fitness

For Android, please visit the following url:

http://androidandme.com/2010/08/applications/check-your-pulse-with-instant-heart-rate/

http://androidhk.com/2010/10/10/app-%E6%8E%A8%E4%BB%8B-instant-heart-rate-%E6%B8%AC%E5%BF%83%E8%B7%B3/

For iPhone,

Measure Your Heart Fitness

Measure your heart rate and monitor your physical fitness using their patented technology and your iPhone. Developed in the laboratory of University in France, this method has been tested and validated against FDA-approved instruments in clinical conditions … …

http://itunes.apple.com/app/heart-fitness/id394908591

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