Michael Air

In a 10-point press release issued today Oracle has listed a series of "commitments" regarding their acquisition of MySQL by way of acquiring Sun. I am not impressed. As a former employee of a large Internet company (the largest at the time, in fact) that used both Oracle and MySQL, I'm utterly puzzled by this. I can't think of why we should trust Oracle to do right by the users of MySQL--especially the non-paying users. You see, for years Oracle worked agressively behind the scenes to discredit MySQL and tried hard to understand how their customers could ever consider using such a "toy" instead of their flagship product. In fact, it was so important to Oracle that they offered some very substantial discounts to customers who were using MySQL and Oracle. In some cases the discounts were so impressive that their motivation was clear: cut off the opportunity for MySQL to grow and spread in such organizations. (Remember what happened to Netscape when Microsoft gave away Internet Explorer... - Michael Air

Our plan was to debut the CrunchPad on stage at the Real-Time Crunchup event on November 20, a little over a week ago. We even hoped to have devices hacked together with Google Chrome OS and Windows 7 to show people that you could hack this thing to run just about anything you want. We’d put 1,000 of the devices on pre-sale and take orders immediately. Larger scale production would begin early in 2010. And then the entire project self destructed over nothing more than greed, jealousy and miscommunication. via techcrunch.com I completely missed this new from a few days ago... wow Permalink | Leave a comment  » - Michael Air

Murdoch himself was responsible for dealing the company the first in a series of blows. On a 2007 News Corp earnings call, a punchy Murdoch told analysts that Fox Interactive Media would generate $1bn in revenues for the 2008 fiscal year (up from about $550m in 2007). With MySpace representing almost all of Fox Interactive’s revenues, the implication was clear: Murdoch thought MySpace’s meteoric rise would continue. There was only one problem: the MySpace management team had no idea Murdoch had set them a new target until he opened his mouth. “It came out of thin air,” says a former MySpace executive. At a stroke, the site’s free-wheeling, entrepreneurial days were over: it had to perform exactly as expected – or else. via ft.com Permalink | Leave a comment  » - Michael Air

“Without permission of the authors, Scribd maintains copies of authors’ works for use in a copyright protection system,” according to the suit. “Once a copyrighted work is uploaded to Scribd without the copyright holder’s permission, the infringement is ongoing and permanent. Even if the work becomes unavailable for download by users, Scribd illegally copies the work into its copyright protection system, without permission or compensation to the author.” via wired.com Scribd is willing to take down any content reported as breach of copyright as well as using technology to prevent future violations... for this they are being sued? The mind boggles as to why an author would want to sue a company in support of copyright protection... Permalink | Leave a comment  » - Michael Air

Ruby on Rails 2.3.4: Security Fixes Posted by michael September 04, 2009 @ 06:04 AM We’ve released Ruby on Rails 2.3.4, this release fixes bugs and introduces a few minor features. Due to the inclusion of two security fixes, all users of the 2.3 series are recommended to upgrade as soon as possible. Security Fixes 2.3.4 contains fixes for two security issues which were reported to us. For more details see the security announcements: CVE-2009-3009 – XSS vulnerability Timing Weakness in MessageVerifier and the Cookie Store Bug Fixes Thanks to the success of the BugMash we have around 100 bug fixes as part of this release. Of particular not is the fix to reloading problems related to rack middleware and rails metals when running in development mode. New Features Support for bundling I18n translations in plugins, Rails will now automatically add locale files found in any engine’s locale directory to the I18n.load_path. commit Added db/seeds.rb as a default file for storing seed data for... - Michael Air

Desert 0.5.2 focuses on speed improvements and bug bixes. Pivotal Tracker Stories: "Fix mailer templates -- very slow with Desert": ActionMailer::Base.view_paths are now cached. This speeds up ActionMailer tests/specs. "Plugin schema migrations should successfully convert from the 'old' scheme to the 'new' scheme": Pulled cauta/desert at master and fixed specs. "Add sweepers to Desert's load path": Pulled willcodeforfoo/desert at master and fixed specs. "Specs should handle Rails version incompatibilities" via pivotallabs.com If you're upgrading or installing desert 0.5.2, you'll need to update the manifest before you can use script/generate desert_plugin - errors out. In generators/desert_plugin/desert_plugin_generator.rb: This: m.template "routes.rb", "vendor/plugins/#{file_name}/config/routes.rb" Should be: m.template "desert_routes.rb", "vendor/plugins/#{file_name}/config/desert_routes.rb" It's already a bug logged in their tracker so this be a temporary workaround until the next... - Michael Air

Site speed has always been an important factor in the development of Facebook, even as the site evolves over time to become more feature-rich and complex. As we grow beyond the 250 million user mark, every small change to the site causes a huge ripple, affecting throngs of web surfers and their experience on Facebook. My project this summer as an engineering intern on the Infrastructure team involved tackling this imposing fact by exploring data and finding out how various changes to fundamental parts of the user experience impacted and changed user behavior. http://www.facebook.com/note... Permalink | Leave a comment  » - Michael Air

Sent from my iPhone Permalink | Leave a comment  » - Michael Air

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See and download the full gallery on posterous Permalink | Leave a comment  » - Michael Air

At the orpheum waiting to see Quentin Tarantino / John Jarrat / Dark Age. Ozploitation. Sent from my iPhone Permalink | Leave a comment  » - Michael Air

Sent from my iPhone Permalink | Leave a comment  » - Michael Air

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Sent from my iPhone Permalink | Leave a comment  » - Michael Air

The barista was experimenting with different techniques and asked if I wouldn't mind trying them out. When macchiato's are involved, I'm always happy to oblige :) Permalink | Leave a comment  » - Michael Air

via news.rediff.com "According to a report in National Geographic News, to replicate the Ho 2-29, a team from the Northrop Grumman defence-contracting corporation used original Nazi blueprints of Hitler's stealth fighter and the only surviving Ho 2-29, which has been stored in a US government facility for more than 50 years." Permalink | Leave a comment  » - Michael Air

Economic downturn? Sent from my iPhone Permalink | Leave a comment  » - Michael Air

Economic downturn? Sent from my iPhone Permalink | Leave a comment  » - Michael Air

Sent from my iPhone Permalink | Leave a comment  » - Michael Air

Sent from my iPhone Permalink | Leave a comment  » - Michael Air

Sent from my iPhone Permalink | Leave a comment  » - Michael Air

Sent from my iPhone Permalink | Leave a comment  » - Michael Air

Sent from my iPhone Permalink | Leave a comment  » - Michael Air

Sent from my iPhone Permalink | Leave a comment  » - Michael Air

Sent from my iPhone Permalink | Leave a comment  » - Michael Air

Sent from my iPhone Permalink | Leave a comment  » - Michael Air

Permalink | Leave a comment  » - Michael Air

Permalink | Leave a comment  » - Michael Air

Permalink | Leave a comment  » - Michael Air

Permalink | Leave a comment  » - Michael Air