Archive for January 2009

MySQL 5.1: a hot skill for 2009

Today Giuseppe pointed me to Hot skills: MySQL 5.1, an article in ComputerWeekly.com.

The takeaway from the Gartner report quoted?

  • Gartner published a report titled “The Growing Maturity of Open-Source Database Management Systems” in November 2008, and found that there was a 50% increase from 2007 to 2008 in the usage of open source DBMS’s in production.
  • “Gartner says the major open source DBMSs are now available for installation as packages, without involving the source code, and include tools to help support administrators and managers.” I’d like to state that, MySQL has always been available in packaged format, and you don’t need to fudge with the source code if you do not want to. In fact, its available on all your distributions as well.
  • “Gartner still has reservations: open source DBMSs should be used “primarily for non-mission-critical applications and those that do not require high availability”. However, they add, “If the technical capabilities of the staff are strong, use of an open-source DBMS in mission-critical environments is possible now”.” I’d like to affirm that its being used in mission critical environments daily, and no one worries otherwise. Customers from Google right to Cisco, Nokia, and more, use MySQL, without hiccups.

The report states that MySQL DBA’s pull in around £30,000 to £40,000 a year. The recommendation for training, is:

Start with Sun’s aptly named “Getting Started with MySQL” and the MySQL tutorial, or search for free independent online tutorials.

I can highly recommend attending a training session (MySQL for Database Administrators or MySQL for Developers), and then focusing on getting certified. Of course, the book on the left, the MySQL 5.0 Certification Study Guide (MySQL Press) is also invaluable.

Good luck in becoming MySQL certified, and prosper with your hot skill for 2009!

Streamyx throttles BitTorrent uploads

I decided to play with the tools at Measurement Lab. Of interest to me was: Test if your ISP is manipulating Bittorrent traffic. I am after all on a Streamyx connection and people tend to complain about it.

I administered the full test, which took around seven minutes (about the time it takes to wolf down a burger, and have a drink), and the results came back mostly positive.

First, it talks about BitTorrent traffic, using a standard BitTorrent port – 6888 – it seems while the downloads show no rate limiting, it seems the uploads have potential rate limiting. On a non-standard BitTorrent port – 10016 – the BitTorrent traffic again confirmed that there was upload throttling. Even TCP traffic on a well-known BitTorrent port, is throttled.

Glasnost: Test if your ISP is manipulating BitTorrent traffic

So there, TMNet’s Streamyx, the most popular broadband service in Malaysia (in fact, probably the only widely available commercial broadband service, so to speak), is confirmed to be rate limiting you, based on the BitTorrent protocol, even on non-standard ports (its definite on the standard BitTorrent port, but not so certain on others – its probably protocol level, from what I would gather). Just limiting the upload speed, is enough to do damage to how BitTorrent works, naturally.

Workarounds? I know there’s some service called BolehVPN. I personally use a box located in a colo, that does the work for me, and I bring what I need down, via scp -C. Does encrypting help? I think I need to read up more on how BitTorrent works, clearly…

FriendFeed room, identi.ca group, for MySQL

Executive summary: There is now a MySQL Room on FriendFeed, as well as a identi.ca group for mysql. Community members, developers, dabblers, users, etc. should find these extra avenues useful, in addition to the forums, mailing lists, and even the Forge. Join them now!

There has been a recent uptake of Twitter amongst the MySQL community… Early adopters have been around for ages, even (as we’re slowly approaching Twitter’s third birthday).

However, I’ve been noticing that slowly, there’s a little shift of the technical crowd, to identi.ca. I’ve had an account there for a while, but never really use the service much – but they’ve had updates this past week. They have group support now.

To post to the mysql group, just say:

!mysql message

The order doesn’t matter. Just have !mysql, in the body of your message. It reminds me of #hashtags on Twitter.

I don’t know how many pay attention to FriendFeed, but there is also a MySQL Room on FriendFeed. I think its a lot more discussion friendly than identi.ca, and would like to see it used more. We always during the Conference & Expo tend to use IRC, but maybe now, we’ll use FriendFeed. Good archives, good conversation, good tracking (one can use twhirl – an Adobe AIR app), I see it as a big win.

All in all, Twitter seems like the .com boom of the early 90’s, when businesses discovered Usenet, however identi.ca seem like those private lists, where the cool kids from Usenet migrated to.

Facebook kills

no longer listed as single... Facebook notifications People tend to be excited when a Facebook status changes. In fact, Facebook gives it a lot of prominence by embedding it on the start page of your friends.

This Facebook status message thing though, can cause a lot of misunderstandings. If you’re not listed as single, it doesn’t mean you’re in a relationship (it could just mean that you’ve stopped looking, decided to become a priest, celebrate celibacy, et al). Whatever.

For some, it can even cause death. Via The BBC, in Wife murdered for Facebook status:

A man murdered his estranged wife after becoming “enraged” when she changed her marital status on Facebook to “single”.


Fiona Cortese, of the Crown Prosecution Service, said: “Richardson became enraged when Sarah changed her marital status on Facebook to single and decided to go and see her as she was not responding to his messages.

I’ve read about breakup’s on Facebook. I’ve read about people’s happiness on Facebook. But this is a first, I’ve read of a murder thanks to Facebook. Waste of a twenty six year old life. Bad social networking.

Offline GMail via Google Gears

I use Thunderbird (current mail client du jour – pine, Evolution, Thunderbird, with maybe a smattering of Pegasus Mail in there for a short span of time) daily. Though I’m tiring of it for my great amounts of personal mail, and have been using GMail, because I can read it on the Web, via Thunderbird, on my phone, or at a public terminal. In fact, GMail rocks so hard, I’m moving more and more of my email to Google’s Hosted Apps service.

Today, Google has made things sweeter – with the announcement of Offline GMail as a Labs feature.

This means I can now use a site-specific browser like Fluid or Prism to read my mail. Because, now its now a real desktop application – even when I’m offline, I can read and reply to emails. This has been a much-requested for feature, for years. Its already enabled in Google Reader (which I use, with a SSB) as well as Google Docs (also, in a SSB for me).

Reminds me of what I used to do successfully over ten years ago on my Palm IIIx PDA (POP had its benefits… IMAP when offline, tends to act weird when brought online – read messages appearing unread, etc. – don’t know if this is a Thunderbird issue, per se)

Unfortunately, none of my GMail accounts have it enabled yet (even the ones with Google Apps hosted domains) :-( Time to wait for yet another killer feature – bringing the cloud to the (portable) desktop.

The Internet era, exposing information, then getting death threats

Today, I found out Michael Arrington of TechCrunch fame got spat on, but worse, he had death threats against him and his family previously (consequently, he will take a break during February to re-focus). It reminded me of what happened with Kathy Sierra, a while back, which made her stop blogging. Then it reminded me of the events of 2002, in where someone did the same thing to me.

When you’re public facing, and on the Internet, you tend to have a lot of your information spewed online. Social networking sites, and the constant need for you to share with others, helps drive the fact that any stalker can find information about you easily. Some even get their iPhone’s to update the Location field in Twitter automatically (wait, I think twibble on the Nokia phones does that too). We’re geotagging photos. Dopplr or TripIt tells others where you are planning to go – so this problem can also be cross-border.

We’re slowly giving up our privacy, to some extent. And we’re allowing malicious folk to know intimate details of our lives. Details that we wouldn’t mind sharing with a friend, but details that can be used to cause attacks, or even identity theft.

So, my question is: is this an online-only phenomena? I mean, journalists in traditional media do the same thing. OK, they have journalistic integrity, and the editors have strict guidelines to ensure that what is in print, isn’t drivel. Rumours tend not to be published, and everything is fact backed. Blogs tend to lack that, sometimes. Its harder to pinpoint and contact an individual journalist – you’ll just be getting to the editor. In a world where everyone can have the potential to be a journalist, without the integrity of one, is leaving yourself vulnerable online a good thing?

From a personal perspective, my incident about seven years ago hasn’t taught me much. I don’t paste my home address with GPS co-ordinates online anymore on my site – instead I use a PO BOX. But on social networking sites like Facebook, my friends get to see more details. With other people tagging photos of me, you even one even gets to see where I’m hanging out. And when I’m bored, I might tweet where I might be. And with geotagging, co-ordinates start showing up (especially if you have Location Tagger running automatically on the Nokia E71).

How do you deal with potential threats? Do you even think of it? Have you been threatened before?

Here’s hoping Mike has a good break and comes back blogging even stronger. Don’t give up!


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