Free book of the day: Essentials of Metaheuristics

Here’s a cool free book for those like me that love messing in the metaheuristics world.

.NET OpenID

Here’s a cool library: DotNetOpenAuth:

This C# library adds OpenID 2.0 Provider and Relying Party, OAuth Consumer and Service Provider, and InfoCard Selectorsupport to your web site both programmatically and through convenient drop-in ASP.NET controls. Use as much or little of the functionality as you want.

Download it now

Download the latest version

or Get the latest source

All downloads include both the library, samples, and tools to help you get started.

We use GIT for source control, click here to find out more

Features

• Compiled library that adds support for your site visitors to login with their OpenIDs by just dropping an ASP.NET control onto your page. It's that easy. An AJAX-style login control is also included for a slick, streamlined user experience.
• Give your site members their own OpenIDs with the provider support included in this library.
• Sample relying party and provider web sites show you just how to do it.
• Easy access to all the functionality so you can customize how OpenID will operate on your site, whether you use ASP.NET or not.
• Classic ASP support
• Full support for custom extensions. Plus built-in support for Simple Registration, Attribute Exchange and PAPE.
• Works in partial trusted shared hosting environments.
• Support for web farms where state persistence, front-facing web servers and ASP.NET may not be standard or even available.
• OpenID 2.0 and 1.x
• OAuth 1.0 and 1.0a
• Superior support for multi-byte Unicode identifiers.
• Lots of security features
• 490+ unit tests to verify correctness.
• Library behind the OSIS OpenID interop testing
• About 1500 downloads per month. See who's using DotNetOpenAuth

Google Chrome just got fatter

Yeap, Google Chrome now has extensions! We can say bye bye to the minimalist approach, but hello to many goodies.

Here are some of the most popular extensions – yes, there’s a basic ad blocker:

Google Mail Checker

(698)

-  115,343 users

Displays the number of unread messages in your Google Mail inbox. You can also click the button to...

AdThwart

(327)

-  70,693 users

Blocks ads on websites. Includes the EasyList ad filter list as of 9 Dec 2009.

Google Translate

(180)

-  69,760 users

This extension translates entire webpages into a language of your choice with one click. By the...

RSS Subscription Extension

(227)

-  49,322 users

Adds one-click subscription to your toolbar

Google Wave Notifier

(123)

-  37,235 users

Displays number of unread Waves.

Xmarks for Chrome Beta

(211)

-  35,478 users

Xmarks for Chrome Beta is a beta preview of Xmarks for Chrome

 

Please note: you’ll have to install version 4 beta.

Windows 7 Sensor and Location Platform Overview

Uau, I want to play with this!

The Windows Sensor and Location platform, new for Windows 7, enables your computer and applications to adapt to their current environment. With location sensors -- including GPS devices, WWAN radios, and even triangulation technology -- your applications and gadgets can know exactly where they are, enabling them to provide more locally relevant content and functionality. Join Dan Polivy, Gavin Gear, product team PMs, and Yochay Kiriaty, Technical Evangelist, as they explain what the Windows 7 Sensor and Location platform is, what underlying architecture supports its functionality, and how developers can take advantage of this new and exciting platform.

 

Installing ESXi 4.0

Here are my notes on my last ESXi installation:

1. Download and burn CD from VMWare – the Dell customized version for a PowerEdge 2950

OPTIONAL BINARY
VMware ESXi 4.0 with Dell Customization
Version 4.0.0 | 181792 - 08/07/09
Binary (.iso) (417 MB)
Image for ESXi Installable that includes Dell customization.
md5sum: 0ff898e830a095abb2275181175e065e

2. Installing ESXi

Not much to say here. Basically set the password and configured the 1st network adapter.

3. Activated SSH (here’s where I’ve learned about this)

• At the console, hit ALT-F1
• type unsupported and hit <enter> (NOTE: you won’t see what your typing until you hit enter…)
• login
• edit /etc/inetd.conf
• uncomment the ssh line
• restart the services (services.sh restart)

We can now get the hell out of the datacenter :)

 

4. Install vSphere client

• HTTP the server, downloaded and installed vSphere client to my workstation
• On Windows 7 you have to fix it. Here the long and the short version

 

5. Install ftp server (here’s where I’ve learned about this)

• Downloaded OEM.tgz
• Uploaded to the datastore using the datastore browser
• On an SSH session, copied it to /bootbank/oem.tgz
• Added to /etc/inetd.conf:
• ftp stream tcp nowait root /usr/sbin/proftpd proftpd
• Reboot

And there you go, you’ve got an ftp server on your ESXi! For client ESXi has native support as:

• wget: wget ftp://user:password@source_ESXi_IP/path/file
• ftpput & ftpget

 

6. Install some precious tooling

• Your favorite ftp client
• VMWare Converter

 

Please remember:

• by default, VMWare Converter chooses flat files
• after uploading to the server your VMWare Server or Player versions, you’ll have to convert it: vmkfstools -d thin -i source.vmdk destination.vmdk.

 

Thanks for the support Rasteiro :)

Error converting Oracle VM

We’ve been converting out VMWare Server 1 and 2 to ESXi4. Today 2 of out Oracle servers stopped working after being VMWareConverted to ESXi. For some strange reason, oracle just managed to screw up the instance, and we got the following error:

ORA-01034 : ORACLE not available
ORA-27101 : shared memory realm does not exist

I had to re-register the service. Something like:

SET ORACLE_HOME=<my oracle home>
SET ORACLE_SID=<my oracle sid>

# delete service
oradim -delete -sid MCH9

# register service
oradim -new -sid <my oracle sid> -intpwd <my sysdba password> -startmode AUTO -pfile <my init.ora>

Running VMWare vSphere on Windows 7

Here’s a cool link to patch VMWare vSphere in Windows 7.

Just received a new phone: TMN Silverbelt (ZTE Raise)

Finally my HTC 3300 gets to be replaced::

 

Nothing much to say for now, it seems pretty fair for the 219.90€ I’m paying. Here’s what you get with one of this:

• Windows Mobile 6.5
• 5 MPixel camera
• GPS and NDrive
• HSUPA
• 3.2’’ screen

 

Here’s the detailed data from PDAdb.net:

 

	Brand:	TMN
	Browse TMN devices
	Manufacturer:	Zhong Xing Telecommunication Equipment
	Browse all devices manufactured by Zhong Xing Telecommunication Equipment
	Hardware:Designer:	Zhong Xing Telecommunication Equipment
	Project;Codename:	ZTE Raise
	Browse all devices under ZTE Raise codename
	Release;Date:	October, 2009
	Predecessor_Model:	ZTE e760
	Physical;Attributes
	Dimensions	57 x 112 x 12.5 millimetres
	(width x height x depth):	2.2 x 4.4 x 0.5 inches
	Bounding_Volume:	79.8 cubecentimetres
	Mass:	146 grams (battery included)
	Software_Environment
	Embedded;Operating:System:	Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.5 Professional
	Browse devices running this OS
	Operating:System_Kernel:	Windows CE 5.2.2
	Microprocessor,-Chipset
	CPU-Clock:	528 MHz
	CPU:	Qualcomm MSM7225
	Browse devices based on MSM7225
	Width_of+Machine-Word:	32 bit
	CPU-Core:	ARM1136EJ-S
	Instruction+Set:	ARMv6
	Memory,-Storage;capacity
	RAM+type:	SDRAM
	RAM_capacity:	256 MiB
	ROM+type:	Flash EEPROM
	ROM_capacity:	7630 MiB
	ROM+capacity;in+bytes:	8 GB (billion bytes)
	Graphical+subsystem
	Display+Type:	color transflective TFT display
	Display:Color_Depth:	16 bit/pixel (65536 scales)
	Display+Diagonal:	3.2 " (81 millimetres)
	Display-Resolution:	400 x 240 (96000 pixels)
	Viewable:Display_Size:	2.73 " x 1.64 " (69.46 x 41.67 millimetres)
	Dot+Pitch:	146.3 pixel/inch (0.17364 millimetre/pixel)
	Audio_Subsystem
	Audio-Channel(s):	stereo sound
	Analog/Digital Converter	16 bit nominal quantization
	(Recording):	44100 Hz sampling frequency
	Digital/Analog Converter	16 bit resolution
	(Playing):	44100 Hz holding frequency
	Microphone(s):	mono sound
	Loudspeaker(s):	mono sound
	Audio:Output:	Supported
	Cellular+Phone
	Cellular-Networks:	GSM850, GSM900, GSM1800, GSM1900, UMTS900, UMTS1900, UMTS2100
	Cellular_Data;Links:	CSD, GPRS, EDGE, UMTS, HSDPA, HSUPA
	Cellular:Antenna:	Internal antenna
	Call-Alert:	40 -chord melody (polyphonic)
	Vibrating;Alert:	Supported
	Speakerphone_:	Supported
	Control:Peripherals
	Positioning;Device:	Touchscreen
	Primary:Keyboard:	Not supported
	Directional;Pad:	Not supported
	Scroll:Wheel:	Not supported
	Interfaces
	Expansion_Interfaces:	microSD, microSDHC, TransFlash, SDIO
	Supports High Capacity (SD 2.0/HC) memory cards with capacity of up to 32GB
	USB:	USB 2.0 client, Hi-Speed (480Mbit/s)
	Bluetooth;(802.15):	Bluetooth 2.0, Internal antenna
	Wireless+LAN/Wi-Fi_(802.11):	IEEE 802.11b, IEEE 802.11g, 54 Mbit/s
	Internal antenna
	Infrared-Gate:	Not supported
	Multimedia_Broadcast
	Analog-Radio:	FM radio (87.5-108MHz) with RDS radio reciever
	Proprietary headset as antenna
	Digital;Media+Broadcast:	DVB-H digital tuner
	Pull-out antenna
	Satellite:Navigation
	Built-in;GPS;module:	Supported
	GPS;Protocol:	NMEA 0183
	GPS+Antenna:	Internal antenna
	Complementary:GPS+Services:	Assisted GPS
	Built-in;Digital;Camera
	Sensor_Type:	CMOS sensor
	Resolution:	2560 x1920 pixels (4.92MP)
	Autofocus+(AF):	Supported
	Optical+Zoom:	1 x
	Macro:Mode:	Not supported
	Built-in:Flash:	mobile light (LED)
	Camcorder:	320x240 pixels
	Recordable-Image;Formats:	JPG
	Recordable_Video-Formats:	3GP, MPEG4
	Built-in_Secondary+Digital+Camera
	Sensor+Type:	CMOS sensor
	Resolution:	640 x480 pixels (0.31MP)
	Camcorder:	0x0pixels
	Recordable-Image:Formats:	JPG
	Recordable_Video:Formats:	3GP, MPEG4
	Power_Supply
	Battery-Technology:	Lithium-ion battery
	Battery_Build:	removable
	Battery+Capacity:	1250 mAh
	Additional;Details
	Built-in+accelerometer:	Supported
	Additional;Features:	GPRS Class 12
	EDGE Class 12
	HSDPA 7.2
	HSUPA 5.76
	Bluetooth stereo audio profile (A2DP
	AVRCP)
	Related_Page:	http://wwwen.zte.com.cn/en/products/mobile/mobile_detail_291.jsp?mobileName=ZT..
	Datasheet:State:	Preliminary specifications
	Datasheet:Views:	5537 times
	Datasheet_Added:	Jul 28, 09 12:30:17

J2EE error: msg=bad version number in .class file

I’ve been loosing a lot of time with the dreadful:

java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: Unexpected error during load of: <somenamespace.someclass>, msg=Bad version number in .class file

After some googling I’ve soon discovered that this problem was related to compiling with a java version and executing with a different one. And finally our java Gurus (thanks Severino) manage to save the day:

Development Turnaround Time

Fact of life: in most development environments there’s a latency involved in the development stages of building and restarting. You can argue that interpreted, dynamic and highly untyped environments don’t suffer of this problem, but the sad truth is that .NET and J2EE environments are prone to this menace.

Some people call it turnaround time. It takes developing very expensive time, and introduces an extra payload: it ruins any change of maintaining the developer concentration and focus on the task they are working on.

Now that I’m entering the J2EE world I’m realizing that on these side of the world this problem is by far heavier. Let me give you an example on our project:

Average time to graceful stop:	0m 30s
Average time to build and deploy:	1m 30s
Average time to start:	4m 30s
Total turnaround time:	6m 30s

I was a little bit worried about this times until I' found that this times are considered acceptable on the J2EE world! Here are the results from a 1100 developer’s survey:

 

 

 

Oops…

Now the good news is that there may be a solution to cut this times by 8-18%: ZeroTurnAround. I haven’t tried it yet but it looks fantastic. Anyone out there is using this tool?

Please note that this survey was issued by the company that made this tool, so let’s hope that the data is not somewhat biased… One thing is for sure: we have a problem here. At least on our project.

Combining open-source efforts

I was searching for a linear programming lib on codeplex for one of my geek personal projects when I found FSharp.MathTools and the following change of plans message:

FSharp.MathTools: Change of Plans

In the interest of having one great open source library for the .NET platform we have refocussed our efforts and are now contributing to dnAnalytics. dnAnalyticsnow includes all the functionality that was in FSharp.MathTools and much more. Although dnAnalytics is written as a C# library with the choice of including fast native code, we have added an F# front end to accomodate the functional programming community. The code for FSharp.MathTools will still be available from this site.
Cheers, Jurgen

Ok, lets go to dnAnalytics. Wait, on the first page I have a similar message:

NOTE: dnAnalytics is merging with Math.NET Iridium into a new project Math.NET Numerics - http://mathnetnumerics.codeplex.com/. The 2009.08 release will be the last release of dnAnalytics.

So up to Math.NET Numerics we go. And my task has ended, here’s the final stop. For now.

Why is this relevant? Because although we need diversity, we also need a steady direction and joined forces, and this is what those guys did. And this is probably a problem with the part of the open-source community that tends to prefer branching over merging. Probably not immune to NIHS?

Just how much standard is EPCGlobal air interface?

The standardization of protocols is guarantee of:

• Independence of hardware
• Open-loop compliance

These concepts are fundamental for the modern supply chain, particularly for the competitiveness of the solutions and their economic viability. For this reason EPCGlobal defined standards, among them the tag air interface so that complaint interrogators can interact with compliant tags.

In my experience all the interrogators I’ve used can interact with all the tags. But there is an exception: we couldn’t read CAEN Temperature Logger UHF Semi-Passive Tag A927Z when using the IF61 Intermec interrogator. We can read it using a CAEN A928, but not with the Intermec. Not even the EPCID, let alone the data bank.

Ok, this is not your everyday logistic passive tag, but it EPC Gen2 compliant, so it should be read by any EPC Gen2 compliant interrogators.

We’ve being talking with Intermec and CAEN about it and the problem will soon be solved. But the problem still persists: for now, compliant certification is not enough, you’ll still have to depend on testing to guarantee it’s compliance.

Anyone else had this problems?

rfrbNET: RFID track & trace federated network

I’ve being devoting my last year to project rfrbNET, a RFID Track & Trace Federated Network (in Portuguese: Rede Federada de Rastreabilidade de Bens).

This project facilitates the building of a network of supply-chain participating peers over EPCGlobal standards. Objects represented by EPC tags transverse this peers, where these movements and respective business context is first captured and later delivered through a standard EPCIS interface. Although a reality right now, this interface is designed over a point-to-point logic, meaning you can query about EPC events directly against an EPCIS, but lacking the way to ask what EPCISes have information about these tags.

This problem is defined by the EPCGlobal as Discoverability, and is still a work in progress. To address the discoverability we have to solve problems like security, identity, privacy, protection of business data, policy rules and above all the architecture that can support it. To make it work, we have to frame it on a federation model that guarantee scalability and easy provisioning of accounts, and defining it's governance rules.

We are finishing the rfrbNET dissemination site, as soon as launch it announce it here.

This project co-financed by the QREN (National Strategic Reference Framework), the framing for the application of the Community’s policy for economic and social cohesion in Portugal.

Integrating RFID in the supply-chain

I’ve been accompanying a series of M.Sc. around RFID. Last Friday Nuno Rodrigues defended his thesis on “Integrating RFID in the supply-chain supported over ERP”.

Here’s the abstract:

The field of logistics and distribution, in what concerns warehouse management, has clear needs of business process optimization regarding the reception and shipping of products. The Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) might be the solution to address those needs.
This document presents the study done regarding RFID technology, the emerging set of standards from EPCglobal, available RFID Middleware tools, analysis of the current business processes (typically supported by barcode technology) and a proposal of new business processes that explores the potential of RFID technology.
It is proposed an architecture for the implementation of an RFID system integrated with an ERP, which usually manage the warehouse, as well the integration with the suppliers and customers, in order to facilitate the exchange of important business information.

On this dissertation, Nuno tackled the problem of inefficiencies on the supply chain (high human intervention, high error rates and lack of item-level tracking), and how  RFID can help addressing this problems.

His dissertation starts making reference to the state-of-the-art, where is worth mentioning the comparison of platforms and their alignment with the EPCGlobal stack.

He devotes the next chapter to the business processes on a warehouse, defining both the AS-IS and the necessarily different TO-BE resulting upon the RFID re-engineering process. The scenario is a typical Order->Palletize->ASN->Ship->Receive Goods process, with all the usual electronic documents. As an extra challenge Nuno had to extend Dynamics NAV in order to support RFID,

The next chapters identifies the involved information entities, the solution architecture and the prototype implementation detail, concluding demonstrating that the integration of RFID addresses the identified problems.

The scenarios and architecture will be addressed on a future post. For now let me list the technologies:

• BizTalk Server as Integration Middleware
• BizTalk RFID as RFID MiddleWare
• Dynamics NAV as ERP

Congratulations for a great thesis, Nuno.

SQL Server ignored default schema

Ignorance is not always a bless… In this case, it took us a lot of time figuring out why wasn’t the default schema kicking in. This one is well documented:

The value of DEFAULT_SCHEMA is ignored if the user is a member of the sysadmin fixed server role. All members of the sysadmin fixed server role have a default schema of dbo.

Two cool Sci Fi movies

I’ve just seen two great movies: “Moon” and “District 9”.

 

 

Why do I feel they’re worth mentioning? Probably because they are not obvious Science Fiction movies, they make use of Sci Fi to tell us the problems behind the stories.

First Google Wave Impressions

I’ve just received an invitation to Google Wave and I’ve being trying it out. Here’s a screenshot for future reference:

 

Unfortunately I couldn’t get any of my geek friends online so I couldn’t experience the collaboration features. And Google Wave is not the kind of application that shines alone, so let’s wait for the first tête-à-tête to post about it. Until then the only thing worth mentioning is the Outlook look and the feel and the promise of open gadgets.

Hope to continue this post soon.

Thanks for the invitation, Pita :)

<update>

Just stared working with Pita. First impressions: it works, but at the present time we can’t figure out what to use it for :) IM? Social networking the FaceBook way? Pure collaboration?

</update>

Joining the dark side of the force

I’ve finally embraced an old objective: to get my hands on a large-size J2EE project!

For years I’ve been working on Microsoft Platforms, and though I’ve started developing on Unix, java wasn’t present back on those days. And though I’ve been in contact with J2EE projects, these were usually small Master of Science projects, not the real thing.

This project will allow me to benchmark the two evil brothers. In my evaluation, here are my first thoughts:

• Boy, do these environments starve for memory! Our typical .NET VMs can settle for 700MB of RAM, the J2EE are crying for 2.5GB…
• Compared to these environment, the .NET platform is quite monolithic. The good side being: there’s way less to consider, projects tend to be more cohesive among themselves
• Methodological these J2EE projects are more solid than .NET ones
• On the other hand, the development experience in .NET is way better, the IDE is more robust and responsive
• J2EE environments depend heavily on bunches of XML configuration files. .NET tend to depend on wizards and graphic DSL tooling
• J2EE developers tend to accept with somewhat religious abnegation the shortcomings of their platform, .NET developers are not as forgiven

 

The baseline of our environment:

• JBoss
• JBoss Portal
• ORM: hibernate
• Container: this will be a subject for a future post…

Hyper-V Physical to Virtual: Disk2vhd

SysInternals has just released an utility, disk2vhd, that creates VHD versions of physical disks for use in Microsoft Virtual PC or Microsoft Hyper-V virtual machines. As it uses Windows’ Volume Snapshot capability, it can copy an image of an online system. Not that the competition doesn’t do it for long…

Download Disk2vhd (751 KB)

The Machine SID Duplication Myth

I’ve been using NewSID for years, first with disk cloning and on the last years with VM images. And it comes as a great surprise for me that it’s okay to have duplicate machine SIDs!

According to Mark Russinovich:

This blog post debunks the myth with facts by first describing the machine SID, explaining how Windows uses SIDs, and then showing that - with one exception - Windows never exposes a machine SID outside its computer, proving that it’s okay to have systems with the same machine SID

The exception to the rule is quite obvious: domain controllers.

Oops. How can so many people (me included) be so wrong for so long?

BizTalk Project Creation Failure

Strangely enough we lost the ability to create BizTalk projects on one of out dev VMs. The solution we chose was to repair the installation.

VMWare Player 3

I’ve upgraded VMWare Player to v3, and I’m having some mixed thoughts about it:

 

The good:

• We can create and update VM settings from within VMWare Player – no more VMX Builder for the majority of tasks
• VMWare tools are self-updatable from the net
• update: Multiple display support
• update: Unity support

 

The bad:

• Still no Unity support (changed "virtualHW.version" from "4" to "7" in the vmx file)
• Still no multiple display support (it works once you upgrade the VMTools)
• update: Unity is terribly slow

 

These last 2 seem to be dependent on a licensed Workstation copy. I can understand that VMWare wants to support its business, what I find hard to understand is why do they keep announcing the bloody features on the menu if they don’t intent to support it? Argh…

Oh well, still a great update.

<update>

I forgot to mention it: the display driver seems substantially slightly slower on my Windows 7…

</update>

Encompassing the Globe: Portugal and the World in the 16th and 17th Centuries

For better or for worse Portugal has its share of responsibility over the globalization we so well known today. The exploration voyages experienced from the 15th century Portuguese sailors connected the world, “discovered” continents and cultures, ended old fears and monopolies, opened the commerce to the word and laid the grounds for the world we live in.

As a Portuguese I always wanted to see an exhibit that portrayed this time of world history as told by non-europeans. Smithsonian has made it possible with a fine exhibit that made its way back home to Lisbon, at the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga.

Though in my opinion this exhibit somehow lacked the needed articulated view of the so called “discoveries age”, the choice and relevance of the exposed objects was enough to make a great exposition. I’m talking about 300 objects gathered from museums in China, India, Japan, South America and Europe.

Here is the exhibit international link, the Portuguese one and some photos. Finally here’s a cool Google Earth kml file.

An now for something completely different: dual boot :S

Ok, after years of evangelizing VMs against dual boot I’ve re-discovered dual boot! And what’s new about it? My new eSATA external disk!

 

I’ve now 3 OS on my laptop (and an extra 4 virtual machines):

• A conservative Windows 7 on my internal drive
• A Windows Server 2008 R2 directly on my eSATA
• A Windows Server 2008 R2 supported on eSATA as a VHD

 

The later was installed the way I’m installing OSs from now on. Here’s how:

 

• Start installing Windows Server 2008 R2
• Start the shell (Shift-F10)
• Launch diskpart
• Create a VHD file:
  • create vdisk file=”D:\Documents\Virtual Machines\VWMROMANO-DEV05\VWMROMANO-DEV05.VHD” type=fixed maximum=20000
• Attach it:
  • select vdisk file=”D:\Documents\Virtual Machines\VWMROMANO-DEV05\VWMROMANO-DEV05.VHD”
  • attach vdisk
• Install into your new disk :)

 

Here’s a simple how to.

 

It’s cool having a bunch of native OS on my laptop! Just think about it: the next time you want to test-drive a new beta OS, you can do it without compromising you stable workstation :)

 

<update>

When we already have the VHD, here’s how to registry the boot entry:

bcdedit /copy {originalguid} /d "New Windows 7 Installation"
bcdedit /set {newguid} device vhd=”[locate]\Image.vhd“
bcdedit /set {newguid} osdevice vhd=”[locate]\Image.vhd”
bcdedit /set {newguid} detecthal on

I had to look for it as EasyBCD messed up the VHD boot entry. In the same blog it states:

The advantages are magnificent:

• Simply copy one file (the .VHD file) and you’re entire system is included.
• Create incremental VHD files: One VHD file can be based on another one. So if you have different systems, create a base Win7 VHD and make all others incremental. This will save a lot of disk space!

There’re also some small disadvantages :-)

• The .VHD booted OS needs to be Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2 or later.
• There’s a performance decrease of about 3%.
• Hibernate and some BitLocker scenarios don’t work
  (BitLocker CAN be used within the guest VHD though, but not on the disk where the VHD resides).
• Windows Experience index won’t work.

</update>

 

<update>

Here’s another link from TechNet.

</update>

Generating FLAC

I’m in the process of getting rid of my physical CD collection into a media hard drive. As I don’t want to compromise the quality of the conversion, I’ve chosen FLAC.

I’ve looked for some advices from my friends the music specialists, and here’s their advice:

Ripping	Playing
Exact Audio Copy	Foobar2000

Silver ink for wearable or throwaway electronics

Here’s a cool technology: Xerox developed a silver ink for wearable or throwaway electronics:

Xerox researchers have invented a kind of ink that can conduct electricity and be used to put electronic circuits on top of plastics, film, and textiles. That means in the coming years we’ll be able to wear or bend our electronics. You could even print out your electronic gadget on plastic sheets, as if you were printing a document.

This technology can prove decisive on the RFID market in massifying usage and pulverizing prices.

Internet speeds and costs

Here’s where we stand:

61Mbps? 0.27$ per Mb/month!I want to go to Japan!

in: http://files.redux.com/images/b3a38a65dc1991703826b71ef1d2e752/raw

eSATA versus USB

I’ve finally bought an eSATA external drive, a 1GB LaCie. Has it supports eSATA + Firewire + USB, I’ve decided to do a little home benchmarking. Here are the results:

 

USB

 

eSATA

 

Uau!… Bye-bye USB, here’s my new VM disk :)

 

And here are my internal disk results:

 

 

Strangely enough, these are worse than eSATA.

 

Update: I’m copying my VMs to my new eSATA external drive at 57MB/s. Cool.

 

<update>

Here’s a benchmark for another drive and external case (with eSATA):

This is a 2.5 disk. And the benchmark results are not so bright…

</update>

 

<update>

And here’s yet another cool setting from another development server we have:

</update>