Blog: Pete Loshin

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January 25, 2008

Time Travel Maps!

I'm fascinated by the physics of time travel, but the type "time travel" instead of "travel time" caught my eye in the link I clicked on to get to Travel-time Maps and their Uses and this More travel-time maps and their uses. Not maps for time travelers, but maps that illustrate the amount of time it takes to travel.

Very interesting and even helpful if you're in the UK: you can use these maps, for example, to figure out whether it's quicker to drive or take a train to a destination, or the fastest mode of transportation for rush hour commuting. But it's also a very neat illustration of how big piles of data can be turned into intelligence. And you don't need me to explain how that kind of intelligence can become "business intelligence" for any business that needs to allocate resources to get people or things from one place to another.

It's all brought to you by mySociety, a charitable project that develops their software as open source; if you're interested in having them do custom mapping for your business, they seem to be willing to do that for a fee (or a donation, I'm not sure how that works in the UK).

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January 22, 2008

Sun to buy MySQL, Part One

Unless you've been under a rock, you know Sun is buying MySQL AB. That was news, last week. But it was also rather puzzling news, in many ways, and worth taking some time out to consider the implications.

So, for Part One of my coverage of the Sun/MySQL deal, I'm mostly going to offer a bunch of links. For example, the Yahoo! News breaking news story: Sun to buy MySQL for $1 billion. You get the basics of the deal here, but you also get some of the issues spelled out for you: Sun is a "server maker"; meaning, they're a hardware company. Other key points to consider:

• Sun expects to spread MySQL into big corporations, who already buy Sun hardware, as well as bolster existing Sun partnerships such as those with IBM and Dell.
• Sun is a software company, too, and an open source software company at that. They, like IBM, see offering open source software as a selling point for their hardware.
• MySQL is dwarfed by the competition from Oracle and Microsoft who dominate in the traditional database market, but MySQL owns the web database market, which is growing (while the more traditional market may be stagnating).

The Yahoo! article gives a pretty good precis of the situation, but you need to dig a little deeper to figure out what exactly is going on. For example, they don't say much about the extent to which Sun controls some very important pieces of software already, including Java, OpenSolaris, StarOffice, NetBeans, and more. Nor do they mention Sun's existing relationship with the other star open source DBMS project, PostgreSQL. For more about Sun, MySQL and PostgreSQL, check out Sun buys MySQL - what about PostgreSQL?, and Sun Purchasing MySQL and PostgreSQL advances from PostgreSQL.

Check back next week for my take on the implications and impact this deal with ultimately have, but in the meantime, here are some of the more interesting articles/blog entries I've found in the past few days about it:

• Ars Technica has a "breaking" story w/ some commentary: Sun targets open source LAMP stack with MySQL acquisition
• Here's the MySQL blog entry announcing the acquisition: Sun acquires MySQL
• Betsy Schiffman at Wired seems to think the deal is overpriced, in Sun Pays Up the Wazoo -- $1 Billion -- for MySQL; she cites analyst estimates of MySQL revenues being just $75-80 million, rather low for a $1 billion deal.
• Dvorak likewise doesn't mince his words; in The Sun-MySQL deal stinks he suggests the deal is horrible (for MySQL) and the only winner will be Oracle (!).
• More from MySQL blogs here Talking to MySQL Founders Monty and David on Sun
• MySQL and Sun - my thoughts from David Van Couvering

For the record, the official press releases here:

• Sun's press release, Sun Microsystems Announces Agreement to Acquire MySQL, Developer of the World's Most Popular Open Source Database
• MySQL's press release: Sun to Acquire MySQL

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January 9, 2008

YouTube and MySQL

YouTube, it turns out, uses MySQL as its backend.

Paul Tuckfield, the YouTube DBA, speaks about using MySQL at YouTube.

Before I even finished listening to the whole presentation, I got several key points:

• Paul Tuckfield started out at YouTube with a lot of database experience under his belt as an Oracle DBA--but no MySQL experience. Which tells me that switching from Oracle to MySQL, while retaining people, should not be an obstacle.
• MySQL scales, nicely. YouTube has three DBAs. They served 100 million videos a day, back in mid-2006. Without DB2 or Oracle.
• Scaling MySQL to YouTube-scale is non-trivial. Tuckfield talks about using master/slave architecture and doing clever things with replication, to make MySQL work for such a huge database. Which tells me that you're not going to scale anywhere unless you have people who are smart enough to make it work.

The talk, recorded last year at the 2007 MySQL Conference, is only about 40 minutes long, so it's the perfect length for listening during your commute--and Paul is an engaging and funny speaker!

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January 4, 2008

Faking the cool OSes, with Windows XP

Check this out: 5 Packs to Transform Windows to other OS.

That's right--no more do you need to go to all the trouble of installing a new OS just to get the "look" of having installed a new OS.

Why? That was my own first question, but it's pretty obvious why, if you're running XP (which is what the article is about) you might want to fake running Vista, Mac OS X, Fedora Linux or Ubuntu Linux:

• You've been told to upgrade your perfectly good Windows XP install, but you just don't want to go to all that trouble and expense. So don't! Just install the Vista Transformation Pack, and get the eye candy without the upgrade hassles.


• Do you work in a "Microsoft or Else" office? Want to give your boss/IT manager/colleagues a heart attack? Just install your choice of Linux/Mac OS X clone pack and enjoy the ride.


• Install the Mac OS X pack in your creative departments, so visitors will think your firm is "cool" enough to use Macs.


• More, and endless, prankage. There are just too many good pranks here to count. Tell the office Windows-know-it-all that Ubuntu Linux is now the order of the day, from the top office. Give that annoying hipster temp a Mac "upgrade". Show the MIS nerds how hard core you are, with your new Fedora desktop.

How would you use one of these transformation packs? Share!

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January 2, 2008

More about Amazon's SimpleDB

Last month, I blogged about Amazon's SimpleDB service, and included some links to smart people who've made some observations about it.

Well, there are other smart people who've made more observations, and here are the links to prove it:

• Amazon SimpleDB thoughts by Ryan Barrett at snarfed.org. A nice summary overview to SimpleDB and what makes it interesting, including lots of links.
• Dave Winer writes about Amazon removes the database scaling wall.
• Scott Gilbertson offers Amazon SimpleDB: Your Database in the Cloud on Wired's Blog Network.

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