Avinash Meetoo: Blog

Did you notice that my weblog is not hosted at Icdsoft anymore? I have moved to a shiny virtual private server courtesy of Slicehost which uses virtualization to run multiple operating systems (hence multiple VPS) on the same server.

I first heard of Slicehost about two months ago when looking for a hosting company supporting Ruby on Rails (which unfortunately Icdsoft isn’t). Their VPS plan includes (I quote):

• Full root access and rebooting - I am a fan of SSH (and SCP) and I loved the idea of getting access (as root) to the command line and do everything I want on a box found in the US…
• Choice of Linux distro - Either Ubuntu (Dapper Drake or Gutsy Gibbon), Debian, Fedora, Centos or Gentoo. I thought a lot about this and settled for Gutsy Gibbon. Sure it’s new but most people using Slicehost use Ubuntu and many have upgraded and had had not problem whatsoever. Moreover, I use Gutsy Gibbon at home…
• Dedicated IP address and Tier-1 redundant bandwidth - My own IP address! Too great. This opens the door to all kinds of tricks like having multiple domains pointing to the same box. I’m sure I’ll get some additional domains very shortly. As for the bandwidth, it’s great to be able to do a “aptitude install apache2″ and have apache running under 5 seconds. Those in the US are spoilt kids
• RAID1 disk storage - No need to do backup (even though it can be done) as RAID1 uses mirroring and, in case of a faulty hard disk, the people at Slicehost naturally replace it. Some people backup the Slicehost data on Amazon S3 just to be sure. I’ll investigate.
• Reserved RAM slice - I have chosen the simplest (and cheapest) plan which gives me 256Mb of RAM. Now, before you run away shouting “What can we do with 256Mb in 2007!!!”, notice that we are speaking of a server without X-Window here. Aha! Now you understand.
• Guaranteed CPU slice and more when available - I have a dedicated CPU slice (in the scheduler sense) and I am currently using only 4% of it for my weblog. This means that I can have lots and lots of new applications (written using Ruby on Rails or Java, whatever) and I won’t even use all my CPU slice. For your information, my weblog now runs on a server with 4 AMD Opteron 2212 HE Dual-Core processors i.e. 8 cores! Now, you understand why I have been teaching Concurrency and Parallelism for the past three years…
• Bootable rescue mode - in case I screw up.
• Unlimited environments: Ruby on Rails, Python, Java and more - and this is the reason I have moved to Slicehost. I love programming. And I love programming languages. Unfortunately, most hosting companies are very PHP-centric. I really want to experiment with frameworks like Ruby on Rails, Django, Spring, Seaside, Lift, etc. Now I have no excuse.

Two (small) glitches

First of all, they don’t accept customers if they feel they don’t have the hardware resources. In that case, you are put on a waiting list and they order new hardware. That why I had to wait two months to move to Slicehost. Now, this “glitch” is also a benefit in the sense that you know that everything will be great once you are accepted.

The second glitch is the price. The smallest hosting plan called 256slice (with 256MB of RAM, 10GB of HD space and 100GB of monthly transfer) is $20 per month. Now, this is mostly negligible for an American or a company but not for me.

I’ve managed to convince Christina that this is worthwhile for two reasons:

1. Self-education. A new server to manage. New frameworks to learn. This is going to be tough but good… and perhaps valuable for the future. Who knows?
2. New opportunities. It is perfectly possible that Christina and I develop a new Ruby on Rails application we have been talking a lot on lately. We will use Adsense, at least to cover our expenses. I know this feels like vaporware but stay tuned…

Popularity: 3% [?]

written by avinash

Eddy has just told me of an article to appear in Today’s edition of Le Mauricien on the Mauritian’s Governement wish to block Facebook (i.e. censoring the social networking website).

This must be a silly joke.

I guess Joel de Rosnay will be very very unhappy if this news is confirmed tonight. And Microsoft too with the money they have just injected in Facebook. And, of course, everyone who is a partisan of free speech (and this includes me).

Whoever is behind this is a retard (if true of course).

An update

The article is now online and states:

“Les Mauriciens étaient incapables ce matin de se connecter au site Internet de réseau social Facebook. Dans un communiqué émis hier, le gouvernement, à travers l’Information and Communication Technology Authority (ICTA), a demandé aux fournisseurs d’accès Internet de bloquer temporairement l’accès au public à ce site prisé par beaucoup d’internautes mauriciens.

L’ICTA affirme que le site ” is currently hosting contents of defamatory nature “, d’où la décision d’en faire bloquer l’accès. Selon Trilok Dwarka, Chairman de l’ICTA, une personne aurait usurpé l’identité du Premier ministre, Navin Ramgoolam, en créant un profil à son nom, comportant également sa photo. De nombreux commentaires diffamatoires auraient été publiés sur cette page. ” Selon la loi, l’ICTA est autorisée à prendre les mesures nécessaires en cas de diffamation “, précise le chairman. L’ICTA a pris contact avec les responsables de Facebook pour leur demander d’effacer cette page, et l’accès au site a été rétabli en début d’après-midi.”

So, it was just a storm in a tea-cup. But wait! Who has ever told ICTA that they have the right to censor 1,000,000 Mauritians from accessing Facebook (or any other Internet site for that matter)??? They could (should?) have asked the Facebook admin to get rid of the profile without disrupting normal access to the website.

This is un mauvais précédent and I don’t like the smell of it at all. You should think twice the next time, ICTA. We are not going to tolerate censorship in our Republic of Mauritius once more.

Popularity: 3% [?]

written by avinash

Liverpool beat Besiktas 8-0 yesterday and this is the new record triumph in the Champions League.

Of course, the same Besiktas beat Liverpool 2-0 only two weeks ago.

But as you all know (by now) Liverpool is unpredictable: on Saturday the team was lethargic (i.e. against Blackburn) and three days later sets a new record… We, Liverpool fans, are used to that.

Popularity: 19% [?]

written by avinash

The latest version of Mac OS X, Leopard, has a network browser that uses stylized icons of the various computers in the LAN. Here is the icon of a generic PC running Windows:

So funny!

Popularity: 2% [?]

written by avinash

Google will today (Thursday) launch the OpenSocial API which is an application programming interface (i.e. a list of functions) that a number of social networking websites and plugin writers will comply to.

Techcrunch was the first to reveal the details but, basically, OpenSocial will cover (I quote the Techcrunch article):

• Profile Information (user data)
• Friends Information (social graph, who is linked to who)
• Activities (events, notifications, birthdays, news)

Google partners are LinkedIn, Hi5, Ning, Orkut, Salesforce, Plaxo, Friendster, Viadeo and even Oracle as well as plugin developers Flixster, iLike, RockYou and Slide.

Notably missing are Facebook and MySpace (which will therefore not be compliant with the OpenSocial API - for the time being, at least.)

My interpretation

Following Microsoft’s flirt with Facebook, Google is trying to be more present in the social networking “business” (which is massively massive!)

Google could have tried to impose their own social networking system, Orkut, but decided to do something more subtle: impose their own OpenSocial API.

The consequence will be a number of different social networking ecosystems (e.g. Friendster and LinkedIn with their extremely different fauna) working seamlessly together fighting against Facebook and MySpace.

Seems to me that Google is really trying hard to control The Long Tail of the social networking phenomenon i.e. neither the kids nor the geeks.

My feeling

I personally use a number of social networking systems and I would be happy to make them interoperate. Google has proposed an API. For once, it does not seem that they want outright control of the data being exchanged. But what will be Google’s next step?

6 November 2007 - MySpace joins OpenSocial

Now everything will be interoperable. Except Facebook.

Popularity: 1% [?]

written by avinash