'Daemon' by Daniel Suarez

Daemon, by Daniel Suarez. This looks like a really fun read, going to grab it! Check it out.

'The Prize' and Facebook

The Prize, by Daniel Yergin is a great read. Before I explain further, the book is not about software at all. In a paragraph, I'll get to the software business parallels and ruminate about them. The book is about history, oil, economics, geopolitics. I’d highly recommend it for anyone interested in these topics. The author won a Pulitzer Prize, and is highly respected among many economists, including the esteemed longtime Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan. Agree with Greenspan or not on some issues, Yergin has respectable admirers related to his work.

Here's the point of the blog post. In history, it’s amazing how fast situations can change. You don't have to look too far back as 2000 A.D. to witness that. I believe the internet economy is on much more solid ground now, not drawing any parallels there whatsoever. However, that is an example, clearly, how fast irrational exuberance can take hold and draw a whole economy into that way of thinking, let alone a smaller group of individuals.

Here is a summary of an excerpt in The Prize: Around 1865 when oil speculation was bubbling because of its discovery and the markets swelling around it (primarily lamp oil at that time), one farm in PA sold for $1.3 million because of the opportunity to mine oil. That’s a lot of money back then. That’s a lot of money in 2007. Less than a year later, the same plot of land sold for $2.0 million. …less than fifteen years later, after a recession and some fires, that same plot of land was sold…………………… for under $5. Five dollars.

Things can change quickly. Granted, less quickly if one is diversified. Also granted, the oil market has not stopped since.

But this post is related to the life of you as an individual -- your life, not the life of an industry. The lesson I read into that: if you get the opportunity, like Mark Cuban, take the money and run.

With this blog as evidence, I love writing software. I love the software business, open source, etc -- every facet of this 'life'. It inspires me daily. I do it because I love to do it, and to a degree I can understand an emotional attachment to a piece of software built and grown.

Purely from an economic perspective on the individuals involved, Facebook in my opinion should be at least, in part, sold. With all due respect to the Facebook titans, I sure hope that Mark Zuckerberg and the Facebook officers have someone giving them perspective in what must be very difficult decisions. But why not sell half for $5 billion and write a new piece of software on your own island? There are plenty of ways to change the world. $5 billion in your pocket is a good start, especially when you are in your 20's. There is just as much glory in sharing the successes with a value added partner or partners. In my mind, Facebook is taking a substantial risk by not selling a large minority percentage at the recently reported valuations.

Solaris 10 Containers (Zones) and Coldfusion MX Licensing

With the Enterprise version of Coldfusion MX 7, a CF developer has the ability to deploy your applications as .EAR files on multiple instances of the JRun application server (or any other J2EE compatible application server, such as BEA WebLogic, IBM Websphere, etc, even open source Tomcat, although that isn't supported by Adobe) . This redundancy enables fault tolerance, which is especially useful in a shared hosting environment . That is, should one instance of the application server fail for 1 application, this would not crash all applications relying on the Coldfusion server. Instead, each application can utilize its own instance of the JRun (or other J2EE) application server.

If you are not familiar with this, the following is a good article, as is Ben Forta's Advanced Coldfusion development book (a veritable CF bible) is a phenomenal reference:
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/coldfusion/j2ee/articles/multiple.html

The J2EE implementation of Coldfusion discussed above exists for really a single shared server environment, as the LICENSE restricts .EAR deployment to a maximum of 2 CPU's. The marketing material is not immediately clear on this, so be aware, that J2EE deployment is unlimited in terms of application server instances, but is limited to TWO CPUs. If I am incorrect on this, someone please provide clarification, but I'm somewhat certain after days of looking into this, that this is the case.

There are still distinct advantages there -- not only the capability for application server redundancy (and clustering), but also the ability to deploy as .EAR files enables the development process to be one that contains a bundled and dated version. While its common and certainly best practice to utilize version control such as CVS and Subversion, it's not common in the Coldfusion community to bundle and deploy applications as .EAR files. This is evidenced by the options available at most Coldfusion hosting sites, which consists mainly of FTP-ing files to your folder. (it should be noted there are small disadvantages to .EAR deployment, if you require frequent small changes to files, but this disadvantage can be significantly nulled out with the use of Apache ANT as a build, zip, ftp, and deploy tool). .EAR file deployment has the distinct process advantage of being able to quickly snap back to dated versions of one's web application instantly. As long as there weren't schema changes to the database, a developer can simply deploy an .EAR file to the application's directory and it will effectively 'unzip' the application and all its dependencies. .EAR file deployment can also be made easy through the use of mature deployment tools such as Apache ANT.

That brings me to my question. As CFMX 7 enterprise enables isolation and redundancy at the application-server level, Solaris 10 has the capability for Containers (aka 'Zones') for isolation and redundancy at the server level itself. The following is a summarized description of Solaris 10 Container capabilities from Sun's website:

• "Build customized, isolated containers—each with their own IP address, file system, users, and assigned resources—to safely and easily consolidate systems
• Guarantee sufficient CPU and memory resource allocation to applications while retaining the ability to use idle resources as needed
• Reserve and allocate a specific CPU or group of CPUs for the exclusive use of the container
• Automatically recover from potentially catastrophic system problems by leveraging the combined functionality of Predictive Self Healing and Solaris Containers"
  

My question to Adobe and the Coldfusion MX Community:
How would the implementation of multiple Sun Solaris 10 Containers affect the licensing of Coldfusion MX 7? If a server had 2 CPU's but was configured for multiple Solaris Zones, would the Enterprise License still apply in such a way that enabled unlimited instances of the application server throughout these Zones? Or is each Zone treated separately as a CPU? It would seem to me, since there are two processors, the enterprise license would allow for this type of integration with Solaris 10 Zones, but I cannot find any documentation on this on Adobe's Coldfusion site or in the license. Can anyone at Adobe help clarify this?

Respectfully,
Mark Holton

Coldfusion MX 7 and Sun Solaris 10 for x86 processors

Hopefully this bit of history is a good sign that it's just a matter of time before there is a supported Coldfusion MX 7 install for Sun Solaris 10 on an x86 processor. I know they support it with the SPARC processor, but why not with the newer x86 chips?

Macromedia/Adobe has supported it in the past, hopefully they will in the near future. Anybody know of any plans for this?
-Holts

https://partneradvantage.sun.com/partners/10moves/quotes.html

"Macromedia

Macromedia is committed to supporting the Solaris OS to ensure our ColdFusion developers can continue to deliver mission-critical business applications. Solaris 10 will provide customers with the scalable, reliable platform they need to continue delivering rich Internet applications with the ease of use and productivity of ColdFusion. "

Jeff Whatcott
Vice President of Product Management
Macromedia"

Touch Screen Technology : What if this was in a Mac?

Came across this technology today and it made me think:

...what if this tech was integrated into, for instance, a Mac? It's not that far fetched, Apple already implemented touch screens with the iPhone, why not with laptops, etc, for a new paradigm in user interfaces for larger screen displays? I personally believe it'd open up a number of possibilities in software to navigate like this via touch screen in addition to our traditional mouse navigation. I think the world is ready for a new navigation paradigm, and this seems one that is next in that evolution.

"In this video, Jeff Han and Phil Davidson demonstrate how a multi-touch driven computer screen will change the way we work and play."