Acum ceva timp, am avut șansa să întâlnesc un om. Un altfel de om. Ciudat la început, în continuare ciudat în decizii și gândire, dar clar ca un cristal în ceea ce vrea. La început nu am înțeles ce caută în viața mea; care este scopul lui. Însă, de la el, cu puțină răbdate, am învățat să dăruiesc. Și să îi ajut pe cei în care cred. Pur și simplu !
Am învățat (aș putea spune chiar pe pielea mea), ce înseamnă să oferi puțin; puțin ce înseamnă mult. Am învățat să fiu mai aproape de cei față de care ar fi trebuit să fiu deja mai aproape. Am învățat să prețuiesc cu totul altfel o invitație la un pahar de vin. Am învățat că o bucurie o poți oferi pur și simplu :) No matter what ....

Proiectul Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) împlineşte 50 de ani, fără a-şi fi îndeplinit încă obiectivul principal. Pornit în 1960, după o ideea a profesorului Frank Drake, SETI şi-a propus interceptarea undelor radio venite din spaţiul cosmic în speranţa detectării unei transmisiuni distincte de zgomotul de fond, care ar fi putut fi emis de către o (altă) civilizaţie. Din păcate pentru SETI, singurele astfel de semnale au fost cele care provenea de la pulsari, unele din puţine surse cosmice naturale de unde radio repetabile. Au fost mulţi critici care, încă de la început, se îndoiau de oportunitatea acestui proiect, dar chiar dacă şansele de a descoperi astfel o civilizaţie inteligentă sunt minime, urmarea unui astfel de eveniment ar fi de o magnitudine absolut extraordinară pentru istoria omenirii.

Undele sunt captate în principal folosind radiotelescopul de la Arecibo (foto) şi începând din mai 1999, milioane de utilizatori casnici pot ajuta programul SETI prin folosirea propriilor PC-uri pentru a analiza în mod automat datele şi pentru a căuta potenţiale surse ale unui semnal repetitiv, de mare intensitate, care să se diferenţieze de fondul de radiaţie natural. Acest program, SETi@Home a ajutat la răspândirea conceptului de “distributed computing” şi în curând o multidudine de astfel de proiecte au apărut, proiecte care aveau nevoie de putere de calcul mare şi care poate fi asigurată de voluntari amatori. Astfel, evoluţia naturală a lui Seti@Home este platforma BOINC, unde utilizatorii pot alege cărui proiect să îi doneze din ciclii procesorului său, în ajutarea echipelor de cercetători din domenii variate: matematică, fizică, chimie, medicină, etc. O extensie a lui SETi@Home (Astropulse) permite căutarea în datele adunate de SETI a pulsarilor şi găurilor negre.

Dacă iniţial SETI părea un proiect cu un rezultat fantezist, el a reuşit atingerea unui ţel care nu a fost propus iniţial, dar care a contribuit la dezvoltarea altor sectoare ale ştiinţei, prin popularizarea conceptului de “distributed computing”, prin participarea oricăruia dintre noi la proiecte ştiinţifice complexe.

For a couple of days I am pondering about publishing this follow-up: on one hand I know some friends from the community would like it, on the other I think some other would think this is useless bragging. But in the end I did a sanity check with an external opinion. Remember those business cards I made for myself last week? I already started using them like this and they are requested like hot cakes:

However, the cards are asked before seeing the design, so probably having a drawing with a sad bearded guy with a sword is not the recipe for success, the size is.

Cam așa ar trebui să arate:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Am decis să mă duc în Budapesta să văd concertul. Nu numai că mi-e mai comod să ajung în Budapesta decât în București, dar nici nu cred că vor veni în București.

De curand am vazut o prezentare foarte, foarte misto despre designul protocoalelor, si anume BGP susntinuta chiar de unul din cei doi co-autori ai sai, Yakov Rekther.

Link-ul la prezentare: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAOVNYSnL7k.

Like WTF was that ?

Thanks to one of my best friends he gave me a very good spaghetti recipe for tonight but in my case I have modified a little bit : -one onion -some garlic -300-400g of meat -one pack of spaghetti barilla -dolmio or any tomato sauce would do -chili (piper cayenne) -celery -parsley -paprika -basil -lovage The mixing and the process is the same so i will quote him You need some ground meat

Eu sper să-l înfunde pe incompetentul de Berceanu, care pune crucea CFR-ului. N-am auzit de Berceanu că ar fi implicat în fapte penale, dar ar fi foarte bine să se curețe transporturile (sau măcar CFR-ul) de el, prin orice metode.

Căcatul ăsta a început cu niște declarații de domeniul irealului despre strategia de rentabilizare, iar din declarațiile și acțiunile de pînă acum reiese o incompetență atît de crasă încît chiar îmi vine a crede că intenția e să desființeze CFR-ul*. De ce ar vrea nu știu, poate ca să-l cumpere ieftin entități private, etc.

Infrastructura și transporturile ajută economia în general, nu aduce profit direct statului, cum pare a crede netotul ăsta de Berceanu.

*
Revin (în măsura în care reușesc) cu referințe despre faptul că statul în general nu scoate profit din transporturi doar bătînd din palme, fără investiții. Asta în cazul în care scoate vreodată profit. Exemple:
1. Foarte multe companii aeriene se află în dificultate, deși: 1) infrastructura lor(aeroporturi, sisteme de comunicații la sol etc.) a fost în general construită pe banii statului, 2) au facilități la cumpărat combustibili și probabil alte facilități. Deci e puțin probabil ca statul să-și scoată investițiile din taxele încasate de la operatori, iar operatorii sunt ei înșiși la limita profitabilității.
2. Transportul public în orașe e subvenționat serios în general.
3. Construcția de autostrăzi îmi inspiră aceeași lipsă de profitabilitate directă, dar aici s-ar putea ca veniturile directe ale statului să fie mai mari: taxele de autostradă, taxele de drum incluse în prețul benzinei (nu știu dacă e corect să le înclud, dar fie).

Articolul din titul aici: http://www.romanialibera.ro/eveniment/a179305-pe-cine-poate-infunda-primarul-craiovei-din-arest.html

Have you any idea why a raven is like a writing desk?

Uh-uh.

Just in case you missed it, back in December I have started myNoSQL a NoSQL blog featuring the best daily NoSQL news, articles and links covering all major NoSQL projects and following closely all things related to NoSQL ecosystem. Everything you need and want to know about NoSQL.

Collaborative effort: Please help me fill in the gaps in the tables below by providing missing data, references to interesting articles, metrics, etc.. Please feel free to suggest new criteria to be included.

This is work in progress..

While it may probably not be exhaustive, my intention is to provide a quick reference to BASE systems (Basically Available, Soft State, Eventually consistent, as opposed to ACID: Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, Durability) that would offer newcomers an overview of the existing projects in the field.

So far, I've been looking for filling in information about the following characteristics:

• Data model
• Partitioning
• Persistence
• Rebalancing (elasticity)
• Replication (clustering)

I have also included notes about the implementation language and the protocols that can be used with each solution.

If you think I should include other criteria please do let me know.

The projects included so far in the list: Cassandra, CloudBase, CouchDB, Dynomite, HBase, Hypertable, Kai, LightCloud, LucidDB, Memcached, MemcacheDB, MonetDB, MongoDB, Neptune, Redis, Ringo, Scalaris, ThruDB, Tokyo Cabinet + Tyrant, Voldermort.

Alternative Data Storages

Project	Data model	Partitioning	Persistence	Rebalancing	Replication
Cassandra	Column-family (BigTable[5], Dynamo6)	Y[n4]	disk	Y	Y
CloudBase	HDFS/Hadoop[n3]	Y	disk	Y	Y
CouchDB	Doc-oriented	?[n2]	disk	?[n2]	?[n2]
Dynomite	Blob (Dynamo6)	Y	pluggable	Y	Y
HBase	Column-family (BigTable[5])	Y	disk	Y	Y
Hypertable	Column-family (BigTable[5])	Y	DFS (HDFS)	?	Y
Kai	Blob	?	disk	?	?
LightCloud	check Tokyo Tyrant[n5]
LucidDB	Column-based	?	disk	?	N
Memcached[n1]	Blob	Y	RAM	Y	N
MemcacheDB	Blob	?	BerkleyDB	?	Y
MonetDB
MongoDB	Doc-oriented	Y			Y
Neptune
Redis
Ringo	Blob	Y	disk	Y	Y
Scalaris	Blob	Y	RAM		Y
ThruDB	Doc-oriented
Tokyo Cabinet + Tyrant
Voldemort	Structured / Blob / Text	Y	pluggable	N	Y

Notes

• [n1] Memcached: a distributed memory object caching system
• [n2] CouchDB partitioning and replication: according to a 2009 Summer of code proposal: While distributed deployments have been achieved with the help of proxies and smart external scripting, the core of CouchDB itself does not currently support distributing the database across multiple machines. More references about CouchDB cluster:
  • CouchDB Cluster
  • couchdb-lounge: Clustering framework for CouchDB
• [n3] All other criteria for CloudBase have been deduced based on the HDFS/Hadoop capabilities
• [n4] Cassandra: Consistent hashing vs order-preserving partitioning in distributed databases
• [n5] LightCloud seems to be a set of management scripts (Python) for Tokyo Tyrant

Implementation details

Project	Impl.	Client protocol	Refs
Cassandra	Java	Thrift[4]	[1], [2], [3]
CloudBase	Java	JDBC (Java)
CouchDB	Erlang	HTTP + JSON	[1], [2], [3]
Dynomite	Erlang	Thrift[4]	[1], [3]
HBase	Java
Hypertable	C++	C++ API, Thrift[4]
Kai	Erlang
LightCloud	Python + Tokyo Tyrant	Python
LucidDB	Java/C++	JDBC (Java)
Memcached	C	all*
MemcacheDB	C	all* (memcached protocol)
MonetDB	C
MongoDB	C++	API (Python, Java, Ruby, PHP, C++, Perl, Erlang)
Neptune	Java
Redis	C
Ringo	Erlang	HTTP
Scalaris	Erlang
ThruDB	C
Tokyo Cabinet + Tyrant	C	C, Perl, Ruby, Java, Lua
Voldemort	Java	Java

Performance

I usually do not trust micro-benchmarks. I know that performance measuring is an art. But I also know that some are looking for this sort of data and sometimes even the smallest piece of information is more helpful than nothing.

Project	reads/s	writes/s	refs
Cassandra
CloudBase
CouchDB
Dynomite
HBase
Hypertable
Kai
LightCloud	See: Tokyo Tyrant results + this
LucidDB
Memcached	here, 2007, here
MemcacheDB	benchmark data
MonetDB
MongoDB	Performance testing
Neptune
Redis
Ringo
Scalaris
ThruDB
Tokyo Cabinet + Tyrant
Voldemort

Other projects

I have found a couple of other projects, but I couldn't decide if they fit in or not. In case you consider that I should include them please do let me know (a helpful argument is also highly appreciated)

• Neo4j
• Schemafree
• Vertica
• Virtuoso

I'd like to also mention the FriendFeed usage of MySQL, which while not being a new system in itself it was conceived to behave like a BASE .

A relational database management system (RDBMS) imposes a fixed schema, so why would I use schema-less and relational database in the same sentence?

I will not write an introduction about what relational database are and what are the differences between them and other storage alternatives and I'll jump directly to the subject: is it be possible to use a row-based storage in a schema-less mode? Or to make it more explicit: is it possible to store free format objects/data in a fixed format?

We have to agree that at the first glance this looks like the eternal hammer hypothesis: give me a hammer and everything will look like a nail. But in this case things are a lot simpler.

So, what is the solution?

Most of the languages support one form or another of object serialization in binary or pure text format. Java has serialization in binary format, Python has marshaling and (c)pickle. Ruby has marshaling too and the list can go on and on. Both Google with protobuf and Facebook with Thrift have proposed their own high performance binary serialization mechanisms. Besides all these existing mechanisms there is also an universal object marshaling protocol: JSON.

By now the solution should become quite obvious: instead of persisting the object by storing it field by field, we would just serialize the whole object with all its properties. Basically, the table will need just 2 fields: an ID and a field that can store our serialized object. Like FriendFeed is doing it (nb Jackrabbit -- the open source implementation of Java Content Repository spec -- was using this solution for quite a while). And if you think this is not the best idea, I'll just say that most (if not all) of the alternative storage solution are using similar storage solutions.

What do you lose?

Referential integrity

Referential integrity in the sense of foreign keys will be lost. You can maintain it at the application level though.

Indexes

Serialized object in either binary or text format are pretty useless in indexes. So, if you need to search based on specific object properties then you'll have to implement your own solution. For example, Jackrabbit is using Lucene to keep an external index, while FriendFeed is using the database by creating indexes on-request.

What do you win?

A solid storage engine

You don't have to recreate or implement yourself the storage mechanism. The solution will use one that is proved to be solid.

Drivers and Tools

Most of the existing RDBMS are providing additional administration and visualization tools. Not to mention their drivers tested by tons of applications.

Last, but not least, you'll keep any other feature offered by your relational database (f.e. clustering).

I'll not end the post without throwing out the real question:

When is a relational database schema-less approach appropriate?

No, I wasn't that pissed and I am after nobody, just used the opportunity with the photo above to show my new toys tatica style. Thanks to a lot of wonderful people in the community and especially Rex who pointed the solution, my video editing problem is solved, I had to update the kdenlive package from rmpfusion updates testing (long story short, the problem was known, the patch was coming, just a bit delayed). Is late today so the videos will have to wait for the next week, but in the meantime people can get themselves busy with photos from the RLUG presentations.

Now that I am not pissed anymore, let me tell a story with Microsoft, which I found cute:

So far our LUG meetings were hosted by a company who was king enough to offer us a nice room in very affordable conditions (however, starting next month we will probably move in a more central and easily reachable location) and in the middle of our meeting we had a surprise visit from 3 people: the company manager and a couple of guests, a former manager in a major phone company and, the icing on the cake, the former general manager of Microsoft Romania and Microsoft South East Europe (also I believe the founder of Microsoft Romania) - they had a business meeting and then came to see the geeks, probably like at the Zoo :D

I found funny how the ex-Microsoftie found hard to understand how we are not managers in a boring business talk, but enthusiast people having great time together. I also found funny the question about our opinion on Windows 7 (rpetre's answer was spot on "for a Windows is OK") and the sales pitch for the Google Apps clone from Microsoft. In the end, all was good, we even got a round of beers "on the house" (from CG&GC, not from MS).

via @hospice.ro

Locatarii -Trupă nou înființată de către Ovidiu Iepan (ex Cargo, Autostop și Metamorf pentru nostalgici), ajunge și in Brasov pentru un concert care promite mult.

Concertul va avea loc în data de 17 Martie, ora 20.00, în clubul Godfather (str. Avram Iancu nr.66) din Brașov. “Locatarii” și clubul Godfather sunt încântați să susțină cauza Hospice, acesta fiind de altfel și primul concert organizat în colaborare cu Godfather.

Ovidiu Iepan cântă încă de pe bancile scolii. În 1976 era în trupa Ecou și repeta cu băieții într-o cameră unde se țineau pantofii. Influența lor majoră venea desigur de la Phoenix, chiar dacă piesele erau cântate în limba engleza. Pe când cei de la Phoenix repetau pentru albumul “Cantofabule”, Tavi și colegii săi de trupă îi spionau, încercand apoi să repete acordurile auzite. După această perioadă, Ovidiu a facut și el parte din frenezia muzicală specifică Timișoarei acelor vremuri, trecând dintr-o trupă într-alta și experimentând în continuu. Și-a exersat vocația cântând cu Adi Barar (Cargo), în formația Autostop, a cantat și la Metamorf, Progresiv TM, apoi Cargo.
Plecarea lui Tavi în Germania s-a petrecut “ca într-un roman de Kafka”, însă timpul petrecut acolo i-a imbogățit experiența mai mult decât dacă ar fi rămas în țară. Despre timpul sau acolo ne spune chiar el că: “A fost cea mai frumoasă perioadă. Am avut și succes cu albumul nostru “Buy now pay later”. Am cântat în faze de studio în scena de acolo. Am dat ore la diverși oameni și am lucrat la diverse proiecte. Comunicarea se desfasura normal. Mi-am dat seama că, indiferent în ce limbă vorbești, râsul este la fel.”

În prezent, Locatarii nu par să se orienteze înspre sound-ul cu care au crescut. Cum îi spune și Tavi Iepan, ceea ce cântă acum s-ar numi un “crossover cu texte puternic ancorate în realitate”. Albumul lor se numeste “Nu te supara frate”, toate piesele fiind compuse de Tavi. Două dintre acestea pot fi ascultate online, la adresa www.locatarii.ro . Din componența trupei mai fac parte Mario Florescu, Victor Miclăuș, Horea Crisovan, Lica Dolga și Radu Rotaru.

Trebuie spus că Mario Florescu nu este la primul său concert caritabil pentru HOSPICE. A luptat pentru prima dată împotriva durerii în 2006, alături de Harry Tavitian și Orient Express. Profesor de percuție la liceul “Sabin Dragoi” din Arad, Mario a venit însoțit de trupa Prezent, formată din câțiva elevi cărora le preda, pentru a cânta în sprijinul Hospice de Ziua Internaționala a Copilului. Pasiunea și intelegerea față de cauza Hospice l-au adus și a treia oara în Brașov pentru un concert caritabil de Crăciun, alături de Ștefan Hrușcă.

Biletele pentru concertul “Locatarii” se pot găsi la Clubul Godfather (str. Avram Iancu nr.66) sau la HOSPICE Casa Speranței. Prețul unui bilet este de 10 lei.

Până la concert, o piesă Locatarii - La stână

---

Informeaza-te! Alege ce ti se potriveste. Fii liber!

seems that 195.36.* drivers are broken if you installed them on ubuntu or any linux but i didn't noticed because my fan is stucked and i only noticed today on my borkstation32 machine , for the moment i have to use the intel gma video but glx is broken just because i have installed it manually so i have found one tutorial to fix the glx issues (it keeps trying to use nvidia's glx even after an

Acum 2 zile, a trebuit să merg repede repede la servici (rămăsese un server agăţat). Şi ce să vezi ! Am prins toate semafoarele pe culoarea verde. E drept, era aproape 20.00, iar viteza mea era aproximativ 50 km/h. Deci, se poate :)

Emily Lakdawalla, from The Planetary Society blog, have some nice insights about Venus related topics that were discussed the 41st Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC, Houston) that ended a few days ago. Very interesting reading material for Venus enthusiasts that weren’t lucky enough to be at Houston during LPSC this year. Downloadable material from LPSC 2010 can be found here.

NASA choosed the Venus SAGE mission among its top three mission finalists for an extensive 12-month mission concept study. The final project will be selected in mid-2011. The Surface and Atmosphere Geochemical Explorer (SAGE) mission would have a probe studying Venus’ atmosphere while descending it and impacting the ground, where it will continue its scientifically survey of the planet’s soil.

Other finalists includes Osiris-Rex, which is planned to rendezvous, land and bring samples from an asteroid, and MoonRise, a planned Moon rover.

JPL press release can be read here.

Se anunță a veni o vară fierbinte tare din punct de vedere al concertelor rock. Dacă până ieri știam deja de concertul AC/DC din 16 mai și cel al Aerosmith din 18 mai, de ieri s-a lansat o nouă bombă: Sonisphere Festival vine în toată splendoarea sa în România între 25 și 27 iunie anul de grație 2010.

Bilete la toate concertele rock importante care vor avea loc în România (pentru moment) puteți cumpăra de la letsrock.ro - distribuitori autorizați Eventim.

Dar ca să revin la Sonisphere Festival 2010, via @letsrock cetire:

Sonisphere Festival 2010 ajunge și în România, în perioada 25 - 27 iunie. Trupele care vor urca pe scenă în cadrul acestui festival sunt pe departe cele mai mari nume ale momentului de pe scena rock și nu numai:

Vineri 25 iunie: MANOWAR, Volbeat
Sambata 26 iunie: METALLICA, Heaven & Hell, Slayer, Megadeth, Anthrax
Duminica 27 iunie: RAMMSTEIN, Alice in Chains, Stone Sour, Mastodon
Preturile biletelor:

25 iunie:
127,20 lei - Normal Circle
233,20 lei - Golden Circle
371 lei - VIP

26 iunie:
196,10 lei - Normal Circle
307,40 lei - Golden Circle
371 lei - VIP

27 iunie:
196,10 lei - Normal Circle
307,40 lei - Golden Circle
371 lei - VIP

Abonament:
371 lei - Normal Circle
519,40 lei - Golden Circle
583 lei - VIP

Așa că de acuma…. la muncă pentru că distracția costă

Și de încheiere… își imagina cineva acum câțiva ani că vor cânta pe aceeași scenă Metallica și Megadeth în aceeași seară? Nu știu ce măsuri de securitate se vor lua în culise :)… Dar, poate au îmbătrânit orgoliile unora.

---

Informeaza-te! Alege ce ti se potriveste. Fii liber!

I am pissed. So pissed that my language will probably stronger than usual. I have work to do but I can't.

Yesterday was the March RLUG meet where I recorded videos of all presentations and I was supposed to start today editing, uploading and sharing them. Unfortunately, Kdenlive, the tool I settled on after extensive research refuse to cooperate: is broken when placing clips on the tracks. It must be the massive yum update I performed a couple of days ago after a long time of laziness: I see in the logs updates for mlt, kdelibs-common and qt, it should be one of them. I can do a yum downgrade for mlt and kdelibs-common, but that's even worse: "kdenlive: error while loading shared libraries: libmlt.so.2: cannot open shared object file".

I don't know what conclusion to draw from here:

• stop doing any updates
• stop using KDE apps
• stop hoping Linux can ever be used for video editing

I don't have the time (nor the patience) for drawing insightful conclusion or for debugging the problem, I have plenty of work to do today, including selecting, editing and publishing some photos from the same event (and forget about the funny story about when the Microsoft guys crashed our meeting).

For the short term, there are a couple of possible solutions for me:

• put the videos on keep and forget about them for a while (I hope my next week will be even busier with some photography stuff), maybe another update will fix the things and I can continue with the work
• turn back to the only trused and reliable video editor available for Fedora, mencoder (PiTiVi is useless, Kino can't do HD, Avidemux is a tool for a different job, Kdenlive just let me down and I don't think we have something else in an usable repository) and do only some rough work before uploading - just splitting and merging, no titles, no effects, no nothing.

I was close from not publishing this angry rant, as in the context of the large discussion about updates in Fedora it can be misread as an endorsement of the Board's vision, which is not, I like a lot feature upgrades and staying on the bleeding edge, I just want those updates to be less broken. If the Board's vision becomes reality, I will probably see myself forced to use Rawhide more and more, endure even bigger pains and in the long term become even more frustrated.

Atat cei de la 9 AM cat si cei de la Evz sunt niste idioti:

Pagina oficiala Rammstein ne spune ca pe 25 iunie au concert in Istanbul, Turcia, iar pe 28 la Atena in Grecia. Nu se mentioneaza nimic despre vreun concert pe 27 in Bucuresti!

In primul rand, cat de tampit tre’ sa fii sa pleci de pe 25 din Istanbul, sa te duci inspre nord, in Bucuresti si apoi sa mergi spre sud in Atena, cand Grecia e chiar intre ??? Apoi… de ce-ar vrea o trupa de calibrul Rammstein, care cu siguranta vine cu un minim de 16 camioane cu echipament (atat a avut Depeche Mode in 2006), sa se incumete pe drumurile noastre de toata jena ???

Fanii sunt invitati sa-i vada in Budapesta pe 16 martie, sau in Sofia pe 23 iunie… Ca vecinii nostri au autostrazi… In Romania am inteles ca presedintele considera ca suntem manelisti.

Sâmbătă 20 Martie 2010 începând cu ora 10:30 se va ţine următoarea întâlnire a grupului. Aceasta va avea loc în sala "Bucharest Hubb" , str. Stelea Spătarul nr. 21 , care ne este pusă la dispoziţie cu sprijinul asociaţiei ProLinux , asociaţie înfiinţată de către membri RLUG (Romania Linux Users Group) . Le mulţumim pe această cale şi pentru sprijinul promis în viitoarele activităţi ale BLUG . Sala ne este pusă la dispoziţie timp de 2 ore, după care ne vom muta la Mcdonalds Unirii unde vom continua socializarea . Hartă Locaţie Pata roşie reprezintă noua locaţie . Ne vedem acolo.

Pentru că asta pare a fi constata ultimei perioade.. Așadar… Ninge, ninge cântată de Margareta Pîslaru

Și totuși… știe cineva unde a emigrat primăvara? Că tare m-aș duce să o caut… să o aduc înapoi….

---

Informeaza-te! Alege ce ti se potriveste. Fii liber!

Joan Shuterland

Ernani, 1979 – at least the part starting from minute 05:25

Click here to view the embedded video.

http://www.metalhead.ro/stiri/Concerte_Metallica_Rammstein_Slayer_Manowar_si_multi_altii_la_festi-aid-82368-l-1

Metallica

Megadeath

SLAYER

Rammstein

Alice in Chains…

and many more >:)

Simulatorul de zboruri cosmice Orbiter se apropie de un nou release. Cea mai nouă versiune stabilă este din 2006, dar nerăbdătorii pot downloada versiunea beta a noului Orbiter, care nu aduce nimic spectaculos în plus. Încă mai sunt probleme în ceea ce priveşte rularea lui pe Vista/Win7, care pot fi remediate prin unele DLL-uri copiate în folderul programului, iar altele au rămas neschimbate (problema cu tastele SHIFT+Numpad), multiplayer inexistent. Dar beta-ul este altfel stabil şi funcţional, suportă texturi şi de level 11 şi nu uitaţi să vă activaţi antialiasingul din control panel-ul NVIDIA, că Orbiter nu permite setări de genul ăsta din meniul propriu. Iată în continuare câteva imagini din simulator:

ISS pe orbită, Atlantis andocat:

Opportunity (centru) în drum spre suprafaţa lui Marte:

Atlantis pe orbită:

LEM şi CSM pe orbita Lunii.

Mwell…my dear dear journal, today I had to learn about Mobility over SAE. As we very well know, our naughty user (User Equipment) does not just stay in one single cell, but rather moves around between different antennas. As per TS 23.401 (I have studied the June edition), there are several “cases” of mobility, or handover, as the 3GPP guys call them.

What is to know about how these “cases” are delimited:

1. whether the UE only moves from one eNodeB to another (the rest of the EPS is the same) or other components (like MME and/or SGW) are also changing => X2-handover and S1-handover

2. whether or not the eNodeBs are connected each-other (when they are connected, the interface is called X2) => this results in 2 separate cases: Direct Tunneling (we have X2) and Indirect Tunneling (we don’t have X2)

3. whether or not the MME changes (is relocated, as per the TS) => no MME relocation and MME relocation scenarios

4. whether or not the SGW changes (is relocated, as per the TS) => no SGW relocation and SGW relocation scenarios

5. in each of these cases, what happens to the user-plane traffic in terms of the path it takes; the uplink usually goes directly through the new components of handover, but the downlink data is forwarded back and forth around those elements – in the diagrams attached I have represented the user-plane in dotted lines – hope you’d like it

6. the user-plane flow problem appears only in the time interval that the handover is not completed, otherwise it is the usual; this is why there is only a downlink user-plane traffic described

So—let’s do this by the book.

TS 23.401, section 5.5.1.1.2 – X2-based handover with NO SGW relocation and NO MME relocation (implicit direct tunneling)

- UE moves from source eNB to target eNB, the X2 interface is present

- the downlink data flows this way: PGW -(via S5/S8)> SGW -(via S1-U)> source eNB -(via X2)> target eNB -(via LTE radio)> UE

TS 23.401, section 5.5.1.1.3 – X2-based handover with SGW relocation and NO MME relocation (implicit direct tunneling)

- UE moves from source eNB to target eNB, the X2 interface is present

- the downlink data flows this way: PGW -(via S5/S8)> source SGW -(via S1-U)> target eNB -(via LTE radio)> UE

* no MME relocation for X2-based handover :d

TS 23.401, section 5.5.1.2.2 – S1-based handover, NO SGW relocation and MME relocation + Direct Tunneling

- UE moves from source eNB to target eNB, the X2 interface is present

- the downlink data flows this way: PWG -(via S5/S8)> SGW -(via S1-U)> source eNB -(via X2)> target eNB -(via LTE radio)> UE

TS 23.401, section 5.5.1.2.2 – S1-based handover, NO SGW relocation and MME relocation + Indirect Tunneling

- UE moves from source eNB to target eNB, the X2 interface is NOT present

- the downlink data flows this way: PGW -(via S5/S8)> SGW -(via S1-U)> source eNB -(via S1-U)> SGW -(via S1-U)> target eNB -(via LTE radio)> UE

* this is the case when there are some downlink packets that have been forwarded from the SGW to the source eNB, BEFORE the handover is completed; this means that the source eNB (knowing there is a handover ongoing), resends/sends back these packets to the SGW they came from; the SGW, at this point, should be aware of the handover and buffer the packets until the handover is completed, then forward them via the appropriate S1-U to the target eNB

TS 23.401, section 5.5.1.2.3 – S1-based handover, SGW relocation and NO MME relocation + Direct Tunneling

- UE moves from source eNB to target eNB, the X2 interface is present

- the downlink data flows this way: PWG -(via S5/S8)> source SGW -(via S1-U)> source eNB -(via X2)> target eNB -(via LTE radio)> UE

TS 23.401, section 5.5.1.2.3 – S1-based handover, SGW relocation and NO MME relocation + Indirect Tunneling

- UE moves from source eNB to target eNB, the X2 interface is NOT present

- the downlink data flows this way: PGW -(via S5/S8)> source SGW -(via S1-U)> source eNB -(via S1-U)> source SGW -(via…to check this up)> target SGW -(via S1-U)> target eNB -(via LTE radio)> UE

TS 23.401, section 5.5.1.2.3 – S1-based handover, SGW relocation and MME relocation + Direct Tunneling

- UE moves from source eNB to target eNB, the X2 interface is present

- the downlink data flows this way: PGW -(via S5/S8)> source SGW -(via S1-U)> source eNB -(via X2)> target eNB -(via LTE radio)> UE

TS 23.401, section 5.5.1.2.3 – S1-based handover, SGW relocation and MME relocation + Indirect Tunneling

- UE moves from source eNB to target eNB, the X2 interface is NOT present

- the downlink data flows this way: PGW -(via S5/S8)> source SGW -(via S1-U)> source eNB -(via S1-U)> source SGW -(via…to check this up)> target SGW -(via S1-U)> target eNB -(via LTE radio)> UE

The signaling required for these handovers are described in TS 23.401 as a flow and in TS 29.274 at the IE level.

I will try to describe each flow (or at least the most significant ones) in future articles. Enjoy :p

Many places I go I meet people telling how much they liked graphic tutorials and how much they learned about using GIMP and Inkscape following theb, and this makes me feel bad, as I am quite busy lately with a lot of things (video and photography ate a lot of my time) and rarely manage to write something new. But here is a perfect opportunity, Fedora 13 entered Alpha and had a code name (Goddard) and so far a visual theme based on rocketry, so it seems a tutorial titled "Drawing a rocket with Inkscape is not rocket science" would be just fit.

The target here is to produce something like this, not extremely realistic but easily recognizable as a rocket and the most important, fun (hopefully) and easy to create by someone who is using Inkscape for the first time.

So start Inkscape and draw a rectangle, which must be more tall than wide (we are drawing a rocket!) and have straight, not rounded corners.

Then select it and convert to path, we will do node editing.

Now go in node editor and select the two top nodes. The following operation can be done (as far as I know) only from keyboard: press Ctrl + Alt + > to enlarge the segment, the result should be a trapezium with the big side up.

With the same two top nodes selected, add a new node in the middle of their segment.

Select the new node (only it) and move it up (keep the Ctrl key pressed to limit the movement to vertical only).

Select back the two nodes that were the top corners of the rectangle and make them symmetric, for a shape starting to look like a bullet/rocket.

To finish the bullet shape of the rocket body we need to make the bottom edge rounded: select the two bottom corners, add a new node in the middle, select it, move a bit up and made it symmetric, now we have a bullet, an aerodynamic shape.

A rocket needs some "wings", so we will create another rectangle, this time much smaller.

Select the rectangle and click on it once, this will put in in rotate/skew mode so we need to skew it a bit my dragging on the arrow on one of its edges.

Move it in position, next to the rocket body.

Again, in rotate/skew mode, rotate it a bit by dragging one of the arrows at the corners, until we like the alignment. Note: no worry if the alignment is not perfect, lower it under the body and when filled with color this won't be noticeable.

Select the wing and duplicate it.

Flip the new (duplicate) wing horizontally and move it to the other side of the rocket body (keep Ctrl pressed to limit the movement to horizontal).

The wing facing us is another thin rectangle, with the same height as the other wings (technically, we should have two rectangles, one for each edge, but for now use one for simplicity). To center the new wing to the rocket body, select it and the body, then use the Align and Distribute dialog to align them horizontally relative to the biggest item (the body).

Now you know what is needed for a funny rocket? A window, so the astronauts inside can look at the space. Start by drawing a circle, which will be the windows frame (I think I am boring repeating this, but keep Ctrl pressed, so what you draw is a round circle not an ellipse).

Select the circle and the rocket body and align vertically to the center of the body.

Another smaller circle will be the real window.

Select the two circles and align them horizontally and vertically.

Now color the items, using either the color palette at the bottom, the Fill and Stroke button in the toolbar or any of the other possible ways (there are quite a few). A rocket is usually silverish, so use shades of gray.

If you want the rocket less realistic but screaming "Fedora", make those grays a bit bluish or go the extra mile and straightly use the Fedora colors (light and dark blue).

Back to our rocket, let's make it fly. Take the Bezier tool (pen) and draw freely a few spikes, they will be the flame.

Color the flame red or a redish orange and lower it under the rocket body.

The core of the flame is supposed to be warmer, so let's draw a new set of smaller spikes in yellow.

Optionally, if we want the rocket cruising, not just taking-off, select everything and rotate a bit.

A bit of beautification never hurt, so let's make the rocket a bit more realistic (if you can call that "realistic") and less cartoon. Remove the strokes (for example using the Fill and Stroke dialog) and use silver gradients for all metallic surfaces, do this by using the Gradient tool, dragging and editing colors.

Fill everything with gradients, including the flames and the window.

Select the inner (yellow) flame and using the Fill and Stroke dialog Blur it a bit for a more realistic (and prettier) look.

Blur also the outer (red/orange) flame. And that's about all.

Now our rocket can take-of and fly proudly. Go to the stars and beyond them!

seems that Firebird 2.5 final is on the way and i wanted to test it on my Karmic machine There is Branch  B2_5_Release for this release so I used this way cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@firebird.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/firebird co -r B2_5_Release firebird2 ./autogen.sh --prefix=/opt/firebird2.5.x --enable-superserver make sudo make install and that is all Another alternative is to use