The argument for not managing systems via packages

Although I haven't changed my mind ingeneral, I think that there are arguments for configuration managementsystems like Cfengine and Puppet over packaging systems. Apart fromtheir actual existence in usable form, one of them is that CM systemsare going to be inherently more agile than packaging systems.

The drawback of packaging systems is that they fundamentally work onpackages. This means that doing things via them requires a multi-stepprocess; you must assemble your files, build one or more packages fromthem, and finally propagate


One of the things that killed network computers (aka thin clients)

Here is a thesis about network computing's lack of success:

The compute power to deliver your applications has to live somewhere,whether that is in the machine in front of you or on a server that sitsin a machine room somewhere. It turns out that the cost of deliveringcompute power in one box does not scale linearly; at various points, itturns up sharply. For various reasons, there is also a minimum amount ofcomputing power that gets delivered in boxes; it is generally impossibleto obtain a


信任


以下是大家都有過的經歷,信任一個人的時候,無論他說什麼,你都會相信,無論他做什麼,你都想支持,無論他有什麼建議,你都會接受。什麼叫信任?字典的解釋是:相信而敢於托付。

這多少有點主觀成分,多少有點不問是

介乎法國與旺角的詩意



最近什麼都不想寫


最近終於買了他們的新碟


非常簡單但又非常厲害


這一次他們連社會主義的幽靈都請出來了


非常貼合現在的氣氛呢



編書的苦樂

最近忙於和兩個朋友合編一本論文集,是為我的博士論文導師而編的,全書都是討論他的哲學。要動用三個人,是因為我們決定用一個很費時的方法去編,以盡量提高書的質素。我們收到每一篇文章後,都會先各自細心讀過,然

OpenSolaris versus Solaris

Discussions about Solaris often wind up bringing up OpenSolaris (andsometimes it crops up in other contexts). However, I do not findOpenSolaris particularly interesting.

My view is that right now, OpenSolaris is essentially a technologydemonstrator. You can't use OpenSolaris by itself, because it lackssufficient support to use it directly and sufficient genuine opennessfor sensible people to base stable things on it. You can't use it as thefuture of Solaris, because I'm not aware of any commitment from Sun that


I'd Rather Hear Both Sides of the Tale

Protection for Gangs, Clubs and Nations Causing Grief In Human Relations It’s A Turf War On A Global Scale I’d Rather Hear Both Sides Of The Tale See, It’s Not About Races Just Places Faces Where Your Blood Comes From Is Where Your Space Is I’ve Seen The Bright Get Duller I’m Not Going To Spend My Life Being A Color

~from Michael Jackson’s “Black or White”

高鐵熱燙燙,我的網圈內大都是反對


尋找一個 ______ 男友





心底裡,

我還是情願自己經濟獨立,

尋找一個能令我笑的男友就足夠。






耶穌這個男人

基督教其中一個賣點是耶穌同時是神和人。神沒有性別,耶穌卻是男人。如果耶穌是個真真正正的人,那麼他也要經過一個正常人必須經過的成長階段,由呱呱落地到牙牙學語到青春煥發到血氣方剛;他死時據說只有三十多歲,

More on mismatched sectors on Linux software RAID mirrors

Some brief followups from my first entry on this.

First, the mismatch_cnt numbers are reset from scratch everytime you re-run a check (and probably every time there is a mirrorresync). On many current systems, this means that they will be resetevery week. This makes sense and is even implied by the documentation (in the usual Unixfashion of reading between the lines),but it would have been nice to have it explicitly documented.

(I'm aware that I'm