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September 30, 2004

[TALK] WiFi and WiMAX

As seen in my INBOX:

The Electronics Seminar by Jim Baker on “WiFi and WiMAX – The Promise of Wireless Everywhere?” will be given on Wednesday 6th October, 2:30 pm in Electronics Lecture Theatre.

Jim Baker is CEO and founder of Telabria, the award-winning Kent-based developer of wireless network solution services. He will talk about real-world issues in building commercial networks to serve urban and rural markets, how wireless standards and technologies are evolving, and what lies ahead.

All staff and students are invited.

"All staff and students" means us, so if this sounds like something you might be interested in (either from the technological angle or from the perspective of someone interested in how small- to medium-sized enterprises come-to-be), you should try and go.

(I wonder... is there a way we can set up a shared calendar, enter talks into it, and then have the calendar software automatically email all of us when the talks are taking place?)

Posted by mjadud at 10:15 AM | Comments (0)

T-Minus 19:23:00

The first meeting of the year starts in just 19 hours and 23 minutes. The prepared student will have:

And two laundry tablets.

Get there, or die trying!

Posted by mjadud at 12:14 AM | Comments (2)

September 27, 2004

A little debate regarding kernels

Right now, there's a nice little "almost-flame-war" going on between a Linux Kernel Developer (LKD) and a Sun Kernel Developer (SKD). Now, both of these people are probably quite experienced in what they do, but I think there's something to be learned---both about Sun's relationship with Linux/OpenSource, as well as the nature of technical discourse---by looking at what they each have to say.

There's a thread between these two weblogs; it starts with the SKD, bounces to the LKD, back to the SKD (where I think it gets interesting), and then the LKD responds again. The SKD starts by discussing, at some level, why Sun is not going to be moving to Linux (from Solaris) anytime soon. This inspired some pushback and a bit of name-calling (the LKD titled their weblog post "A rebuttal of a single Sun misinformed developer"). In particular, he responded to this comment:

The main reason we can't just jump into Linux is because Linux doesn't align with our engineering principles, and no amount of patches will ever change that. In the Solaris kernel group, we have strong beliefs in reliability, observability, serviceability, resource management, and binary compatibility.

In his response, the SKD defines exactly what reliability, observability, etc., all mean to Sun with respect to the core of their operating system. This post is a good read unto itself; for those of you just starting out (perhaps still fighting your way through syntax error after syntax error), you might pause and wonder how you build an operating system that is as robust as Solaris---at least, assuming all of Sun's technologies perform as promised (by-and-large, they do). Also, note that his response is concise, professional, well-written, and he does his best to defuse any "us-vs.-them" feelings that this debate may have spawned.

The LKD responds one last time; his writing is (comparatively) sloppy and informal, and if you compare his description of technologies in the Linux kernel that are similar to those found in the Solaris kernel, you'll see that his definitions are more... vague, perhaps, or less precise. To me, it seems like the SKD clearly explained that the systems target completely different markets---apples and oranges, so to speak---yet the response implies that really, they're the same:

Binary compatibility. You state:

We have customers paying tens of millions of dollars precisely because we claim backwards compatibility.

You have customers paying that much money for driver compatibility? Geesh, I didn't know drivers were that expensive... Seriously, for Linux, this argument doesn't even register. A customer does not have to worry about the huge investment they just made in hardware, and the fact that the driver they have for it better work for any future version, as they have the source to it (it's in the kernel tree.) They know that it will work with all future versions of Linux, and if something goes wrong, they can either fix it themselves, or hire someone else to fix it for them, for far less than "millions of dollars."

Now, the SKD points out that they have customers with hundreds of thousands of users on tens of thousands of servers running 24/7 all around the globe---within a single enterprise. We're talking about the big commercial entities of the world: British Petroleum (BP), DaimlerChristler, Toyota, and Sony (for example). These companies are dealing with yearly revenues in the hundreds of billions of dollars. Over lunch, talk with some of your classmates about what might be involved in upgrading several thousand servers around the globe every time a critical patch comes out, or upgrading every year for a major kernel revision. Oh, and remember: you can't afford to have any downtime.

So yes, Sun does have customers who are paying tens of millions of dollars for the guarantee that if they develop software (at a cost of millions) right now, that five, ten, fifteen years from now, their software will not just be able to be executed (the LKD's claim), but that the software will run better ten years from now than it does today.

If you're bored, take some time and muddle your way through the posts; they get a bit technical at times, but pay attention to the expertise and tone of voice brought to the debate. If you listen carefully, I think you can hear a distinct difference in the tone (professionalism?) of these two posts. Mind you, it might be that the Sun posts were vetted by the entire kernel team before they went to the web; we have no way of knowing.

Update, Tues 27th
I didn't do my research thoroughly before my first drafting (post) of this article; based on the good point made by the first comment, I've made some revisions that I hope paint both the LKD and SKD in more neutral terms. I should have done a better job of this in the first place. Many thanks.

Posted by mjadud at 05:57 PM | Comments (2)

September 21, 2004

First Meeting of the Year

WHEN: Thursday 30th September, 7PM.
WHERE: SE107 - CS Multimedia Lab.
WHY: Why not?
WHAT: Short introduction with the new freshers joining then a trip to a bar for a few drinks and a 'get-together'.

All welcome!

As the mighty Matt might say: "Get there or die trying".

Rob

Posted by rwatkins at 12:26 PM | Comments (1)

September 12, 2004

Lego in .NET

These guys have created a project to build a lego RCX platform using C#.net and the .net IDE. I've never written anything Lego in Java so I don't know how different it is, but certainly the ability to use a proper IDE for building Lego stuff is good. Robolab is not counted because it's as good-an IDE as BotNet was as a project.

Posted by rwatkins at 10:18 PM | Comments (0)

September 08, 2004

Cleared for Take Off

CSCS can have a presence at all three of the Stage 1 reception in freshers week, the intro session in the first week of term and also the 'welcome session' during freshers week. I can't remember what that lecture was really - was it where we got our calculators and timetables? :).

I'd ideally like to choose the reception and one of the second two. I don't know how the stage II timetable goes in the first week, and so asked for an alternate date in case we have an important lecture in the same timeslot as the stage I talk.

Anyway, I thought about bringing some leaflets to the CS reception to hand out so people know that we exist (not sure how we could print them out, is it going to be use of printer credits or is there something the department can do?) and maybe a lego if we have time to build something that works (unlikely?).

As for the lecture 'invasion', then I think someone blagging something on the spot will do. No need for a big speech, maybe just writing down the URL of the blog so people know where to go to get more info. I'm still more than happy to be involved in both, but some extra help in the reception would be good :).

Rob

Posted by rwatkins at 01:11 AM | Comments (0)

September 05, 2004

CSCS Blog look and feel

AS some of you may know we have the blog back and dunning on our new server. However the style has gone. We of course have a few options.


  1. Do nothing and keep the default MT3 theme.

  2. Move the old style over (Think that would be down to Matt)

  3. Some one of some of us come up with a new funky design.

  4. Several of us come up with diffrent designs and put a css selector in place so we can each use the style we want


Well answers in a comment :-) Options 2 and 3 I like the most btw.

Posted by shendry at 06:29 PM | Comments (3)

September 04, 2004

How we communicate

The internet makes communication easy, cheap and quick. CSCS takes advantage of this, what with our own IRC channel, mailing list, weblog and wiki. I think we are suffering, however, from 'communication overload'. I think we need to have one place to communicate as a group--people don't know where to look for information and although the mailing list looks the best idea, I think the weblog should be where all CSCS communication occurs.

The reasons for this are threefold. Firstly, the weblog is open to all - there is no need to be a member to read posts or post comments; secondly the weblog archive is easily searched and indexed for quick viewing and finally it's something we can all contribute to. The list has been more focussed--used for CSCS related things only--but CSCS is more than just a weekly meeting. Using the weblog more often would mean there is more communication about a wider range of topics, which would help everyones education. And hey, what's better than both having fun and learning at the same time? If only lectures could be the same....

An idea would be to tie-up the mailing list and the weblog, so that new threads to the mailing list are posted on the blog (and replies as comments) and new weblog posts (and comments!) are posted to the list. MovableType does let you announce new posts, so it could be hacked up a little to do what we want. Might require a bit of code though, unless it's been done before.

Or we could just use the mailing list for "crap I forgot to tell you about a talk we have in 10 minutes" type threads, and the blog for everything else. I think I like that idea ;).

Rob

Posted by rwatkins at 12:30 AM | Comments (1)

September 03, 2004

What will be going on this year?

We've got a some plans--no secret documents yet--but plans.

Our thought was a more structured introduction to programming mobile agents (read: LEGO robots) in the autumn term, and from there break into Ninja CSCS Squads in the spring. Or something. Yeah.

The intention is that Christian (mostly) will take the group through an introduction to occam on the LEGO Mindstorms; material will be appearing here over time, for those who want to peek. We'll be doing this for a few reasons. First, occam is used here at Kent, so learning it can only be a benefit to all concerned. Second, it's a very powerful language when it comes to programming things that either happen in parallel or involve communication: both of these happen a lot in robotics. And third, but not least, we think this is a good combination of technologies, and will set us up for more cool stuff in the spring.

The culmination of the autumn term will be a competition, and we'll hype that up. I imagine we will have a few speakers throughout the autumn, and overall it should be good times. Looking into next term, we're thinking small software projects, additional robotics (with the larger platforms--perhaps some of you will want to work on those sooner rather than later), WiFi on handhelds, and other stuff like that.

Hope that sounds good to y'all.

Posted by mjadud at 11:41 AM | Comments (2)

September 02, 2004

Fancy a challenge?

Give the Google Code Jam 2004 a whirl for a chance to win up to $10,000.

Java is one of the allowed languages, so you can have your CO309 knowledge put to the test and see how you go.

Hey, if you do well you might be plucked out of university and sent to work for Google, just in time for a windfall from their share auction. Don't forget us back at CSCS though!

Rob

Posted by rwatkins at 11:53 PM | Comments (1)

Cool stuff into 2004!

Just so you have an idea of the CSCS schedule into 2004, the first normal week of term will be some kind of meet-up involving a bar and the transfer of beer from glass to mouth. After that, however, we will be cracking on with some bot-induced fun involving either some new robots or the mindstorms.

Meeting dates and times to follow!

Here's to 1 year of CSCS and an even more prosperous second year,

Rob Watkins.

Posted by rwatkins at 11:29 PM | Comments (3)